Aldrich Ames, the most murderous turncoat in the history of the Central Intelligence Agency, whose betrayal went undetected for almost a decade, died on Monday. He was 84 and had been a federal prisoner, serving life without parole, since 1994.
The death was recorded in the federal Bureau of Prisons inmate database. The entry did not cite a cause or say where he died.
The son of an alcoholic C.I.A. officer, Mr. Ames failed upward through the agency ranks for 17 years until he attained a headquarters post of extraordinary sensitivity.
He became the chief of the counterintelligence branch of the C.I.A.’s Soviet division in September 1983. He had access to some of the nation’s deepest secrets: in particular, its clandestine liaisons with the Soviets, who worked in secret with American intelligence. These were a small cadre, barely a dozen all told, who were cultivated over the course of two decades and well-placed in Soviet government agencies and embassies around the world.
As the Cold War was cresting, Mr. Ames decided that he would change the course of history by upending a long-running game of nations, the contest of spy versus spy. He saw it as a charade. By his own account, he was fueled by a toxic cocktail of vodka, arrogance, delusions of grandeur and naked greed.
In April 1985, he took his first gamble. He hand-delivered an envelope addressed to the K.G.B. chief at the Soviet Embassy in Washington. He offered a smattering of C.I.A. secrets, and he requested $50,000 in return. He identified himself by name and rank. The relationship was sealed over a long, boozy lunch at an elegant hotel near the White House.
Then he bet the house. Mr. Ames feared that one of the C.I.A.’s Russians might betray him, so he decided to betray them all. He knew he would be paid a fortune.
“I panicked,” he said in a 1994 interview with The New York Times, conducted from jail. “Only by suddenly giving them everyone” would he be protected — and he knew in return that he would be paid “as much money as I could ever use, if I chose to do that.”
Mr. Ames put together hundreds of secret documents in a six-pound stack — a who’s who of Soviets working for the C.I.A. and an encyclopedia of American intelligence operations behind the Iron Curtain. He stuffed them in his briefcase, walked out of headquarters and delivered them to a contact at the Soviet Embassy.
“I was delivering myself along with them,” he said in the 1994 interview. “I was saying, ‘Over to you, K.G.B. You guys take care of me now.’”
The K.G.B. took care of him — he was paid at least $2,705,000 — and it took care of its own turncoats. As many as 10 Soviet and Soviet-bloc spies were arrested, interrogated and executed for treason. One was imprisoned. At least two escaped, one step ahead of their pursuers. The network that had provided the United States with political, military, diplomatic and intelligence insights on Moscow was destroyed.
A full obituary will appear shortly.
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