This is an account of the life of Aldrich Ames, the double agent whose treachery almost destoyed the CIA. It begins in 1985 when Ames, recruited by his wife, betrayed Western intelligence's greatest asset - KGB double agent Oleg Gordievsky. Gordievsky barely escaped with his life and Ames was launched on his own career as an unlikely double agent, during which he delivered a stream of information to Russia. The book tracks the CIA's hardening suspicions about Ames, and climaxes with the massive scheme to trap him. It includes interviews with his wife Rosario, the head of Russian intelligence and all the living CIA heads involved. It details the damage Ames did; the deception operations mounted by the Russians to confuse the hunters; the lessons learned from the affair - including the recommendations that the CIA as it exists today be scrapped.