The case against Aldrich and Rosario Ames is back where it began - under a cloak of secrecy.
While a grand jury decides whether to indict them on espionage charges, top officials are meeting behind closed doors to decide how tough the United States can afford to be.
"As we speak, this is on the tables in the inner circles of government," says Paul Rothstein of the Georgetown Law Center, who has followed past espionage cases closely.
He says Ames, a career CIA official accused of selling secrets to the Soviets and to Russia for more than $ 2.5 million, could force prosecutors into a plea bargain by threatening to reveal vital U.S. secrets in open court.
On Sunday, The Washington Post reported that East German intelligence files led to a joint CIA-FBI investigation of Ames and his wife. A hearing for the two is set for Thursday in the Eastern District of Virginia, known in legal circles as "the rocket docket" for the speed at which cases roar through the judicial system.
"The government is caught in a real bind," Rothstein says. "You can do more damage than he's already done by opening up everything that's going on in these proceedings."
But Rothstein doesn't think prosecutors will make any deals soon.
"People inside government are smart enough to let this percolate a little bit longer to see where it stands. If you're too easy on these spies, the public isn't going to take it very well."
Any plea bargain for the couple would have to be approved by Attorney General Janet Reno and the White House.
Eventually, the government must decide between:
-- The possibility that Ames would reveal more damaging security secrets in a public trial, a threat called "graymail."
-- Implying weakness by letting off easy someone accused of being one of the worst U.S. spies in history.
The law allows a judge to filter information in a case that could threaten national security, "but it's not a perfect instrument," says Joseph diGenova, a former U.S. Attorney in Washington who prosecuted Navy spy Jonathan Pollard.
After helping prosecutors, Pollard was sentenced in 1987 to life in prison for spying for Israel. His wife got a lighter term.
Alleged spies "can reveal a lot," says Judge Alexander Harvey II, who sentenced Navy spy John Walker to life in 1986. Walker cooperated to help his son, also charged, get a lighter sentence. But another spy, Ronald Pelton, found out a month later that cooperation doesn't always pay off.
After a jury convicted him of three counts of espionage, Pelton cooperated to try to reduce his sentence. Judge Herbert Murray rejected the government's call for leniency and sentenced Pelton to life in prison. "It's the most serious offense anyone can be guilty of," he says. "It's betraying your country."
If Ames strikes a deal behind closed doors, he'll find he has "bargaining power only in the worst sense of the word," diGenova says. "Your back's up against the wall. The choices become attractive because you have none to begin with."
DiGenova thinks most of the Ames proceedings will be open to the public because the government has had good luck with spy prosecutions in the past.
Murray says the decision on whether to stay out of open court is difficult: "The whole tradition of this country is to have open criminal trials. But, at the same time, your chances of having an open trial are compromised if you let people get away with trading secrets to foreign countries."
