Working With Agents: Soviet KGB Tradecraft for Running Agents – First Ever Professional English Translation
A top-secret KGB training document, Working With Agents is an essential manual from the Cold War era, outlining how Soviet intelligence officers handled their most valuable resource: human agents. For the first time in professional English, this edition reveals the KGB’s rigorous procedures for vetting, evaluating, and managing intelligence assets in foreign environments.
This book is another volume in the Conflict Research Group’s acclaimed series of KGB manuals. This series continues to present previously highly-classified Soviet intelligence materials to the public, offering scholars and practitioners unparalleled access to Cold War espionage doctrine.
Essential Reading for Intelligence Professionals, Historians, and Spycraft Enthusiasts
Agent Handling Procedures – Explore how KGB officers maintained control over recruited assets, issued operational tasks, and evaluated agent performance over time.
Counterintelligence Safeguards – Learn how Soviet handlers detected and neutralized double agents, moles, informers, and Western counterintelligence infiltrators.
Deception and Tradecraft Testing – Discover how agents were tested for honesty through covert surveillance, disinformation drops, and fabricated assignments.
Surveillance and Vetting – Understand how KGB stations used observation, cross-agent reporting, and technical means to verify agent loyalty.
Operational Doctrine – See how the KGB trained officers to assess ideological alignment, psychological stability, and operational security risk.
Unlike previous machine-generated or unofficial translations, this edition by the Conflict Research Group is the first professional English translation, preserving the clarity, precision, and authentic intelligence terminology of the original manual.
This historical document offers a rare window into the day-to-day mechanics of Cold War espionage work—how agents were run, evaluated, and, when necessary, exposed. It is indispensable for those studying human intelligence (HUMINT), counterintelligence, or the operational psychology of spycraft.
Includes a detailed translator’s note and contextual introduction, prepared by Major Christoph P. Schwanitz (Ret.), a former NATO intelligence officer and expert in Soviet tradecraft.
Whether you are a defense analyst, academic researcher, intelligence professional, or simply fascinated by Cold War history, Working With Agents belongs in your collection. Add this Cold War-era Top Secret intelligence training manual to your library today.
