ABC is aiming to get on the hip, Cold War drama train with its new miniseries, The Assets. Launching in summer 2014, the series will look at the end of the Cold War through the eyes of the CIA and its agents, loosely basing its story on Circle Of Treason: A CIA Account Of Traitor Aldrich Ames And The Men He Betrayed by veteran CIA officers Sandra Grimes and Jeanne Vertefeuille. This will actually be the second televised telling of Ames’ life: The first, Aldrich Ames: Traitor Within, aired on CBS in 1998 and starred Timothy Hutton as Ames.
Ames was a mole who fed information to the Soviet Union that ultimately contributed to the deaths of at least 10 Soviet agents who were spying or had spied for the States, making him the second-biggest compromiser of CIA assets in the organization’s history, behind only Robert Hanssen. He was arrested and convicted of spying in 1994 and is currently serving a life sentence at the Allenwood U.S. Penitentiary near Allenwood, Pennsylvania.