Aldrich Ames, CIA agent who sold secrets to the Soviets, dies at 84

2026-01-07 08:38:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Aldrich Ames, a CIA officer who became one of the agents who caused the most damage to America, has died at the age of 84.

The former counterintelligence officer, who was serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole, died on Monday at the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland, CBS News, the BBC's US media partner, reported.

Ames was imprisoned on April 28, 1994 after admitting to selling secret information to the Soviet Union and later Russia.

He compromised more than 100 clandestine operations and revealed the identities of more than 30 agents spying for the West, leading to the deaths of at least 10 CIA intelligence assets.

Seeking money to pay off debts, Ames said he began giving the KGB the names of CIA spies in April 1985, receiving an initial payment of $50,000.

Known to the KGB by his codename, Kolokol (Bell), Ames went on to identify almost all of the CIA's spies in the Soviet Union, for which he was handsomely rewarded.

"To my continued surprise, the KGB replied that it had set aside $2 million for me in gratitude for the information," he said in an eight-page statement he read in court.

Over the course of nine years, Ames admitted to receiving a total of about $2.5 million from the Soviet Union for his betrayal of the US.

The money gave Ames a life of luxury, where he spent heavily on a new Jaguar, overseas vacations and a home worth $540,000, despite never having a salary greater than $70,000 a year.

Ames' 31-year career at the CIA began when his father, a CIA analyst, helped him find a job there after he dropped out of college in 1962.

He married his first wife, fellow CIA agent Nancy Segebarth, in 1969, before being sent to Turkey as a counterintelligence officer to recruit foreign agents.

Three years later, he returned to the US, where his problems with alcohol began to emerge and his marriage began to fall apart.

Despite several security breaches over the years, including leaving a suitcase full of classified information on a subway, Ames was then sent to Mexico City in 1981. There he met his second wife, Maria del Rosario Casas Dupuy, a cultural attaché at the Colombian embassy and a CIA asset who would later be accused of being his collaborator.

Returning to the US in 1983, Ames became head of the CIA's Soviet counterintelligence department - despite ongoing concerns about his alcohol consumption.

While his career was booming, his personal life was spiraling. In addition to monthly support for his first wife, he also financed Rosario's lifestyle, including her love of shopping.

It was his mounting debts that led him to sell the secrets to which he had access.

"It was about the money and I don't think he ever tried to make anyone believe it was anything more than that," FBI agent Leslie G Wiser, who was involved in the investigation that led to Ames' arrest, told the BBC in 2015.

His betrayal began in 1985 when he gave the Soviets the names of several KGB officers working secretly for the FBI in exchange for $50,000.

His espionage continued for the next nine years, until his arrest on February 21, 1994, after a manhunt that had begun to close the year before.

Ames cooperated with authorities in exchange for a plea deal that secured a lenient sentence for Rosario, who admitted to knowing about the money and his meetings with the Soviets. She was released after five years.

The CIA director at the time, R. James Woolsey, described Ames as "a vile traitor to his country."

Woolsey said the agents Ames betrayed died because a murderous traitor wanted a bigger house and a Jaguar./ CNA