Notorious CIA Double Agent Aldrich Ames Passes Away at 84

Thu Jan 08 2026 15:36:03 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)

Aldrich Ames, the CIA officer turned double agent responsible for grave breaches of national security, has died while serving a life sentence for espionage, raising further questions about his betrayal during the Cold War.

Aldrich Ames, a former CIA officer who infamously sold secrets to the Soviet Union, has died at the age of 84 while incarcerated. Serving a life sentence, Ames's actions compromised over 100 operations and led to the deaths of numerous CIA agents. His motivations centered around financial gain, evidenced by the shocking amount of money he received for his treachery. Ames's life story reflects a dramatic fall from a career in intelligence to one of espionage and betrayal.

Aldrich Ames, a CIA officer who became one of America's most damaging double agents, has died aged 84.

The former counterintelligence officer, who was serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole, died on Monday at the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland, CBS News reported.

Ames was jailed on 28 April 1994 after he admitted to selling secret information to the Soviet Union and later Russia.

He compromised more than 100 clandestine operations and divulged the identities of more than 30 agents spying for the West—leading to the deaths of at least 10 CIA intelligence assets.

Seeking money to pay debts, Ames said he began providing the KGB with the names of CIA spies in April 1985, receiving an initial payment of $50,000.

Known to the KGB by his code name, Kolokol (The Bell), Ames went on to identify virtually all of the CIA's spies in the Soviet Union, for which he was well rewarded.

To my enduring surprise, the KGB replied that it had set aside for me $2 million in gratitude for the information, he said in an eight-page statement he read to the court.

Over the course of nine years, Ames admitted receiving about $2.5 million from the Soviet Union for his betrayal of the US.

The cash fueled a lavish lifestyle, with Ames splashing out on a new Jaguar, foreign holidays, and a $540,000 house—despite never having a salary of more than $70,000 a year.

Ames's 31-year career at the CIA began when his father, an analyst at the CIA, helped him land a job there after dropping out of college in 1962.

He married his first wife, fellow CIA agent Nancy Segebarth, in 1969, before being sent to Turkey as a counterintelligence officer to recruit foreign agents.

His espionage activities dwindled after running afoul of the law in personal matters, and yet he was sent to Mexico City in 1981, where he met his second wife, a CIA asset who was later charged as his accomplice.

Ames's indiscretions and financial troubles ultimately drove him to betray his country, leading to his eventual arrest and conviction. CIA Director R. James Woolsey condemned Ames as a malignant betrayer of his country who endangered countless lives for personal gain.