Cloak & Lager Espionage Book Club: The Spy in the Archive

Cloak & Lager is Denver's only espionage book club and one of very few espionage-centric book clubs in the United States. On the second Tuesday of each month, we meet at 7 PM at Station 26 Brewing to discuss spy books of all types, fiction and nonfiction.

This month, we will be reading The Spy in the Archive: How One Man Tried to Kill the KGB (272 pp.) by Gordon Corera. Soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Vasili Mitrokhin, retired archivist of the First Chief Directorate of the KGB from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s, walked into the American embassy in Riga with genuine KGB material. Disbelieved by the Americans, he then went to the British embassy, where he eventually got an audience. Eventually, MI6 exfiltrated him and his 25,000-page trove of KGB files. Mitrokhin is among the all-time most important leakers to Western intelligence services.

Please note: this book was recently published (January 2026), so it may be more difficult than many other selections to get quickly from the library.

Weather permitting, we will be outside. To find us, look for a Cloak & Lager table sign.