Customer Reviews

Killer Spy: Inside Story of the FBI's Pursuit and Capture of Aldrich Ames, America's Deadliest Spy

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THis book incorrectly focuses on the FBI as the capturers of Ames and leaves out the mole hunting CIA team's chase of Ames. While they did mess up and take years to identify the problem, the CIA team caught Ames. THis book is also way short on providing insight into Ames motives, tactics and techniques. A MUCH better book on the subject is "confessions of a spy" by Pete Early. Earley is the only journalist that was able to interview Ames and his well researched book provides the story in Ames own words as well as interviews with his russian accomplices.

Maas does a good job of keeping the reader interested and moving the story along, however, I feel that because of this some of the details of the CIA's involvement in the investigation are glossed over. My only other complaint is that I felt Maas didn't spend enough time explaining the importance of the U.S. sources that Ames gave to the Soviets and who they were. While Maas does a great job in portraying Ames, putting a spotlight on his character for the reader, humanizing the agents whose deaths Ames is responsible for, would add to the reader's understanding of his depravity and villainy masked by his self-centered worldview. Despite these complaints, Maas's, Killer Spy, is a well written, detailed account of a fascinating espionage investigation not to mention a fun read.

This book is relatively short but it provides enough information on the subject. I also liked its matter of fact presentation of the events.

But the truly amazing part is the "Keystone Cops" aspect of the whole affair. CIA and FBI joint task force identified Ames after the first real check of the financial status of possible sources, but it took 10 years of humiliating failures for this pretty routine investigation to get started.

And after that initial success the team of top flight FBI agents experienced one snafu after another trying to catch Ames and his Russian handlers red-handed and finally gave it up.

The late journalist and crime writer Peter Maas (1929-2001) here presents one important aspect of the Aldrich Ames spy scandal, the FBI's involvement in the case. (The subtitle is crucial to understanding what Maas is about; he acknowledges "exceptional cooperation from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.") Of course, Ames worked for the CIA, and that agency strove for many previous years--often clumsily to be sure--to discover the cause of one of the most disastrous security breeches in American intelligence history.

I think Maas writes well enough to keep most readers turning the page, but I had the advantage of first having read the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the Ames case before coming to this book. Some readers without that background may find the narrative confusing in spots.

To my mind the most interesting parts of Killer Spy were the vignettes of some of the KGB "assets" betrayed by Ames's treachery as well as the kind of debacles that can befall real-life police operations of a sort that never appear on TV crime shows.

Two weaknesses of the book are Maas's attempt to play down Ames's drinking (perhaps to emphasize his shrewdness and intelligence) and to minimize CIA acceptance of a "boys will be boys" ethos in its shop. Certainly an intelligence organization less tolerant of heavy drinking and adulterous relationships with big-spending foreign nationals would have sacked Ames before he ever got to the Russian Embassy.

The book wa very interesting and had me excited to the end. Some of it was a little confusing and I felt like I missed parts, but overall the storyline was fun and it was fun to read about the allusive Ames. I was able to get into Ames very well. It seemed like it was a well told story of an some intersting events.