Aldrich Ames

Aldrich Ames was a CIA counterintelligence officer who spied for the Soviet Union and Russia from 1985 until his arrest in 1994. His disclosures compromised numerous intelligence sources and operations.

KGB: The Soviet Union’s principal security and intelligence agency, responsible for foreign espionage and internal security. Ames supplied secrets to its officers, first in Washington and later through other channels.
Sergei Motorin: A Soviet intelligence officer in Washington who secretly provided information to U.S. intelligence. Ames betrayed Motorin, who was later arrested and executed by the Soviet Union.
Rosario Ames: Aldrich Ames’s wife, who was convicted of tax evasion related to the couple’s undeclared income. Her spending helped attract attention to the couple’s unexplained wealth.
Ames espionage case: The criminal investigation and prosecution that led to Aldrich Ames’s 1994 guilty plea for spying. The case established his guilt and documented the scope of his espionage.
Jonathan Pollard: A U.S. Navy intelligence analyst who passed classified information to Israel and was convicted of espionage. Pollard also exploited government access, but his case involved a different foreign service and intelligence relationship.
CIA: The United States’ civilian foreign intelligence agency, which collects and analyzes information abroad. Ames exploited his CIA position and access to classified counterintelligence files.
Oleg Gordievsky: A KGB officer who secretly worked for British intelligence and defected to the United Kingdom in 1985. Ames’s disclosures endangered Gordievsky, whose extraction became a major intelligence operation.
Vasili Mitrokhin: A former KGB archivist who copied intelligence records and brought them to the United Kingdom after the Soviet collapse. His archive later supplied information relevant to Ames’s espionage and its victims.
Soviet human intelligence sources: People who secretly provide intelligence about Soviet institutions, policies, or operations. Ames’s disclosures exposed numerous sources recruited by U.S. intelligence inside the Soviet bloc.
John Anthony Walker: A U.S. Navy warrant officer who ran a Soviet spy ring that supplied cryptographic secrets. Walker’s long-running network shows another route by which an insider compromised U.S. intelligence.

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William H. WebsterRelated: Ames’s long-running espionage exposed serious counterintelligence failures during Webster’s CIA tenure.