As CIA Aldrich Ames continues divulging the secrets of his betrayal after his guilty plea last week, the questions are many. How many U.S. double agents did he sell out? Were there other CIA moles working for Moscow? What precisely did he disclose about secret U.S. communications systems and recruitment methods?
Those questions and others will be put to Ames over the next several months as the FBI tries to determine precisely how much damage he did to national security. Already, in terms of human lives, the enormity of his treason is crystal clear: At least 10 high-level Russian intelligence and military officials and an Eastern European security officer who spied for the U.S. and its allies were sold out by the former CIA man; four of the spies were executed. "Ames traded people's lives," said prosecutor Helen Fahey, "for $2.5 million."
Ames, 52, will spend the rest of his life in prison -- longer, perhaps, than the 31 years he spent in the CIA. He has agreed to cooperate with investigators as part of a plea bargain that he hopes will win leniency for his wife, Rosario, who pleaded guilty to lesser espionage and tax charges. Prosecutors call the spy case the worst in U.S. history. Few in government believe they will ever fully unravel the Ames affair.
Naming names. Ames knows many, if not all, of the identities of the double agents he compromised. Intelligence specialists told U.S. News that Ames fingered a Soviet military intelligence official, Maj. Gen. Dimitri Polyakov. Polyakov, known by the FBI code name "Top Hat," was executed in 1988. In court, among those Ames admitted compromising was a senior KGB officer code-named "GTTickle." He was, in fact, Oleg Gordievsky, who was cooperating with British intelligence. Gordievsky defected in 1985 after the CIA learned from KGB agent Vitaly Yurchenko that the Soviets were "zeroing in" on a KGB agent in London, says a former U.S. official.
It may be impossible for the FBI and the CIA to piece together all the secrets that Ames turned over to the Russians. "The problem is, he was a high-tech vacuum cleaner, sucking stuff up and passing it on," says Vincent Cannistraro, who served as a CIA operations officer. "He probably doesn't know everything he turned over." Intelligence officials suspect that he gave the KGB tens of thousands of documents, sometimes on high-density computer disks. Through his computer at the CIA, they say, Ames had access to sensitive State and Defense department cable traffic and even some National Security Agency material. Many intelligence officials don't think Ames knows of other Russian moles. His lawyer, Plato Cacheris, says Ames worked alone.
Congress has its own questions about the Ames case. Some members believe the CIA's failure to share vital information with the FBI may have contributed to the debacle. Dennis DeConcini, the Arizona Democrat who chairs the Senate intelligence committee, is pushing legislation that would extend the FBI's spy catching responsibilities. The CIA wants any reforms handled administratively, and Director R. James Woolsey is seeking to avoid a legislative fix. In the meantime, Woolsey says, he is moving "full steam ahead" to identify all the damage done by the Ames case and to fix it.
