Spy Suspects Ordered to Transfer Overseas Money to U.S. : Espionage: Federal judge sees ‘substantial probability’ Ames and his wife will be convicted. Freeze on their domestic holdings is extended.

A federal judge, declaring that there is “a substantial probability” accused spies Aldrich H. Ames and his wife will be convicted of espionage, Thursday ordered them to transfer to their U.S. accounts hundreds of thousands of dollars from overseas banks.

Ruling at the request of federal prosecutors, U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton also extended indefinitely a freeze on the Ameses’ domestic holdings.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Mark J. Hulkower told the court that the couple had “dissipated” most of the estimated $2.5 million they received from their Russian handlers, leaving the government well short of recovering all of their ill-gotten gains.

At a two-hour court hearing, an FBI official also disclosed that Aldrich Ames’ superiors at the CIA first were alerted to his sudden wealth in 1989 when he paid cash for a $540,000 house in Virginia.

It was the first time anyone had given such an early date for the CIA’s initial tip that Ames had wealth beyond the means provided by his agency salary. Some members of Congress have criticized the CIA for not moving sooner against Ames, whose spending later included buying a 1992 Jaguar and the expenditure of $99,000 for improvements on his home.

Ames was questioned about the purchase of the house during a routine lie detector test that CIA officers are given periodically. But he convinced his superiors that he had inherited money from his father-in-law in Colombia, FBI supervising agent Leslie G. Wiser Jr. testified.

Wiser said that the Ameses began depositing tens of thousands of dollars in cash in Washington area bank accounts beginning in 1985, when authorities allege his espionage began, but sought to avoid scrutiny by making individual deposits of less than $10,000, the threshold at which banks are required to report transactions to the Treasury Department.

Plato Cacheris, Ames’ attorney, argued in vain that prosecutors had failed to prove that funds held by Ames in five bank accounts in Switzerland, Italy and Colombia are linked to allegations of espionage. Restraining the funds also imposes “a severe hardship” on the family, especially the care of the Ameses’ 5-year-old son, Cacheris contended.

In ordering the Ameses to transfer the money, however, Hilton agreed with Hulkower that funds overseas would not be subject to control by the U.S. government if the couple is convicted. He said that they probably could not be forced to forfeit those funds under federal law.

Hulkower said that Swiss officials, despite a mutual assistance agreement with U.S. law enforcement officers, have refused to freeze the accounts or even provide information about them on grounds that espionage is a political crime not covered by the pact.

“There’s a lack of security for foreign funds unless he is ordered to bring the money back here,” Hulkower told the court.

Prosecutors stressed that Hilton’s orders only place restraints on the Ameses’ money and do not amount to seizure.

Ames, a 31-year veteran of the agency, at one time served as chief of Soviet counterintelligence in the CIA’s Soviet-East European division. He and his wife were arrested on Feb. 21, nine months after being placed under surveillance by the FBI, when officials feared that they were about to leave the country.

Wearing olive-drab prison clothing, the Ameses exchanged frequent whispers as they sat in court behind their defense lawyers. Rosario Ames shook her head to signal “no” when Wiser said that after her arrest she had admitted her husband received millions of dollars from the Russians.

In 1986, when Ames was posted to Rome for three years to help recruit spies for the CIA, he already was passing information to the Russians, officials said. Once overseas, he suspended his cautious practice of making limited cash deposits and instead began funneling up to $1.9 million through accounts in Switzerland and Italy, then wire-transferred $600,000 to his U.S. bank accounts, an act that would not trigger any federal reporting, Wiser testified.

Wiser said that the CIA learned Ames had foreign bank accounts sometime between 1990 and 1992 but apparently did not determine that he was spying, even though his official government salary never exceeded $69,000 annually.