Aldrich Ames

By the late '70s I had come to question the point of a great deal of what we were doing, read more

By the late '70s I had come to question the point of a great deal of what we were doing, in terms of the CIA's overall charter.

An espionage organization is a collector: it collects raw information. That gets processed by a machinery that is supposed to read more

An espionage organization is a collector: it collects raw information. That gets processed by a machinery that is supposed to resolve its reliability, and to present a finished product.

Because interrogations are intended to coerce confessions, interrogators feel themselves justified in using their coercive means. Consistency regarding the technique read more

Because interrogations are intended to coerce confessions, interrogators feel themselves justified in using their coercive means. Consistency regarding the technique is not important; inducing anxiety and fear is the point.

I could have stopped it after they paid me the $50,000. I wouldn't even have had to go on to read more

I could have stopped it after they paid me the $50,000. I wouldn't even have had to go on to do more than I already had: just the double agents' names that I gave.

Foreign Ministry guys don't become agents. Party officials, the Foreign Ministry nerds, tend not to volunteer to Western intelligence agencies.

Foreign Ministry guys don't become agents. Party officials, the Foreign Ministry nerds, tend not to volunteer to Western intelligence agencies.