Overworld - Softcover

Kolb, Larry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593053591 ISBN 13: 9780593053591

Publisher: Riverhead Books, 2004

Synopsis

This gripping memoir by a former American intelligence operative is a vivid portrait of a spy at every stage of his life and career. Raised in various countries around the world as the son of an American spymaster, Larry Kolb tells how his father taught him to think, look and listen like a spy, and how a friend and colleague of his father attempted to recruit him to the CIA. Kolb declined, choosing instead to become an international businessman. His early success - in his mid-twenties he became an agent for several professional athletes, including Muhammad Ali - brought him into contact with many of the world's wealthiest and most powerful men, making him irresistible to master spy and CIA co-founder, Miles Copeland. When Copeland later tried to recruit him, Kolb accepted, and soon he was involved in covert intrigues in Beirut, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Nicaragua, Pakistan and India. Peopled by larger than life characters such as Adnan Khashoggi, Imelda Marcos, Rajiv Gandhi and Ronald Reagan, OVERWORLD is a real-life adventure story of the highest order which offers compelling insights into the danger, glamour and psychology of espionage - as well as an extraordinary glimpse into the real corridors of global power.

About this title

About the Author

Larry Kolb was born in Virginia and educated around the world. With Miles Copeland, Kolb co-wrote white papers for the President of the United States and the National Security Council. While running a covert propaganda campaign for Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, Kolb anonymously wrote a widely published series of investigative newspaper stories which electrified India. More recently, he has found himself in a safe house in Florida with nothing to do but listen to the waves roll in and put down on paper the extraordinary story of his life so far.

From The Washington Post

In the world of espionage it helps to be a mensch. So, at least, asserts Larry J. Kolb, the son of a spy and a man of many faces: He was a former agent for Muhammad Ali (a job that gave him the best "cover" of his career), a stepson-in-law of Saudi entrepreneur Adnan Kashoggi, and a secret-stealer of such versatility that he plied his trade in Lebanon, Saudia Arabia, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Nicaragua, Pakistan and India. In Overworld: The Life and Times of a Reluctant Spy (Riverhead, $25.95), Kolb explains the techniques by which he ingratiated himself in so many venues : "If you showed a bit of world-view rather than behaving like a tourist, if you bothered to learn a few sentences of the local language as soon as you arrived, so that, by the time you met the King or Prime Minister or just a delighted porter, you could greet him flawlessly in his own language, if you did not fawn but treated even the exalted like normal people who crawl around on the floor with their grandchildren, if you took flowers for their wives -- you would be well remembered and welcomed back."

Kolb learned his craft in part from Miles Copeland, whose career before spying for the CIA included a stint as a trumpeter with the Glenn Miller Orchestra, and his wife, Lorraine, an innocent-looking blonde whose wartime specialties were "blowing up bridges and derailing German trains." Having recruited Kolb, Copeland explained why his training would be less than comprehensive: "Obvious professionalism can be as undesirable in spies as in prostitutes. . . . The KGB were the first to realize this. . . . The Soviets actually taught their agents less rather than more. So when their agents came under spot surveillance -- and almost everyone with access to sensitive materials or facilities is subject to routine spot surveillance -- they didn't display mannerisms which betrayed them and subjected them to full surveillance." And then Copeland added darkly, "Almost no one can beat full surveillance."

How to Be a Spook
Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Riverhead Books
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0593053591
• ISBN 13: 9780593053591
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1