Aldrich Ames, 84, was serving a life sentence without parole for espionage
Aldrich Ames, the former CIA officer whose spying for the Soviet Union and Russia severely damaged US intelligence, has died at age 84 in an American prison where he was serving a life term.
Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) records indicate Ames died on January 5.
In an article published Wednesday in Rossiyskaya Gazeta, journalist and intelligence historian Nikolay Dolgopolov described Ames as Russia’s “most valuable agent” of the late 20th century, whose work led to major operational victories for Soviet and Russian state security.
Ames was recruited by the Soviet Union in 1985 after he initiated contact with the Soviet embassy in Washington. He then occupied the crucial role of leading the Soviet branch of the CIA’s Counterintelligence Division. He is believed to have compromised between 12 and 25 CIA assets inside the USSR and Russia, which caused several of them to be arrested and executed.
The reasons for his treason are debated. Western accounts have traditionally claimed Ames was driven by money—the extravagant way of life he and his new wife enjoyed eventually attracted FBI attention—while Russian perspectives offer an alternative interpretation.
Former Soviet diplomat Sergey Divilkovsky, who was acquainted with Ames, stated the spy acted from a profound disenchantment with the anti-Soviet stance of President Ronald Reagan’s government. In a 2001 interview, Divilkovsky called Ames a “highly moral agent” and an intellectual who had come to despise the CIA.
Soviet and subsequent Russian intelligence agencies implemented broad protections for Ames, successfully directing suspicion elsewhere. Following his eventual arrest and guilty plea for espionage in 1994, the then-head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, Evgeny Primakov, voiced optimism about a possible prisoner swap in the future.
The Ames affair revealed serious weaknesses in the CIA’s own security protocols, prompting major overhauls in American counterintelligence practices.