Spineless coward who betrayed America for vodka and to keep his wife happy: The pathetic double life... and death... of the worst CIA traitor in history
In the end, one of the most reviled traitors of the Cold War died in a grim prison cell, his brain so addled by vodka he couldn't remember many of the secrets he sold.
Aldrich Ames, the former CIA operative whose colossal betrayal cost the lives of numerous double agents, passed away aged 84 at the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland.
He was serving a life sentence without parole. The Bureau of Prisons did not reveal a cause of death.
It was a long way from the life of luxury he had led after selling out his country to the Kremlin and spending the proceeds on fast cars, women and alcohol.
Over the course of a decade, Ames divulged secret U.S. missions to the KGB, kneecapping the CIA's spying operation at a crucial time in history as the Soviet Union was collapsing.
He revealed the identities of Soviet officials secretly working for the U.S. and up to 10 of them were executed by Moscow.
In all, he earned $2.7 million - about $6.7 million at current value - which was the most money paid by the Soviet Union to any American for spying.
Ames used it to fund a non-stop party for himself and his Colombian wife Rosario.
He drove a Jaguar, splashed out on a grand Washington home, and spent many of his days in an alcoholic haze.
The couple kept cash in Swiss bank accounts and ran up $50,000 annually in credit card bills.
Former CIA agent Aldrich Ames leaving federal court after pleading guilty to espionage and tax evasion conspiracy charges April 28, 1994, in Alexandria, Virginia
Ames worked as a counterintelligence analyst for the CIA for 31 years and passed information to the Kremlin between 1985 and his arrest in 1994.
Despite superiors regarding him as a poor spy, he learned Russian and rose to be head of the Soviet branch in the CIA's counterintelligence group.
In addition to handing the Kremlin the names of dozens of Russians spying for the U.S., he divulged satellite operations, eavesdropping and general spy procedures.
Relying on bogus information from Ames, CIA officials repeatedly misinformed presidents Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush and other top officials about Soviet military capabilities.
In 1994 he pleaded guilty without a trial to espionage and tax evasion and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
He admitted 'profound shame and guilt' for 'this betrayal of trust, done for the basest motives.'
Ames is led from the courthouse after being unmasked for selling secrets to Russia
The seal of the Central Intelligence Agency at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where Ames worked
That motive was to pay debts run up while living beyond his means.
'You might as well ask why a middle-aged man with no criminal record might put a paper bag over his head and rob a bank. I acted out of personal desperation,' Ames said.
'When I got the money, the whole burden descended on me, and the realization of what I had done.'
But he was critical of the CIA and downplayed the damage he had caused.
'These spy wars are a sideshow which have had no real impact on our significant security interests over the years,' he claimed.
President Ronald Reagan with general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985, the year Ames began selling secrets
Moscow executed some of the Russian double agents betrayed by Ames
Aldrich Hazen Ames was born on May 26, 1941, in River Falls, Wisconsin, and was known as 'Rick.'
He was the son of Carleton Ames, a professor of European and Asian history, who also worked for the CIA.
At age 12, while the family was in Burma, Ames learned of his father's role.
He later got a summer job as a handyman at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia and became a clerk there in 1962 aged 26.
In 1969 he married another spy, Nancy Segebarth.
Problems with alcohol bedeviled his stints in Turkey, Mexico and Italy and he was arrested for drunk driving.
Aldrich Ames in his 1959 yearbook
Ames was caught in 1994 when Bill Clinton was president
In New York, he disastrously left a case containing classified information on a subway train.
In Mexico he was involved in a drunken row with a Cuban official at an embassy reception.
He divorced his first wife and married Rosario, who was the cultural attaché at the Colombian Embassy in Mexico City.
On April 16, 1985, while working at Langley, he went to the Soviet Embassy in Washington and offered an envelope containing classified information.
He and Russian officials then sealed their deal at a a long, alcohol-fueled boozy lunch in a hotel near the White House, and the KGB paid him an initial $50,000.
There were further meetings with the KGB, including in Bogota and Rome.
The Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where Ames stole secrets from
Ames at a meal in Colombia in 1994, the year he was caught
At one point he walked out of CIA headquarters at Langley with a stack of documents in a briefcase weighing six pounds, and delivered it straight to the Soviet Embassy in Washington.
He also passed classified documents to the KGB using 'dead drops' - prearranged hiding spots - around Washington.
KGB agents picked up the packages and left money and instructions for the next dead drop.
Meanwhile, the CIA and FBI could not work out why their Russian double agents kept being arrested and executed.
After a 10-month investigation. on October 13, 1993, investigators found a chalk mark Ames had made on a mailbox and confirmation of a meeting in Bogota, Colombia, and he was soon arrested.
In court, Ames was sentenced to life in jail without parole.
Rosario pleaded guilty to tax evasion and conspiracy to commit espionage and was sentenced to 63 months.
Following her release, she returned to Colombia with her son.
Ames made 'dead drops' around Washington DC to pass information to the KGB
Amid the fallout from the scandal CIA director James Woolsey resigned after refusing to fire or demote anyone at Langley.
Woolsey said: 'They (the double agents) died because this warped, murdering traitor wanted a bigger house and a Jaguar.'
In a later interview from jail Ames, one of the most reviled villains of the Cold War era, attributed no grand motive for his betrayal.
'The reasons that I did what I did were personal, banal, and amounted really to kind of greed and folly, as simple as that,' he said.
'I knew quite well, when I gave the names of our agents in the Soviet Union, that I was exposing them to the full machinery of counterespionage and the law, and then prosecution, and capital punishment.'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15442719/Aldrich-Ames-spy-dead-CIA-traitor.html
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