11. Aldrich Ames and Cold War Espionage
Aldrich Ames, a CIA counterintelligence officer, began spying for the Soviet Union in 1985. He provided the KGB with the identities of over 30 CIA agents operating in the Soviet Union, leading to the execution of at least 10 of them. Ames’s betrayal compromised more than 100 U.S. intelligence operations, making it one of the most damaging espionage cases in American history. He was arrested in 1994 and sentenced to life imprisonment (fbi.gov).
