16. The CIA’s Most Damaging Traitor
Betraying the CIA was a cakewalk for Aldrich Ames, who passed two polygraphs while spying for the KGB. He needed no high-tech means or complicated capers to smuggle out secrets. Ames simply stuffed whatever documents he wanted to give his KGB and FSB handlers in his briefcase or in trash bags, and brazenly carried them out of the CIA headquarters at the end of the workday. Nobody questioned him.
As a result of Ames’ treachery, at least twelve CIA spies within the Soviet Union were captured, and ten of them were executed. By the time he was finally unmasked, Ames and his wife had revealed to the Soviets and Russians the identity of every CIA spy operating in their country. After he was arrested in 1994, he cut a deal with prosecutors that spared him the death penalty, and ensured that his wife got no more than five years’ imprisonment. He is currently serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
