It's Monday, January 12, 2026. I'm Albert Mueller, and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. The world of spies is one that by definition is filled with intrigue. It is also a world that many people find very interesting. One of the fastest selling genres of literature is the spy or espionage novel. And interestingly, novels by the likes of such figures as John Le Carré are actually being republished and even new versions of older movies are coming out. And that's because espionage or spycraft reveals some of the deepest, as well as darkest, moral and worldview issues imaginable. But it's not a fictional spy that is our concern today. No, it's an all too real, all too deadly spy who just recently died in federal custody. Aldrich Ames, referred to by The New York Times as the most murderous turncoat in the history of the Central Intelligence Agency, died just days ago in the Federal Correction Institution in Cumberland, Maryland. He was serving a life in prison term without the possibility of parole. And that's only because there was not a stronger sentence that could be delivered against him. Tim Weiner of The Times reports, quote, Aldrich Ames, the most murderous turncoat in the history of the CIA, whose betrayal in working for the Soviet Union went undetected for almost a decade, died on Monday. He was 84 and had been a federal prisoner serving life without parole since 1994. And then just get this one paragraph, quote, the son of an alcoholic CIA officer, Mr. Ames failed upward through the agency ranks for 17 years until he attained a headquarters post of extraordinary sensitivity. He became the head of Counterintelligence Branch of the CIA's division devoted to the Soviet Union. He took that role in September of 1983. As The Times says, quote, he had access to some of the nation's deepest secrets, in particular, its clandestine liaisons with the Soviets who worked in secret with American intelligence. Well, this became one of the deadliest compromises of American spy craft. Now remember, the big issue is that Aldrich Ames had become head of the Counterintelligence Branch of the CIA's Soviet division. In other words, this very high CIA official who was charged with protecting the spies was actually betraying his nation and betraying those espionage agents. And they often paid with their death. He was paid with very real money, multiple millions of dollars. And here's some of the strange detail. You would think that the CIA would have been on top of the fact that this guy had really not been all that effective for years. His father had been an early CIA agent who had actually kind of ended his career with an alcohol problem. Aldrich Ames began as a teenager in a summer jobs project at the CIA and later he decided he would join the CIA. And he did so. He doesn't seem to have had a great deal of passion and he had a record that was described by many as mediocre. In some cases worse. He had some higher evaluations and other posts. But eventually he decided to go in the area of Russian espionage. He was given this very high position. And here's the thing. The CIA seems not to have noticed number one that much of the information had been compromised. And number two, the hero is a man who made the equivalent of $60,000 a year and yet was living a lavish lifestyle. For example, he began driving a Jaguar XJ6 sedan. That is not the kind of car that someone on that kind of salary can pay for. He began living in a house that even back then was evaluated at more than $500,000, more than a half million dollars in today's money. That's a vastly expensive house. A CIA agent isn't making that kind of money. You would think that the CIA would have been directly suspicious of someone in such an important position when it came to espionage in the Soviet Union, who apparently all of a sudden had a lot of money. He divorced his first wife. He later married a woman who had been from Columbia and involved in some way in Colombian intelligence. She, at least according to some accounts, did not know of her husband's espionage in the beginning, but she did come to know of it and she understood that's where the money was coming from. And she also enjoyed spending the money. As I say, life and death was very much hanging in the balance. It is known that at least about 10 major figures who were working for the United States ended up executed in the Soviet Union. This has gone down as one of the most scandalous espionage developments in the entire history of American spycraft. And it's made all the darker by the fact that Aldrich Ames at no point expressed any kind of remorse. As a matter of fact, he seemed to believe that there was no moral issue, no moral imperative that bound him into any system of honor. It turns out that even early on he had basically decided he was in it for himself rather than for his country. He also understood the stakes in comments made after his arrest. He made very clear he knew that one of the reasons he gave those names in order that those figures in the Soviet Union would be executed before they had the opportunity to expose him. Furthermore, when the CIA began to be suspicious and it became very clear there was some major leaking taking place on the American side, they actually turned to another suspect and believed that he was a part of this. It turned out he was also a spy on behalf of the Soviet Union, but one with less impact. And it turns out that eventually the CIA determined that some of the information that was clearly being revealed could not have been handled by the other person. So it was indeed Aldrich Ames who ended up very much as the lead suspect. He turned out also to undoubtedly have been guilty. Long before he was entrusted with such a top position there in terms of espionage connected to the Soviet Union, Aldrich Ames was already fumbling things. At one point, for example, he left a briefcase with highly sensitive documents on a train. This would have exposed Soviet diplomats working for the CIA. Nonetheless, even with this kind of error and repeated concerns, he was promoted. He was given more and more responsibility. As the Times had quote, he earned a billet on the home front by learning Russian and joining the CIA's Soviet division. Worse than this, it was even understood that he, like his father, had a serious problem with alcohol. This is one of the issues that should compromise anyone in this kind of intelligence position, but in his case, he actually took on greater and greater responsibility. One of the most amazing aspects of the Ames case is that he initiated the contact with the Soviet system. He went and addressed himself to the Soviet embassy and right there made the offer to exchange intelligence for money. As the Washington Post tells us, quote, while in Washington in April 1985, he walked into the Soviet embassy and offered up the names of two CIA-recruited agents for which he was later given $50,000. Some months after that, he followed up with the names of all the Soviet and Warsaw-packed agents he knew the CIA and FBI had recruited without immediately asking for money. The next line, the Soviets intrigued, told him that he would eventually receive up to $2 million. By some accounts, he received more than twice that much money. At the worldview level, this case raises some really big questions. One of the questions is, is this entire arena of human activity, is it legitimate? Is it from a Christian perspective, legitimate? After all, we're talking about intrigue. We're talking about what some are referred to, including Winston Churchill's, a bodyguard of lies. We are talking about a very deep and dark business. But it's also true that in a very dangerous age and in a very dangerous world, a society, in a free society like the United States of America, can only exist by having some means of adequate espionage against those who are our very real enemies. This was particularly true during the Cold War and it's become very, very clear subsequently. By the way, it also had become clear during World War II, especially in terms of the activities of Nazi Germany, but at that point, British intelligence was far ahead of the Americans in terms of expertise. The Americans had to catch up, which they did largely during the period of the Cold War, after World War II and beyond. But it's also clear that there are some very murky moral issues. There are some complexities. For one thing, what kind of person is drawn into this? We've had conversations with some who clearly have been on the side of righteousness and honor and have acted on behalf of American interests and freedom and liberty and constitutional self-government. And they have also understood that in the clash of worldviews, there is a difference between light and darkness. Even in a fallen world, there is a difference between those governments that are upholding human dignity and those which are seeking to subvert or destroy it. There is a difference between, for example, the USSR and the USA and its allies. There's no apology for understanding that difference. As a matter of fact, that is a necessary act of moral responsibility. But it is worth noting that some of the people drawn into this kind of business are not drawn evidently for the loftiest of motivations. Furthermore, there is an opportunity presented in so much of this on both sides of the equation, or multiple sides of the equation, in which you can never know exactly what the loyalties of some people would be. Now, this is one of the examples why in the Cold War, as in the struggle of the West against Nazi Germany, one of the things that came up is that you had agents, and then you also had double agents, and then you had triple agents. And in some cases, you had quadruple agents. At some points, even now, it is impossible to know eventually which side some people involved in espionage were working for. It's hard to know exactly where their loyalties were. And that's one of the reasons why we are talking about a very difficult, morally complex and sometimes almost impossible to fully understand human enterprise. And when it comes to something like espionage in a fallen world, it becomes very necessary. But in a fallen world, it becomes very, very suspect. Even the closer you look on the inside. Now let me remind you that the immediate effect of the espionage undertaken by Alder James was the death of some of the people who had been working on behalf of the United States. Some of them were executed. Some of them were also tortured as well as imprisoned. And furthermore, we really don't even today have an adequate understanding of the breadth and depth of the criminality and the damage done by Alder James. But it's also clear that he never really considered himself to be a moral actor. And if anything, that makes the entire thing far more troubling from a Christian worldview. In his own words, at one point Alder James said after his conviction, quote, there was this strange transfer of loyalties. It wasn't to the Soviet system, he said, which I believe was a beastly and human nasty regime. Instead, he went on to say that he'd been disillusioned with the United States and with U.S. intelligence and in the post words, quote, had shifted his loyalty to a way of life and a world he considered above the petty concerns of governments, end quote. That is a horribly confused and corrupted statement, just in moral terms. But frankly, even in just bare psychological terms, it really doesn't make sense. Unless this was a man who had, in some sense, basically subverted his own moral conscience for so long, it really didn't function. This reminds me of the Apostle Paul's language in Romans chapter one, where he speaks of God giving people over to their sin. In one sense, it seems that graphic testimony of that pattern of God giving them over shows up in the tragic case of Alder James. He died in federal custody and the United States government dealt with his death simply by acknowledging that it happened. That's one of the ways the U.S. government deals with persons who were involved in such espionage, such federal criminals, also some who were involved in domestic crimes as well. They are sentenced to effectively life in prison without the opportunity of parole. They really have no contact with the outside world. And their death simply comes as a simple matter of announcement. There's another footnote to this that is of interest, and that is that many people wondered why someone like Alder James hadn't been caught with a lie detector test. And at one point, intervening in another case, simply making a comment, Alder James mentioned that he had been able to fool the entire polygraph system, the lie detector system. And it is because he just learned how to master his emotions, even his physiological condition in such a way that he would gain the confidence of the person doing the interview in such a way that they did not recognize the very clear fact that he was lying and that his lying was devastating and came with deadly effect. In moral and in worldview terms, the case of Alder James is one of the biggest cases of recent American history. It raises massive issues. And the occasion of his death, now acknowledged by the U.S. prison system, is worthy of our consideration. Now, speaking of moral issues, we discussed the issue of surrogate motherhood as one of the great moral crises of the age. It's really interesting that in recent days, the Wall Street Journal had a major front page article of the headline, surrogate mothers can face big debts as industry booms. Catherine Long's the reporter in the story, and it really comes from an unexpected concern. And it's very revealing in moral terms. A concern is this, many of the women who are signing up as surrogates, that is, they are signing up for pay to carry a pregnancy on behalf of others. The big complexities with that we'll discuss in just a moment. But the source of this particular interest is the fact that many of them are facing massive medical bills that come in the course and are related to the fact that they've been serving as surrogates, and they're stuck with them. And so that's one of the interests, even, of the national media. In this case, the Wall Street Journal is interested in this, not so much for the big moral issues, but for the fact that these women are often finding themselves now with medical bills and no one's giving them the money to pay for it. So, for example, the article begins this way, quote, Neha Trent Wilson owes 182,000 plus dollars in medical bills for a baby that wasn't hers. Now, let me just stop here for a moment and say, this is something unprecedented in human history. This is something that could not have been discussed. The Senate's, this lead in this news article would have made no sense whatsoever, just a matter of a couple of generations ago. It is only with the development of IVF and vitro fertilization, modern reproductive assistance, these technologies, it's only with the rise of the ability to insert an embryo into a woman to carry that baby to term as a, quote, surrogate mother. It's only with the development of this that a story like this is even possible. The article continues, quote, in late 2021, she agreed to act as a surrogate through an agency, now listen carefully, that paired her with a gay couple from Washington, D.C. Okay, so again, this is something that a lot of people don't want to talk about. It's connected to the very essence of in vitro fertilization, IVF technology. It's tied to the very existence of this surrogacy. The fact is that you have people who will say, well, these are heterosexual married couples using their own, their own cells to create these embryos, and they're being implanted in surrogates and carried to birth simply because these are couples that want to have babies and otherwise would be unable to have them. But the closer you look at this industry, it actually, much like IVF itself, opens what can only be described as an absolute Pandora's box of moral complexity. This article points out that this is a woman who had signed up as a surrogate mother, remember, for a gay couple from Washington, D.C. Listen to this quote, the terms are typical, $70,000 plus fees in the event of a potential health complication and a promise that the intended parents would cover medical costs. Here's something else, Trent Wilson, that is the woman, Neha Trent Wilson is a hyphenated last name, quote, had been a surrogate twice before and thought she knew what to expect. But this time the pregnancy went badly sideways. Serious medical complications forced doctors to remove her uterus and fallopian tubes. She went home with a bill, the parents put that in quotation marks in my mind, went home with the baby. So the gay couple went home with the baby, she went home with huge medical bills and medical complications and clearly she will not be able to serve as a surrogate in the future. The interest of the Wall Street Journal in this is basically the financial issue that's revealed and the fact that there's this entire industry in IVF and the fact that there are some women who had signed up to be surrogates who find themselves effectively holding the bill. And some of these bills are massive. Again, in this case, this one woman, $186,000. And the baby was not hers. And thus she basically had forfeited rights to the baby in the contract to serve as a surrogate. And so the baby was taken away from her. That just should point out to Christians, something that is basic in terms of the problem. If indeed the woman who has given birth to this baby is not the mother of the child, and by the way, this means in every way, no pun intended, conceivable, then we are looking at an absolutely massive problem. And it also points to moral risk and the kind of moral opportunity that's revealed here. Again, to be clear, before the IVF technology and the rise of contracted surrogacy in terms of women carrying these babies, this would have been impossible. It would have been something like science fiction. It wouldn't have made any sense whatsoever. But now it makes so much sense, and it is such an issue, that it made the front page of the Wall Street Journal, one of the world's most influential newspapers. In rather dispassionate terms, the journal says this, quote, tens of thousands of people, including infertile and same-sex couples, have had babies through the advances of in vitro fertilization and the willingness of surrogates to carry those children. Here's the next paragraph, and I quote, surrogacy in the U.S. has surged into a multi-billion-dollar industry, in which the women who bear the children have few financial or other protections, and even are sometimes surprised by strangers wielding legal documents, taking the babies away after birth, end quote. One of the things that comes up in this, and also in recent coverage of some Asian oligarchs who've been having babies this way, contracting for surrogates and IVF and all the rest, one of the things that has come up is that these are often babies that are picked up at a medical center nearly immediately after birth, and they're not even taken by any source that is even involved in the adoption of the baby. They're simply taken by agents on behalf of such persons. This is turning babies into mere commodities. It's as if you're talking about some kind of toy or some kind of technology or some kind of consumer good. For Christians, this should be a big alarm telling us that we face a major issue here. Now, we know that. We should know that because of the alienation of the pregnancy from the context of sex and from the embodiment that was God's plan for the beginning, that embodiment in the context of a man and a woman in the covenant of holy marriage. That's a situation in which there's no embarrassment for having a baby. Frankly, in most cases, there's no need for a lot of technology. When you add the complexity, which isn't just of some problem with fertility, that, it's acknowledged in the article, is a part of this market. But that's not the biggest part. That became exposed, interestingly enough, when Russia invaded Ukraine. One of the things that was exposed when Russia invaded Ukraine is how many Ukrainian women were serving as surrogate mothers on behalf of American couples and the majority of them were homosexual couples. They were gay male couples. Now, there's another aspect to this that was largely financial because those women could be contracted for less money than women in the United States. Some of the surrogate mothers here in the United States. But one of the other issues that was revealed is that the United States is, as we've often remarked, and as foreign observers have affirmed, the wild, wild west of modern reproductive technologies. Now, again, the Wall Street Journal is about business. So let's look at how the business is reported here in their article. Quote, the US is a leader in the global surrogacy industry. In 2023, the most recent year data is available. Nearly 11,000 surrogates underwent an embryo transfer, a figure that has more than doubled since 2014, according to data that represents around 95% of IVF procedures collected by an industry group. End quote. Now, I'm not going to even criticize that reporting. I'm simply going to point out it's presented as if this is just any other business, any other industry. Christians have to hear this and understand this isn't just any other business. This isn't just any other industry. We're talking about the reproduction here of human beings. We're talking about what in Marxist terms, but also in terms of classical capitalist economics, is referred to as commodification, turning something into a commodity. A commodity is something of economic value that can be traded, bought or sold, but it isn't necessarily something that should be up for sale. Commodification in this sense is something that can be positive. You can come up with a service that you can sell. This is a whole new economic opportunity, but it can often be the opposite. It can be something that is not only morally dubious, but is morally evil. After all, there is a trade in hired killers that has economic consequence. It could be a contract just almost like any other contract, but that doesn't make it right. As a matter of fact, murder is inherently evil period. Going back to the surrogacy business, and that's exactly what it has become, the Wall Street Journal ominously reports that it has become such a significant arena of economic activity that private equity companies are moving in to make investments in surrogacy services in the wild, wild west that is reproductive technology in the United States of America. We should note that the U.S. is known for many things around the world, but increasingly it is known for having almost no controls over these assisted reproductive technologies. And there's a reason for it. The reason for it in terms of the Wall Street Journal's interest is commercial and financial. It's big business. But for Christians, and for those who are also pushing the agenda from the opposite direction, we understand that the biggest issue here is not money, it's morality. And furthermore, we have to recognize that that morality is inherent in the equation. You're talking about human beings. You're talking about what it means to be human. You're talking about the commodification of human beings, human beings, human babies, turned into products effectively for design, for engineering, for special selection, and for birth. Not only that, but you understand that that's the redefinition of human dignity taking place right before our eyes. I think we should also note, once again, that this is treated as largely an economic issue with an industry very much in view. For Christians, we have to look at this and see nothing less than a moral disaster. But we as Christians also need to recognize that it's nothing less than a moral disaster, that so many Christians, so many Christian churches, so many denominations, so many Christian couples seem to miss the moral issues at stake here. They tend to see this as some kind of good simply because it leads to a baby. But here's where Christians have to understand that even going back before the technology and looking at the moral context of a sex act, it has never been true that the existence of a baby itself justifies the sex act. That's never been true, nor does the existence of a baby simply justify the technology. The baby, as a human being made in the image of God, is an unalloyed good. The baby is not the problem. It is the process. It is the surrogacy. It is the relationship. It is the fact that this is taking place in so many cases, not only outside of marriage, but outside of an entire heterosexual formula. We are doing this. The people around us are doing this. Now it has become even big business and a venture capital opportunity. The Wall Street Journal seems to be quite interested in how some women are being used and abused in this, and that's a very legitimate concern. But it's only the start of very legitimate concerns. When it comes to the most basic concerns, those who have the opportunity to make big money are going to extend big effort in avoiding those questions at all costs. That's something we as Christians simply can't do. Before signing off today, I want to remind you that back in 2021, I had a lengthy thinking and public conversation with James Olson, former CIA head of counterintelligence, a deeply thoughtful man. It was a deeply thoughtful conversation. I think you will find it fascinating. Raising many of these issues from someone who to say the very least was an insider among insiders. For information on Boyce College, just go to boycecolors.com. I'm speaking to you from Davenport, Florida, and I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.
