REBOOT - ‘Dead Drops’ - The Women Who Took Down An American Traitor

His Ames Was Not True

***Rebooting from the archives, in light of the death of spy Robert Hanssen. Originally published on January 14, 2023. This post is for paid members.***

Jeanne Vertefeuille worked in CIA Counterintelligence when she noticed something alarming. In 1985, the CIA began to lose ‘cases’ - Soviet officials who were working as double agents for the CIA. They were disappearing. Later, she said in interviews that she was led to believe something was going terribly wrong, but she did not yet suspect moles.

But then something shocking happened - they lost one of their most vital Cold War-era spies, Soviet Major General Dmitry Polyakov, who had retired after two decades of spying for the US. It would be eight years before they arrested the key man who sold Polyakov out - Aldrich Ames, a CIA officer who proved to be one of the most deadly double agents in American history.

The two men could not have been more different…