Aldrich Ames

So this was ultimately the result of poor CIA tradecraft that exposed someone who wasn't actually working for them.

Setting the context for this time, though, the CIA had sources in the Soviet Union who were being executed because this was also the same time as Aldrich Ames, who was divulging the identities of people to the Soviet Union.

Can we spend a moment talking about how desperate the CIA was to get information, to establish sources?

They suspected that there was a traitor somewhere within the CIA, but they didn't know who it was.

Money.

Well, if you check even the most famous, uh, spies, okay, from Kim Philby till Aldrich Ames at the United States, okay, or others in Israel, or the Iranian spies that we discover the last three, four years, dozens of them, okay? Some of them soldiers in the army.

Some of them people-

Oh my God

You'll probably agree.

You know, I'm always fascinated how a lot of these people, whether it's a corrupt politician, uh, a person like Aldrich Ames, you know, they go out, they flash, they buy these big houses, the cars.

They just never think they're gonna get caught.

You would agree that Ames was probably the biggest, uh, you know, spy who got caught in the last few decades within the agency, would you, uh, Mr. Hersh?

Ronald Pelton reveló capacidades de vigilancia por satélite.

Aldrich Ames y Robert Hanssen traicionarían posteriormente a la inteligencia estadounidense durante los últimos años de la Guerra Fría.

Estos no eran espías de película con aparatos elaborados.

Eran personas normales, algunas veces motivadas por la ideología, otras por el dinero y otras por agravios personales.

And so it's just basically, and I talk about this a little bit in the book about, you know, when we establish categories, they have survival value, but there's drawbacks as well.

In your book, Bill, Aldrich Ames betrayed agents for money, while figures such as Oleg Penkovsky risked everything to help the West.

How can the same psychological framework genuinely explain both men?

Well, y- if you look at Aldrich James, and in fact I, I met him once.

It was a wonderful piece of internal sleuthing, and they worked out, yep, it's Oleg Gordievsky.

What they didn't realize, however, was that the head of that unit doing the investigation was himself a KGB spy called Aldrich Ames.

So, so you've got an extraordinary situation there where a brilliant piece of internal deduction actually ends up destroying the case.

The, the man who led that investigation, um, who just couldn't bear that there was a secret the British had that he didn't know passed away Not l- not long ago, and I can remember getting in terrible trouble with him once w- uh, pointing out that y- did you really have to knock on the door, uh, that, that hard? So, um, reading this book, I, I thought, as I often do at the end of, of your books, geez, I wonder what he's gonna write about next.

Now, if you saw this movie about the guy who was sold us out, I forget his name.

He was worse than Aldrich Ames.

Anyway, that guy, when Brian Philippe plays his assistant and he says, yeah, I'm going to requisition him for a computer.

He goes, why are you going to do something stupid like that? Just go get one.