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Washington — Aldrich Ames, a former CIA counterintelligence officer who infamously betrayed his country by spying for the Soviet Union and later Russia, has passed away, according to a spokesperson from the Bureau of Prisons.
Ames, who was serving a life sentence without the option for parole, died on Monday at the age of 84 at the Federal Correctional Institution located in Cumberland, Maryland.
Over his 31-year tenure with the CIA, Ames is believed to have compromised more than 100 intelligence operations, resulting in the imprisonment or execution of numerous Soviet agents. He exchanged classified information for substantial financial gain, funding a lifestyle marked by luxury and excess.
Upon pleading guilty, Ames confessed to undermining “virtually all Soviet agents of the CIA and other American and foreign services known to me,” and provided the Soviet Union and Russia with an “enormous amount of information on United States foreign, defense, and security policies.” He revealed the identities of 10 agents, with at least nine being executed, as reported by the Defense Department.
Throughout Ames’ career, several warning signs were evident—such as failed lie detector tests, unexplained wealth, subpar job performance, and alcohol abuse. Despite these indicators, the CIA failed to act on these red flags, even promoting Ames to more sensitive positions.
Ames was born in River Falls, Wisconsin, in 1941 and spent part of his childhood in Southeast Asia, where his father was employed by the CIA.
In pleading guilty, Ames admitted that he compromised “virtually all Soviet agents of the CIA and other American and foreign services known to me” as well as giving the Soviet Union and Russia a “huge quantity of information on United States foreign, defense and security policies.” Ames divulged the identities of 10 agents, and at least nine of them were executed, according to the Defense Department.
There were a number of red flags throughout Ames’ career — lie detector tests that showed deceptive answers, sudden unexplained wealth, poor job performance, alcohol abuse — but the CIA repeatedly missed or ignored the warning signs and promoted him to increasingly sensitive posts.
Born in River Falls, Wisconsin, in 1941, Ames spent part of his childhood in Southeast Asia while his father worked for the CIA.
After graduating high school and failing out of classes at the University of Chicago, Ames joined the CIA in 1962, performing clerical duties. At the same time, he attended George Washington University, graduating in 1967 with a degree in history.
In 1969, he married his first wife, who also worked for the CIA, and accepted his first assignment abroad in Ankara, Turkey, where he targeted Soviet spies for recruitment. But he was sent back to CIA headquarters in Virginia after three years when his job performance declined.
Back in the U.S., Ames’ problems with alcohol began to surface at work and his marriage fell apart.
Ames went alone to his assignment in Mexico City, where he worked from 1981 to 1983. There, he met his next wife, Rosario, a cultural attaché at the Colombian Embassy and a CIA asset, who would later be charged as his accomplice.
Despite several security violations over the years, including leaving a briefcase on a train in New York that contained classified materials that could have compromised a Soviet asset, and his superiors’ concerns about his heavy drinking, Ames was promoted to chief of the Soviet branch of the counterintelligence division.
By then, financial pressure was building on Ames. The divorce from his first wife had left him in debt and he had new bills to pay once Rosario came to live with him.
So, in 1985, he approached the Soviets, giving them the names of a few KGB officers secretly working for the FBI in exchange for $50,000. He later gave the KGB a list of CIA assets, dealing “a crippling blow” to the agency’s Soviet operations, according to a 1994 Senate Intelligence Committee report. The KGB promised to give him more than $2 million for his cooperation. To tamp down suspicions about his newfound wealth, he told colleagues that Rosario came from a wealthy family.
He continued spying for nine more years, including in Rome, where he served from 1986 to 1989. From 1990 to 1994, he oversaw operations in Western Europe and Czechoslovakia and worked for the CIA’s counternarcotics center, traveling to meet his handlers in Vienna, Bogota and Caracas.
Meanwhile, the CIA and FBI were looking for the source of the damaging compromises. In 1993, the mole hunt closed in on Ames. Investigators surveilled him for months, arresting him on Feb. 21, 1994, in Arlington, Virginia, days before he was scheduled to attend a conference in Moscow.
Nearly two months later, Ames and his wife pleaded guilty to charges stemming from their espionage activities. Ames’ wife was sentenced to five years in prison.
Then-CIA Director R. James Woolsey said Ames was “a malignant betrayer of his country who killed a number of people who helped the United States and the West win the Cold War.” Those agents died, Woolsey said, because a “murdering traitor wanted a bigger house and a Jaguar.”
In an interview with the New York Times after his arrest, Ames explained his decision to start spying for the other side, saying money was the main motivator. But he also said the seed was planted when he regularly had lunch with a correspondent of the Communist Party newspaper Pravda in the 1970s. The Soviet threat was not as great as the U.S made it out to be, he determined.
“I know what’s damaging and I know what’s not damaging, and I know what the Soviet Union is really all about, and I know what’s best for foreign policy and national security,” he told the New York Times. “And I’m going to act on that.”
