Aldrich Ames: CIA Spy Who Sold Secrets to Russia Dies

Aldrich Ames, a former CIA officer who became one of the most damaging double agents in U.S. history, has died at the age of 84. Ames, who was serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole, died Monday at the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland.

Aldrich Ames: A Career of Betrayal

Ames was jailed on April 28, 1994, after admitting to selling secret information to the Soviet Union and, later, Russia. His actions compromised more than 100 clandestine operations and revealed the identities of over 30 agents spying for the West, resulting in the deaths of at least 10 CIA intelligence assets.

Ames began providing information to the KGB in April 1985, motivated by mounting debts, and received an initial payment of $50,000. He became known to the KGB by the code name “Kolokol” (The Bell) and ultimately identified nearly all of the CIA’s spies operating within the Soviet Union, receiving substantial financial rewards for his betrayal.

“To my enduring surprise, the KGB replied that it had set aside for me $2 million in gratitude for the information,” Ames stated in an eight-page statement read to the court. Over nine years, he admitted to receiving approximately $2.5 million from the Soviet Union.

The money funded a lavish lifestyle, including a Jaguar car, foreign vacations, and a $540,000 house, despite Ames never earning more than $70,000 annually. His 31-year career with the CIA began in 1962, aided by his father, a CIA analyst.

Ames married fellow CIA agent Nancy Segebarth in 1969 and was subsequently assigned to Turkey as a counterintelligence officer. He was later reassigned to the U.S. in 1972, where he struggled with alcohol and his marriage deteriorated.

Despite multiple security breaches, including leaving classified documents on a subway, Ames was sent to Mexico City in 1981. There, he met Maria del Rosario Casas Dupuy, a cultural attaché at the Colombian embassy and a CIA asset who would later be charged as his accomplice.

Returning to the U.S. in 1983, Ames was appointed head of the CIA’s Soviet counterintelligence department, despite ongoing concerns about his drinking. While his career progressed, his personal finances spiraled as he supported both his first wife and Rosario’s lifestyle.

FBI agent Leslie G. Wiser, involved in the investigation, told the BBC’s Witness History in 2015, “It was about the money, and I don’t think he ever really tried to lead anybody to believe it was anything more than that.” Ames’s espionage began in 1985 with the exchange of KGB officer names for $50,000.

His betrayal continued for nine years until his arrest on February 21, 1994, following a year-long mole hunt. Ames cooperated with authorities in exchange for a plea deal that resulted in a reduced sentence for Rosario, who admitted knowledge of the money and meetings with Soviet contacts. She was released after five years.

CIA Director R. James Woolsey described Ames as “a malignant betrayer of his country,” stating that the agents Ames compromised died because of a “murdering traitor [who] wanted a bigger house and a Jaguar.”