Spymaster, defector, double agent---the remarkable true story of the man who ran Russia's post–cold war spy program in America.

In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, the cold war ended, and a new world order began. We thought everything had changed. But one thing never changed: the spies.

From 1995 to 2000, a man known as "Comrade J" was the highest-ranking operative in the SVR---the successor agency to the KGB---in the United States. He directed

When Aldrich Ames was arrested in 1994, he had been feeding the KGB information for nine years; he had been paid more than two and a half million dollars, with the promise of two million more; and he had been personally responsible for the betrayal that led to the execution of most of the United States' top assets in the Soviet Union. Never before had one man done so much damage to American security.

Pete Earley is the only writer to have conducted