If he winds up doing all that hard time the FBI has planned for him, maybe Aldrich Ames can write a book: Why Pack Rats Should Not Be Spies. In their "Dear Friend" letters from Moscow, the CIA man's handlers cautioned him not to hang on to secret materials that could draw suspicion to him; he ignored the advice. FBI agents who raided his house and CIA office found piles of secret documents and detailed accountings of the $2.7 million the FBI says he was paid for his espionage work. He even recorded hundreds of thousands of dollars of payments on a popular home- computer software program called "Manage Your Money."
About money, his Moscow handlers offered no cautionary advice. Maybe they knew what slouches the CIA had working the security beat. The CIA was aware back in 1989 that Ames and his wife had paid $540,000 in cash for a handsome suburban home. When CIA security officers questioned him about it, he said his wife had inherited the money from her father. No one checked the story. A CIA lie detector test he undertook two years later was also botched, government sources say. Last week, CIA Director R. James Woolsey announced a sweeping, three tiered review of the Ames case. To critics on Capitol Hill, the announcement had the familiar sound of a barn door closing after the horse had escaped.
