♪ i wish the truth would just reveal itself ♪ ♪ who do you call to make it to the top ♪ ♪ and who do you call to make the shootin' stop ♪ ♪ and who do you call to give the coupe a wash ♪ ♪ after everything i did i think i'm still myself ♪ ♪ so just a little taste and you know she got you ♪ ♪ can you hide away can you hide away ♪ ♪ the sound of silence as they all just watch you ♪ ♪ i kinda find it strange how the times have changed ♪ ♪ but i wish we could go and be free once baby you and me ♪ ♪ we could change the world forever and never come back again ♪ ♪ let's leave it all in the rear-view ♪ ♪ let's leave it all in the rear-view girl ♪ ♪ let's leave it all in the rear-view girl ♪ ♪ you don't have to cry you don't have to cry ♪

♪ ♪ ♪

>> tonight on night line, me my selfie and i. from president obama to kim kardashian, it seems everyone is doing it. behold the many faces of james franco. what may be the biggest trend of 2013. spy story. it's been called the worst cia scandal ever. an american betrays his country, his friend, and his loved one. it might sound like fiction but it is the real story. >> i work for the cia. >> that inspired an abc miniseries. we go behind the scenes. >> and box office confidential from the hunger games to fast

and furious, what is the secret to hollywood's best year ever? >> keep it right here, america. "night line" is back in just 60 se

>> it's not for nothing that websters officially added the word selfie to the dictionary this year. the cultural trend that may stand out most prominently is the cyber self-portrait. pop stars are doing it, teen aged girls are all over it. president obama did it and so did the pope. is this harmless fun or another sign of america's unchecked narcissism? >> celebrities do it.

even oscar winners and former first ladies do it. we all do it. and not always well. >> now i'm recording a video. >> here is eminem at the lourve, beeber in the hospital and rihanna just about everywhere. she shared hundreds of intimate selfies. for celebrities it could be crafted marketing. james franco is a self-proclaimed selfie ofiperso. and miley cyrus, her own take goes for shock value in her latest controversial video.

♪ >> the president took time out to mark the year of the selfie. twitter devotes a day to it, hash tag selfie saturday. face book and instagram may be contributing to self involved oversharers. >> a super close up of my eye, now a selfie looking cute. >> when you're sending out photos of yourself the message is look at me, admire me. >> one study looked at college students over time and found that narcissistic traits has been rising but is posting selfies to blame? ask any ninth grader and they will tell you they take hundreds of selfies every year.

teen girls are five times more likely than boys to share se selfies. >> who has more photos, more friends. >> who has more likes? >> exactly. >> i didn't see you there. >> with instagram trending towards video and facebook gobbling up vines, videos are all the rage. if you can get yourself noticed in a stadium, you, too, can go viral. these girls were fined 1500 bucks. >> i think it's the truth. the eyes are the window to your soul. i can see whether they are a frowner or a smiler by the way the wrinkles lie on your face. he made a name for himself on america's top model and now hosts oxygen the face.

he sees selfies as therapeutic. >> if people feel insecure, they don't feel confident, it can really bring themselves down. >> poor lighting, poor framing or poor taste? >> what kind of shot? that guy pouring chocolate syrup? some are like that. >> it's all about what you eyre trying to say. are you trying to get a date or purely to say here i am or to send to your mother or here's my new haircut or look cool in the picture? there are so many messages. >> so many people do the duck face. why do they do that? >> they think they look better, sucking in their cheeks and they don't get it. >> basically you're saying don't pose? >> posing is the worst. it's not about the pose, it's about you.

the pose is not you. >> where is the line between being confident and being narcissist narcissistic. >> it's not about feeling that you're better than the next person. when you look, you're like that's me and i'm happy. >> nigel says you start with what's on your mind. >> i want to say look, i'm in this whole place with nigel. >> right, right, right. >> stay in that moment. there you go. >> yeah. >> that was beautiful. >> that was actually good. >> we took our selfie skills on location to see it in action. >> first of all, it's a very gritty drk it juxtaposes as well. >> not to mention, a great light

box which is this lit up building which lights us up. >> spontaneity is the final secret. >> it doesn't just make good selfies. spontaneity is the spice of life. >> for "nightline" in new york city. >> for the record, i don't think i have ever posted a selfie. i may do it now. >> the new show that goes inside the hunt for one of the worst traders in american history and the real life mom who helps bring him down.

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if you experience a sudden decrease or loss in vision or hearing. this is the age of taking action. viagra. talk to your doctor. married to morty kaufman. [ lee ] now that i'm getting older some things are harder to do. this is not a safe thing to do. be careful babe. there should be some way to make it easier [ doorbell rings ] let's open it up and see what's cookin'. oh i like that. look at this it's got a handle on it. i don't have to climb up. this yellow part up here really catches a lot of the dust. did you notice how clean it looks? morty are you listening? morty? [ morty ] i'm listening! i want you to know

>> we're going to take you inside a real life scandal. you're going to meet a mom who helped bring down perhaps the worst trader in cia history. how did she do it? >> what you are watching is inspired by real life events. one of the worst acts of treason in american history. a cia officer walks into the russian embassy, hands over secrets and demands a mooting with the kgb. >> i work for the cia. >> this betrayal is at the heart of the new abc miniseries, the asset. >> i think you will want to meet with me after you read this. >> and it's based on the case of a cia mole whose treachery

shocked the nation. >> tonight, aldrich ames. >> what you did, you did for money. stop me if i say anything that's wrong. >> the asset takes us inside the hunt to take down ames, which is led in part by sandy grimes, a wife, mother, and cia agent seen here on the show. and seen here today, how much damage. >> he wiped out your ability to have eyes and ears on the ground in our number one enemy? >> exactly. >> sandy grimes first met aldrich ames in the early 1970s when they were both young agents and in the same carpool.

>> at the time, sandy had an extremely sensitive job, helping to manage the cia's relationship with the agency's crown jewel, a spy named general top hat, the highest ranking soviet officer ever recruited. she spent so long on his case that she felt he was her best friend. >> why did he volunteer to help us? >> the dangerous espionage work was blended with a tender home life. >> we were very close. >> his granddaughter remembers him as a doting figure. >> he was always making furniture for my dolls.

>> but her relationship with her grandfather was cut brutally short when on june 13, 1985, rich ames gave a list of every known human asset the cia had in the soviet union. the list had 20 names on it. within a year, ten of those people were executed. among those rounded up, this general seen in the remarkable footage as he is arrested and stripped on the spot just in case he had a cyanide pill on him to take his own life. he was later tried in a secret court and shot. back at the cia, no one knew exactly what had gone wrong as they had been betrayed by aldrich ames. sandy grimes blamed herself.

>> in many respects it's more difficult to regain the business. >> you didn't view it as just business. >> it didn't take long for grimes to start to suspect rich ames. he had an affair with a column beeian woman. she would become his second wife and she had expensive taste. he began wearing high end suits, getting fancy haircuts and driving a jaguar. the cia didn't begin to focus on ames until many years later. grimes's job was to construct a data base of all of ames's activity. he made a series of cash deposits in the bank each time just hours after meeting with a

russian official. those meetings were sanctioned by the cia so they didn't look suspicious until they were matched up with those bank statements. >> that would eventually lead to rick's arrest and conviction. >> 18 months later as a result of the work done by grimes and the rest of the task force, aldrich ames and his wife were arrested. to grimes it is a bittersweet victory. she is angry about the people that he betrayed. >> he knew full well what fate awaited them and he did it basically for money. he needed money to take care of his mistress. he was a weak person. he could not face telling her no. i think it was that simple. >> ames was sentenced to life in prison. >> what i did to those men, the situations their families and

others -- this is kind of shame and remorse that i feel. it's something that is and probably will be for me. >> rosario ames got five years in prison. they found boxes of panty hose that had never been opened and designer dresses that had never been worn still hanging in the closet. she insisted she only knew about her husband's treason for the last 18 months and she even denounced her husband. >> you don't betray your mother, you don't betray your country. you don't betray your wife. you don't betray people. >> grimes co-authored a book called circle of treason. she got a surprise. >> i came up to her. i was very nervous. i didn't know what to say.

so i opened the book to the page where my picture was. i said i'm in this book. >> she points to the picture and she said i'm that little girl. i said you're the general's granddaughter? she said yes. so we hugged one another. we both were in tears. >> isn't she beautiful? >> we were there as grimes and the granddaughter of the man she once considered her beth friend saw the new series for the first time. >> what do you hope viewers take away from the show? >> that they remember those people who volunteer to the u.s. government knowing that working for us, passing our secrets might result in their losing their lives. in addition to that i want them to remember that treason is a crime against every citizen of our country.

>> abc's eight part miniseries "the assets," premiers this thursday. up next, the $11 billion question, what did the top five movies of this year including ironman three all have in common? n thing with real protein. [ female announcer ] ditch the diet and go on a try-it. just try one of 70 yummy lean cuisine dishes for 10 days. packed with 13 grams of real protein. it will keep you satisfied and feeling great. i'm trying this too. and maybe this. nope. not trying that. [ female announcer ] ditch the diet. go on a try-it with lean cuisine. get a starter kit at 10daytryit.com and you'll get a meal on us. nestle. good food. good life. on your busiest day, you see the gray. try root touch up by nice 'n easy. just brush our permanent color matching creme right where you need it. then rinse. in 10 minutes, zap those grays and get on with your day. nice 'n easy root touch up.

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>> we're going to pull back the curtain on hollywood's most lucrative year ever. >> it's a bird, it's a plane, it's a top selling movie of 2013. >> i got you. >> i got you first.

>> ironman 3 travelled the globe to the tune of $1.2 billion. it earned more ticket sales than ever before. nearly $11 billion. also along for this highly profitable ride, the loveable min ons from despicable me, the easy on the eyes cast of fast and furious 6 and the fur balls pursuing higher education in monsters university. you my be noticing a trend here. the top five movies were all sequels. but there was, we should note, one breath of fresh air. gravity showed us there is still room for originality. the sandra bullock brought in $653 million. at least eight of the nine non-sequel films we leased this year already have sequels in the works. world news now is coming up with your overnight news.

tune into gma and as always we're online at abc news.com. we want to leave you with something very important to all of us. a look at the people who helped bring you "nightline" throughout the year.