Ames Could Be Forerunner of Other Spy Cases

The CIA’s Aldrich H. Ames may turn out to be merely the first of a number of U.S. government officials who will be accused over the next few years of spying for the Soviet Union or its Warsaw Pact allies during the Cold War.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall have made available a wealth of records and data from the Soviet’s KGB secret police, East Germany’s Stasi and other East Bloc intelligence agencies about their intelligence-gathering operations in the United States. American counterintelligence officials are believed to be using this information to investigate U.S. government employees who may have worked for foreign governments.

“A lot of information has been trickling out,” said one source familiar with U.S. intelligence operations. “Individuals have been coming forward. If people come away with the impression that Ames is the end of all this, that’s naive thinking.”

Although the Ames case involved the CIA, future instances, unrelated to Ames, could involve other federal agencies, such as the State or Defense departments or the National Security Agency. In this sense, Ames could be merely the first big post-Cold War spy story in a series that will unfold over the next four or five years.

In the case of Ames, who was arrested in February on charges of spying for the Soviet Union at least since 1985, critics have complained that the CIA did not notice or act upon clear signs that one of its employees was spending large amounts of money. Ames told colleagues the money had been inherited by his wife.

Ames, who once headed East European counterintelligence for the CIA and had access to some of the agency’s most sensitive secrets, is believed to have accepted $2.5 million from the Soviets and later Russia for his spying.

“Other cases undoubtedly have the same earmarks as Ames,” said another knowledgeable U.S. official recently. While more than four years have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall and nearly three since the collapse of the Soviet Union, U.S. officials are still piecing together information about East Bloc intelligence operations.

However, Ames is the only one of its kind prosecuted with the help of the new post-Cold War materials, because U.S. officials are moving cautiously. “You do not rush to judgment just because you have a name,” explained one U.S. official.

U.S. government officials are believed to be examining how much classified information can be made public and how far they can go in investigating U.S. government employees or accusing them of crimes.

Any additional prosecutions of U.S. officials will depend on such legal questions as the ability of investigators to establish probable cause that a crime has been committed and to obtain warrants from the special courts set up by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

At the moment, Congress is considering proposals that would make it easier for U.S. counterintelligence officials to examine the financial records of government employees.

Sen. William S. Cohen (R-Me.) and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.), each has introduced legislation to this end.

“Things are broken at the CIA and need to be fixed,” DeConcini said when he introduced his bill last month.

Such records can be obtained now only if the federal employee is notified. CIA Director R. James Woolsey said in a speech last month that he supports wider access to intelligence officials’ financial records.

Woolsey said that the federal government should be given “the legal authority, which it does not now have, to check the financial situations of some employees in sensitive positions at a relatively early stage of a counterintelligence investigation, without alerting them to the fact that the investigation is taking place.”

The prospect that there may be more spying cases could help the CIA and FBI fend off efforts in Congress to cut back their budgets.

Since the Ames case broke, Woolsey and other top CIA officials have been trying to prevent Congress from reducing the intelligence budget or ordering other far-reaching changes in the way the CIA conducts its business.