Confessions of a spy

When Aldrich Ames was arrested in February 1994, he had been feeding the KGB information for nine years; he had been paid more than two and a half million dollars, with the promise of two million more; and he had been personally responsible for the betrayal that led to the execution of most of the United States' top assets in the Soviet Union. Never before had one man done so much damage to American security. Pete Earley is the only writer to conduct fifty hours of one-on-one interviews with Ames, without a government censor present. He is the only writer to have traveled to Moscow to speak to Ames's KGB handlers and with the families of the spies he betrayed. He is the only writer to have had access to the remarkable CIA mole-hunting team that tracked down Ames through its own detective work.

The result is a portrait of a much more complex and diabolical man than has previously been depicted; an account of damage far worse than has ever been chronicled, including startling revelations of unreported double agents and scandal in high Washington circles; and a story of three women - a gray-haired lady in tennis shoes, a knockout blonde, and a shy, gum-chewing secretary - who bucked every obstacle the CIA male establishment could throw at them, to expose perhaps the most devastating spy in modern U.S. history.