When Aldrich Ames was arrested in 1994, he had been feeding the KGB information for nine years; he had been paid more than two and a half million dollars, with the promise of two million more; and he had been personally responsible for the betrayal that led to the execution of most of the United States' top assets in the Soviet Union. Never before had one man done so much damage to American security.

Pete Earley is the only writer to have conducted fifty hours of interviews with Ames, without a government censor present; to have traveled to Moscow to speak to Ames' KGB handlers and the families of the spies he betrayed; and to have had access to the remarkable CIA mole-hunting team of three women who finally tracked Ames down. The result is a much more complex portrait of the man and his impact than previously seen.