The Americans is a popular US television show about spies in Northern Virginia, but there's

a real-life spy story that unfolded there about a former CIA officer who gets pulled into

espionage almost by accident, and then, because of small, silly mistakes, gets caught, and

is sentenced to 20 years in prison.

The case of Kevin Mallory is one of only a small number of espionage cases over the past

several decades, and at the end, the day he was sentenced, he said he still loved his

country.

I'm Tara McElvy, and I want to find out what made this patriotic American become a traitor,

and how did he get caught, not because the FBI found him, but because he made a series

of schoolboy errors.

The Alexandria Detention Center is about 10 miles from Washington, D.C., and this is where

Mallory was taken after his arrest and held during the trial.

David Charney is a psychiatrist, and he's interviewed other traders there asking why they turned

on their country.

He spoke with me at the jailhouse.

I always am interested in what were the experiences that somebody had growing up because that

lays down the foundation of how they are psychologically oriented.

But the other thing I have learned to look for is the pile up of pressures and stresses

that load up on a person in the roughly six months to a year before they make that drastic

decision to cross the line.

Kevin Mallory lived here in a neighborhood called Raspberry Falls, a place with deer and

rabbits and tall birch trees.

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