Aldrich Ames, the most damaging CIA officer ever to work as a Russian spy, has died in prison at the age of 84. His treason, driven by financial need, led directly to the execution of at least ten Western agents and compromised over one hundred clandestine intelligence operations for the United States and Britain.
From CIA Officer to KGB Asset
Ames, whose father also worked for the CIA, was recruited by the agency in 1967. After postings in Ankara and Mexico that yielded little success, he returned to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. There, he was given a critical role: overseeing the security of all the CIA's Soviet assets. However, his personal life was in disarray. His marriage had failed, and he had begun a relationship with fellow CIA employee María del Rosario Casas Dupuy, whom he later married. The couple's expensive tastes plunged them into debt.
In April 1985, Ames devised what he thought was a "clever plan". He offered to sell limited information to the KGB for $50,000 to clear his debts. He delivered an envelope to the Soviet embassy in Washington. A month later, a meeting with KGB officer Victor Cherkashin changed everything. Told his information was insufficient for payment, Ames crossed a line he could never step back from.
The "Big Dump" and its Deadly Consequences
Under pressure, Ames provided a list of names that Cherkashin later described as "a catalogue of virtually every CIA asset within the Soviet Union." This act, known as "the big dump," had catastrophic results. Over the following 18 months, every major US and British source inside the Soviet Union vanished.
Among those betrayed were two of the West's most valuable agents. Major General Dmitri Polyakov of Soviet military intelligence (GRU), who had spied for the CIA for over 25 years, was arrested in July 1986 and executed by a bullet to the head in March 1988. Oleg Gordievsky, the KGB's head of station in London who was secretly working for MI6, was recalled to Moscow and interrogated. He never confessed and was later famously exfiltrated to Finland in the boot of a car by British intelligence.
At least ten of the agents named by Ames were executed. The KGB spaced out the killings to obscure the source of the breach. In return for his treachery, Ames was paid handsomely, receiving around £10,000 a month, which he spent on luxuries like a second-hand Jaguar while posted in Rome.
Discovery, Arrest, and Life Behind Bars
Ames was eventually caught through financial sleuthing. A determined CIA officer, seeking the traitor who had betrayed Polyakov, uncovered evidence of Ames's unexplained wealth. Bank records showed large cash deposits made shortly after meetings with a Soviet official in 1985.
After being placed under FBI surveillance, Ames and his wife Rosario were arrested at their home in Arlington, Virginia, on 21 February 1994. To secure a lenient sentence for his wife, Ames pleaded guilty to espionage charges. He was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Rosario served four years of a 63-month sentence before being released and returning to Colombia.
Aldrich Hazen Ames, born on 26 May 1941, died on 5 January 2026, leaving behind a legacy as one of the most destructive moles in the history of Western intelligence.
