Aldrich Ames
Aldrich Hazen Ames (born May 26, 1941) is a former Central Intelligence Agency counterintelligence
officer and analyst, who, in 1994, was convicted of spying for the Soviet Union and Russia.
Early life & work
Ames was born in River Falls, Wisconsin to Rachel Aldrich and Carleton Cecil
Ames.[1] Ames began working for the CIA in 1962 in a low-level job. Over the next
few years, he graduated from college and advanced through the ranks while
working in the Records Integration Division of the Operations Directorate. In 1969,
on his first assignment as a case officer, he was stationed in Ankara, Turkey,
where his job was to target Soviet intelligence officers for recruitment. While he
had some interesting assignments, his personal life was in shambles. He
frequently fought with his first wife, Nancy, and would often go out binge drinking
to get away from her. When assigned to the US Embassy to Mexico in 1983, he
committed adultery with Rosario Dupuy, an employee of the Colombian Embassy
to Mexico. Upon his return to the US following that assignment, he began divorce
proceedings against Nancy, who had the upper hand in taking the joint assets of
their marriage as the divorce was on the grounds of his unfaithfulness. He also
began cohabitation with Rosario, who was spending a lot of his money, as she was
a shopaholic. The financial pressure of his divorce and Rosario's high living made
Ames think of a way to figure out how to make a fast buck. He first began spying
for the Soviet Union in 1985, when he walked into the Soviet Embassy in
Washington to offer secrets for money.
Ames was assigned to the CIA's Europe Division/Counterintelligence branch, where
he was responsible for directing the analysis of Soviet intelligence operations. He
had access to the identities of U.S. sources in the KGB and Soviet military. The
information Ames provided led to the compromise of at least 100 U.S. intelligence
operations and to the execution of at least 10 U.S. sources. He ultimately gave the
Soviet Union the names of every American agent working in their country. The
Soviets paid Ames approximately $4.6 million, allowing Ames to maintain a
lifestyle well beyond the means of a normal CIA officer. With the money he earned
from spying for the USSR he bought a new Jaguar, jewelry, designer clothing, and
a house in the Northern Virginia suburbs valued at $500,000 (paid for in cash).
Ames, who struggled with alcoholism, had no ideological affinity for the USSR; as
mentioned above, he was interested only in making more money. Before he was
caught, he was assigned the task of preparing the damage assessment of
Jonathan Pollard's activities, and it is believed that he used the opportunity to
attribute to Pollard the act of uncovering CIA agents and assets in the USSR. Ames
and his wife liquidated about $2.5 million of the money the Soviets paid him for
their use, with the Soviets withholding the remaining $2.1 million in a Russian
bank account to be utilized once Ames retired from his spying.
Various betrayals

Vitaliy Sergeyevich Yurchenko was a KGB officer in the Fifth Department of the
Directorate K. He defected to the US only to later repatriate to the Soviets. Ames was
privy to all the information that Yurchenko gave to the CIA, and was able to report all the
information Yurchenko handed over to the KGB which allowed easy cover-ups of lost
information (Cherkashin 219). Yurchenko returned to the Soviet Union in 1985 and was
reportedly tried and executed, then reappeared, alive, in 1986.[2]

In the mid-1980s, Dmitri Polyakov was the highest ranking figure in Soviet military
intelligence (GRU) giving information to the CIA. He was executed in 1988 after Ames
exposed him. [3] Many agree he was the most valuable of the assets compromised by
Ames. A CIA official said of him, "He didn't do this for money. He insisted on staying in
place to help us."[4]

Colonel Oleg Gordievsky was the head of the London rezidentura (residency). He spied
for the SIS. Ames handed over information about Gordievsky that positively identified
him as a traitor (Cherkashin 179-180), although the SIS later managed to extract him.

Valery Martynov was a Line X officer at the Washington rezidentura. While a CIA mole
was suspected to work at the Washington rezidentura, no one was able to pinpoint who
it was. Ames handed over information that led to his arrest and execution (Cherkashin
187).

Major Sergei Motorin was a Line PR officer at the Washington rezidentura. The FBI
blackmailed him into spying for the US.[5] He was one of two moles at the rezidentura
who was betrayed by Ames (Cherkashin 187). Motorin too was quickly executed after
he was exposed. [6]

Colonel Leonid Polishchuk was a Line KR agent in Nigeria. He too was betrayed by
Ames. His arrest was attributed to a chance encounter where KGB agents observed a
CIA agent loading a dead drop. After some time, Polishchuk was seen removing the
contents (Cherkashin 191-192).

Sergey Fedorenko was a nuclear arms expert assigned to the Soviet delegation to the
United Nations. In 1987, Ames was assigned to handle him, and Fedorenko betrayed
information about the Soviet missile program to Ames. The two men became good
friends, hugging when Fedorenko was about to return to Moscow. “We had become
close friends,” said Ames. “We trusted each other completely.”[7] Ames was initially
hesitant to betray his friend, but soon after handing over the majority of the information
decided that he would also betray Fedorenko because to "do a good job" for KGB he
should really tell them every secret he knew. [8] Back in the USSR, Fedorenko used
political connections to get himself out of trouble. Years later, Fedorenko met his friend
Ames for an emotional reunion over lunch and promised to move to the US for good.
Ames promised to help. Shortly after lunch, Ames betrayed him to the KGB for a second
time. [9] Fedorenko escaped arrest, defected, and is currently living in Rhode Island.[10]
CIA response
Replacement of the mailbox used by Ames: a horizontal chalk mark above the USPS logo to
signal a needed meeting. 37th and R Sts. NW. Original in a museum.
As early as 1985, the CIA's network of Soviet-bloc agents began disappearing at an alarming
rate. The CIA noticed that something was very wrong, but was reluctant to admit that there
was a mole in the agency. The CIA was the only Western intelligence agency that had never
been proven to be penetrated by the KGB. Initial investigations were far more focused on a
communications breach caused by Soviet bugs or by a broken code. By 1990, the CIA was
certain that there was a mole, but could not find the source. Recruitment of new Soviet agents
came almost to a halt.[11]
The CIA was harshly criticized for not focusing on Ames sooner, given the dramatic increase in
his standard of living. At this time, his official salary was about $60,000 USD, but his
expenditures included a few surprising items:

he had bought a house in Arlington, Virginia, paying $400,000 in cash;

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he drove a Jaguar that cost more than $60,000;
his wife's monthly phone bill (mostly calls to her family in Colombia) exceeded $6000.
It has been alleged that investigation into the breach was discouraged in the late 1980s when
the CIA was reeling from the Iran-Contra Affair and was desperate to avoid another major
embarrassment.[11] Another explanation is that the CIA was anxious to avoid a repeat of the
internal turmoil generated by the brilliant, but extremely paranoid, former ADDOCI James
Angleton, whose obsessive conviction that the CIA was riddled with Soviet double agents
adversely affected agency operations during the 1970s.
In 1986 and again in 1991, Ames passed two polygraph screening examinations while spying
for the Soviet Union and Russia, respectively. Explanations for this include the possibility that
Ames was in fact a sociopath and consequently immune to the polygraph test, or had learned
or been trained how to defeat the "lie detector". Ames himself admits that the techniques
needed to defeat the polygraph are relatively easy to learn and perform; and critics claim the
CIA's over-reliance on the device to be harmful to national security.
Due to the inability of the CIA to uncover the leak and the fear that the counter-intelligence
division may not have been secure, the CIA turned to the FBI to investigate the matter. The
FBI soon focused on Ames as one of the prime suspects, putting him under constant
surveillance.
Markus Wolf, the retired director of the Stasi's foreign intelligence directorate, claimed in his
memoirs that Gardner Hathaway, recently retired as CIA counterintelligence director but
haunted by his failure to identify Ames, approached him in 1990 with an offer of cosmetic
surgery, lavish compensation, and a new life in the United States if he were to defect and help
the CIA identify the source of Ames's ongoing leak. Wolf also claimed to have declined the
offer in the belief that he would have to compromise moles he had placed and that he had
insufficient guarantees that the CIA would not betray him.
Arrest
In February of 1994, Ames was scheduled to fly to Moscow as part of his duties for the CIA,
and the FBI feared that he would defect. This led to the arrest of Ames and his wife on
February 21, 1994, by the FBI for providing highly classified information to the Soviet KGB and
its successor organization, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. In the plea Ames made to
the court, he said that he had compromised "virtually all Soviet agents of the CIA and other
American and foreign services known to me" and provided the USSR and Russia with a "huge
quantity of information on United States foreign, defense and security policies."[12]
On February 22, 1994, Ames and his wife were formally charged by the United States
Department of Justice with spying for the Soviet Union and Russia. Ames could have faced the
death penalty, since his betrayal had resulted in several CIA "assets" being killed. [11] However,
he received a sentence of life imprisonment, and his wife received a 5-year prison sentence for
conspiracy to commit espionage and tax evasion as part of a plea-bargain by Ames. Upon her
release from prison, Rosario went to South America to reside.
Although generally regarded as a traitor and in fact indicted for treason, Ames was never
convicted of treason. The United States Constitution defines treason as granting aid and
support to the enemy in times of war. Although the Cold War was a source of much tension,
Congress never declared war on the Soviet Union. Actual fighting and hostilities must be
undertaken in order for someone convicted of aiding an adversary to qualify as treason.
Ames is currently housed in the high security US Penitentiary in Allenwood, Pennsylvania. [10]
Ames received a total of $4.6 million for his spying, over $2 million of which remains to this day
in an undisclosed bank account. Russian intelligence has refused to disclose this bank account
information in order for the United States to seize it; arguing that that the money was rightfully
earned by Ames and will remain his (although it is unknown how Ames will be able to collect
it).
Ames is, to date, the highest paid spy in American history, and is one of five spies to have
earned the "big money" ($1 million or more). Clyde Conrad, Larry Wu-Tai Chin, John Anthony
Walker, and Robert Hanssen are the other four.
In popular culture
Ames' story is dramatized in the 1998 movie Aldrich Ames: Traitor Within, with Timothy Hutton
as Ames. Ames was included as a character in the 1997 Frederick Forsyth novel Icon, in which
several Soviet agents recruited by the United States were betrayed by him.
References
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Cherkashin, Victor, and Gregory Feifer. Spy Handler: Memoir of a KGB Officer: the True
Story of the Man Who Recruited Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames. New York: Basic
Books, 2005. ISBN 0-465-00968-9
Earley, Pete. Confessions of a Spy: The Real Story of Aldrich Ames ISBN 0-425-167127
Maas, Peter. Killer Spy: The Inside Story of the FBI's Pursuit and Capture of Aldrich
Ames, America's Deadliest Spy, Warner, 1995, ISBN 0-446-51973-1
Wise, David. Nightmover: How Aldrich Ames sold the CIA to the KGB for $4.6 Million,
HarperCollins, 1995, ISBN 0060171987

Powell, Bill (2002-11-01), Treason: How a Russian Spy Led an American Journalist to a U.S.
Double Agent, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0743229150
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Online chapters of Confessions of a Spy: The Real Story of Aldrich Ames by Pete
Earley.
U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, "A Review of the FBI's
Performance in Uncovering the Espionage Activities of Aldrich Hazen Ames Unclassified Executive Summary (April 1997)" Executive Summary online
"Famous Cases: Aldrich Hazen Ames", Federal Bureau of Investigation (Mar. 27, 2005)
- A short description of Ames' spying career
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Rationalizing treason: An interview with Aldrich Ames, CNN Cold War Series (1998) Aldrich Ames in his own words
CIA Traitor Aldrich Ames - A lengthy description of Ames' spying career
Victims of Aldrich Ames