“You bought the wrong one!”
The year 1994 was perceived by many in the United States as a long-awaited period of peace and tranquility. The Cold War is over, friendly relations have been established with Russia, and, according to Fukuyama, the planet is moving smoothly towards the “end of history”, when a boring and stable liberal democracy will be established around the world and conflicts will become impossible. .
Against this background, the scene that unfolded on February 21 in the home of Aldrich Ames, head of the CIA’s Soviet counterintelligence department, looked even stranger and resembled a thriller about the Cold War. The FBI entered the house, handcuffed the man and his wife, and told them they were under arrest. The counterintelligence chief responded with a classic movie line: “You are making a big mistake! You bought the wrong one!
By then, the CIA and FBI had been closely monitoring Ames’ every move for nearly a year: He was under surveillance, there was a bug in his car, and agents were regularly examining waste in his home trash can.
Nothing important was found there, but the CIA officer was detained shortly before his departure for Russia for a conference due to a large number of accumulated suspicions.
Shortly after the arrest and interrogation, when investigators compiled a complete picture of Ames’ activities, it became clear that the FBI had “caught” exactly the right person. The counterintelligence officer turned out to be one of the most successful Soviet spies in history, but after the collapse of the USSR he continued to work for the Russian Federation with the same success.
Due to the scandal, CIA director Robert Woolsey lost his job, and many politicians in the United States demanded that President Clinton change the political paradigm, cancel all aid programs to Russia and stop trying to establish allied relations. The American leader refused to do so – eventually Jonathan Pollard was convicted in 1987 of spying, less successfully, on behalf of a much closer ally, Israel, which did not lead to any serious sanctions.
Biggest counterintelligence failure
Born in 1941, Ames worked for the CIA nearly his entire life; He initially joined the CIA as a trainee intern during summer break from college. Shortly after graduating from George Washington University with a degree in history, he began working seriously in intelligence, doing real undercover work. He was transferred to an office in Ankara and given the task of searching for and recruiting Soviet intelligence officers. There is no public information on how many people were recruited to work at the CIA, but Ames did an excellent job of infiltrating the communist environment by infiltrating the Revolutionary Youth Federation of Turkey through his dorm roommate. The authorities found his work satisfactory, which almost caused the intelligence officer to resign.
There were different periods in Ames’ subsequent career: Sometimes he received large cash bonuses for excellent work, sometimes he received reprimands for losing a briefcase with secret documents and notes in his personal file about drunken brawls and extramarital affairs. In 1983, the specialist was transferred to the counterintelligence department against the USSR, which he soon headed, where he gained access to data on all operations against the KGB. (Committee for State Security of the USSR) and GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate). At the same time, he decided to divorce his wife for the sake of a full-fledged relationship with his mistress, Colombian Maria Dupuis.
This changed Ames’s whole life: as a result of the divorce, he had a huge debt to his ex-wife in the amount of 46 thousand dollars, and his new wife bought all the clothes and accessories he liked in stores – after his arrest, dozens of handbags and a pair of shoes were found in the house of hundreds of Intelligence officers. At the same time, Ames gradually became disillusioned with working for American intelligence and eventually June 13, 1985, sitting in the office, I made an irreversible decision. He collected two kilograms of secret documents with the pseudonyms of agents recruited in the USSR into a pile, put them in a bag, left the CIA building and went to lunch with the Soviet representative.
As Ames later recalled, handing the package under the table, felt, who surrendered his soul with him to the KGB. He asked for 50 thousand dollars in return: Soviet intelligence considered the documents received useless, but decided to pay for contact with an insider.
Soon after that, miracles began in the CIA – the best unidentified agents in the USSR began to disappear one after another.
For several years, GRU Major General Dmitry Polyakov and Lieutenant Colonel of the KGB PGU were arrested (First Main Directorate responsible for foreign intelligence, the most honorable) Gennady Varenik, head of the London KGB station Oleg Gordievsky, who worked on the Mi-6, and dozens of people. For example, among them was Lieutenant Colonel Vitaly Yurchenko, the former head of the 5th department of the KGB (foreign counterintelligence) department – he could be called a mirror copy of Ames, he was the most valuable agent within the KGB.
With Aldrich’s help, they uncovered Adolf Tolkachev of NIO Phazotron, who had transferred large amounts of classified data on the operation of Soviet radars and missile control systems to the United States. An engineer from the MiG design bureau, whose name is still unknown, was also arrested: working for more than 14 years, he gave the CIA all information about the technical structure of the USSR fighter jet, as well as test results and scientific developments.
The KGB detained American spies with a speed unusual in intelligence: It was believed that exposure too quickly would reveal the “mole”, allowing the agents to be found. The Americans did not understand what was happening – everything indicated that the information was transmitted by one of the high-ranking CIA employees, but the investigation could not reveal who exactly.
It is worth noting that the Soviets were also shocked by the scale of the infiltration of Western intelligence into the USSR. Among other things, the KGB was interested in how they managed to recruit so many people in a closed country. This secret has not been revealed yet.
What killed Ames?
The most interesting element in the Ames case is the treason motive. Often, people in high places do not turn to foreign intelligence for basic purposes: for example, General Polyakov, Ames exposed, considered the Communists to be the enemy of Russia and responded to the CIA’s numerous offers to evacuate to America after retirement: “ Don’t do that”. do not wait for me. I will never come to the USA. I’m not doing this for you. I’m doing this for my country. “I was born a Russian and I will die a Russian.” (OI Lemekhov, quoted by DP Prokhorov “Defectors. Shot in absentia”). Klaus Fuchs and the Rosenbergs, who passed the secrets of nuclear weapons to the USSR, were ideological communists.
Ames, on the other hand, had no warm feelings towards either communism or Russia and worked only for money. At first he just wanted to pay his bills, but he soon got used to it and eventually received about $4.5 million from the USSR.
Ames tried to protect himself by making up a story about his new wife’s enormous wealth, but he nevertheless lived in alarming luxury. Colleagues noticed that the counterintelligence officer began to wear special clothes, which only the highest officials could afford. Throughout her life, Ames often wore “sale” cheap clothes. His teeth, yellowed from years of smoking, turned white, even though cosmetic dentistry was not included in Scout’s insurance.
Gradually, CIA leak investigators began to realize that a man with an official annual salary of $60,000, a $540,000 home, a $50,000 Jaguar, $100,000 in renovations, and many premium credit cards had monthly payments higher than one. wage. The money was disguised as his wife’s income in Colombia, but in 1989 his colleagues learned that he was not rich at all. A serious look at Ames’ finances revealed that he was working either for the mafia or for foreign intelligence, but for some unknown reason the CIA acted slowly and delayed the arrest until 1994.
Ames was ultimately sentenced to life in prison without parole. His wife was also convicted of conspiracy and tax evasion and sentenced to five years in prison. Special services historian Nikolai Dolgopolov saidHe said that the Russian foreign intelligence service had been trying to replace Ames for a long time, but the United States was indecisive and the former spy was still serving his sentence. He turned 82 in 2023.