27. US Intelligence Misses Numerous Clues About a Major Mole in Their Midst
Central Intelligence Agency official Aldrich Ames rose to high rank within the agency’s Soviet and East European division, which gave him access to sensitive information. He decided to cash in on that by turning traitor, and sold his services to the KGB as a deep mole within their enemy’s camp. Before long, Ames became one of the Soviet Union’s, and later Russia’s, most effective double agents in the US.
He was helped by numerous mistakes, as the CIA kept missing – and sometimes ignoring – glaring clues that all was not right with Ames, the son of a CIA analyst whose family connection paved the way for his joining the agency in 1962. Notwithstanding heavy drinking, drunken run-ins with the police and drunken brawls in public with foreign diplomats, and sloppiness that once led him to forget secret documents in an NYC subway car, Ames rose steadily through the CIA’s ranks.
