Barron, son of a Methodist minister, graduated from the University of Missouri and studied Russian at the United States Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.He served in Berlin as a naval intelligence officer.

In 1957, he joined the Washington Star as a investigative reporter.In 1965, Barron joined the Washington bureau of Reader's Digest. There he wrote more than 100 stories on a wide variety of subjects...notably a 1980 story concerning unanswered questions surrounding the drowning death of Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick, which involved Ted Kennedy.

• KGB: The Secret Work of Soviet Secret Agents. New York: Reader's Digest Press, 1974. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1974. [pb] New York: Bantam Books, 1974. ISBN 9780883490099
• Murder of a gentle land: the untold story of a Communist genocide in Cambodia, Authors John Barron, Anthony Paul, Reader's Digest Press, 1977, ISBN 9780883491294
• MiG Pilot: the Final Escape of Lt. Belenko, New York: Reader's Digest Press, 1980, ISBN 0-380-53868-7. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980. [pb] New York: Avon Books, 1981.
• KGB Today: The Hidden Hand. New York: Reader's Digest Press, 1983. New York: Berkley Books, 1985. ISBN 9780425104088
• Breaking the Ring: The Bizarre Case of the Walker Family Spy Ring John Anthony Walker. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987, ISBN ISBN 0-395-421101
• Operation SOLO: The FBI's Man in the Kremlin, Washington, DC: Regnery, 1996, ISBN 9780895264299

Anthologies

• "The KGB's Magical War for 'Peace'", The Apocalyptic premise: nuclear arms debated : thirty-one essays by statesmen, scholars, religious leaders, and journalists, Editors Ernest W. Lefever, E. Stephen Hunt, Rowman & Littlefield, 1982, ISBN 9780896330634

Matt Schudel in The Washington Post:

Susan Sontag in 1982:

John Barron in KGB - The Secret Work of Soviet Secret Agents: