> It’s still an incomplete picture. Ortis stood at the top of his field, not struggling on the middle rungs. Why risk it all? In his book The Anatomy of a Spy:

> It’s still an incomplete picture. Ortis stood at the top of his field, not struggling on the middle rungs. Why risk it all? In his book The Anatomy of a Spy: A History of Espionage and Betrayal, Michael Smith describes four main motivators for going rogue: lust, money, ideology, and revenge. Ortis fits awkwardly into those categories. This is journalistic negligence. They are obviously referring to MICE or MALICE which are mnemonics for analyzing motives in counterintelligence that stand for "Money, Ideology, Compromise, and Ego" and "Money, Anger, Lust, Ideology, Compromise, and Ego" respectively. The simplest explanation is "Ego" in this case, which is probably why the article went out of its way to point his self confidence bordering on arrogance, yet replaced it with "revenge" to leave an air of mystery. He likely just enjoyed playing James Bond with all the opsec and secrecy that goes into that. The reasons for betrayal like that are often the most banal.