honey, i am home. put the rose in the oven. your astronaut is home. i recently went back to togethersville with some of the women and went into sue bean, alan bean's first wife, looking at the pool and alan bean who was the fourth man to walk in the route moon with pete conrad on apollo 12 did this mosaic bar with the ignacio zamora insignia and sue was very beautiful, blond, texan, looking out over the pool and said buzz and joan used to live over there and the bass ats were over there. thists were over there. thisets were over there. this was a really swinging place. the wives and 60s for the astronauts' wives club which would meet once a month to support each other and get to know each other.

these were monthly tea and coffee events. fabulous scenes that are not reproduced in women's gathering today because times have changed, doubled as and over crowing -- overflowing ashtrays and martini hours and just sort of being there to support each other and going through something very few will ever experience. the way the wives don't with the pressure was very different. you have the pressure of your husband and the pressure of the media. and the most dreaded moment, even more than the possibility of something going wrong on the launch pad, was opposed flight press conference. this was the moment when all the wives would have to walk out on their suburban lawn, face the

cameras and give a statement and receiving very little formal coaching from nasa besides what they heard back in their air force and navy days which was feed your husband a good breakfast of steak and eggs so he doesn't get white headed up in the air. these women were basically just told to act picture-perfect and so they did this send up together and ran a carpenter who i mentioned, glamorous and outspoken, blond, came up with this 1-woman show and called it released a land that was her send the name of the esteban wives and she was married to squarely stable, her perfect astronaut husband. they had their perfect astronaut

children and their dog smiley and she said whenever reporter asks you tell them you are happy, fraud and thrilled, throughout the decade whenever the wives are asked how they are feeling, when their husbands were up there, in space, being blasted into space, they often say, happy, proud and frills. and of course reporters are tearing their hair out. we want to deal -- to hear how you feel but back then it wasn't -- they really weren't able to put the feeling into words. they were scared of revealing too much in this highly competitive environment. if i show my fear is like my husband maybe he will be bumped from the flight. marilyn lovell, married to jim lovell, a wonderful couple to this day, he was played by tom hanks and apollo 13. when he was going into space on one of his gemini flights,

marilyn found out she was pregnant and she hid her pregnancy from jim for a few months which is pretty remarkable until he finally found out and she said i am sorry, i didn't want you to get bumped from the flight. cheese said good idea, we should keep it secret for a longer. this is just a taste of the astrowives lives. i would like to open up the discussion to questions now because it is such a rich topic and i could talk a little more about what it was like going into these historic figures's living rooms and what it was like getting to know them as well. if anyone has questions, please do line up.

>> in your book, you talk about one of the episodes on one of the lunar landings where the camera didn't work and there was virtually sort of a cover-up because they didn't want to show that. i wonder if you could go into that. >> one of the most exciting things, of course, about walking on the moon, being on the moon for the guys and everybody watching back at home, that was what was so incredible about the apollo program. even for someone like me who is one of the wives once asked me when i went to interview her, where were you when we landed on the moon? how old were you? i said jo, i think i was moon dust. i wasn't born yet. whenever you become fascinated with this subject, you can go there with the guys. all you have to do is look at the youtube footage, television footage they filmed. the incident you were just

talking about was apollo 12, the second mission to the moon. alan bean had this television cameras a burgling to use to chronicle their journey and he by accident turned it into the sun, so it was burned out. the only transmission they were able to share with the public in real-time was the voices of the astronauts which are going into the wives's homes versus on the squawk boxes which are these baby intercom like space-age device is all the wives had at home but the networks are flipping out. we are not going to get our moon footage and we had big swaths of time allowed for it. what they did was nasa had some mockups of the moon where the guys would practice going through their routines for when they were up there so they

outfitted some actors in space suits and had them sort of manic what pete conrad and alan bean or beeano as his friends call him or doing on the moon and it has only fuel the conspiracy theories that anyone who has anything to do with nasa including the wives think are absolutely ludicrous. i would like to tell you all how i came to write this book and a little bit about getting to know these women today. of course i am a writer, i live in new york with my husband who is also a writer, in the front row. our lives are composed on a daily level of thinking about stories, thinking about ideas for great stories. this isn't something you can manufacture. inspiration has to hit. i have to admit at that time i

was quite into the show madmen, we were having a carrot -- a tv marathon watching it and i love the 60s time period, my grandmother used to wear pulitzer dresses, we just bought this big soda book of the moon landings with the norman mailer text of a fire on the moon. and i was looking through these pictures of neil armstrong on the lunar surface, buzz aldrin and his sort of marshmallow space suit and just having sort of a tomboy moment because these are pretty male heroic images, until i turn a page and i am hit with this burst of color. ..

and a sort of continue to support each other through triumph and tragedy. one of the sweetest things about the connection of the wives is many of them when i met them they wore a little gold bracelets with a tiny golden whistle on it and that's one of their symbols we will be there for you and it was a matter of

winning over these women's trust. they were always very protective of nasa, of their husbands even if they were later after their husbands back from the moon divorced because astronauts and their wives did divorce after the apollo program and i see it as a casualty of the incredible amount of pressure that was on these families to come for them and tform andto just work aroune rigorous hours. out of 30 couples only seven marriages survived. so in many ways as they pointed out, there relationships have endured longer than the marriages. it outlasted them as well. there were people that were more difficult to get to know their mothers. at the beginning everyone was sort of whistling is betty going

to talk to you? i don't think that he is going to talk to you. she doesn't come to our meetings and so i was nervous because she was someone important to talk to and sure enough i got a lovely letter from her. she doesn't talk on the phone much because of her hearing that she said when you come to houston please come to my home and it was one of these interviews that i expected it to be about two hours and when we went back to her house about 10:00 at night i told her i think i should go to the hotel and get some sleep and come back tomorrow morning. and she was just fun loving andd honest and had the kind of memory she would've plucked out conversations that she had back in the day.

they were high school sweethearts like many of the astronauts and their wives. her story is a tragic one. of course during the mercury program, his capsule thinks so he is given a bad rap for that position of his and from the early days of course way men always had to deal with the pressure of what if he doesn't come back. which is you don't talk about the danger especially with your husband coming to don't talk about the danger with your friends because it was seen as a james many of them have superstitions and my favorite woman i got to know during the project had a superstition i think we can all probably relates to which is pete's pillow had to be perfectly smooth on his site of the bed in

his closet door had to be closed because if she did it, she felt like something wrong could happen and this is just a reflection of the fear these women had to digest and live with. goss always told betty that he didn't like her wearing black and she felt the only time you should ever wear black was to a funeral and purposefully she didn't end up wearing black to his funeral people to listen to something happens to me i want you to have a party. so early on she promised him, she said okay i will have a party. he is one of the men that died during the apollo fire, and this was the first large-scale tragedy when the men perish in a capsule it catches fire on the ground and this is a very

revealing part of what these men went through because it was excruciating. the way that they reported was relatively new lows in the official man always had to tell the wife her closest friends are always called before tuesday something bad has happened out there. i want you to go to her house right now that the women knew they were not allowed to use say anything they just had his agent told the official word could arrive, so very difficult. in the case of petty end o betto other wives in the fire, debbie ended up saving nasa's -- sueing nasa's and as a result she was basically ostracized from together as bill by the other

astronauts and the astronauts lives for not touting the party line for going against the company organization. pat weitz was a tragic story. she never really got over her husband after apollo one and when they were planning a reunion years later she actually committed suicide and they saw her as a final tragedy of the apollo one fire. so a lot of heartache in this story. but just incredible american moments that were not seen as necessarily input to report back then because we were not as

focused on the fact as behind every great man is a great form in or behind every moonwalk or there is a strong woman waiting on earth and it is just a whole another sort of constellation perspective on what it took to get to the moon. do we have any of your questions? >> it could be your next book three of how do the children fare in that kind of upbringing? >> as i talked to many of the kids it was sort of growing up in the cradle of the american dream, green lawns, a pool that was shaped like the space capsules like the -- the kids almost remember fondly those were the days our mother would

lock us out of the house and they don't come home until dinner. you are giving me a headache and it was great because we would ride our bikes and go to the pool and that is sort of the memory. but i think it's difficult having a father who is a hero but often and absentee father because they wer were a way trag so often. one of the kids remembered it was sort of strange. it was like a dad wouldn't be home a lot suddenly he would be very end of the magazine would be there and we would be doing a photo shoot out on the swing. we never did this in real life. it's probably at a lot of kids in hollywood at the old place now. their lives were made almost

reality shows so there was dealing with that and i will share one more funny anecdote which is the wives were always sort of kidding and complaining they had to drag their kids into watch the space launches, johnny would rather be watching star trek. but within your dad is doing some important stuff. well my best friends dad is an astronauastronaut and lives acre street, those are engineers over there, and this was the world that was normal to them and the wives tried very hard to keep normal and grounded. >> you kind of you who do to help their lives changed after the program and i was wondering if you could share their thoughts on what was it like when that ended? do they feel like it should continue and like there was a sense among these families at

that point? everyone was sad when mixing ended the program and these wives who i see today and i think in history they will continue to be seen and i've told this to them as a sort of pioneer space women. they were the pioneers. their husbands were doing something we had never done before. just the moments of going out in your backyard as jane conrad remembered when her house .-full-stop there walking around on the moon and she -- the house just cleared out and she had all of the wives over for a party about 5:30 in the morning she wandered out by the pool and just look a looked at the moon t of stared at it and i think we can all think this when we look at the mood like we went up there as a country and as human

beings. but she said she remembered when she was a little girl how she used to look forward to man in the moon and she said this is trippy. my husband is the man in the moon and for this one moment she had this mystical feeling of clarity. this is the late 60s. people are into that. she said it basically vanished in a moment and then she was going back inside to do the dishes. but to get back to justify fallout after the apollo program, i think the most prominent example is looking at buzz aldrin and his wife. like many they had a hard time coming back from the moon after the families and the crew members into their lives would go on these fabulous tours especially after apollo 11 they

went all over the world presenting moon rocks and little cases to the clean of thing cleg going, etc., the heads of state and while they were on this tour she shared her diary with me that she kept and she starts seeing buzz spiraling out of control. he's been outspoken about his own alcoholism and depression he built with after coming back from the moon and that is something that changed her life. they ended up getting a divorce and they have three kids. she has an entry in her diary i think our lives will return to normal and he looked at her and said i've been to the moon. nothing is ever going to be the same. and i think that is true for a lot of the families.

>> you mentioned how you flipped a page in a magazine and a story came to life. if you have a moment at the end of the red leather and i hear -- diary what caused you to flip their? cynic i will save that for the moment and please -- >> i haven't read the book yet but i look forward to reading it. i don't know the ages of the women that you are referring to but in your research, did the idea come up with a conversation about the commercialization of space travel and would any of them ever consider the galactic would they do that themselves? to ask about going into space back in the six he sispa and lots of time with life magazine

of course, if you have these articles about we are going to be putting up a couple of the astronaut had this sort of crackpot scheme and root beer stands when we colonized, so yes someone like a former tough marine said i would have gone up there in a heartbeat and the early pilot who ended up flying in the powder puff derby she would have been there in a moment but some of them are like are you kidding i want to stay down here with my feet on the ground and of course they all hope we will continue to explore and push the envelope as their husband used to say. i will just mention very deeply the red leather diary, my first

book because i think it reflects on how i wanted to talk this kind of story. i grew up in chicago. and it was a new york guy in a city girl. i was in new york with that density of people walking around looking at these old buildings into these windows lit up and i just sort of naïve, just to be an incredible amount of untold stories but there are and how everybody has a story and somehow i just wanted to be able to reveal some of those distant stars. so very serendipitously i have to say i feel quite lucky.

but strange things happen to me or maybe i see the world in a different way. i notice things that seem almost fear a tale -- fairy tale. i came out after i graduated and i was working as a news clerk at "the new york times" which is like the devil wears prada that without the prada with lots of bow ties and the businessmen who would give me bits of advice. i wanted to be a novelist to which i going to return to for my next project, which is going to be fiction. i came out of the building and there was something too good to resist pus push with the dumpstr and not an ordinary because it was filled with about 50 old trunks into these were the old kinds that were brought on the titanic from paris and the french line.

i am not a dumpster diver by trade but i love vintage clothing and a good story so it's eight in the morning and i literally climb on top of that is to and i start -- you are all looking at the very odd. i started going through these dresses in the collections of handbags and among the urban treasure with a red leather diary kept from a woman from 1921 to 1934 at the height of the depression and a long fairy tale short i ended up tracking down the owner is 90 with the help of a private investigator and befriending her. she wanted to be a writer and she hosted a literary salon, she was a renaissance woman who had love affairs in her story spoke

to me so much i ended up telling this story of how this comical made the way back to her and it was sort of given as a gift to the rest of the world. telling the forgotten story was very interesting to me. little things i remember from professors the good stories are often little margins were footnotes. it's not the typical heroic model but it's the other side of the coin and it was that desire and hunger to tell the story that is an untold stor story but there's also this sort of emotional catharsis for the subject that has been under the

radar revealed to the world and i know from speaking to the boys not only does this book take them back in time but they feel very gratified that people care about their story. i don't think many of them call themselves heroes because they were so in support of their husbands and would have seen that as arrogant and inappropriate, but i certainly see them as heroines myself, and i think they have the right stuff. [laughter] [applause] book

"circle of treason: the cia account of traitor aldrich ames and the men he betrayed" this is an hour. >> we are very fortunate to have sandra grimes this afternoon. she has a remarkable story to tell. the story from inside the cia where she worked for years. hired by them out of college in 1967, she spent two and a half decades rising in assignments working against european countries. she was going to resign when asked to stay for one more assignment in 1991. that assignment involved joining a five-person team charged with figure out why so many of the cia's most valued soviet assets

had been executed or put in prison years later. it ended up turning up one of the most wellknown traders. "circle of treason: the cia account of traitor aldrich ames and the men he betrayed" is an inside account of how he was caught and who he betrayed. it was published along with a co-writer in may of 2012. the story has gained attention as part of the eight-part minee

series "assets" that started airing last month. zeier "zero dark 30" showcased women and "homeland" revolves around a female cia analyst. her real life story lacked the drama of these stories and told her one condition when putting together the assets was her character have no affairs. she put her foot down there. old school she says. but sandy is a bright and determined intelligence professional who did our country a great service. review of the book in

the "washington times" says quote the most gripping account of insider accounts you are ever apt to read. please join me in welcoming sandra grimes. thank you very much. can everybody hear me? i will have to take my glasses off so i can see my notes. i am delighted to be here to talk about "circle of treason." my remarks are going to be 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'll be able to. i want to say i am here to represent my good friend and co-author jean. as i tell you about the story to determine who or what caused the

loss of the soviet assets in 1985 and 1986. in 1991, that led us to search for a trader in cia. to make matters worse, we know it would not be a stranger. he would be a co-worker, a colleag colleague, someone we had known for a very long time and saw every day probably in the head quarters of the building. but "circle of treason" isn't 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 cia's contact with his victims. many of their stories are ours are well. we participated in the number of handling of the cases and we watched as those we knew were arrested and executed also

concerned we might have made a mistake which led to their deaths is a burden no one wants to carry but that is what a number of us in cia had to do for the next eight years until our mole was identified. you may have noticed i have yet to mention his name. we know it is aldrich ames or rick as he is known to us. and yes, he was a colleague and for me personally he and i were carpool partners in the mid-1970s. on april 16, 1985 rick ames decided to walk to the front door of the soviet embassy downtown washington, d.c. 16th street and volunteer his

services to the soviet union. two months later, he decided to provide his kbg handlers with the names of or identifying information on every single one of our human sources reporting on the soviet union. those who were current, retired and dormant. and he knew what fate awaited them by doing so. they would be arrested, they would be interrogated, they would face a trial, and they would be convicted and they would be executed. a bullet to the back of the head. now, it is 1985 and our nightmare begins. late may, gru asset

focomreceives a cable saying you are to return to moscow and we bring him safely to the united states. early august, our kbg asset in nigeria is arrested in moscow during a home leave. sometime between late august and ear ear ear early october our giu is arrested in moscow also during a home leave. november 6th, our kbg asset here in washington, d.c. boards a flight at dulles bound for moscow over and back short trip.

he never see him again. early november again, our kbg asset travels to east berlin for a three-day conference. he disappears. and into 1986, february, our g asset arrested in moscow. rgru asset in moscow is arrested. july 7th, 1986 our long retired gru asset, general demitry is arrested in moscow one day after his 66th birthday and he is the highest ranking officer this government has ever rung.

in 1987, another kbg asset is arrested. here we are at the end of 1985 and obviously something is seriously wrong. two possible explanations. we have a human penetration at the 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 1986 a soviet intelligence officer volunteered to cia. our goal was simple: we have to

keep this one alive. we have no idea if this is a trader or technical issue so we have to guard with both sides. in respect to trader, we institute what we call jur coneian security measures and we eliminate everybody being aware of those new assets. we have to address the technical side with the possibility they are reading the traffic on the soviet cases. well this one was a little bit more difficult. we basically punted and ignored staff communications. we didn't -- there was zero cable traffic between head quarters and the field station

where the new asset was. we went back to basic toes communicate. it wasn't the stone age, but it was pretty close we said. we did have a technical 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 co-author who is on assignment in garbone as our chief of stations. she returns home and she is trapped with trying to determine what in the heck happened. she has a small task force of people who begin this effort. at the same time jean and her people are looking at our

losses, the fbi has also established a task force. they suffered similar problems with their soviet cases during the same time period as we. all right. now we are going to have to fast forward. it is early 1991, a little over five and a half years later and we still don't have a clue as to what happened. that is not to say there were not plenty of explanations and leads. there were lots. each was fully investigated and each was discarded. meanwhile the fbi also doesn't have a clue as to what caused their losses. however, there is a bit of good

news. since we instituted the security measure we haven't lost a single new source and the number of our 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 sign senior positions in cia who believed what happened in 1985 and 1986 was largely a historical problem. it might be nice to know the answer, but it wasn't affecting our current operations. we were doing fine and were once again back in business.

e enter jean again. she is facing mandatory retirement and she still felt terriblely guilty she was unable to answer the question as to why he -- we -- suffered so many losses during that period. and she wanted to spend the rest of her time taking one more look at these old cases. she viewed this as a solitary effort. it would only be jean looking at the old reports. however that was soon to change. and again i have to be completely honest if was really due to happenstance that i ended up working with jean, looking for the answer, as did two fbi

employees; one a special agent and one a special analyst. we added a fifth member eventually, a cia officer from our office of security. now, the book takes you through our search for a trader. out of approximately 160 cia employees who over the years had information about one or more of the loss cases. the investigation itself and i will use one of jean's favorites words was many pronged. it involved months of mind-numbing work with the occasional nugget which kept us going.

that is not to say there wasn't a urekea himont. there was. it occurred in early august 1992, a little over a year after the group was assembled. i was given the task of creating a list of all of rick's activities. that particular august morning, i was able to create dates of meetings rick was having with a soviet development contact here in washington, d.c. with cash deposits he had made to one of his local checking accounts. this was the first link that the lead to his arrest and conviction.

it was cash. it was after meetings with the soviet national who wasn't an intelligence officer but arms controlled specialist. why was what he said he was. and every one of the depauosits was below the $10,000 reporting requirement that the feds put on the banks at the time. all right. lastly, were jean and i ever afraid rick ames was going to get away with treason? you bet we were. the task force was drawing to a close in 1993, several months

later an fbi analyst began to prepare a report of the findings. this wasn't a cia document. it was an official fbi document because we were turning everything over to them. jean and i had a say in the drafting of the paper, but the final wording was beyond our control. as we understood it, when the report came out in march of 1993, it didn't identify rick ames as the primary suspect. it did, however, have his name on a short list of other possible suspects. for jean and myself it was a pretty difficult time. we were convinced rick ames was the trader we spent two years looking for and our analysis

proved that to be the case. we know the fbi didn't share our belief and would continue to focus on others on their short list. but thankfully, and truly thankfully, additional information became available that didn't identify rick, but pointed in his direction. and most importantly, it forced the fbi to open a full scale investigation of risk ames. one year later, february 21st, 1994, president's day, a government holiday and we were at work. rick ames is arrested by the fbi around the corner from his house. he was on his way to cia head

quarters. not too long after that, his wife was arrested at their home. both pled guilty to espionage. his wife got five years and was stripped of her citizenship and deported to columbia upon being out. rick received life. it is almost 20 years. he is at the federal pen at alanwood, pennsylvania. as i mentioned at the beginning, jean and i are most proud that we have 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 and as jean and i and others at cia understood when these soviet intelligence officers volunteered their services to the united states they knew they were putting their lives in our hands and we, meaning the cia, failed them. we could not repay them for thor sacrifices or their flames, but we owed each of them an answer and that was the goal and mission and the story of "circle of treason." questions on that sad note?

[ applause ] yes? >> so this happened over 20 years ago? with today's technology, data mining and predictive analytics, do you think that would have accelera accelerated the search? >> not at all. i will use this as an example. rick ames had no personal meetings in washington, d.c. all of the meetings with his kbg handlers were broad. but like bob hanson from the fbi, if you keep it simple it tends to work. the basics don't fail you in spying. he loaded drops, made signal sights, unloaded drops and he had complete technical coverage

by the fbi and they are very good at that. i mean the phones were bugged, there were cameras everywhere, not just at his house, but cia head quarters as well. there were beacons on this car. so all of the that stuff, no, not in the terms of the spying we did. questions, please! [inaudible question] >> it has been a long time but i remembered questions about how people can't see the increase fluent and why that didn't raise questions. >> rick and his increased

consumption and the one thing you read in the papers all of the time was his red jag. let's put it this way, rick, as i said, he walked in and started to work for the soviet in april 1985. you saw zero change in ames until returning from the tour in rome and that was in 1989. he was still the rick ames i had always known truly. but rick said this was his cover story that he had gotten the money from his wife's family. her father died in the mid-1980s. we knew they were from a well-connected family in columbia.

as a matter of fact, the extended family gave the land to build the largest soccer field in bogota. she met rick when she was assigned to the columbia city third secretary. she got her appointment from the president of columbia. so it wasn't out of the question that obviously some of the money came from her side of the fam y family. but i always say with respect to the stupid red jag. rick and i parked in the same garage and i had to walk past three red jags before i got to my car and one was rick's. this wasn't out of the ordinary. the same are respect to rick's

drinking. i did socialize with rick a l litt little. we were not closed but we group in the same circles and close in age. even at the christmas parties, which were very nice, i never saw him drunk. i think he was a binge drinking and particularly after his marriage. whenever she was out of the country or out of town he would get drink. and i never met his wife, but she apparently was so difficult her lawyers couldn't stand her, even the poor borough guys

listening to the phone -- they thought rick was abused so just a human touch to ames. and i will add one think. if you told me rick ames was going to be one of the worst traders this country has ever seen i would have said not the rick ames i knew. >> were there other people around you other than rick ames that knew more suspension and have you thought what was different between him and the others? and do you know what happened to his wife in columbia? >> i will answer that one first. i don't have a clue what happened to her. i suspect she is alive and squel

living the good life in bogota. they did have one child. paul is his name. and he is in his 20's now. when she went to jail, her mother took paul back to columbia where he was raised. he was five or six at the time. okay. what am i answering now? oh, what was the question again? >> why he was so not-suspect and were there others who were more suspect. >> i am not going to tell you their names if they were. however, this is a fairly long story. when we started the task force, we have to look at 160 people, right? we immediately have a terrible problem.

there is no way we can investigate 160 without an army. so we have to find some way to prioritize. and this was jean's idea. simple, not scientific and i will say criticized by people in power after rick's arrest, but it worked. what we did was we had the four members and six others, four from cia and two from the fbi, we asked them to please privately write down on a piece of paper, i am almost embarrassed to tell the story, the names of five or six people who made them uneasy.

we are looking for a trader here. and made them uneasy and individuals they thought we should take a close look at first. then we asked them to put them in rank order. the one that made you the most uneasy first place, second and so on down. we say this wasn't a contest you would want to win. we took the submissions and totaled the numbers. and a real surprise! rick ames came out on top and he had the most points at 21. and i will toot my own horn here and as i say i will use jean's word of all those who voted only sandy gets the gold star. she had him in first place. we have a new short list because rick wasn't the only one who got

more than one or two points. what we did was we looked at the small group first and eventually ames became the primary focus. that is not to say we didn't continue to look at the rest of the people, by this time, probably 152 on the list, we did. but we focused on the short list. that is how it got sorted out. >> so, these events were '85, '86, and '87 and you four people were formed when? >> '91. i got there in may and the other guys end of june. >> and a timeline question: how long did the four of you meet and before you zeroed in and

thought he was prime? was it immediately because of the vote? >> it was about a year. it was less than a year. it was less than a year because the moment came a little bit more than a year and then there was no question. >> the rest was data to support it? >> exactly. and then what happened was the borough in 1993 came in after getting the additional information and then it was truly an invesigative affair. obviously we are very involved with the justice department and attorneys because they want evidence to be able to prove

espionage charges. it is one of the worse cases in the world to try so they would like to catch them in the act but we didn't. >> my question is how did they vet the members in the program to make sure you were not the mole? did they take a chance? >> i have to say you are the second person to ever ask me the question. i think it is great question. because it would be the first i would ask. jean and had both had to be repar rep repolied. we were lucky in that she and i knew all of the resources but we were doing different things in '84 and '85. she wasn't in the country and unaware of the counturrent sour

and i was handling activity to soviet europeans in africa. i knew one and she was one my branch was responsible for keeping alive. so i was aware of that one. but because we had insufficient knowledge. but you are correct, we did have to be repolied. it was determined that sandy and jean were going to worth together and the fbi guys were going to come over and then i got the news you have to do a polygraph. i got a speeding ticket on the way to the office that day. >> was the rest of the agency

aware you were in the middle of the hunt or was it kept quite? >> we didn't keep it from anybody. and i think that is an important distinction. this wasn't going to be a paper exercise. we were looking for a human penetration of cia. rick was aware of it. we interviewed rick. i cannot use that word, though. we talked to people who were aware of the operations to garth more information about how paper was really handled. you can read what it says in the file, nowadays an e-mail, but you don't know the interaction between people. >> two questions. i am surprised he could walk into the soviet embassy in washington, d.c. and wasn't that embassy under surveillance.

and i am wondering if there was a moment before we was arrested when we realized you knew who he was and if not what was it like once you realized it was him, but he had not been arrested yet, how difficult was it to have to deal with him? >> it was more than difficult. i think most of the time we are good actors and actresses, but that was tough. i smoked during those days, confession. you could not smoke in the building and i would go out to the courtyard. rick is a heavy smoker and he would always come over and say what are you doing? how is the search going?

i stopped smoking. [ applause ] >> i was so afraid i was going to mess it up. but in hindsight i did haven't a think to worry about. rick was so arrogant. there was no way two ladies, and add two fbi guys, are every going to catch me. it was really that. and then first part? the surveillance. okay. you are absolutely right. they have coverage. so what did rick do? after he leaves the soviet embassy, he calls his buddies that i assume it was the washington field office and says

if you see a guy going into the embassy at 1:15 p.m. today, it is me. he had sort of an excuse for being there. we never knew he walked into the embassy until later during the investigation when we giving the borough things to handle. at the time, beginning in early 1985, rick was developing a soviet national. he was an armed control specialist and there was nothing out of ordinary with rick doing this job. his contact with his individual was known to fbi head quarters, cia head quarters, it was reported to each during the

development phases and that particular day rick was sched e scheduled to have a meeting at the mayflower. and rick was an alias so he doesn't want anything to do with this american and that is if i do something with this american i have to report it to the kbg. he kept ignoring rick. and that day scheduled lunch and he doesn't show up again and rick throws down 3-4 vodkas and decides he is going to walk right into the embassy and if he is ever asked he is going to say i got sick and tired of being

stood up by the punk. so i walked in. and guess what? he showed up for the next scheduled meeting. so he had cover for action as we say. >> you had mentioned it was the finding of the fbi report and the way it was structured that could have made or broken your case. was there an internal path within the cia you would have followed otherwise or followed-up on their own based on the level of work they put in? >> i don't know the answer to that question. i don't know. i only know two things: when jean and i started this, we

always knew we would identify who the trader was. in our wildest dreams, we never imagined he would be convicted and go to jail. that just wouldn't happen. we would be able to answer the question internally and the fbi report, god, i don't know. it was on official fbi document. did we make mistakes? yes. and we talk about one thing we had done, but we didn't think about this. these were our buddies. the fbi and cia, right? and there was no question we were surprised at the final report. how and why that happened is beyond me. don't know.

but in hindsight, when that came out, yeah, we should have done that ahead of time on the off chance because we didn't know what the official paper was going to look like. we should have written our own, but we didn't, and it caused lots of problems. yes? >> this is about the tv program. i watched the two episodes that were air. is there anyway you can see the other episodes? >> i would like to see them as well. i will say this: there is hope. c and the reason there is hope is because the president of abc announced to the press that the

asse "assets" will be shown in one way whether it is cable, netflix or abc proper. he said one week after he canceled us. i did get to see episode three and it is much better than the first two. >> i am going to write to the president of abc and complain >> there is still hope. another think i will -- thing -- i will say is there is creative license. number one, i have never made pancakes in my life. and i certainly have never prepared a hot breakfast for my family during the week -- ever! it was always cold cereal in the

car for the girls as i took them to the bib baby sitter and no milk. dry! . >> what did you think about the new tv show "the assets"? >> it was a world that i had never been a part of and i will laugh, though. i wish that it happened maybe 20 years ago. a lot more fun. however, for you ladies here, the day i was on "good morning america" i had a professional make-up artist who travelled with me the entire day. it was wonderful. i didn't wash my face for about three days.

and false eyelashes! it was fun. >> thank you. >> you are quite welcome. >> hi, you said that you checked his bank records. and i am just wondering in terms of employee confidentality, do agents sign a release? how do you get -- >> it is called the national intelligence letter. i didn't know it existed simply because i was never involved in personal security. but it is part of the authority director of the cia but only counter intelligence case, in

other words there a has to be suspicious behavior. >> evidence? >> i would call it circumstantial. they could say no. and in rick's case they did. but the big thing was i would say part of it wasn't just his bank accounts, credit card accounts and two there were little things that would come up. i cannot believe he was so sloppy. he would charge an airline ticket. new york to austria.

and we were under the rules com legilations of the cia employee you travelled anywhere out of the country, whether it was for pleasure, you had to get approval from the office of security to do that and in all places the hot bed of spying east and west? there were little things like that. and i had to say as we were going along, it is probably like a police investigation if you are looking for a murder suspect. true are trying to eliminate rick as your suspect. every piece of information. you don't want to get the wrong guy. >> where did you determine were his motivation for spying? >> simple greed. it was money. now, money, though with again a

little twist. jean and i are absolutely convinced if it were not for his wife rick never wouldn't have committed treason. the material things were not important to him. but in early '85, he was facing a divorce, although he had not told his current wife that he needed a divorce because he had promise his new wife who was now in the states they were getting married in august. and rick knew he had to divide up his and nan's assets. there were not a lot. it was basically $20,000. that is all we needed. and he could have come to the agen agency. we help our employees.

and he chose not to. however, he never ever would have been able to keep rosario in the style she what she was due. neiman marcus and up the ladder is all she was concerned with. >> sandy, you indicated in the book getting the manuscript was a struggle and you got 90% a approv approved. you would think the agency would want the truth out. why the difficult? >> we didn't write "circle of treason" until nine years after rick's arrest and then it was four years later, after serious

medical issues, we had our first draft and submit it to the cia's review board for approval. it was painful. the first draft came back and we were shocked. it was pages of black. so it took us three years of back and forth. and i think a big part of the problem were the story of assets. this is the secret world of spying. however, everyone of those guys were gone. and the kbg certainly knew more about the operations than we did because they were able to interrogate them. there were other things the agency asked that we remove.

they didn't tell us why. although, we sort of had an inkling. times changed and things that may not have been classified. when you are dealing with human beings, things that might not have been classified in, you know, 19 -- i don't know. how about 2004. there can be a circumstance that would require that story not be released at that time. so for the most part, i would say we were able -- yes, 90%. and the 10% one where circumstances had changed and the other said were just stupid. and i say stupid in the sense

when you read the book you will see the first name and the first initial of the last name -- i don't know. i think it was like working for an insurance company. it was what was on the rules and regulations. it didn't make any difference these people had not retired under cover, it didn't make any difference they had passed away 20 years earlier, it didn't make any difference their names were in books all over the place. so finally we give up and said the heck with it. but i would say it was one of these -- it was just hard for them to accept that this kind of material should appear in public. but you paid for it! >> you mentioned that you did the straw pull and discovered amongst the investigator, for

lack of a better term, that mr. ames made people the most uneasy or whatever the right grammar is. in the wake of all that we have learned in the concept of blink and brilliant and manifesting itself after years of experience, did you every sit around with them what made you uneasy about him? >> it was his ego. it was so huge to the point that even his posture changed. rick was a tall guy and slouched. he was erect and in charge of

everything after coming back, smarter than everyone in the room, and we all knew that that certainly wasn't coming from cia. his career was a dead end. he was a gs-14 and that was it. and all of his classmates are rising through the ranks, but it didn't make any difference. you have never seen anybody with such a frightening ego. it really was almost frightening it was so huge. and that was, as i say in the book, that wasn't the rick ames i had known. he was a gentle soul. it was a personality change. but you have to remember, we worked with all of the these people. with a pretty small little group

we had known for years and i am certain if you ask the same question to your own organization, you can look in your office and say that person would never be a trader. you know? hopefully. and it was really one of those and i know the guys in the department said i cannot believe we are doing this. we said trust us. it is just like jean and i could never a find a spy in the fbi. we don't know the people or how the game is played. that does make a big difference. so, yeah, a lot of it is we could never find a spy working for the chinese and the reason we could not do that is we don't

know the chinese services. we knew the soviet services and probably better than any individual working in them. at times, you have to think like the opposition. it is that old story and i am certain there are a number of you who saw george scott in "pattent" when he said ronald, i read your book. and that is part of it. anymore questions? >> time for one more. >> go ahead. i already asked. >> thank you. not wishing bad on anybody, but if all of the evidence and then convicted, why was he given life instead of the death penalty? >> good question. that is all that was on the

federal books at the time. i think this went back and i am not positive but i think this went back years to frank church, the church committee. ...

[laughter] and their stories match on this. of install one-and-a-half years before he was arrested. she found the note that was obvious this had to do with the soviets. but she never once asked one question about the thousands of dollars were the bags of cash in the garage sale and she spent every single cent in that she could. [laughter] it is my personal opinion to listen to them something would happen to her.

but that is the reason she got five years. [applause] if thank you for coming. >> sandy will sign copies of her book which are for sale if you don't have one. [inaudible conversations]

[applause] i know it is a friday night the united is miami. [laughter] there will be plenty of time to get to the clubs on the beach. i will see you there. [laughter] "ping pong dilpomacy" anisette it was an extraordinary moment in 1971 where this deeply ingrained to antagonism that exist between china and the united states of fractured it does seem to happen in doubling of the night.

the ping pong players started the process rather than the politicians. the press loved it because of the spontaneity and almost too good to be true with a young american who befriends a young chinese stand together they start the process that truly changes the world. that is what we were taught. but it is a pack of lies. it falls the the into what everyone when did you to know and the nixon and kissinger narrative but not the full story. this is the full story. i want to start off at the beginning and present three different vignettes to hold in your head. they are very different but will be connected.

first of all, if you would imagine the downton abby setting common 1908 i young boy five years old and will be a communist revolutionary but at the moment dressed in black velvet suit with silks muffles a and a patent leather shoes trying to get to the window but his nanny is holding him back from the window. he wants to get to the window because he knows someone special is coming to tea. the princess of wales. he is very excited because he knows there will be cold in carriages and 12 white horses. you rushes downstairs and sees his mom and dad and the woman comes wearing a brown dress a and they have t. then she gets into a motor

car he turns in says where is the princess? she said that was a and he feels a deep disappointment that will be returned to when the princess of wales becomes the queen and will bright a note of condolence not because he has died but has done something more unforgivable but barry's to class is beneath him. [laughter] the headlines sweeps the nation it ends up on the front page of "the new york times" it is a shock. now the second vignettes is of to 40 something chinese men in the cave there playing ping pong in the 30's. one has a slightly withered arm that was broken in a

horseback accident in the doctors told him the best thing he could to was play ping-pong every day even more strangely the cave is literally shaking as game goes on. the third vignettes and american hippie sneaking out of a hotel just to the side of tiananmen square. the first one stepped into china and escapes wandering through the streets but it is very early of crowd starts to follow them. they decide since everything is communist what they will do is barrault a microphone. they can tell the crowd does not like it. they start to get on the bike the crowd moves to them

so they dumped the bike and a sprint back to the hotel. those three vignettes is the beginning and the middle and end the end of "ping pong dilpomacy" to show just how political this game was. that nobody knew and no one has spoken about since then. the first young boy who becomes a communist revolutionary goes by the honorable ivan montagu. the two chinese men playing ping-pong is the future premier at that point. the american is a young free spirit from californian named glenn not doing much of anything gets into pingpong somehow invited to join the american team ended

today's later at he is a spontaneous diplomat out of the blue is on every newspaper in the world in the '70s. what i want to talk about is i don't think we have to concentrate very hard to know china has come a long way in the last 50 years and that relationship is more important than ever. they have been there before up until the 1800's and it is very hard you cannot see athens getting their stuff together or to come back anytime soon.

but the chinese have been here before. in they make mistakes getting back on their feet again. favor on the right road generally. whether the chinese intentions? with this whole industry who make a living in the other reason is we just don't know. if what we go abroad china if this relationship told the is that china are maneuvering around but just

to complicate matters. so maybe it is worthwhile to look at how the relationship started. but why ping-pong? "ping pong dilpomacy" this thought occurred to me in 2008 about beijing with the olympics and one of the things to do was to look although you can watch people go play seriously and you realize it was about acceptable face of nationalism. when you walked into the stadiums you were given a bunch of papers with lots of

information if you want to right about them. end of the very first fact 300 million will play ping-pong get least once her review have been to china it is a top down country. so that means someone has some time made the decision to tell ever ready to play ping-pong. it is a very strange idea but it is true. think of the things they could have told them to do. weightlifters or sharpshooter's. [laughter] why? why would they do that? at the height of the english empire they were codifying and exporting sports at an incredible rate from soccer to rugby to hockey but the chinese decided to concentrate on pingpong. so i ask a man who knew a

thing or two ancient how did that happen? it all starts with the englishmen named montagu so i went back and asserted to dig. why do the chinese listen? what i found out he was the son of the baron a very noble family relatively new and the third son the youngest of the three come with the least popular. a very, very rich childhood that has enormous country houses and he reacted against his family very young.

and started to talk about socialism by the time he was 18 federally he should take a step further to become a communist. the very first director he met was offered hitchcock said she started to produce films for alfred hitchcock. when you turn 21 in england you could finally travel without parents. of the day of his 21st birthday she rode the train to moscow if he is picked up by russian intelligence services. who wouldn't want to be friends with him? he is called out again they ask him to come work secretly for a communism international that had a very precise mandate to

bring communism to infiltrate foreign cultures so montagu had a very good opportunity now he is doing the hitchcock -- hitchcock's five movies and he has no idea his producer is a spy. [laughter] this revision ship continues over about six movies. some of the greats. what a typical week in his life he could move so quickly through social circles his other bobby was ping-pong them probably the only person in the world to start the federation to gets

the ittf going wittiest 20 to start having the world championships international table tennis federation he decides to write a letter to drop in on trotsky. it he was living in exile in turkey and very worried about being assassinated as he was but he had dealings aerostatic english man and had no idea he was a star. they set up all night and talk that the end of the evening he trotsky confesses he could be assassinated at any moment in hands montagu well loaded pistol. he was not a killer and then he almost drowned and

continues the ping-pong tournament but it was a very normal week. fdr, the prime minister, the king of england, a charlie chaplin, alfred hitchcock hitchcock, it is remarkable reading through the records it is comedic then no one has talked about montagu there is no one he does not know. when world war ii starts now the russians need him for something were dangerous. the it giu looks like chicken feed compared to the kgb. his brother happens to be

very high ranking naval intelligence. as montagu becomes a superstar for the soviets during committed four days did after the war ends the and there is an amazing, incidence in the four days that mao takes over china and montagu known as someone in charge of the most populist nation on earth the sword is an opportunity with culture, as forthcoming committed some, it is perfect for montagu. he gets on the plane to go to china to try to sell the chinese on the idea that ping-pong would make a fantastic national sport. he tried this in russia ended did not work so he tries again bid to his surprise they think it is a good idea.

they ran with it in the '50s they don't want to play yet because when they came out to play they wanted to win not represent themselves as weak. they worked hard and put a lot of state money into getting better and better. by the end of the '50s is a great leap forward in about the on the thing that's ended successfully in was ping-pong. the rest of the country was an absolute disaster. montagu has another friend one of the great soviet peasant scientist who had a wonderful idea that a few sprinkles seats close together they would pay one another to grow and would only strengthen. that is probably the worst

idea in the history of agriculture. sure enough, it is santa it all fails to radically across china. montagu mao everybody tries to standardize everybody puts on the homemade furnace and the country fails. if you believe the chinese statistics 70 million people died between 58 and 61. the most recent statistics by one historian the number is 44 million. that means if you left it tomorrow morning from maria me to walk to washington d.c. you would not see anybody on your entire walk. montagu wanted to do his part for the great leap forward in and that would be

tabled in is that they could show themselves in a good light. it seems like a nice idea but with the assumption of the disaster this is of vital opportunity for the government to show things are fine thank you very much with all the table tennis teams and i pulled this off but the whole point of propaganda not show a team from the rooftops but in this case that no one knows the 44 million died was remarkable these young men

into women you can imagine the pressure with fed chairman mao at the session and you did not want to disappoint him. isn't they become superstars in china. cute kid to have dinner with her and also gets home the dumplings they're having a great time. the other thing that mao does not like the way the cold war is going the adl though world is being divided between the united states did russia why not china the did the developing nation?

so he sends the ping-pong players across the world tour africa and asia and that is to be the spearhead. many officials who traveled with them and this is working really well and tell the of middle of the '60s in he unleashes the cultural revolution of china. then the whole country is turned upside-down then he turns the young against the old the distilled possible to practice a revolution against your elders. that basically means anyone who has any kind of success

and of course, the ping-pong team is persecuted or vapor carl they have their heads shaved in tortured so bad they feathery commit suicide for even those that brought the most sporting glory to china and here they are one did not commit suicide but was beaten to death. it is very sad story. so now mao is an epochal not only is he upset but said he was your every ambassador from around the world so nobody knows what is going on inside china intended does not know what is going on in the world it has decided he will try something drastic.

he decides in order to triangulate the world he will pick a fight with the russians with the northern border there was an ambush and they killed 38 of the patrol it escalate quickly within one week 1 million russian troops on the chinese border it looks like a miscalculation. but he decides to launch two nuclear tests on the chinese side of the border so of the fallout goes over the russian troops do they are hopping mad. they go straight to washington d.c. to ask america to greenlight a nuclear attack on china which of course, they don't because the light bulb goes off but kissinger and nixon think this is something we could exploit this is good

news. then of course, mao is seeking something not entirely different he tells his doctor a riddle. what do you do when all your neighbors hate you? even india hates us. the taiwanese from a japanese, the russians, what do you thank you should do? the doctor did not know. do what our ancestors recommended to reach across the ocean to contact the americans. he is horrified. there the imperialists against everything they have been told over 20 years but mao is very comfortable. he starts to reach out to america.

and and looking for channels so they finally find pakistan with a handwritten notes to go back and forth in things are coming along nicely but unfortunately now the next move is so subtle he took the left-wing american journalist to put him on his right side of thought that was brilliant that would be picked up by the cia and foreign services period nixon would understand it was the important message because it was so left-wing but he thought he was working for the cia. [laughter] that was a problem because nixon decides to continue with the vietnam war era and stars to bob the ho chi minh

trail so now the chinese think what is to win on? so now total silence. so with a signal so glaringly obvious that no one could possibly get a wrong this is why they used ping-pong. so suddenly he has a job to do to coordinate those whole thing to position with the green light so now he has to get a team to the world championships but there in of all countries come to japan did not have diplomatic relations so he jumps through hoops to finally get permission to go to japan. but the team is so were terrified nobody wants to

go. is in the end they don't have a choice. mao writes a note that says not everybody may come home we may lose a few but they should go anywhere. [laughter] so they get to japan now they have to reach out to the americans. there is an incident that has become popular where this hippie, :coming gets on the bus. in theory he gets dawn they have a nice chat then the pingpong players have relations not true. the chinese have their own bus their own practice stadium and their own hotel. they wait for glen they have been scoping him out to. he tried to practice was one

of them they know exactly who he is. glen has such a big ego they think he is skilled doubt because he is such a good player. the last thing fate need is advice from glen said he said he was waived on to the bus which is true then there is a famous moment he is given a silkscreen portraits. at the lows as a lot chinese is very precise about gift-giving there is a store in china if you go on a diplomatic mission i.m. beatty with ambassador, secretaries and pick from the right to your. he did confess i had to pick

something nice for the american that says little. it was not a coincidence that was the set up to get the americans into beijing. they are about as diverse as you can get. black, of white, latin, high-school girls come ibm engineers, a chinese immigrant that worked for the un. they have 36 hours ago suddenly in teeeighteen this takes the world by storm. of us in "new york times" offered to cover and they laughed at him. now begging him. it is a huge saying.

but imagine being stowe's table tennis players. someone on that team is carrying a large stash of drugs is about to declare his deep love of communism agent mao and the entire world is watching. nixon and kissinger are having a connection they have been practicing this secret lead now here they are and they don't know what is happening. luckily joe knows what he is doing. it is so skillful the story preens -- runs four weeks with the enormous feelings for the country's. the myth of trying because yo