More spies have been named in the last ten

years than ever before in American history. And

they have inflicted more damage on the nation s

defenses than even the A-bomb spies of the

1940s. Merchants of Treason, by the authors of the

highly acclaimed biography of Admiral Hyman

Rickover, will be hailed as the first comprehen-

sive analysis of how and why we are Iosing so

badly in the back-alley war of counter-espionage.

In the not-so-distant past, people betrayed

their country for reasons of ideology. But the days

of Philby, Burgess, Madean, and the Rosenbergs

are over. Now our nation s most secret materials

are being sold at an espionage bazaar where

the Soviets are the most frequent and generous

buyers. It is the conviction of Allen and Polmar,

meticulously documented and passionately ar-

gued, that the betrayal by Walker, Whitworth,

Pelton, PolIard, and the other modern spies is not

a rare disease but a symptom of a veritable

plague that has descended upon us.

We go behind the headlines as the authors

explore the following questions:

-Did the raid to free our American hostages in

lran fail because of fears that the Soviets were

able to penetrate our cryptographic system?

-How many U.S. soldiers, sailors, and marines

have escaped public attention in spy cases swept

under the rug by bureaucrats in the Pentagon and

the Department of Justice?

-Did U.S. counter-espionage agents know that

whitworth was stealing code secrets years be-

fore he was arrested?

-Has the Soviet Union been able to place moles

within the U.S. government, as they have in Bri-

tain and other Western nations?