Tim Weiner

Fewer than half of those people are actually spying overseas in the U.S.,

You know, we're American.

We don't have the languages or the country knowledge to spy on the entire world.

So these liaisons, the five eyes system, almost chief among them, are essential to the CIA and indeed to the national security of the United States.

This guy was so bad at being a spy that, you know, he did everything but hang a sign around his neck, blinking in neon, you know, saying, I am a spy for the Soviet Union.

And by then the Cold War was over.

But the damage this did to the CIA and its ability to conduct espionage against Russia and to its reputation lasted for years and years and years.

Listen, I interviewed Ayn shortly after he was arrested in the county jail.

outside Washington, and continued to interview him by telephone.

He called me.

We spoke for about eight hours.

And yes, at first he put out this grandiose idea that we had cleaned the Soviet's clock during the latter years of the Cold War.

And he wanted to level the playing field.

He wanted to lift up the hood of

history and tinker with the engine but that was all nonsense.

He did it for the money and eventually after some not too gentle questioning on my part he admitted that that's why he'd done it for money.

The CIA is an executor of American foreign policy.

It does, with the rarest exceptions, what the president tells it to do.

It's his outfit.

The CIA has been used for political warfare, covert operations, paramilitary operations, as kind of a third option between diplomacy and sending in the Marines.