Aldrich Hazen Ames (born May 26, 1941) is a former Central Intelligence Agency counter-intelligence officer and analyst, who, in 1994, was convicted of spying for the Soviet Union and Russia. Until the arrest of Robert Hanssen seven years later, Ames compromised more CIA assets than any Soviet mole in American history.
While spending nine years working in CIA counter-intelligence, he declared an annual income of $60,000 but his plastic spending of up to $30,000 a month funded a lifestyle that included a new Jaguar and a $540,000 house (2011 value: $800,000) paid for in cash
Arrest
Finally in March 1993 the CIA and FBI began an intensive investigation of Ames that included electronic surveillance, combing through his trash, and a monitor installed in his car to track his movements.
From November 1993 until his arrest, Ames was kept under virtually constant physical surveillance. When in early 1994 he was scheduled to attend a conference in Moscow, the FBI believed it could wait no longer, and he and his wife were arrested on February 21, 1994.
At arrest, Ames told the officers, "You're making a big mistake! You must have the wrong man!"
On February 22, 1994, Ames and his wife were formally charged by the United States Department of Justice with spying for the Soviet Union and Russia. Ames could have faced the death penalty because his betrayal had resulted in the deaths of a number of CIA assets.
However, he pleaded guilty on April 28 and received a sentence of life imprisonment. His wife received a 5-year prison sentence for tax evasion and conspiracy to commit espionage as part of a plea-bargain by Ames.
In court, Ames admitted that he had compromised "virtually all Soviet agents of the CIA and other American and foreign services known to me" and had provided the USSR and Russia with a "huge quantity of information on United States foreign, defense and security policies."
It is estimated that information Ames provided to the Soviets led to the compromise of at least a hundred U.S. intelligence operations and to the execution of at least ten U.S. sources
Post sentence
Ames is Federal Bureau of Prisons prisoner #40087-083, serving his sentence in the high-security Allenwood U.S. Penitentiary near Allenwood, Pennsylvania.
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