Aldrich Ames

Aldrich Hazen Ames (/eɪmz/; born May 26, 1941) is an American former CIA counterintelligence officer who was convicted of espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union and Russia in 1994. He is serving a life sentence, without the possibility of parole, in the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland. Ames was known to have compromised more highly classified CIA assets than any other officer until Robert Hanssen, who was arrested seven years later in 2001.

Ames was born in River Falls, Wisconsin, on May 26, 1941, to Carleton Cecil Ames and Rachel Ames (née Aldrich). His father was a lecturer at the Wisconsin State College–River Falls, and his mother a high school English teacher. Aldrich was the eldest of three children and the only son. In 1952, his father began working with the Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Operations in Langley, Virginia. The following year, in 1953, his father was posted to Southeast Asia for three years, and the family relocated there. Carleton received a "particularly negative performance appraisal" in part because of serious alcoholism, and spent the remainder of his career at CIA headquarters in Langley.

Ames attended McLean High School in McLean, Virginia. Beginning in 1957, following his sophomore year, he worked for the CIA for three summers as a low-ranking GS-3 records analyst as part of a program to give temporary jobs to children of CIA employees. Ames was responsible for marking classified documents for filing as well as making fake money to be used in training programs for "the Farm", where CIA trainees began. Two years later, in 1959, Ames entered the University of Chicago, where he planned to study foreign cultures and history. His "long-time passion" for drama, however, resulted in failing grades, and he did not finish his second year.

Ames returned to the CIA during the summer of 1960 as a laborer and painter. He then became an assistant technical director at a Chicago theater until February 1962. Returning to the Washington metropolitan area, Ames took full-time employment at the CIA doing the same sort of clerical jobs he had performed in high school. While taking his first polygraph examination, Ames claimed to have committed a crime, which was considered no probability of deception. When asked to elaborate on the offense, Ames confessed that he and a friend not affiliated with CIA, while drunk, stole a delivery boy's bicycle and went joyriding. However, this confession had not been considered grave enough to disqualify Ames from a security clearance.

Five years after beginning his work for the CIA, Ames completed a bachelor's degree in history at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He did not plan to have a career with the agency, but after attaining the grade of GS-7 and receiving good performance appraisals, he was accepted into the Career Trainee Program despite several alcohol-related brushes with the police. In 1969, Ames married a fellow CIA officer, Nancy Segebarth, whom he had met in the Career Trainee Program.

Ames was assigned to Ankara, Turkey, and Nancy then resigned from the CIA because of a rule that prohibited married partners from working from the same office. Ames' job in Turkey was to target Soviet intelligence officers for recruitment. He succeeded in infiltrating the communist Dev-Genç organization through a roommate of student activist Deniz Gezmiş and a beauty pageant contestant whose boyfriend was participating in a movement to overthrow the Turkish government. In spite of this success, Ames' performance was rated only "satisfactory". His superiors considered the spies recruited to be of sufficient value, but a remark was made that Ames was "unsuited for field work and it is recommended he spend the remainder of his career at CIA headquarters". Discouraged by the critical assessment, Ames considered resigning from the agency.

In 1972, Ames returned to CIA headquarters, where he spent the next four years in the Soviet-East European (SE) Division, where he was responsible for managing assets and his skills were better utilized. His performance reviews were "generally enthusiastic". Nevertheless, his excessive drinking was noted, and two "eyes only" memoranda were placed in his file.

In 1976, Ames was assigned to New York City, where he handled two important Soviet assets. His performance was rated excellent, and he received several promotions and bonuses, being ranked above most operations officers in his pay grade. However, Ames' tendency to procrastinate in submissions of financial accounting was noted. His inattention to detail also led him to commit two security violations, including once leaving a briefcase containing classified operational materials on the New York City Subway, which the FBI recovered and determined as being uncompromised. Ames later said he received a verbal reprimand but no documentation of the matter.