The First Counterspy: Larry Haas, Bell Aircraft, and the FBI's Attempt to Capture a Soviet Mole

By: Kay Haas and Walter W. Pickut

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Synopsis: The First Counterspyis the pulse-quickening and traumatic story of spy, counterspy, and an American family unwittingly caught in its web. Until this case, the FBI had never recruited civilian counterspies to catch a Soviet agent. The first two were Larry Haas, a leading aviation engineer at Bell Aviation, and Leona Franey, head librarian at Bell&’s technical library. The FBI pitted them against a Soviet agent, Andrei Ivanovich Schevchenko, operating legally as one of the highest Soviet officials in the United States during WWII, and illegally as the secret head of a wide-ranging spy network hidden within the American aviation industry. The First Counterspylays out this exciting story and, later, the consequences of Schevchenko&’s deadly threat of vengeance against Haas, the counterspy who betrayed him. The threat was uttered in a mere fourteen seconds but generated lethal consequences that long outlived Schevchenko, tormented Larry Haas, killed his wife, and subjected his daughter, Kay (the co-author of this book), to decades of nearly fatal harassment. And thereby hangs a tale of spy vs. spy intrigue against the backdrop of the home front during World War II.