Introduction

This introductory chapter provides a short biographical summary of the life of Michal Goleniewski, mentioning his importance as a ‘mole’ for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Polish Intelligence with the cover name ‘Sniper’, his defection from Berlin and his intensive debriefing in America. The Agency distanced itself from Goleniewski after he began to repeat the bizarre claim that he was in fact Alexei Nikolaevich Romanoff, the hemophilic son of Tsar Nicholas II, who was murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918. The chapter also discusses Goleniewski’s scurrilous newsletter Double Eagle founded in 1975 which became the vehicle for further outrageous claims and conspiracy theories. It concludes by suggesting that Goleniewski’s claims to be part of the Romanoff family have overshadowed how important his espionage revelations were.