The Spy Who Rewrote Rules

Описание: #intelligence #CIA #aldrich
Aldrich Ames, the Central Intelligence Agency officer whose betrayal of secrets to the Soviet Union and later Russia ranks as one of the most devastating in American history, has died behind bars. He was 84.Ames passed away on January 5th at the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland, where he was serving a life sentence without parole. The Bureau of Prisons confirmed the death but disclosed no cause.

A 31-year veteran of the CIA, Ames began spying in 1985, motivated chiefly by greed. Over nine years he received around $2.5m from the KGB and its successors, funding a conspicuously lavish lifestyle—a Jaguar, a $540,000 home in Virginia, exotic holidays—on a salary never exceeding $70,000. In return, he compromised more than 100 clandestine operations and exposed the identities of over 30 agents working for the West, at least ten of whom were executed.

His access was extraordinary: as head of the Soviet counterintelligence branch, Ames could peruse files on virtually all American operations against Moscow. Red flags abounded—failed polygraphs, alcohol problems, unexplained wealth—yet the agency repeatedly promoted him, exposing glaring lapses in internal vetting.


Arrested in February 1994 with his wife, Rosario (who served five years for aiding him), Ames pleaded guilty two months later, avoiding trial and a possible death penalty. His case, coinciding with that of FBI mole Robert Hanssen (who died in prison in 2023), prompted overdue reforms in counter-espionage practices. With Ames's death, a sordid chapter in the Cold War's twilight closes quietly in a prison cell. His treachery cost lives and trust; its lessons, painfully learned, endure.

When the CIA arrested Aldrich Ames in February 1994, the United States learned that the greatest threat to its secrets does not always come from hostile foreign services but from the very people entrusted to guard them. Ames, a senior operations officer in the agency’s Soviet‑focused division, sold classified information to Moscow for nearly a decade, compromising at least ten American assets and costing the United States billions of dollars in intelligence setbacks. The episode reshaped the culture of American intelligence, prompting a series of reforms that remain relevant as the sector confronts ever‑more sophisticated insider threats.