On This Day: Aldrich Ames Sentenced for Role as Double Agent

Ames admitted to the court that he sold confidential information to the Soviet Union and later Russia from April 1985 until his arrest in February 1994.

The FBI arrested Aldrich Hazen Ames on Feb. 24, 1994, at his home in Arlington, Va. Ames had been stationed across the globe during his 31-year career, working in countries such as Mexico, Turkey and Italy. During each assignment, Ames passed classified information to the Soviets in the form of “‘dead drops’ or prearranged hiding places where he would leave the documents to be picked up later by KGB officers from the USSR Embassy,” the FBI Web site reports.

Ames was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole by a court in Arlington. According to the BBC, Ames was the “highest-ranking CIA official ever to be exposed as a double agent.”

Because of his treason, “the CIA lost almost all its agents in the Soviet Union,” according to Time magazine. At least 10 agents were executed by the KGB due to information Ames provided, and the magazine profiles some of them.

A July 28, 1994 special report in the New York Times described Ames as “the most destructive mole” in CIA history. After his conviction, Ames told authorities that although his primary motivation for the betrayal was greed, he also "had a vision of shortening the Cold War by ‘leveling the playing field’ between a decaying Moscow and a dominant Washington," writes the Times. CIA Director R. James Woolsey called his explanation "nonsense."

Aldrich “Rick” Ames grew up in a CIA family—his father was a secret agent in Burma. Starting at 16, Ames worked at “the Farm,” a CIA training facility. Ames later explained what he learned there: “At the Farm … you were told that you were now part of an elite service, and that your job was paramount to the very survival of the United States. Because of these things, you were entitled to lie, cheat, deceive. You could operate in disguise, be anyone you wished.”

The PBS show NOVA quoted a 1998 interview Ames had with CNN. During the interview he discussed why he did what he had. The reasons, he told CNN, "were personal, banal, and amounted really to kind of greed and folly."

After Ames was arrested, the United States Senate investigated his treachery. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence published a report.

Ames worked for the CIA for 31 years, carrying out “clandestine operations across the globe,” according to the assessment of the case.

The committee also harshly criticized the CIA for failing to notice Ames’ subversion, despite obvious signs of criminal involvement. According to its report, Ames used the $2 million he was paid by the KGB to “purchase a new Jaguar … and a $540,000 home with cash … Apparently, these seemingly large expenditures by an employee making less than $70,000 a year had not raised questions at the CIA.”

The CIA, according to the Senate committee, was widely to blame for Ames’ destructive behavior. According to the report, “The Ames case demonstrated a serious division between security and counterintelligence activities in the CIA.”

In addition, many wondered why Ames’ performance was never called into question. A subsequent investigation by the agency’s inspector general showed that Ames struggled professionally. Not only did he suffer from alcoholism, he slept on the job, failed to turn in reports and breeched CIA security regulations.

In an Oct. 21, 1994, memorandum to all the CIA office heads, Director R. James Woolsey analyzes the CIA’s failure to identify Ames as a double agent. According to the report, Ames’ “professional weaknesses were observed by … colleagues and supervisors and were tolerated by many who did not consider them highly unusual for Directorate of Operations officers on the ‘not going anywhere’ promotion track.”