Ameses Got $2.5 Million, Promise of Dacha, Officials Say : Espionage: Papers filed in court spur denial of bail for ex-CIA official and his wife. U.S. agent also says classified cables, letter found in couple’s home.

The Russians promised Aldrich H. Ames and his wife a riverside tract in Russia where a dacha could be built after their espionage career ended, besides paying the couple at least $2.5 million, U.S. officials said in federal court Tuesday.

The testimony, which came at a bond hearing for the Ameses, provided details suggesting that the couple was promised even greater riches for spying than had been reported earlier. An FBI supervisor testified at the hearing that Ames, a former CIA executive, and his wife, Rosario, had received twice the amount of any spy or spy network known to officials.

U.S. Magistrate Barry R. Poretz concluded the hearing by denying bail for the Ameses, ordering them held in federal custody indefinitely.

The couple, arrested on espionage conspiracy charges last week, had been brought into the hearing dressed in olive-drab prison clothing, with Aldrich Ames’ shirt stenciled with prisoner in black.

Arguing for denial of bail, Assistant U.S. Atty. Mark J. Hulkower declared: “They damaged national security and sold out their country for a lifestyle of luxury.”

Ames, a 31-year veteran of the agency, served for two years as chief of the Soviet counterintelligence branch in the CIA’s Soviet-East European division. He held that post, which gave him access to “nearly the crown jewels,” as one former agency official put it, into 1985, when it is alleged he began spying for the then-Soviet Union.

According to the accusations, Ames left a rather clearly marked trail, for a veteran CIA official trained in counterintelligence, living well beyond his salary while his wife was a part-time student at Georgetown University. Ames bought a $540,000 house in Arlington, Va., for which real estate agents said he paid cash, and he drove a 1992 Jaguar, on which he made a $25,000 down payment.

His explanation for the sudden lavish living was that his wife came from a wealthy Colombian family.

In proceedings Tuesday, Leslie G. Wiser Jr., FBI supervising counterintelligence agent, referred to the $2.5 million the Ameses allegedly received in addition to the promise of Russian land. Wiser said that the amount was surprisingly high because the Russians “are notoriously thrifty with respect to payments to agents.”

The case has led to calls in Congress for suspension of U.S. economic aid to the former Soviet Union.

Hulkower said that FBI agents had found more than 100 classified CIA cables on computer disks at the Ameses’ house, a violation of agency regulations against keeping such material at home. Ames is believed to have provided the material to the Soviets starting in 1985, Hulkower said.

A nine-page letter found in Ames’ study spelled out his Russian handlers’ priorities, Wiser told the court. He said that the letter asked for information about CIA penetrations of the Soviet KGB and the Soviet military intelligence service, the GRU.

Ames received the letter while serving in Rome from 1986 to 1989 as a CIA operations officer assigned to recruit spies for the agency, Wiser testified. During that period, he said, Ames disclosed to the Russians the identity of an East European official, code-named “GT Motorboat,” who was voluntarily giving him classified documents dealing with East European security matters.

GT Motorboat subsequently disappeared and “the CIA made many attempts to locate him without success,” Wiser said.

At congressional briefings last week, FBI officials said in a “worst-case scenario” that Ames may have jeopardized the lives of 10 Russian agents working for the United States.

In a 39-page affidavit made public last week, the FBI said it had found evidence in Ames’ computer records that in 1990 he exposed a Soviet counterintelligence officer who was secretly collaborating with the CIA. That agent was code-named “GT Prologue.”

During Ames’ years in Rome he opened three Swiss bank accounts through which more than $600,000 passed, Wiser said investigators have determined. Two were in his name and a third was in the name of Cecelia Dupuy, his mother-in-law in Colombia, Wiser said.

Dupuy, interviewed recently by authorities, said that she signed a bank signature card at Ames’ request but has never seen any financial records or conducted any transactions herself, Wiser told the court.

While hundreds of thousands of dollars in overseas funds eventually were transferred to bank accounts in the United States by Ames, at least $1 million believed to remain overseas has not been located, Hulkower said. All the funds in U.S. accounts have been frozen, Wiser testified.

Ames has steadfastly refused to answer any questions posed by the FBI, Wiser said. But Mrs. Ames volunteered a series of damaging statements to FBI agents before she was given a court-appointed lawyer, he said.

Wiser testified that Mrs. Ames first claimed that the couple’s wealth grew out of investment help her husband had given to a friend in Chicago, but she later said that her husband had received millions of dollars from the Russians for spying.

She said that she discovered his espionage in 1991 and later cooperated in his efforts, Wiser said. He quoted her as saying that she often made cash deposits for her husband in amounts under $10,000, aware that banks must report to the government any cash deposit of $10,000 or more.

According to Wiser, she also told agents that she accompanied her husband last September on a drive into Washington from their suburban Virginia home to look for a signal from his Russian handlers verifying that they had picked up a package of classified documents left for them at a so-called “dead drop.”

The FBI, which began electronic and visual surveillance of the Ameses in May, had agents tailing the couple at the time.