Larry J. Kolb
Larry Jackson Kolb | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1953 (age 70–71) Norfolk, Virginia, US |
| Occupation | Author, spy, businessman, agent for professional athletes, counterterrorism investigator |
| Genre | memoir |
| Subject | biography, intelligence officers, CIA, DHS |
| Spouse | Kim |
Larry J. Kolb (born 1953) is the author of two memoirs of his life as an intelligence officer and world-traveling businessman.[1][2]
Prior to his career as an author, Kolb, by his own account, worked as a close advisor to Muhammad Ali and Adnan Khashoggi and as a spy with CIA co-founder Miles Copeland, Jr., with whom he was involved in intrigues in Pakistan, Nicaragua, India, Lebanon, and elsewhere, until Kolb was forced to retreat to a safe house in Florida to avoid extradition to India.[3]
As Kolb recounts in Overworld, his father was a highly placed U.S. intelligence official, and Kolb grew up in various places around the world, following his father's assignments.[4] Kolb resisted various efforts at recruitment by official intelligence agencies until he was recruited by Copeland.
Upon the publication of Overworld, Kolb was again recruited, this time by the Department of Homeland Security, to help investigate two white collar criminals with connections to the CIA. Kolb's investigation of Robert Sensi and Richard Hirschfeld led him to discover and foil a conspiracy to smear the John Kerry 2004 presidential campaign with false links to Al Qaeda.[5] This became the subject of his 2007 book America at Night, which was reviewed by The New York Times on January 25, 2007.[6]
In The Unending Game: A Former R&AW Chief's Insights into Espionage, Vikram Sood, retired chief of India's foreign intelligence service Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), devotes a chapter to Kolb's operations in India, and calls Kolb "multi-talented, a kind of real-life James Bond with Bond's legendary luck with women and the subtlety of a John le Carré character."
Kolb, who was born in Virginia, currently lives in Florida.
References
- ^ Kolb, Larry Jackson (2004). Overworld: The Life and Times of a Reluctant Spy. NY: Riverhead Books. ISBN 978-1-57322-253-2. OCLC 237878861.
- ^ Kolb, Larry Jackson (2007). America at Night : The true story of two rogue CIA operatives, Homeland Security failures, dirty money, and a plot to steal the 2004 U.S. presidential election--by the former intelligence agent who foiled the plan. NY: Riverhead Books. ISBN 978-1-57322-253-2. OCLC 71126723.
- ^ Dennis Drabelle. "How to Be a Spook". The Washington Post. October 31, 2004. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7812-2004Oct28.html
- ^ Michael Fleming. "Atmosphere to engulf 'Overworld'". Variety. June 13, 2004. http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117906396?refcatid=13
- ^ John Freeman. "Darker Dirty Tricks: Retired spy blows the cover off recent CIA shenanigans". The Denver Post. April 29, 2007. http://www.denverpost.com/lifestyles/ci_5759844
- ^ Maslin, Janet (2007-01-25). "Returning to the Spy World to Uncover a Political Plot". Books of The Times. The New York Times Company. Retrieved 2010-03-21.
- Sood, Vikram (2018). The Unending Game: A Former R&AW Chief's Insights into Espionage NY, Penguin Random House. ISBN 978-0-670-09150-8
Bibliography
- Overworld: The Life and Times of a Reluctant Spy. NY: Riverhead Books. 2004.
- America At Night : The true story of two rogue CIA operatives, Homeland Security failures, dirty money, and a plot to steal the 2004 U.S. presidential election--by the former intelligence agent who foiled the plan. NY: Riverhead Books. 2007.
- The Unending Game: A Former R&AW Chief's Insights into Espionage. NY: Penguin Books. 2018.
External links
- Larry J. Kolb's website - includes extensive documentation and photographs of the stories recounted in Kolb's books
- Larry J. Kolb at IMDb
