{"id":92234,"date":"2026-01-07T12:21:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T12:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/92234\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T12:21:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T12:21:11","slug":"aldrich-ames-cia-traitor-who-sold-secrets-to-soviets-dead-at-84","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/92234\/","title":{"rendered":"Aldrich Ames, CIA traitor who sold secrets to Soviets, dead at 84"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aldrich Ames<\/a>, a CIA counterintelligence officer who committed one of the most damaging breaches in US history by selling out nearly a dozen Soviet, Russian and other officials<\/a> working for the West, died Monday at the Maryland federal prison where he was serving a life sentence. <\/p>\n

He was 84.<\/p>\n

Ames pleaded guilty in 1994 to conspiracy to commit espionage and tax evasion, admitting to being paid at least $2.5 million by Moscow in exchange for US secrets between 1985 and Feb. 21, 1994, the day he was arrested outside his Arlington, Va. home. <\/p>\n

At the time of his arrest, Ames had been working for the agency for 31 years and had been posted to some of the most sensitive areas of the Cold War \u2014 including Turkey, New York, Mexico City, and Rome.<\/p>\n

The turncoat\u2019s disclosures to Moscow included the identities of 10 Russian officials and one Eastern European who were spying for the United States or Great Britain \u2014 along with spy satellite operations, eavesdropping and general espionage procedures.<\/p>\n

\"AldrichFormer CIA agent Aldrich Ames leaves federal court after pleading guilty to espionage and tax evasion conspiracy charges April 28, 1994, in Alexandria, Va. AP<\/p>\n

Prosecutors said Ames\u2019 leaks caused the executions of Western agents working behind the Iron Curtain and deprived the United States of valuable intelligence material for years.<\/p>\n

Unlike earlier double agents, most of whom turned their back on their country out of ideological sympathy with the Soviets or a misguided belief that Washington and Moscow were allies, Ames acknowledged he had worked with the Russians for money \u2014 in large part to fund the spendthrift lifestyle of himself and his second wife, Rosario, a former CIA informant.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey [Intelligence assets] died because this warped, murdering traitor wanted a bigger house and a Jaguar,\u201d said then-CIA Director James Woolsey, who resigned 10 months after Ames\u2019 arrest amid questions about how he had gone undiscovered for so long.<\/p>\n

In court, Ames professed \u201cprofound shame and guilt\u201d for \u201cthis betrayal of trust, done for the basest motives.\u201d But he downplayed the effect of what he had done, telling the court he did not believe he had \u201cnoticeably damaged\u201d the United States or \u201cnoticeably aided\u201d Moscow.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese spy wars are a sideshow which have had no real impact on our significant security interests over the years,\u201d he claimed, questioning the value that leaders of any country derived from vast networks of human spies around the globe.<\/p>\n

\"FormerFormer CIA agent Aldrich Ames leaves federal court April 28, 1994, in Alexandria, Va. AP<\/p>\n

In a jailhouse interview with the New York Times<\/a> following his sentencing, Ames said: \u201cA number of people throughout the agency\u2019s history have stolen money from the agency and have done terrible things for money. Very few have sold secrets to the KGB, and I think one of the reasons is because many of them would have found \u2014 there were a lot of barriers in the way. For me, by 1985, some of those barriers weren\u2019t there any more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ames was working in the Soviet\/Eastern European division at the CIA\u2019s headquarters in Langley, Va., when he first approached the KGB, according to an FBI history of the case. He continued passing secrets to the Soviets while stationed in Rome for the CIA and after returning to Washington.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just passed what I had access to. And I had access to a wide range of stuff, but not to Soviet, sensitive Soviet operations,\u201d Ames claimed to the Times. \u201cExcept little bits and pieces. But I had a wide range of other information that the KGB was eager to get, and happy to get \u2026 And so I passed a lot of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Meanwhile, the US intelligence community was frantically trying to figure out why so many agents were getting discovered by Moscow.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got two or three or four thousand people running around doing espionage,\u201d Ames told the Times from his jail cell. \u201cYou can\u2019t monitor it. You can\u2019t control it. You can\u2019t check it.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Ames returned from Rome in 1989, his bosses received reports of his unusual wealth \u2014 namely, the new Jaguar and the fact that he had purchased the Arlington home for more than half a million dollars in cash, along with fine tailored suits and cosmetic dental work.<\/p>\n

Despite the red flags, an internal investigation crawled along \u2014 in one instance, being stalled for months while the lone official on the case underwent a training course \u2014 until the FBI got involved in May 1993.<\/p>\n

Woolsey himself admitted that \u201cappropriate resources were not dedicated promptly in the Ames case\u201d and partially blamed the agency\u2019s culture, which he likened to \u201ca fraternity \u2026 wherein once you are initiated, you\u2019re considered a trusted member for life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ames\u2019s spying overlapped <\/a>with that of FBI agent Robert Hanssen, who was caught in 2001 and charged with taking $1.4 million in cash and diamonds to sell secrets to Moscow. Hanssen died in prison in 2023 at the age of 79.<\/p>\n

Rosario Ames pleaded guilty to lesser espionage charges of assisting her husband\u2019s spying and was sentenced to 63 months in prison. Upon her release, she returned to her native Colombia with her son Paul, whom she shared with Ames.<\/p>\n

With Post wires<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aldrich Ames, a CIA counterintelligence officer who committed one of the most damaging breaches in US history by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[13880,1015,9,11,10,9045,41815,27673,58],"class_list":{"0":"post-92234","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-cia","9":"tag-deaths","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-headlines","12":"tag-new-york-news","13":"tag-russia","14":"tag-soviet-union","15":"tag-treason","16":"tag-us-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}