Mystery of Aldrich Ames‪.‬

Motivation is the central mystery of espionage. Why do people spy? What compels them to trade in the currency of secrets? How are they able to court trust and seduce confidences when their purpose, all along, is to betray? What is it in their personalities that allows them to be one thing on the outside and quite another within? To answer these questions one has to slip into the spy's skin. Such is the challenge facing the biographer of an individual as enigmatic as Aldrich Ames. "Why did Pym do it, Tom? In the beginning was the deed. Not the motive, least of all the word. It was his own choice. It was his own life. No one forced him."