“Why did you commit treason?”
“Treason?”
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Aldrich Ames
(POLICE) |
Aldrich Hazen Ames repeats the word out loud as if he is shocked
by it. The word itself sounds evil, doesn’t it? he says. He
prefers spying. It is easier on the ear, exotic even, much more
civilized. “Rick” Ames is excellent with words. He enjoys
the sound of his own voice, listening to his explanations, repeating
his detailed rationalizations. He is smart, extremely well-read (he
has read an average of two or three books each week since he was a
teenager) and he can be affable. A listener has to remind himself
that Ames also is one of the most cold-blooded traitors in U.S.
history. During the nine years that he worked for the KGB as a mole,
Ames single handily shut down the CIA’s eyes and ears in the
Soviet Union by telling the Russians in 1985 the names of every
“human asset” that the U.S. had working for it there. In all, he
sold the KGB the names of twenty-five “sources.” These
twenty-four men and one woman, all Russians, were immediately
arrested and ten were sentenced to what the KGB euphemistically
referred to as vyshaya mera (the highest measure of punishment).
The condemned person was taken into a room, made to kneel, then shot
in the back of the head with a large caliber handgun so his face
would be made unrecognizable. His body was buried in a secret,
unmarked grave to further punish his loved ones. It was part of the
Stalinist tradition. Although Ames didn’t know most of the spies
whom he betrayed, one of them was a Soviet diplomat whom he
considered to be one of his best friends. Ames betrayed him, not
once, but twice.
Besides revealing the names of every U.S. spy in the Soviet
Union, Ames derailed vital CIA covert operations and put dozens of
CIA officers at risk. In return for his treason, the KGB paid him
more than $2 million and kept another $2 million earmarked for him
in a Moscow bank, making him the highest paid spy in the world.
His arrest in February 1994 badly embarrassed the CIA. He remains
the most damaging mole ever to burrow into the agency. After he was
caught, Congress criticized the CIA for badly bungling the Ames
investigation. It should have been known that he was a mole much
earlier but instead of investigating obvious clues -- he drove a new
Jaguar to work that cost more than his annual salary -- it spent
years chasing dead-end leads and focusing on obscure suspects.
While that criticism stung, what really infuriated CIA officers
the most about Ames was that he was one of their own. He came from a
CIA family. The CIA had trained him to recruit foreigners as spies.
Yet, he was the one who had betrayed his own country. Why?
“What really amazed me about Rick Ames is that I thought he had a
feeling of loyalty to the people whom he dealt with and that is the
betrayal that I can’t understand,” said FBI agent R. Patrick
Watson. “I can understand why he didn’t have any loyalty to the
agency. I can understand how he could have lost his way so that
there came a point when it didn’t matter to him if he was the
recruiter or the recruitee. But what I can’t understand is how he
lost his loyalty, not only to his coworkers, such as me, but his
friends! How can you ever justify betraying the people closest to
you?”
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