Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official Aldrich Ames rose to high rank within the agency’s Soviet and East European division. That allowed him access to highly sensitive secrets. He exploited that, turned traitor, and sold his services to the KGB as a deep mole within their enemy’s camp. Ames became one of the Soviet Union’s, and later Russia’s, most effective double agents in the United States.
A Sloppy Spy’s Rise Through the CIA’s Ranks
Aldrich Ames was born in 1941 in Wisconsin to a high school English teacher mother and a college lecturer father. His father eventually became a CIA analyst in the early 1950s. His connections paved the way for Ames to join the spy agency in 1962. The connections that got Ames hired also kept him in the CIA despite numerous screw ups that started early on. In hindsight, they should have cost him his job long before he managed to inflict so much damage and get so many people killed.
Ames was a heavy drinker. His alcohol-related problems included drunken run-ins with the police and drunken brawls in public with foreign diplomats. He was also so sloppy with security that he once forgot secret documents in a New York City subway car. Despite all of that, his connections ensured that he rose steadily through the CIA’s ranks. After a stint in Turkey recruiting Soviet spies in the 1960s, he returned to the US in the 1970s. He was eventually posted to Mexico in the early 1980s.
A Turn to Treason
In Mexico, Aldrich Ames me his second wife, Maria del Rosario Casas Ames, a Colombian whom he had recruited. They wed in 1985. That same year, while Ames was working in the CIA headquarters, he began to sell secrets to the KGB. Assisted by his wife, he continued to do so when he was transferred to Rome. The couple kept at it upon his return to Langley. Their run of treason lasted until they were finally unmasked in 1994. During that span, Ames and his wife were paid over $2.7 million by the Soviets, and after 1991, the Russians.
There had been plenty of warning signs, as the couple indulged in conspicuous consumption and extravagant spending. Their splurging included a big $520,000 house paid for in cash, and luxury vacations. Ames had premium credit cards whose minimum monthly payment exceeded his government salary. His luxury cars stood out in the CIA’s parking lot, full of the typical vehicles that government employees drove. The man brazenly displayed expensive things, and lived a lavish lifestyle that no public servant could afford on government pay. No alarm bells were raised for years, however. Even when they were, it took years more – until 1993 – before the CIA seriously examined his finances.
Aldrich Ames Inflicted Enormous Damage and Got Many People Killed
In the meantime, Aldrich Ames passed two polygraph tests while committing treason – apparently, those things are bunk and junk science. It has since come out that polygraph failure rates are around 50% – pretty much the same as flipping a coin to find out if a subject is lying or not – and the results can easily be manipulated by the examiner at whim. As to how Ames went about his betrayal, he needed no high tech means or complicated James Bond exploits.
To smuggle out secrets, Ames simply stuffed whatever documents he wanted to give his Soviet KGB and later Russian FSB handlers in his briefcase or in trash bags. He then brazenly carried them out of the CIA’s headquarters at the end of the workday, and nobody questioned him. By the time Ames and his wife were finally unmasked, the damage inflicted was catastrophic. The couple had revealed to the Soviets and Russians the identity of every CIA spy operating against them.
At least twelve CIA, FBI, and British sources reporting on Soviet and Russian activities were caught because of Ames. Of those, ten were subsequently executed. Ames also gave his handlers information on spy satellite operations, eavesdropping, and various espionage procedures. After he was arrested in 1994, Ames cut a deal with the US government that spared him the death penalty. It also ensured that his wife got a relatively light sixty-three-month sentence. He got life without the possibility of parole. Aldrich Ames served more than three decades at the Federal Correctional Institute in Cumberland, Maryland, before he died behind bars in early 2026.
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Some Sources & Further Reading
Doyle, David W. – Inside Espionage: A Memoir of True Men and Traitors (2000)
History Halls – Yisrael Bar, the Enigmatic Soviet Spy Who Infiltrated Israel’s Top Security Circles
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