The President’s Mistress 1978

Donna Morton, Karen Grassle, has been carrying on a clandestine affair for months with the President, meeting him in a Washington, D.C. safe house and always being picked up by a Secret Service driver. The arrangement is tense and covert, with the constant undercurrent of risk.

In Moscow, a US agent inside the Kremlin uncovers a secret document that identifies Donna Morton as a KGB asset sent to spy on the president. This highly sensitive document is whisked back to Washington, where it falls into the hands of the CSA, which begins to monitor Donna and scrutinize every move she makes. The discovery sets off a chain of events that draws the CIA-like organization deeper into a dangerous game of espionage and political peril.

On the same day, her brother Ben Morton, Beau Bridges, a Washington businessman and occasional CSA courier, returns home and reconnects with the city. During a plane ride, he meets Mugsy Evans, Susan Blanchard, and the two begin a romance, adding personal stakes to the unfolding crisis. Not long after, Donna Morton is found dead in her apartment, just moments before she would have been picked up by her regular Secret Service driver, a shocking turn that jolts the investigation into high gear.

Ben begins to dig, uncovering Donna’s affair and, through his CSA and Secret Service contacts, the fact that a CSA agent was seen leaving her building around the time of her death. The driver who frequently ferries Donna confirms CSA involvement, but she is killed before she can reveal more. The mystery grows more dangerous as Ben pieces together a conspiracy that points toward a broader geopolitical play.

Realizing the CSA’s heavy involvement, Ben confronts the CSA’s leadership. They reveal a startling twist: the Soviets were responsible for Donna’s death, and the prime suspect is the head KGB agent in Washington, Anatoly. Anatoly is confronted, and the truth emerges in a tense car interrogation: the classified document identifying Donna as a Soviet agent was a fabrication designed to mislead the CSA and to fall into American hands. The KGB had crafted this ruse to destabilize the White House at a crucial moment in talks with China, turning personal betrayal into a strategic political crisis.