By Robert Davis ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- Aldrich Ames grew up in a house where spying - and the CIA - were a way of life.
His father had toiled there before him. And as a young man, Ames craved the excitement of the agency. His mother, a popular English teacher, had nurtured his people skills.
Even Tuesday - as Ames, 52, and his wife, Rosario, 41, appeared in federal court accused of selling CIA secrets to the Soviet Union and Russia for more than $ 2.7 million - he looked enthralled, eager.
He listened closely during testimony and several times consulted with his lawyers, occasionally smiling.
But prosecutor Mark Hulkower said, "The only concern or Mr. and Mrs. Ames have entertained in the last nine or 10 years has been for themselves. . . They sold out their country."
His old friends don't believe the intelligent young man they knew is the same man jailed on espionage charges.
"This is just staggering," says Wes Sanders of Cambridge, Mass., whose father also was in the CIA. When years went by without word form his high school chum, Sanders assumed Ames was a secret field agent.
"I thought he'd gone into the cloak-and-dagger side of things when he dropped out of sight," Sanders says. "The word was around us CIA brats that he went to 'the farm' (a secret CIA training site). We didn't know if he was dead or alive.
"I certainly never could have predicted this would happen. But the world of the CIA is a very murky world where values get turned upside down. There's a lot of cynicism built into the central point of view at the agency. It's about spying, it's about secrets, and part of it is about bumping people off."
Margaret Anderson, who teaches at the University of California at Berkeley, says the Rick Ames she knew in high school wouldn't betray his country out of greed.
But prosecutors say Ames and his second wife, Rosario, had been spying for a decade, secreting the money in bank accounts worldwide and spending some on a fancy car and a $ 540,000 home where they lived with their son, Paul, 5.
If true, Anderson says, it's the act of a troubled man she doesn't recognize. "He left some awfully broad clues for which I think there must be psychological reasons more than intellectual reasons."
Sanders says Ames' dad was "retreating or reclusive."
Michael Horwatt, a high school friend who handled Ames' 1985 divorce from first wife Nancy, is more direct: "If you had a father who was bingeing (on alcohol) and missing from the scene and sometimes abusive to your mother, it couldn't help affect a kid."
Despite troubles at home, Ames was voted "most witty" by McLean High School's Class of 1959. He was a member of the debate team and was considered a good writer.
Old friends say he was intellectual, eccentric and adventurous - skills that experts say make a good spy hunter.
Ames graduated from George Washington University with a degree in history - like his father. And he rose to the mid-level ranks of the CIA - like his father.
One of his jobs in the field was recruiting spies from the ranks of Soviet citizens working at United Nations headquarters.
"He and (first wife) Nancy were down to earth, decent people," says Horwatt, who used to occasionally see the couple when they still lived in the Washington area.
Ames' former wife refused to discuss Ames or their relationship. But by the early 1980s - when Ames was assigned to monitor Soviet and Cuban espionage in Mexico City - their marriage had collapsed, and she stayed in New York, where she lives today.
In Mexico, he monitored elite social circles, where he met Maria del Rosario Casas-Dupuy, the cultural attache in Colombia's embassy.
Friends say she came from a well-connected Colombian family and moved in ritzy circles, spending time with diplomats and famous authors.
Ames put her on the payroll as an informant. They fell in love and lived on expense accounts from both governments.
When they returned to Virginia, they married. But Ames' divorce, and life on his salary - about $ 69,800 when they were arrested last week - left them financially strapped.
Horwatt wouldn't discuss the financial effect of the divorce, but he says Rosario Ames "from all appearances brought a new lifestyle."
The FBI charges that's when Ames began trading top U.S. secrets for Russian cash.
It was also about this time that Rachel Ames, Aldrich Ames' mother, died of a heart attack while visiting her son. "I think her death played a very critical role in that it removed a barrier that might have prevented this," Horwatt says. "She was an anchor."
In court Tuesday, Ames looked stoic and strong.
He spent much of the hearing listening intently, with a white Bic pen pressed against his pursed lips.
His wife, a slight woman with jet-black hair, bowed her head when the judge said she would not be allowed to be with her son.
Paul is staying with Rosario Ames' mother and sister, who are in the Washington area. Plans have been made for Rosario Ames' mother to take her grandson back home to Colombia.
The couple, appearing in drab prison garb, left the packed courtroom without saying a word.
Opinions on the CIA
The public's favorable opinion of the CIA has climbed slightly over the years, according to a poll.
More have a favorable opinion of the CIA
1987 40%
1994 48%
Most have at least some confidence in CIA
A lot 26%
Some 43%
Little 31%
Most want to continue to work with Russia, despite the accusations that a CIA agent and his wife spyed for that country
Improve relations 76%
Take steps against 20%
Spying - from both sides Percentage of respondents who say the U.S. should secretly watch the following countries and which of them they think secretly watch the U.S. :
