Confessions of a Spy: The Real Story of Aldrich Ames

New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1997. First Printing. Hardcover. 24 cm, 364 pages, illustrations, sources, bibliography. The first complete story of the "spy of the century," based on the author's interviews with Aldrich Ames. This book is a portrait of a complex, diabolical man and an account of the damage he wreaked that is far worse than has even been chronicled. Pete Earley (born September 5, 1951) is an American journalist and writer of nonfiction books and novels. A former Washington Post reporter, he is the author of books about the Aldrich Ames and John Walker espionage cases. His book Circumstantial Evidence: Death, Life, and Justice in a Southern Town won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Fact Crime Book in 1996. His book about the John Walker spy ring, Family of Spies, was a New York Times bestseller and was made into a CBS miniseries starring Powers Boothe and Lesley Ann Warren. In 2007, he was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for his book Crazy. His 2008 book, Comrade J, is about Russian SVR defector Sergei Tretyakov. Pete Earley, the only author to conduct 50 hours of one-on-one interviews with Ames--without a censor present--presents the first and only complete story of the spy of the century, revealing a man much more complex and diabolical than previously depicted--and damage far worse than has ever been chronicled about the case. Derived from a review found on-line: At the opening of ''Confessions of a Spy: The Real Story of Aldrich Ames,'' Pete Earley describes the obstacles he faced in gaining direct access to his subject, who is widely considered to have been the most valuable source the Soviet Union ever had inside American intelligence. Among these obstacles was the spin that the United States Government was putting on its capture of Mr. Ames. Mr. Earley tries to tell the real story. As he interprets it, Mr. Ames was highly competent at the craft of espionage and was told the choicest secrets because he was trusted. His cleverness was what made him so hard to catch, but an intrepid team of C.I.A. investigators eventually prevailed. The F.B.I. didn't even join the hunt until it was asked to help in 1991. Yet, in Mr. Earley's view, the F.B.I. got all the credit because it prevailed in a battle of bureaucracies. What's strikingly new in Mr. Earley's telling of the Ames story is his access to the subject himself. In the book's opening chapter, the author describes how through a combination of luck and guile he outsmarted a prison bureaucracy to talk alone with Mr. Ames for more than 50 hours. Using these talks and nearly 500 pages of letters that Mr. Ames wrote to him, Mr. Earley intersperses his third-person narrative with comments by Mr. Ames himself. The acuteness of his self-analysis reveals Mr. Ames to be a man of somewhat more dimension than previous books have done. Mr. Ames seems willing to bear the full burden of guilt for having identified to the K.G.B. some 20 of the United States agents in the Soviet Union, many of whom were executed. In the end, Mr. Ames stands revealed as an example of a quintessential 20th-century figure, the self-analytical man who doesn't understand himself at all. Condition: Very good.

Keywords: CIA, KGB, Cold War, Aldrich Ames, Spies, Betrayals, Intelligence Operations, Counterespionage, Counterintelligence

ISBN: 039914188X

[Book #28980]

Price: $35.00

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