DEATH OF A TRAITOR

Most Damaging Traitor in CIA History Dies in Prison at 84

Ten Soviet officials working for Western spy agencies were executed because of the CIA officer’s betrayal.

Aldrich Ames, the CIA traitor whose betrayal led to the deaths of multiple agents behind the Iron Curtain, has died in prison at 84. Ames was heading the CIA’s Soviet counterintelligence division at Langley, Virginia, in the mid-1980s when he decided to start selling secrets to the KGB—and ended up handing over hundreds of documents betraying CIA operations and Soviet officials working for the agency. The Bureau of Prisons said the traitorous double agent died at Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland, on Monday, 32 years after he pleaded guilty without trial to espionage and tax evasion and was sentenced to life without parole. The New York Times reports his spying for the Soviets led to the executions of 10 U.K. and U.S. spies behind the Iron Curtain, earned him $2,705,000, and plunged intelligence operations into chaos between 1985 and 1994. Prior to his sentencing, he told the Washington Post that his decision to flip came from “financial troubles, immediate and continuing,” but despite his “profound shame and guilt” he largely downplayed the impact he thought his actions had had.