AMES ESPIONAGE CASE

AMES ESPIONAGE CASE. In one of the worst security breaches in American intelligence history, Aldrich Ames (1941–), a second-generation Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee, systematically destroyed the CIA's ability to monitor Soviet activities by betraying more than thirty double agents in the United States and the Soviet Union between 1985 and 1994. Of these individuals, at least ten were executed. During the same period, Ames also revealed the details of approximately one hundred covert operations to his Soviet handlers. For his treachery, Ames received more than $2 million. Ames's arrest and that of his second wife, Rosario, who aided him between 1992 and 1994, severely damaged the CIA's reputation, forced the retirement or resignation of several high-ranking CIA officials, including then-director R. James Woolsey, and resulted in stricter rules for Agency personnel.

Ames's treachery was all the more remarkable because his CIA career was so undistinguished. Despite consistently poor performance, he continued to be assigned to positions where he had access to top-secret information. At the same time, Ames's supervisors tolerated his drinking problem and never questioned his increasingly lavish lifestyle.

Ames, who began spying for the Soviets while he was head of the CIA's Soviet Counterintelligence Division, did so out of greed and contempt for the CIA. He attributed his success to his own cleverness and to his ability to pass routine lie detector tests, but he also benefited from sustained Soviet deception, bureaucratic ineptitude on the part of both the CIA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and from his superiors' unwillingness to believe that a CIA employee could be a traitor. Eventually, the CIA and the FBI cooperated in a massive investigation involving wiretaps, round-the-clock surveillance, and a house search that resulted in the couple's arrest and conviction. Both were imprisoned, Rosario for five years, and Ames for life.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adams, James. Sellout: Aldrich Ames and the Corruption of the CIA. New York: Viking, 1995. A British journalist's assessment of the impact of the Ames case.

Volkman, Ernest. Espionage: The Greatest Spy Operations of the Twentieth Century. New York: John Wiley, 1995. Case studies describing major clandestine efforts of the United States, its friends, and its enemies.

Weiner, Tim, David Johnston, and Neil A. Lewis. Betrayal: The Story of Aldrich Ames, an American Spy. New York: Random House, 1995.

Mary JoBinker

See alsoSpies .