Epstein Secrets

TO SNOWDEN’S THEFT of NSA documents, the single most shattering blow to the confidence of the U.S. intelligence com- munity was the 1994 exposure of Aldrich Ames as a long-serving Russian mole in the CIA. Ames, it will be recalled, had been a high- ranking CIA officer, working at the CIA’s Counterintelligence

198 | HOW AMERICA LOST ITS SECRETS of the communications of its adversaries. Even though the Cold War had been declared over after the collapse of the Soviet Union a quar- ter of a century earlier, the age-old enterprise of espionage did not end with it. Russia and China still sought to blunt the edge that the N

d intensive investigations for many decades. Robert Hanssen served as a KGB penetration in the FBI for over 20 years without being caught. Similarly, Aldrich Ames, acted as a KGB mole in the CIA for more than ten years, and passed all the CIA’s sophisticated lie detector tests. Both Hanssen and Ames eluded inte

re he leaked information that exposed CIA operations. Although Agee insisted he was a whistle-blower, and he adamantly denied offering any secrets to the Soviet Union, the KGB viewed him as a conventional spy. According to Oleg Kalugin, the top Soviet counterintelligence officer in the KGB in Moscow, who defected t

of evidence is...” —Carl Sagan, Cosmos (Random House, New York) 1980. P. 49 15. “We have many notable cases...” For the cases of Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames, see Appendix A 16. “The greatest trick the...”—Author’s interview with Victor Cherkashin. The quote from Zhe Usual Suspects was adopted by the movi

. 209-240 4. “I don’t know him...”—Author’s interview with Andrei Lugovoi 5. “It was a rare...”— The vast majority of the 15 Americans defectors to the Soviet Union in the Cold War, including Joel Barr, Morris and Lona Cohen, Victor Hamilton, Edward Lee Howard, George Koval, Bernon Mitchell, William Martin, Isaia