The Defector
04 September 2025Imprint: Blink Publishing
Synopsis
The Defector is the untold account of how, in 1971, the defection of a KGB saboteur in London led to the expulsion of more than a hundred Soviet 'diplomats' from the UK.
Drawing on newly declassified intelligence documents and dozens of interviews with spymasters, The Defector tells a startling story of a Soviet mission to plant fake Kremlin agents within British and American intelligence services, the paranoia that ensued, and how the actions of a genuine turncoat, the former KGB officer Oleg Lyalin, and the secrets he revealed resulted to one of the most dramatic and pivotal moments in the Cold War.
Lyalin led MI5 to rethink its relationship with the CIA. And his defection discredited a previous KGB defector, Anatoly Golitsyn, the darling of the CIA, and ultimately destroyed the reputation of the US agency's head of counterintelligence, James Jesus Angleton.
As Richard Kerbaj writes: 'There was a poetic irony in Golitsyn's loss of credibility. It came, as he had previously feared, at the hands of a KGB defector. Except Oleg Lyalin had not been sent by the KGB - he was running away from it.'
At the heart of Lyalin's story is a narrative entwined with lies, disinformation, Kremlin deception campaigns, intelligence failures by the CIA and MI5, and a tangled love life. Told in full here, for the first time, by one of this country's leading commentators on national security, it reveals how during the darkest moments of the Cold War one of the West's greatest achievements transpired as a result of MI5's break with the CIA.
The disclosure of the inside story of this historic event also comes at a time when there is a renewed interest in the relationship between transatlantic spy services - from the intelligence they share or hold back, to the way they respond to their political masters and stand up to threats from Russia.
Drawing on newly declassified intelligence documents and dozens of interviews with spymasters, The Defector tells a startling story of a Soviet mission to plant fake Kremlin agents within British and American intelligence services, the paranoia that ensued, and how the actions of a genuine turncoat, the former KGB officer Oleg Lyalin, and the secrets he revealed resulted to one of the most dramatic and pivotal moments in the Cold War.
Lyalin led MI5 to rethink its relationship with the CIA. And his defection discredited a previous KGB defector, Anatoly Golitsyn, the darling of the CIA, and ultimately destroyed the reputation of the US agency's head of counterintelligence, James Jesus Angleton.
As Richard Kerbaj writes: 'There was a poetic irony in Golitsyn's loss of credibility. It came, as he had previously feared, at the hands of a KGB defector. Except Oleg Lyalin had not been sent by the KGB - he was running away from it.'
At the heart of Lyalin's story is a narrative entwined with lies, disinformation, Kremlin deception campaigns, intelligence failures by the CIA and MI5, and a tangled love life. Told in full here, for the first time, by one of this country's leading commentators on national security, it reveals how during the darkest moments of the Cold War one of the West's greatest achievements transpired as a result of MI5's break with the CIA.
The disclosure of the inside story of this historic event also comes at a time when there is a renewed interest in the relationship between transatlantic spy services - from the intelligence they share or hold back, to the way they respond to their political masters and stand up to threats from Russia.
Details
04 September 2025304 pages
9781789468489Imprint: Blink Publishing
Reviews
'An absolutely thrilling read based on deep research which brings this MI5 asset's importance to life' Gordon Corera, co-host of The Rest is Classified
'A truly gripping, untold story of how a Russian defector helped British intelligence defeat the Soviet spies. Richard Kerbaj's painstaking research, including interviews with key players, upends much of the orthodoxy about what happened in the Cold War. The Defector reads like Le Carre but uncovers important truths that are being played out in Putin's Russia today'Robert Verkaik, Sunday Times Bestselling author of The Traitor of Colditz
'A lucidly written account of a significant setback for Soviet intelligence. Dynamic and vivid, reads like a spy thriller. Kerbaj skillfully makes major figures of the Cold War cloak-and-dagger operations come to life: defectors Oleg Lyalin and Anatoly Golitsyn, CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton, MI5 director Martin Furnival Jones, KGB chairman Yuri Andropov, and many others'Dr. Filip Kovacevic, University of San Francisco and author of KGB Literati: Spy Fiction and State Security in the Soviet Union
'[The Secret History of the Five Eyes] Unencumbered by any sense of an agreed or official narrative'staff, Sunday Times
