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CONFESSIONS OF A SPY
by Pete Earley
Diane Publishing Co, June 1997
364 pages
$27.50
ISBN: 0788161644


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

A compelling. complex tale of spies, betrayal, greed, sex, and incompetence, this is the true story of the creation, development and finally the unmasking of a man who has been called the most damaging threat to American security in the twentieth century, Aldrich Ames.

The author has impressive credentials. He has written about espionage before. CONFESSIONS shows ample evidence of extensive and meticulous research. Earley interviewed Ames for over fifty hours; he went to Russia to interview prominent and not-so-well-known members of the KGB and the GRU, counterparts to the CIA, and he read extensively in espionage literature. The delineation of his sources and research bibliography is extensive and useful.

What is the result of this prodigious effort? Here is a story, tragic in many aspects, in which professional intelligence people, presumably possessed of average or better intelligence, are sucked into a huge bureaucratic morass. The CIA which, like most government bureaucracies, is at times unable to avoid being completely self-serving. And, as with most government agencies, such self-service usually works to the detriment of the intelligence-gathering function of this particular bureaucracy.

How is it possible that the definitive recommendations of such a large and expensive agency as the CIA, based on extensive overt and covert intelligence gathering, were routinely ignored by federal politicians in order to further political agendas? Is this still happening? One of the most disturbing aspect of CONFESSIONS is the obvious possibility that our elected politicians are still routinely ignoring intelligence gathered by the CIA. Is the frustration over being ignored one of the factors that leads professional intelligence men like Aldrich Ames to pass on to the opposition reams of sensitive documents?

And what about security? Apparently Ames periodically walked out of Langley and the embassies in Rome and Mexico City with shopping bags stuffed with secret materials! What emerges here is a picture of an agency more focused on its image than on its job, a place where pettiness and personal maneuvering, unduly influenced by Congressional agendas, seriously hampered the agency's ability to do its mandated job.

Finally what also emerges is the story of a bright, well-educated, well-read man, who gradually went adrift from his basic moral learnings, who was unable to withstand the increasingly intense pressures of bad marriages, who came to disdain the game of espionage, and who finally found a way to profit from his disenchantment.

This is a book filled with assets, murder, treason, safe houses, persistent police work, bitterness and disillusionment. And with irony. How ironical it is that CIA case workers talk about their sorrow and pain at losing the heroic Russian spies and traitors who were stealing state documents and intelligence from inside the Kremlin, then feeding that intelligence to the CIA. Ironic that they then turn and vilify their co-worker, Aldrich Ames, for being and doing exactly the same thing in exactly the same way, only for the other side.

CONFESSIONS raises many questions about competition between nations, and for that reason alone it is fascinating reading. Much of what happens could never be included in a novel, it's too incredible. I noted earlier that it is well-written, although I find it interesting that almost no one in the book is ever angry. They are enraged, or furious, never just angry. Perhaps that's a true indicator of the climate in which Ames spied for nine years.

The reviewer is the author of

INNER PASSAGES and

A SUPERIOR MYSTERY

http://www.Minnesotacrimewave.org

Reviewed by Carl Brookins, December 2002

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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