Tales of Espionage and Treason at the Library

Sandra Grimes will be giving a talk at the Abbot Public Library about her book, Circle of Treason: A CIA Account of Traitor Aldrich Ames and the Men He Betrayed, co-authored with Jeanne Vertefeuille.

The talk takes place on Friday, Sept. 25 at 7 p.m. at the library.

This presentation is the story of Grimes’ and her co-author’s, the late Jeanne Vertefeuille’s, involvement in the CIA’s effort to determine who or what caused the wholesale loss of the Soviet assets in 1985 and 1986. In 1991, that road led them to search for a traitor in the CIA and to their identification of that individual as Aldrich “Rick” Ames, a long-time friend and co-worker in the Soviet-East European Division in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations.

Grimes will take those who attend the through the entire journey as they lived it, from the KGB’s arrest and execution of our assets in the mid-1980s to the FBI’s arrest of Ames in February 1994 and his sentence to life in prison two months later.

Grimes is a 26-year veteran of the CIA’s clandestine service who spent the majority of her career working against the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. She lives in Great Falls, VA.

Jeanne Vertefeuille was a CIA officer from 1954 to 1992, specializing in counterintelligence in the Soviet Union, and she served as a contract analyst since 1993 until her death in December 2012.

The library closes at 5 pm for regular services on Sept. 25 but will be open Friday evening for this event only.

The Abbot Public Library is located at 235 Pleasant Street in Marblehead.