They gave up the names of people who had placed their trust in them. I did the same thing, for reasons that I considered sufficient to myself. It's a nasty kind of circle, with terrible human costs.

When I got the money, the whole burden descended on me, and the realization of what I had done. And it led me then to make the further step, a change of loyalties.

This belief of the noninjurious nature of what I was doing permitted me to do what I did for much more personal reasons.

You might as well ask why a middle-aged man with no criminal record might put a paper bag over his head and rob a bank. I acted out of personal desperation.

When Reagan was elected, I felt that the Agency had gone much more into the service of a political tendency in the country with which I had already felt very strong disagreement.

When I handed over the names and compromised so many CIA agents in the Soviet Union, I had come to the conclusion that the loss of these sources to the U.S. would not compromise significant national defense, political, diplomatic interests.

To the extent that I considered the personal burden of harming the people who had trusted me, plus the Agency, or the United States, I wasn't processing that.

Thousands of people in sensitive positions in the United States, in Britain or in the former Soviet Union, had all kinds of personal problems, to the extent that they wrecked their lives over them.

There's almost a consistency throughout the Cold War that the information that comes out on politics generally tends to downplay grand Soviet strategies, big plans, world domination.