Aldrich Ames, the CIA officer who spied for the Soviet Union and Russia in one of the most damaging intelligence breaches in US history, has died in a Maryland prison. He was 84. The Bureau of Prisons confirmed his death on Monday.
Ames, along with his wife Rosario, was arrested in February 1994 and pleaded guilty without a trial to espionage and tax evasion. Aldrich was charged with espionage, and his wife with aiding and abetting his activities. He was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, while Rosario received a little over five years.
Ames admitted to passing information to Moscow for nearly a decade, including the identities of Western agents behind the Iron Curtain, and said he was paid $2.5 million by Russia. In a jailhouse interview with the Washington Post the day before his sentencing, he said he was motivated by “financial troubles, immediate and continuing”.
He expressed “profound shame and guilt” for the betrayal, but downplayed the damage he caused, telling the court he did not believe he had “noticeably damaged” the United States or “noticeably aided” Moscow. He described the spy wars as a “sideshow” with no real impact on significant security interests.
Ames was working in the Soviet/Eastern European division at the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, when he first approached the KGB. He continued passing secrets while stationed in Rome and after returning to Washington. In 2018, his name featured in Ben Macintyre’s book The Spy and the Traitor, which detailed the rescue of KGB colonel Oleg Gordievsky; Ames was the “traitor” who tipped off Moscow to Gordievsky’s activities.
