Sellout: Aldrich Ames and the Corruption of the CIA [Paperback]

James Adams (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 25, 1996

Aldrich Ames was the CIA agent who betrayed western intelligence's greatest asset - KGB double agent Oleg Gordievsky. Gordievsky barely escaped with his life and Ames was launched on his nine year career as an unlikely double agent, during which he delivered a stream of priceless information to Russia. This book traces the CIA's hardening suspicions about the mole in their midst and climaxes with the massive inter-agency scheme to trap and arrest Ames.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Working with the facts of Ames' sellout to the Russians and with knowledge of the byzantine CIA culture that allegedly abetted such treason, British journalist Adams has created a well-rounded story of the sensational spy scandal. Adams collects the various revelations about Ames' biography, personality, and career and sets them into the managerial context in which he operated, which includes the chronic CIA/FBI turf war. It was the agencies' attempt to ameliorate the latter, ironically, that gave Ames his opportunity: he was the CIA's representative in a joint operation to recruit Soviet diplomats in Washington, and he used that cover instead to sell the Soviets the names of all CIA moles inside Soviet intelligence. Most were executed, and for nine years the CIA couldn't collar the culprit within. Its initial mole hunt stalled and revived only after another agent told superiors that the rumor that attributed the source of Ames' material extravagance to his "wealthy" wife was false. In the meantime, Ames' lax performance and breaches of security regulations earned not even a reprimand. Aside from any policy implications, Adams delivers a surefooted spy story bound to be as popular as the front-page treatment the case continues to attract. Gilbert Taylor --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; New edition edition (July 25, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140244670
• ISBN-13: 978-0140244670
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,130,814 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Selling out and The Year of the Rat, December 11, 2001

By 

Bob Nucich (Revelstoke, B.C., Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sellout: Aldrich Ames and the Corruption of the CIA (Hardcover)

Well written, and stunning in its detail of the incompetence, unbelievable bungling, and the persistent failure to follow up on what was obvious about Ames to all but the blind--this,within the bowels of the CIA at the highest levels. I cannot recommend this book enough.

Not even Ames's rampant drinking, lavish lifestyle, and poor performance could for years unmask or launch a thorough investigation, something in any other organization would certainly take place. And then, to have the same person assigned to the CIA's Counter Intelligence Center with access to highly classified material and at the same time was "considered a dumping ground for CIA underachievers" has to be the apex of irony on a scale incapable of measurement.

"The directorate of [CIA] operations regarded the Counter Intelligence Center as a place that poor performers could be sent because they could not do much harm," said panel chairman Jeffrey H. Smith, a former Senate Intelligence Committee staff member. "It was like a bank concluding that because one of its officers had performed poorly, he should be put in charge of the vault." (pp. 248-49) Indeed.

For the many who did their jobs, this must have been a crushing revelation, none more so than for Jeannie Brookner, a successful case officer who was forced to bring a sexual discrimination lawsuit against the Agency, in which the court papers revealed "a male-chauvinist nightmare of drunkeness, drug-taking, and wife-beating, in which the mentally unsound [Ames might well qualify, in certain respects] serve alongside the corrupt to produce a parody of the intelligence community that is far more bizarre than anything a novelist might imagine. It is difficult to believe that in this apparently lunatic world the CIA could ever spy successfully against anybody." (p. 250)

A companion book would to have to be "The Year of the Rat: How Bill Clinton Compromised American Security for Chinese Money."

While Rick Ames smugly and gloatingly languishes in jail, he must wonder at times why he hasn't Bill as a cellmate because, as both books reveal, "Ah shucks, we did it for the money."

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best description of a mole I have ever read, July 6, 2002

By 

it (Sunnyvale, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sellout: Aldrich Ames and the Corruption of the CIA (Hardcover)

This is the best and most complete description of the life cycle of a mole I have ever read. It also gives supplementary information on other moles and incompetents in the CIA as it goes along. There is one problem in the book. It assumes that the CIA has a monopoly on people with common human nature imperfections. I have seen similar problems in the military, academia, and industry. The reader is probably familiar with the recent Catholic child molesting scandal which is another example. As a result of this, the author advocates corrective action which involves the either-or logical fallacy and "throwing out the infant with th bath water" type actions.