Aldrich Ames

Espionage, for the most part, involves finding a person who knows something or has something that you can induce them read more

Espionage, for the most part, involves finding a person who knows something or has something that you can induce them secretly to give to you. That almost always involves a betrayal of trust.

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.

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.

I found that our Soviet espionage efforts had virtually never, or had very seldom, produced any worthwhile political or economic read more

I found that our Soviet espionage efforts had virtually never, or had very seldom, produced any worthwhile political or economic intelligence on the Soviet Union.

Historians don't really like to carry on speculative debates, but you could certainly argue that the likelihood of a Soviet read more

Historians don't really like to carry on speculative debates, but you could certainly argue that the likelihood of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe was extremely, extremely low.