How George Washington transformed the office of the president. All this and more on cspan2 this week and. The full schedule is by the way on booktv. Org. Sandra grimes talk about hunting down and capturing cia mole aldrich ames who compromise the secondlargest number of assets in cia history. Circle of treason the cia account of traitor aldrich ames and the men he betrayed of five c i a principles test with crowding out aldrich ames and build it case against him. This is about an hour. Host we are very fortunate with us to have Sandra Grimes this afternoon. She has quite a remarkable story to tell, a story from inside the cia where she worked for years, hired by the cia right out of college in 1967. Sandy spend two decades rising through the agencys ranks and assignments working against the soviet union and Eastern European countries. She was about to resign in 1991 when she was asked to stay for one more assignment. That assignment involves joining a five person team charged with figuring out why so many of the cias most valued soviet assets have been executed or imprisoned several years earlier. Investigation ended up exposing one of the most destructive traders in u. S. History, aldrich ames, a cia counterIntelligence Officer. Since his conviction in 1994, ames has been serving a life sentence. A circle circle of treason the cia account of traitor aldrich ames and the men he betrayed is the first account from inside the cia not only of how aldrich ames was caught but of the men that he betrayed. Sandy wrote it with another longtime Agency Member who participated in the investigation. Their book was First Published a little over a year ago in 2012 and jean castawpassed away at t of 2012 but they gained new publicity from the miniseries the assets. There has been a lot of focus on women at the cia. The movie zero dark 30 played up for role of female undercover officer tracking down osama bin laden, the popular showtime series homeland revolves around female analyst. Sandys reallife experience lacked some of the heights of drama of these fictionalized characters and she told me also that one of her conditions putting together the assets was her character have no affairs. She put her foot down. Old school, she says. Sandy remains a very bright and determined intelligence professionals who did our country a very great service. A review of her book in the Washington Times calls circle of treason the cia account of traitor aldrich ames and the men he betrayed the most gripping insider accounts of a counterintelligence operations that you are ever asked to read. Leasing gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Sandra Grimes. [applause] thank you very much. Can everybody hear me . I have to take my glasses off to see my notes. All right. I am delighted to be here to talk about our book circle of treason the cia account of traitor aldrich ames and the men he betrayed. Before i get started my remarks are going to be fairly brief because i want to leave a lot of time for your questions and i will be glad to answer, i assume, most of them, i will be able to. I also want to say i am here to represent my good friend and coauthor jean vertafay. The wholesale loss of our soviet assets in 1985 and in 1986, in 1991, that led us to search for a trader in the cia, to make matters worse, we knew he wouldnt be a stranger. He would be a coworker, a colleague, someone we had known for a very long time, and someone we probably saw everyday in the always of our headquarters building. But circle of treason the cia account of traitor aldrich ames and the men he betrayed is not just a story about how we identified a spy. It is much more than that. For the first time, jean and i are able to tell the history of c i as contacts with his victims. Many of their stories are ours as well. We participated in the handling of a number of these cases and we watched as those we knew were arrested and executed. Always concerned that we might have made a mistake which led to their deaths is the burden no one wants to carry but i have to be completely honest, that is what a number of us in cia had to do for the next eight years. Until our mold was identified. You may have noticed i have yet. You may have noticed i have yet to mention his name. We all know it was aldrich ames, rick to us, and he was a colleague. He and i were car pool partners in the mid1970ss. End on april 16th, 1985, aldrich ames decided to walk through the front door of the soviet embassy, Downtown Washington d. C. Sixteenth street and volunteer his services to the soviet union. Two months later he also decided to provide his kgb handlers with the names of identifying information on every single one of our human sources reporting on the soviet union. Those who were currently reporting, those who were long retired, those who were dormant. And in doing so, he knew full well what fate awaited them. They would be a arrested, they would be interrogated, they would face a trial, they would be convicted, and they would be executed. Hart Senate Office building to the back of the head. Now, it is 1985 and our nightmare begins. In athens, greece, received a cable from his headquarters saying you are to return to moscow. He decides to defect and we bring him safely to the u. S. Early august our kgb assets, arrested in moscow during of home lease. Sometime between late august and early october, at gee of u. S. In lisbon, portugal is also arrested in moscow also during a home leave. November 6th, our kgb assets in washington d. C. Boards and their flight at dulles bound for moscow. Over and back, short trip. We never see him again. Again, early november. Our kgb asset in west germany travels to east berlin for a three day conference. He disappears. Into 1986, february, our kgb asset in moscow is arrested. June or july as best as we can tell. Our gee are you assets in moscow is arrested. July 7th, 1986, our long retired g are you gru asset is arrested after his 60 fifth birthday. He is the highest ranking soviet Intelligence Officer this government has ever run. And unfortunately into 1987 our kgb asset in moscow, long retired, is arrested. So here we are, it is the end of 1985, and obviously something is seriously wrong. Two possible explanations. We either have a human penetration of cia, or our communications have been compromised. In other words they are reading our traffic. What do we do . Our first action was taken in response to a new volunteer. In january of 1986, a soviet Intelligence Officer volunteered to c i a. Our goal was simple. We got to try to keep this one alive. We had no idea whether it is a trader or a technical penetrations so we have to guard against each possibility. With respect to the traders side of the equation we institute what we still to this they affectionately call draconian security measures. We simply eliminate almost everybody from those who are aware of our new assets. We have got to address the technical side. With respect to our staff communication and the possibility that they are reading traffic on soviet cases. This one was all a little bit more difficult so we basically punted. We ignored staff communications. There was an zero cable traffic between headquarters and the field station where our new asset was located. We went back to basics to communicate. We affectionately also say it wasnt this done age but it was pretty close. Although we did have something that was sort of out of this world at the time. We have our new asset, he is okay. We are keeping this one alive. Enter my coauthor jean vertasay who is our chief of station. She returns to headquarters in the middle of the 1986, and she is tapped with trying to determine what the heck happened. She has a Small Task Force of people who begin this effort. At the same time she and her people are looking at our losses, the fbi has also established a task force, they suffered similar problems during the same time period as we. All right. Now we are going to have to fastforward. It is early 1991, a little over five years, we still do not have a clue as to what happened. Not a clue. Not to say there were not plenty of explanations, plenty of leads. There were lots. Each was fully investigated and each was discarded. Meanwhile the fbi also doesnt have a clue as to what caused their losses. However, there is a bit of good news. Since we instituted those draconian security measures we havent lost a single new source and the number of reporting sources on the soviet union had continued to increase and we were able to keep every single one of them alive. Because of this, there were some people in senior positions in the cia who believed that what had happened in 1985 and in 1986 was largely a historical problem. It might be nice to know the answer but it was not affecting our current operations. We were doing just fine. We were once again back in business. Enter Jeanne Vertefeuille again. She was facing mandatory retirement at the end of 1992. She still felt terribly guilty that she had been unable to answer the question as to why we suffered so many losses during that awful period, and she wanted to spend the rest of her time until mandatory retirement taking one more look at these cases. There had to be an answer. And would only be jean, that wasnt change. I have to be completely honest. It was really due to happenstance that i ended up working with Jeanne Vertefeuille, looking for the answer, as did two fbi employees, won a special agent and one soviet analyst. We added a fifth member to our little task force, cia officer, our office of security. The book takes you for our search for a trader out of approximately 160 cia employees who over the years had access to information about one or more of our lost cases. The investigation itself, i will use one of jeans favorite words was many prompt and it really involved just simply months of mindnumbing work with the occasional nudge that which kept us going. That and is not to say there wasnt a eureka moment. There was. And it occurred in early august, 1992, just about a year after we had been, our group had been assembled. At the time i had been given the task of creating a chronology of all of wrecks activiti s act 1985 until the present. That morning that is able to connect the dates of meetings he was having with the soviet development of contact in washington d. C. With cash deposits he had made to one of his local checking accounts. This was the first link that would lead to his arrest and his conviction. It was cash. It was after meetings with the soviet national was not an Intelligence Officer, arms control specialist. He was what he said he was. Every one of these deposits, at that time there were only three we had records of. Everyone was below the 10,000 reporting requirement that the fed had put on the banks at the time. All right. Lastly, where Jeanne Vertefeuille and i ever afraid aldrich ames was going to get away with treason . You bet we were. Oddly enough it happened as our task force was drawing to a close in early 1993. Several months prior, the fbi analyst began to prepare a report of our findings. This was not a cia document. It was an official fbi document because we were turning everything over to them. Jeanne vertefeuille and i definitely had a say in the draft stages of the paper but the final wording was beyond our control. And as we understood it, when the report came out in march of 1993, it did not identify aldrich ames as the primary suspect. It did, however, have his name on a short list of other possible suspects. For Jeanne Vertefeuille and myself it was a very difficult time. We were convinced aldrich ames was our trade. We spent two years looking for him and our analysis proved that to be the case. We also knew the fbi did not share our belief and would continue to focus on others on their new short list. Thankfully, Additional Information became available which didnt identify rick but it certainly pointed in his direction and most importantly it forced the fbi to open a fullscale investigation of aldrich ames. One year later, february 21st, 1994, president s day, a government holiday, and we were at work. Aldrich ames is a rest and around the corner from his house. He was on his way to cia headquarters to answer a fictitious cable. However not long after that, his wife was arrested at their home. Both eventually pled guilty to espionage. Rosario received five years which she served in a federal facility in danbury, connecticut. Upon her release she was stripped of her u. S. Citizenship. She was a naturalized citizen and deported to columbia,. Rick received life. I was just thinking it is almost 20 years, coming up on 20 years. He is that alanwood federal penitentiary. Still there. As i mentioned at the beginning, Jeanne Vertefeuille and i are most proud the we have finally been given permission to be able to tell the story of our assets. They are about real people, real spying and real contributions. And most important, Jeanne Vertefeuille and i and some many others at the cia understood when these soviet Intelligence Officers for the most part volunteered their services to the United States government, they knew they were putting their lives in our hands. And we, meaning of the cia, failed them. We couldnt repay them for their sacrifices and we certainly couldnt repay their families for their losses. But we did know each and every one of them an answer. That was our goal, that was our mission, and that really is the story of circle of treason the cia account of traitor aldrich ames and the men he betrayed. Questions on that . [applause] yes . Some of this happened over 20 years ago. Would todays technology with dana mining and predicted analytics do you think that would have accelerated you or help you in your search . No, not at all. I will use this as an example. Aldrich ames had no personal meetings here in washington d. C. All his personal meetings with his kgb handlers were abroad. However, he managed just like bob hansen from the fbi, it tends to work if you keep it simple. The basics usually dont fail you in spying. He loaded drops, he made signal sites, he unloaded drops comment and he had complete, was under complete technical coverage by the fbi and they are very good at that. The phones were but, there were cameras everywhere. It wasnt just that his house, it was at cia headquarters. So no, all that stuff, not in the terms of the spying that we did. Questions, please. I remember at the time the report talked about consumption, increased fluids, and it has been a long time, but i remember questions about how could people not see his increased influence . That raised the question. Ho rick and his increased consumption and something you read in the papers all the time was his red jaguar. Lets put it this way. Rick conlan as i said, walked in, started to work for the soviets in april of 1985. You saw zero change in aldrich ames until he returned from a tour in rome. That was in 1989. He was still the slovenly rick ames i had always known. Truly. But rick said, this was his cover story, that he had gotten the money from his wifes family, rosario. Her father had died in the mid 80s. We knew they were from a wellconnected family in colombia. As a matter of fact the family as it turned out, the extended family gave the land to build the largest soccer fields in bogota. Rosario who met rick when they were both assigned to mexico city, she was with the colombia embassy. There secretary, she got an appointment from the president of colombia so it was not out of the question that obviously some of this money came from her side of the family. But i always say this with respect to that stupid red jaguar. Rick and i parked in the same garage. This is why we were on the task force. I had to walk past three read jaguars before i got to my car and one was ricks. This wasnt out of the ordinary. The same, i might add, you didnt ask the question with respect to ricks drinking. Jean and i had known him for 20 years. And young offices together in the organization. Even at the Christmas Party which were very nice affairs in their all golden days i never saw rick drunk ever. You read all this stuff. He was a binge drinker particular early afternoon married rosario. This was his second marriage. Whenever he was out of the country or out of town he would get drunk. It was sort of this i owe myself one. I never met rosario. But she apparently was so difficult. Early lawyers couldnt stand her. Even the poor bureau guys listening to the phone. He thought rick was abused. A human touch to aldrich ames. If you had told me aldrich ames was going to be one of the worst traitors this country had ever seen i would have said no in the early days. Not the aldrich ames i knew. I knew him since 1973. Where there other people around you other than aldrich ames that drew more suspicion, fought about what was the distinction between him and the others that he seemed to be not suspect to such an extreme degree and do you know what ever happened to rosario . I will answer what happened to rosario. I dont have a clue. I suspect she is alive and well and living the good life in bogota where her family is. They did have one child, paul is his name. And he is in his 20s now. When rosario went off to jail, her mother took paul back to colombia where he was raised. He was 5 or 6 at the time. Rick had no children by his first marriage. What am i entering . What was the question again . He was so not suspect. Were there others who were . I am not going to tell you their names if they were. However this is a story, fairly long story. We asked them to please privately write down on a piece of paper im almost embarrassed to tell this story. Ive told it so many times. The names of five or six people who made them uneasy. Dont forget, were looking for a traitor here. And individuals they thought we should take a close look at first. Okay. Then we asked them to please put them in rank order. The one that made you the most uneasy, second and so on down. This was not a contest you underwent. We took the submissions, totaled all the numbers, and a real surprise. Rick ames came out on top. The most points. 21. And i will toot my own horn here, as i say, i will use genes words. Of all those who voted, only sandy gets the gold star. She had him in first place. Now, here we are. We have a new short list. Rick wasnt the only one who got more than one or two points. What we did, though, we lo