Aldrich Ames, one of the most notorious double agents in U.S. history, has died in custody at the age of 84, American authorities confirmed on Monday, January 5th. Ames was serving a life sentence after being convicted of selling highly classified CIA secrets to the Soviet Union and later Russia.
During his 31-year career as a CIA counterintelligence analyst, Aldrich Ames—alongside his wife Rosario—secretly sold classified information to the Soviet Union between 1985 and 1993. He revealed the identities of dozens of Soviet citizens spying for the United States, a betrayal that led to the deaths of at least a dozen double agents and compromised numerous covert missions, earning the couple more than $2.5 million (€2.1 million).
His exposure in 1994 sparked one of the CIA’s biggest scandals, forced senior leadership resignations and further strained already fragile U.S.-Russia relations in the post-Cold War era.
