Ames Gets Life; Admits Betraying Double Agents

Former CIA agent Aldrich H. Ames calmly admitted Thursday that he gave the KGB the names of Soviet officials cooperating with American intelligence--many of whom were later executed--as well as the details of super-secret U.S. surveillance of the East Bloc.

For his crimes, Ames was sentenced by a federal judge to life in prison without possibility of parole, the harshest punishment possible under current law.

In a statement striking for its lack of remorse, Ames dismissed the idea that his actions caused any significant harm to his country, saying “there is no rational need” for most CIA operations.

“I had come to believe that the espionage business as carried out by the CIA and a few other American agencies was and is a self-serving sham,” he told U.S. District Judge Claude M. Hilton.

“The information our vast intelligence network acquires at considerable human and ethical costs is generally insignificant or irrelevant to our policy-makers’ needs.”

Ames, 52, who rose to chief of Soviet counterintelligence in the CIA’s Soviet-East European division during 31 years with the agency, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage as part of a negotiated agreement in return for a recommendation of leniency for his wife, Rosario.

Mrs. Ames, 41, whose role was described by the government as considerably smaller than her husband’s, also pleaded guilty Thursday, but to lesser charges of “aiding, advising and encouraging” her husband’s activities.

The Ameses, arrested Feb. 21 at their suburban Virginia home, also pleaded guilty to conspiring to evade federal income taxes for concealing an estimated $2.5 million in cash payments from the Russians.

Officials said that Ames agreed to cooperate in exchange for a lighter sentence for his wife, who has experienced emotional problems since her jailing. Ames also believed their 5-year-old son, Paul, needs the care of his mother, the officials said.

Mrs. Ames will be sentenced Aug. 26 to a term of 63 to 72 months but she will receive credit for time served since their arrest, provided her husband cooperates with authorities. The four-month delay in her sentencing will allow prosecutors to assess Ames’ cooperation in disclosing whether any colleagues at the CIA assisted him, either knowingly or unknowingly.

Under the plea agreement, both of the Ameses must forfeit all of their remaining assets, including their $540,000 suburban home, Jaguar and Honda cars, Ames’ pension for 31 years in the CIA, all domestic bank accounts and all foreign accounts and profits from any book they might write.

At a news conference following the pleas, U.S. Atty. Helen F. Fahey said that this was “the most damaging spy case in the history of this country.” She said that U.S. intelligence officials now will begin “an extensive debriefing” of Ames to learn even more about the damage to CIA operations caused by his espionage and whether anyone else helped him.

Ames has not previously cooperated with federal investigators because he was maintaining silence on the advice of his attorney, Plato Cacheris.

Espionage was a capital offense until ruled out in a series of Supreme Court decisions. The Senate-passed crime bill restores capital punishment for espionage, but even if the House agrees to the Senate language, Ames would not be affected.

A “statement of facts” filed by the government Thursday disclosed that Ames had caused greater damage to U.S. security than previously had been revealed. Ames’ actions ranged from naming to the Soviets at least 11 military and intelligence officials in their country who spied for the CIA or other friendly intelligence services, to turning over “a substantial amount of top-secret information, including signals intelligence,” a reference to the interception of Russian communications.

Those communications could range from military units in the field to more sophisticated links between embassies and satellite transmissions. Knowledge of the security breach would enable the Russians to feed disinformation, develop more secure methods of communication and determine which secrets had been exposed.

“Ames’ compromise of these penetrations of the Soviet military and intelligence services deprived the United States of extremely valuable intelligence material for years to come,” prosecutors said.

At least four of the U.S. spies were arrested and executed after Ames revealed their identities, the government said.

Ames maintained that he was “never personally advised by the KGB or anyone else as to the disposition and fate of the sources he compromised,” the statement of facts noted.

When he began spying for the KGB in the spring of 1985, Ames’ CIA position “guaranteed him access to most information relating to penetrations of the Soviet military and intelligence services and intelligence operations against the Soviet Union,” the statement said.

While stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Rome from 1986 to 1989, Ames told the KGB about CIA activities against the Soviet Union, including a large number of double-agent operations and of U.S. knowledge of double-agents working for the Soviets, prosecutors said.

After he returned to CIA headquarters in 1989, Ames provided the KGB with classified information both related and unrelated to his specific CIA assignments. The statement did not disclose how Ames obtained the unrelated material, which would be denied to him under normal CIA practices of “compartmentation.”

Dressed in khaki prison garb and speaking in a low monotone, Ames said in the jammed courtroom that in April, 1985, “I conceived a kind of confidence game to play on the KGB” to obtain funds to pay personal debts.

“In exchange for $50,000 I provided the KGB with the identities of several Soviet citizens who appeared to be cooperating with the CIA inside the Soviet Union,” he said. “I suspected that their cooperation was not genuine, that their true loyalty was to the KGB, and therefore I could cause them no harm.”

But Ames said that a few months later, “I did something still not entirely explicable even to me--without preconditions or any demand for payment, I volunteered to the KGB information identifying virtually all Soviet agents of the CIA and other American and foreign services known to me.”

He said that “to my enduring surprise,” the Soviets replied that they were paying $2 million “in gratitude for the information.”

While expressing “deepest sympathy” for the victims of his actions, Ames suggested that their fate was an expected risk of the intelligence business. “We made similar choices and suffer similar consequences,” he said.

Ames showed emotion only in defending his Colombian-born wife, who he insisted “had no knowledge of what information I furnished” to the Soviet Union and later the Russians.

Ames said he concealed his spying from his wife until the last 1 1/2 years of his activities. She pleaded with him to break off with the Russians but he manipulated and blackmailed her to avoid doing so.

Ames contended that she had no knowledge of information he was furnishing to the Russians and, while she “knew that I had received a great deal of money, she had no way to associate such sums with the gravity of the information I was passing.”

In the government’s “statement of facts” on Mrs. Ames, prosecutors said she provided “advice and support” for his espionage once she learned of it. “The defendant did not, however, personally handle or transmit any classified information or documents to the Russians, nor did she meet her husband’s Russian handlers,” it noted.

Code Names of 11 Compromised Agents

Eleven Russians, by their U.S. code names, whose spying for the United States was compromised by Aldrich H. Ames, according to the government:

* Cowl. A Soviet intelligence officer stationed in Moscow who disclosed that the KGB used an invisible substance known as “spy dust” to track U.S. officials. President Ronald Reagan at one point confronted Moscow with this information. Cowl was executed.

* Tickle. Described as the chief KGB officer in the United Kingdom whose cooperation with British intelligence was disclosed to the KGB by Ames. Fate unstated.

* Accord. A Soviet GRU, or military intelligence, officer who gave classified information to the CIA. Executed.

* Fitness. A KGB officer who cooperated with the CIA. Executed.

* Million. A lieutenant colonel in the Soviet military intelligence service who cooperated with the CIA. Executed.

* Pyrrhic. Described only as a Soviet official who had cooperated with the CIA. Fate unstated.

* Motorboat. An Eastern European security officer who had cooperated with the CIA. Fate unstated.

* Prologue. The government in its original affidavit in support of Ames’ arrest in February said Prologue was an officer of the Second Chief Directorate, the arm of the KGB responsible for counterintelligence investigations in the Soviet Union. It said the officer was secretly working for the CIA. Fate unstated.

No information was provided on three others, code names Weigh, Gentile and Blizzard.

Source: Associated Press