Spies in the Family: An American Spymaster, His Russian Crown Jewel, and the Friendship That Helped End the Cold War

During the summer of 1975, seventeen-year-old Eva Dillon was living in New Delhi when her father was exposed as a CIA spy. Long believing that he was a U.S. State Department employee, Dillon had no idea that her father was handling the CIA’s highest-ranking double agent, Soviet general Dmitri Fedorovich Polyakov. Code-named TOPHAT, the Russian provided a prolific flow of top secret intelligence that offered the CIA an unfiltered view into the vault of Soviet intelligence. But it wasn’t solely espionage: Dillon’s father and Polyakov had a close friendship that went back years, to their first meeting in Burma in the mid-1960s. At the height of the Cold War, their collaboration helped ensure that tensions between the two nuclear superpowers did not escalate into a shooting war.

Spanning fifty years and three continents, Spies in the Family is a deeply researched account of two families on opposite sides of the lethal espionage campaigns of the Cold War, and of the two agents whose devoted friendship blurred the lines between enemies, until the devastating final days of the men’s lives. With impeccable insider access to both families as well as to knowledgeable CIA and FBI officers, Eva Dillon goes beyond the fog of secrecy to craft an unforgettable story of allegiances and betrayals, double agents and clandestine lives. In revealing what the Cold War cost two families, she challenges our notions of patriotism and sheds light on the commonality between peoples of rival political economic systems.

Both a gripping tale of spy craft and a powerful personal story, Spies in the Family is an invaluable and wholly fresh look at one of the most extraordinary episodes in American history.