Aldrich Hazen Ames had a new wife, a taste for the good life and of the most sensitive jobs in the CIA. That made him very vulnerable
by Brian Duffy, Edward T. Pound, Gary Cohen
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Enter the swinging doors of the CIA's New Headquarters Building, cross the handsome glass lobby, take the first corridor to the right, then take the elevator down -- this is the CIA, remember. In the basement, on the "G" Level, look for Room V06, enter, then walk past the banks of cubicles where CIA case officers assigned to track drug smugglers are working the phones and computers. On the far side of the big room are the only two private offices in the place. On the door of one is a sign: RICK AMES.
Everyone called him Rick. His full name, as the world now knows, is Aldrich Hazen Ames, and if the criminal charges lodged against him last week are anything like the truth, he may be one of the most important American spies ever recruited by Moscow. According to the 35-page affidavit filed against him by FBI Special Agent Leslie Wiser Jr., Ames was paid more for his espionage work than any other American spy. Bank records cited by Agent Wiser indicate that Ames's Moscow handlers paid the CIA man $1,538,685 to betray his agency, his colleagues and his country. U.S. intelligence officials say they believe, although they cannot prove, that as many as 10 American agents -- all or most of them Russian -- were executed as a result of Ames's espionage activities.
The revelation that Russia is still paying for American secrets could hardly have come at a more uncomfortable moment for the Clinton administration. If the discovery was shocking at all, it was partly because, in its campaign for aid to Moscow, Clinton and his advisers have painted such a rosy portrait of a Russia marching toward democracy, a market economy and a more cooperative foreign policy under Boris Yeltsin.
The Ames case, however, suggests either that Yeltsin isn't in control of the successors to the Soviet KGB or that he is more hard-nosed than Clinton thought. And it comes at a moment when other developments in Russia are prompting growing criticism that Clinton's Russia policy has been naive. Instead of moving toward a market economy, Yeltsin's sputtering economic reforms have encouraged the wholesale looting of Russia. The vacuum created by the collapse of the Soviet Union is being filled not by the Western-style rule of law but by powerful organized crime families . Russia's intervention in the Balkans on the side of the Serbs and its efforts to bully some other former Soviet republics suggest that while Clinton tries to cultivate his friendship with Yeltsin and Russia, Russia is cultivating its traditional interests in Europe and Asia.
The man who set off this tempest remains largely a cipher, which of course is what CIA officers strive to be. Of the many unanswered questions swirling around Aldrich Ames today, one is especially intriguing: If he betrayed his country as charged, did he do it for love of money -- or just plain love? If love is the answer, it would be a cruel but especially fitting irony.
The Ames story begins in Mexico City. The time is 1985. In one sense, it was a long way from home for a young man from River Falls, Wis. In a more meaningful way, though, Mexico City was not as far from Wisconsin as it seems. Ames's father, Carleton, was a career CIA man, and the son, it seemed, was merely following in his footsteps. The elder Ames was an intelligence analyst, however, and his son had gotten into the business of running spies -- the more exhilarating side of the intelligence trade. That's what Ames was doing in Mexico City. It was his fourth tour with the espionage agency, after postings in Turkey, Washington, D.C., and New York City.
In Mexico, all was not well with Rick Ames. His marriage to Nancy Jane Segebarth was in trouble. The reason may have been one of the agents he was running. Ames and Segebarth had married in 1969 in Virginia, but the union had produced no children. In Mexico City in 1983, the marriage began to crack. A year earlier, Ames had recruited a vivacious Colombian woman as a spy and put her on the CIA payroll. Maria del Rosario Casas Dupuy was a cultural attache at the Colombian Embassy. Articulate and accomplished, the daughter of one of Bogota's most prominent families, Rosario Casas was among the brightest stars in the diplomatic whirl of the Mexican capital. Her many charms made her a perfect spy.
Storybook union. So perfect, in fact, that she won the heart of her handler. Ames's tour in Mexico ended in late 1983; his relationship with Rosario Casas did not. On Aug. 1, 1985, a judge gave final approval to the divorce of Rick Ames and Nancy Segebarth. Nine days later, Ames and Rosario Casas were married in the Unitarian Church in Arlington, Va. To families and friends, it must have seemed the beginning of a storybook marriage.
Ames's career was on track, for one thing. Not long after his return to CIA headquarters from Mexico, he was promoted to one of the most sensitive positions in the agency. His new title was impressive: chief of the Soviet counterintelligence branch in the division known in CIA-speak as "SE." That stood for Soviet/East European. As counterintelligence officers, Ames and his colleagues in SE were responsible for protecting the CIA's intelligence gathering operations in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. They were also responsible for recruiting spies from hostile intelligence services in that part of the world.
Ames got one of the toughest jobs. In March 1984, after several months of intense training in counterintelligence work, he began cultivating employees of the Soviet Embassy on 16th Street in Washington, D.C. His mission was to gather information and, if possible, to recruit spies. CIA regulations required Ames to report in writing every Soviet contact. Within months of his marriage, however, Ames's recordkeeping became sloppy. According to the FBI, he reported some contacts with Soviet officials only months later; others, he never reported at all.
Then the money started showing up. On Feb. 14, 1986, Ames met with someone from the Soviet Embassy in Washington and failed to report the meeting. A day later, bank records show, Ames deposited $13,500 in cash into his personal bank account and an additional $6,500 in cash in his wife's. This, according to the evidence amassed by the FBI, marks the beginning of Ames's long and lucrative career as a Soviet and Russian mole in the CIA.
Well-placed. The Soviets had scored a major coup. As a counterintelligence officer responsible for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, Ames knew the code names and the identities of American agents in Moscow, across the Soviet Union, in every Warsaw Pact country and in other countries as well.
The CIA's counterintelligence effort wasn't what it once was. Under the legendary spy chaser James Jesus Angleton, the CIA had inflicted enormous damage on itself a decade earlier in pursuit of a suspected Soviet mole. One of the many tragedies of the Ames affair is that, in the wake of Angleton's rampage, the agency's managers downgraded the counterintelligence effort. "CI," says one CIA officer, "became a backwater."
Even a flurry of embarrassments a decade ago, including the defection of a clandestine service officer with a history of drug and alcohol problems who was being trained to work in Moscow, failed to shake the CIA out of its counterintelligence torpor. Now, heads are likely to roll. James Woolsey, the director of central intelligence, admitted as much last week after Ames was arrested. Members of Congress who oversee the operations of the CIA have called for an investigation and are demanding reforms. Insiders say several CIA careers will end as a result of the Ames case.
The many unanswered questions about the case are a measure of the agency's lackadaisical security. No one is sure whether Ames was recruited by the Soviets or whether he was a "walk-in," a volunteer. During her empl
