The year is 1995, and an energetic senator wants to disarm, perhaps even eliminate, the CIA. To accumulate the evidence necessary to persuade the Senate, he needs the cooperation of Blackford Oakes, now retired. He wants an account from Oakes of his covert activity ten years earlier, when he served as chief of covert activities for the CIA. What will the frustrated senator do to compel cooperation from Blackford Oakes?

With the detailed knowledge and savoir faire characteristic of the author, A Very Private Plot takes the listener inside the Kremlin, the Reagan White House, and the Clinton White House. The forces unleashed in 1985 threaten any resolution between the United States and the Soviet Union, and threaten the lives of a very small unit of young Russians who remain in the memory as the tale reaches its climax.