Aldrich
Ames
1941
Spied For: The Soviet Union
Ames is a former CIA
Counter-intelligence Officer who was convicted of spying for the Soviet Union
in 1994. 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. Due to financial problems in his personal life as a result of
alcohol abuse and high spending, Ames 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
European office where he had direct access to the identities of CIA operatives
in the KGB and Soviet Military. The information he supplied to the Soviets lead
to the compromise of at least 100 CIA agents and to the execution of at least
10. He ultimately gave the USSR the names of every CIA operative working in
their country; for this they paid him 4.6 million dollars. Ames used the money
to live well beyond his means as a CIA agent, buying jewellery, cars, and a
$500,000 house.
In early 1985, the CIA began to
notice that they were losing their “assets” at a very rapid rate. For unknown
reasons they were not willing, in the early stages, to believe that they had
been infiltrated by the KGB, instead presuming the leak to be via bugging
devices. When the FBI were finally brought in to investigate, Ames became the
primary suspect. Fearing he would defect on a CIA trip to Russia, The FBI
arrested him at the airport with his wife. He was given a life sentence and is
incarcerated in the US Penitentiary in Allenwood, Pennsylvania.
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