An Assessment of the Aldrich H. Ames Espionage Case and Its Implications for U.S. Intelligence, Part 1

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
01 November 1994
Part One

INTRODUCTION

On February 21, 1994, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested a 52-year old employee of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Aldrich Hazen Ames, outside his Arlington, Virginia residence, on charges of conspiracy to commit espionage on behalf of Russia and the former Soviet Union. According to the affidavit supporting the arrest warrant, these activities had begun in April 1985, and continued to the time of the arrest. Ames's wife, Maria del Rosario Casas Ames, was arrested inside the residence on the same charges shortly after her husband was taken into custody.

Announced publicly the following day, the arrests prompted outrage and alarm across the country. Ames had been an employee of CIA for 31 years, with most of his career spent in the Directorate of Operations, which is responsible for carrying out CIA clandestine operations around the globe. While the precise extent of Ames's espionage activities was unclear at the time of his arrest, Justice Department officials confirmed that Ames was believed to have caused the death or imprisonment of a number of Soviets who had been sources of the CIA and FBI. There were calls in Congress for curtailing aid to Russia, and legislative proposals were introduced within days of the arrests to bolster government security practices. A CIA team was sent to Moscow to speak with the Russian intelligence services, but returned empty handed.

President Clinton directed that the senior intelligence officer at the Russian Embassy in Washington be expelled from the United States in retaliation, while at the same time cautioning against treating the episode as a cause for disrupting the fragile political relationship with Russia.

The affidavit made public at the time of the arrests also confirmed that Ames had received substantial payments for the information he had provided -- money that he had used years earlier to purchase a new Jaguar automobile and a $540,000 home, with cash, in Arlington. Apparently, these seemingly large expenditures by an employee making less than $70,000 a year had not raised questions at the CIA.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (hereinafter "the Committee") received its initial briefing regarding the case on the day the arrests were publicly announced. The facts contained in the affidavit supporting the arrest and search warrants were summarized by representatives of the FBI. While recognizing the need to avoid actions that might complicate or hamper the ongoing FBI investigation and ultimately the Justice Department's prosecution of the case, the Committee was deeply concerned that Ames had been able to carry out his espionage activities without detection for a period of nine years, despite the presence of circumstances which indicated a security problem. What had gone wrong?

To answer this question, the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Committee wrote to Frederick P. Hitz, the Inspector General of the CIA on February 23, 1994, requesting a comprehensive investigation of the Ames case. On March 1, the Committee met in closed session with Mr. Hitz to discuss the plans to investigate the Ames case.

In the meantime, the Committee continued to receive off-the-record briefings from the FBI and CIA regarding the progress of the ongoing investigation. The searches of Ames's office and residence conducted after the arrests yielded additional evidence of his relationship with the KGB and, since 1991, with its successor intelligence service, the SVR. Indeed, it appeared that Ames may have received approximately $2.5 million for the information he provided. It was clear the case represented a security breach of disastrous proportions.

On March 10, 1994, the Committee heard testimony in executive session from Director of Central Intelligence, R. James Woolsey, about the interim actions he was taking in light of the Ames case. This testimony was supplemented by a letter from the Director on March 24, 1994, advising the Committee that he

would not promote, advance to a more responsible position, or provide any job- related recognition to, those responsible for supervising Ames or for dealing with issues related to the Ames investigation until the Inspector General had submitted his report on the case. Additional steps to tighten security at the CIA were also outlined in the letter.

On April 13, 1994, the Committee held another closed session regarding the Ames case specifically to obtain the response of the CIA to certain stories which had appeared in the press. In particular, CIA witnesses denied press accounts that Ames had been warned by a superior that he was under investigation for espionage.

On April 28, 1994, Ames and his wife, Rosario, pled guilty to charges stemming from their espionage activities. Entered into the record at the time the pleas were made was an agreed-upon "Statement of Facts" which provided new details regarding the Ames's espionage activities. Meetings with the Soviets in Washington, D.C., Vienna, Bogota, and Caracas were acknowledged for the first time. Ames also acknowledged that as of May 1, 1989, he had been paid over $1.8 million by the KGB and that $900,000 more had been set aside for him.

In a statement read to the court at the time the plea agreements were entered, Ames admitted having compromised "virtually all Soviet agents of the CIA and other American and foreign services known to me" and having provided to the Soviet Union and to Russia a "huge quantity of information on United States foreign, defense and security policies." Ames went on to say:

For those persons in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere who may have suffered from my actions, I have the deepest sympathy even empathy. We made similar choices and suffer similar consequences.

As part of their plea agreements, both defendants agreed to cooperate fully with the government to explain the nature and extent of their espionage activities. Both signed agreements forfeiting the proceeds of their espionage activities to the U.S. Government. Ames was sentenced to life in prison, his wife later received 63 months in prison.

With a trial of the Ameses obviated by the plea agreements, the Committee was no longer constrained in its inquiry by the possibility of interfering with the criminal prosecution. At closed hearings held on May 6, June 16, and June 28, the Committee focused upon Ames's espionage activities as well as the handling of the case by the CIA and FBI. On July 18 a full day was devoted to a staff briefing by representatives of the CIA and FBI, who covered the case from start to finish.

These proceedings were supplemented by an interview of Ames by Chairman DeConcini which occurred on August 5, 1994, at a secure facility in Northern Virginia. In mid August, copies of the transcripts of the debriefings of Ames by the FBI were provided to the Committee, as well as copies of the interview summaries performed by the FBI during the criminal investigation.

On September 24, 1994, the Inspector General of the CIA submitted the report of his investigation to the Committee. Over 450 pages in length, the report provided a comprehensive, thorough, and candid assessment of how the CIA had handled the Ames case. Based upon interviews with over 300 people, including several interviews with Ames himself, and documentary evidence totaling over

45,000 pages, the report provided a wealth of new information. The Committee, in fact, relied heavily on this extraordinary report in the preparation of this report.

Factual Summary Of The Ames Case

A. Ames's Professional and Personal Life Prior to his Espionage Activities

1. 1941 to 1969

Aldrich Hazen ("Rick") Ames was born in River Falls, Wisconsin on May 26, 1941, to Carleton Cecil Ames and Rachel Aldrich Ames. Aldrich Ames was the oldest of three children and the only son. Carleton Ames received his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin and taught at River Falls State Teacher's College; Rachel Ames taught English at a local high school. According to the IG report, the elder Ames came to work for the CIA's Directorate of Operations (DO) in 1952. The family moved to the northern Virginia suburbs, and his wife secured a job teaching English in the Fairfax County public schools.

The elder Ames had one overseas tour -- accompanied by his family, including Rick -- in Southeast Asia from 1953 until 1955. CIA records reflect Carleton Ames received a particularly negative performance appraisal from this tour, and that the elder Ames had a serious alcohol dependency. Carleton Ames returned to CIA Headquarters after his overseas tour, and after a 6-month probationary period, remained in the Directorate of Operations until his retirement from the CIA in 1967 at the age of 62. Carleton Ames died five years later of cancer in 1972.

In 1957, after his sophomore year at McLean (Virginia) High School, Rick Ames secured a summer job at the CIA as a General Schedule (GS)-3 on the federal government salary scale. (The federal government GS scale is a matrix of standard salaries from the lowest, GS-1, to the highest, GS-15). He served as a Records Analyst, where he marked classified documents for filing. He returned to the same job each summer through 1959.

After graduating from high school, Ames entered the University of Chicago in the fall of 1959, where he pursued a long time passion for drama, and where he intended to study foreign cultures and history. In the summer of 1960, he again obtained employment at the CIA, working as a laborer/painter at a facility in Virginia. He returned to the University of Chicago in the fall of 1960, but because of failing grades resulting from his devotion to the theater, he did not finish out the school year. Instead, he worked as an assistant technical director at a Chicago theater until February 1962, when he returned to the Washington, D.C. area and obtained full time employment at the CIA as a GS-4 clerk typist. At this time he performed essentially the same type of clerical duties he had performed during his summers in high school.

During his March 23, 1962 "entrance on duty" polygraph examination, Ames admitted that in November 1961 he and a friend, while inebriated, had "borrowed" a delivery bicycle from a local liquor store, were picked up by the police, and subsequently released with a reprimand. The polygraph examiner noted that Ames was "not sparkling, but a friendly, direct type" who was generally cooperative during the interview. Ames passed the polygraph examination, and his initial Background Investigation (BI), completed on May 18, 1962, revealed no negative information from police or credit bureau records.

Ames remained a document analyst at the Agency within the Directorate of Operations (DO) for the next five years while attending George Washington University on both a part time and full time basis. In September 1967, he graduated with a B minus average and a bachelors' degree in history. During this period, Ames was arrested for intoxication in the District of Columbia in April 1962. The following year, Ames was arrested for speeding, and again for reckless driving in 1965. According to Ames, at least one of these latter incidents was alcohol related. By 1967, Ames had attained the grade of GS-7, having received good performance appraisals from his supervisors.

According to the IG report, Ames originally viewed his work as a records analyst as a stopgap measure to finance his way through college. Once he obtained his diploma, however, Ames applied and was accepted into the Career Trainee Program at the CIA in 1967. During this training, the CIA taught Ames the skills necessary for CIA officers to recruit and manage agents those individuals who provide the CIA with information or other forms of assistance. Such officers are known within the CIA as "operations officers" or "case officers."

The CIA conducted a psychological assessment of Ames prior to his training as an operations officer, a routine procedure for all successful applicants. Ames placed on the low end of the spectrum in terms of the qualities necessary for a successful career as an operations officer. Ames appeared to be an intellectual and a loner, rather than a gregarious person capable of meeting and recruiting people of diverse backgrounds and cultures. But at the conclusion of his training, Ames was assessed as a "strong" trainee, depicted as intelligent, mature, enthusiastic, and industrious.

During this period, Ames met his first wife, also a participant in the CIA's Career Trainee Program. They were married in May of 1969. Upon his graduation from the trainee program in October 1968, Ames was promoted to GS-10 and in October 1969 was given his first overseas assignment to Ankara, Turkey.

2.1969 to 1981

Ames's Tour In Ankara:

Ames was accompanied by his wife to Turkey where he worked as an operations officer. Pursuant to CIA policy, his wife was required to resign from the Agency, but continued to perform part-time administrative work in her husband's office.

During his first year in Ankara, Ames was rated as a "strong" performer and was promoted to GS-11 in 1970. His performance during the second and third years gradually declined. At the end of the second year, he was rated as "proficient," and by the end of the third year, Ames's superiors considered him unsuited for field work and expressed the view that perhaps he should spend the remainder of his career at CIA Headquarters in Langley -- a devastating assessment for an operations officer. Ames's overall evaluation was "satisfactory." Ames was deeply bothered and discouraged by this critical assessment of his job performance. Indeed, Ames would subsequently reflect to colleagues in 1988 that his Ankara tour was "unhappy" and "unsuccessful" and he seriously considered leaving the CIA.

Ames's Subsequent Assignment in the U.S:

In 1972, Ames returned to CIA headquarters where he spent the next 4 years in the Soviet-East European (SE) Division of the DO. In 1973, he was given Russian language training, and thereafter was assigned to a position where he supported CIA operations against Soviet officials in the U.S. While at Headquarters, Ames won generally enthusiastic reviews from his supervisors, apparently because he was more proficient in managing paperwork and planning field operations than being "on the front lines" as an agent recruiter.

Yet evidence of Ames's drinking problems also surfaced during this period. At a Christmas party on December 20, 1973 Ames became so drunk that he had to be helped to his home by employees from CIA's Office of Security. The following Christmas, Ames also became intoxicated and was discovered by an Agency security officer in a compromising position with a female CIA employee. Each incident resulted in an Office of Security "eyes only" memorandum being placed in his security file, but it does not appear that his supervisors were made aware of these incidents.

Ames served as a desk officer supporting field operations through June 1976. He received four evaluations rating him as a "strong performer" and one as "proficient," and there were occasional commendations for his motivation and effectiveness. However, these favorable evaluations also noted Ames's procrastination and inattention to detail -- issues that would become chronic problems.

Following his tour at CIA headquarters, Ames was assigned to New York City from 1976 until 1981, where he handled two important Soviet assets for the CIA. The performance appraisals Ames received during this period were the highest of his career. Rated four of the five years as "superior" or "invariably exceeding work standards," Ames's supervisors regarded him as interested, articulate, and capable. As a result of these evaluations, Ames received several promotions and a bonus. At the conclusion of his New York tour in 1981, he was ranked near the top of all operations officers at his grade level (GS-13). Subsequently, in May 1982, largely on the basis of his performance in New York, Ames received what was to become his last promotion to GS-14.

Despite his generally favorable performance in New York, Ames's supervisors continued to note his tendency to procrastinate, particularly in terms of his late submissions of his financial accountings and operational contact reports.

Ames's inattention to detail led to two significant security violations during this period. In an incident which occurred in 1976 when Ames was on his way to meet a Soviet asset, he left his briefcase on a subway train. The briefcase contained classified operational materials which could have compromised the Soviet asset concerned. Within hours, the FBI retrieved the briefcase from a Polish emigre who had found it, but it was unclear to what extent the information may have been compromised. Although Ames himself later reflected that the incident made him consider leaving the CIA, it appears that he received only a verbal reprimand. Several years later, in October 1980, Ames was cited for leaving TOP SECRET communications equipment unsecured in his office, but this, too, did not result in an official reprimand.

During Ames's assignment to New York, it also appears his marital relationship grew strained. He turned down several overseas assignments because his wife preferred to stay in New York. Realizing, however, that frequent rejections of overseas assignments would negatively impact on his career, Ames accepted an assignment in September 1981 for Mexico where he believed he could stay in fairly close contact with his wife, who remained in New York.

3. 1982 to 1983

In Mexico, Ames continued to specialize in Soviet cases. While his first performance appraisal was generally positive, his second and final evaluations grew progressively weaker. As in Turkey, Ames appeared stronger handling established sources rather than developing new ones. While in Mexico, Ames spent little time working outside the office, developed few assets, and was chronically late with his financial accountings. Ames's evaluations were "generally unenthusiastic," and focused heavily on his poor administrative work. Nevertheless, Ames's superiors gave him overall grades which indicated he "occasionally exceeds the work standards" and his "performance is good."

CIA records reflect that in 1982, Ames was considered for a Deputy Chief of Station assignment in another Latin American country. Yet neither of his immediate supervisors supported the assignment, primarily because of his mediocre job performance.

Ames Meets Rosario:

While he had hoped that his marriage could endure during his unaccompanied tour in Mexico, Ames engaged in at least three extramarital affairs during the early part of this assignment. Toward the end of 1982, Ames realized he had no desire to salvage his marriage. It was during this period in late 1982 that he met Maria del Rosario Casas Dupuy (hereinafter referred to as "Rosario"), the cultural attaché at the Colombian Embassy in Mexico City.

They were introduced through a CIA colleague of Ames who had recruited Rosario in October 1982 as a paid source. By virtue of her membership on the board of the local diplomatic association, she knew diplomats from many of the embassies in Mexico, including a KGB officer who served on the same board.

Ames's relationship with Rosario grew increasingly serious until he eventually proposed marriage to her. Despite Agency regulations, Ames did not report his romance with a foreign national to his superiors. Some of Ames's colleagues were aware of the relationship, but this did not prompt Ames to file the necessary report.

Ames's Drinking Problem:

Ames's lackluster performance appraisals during the Mexico assignment were partially due to a growing pattern of heavy drinking. In an interview with Chairman DeConcini, Ames noted that he had a reputation for "regularly going out with a group of people, taking long lunches, and having too much to drink." He recalled one particular episode at a diplomatic reception at the American Embassy in Mexico City, where he had had too much to drink and became involved in a loud and boisterous argument with a Cuban official. On another occasion, Ames was involved in a traffic accident in Mexico City and was so drunk he could not answer police questions or recognize the U.S. Embassy officer sent to help him.

According to Ames, the episode with the Cuban official "caused alarm" with his superiors. He was counseled by one superior, and another supervisor sent a message to CIA headquarters recommending that Ames undergo an assessment for alcohol abuse when he returned to the United States.

On Ames's return from Mexico, he had one counseling session but there was no follow up program of treatment. Ames was administered blood tests which proved normal, and he denied to the counselor that he had a drinking problem. The IG report indicates that the medical office was not aware of, and did not request, additional information about Ames's drinking habits, either from the Office of Security or the DO, prior to the counseling session.

Ames said in an interview after his arrest that there were "many much more serious problems of alcohol abuse" within the directorate. He said that his alcohol problem had "slopped over" only once during a formal occasion (at the embassy reception in Mexico City), and only on "a couple of less formal occasions."

In February 1983, the CIA Office of Security conducted a routine background investigation of Ames. The investigative report noted that Ames was a social drinker who was inclined to become a bit enthusiastic when he overindulged in alcohol. But no serious alcohol problem was identified.

Furthermore, although Ames's supervisor in Mexico City had recommended to CIA headquarters that Ames be counseled for his drinking problem, this was not made known at the time to his prospective supervisors in the SE Division, who were unaware of this growing personal problem.

In April 1983, a former colleague of Ames, who had served with him in New York and was now in a supervisory position in the SE Division of the DO, requested that Ames be assigned to a position in the SE Division after his tour in Mexico. Despite his poor performance and alcohol problem, Ames's Mexico City supervisors did not object to his new assignment, which placed him in the most sensitive element of the DO -- responsible for the Agency's Soviet counterintelligence activities.

4. September 1983 to April 1985

When Ames returned to headquarters in September 1983, he was made counterintelligence branch chief for Soviet operations, responsible for analyzing selected CIA operations involving Soviet "assets." Ames was regularly involved in reviewing whether asset cases were genuine, whether there were security problems evident, or whether a particular agent had been compromised.

In this counterintelligence function, Ames was in a position to gain access to all CIA operations involving Soviet intelligence officers worldwide. His assignment also gave him access to all CIA plans and operations targeted against the KGB and GRU intelligence services.

In March 1984, in addition to his full time responsibilities as chief of the Soviet counterintelligence branch, Ames began providing intermittent support to a CIA field office responsible for developing Soviet sources in Washington, D.C. area. He met occasionally with one Soviet official to assess that individual as a potential source, and when that individual returned to the Soviet Union, Ames established a new relationship with another Soviet embassy official, Sergey Dmitriyevich Chuvakhin, also to assess him.

Ames conducted these contacts with the approval of the CIA local field office, the FBI, as well as the approval of his immediate supervisor in SE Division. Ames was required to report all such contacts to the CIA, and the CIA was required to coordinate these activities with the FBI. The Committee was advised that it was not unusual for CIA officers, posted to headquarters, to support other ongoing CIA operations in this manner.

Judging from his performance appraisals, Ames performed well in his new assignment in the SE Division. His ratings were noticeably improved over those in Mexico City. He was judged "above average" and described as "something of a Soviet scholar...(with) considerable experience in working sensitive cases." He was also cited as a good manager. His supervisor -- the same one who had given him the highest possible ratings in New York downgraded Ames slightly to a rating which indicated he "frequently exceeds the work standards" and his "performance is excellent." There was no evidence in his file of the drinking problem that had surfaced in Mexico.

In November 1983, Ames submitted an "outside activity" report to the Office of Security, noting his relationship with Rosario Casas. This was shortly before Rosario came to the United States and began living with Ames in his Falls Church apartment.

On April 17, 1984, Ames notified the CIA of his intention to marry Rosario. In accordance with CIA policy, this triggered a background investigation of Rosario. On August 27, 1984, Rosario was given a polygraph exam, which is standard procedure for a foreign national marrying a CIA officer. She passed the exam with no indication of deception. The Office of Security completed a background investigation of Rosario on November 5, 1984 which included interviews with five of her friends and associates, some of whom commented that "she came from a prominent, wealthy family in Colombia." However, CIA did not conduct any specific financial checks in Colombia to verify these statements.

While the polygraph examination and background investigation did not turn up any derogatory information concerning Rosario, the counterintelligence staff of the DO nonetheless recommended that in light of Ames's intent to marry a foreign national, he be transferred from his position as branch chief in the counterintelligence section of the SE Division to a less sensitive position in the Directorate of Operations. This recommendation was accepted by the Deputy Director for Operations (DDO), but there is no record of any further action by DO management.

In the summer of 1984 or 1985, after consuming several alcoholic drinks at a meeting with his Soviet contact, Ames continued to drink at a CIA FBI softball game until he became seriously inebriated. Ames had to be driven home that night and "left behind at the field his badge, cryptic notes, a wallet which included alias identification documents, and his jacket." Some recall that senior SE Division managers were either present or later made aware of this incident, but the record does not reflect any action was taken as a result.

Ames was involved in another breach of security in the fall of 1984, this time involving Rosario. Ames had been temporarily detailed to work in New York. It had been arranged that Ames and two other officers would travel to New York and stay at Agency-provided housing. Ames showed up with Rosario. One of the other officers complained to a local CIA officer that Rosario's presence in the Agency housing compromised the cover of the other case officers as well as their activities. A second CIA officer confronted Ames and reported the matter to senior CIA management in New York. Ames says he complied with a management instruction to move to a hotel room. There is no record that any disciplinary action was taken against Ames in this matter, but both Ames and a Headquarters officer recall that Ames was told that he had exercised bad judgment when he returned to Washington.

Divorce and Financial Pressures:

In October 1983, Ames formally separated from his first wife, who by this time had found new employment and continued to live in New York. The couple ratified a "Property Stipulation" in which Ames agreed to pay her $300 per month for 42 months, beginning in June 1985 and continuing through November 1989. This placed a new cumulative debt on Ames of $12,600. Ames also agreed as part of the separation agreement to pay all the outstanding credit card and other miscellaneous debts, which totaled $33,350.

The IG report indicates that Ames believed his divorce settlement threatened to bankrupt him. At the same time, Ames acknowledged that his indebtedness had grown since Rosario came to live with him in December 1983. He faced a new car loan, a signature loan, and mounting credit card payments.

On September 19, 1984, Ames's wife filed for divorce on grounds of mental cruelty. Divorce proceedings began the following month and lasted into the next year.

Ames later told Senator DeConcini that these financial difficulties led him to first contemplate espionage between December 1984 and February 1985:

I felt a great deal of financial pressure, which, in retrospect, I was clearly overreacting to. The previous two years that I had spent in Washington, I had incurred a certain amount of personal debt in terms of buying furniture for an apartment and my divorce settlement had left me with no property essentially. Together with a cash settlement of about $12,000 to buy out my pension over time, I think I may have had about $10,000 or $13,000 in debt. It was not a truly desperate situation but it was one that somehow really placed a great deal of pressure on me... Rosario was living with me at the time...I was contemplating the future. I had no house, and we had strong plans to have a family, and so I was thinking in the longer term...

It was these pressures, says Ames, which in April 1985, led him to conceive of "a scam to get money from the KGB."

B. Ames's Espionage and the Government's Attempts to Catch a Spy

1 April 1985 to July 1986

Ames Offers His Services:

With his considerable knowledge of Soviet operations and experience in clandestine operations, Aldrich Ames conceived of a plan to obtain money from the Soviets without being detected by the CIA or the FBI.

As summarized in the previous section, Ames routinely assisted another CIA office which assessed Soviet embassy officials as potential intelligence assets. His SE Division manager agreed to and sanctioned his work in this area in late 1983 or early 1984, even though Ames was in a counterintelligence job which gave him access to both former and active CIA operational cases involving Soviet intelligence officers. Ames initially coordinated his contacts with the FBI, and he worked out the operational details with the local CIA office responsible for such operations.

According to Ames, he contacted selected Soviet officials using an assumed name and fake job description identifying himself as a Soviet Union expert with the Intelligence Community Staff.

Using this cover, he met with a particular Soviet official for almost a year. When this official returned to Moscow, he suggested Ames continue his contacts with a Soviet Embassy official Sergey Dmitriyevich Chuvakhin, a member of the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs who specialized in arms control matters. In April 1985, Ames arranged a meeting with Chuvakhin. Chuvakhin thought the meeting was to discuss broad U.S.-Soviet security concerns, and the CIA thought Ames was meeting with Chuvakhin to assess the Soviet as a possible source for U.S. intelligence. In fact, Ames planned to offer the Soviets classified information in exchange for money.

Ames entered the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C. on 16 April 1985 and handed an envelope to the duty officer at the reception desk, while asking for Chuvakhin by name. The message was addressed to the Russian officer he knew to be the most senior KGB officer at the embassy. Although unspoken, it was implied that Ames wanted the letter delivered to the KGB officer. The duty officer nodded his understanding. Ames then had a short conversation with Chuvakhin and departed the embassy.

Inside the envelope left with the duty officer at the Soviet Embassy was a note which described two or three CIA cases involving Soviets who had approached the CIA to offer their services. The CIA believed each to be controlled by the KGB, (i.e. "double agents") and thus, Ames thought that disclosing to the KGB that these Soviets were working with the CIA was "essentially valueless information." Nonetheless, he thought providing such information would establish his bona fides as a CIA insider. (Later, Ames disclosed to the KGB that, in fact, the CIA believed these Soviets were controlled "double agents.")

To further establish his bona fides, Ames included a page from an internal SE Division directory with his true name highlighted. He also listed an alias he had assumed when meeting Soviet officials earlier in his career. Finally, he requested a payment of $50,000. Ames has stated he did not ask for a follow up meeting or suggest possible future means of communication with the KGB in this initial letter. Several weeks later, however, Chuvakhin scheduled another luncheon with Ames. According to Ames, he entered the Soviet Embassy on May 15, 1985 and asked for Chuvakhin, but instead was escorted to a private room.

A KGB officer came in and passed him a note which said that the KGB had agreed to pay him $50,000. The KGB note also stated that they would like to continue to use Chuvakhin as an intermediary between the KGB and Ames. Two days later, on 17 May, Ames met Chuvakhin and received a payment of $50,000 cash.

Motivation for Continuing his Espionage Activities:

Ames has admitted that his motivation to commit treason changed over time. Because of his perception of his growing financial problems, Ames say he initially planned a one time "con game" to provide the Soviets with the identities of their own double agent operatives, in return for a one-time payment of $50,000 to cover his debts. He guessed the KGB would pay him the $50,000 and thought this would solve most of his outstanding financial problems.

What motivated Ames to continue the relationship with the KGB after the $50,000 payment is not altogether clear, even to Ames himself. In an interview with Senator DeConcini, Ames observed that he viewed his request for $50,000 as a "one time deal." Ames stated that " ...(a)t that time in May when I had got the money, I figured I was finished." Ames elaborated in the interview:

I'm still puzzled as to what took me to the next steps. The main factor, on balance I think, was a realization after I had received the $50,000, was a sense of the enormity of what I had done. I think I had managed under the stress of money and thinking, conceiving the plan I had carried out in April, I saw it as perhaps a clever, ...not a game, but a very clever plan to do one thing. ...(I)t came home to me, after the middle of May, the enormity of what I had done. The fear that I had crossed a line which I had not clearly considered before. That I crossed a line I could never step back. And...I think in retrospect, it is very difficult for me to reconstruct my thoughts at the time. Before April, I can very well. It was a very rational, clever plan, cut between the middle of May and the middle of June ...it was as if I were sleepwalking. I can't really reconstruct my thinking. It was as if I were in almost a state of shock. The realization of what I had done. But certainly underlying it was the conviction that there was as much money as I could ever use. If I chose to do that.

Ames has also told FBI investigators involved in his debriefings that, in retrospect, he left his initial communication with the Soviets open ended so that they would expect his continued cooperation. After the KGB paid him the $50,000, according to an FBI official, Ames "decided that he wasn't going to stop at that point."

Increased Espionage Activities:

Ames's next step dealt a crippling blow to the CIA's Soviet operations. According to interviews with Ames, without any prompting or direction by the KGB or any promise of additional money, he met again with Chuvakhin on June 13, 1985, and provided copies of documents which identified over ten top-level CIA and FBI sources who were then reporting on Soviet activities. CIA officials have testified that Ames provided the "largest amount of sensitive documents and critical information, that we know anyway, that have ever been passed to the KGB in one particular meeting..." Ames wrapped up five to seven pounds of message traffic in plastic bags and hand carried them out of the CIA Headquarters building for delivery to the KGB, knowing that the CIA no longer examined packages carried out of the building by Agency employees. Ames would use this simple and straightforward method at both CIA Headquarters and during his Rome assignment to provide information to the KGB. In court documents filed for this case, Ames admitted he disclosed the identities of Russian military and intelligence officers who were cooperating with the CIA and friendly foreign intelligence services. Some of these officials held high level jobs within the Soviet military and intelligence services. For example, the court documents stated, one particular asset was "a KGB officer stationed in Moscow who had provided valuable intelligence including, the revelation that the KGB used an invisible substance referred to as `spy dust' to surveil U.S. officials in Moscow." Ames has also admitted that part of his rationale for exposing these operations to the KGB was because he sought to protect his own role as KGB informant by eliminating those KGB assets who could be in the best position to tell the CIA of Ames's espionage.

The CIA Recognizes a Problem:

In the months ahead, the CIA would begin to learn of the loss of the sources identified by Ames on June 13, 1985.

But unbeknownst to the CIA, at virtually the same time Ames began his relationship with the KGB, a former CIA employee, who had had access to some of the same Soviet cases which were disclosed by Ames, was himself cooperating with the Soviets.

Edward Lee Howard:

The CIA had hired Edward Lee Howard in 1981, and as part of his training for an initial assignment in Moscow, Howard had been given access to the details of certain CIA operations in the Soviet Union, including identifying information on several CIA sources. In 1983, after Howard made damaging admissions during a polygraph examination which indicated serious suitability problems, the CIA abruptly terminated Howard's employment with the CIA. His bitterness toward the CIA gradually increased over the next year. Late in 1984, Howard decided to retaliate by compromising several CIA operations to the KGB. He is believed to have met with the KGB in January 1985, and again several months later in May 1985, and presumably disclosed the details of several CIA operations.

For CIA officials, the recognition of the source and extent of the losses of its Soviet operations took months to piece together. In May 1985 -- several weeks before Ames passed his list of sources to the KGB -- officials in the Directorate of Operations began to sense a possible security problem when a CIA source was suddenly recalled to the Soviet Union. Later that summer, the CIA became aware that a Soviet source handled by British intelligence had been recalled to Moscow and was accused of spying.

Then on June 13, 1985 the same day that Ames gave the list of CIA and FBI sources to the KGB in Washington the KGB thwarted a planned meeting between one of the sources disclosed by Ames and a CIA officer in the Soviet Union, indicating to CIA officials that the Soviet asset had been compromised. (Although it is now presumed that Howard had enabled the KGB to identify this source, the source was also among those identified by Ames in his 13 June 1985 transmittal to the KGB.)

The CIA began to focus on Howard as the source of these compromises in August 1985 when a high-level KGB defector, Vitaly Yurchenko, told CIA he had seen cables in 1984 which identified a former CIA employee named "Robert" as a KGB source. Soon afterward, as a result of the debriefings of Yurchenko, the CIA deter mined that "Robert" was, in fact, Edward Lee Howard.

While Yurchenko was being debriefed in Washington, Howard was meeting with the KGB in Vienna. At that meeting the KGB warned him that one of their officers with knowledge of his case was missing. On September 21, 1985, two days after a meeting with the FBI where he was confronted with Yurchenko's allegations, Howard eluded FBI surveillance and fled the United States for Helsinki, Finland, and ultimately settled in the Soviet Union. He has effectively eluded U.S. authorities ever since.

More Losses Surface:

As the Howard case was unfolding, the CIA learned in September 1985 that a source in Moscow had been arrested for espionage. In October 1985, the CIA learned that a second intelligence asset in a European country, who returned to Moscow in August on home leave, had never returned to his post. In December of that year, the CIA learned that this asset had also been arrested. In January of 1986, the CIA learned that a third source posted in a European country had been taken into custody by Soviet authorities in November and returned to Moscow. These assets, whose arrests were reported in the fall of 1985, were regarded among the most important CIA human sources at the time. All of these sources were later executed.

According to a CIA analysis, Howard had known of none of these agents. Thus, while Howard's treachery had initially clouded the picture, it was clear to the SE Division of the Directorate of Operations by the end of 1985 that the defection of Howard alone could not explain the disastrous events which were unfolding.

Indeed, throughout 1986, CIA continued to learn of Agency operations that had been compromised to the Soviets. As one CIA officer put it, "they were wrapping up our cases with reckless abandon." This was, by all accounts, highly unusual behavior for the KGB. If the KGB had recruited an agent within the CIA, the last thing they would likely do -- according to the prevailing wisdom among the Agency's professional "spy catchers" -- would be to draw attention to the agent by suddenly "rolling up" all the cases he knew about. According to the CIA IG report, Ames says that his KGB handlers recognized the dangers of what they had done. They told Ames that they regretted putting him in such a position, but believed their political leadership felt they had little choice but to take those steps.

In all, there were over 20 operations compromised to the Soviets during this period, less than half of which could plausibly be attributed to Edward Lee Howard. In addition, other U.S. intelligence activities which had clearly not been known to Howard were also compromised during this time period. The compromise of the identities of these intelligence agents amounted to a virtual collapse of the CIA's Soviet operations.

The CIA's Initial Response:

Each of the cases the CIA learned had been compromised in the fall of 1985 was separately analyzed by the counterintelligence element of the SE Division to attempt to ascertain the reason for the compromise.

The CIA first suspected that the KGB had penetrated its communications with the field, using either technical means or a human source. To ascertain whether this was true, the CIA in late 1985, ran probes and tests which elicited no discernible response from the KGB.

In reaction to the compromises that had occurred, the SE Division in January 1986, put in place "draconian measures" to limit access to its ongoing Soviet operations and to ensure that communications from the field were accessible only to the few employees of SE Division working on the operations. SE Division greatly limited the number of personnel who had access to the new agent cases.

It is also clear that by January 1986, Director Casey had been apprised of the situation. His initial response appears to have been to request a senior CIA official, a former Inspector General and Deputy Director for Operations, to review each of the cases known to have been compromised and to analyze the reasons for the failures.

According to individual recollections, the senior official concerned provided a 9-10 page memorandum which concluded that each of the compromised cases could be attributed to problems evident in each case. The possibility of a technical penetration of CIA facilities or communications also was apparently noted. (The 1994 CIA IG report notes that the theory that each case might have held "the seeds of its own destruction" was "never totally rejected as the answer to the compromises despite the rate at which the SE Division was losing cases, which pointed to more than sheer coincidence."

Apparently motivated by the report from the senior official, DCI Casey convened what is believed to be the first meeting with senior staff of the Directorate of Operations in April 1986 to discuss the compromised cases. According to individual recollections, Casey was told that the SE Division was reviewing the files pertaining to the cases and was exploring the potential for a technical compromise, but no further action resulted from the meeting.

In fact, the SE Division was continuing to get new Soviet cases by this time which appeared to be surviving. This development appears to have led some to conclude several years later that whatever the source of the compromises had been, it no longer seemed to be causing problems.

Ironically, around the same time, the CIA Inspector General and the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) issued assessments of the CIA's handling of the Howard case, which specifically identified serious institutional and attitudinal problems in the CIA's handling of counterintelligence cases. The PFIAB report noted in particular that "senior CIA officers continued to misread or ignore signs that Howard was a major CIA problem. This myopia was partially ascribed to a fundamental inability of anyone in the SE Division to think the unthinkable -- that a DO employee could engage in espionage." The report went on to recommend that CIA component heads report counterintelligence information to the Office of Security, and that the Office of Security serve as focal point for informing the FBI of such matters.

In June 1986, (as SE Division officers reviewed various alternatives to explain the Ames losses,) DCI Casey reacted strongly to the CIA IG and PFIAB findings. He sent a June 4 memorandum to the Deputy Director for Operations (DDO) Clair George saying that he was appalled by the DO's handling of the Howard case, especially the Directorate's "unwillingness to accept even as a possibility a DO officer committing espionage for the Soviet Union." He stated that the DDO and the SE Division Chief were deserving of censure, and DO division and staff chiefs were to be instructed that "the DO must be more alert to possible CI cases in the ranks." In the future, any suggestion of such a development was to be shared with the Director, Office of Security and Chief, Counterintelligence Staff. The memorandum from Casey held the DDO personally responsible for correcting "deficiencies in process, organization and attitude that contributed to (the Howard) catastrophe." Also, the DCI charged the Chief, SE Division to take personal responsibility in the future for the selection of division officers for particularly sensitive posts. The DCI's memorandum was forwarded to the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs for information.

While Casey reacted strongly to the criticisms of the Agency's handling of the Howard case, his admonitions to the DO do not appear to have significantly affected the efforts to resolve the 1985 compromises.)

Ames Continues His Double Life:

While the CIA attempted to sort out what had gone so drastically wrong with its Soviet operations, Ames continued to provide the KGB with classified information from May 1985 until he left for an overseas assignment in Rome in July 1986. Ames met repeatedly with Chuvakhin, his intermediary, and passed a wealth of detail about Soviets targeted by the CIA, double agent operations, the identity of other CIA agents, background information on his past tours, and CIA modus operandi. In the end, the FBI identified over 14 occasions between May 1985 and July 1986 when Chuvakhin met with Ames, although Ames believes there were probably a few more meetings which were not detected by the Bureau.

In order to maintain a plausible cover for his frequent lunches with Chuvakhin, Ames filed reports with the CIA which summarized his meetings, and he met occasionally with CIA and FBI officials to discuss the progress of his recruitment operation targeted against Chuvakhin.

According to testimony from CIA officials, Ames was walking a difficult line:

Rick was trying to play a funny game, you know, because in one sense he was -- he wanted to make it look good enough so that everybody would want to continue the operation, but on the other hand not to make it look so good that people would start to focus on it. And not to make it look so good that when Rick decided to withdraw from it, that someone else would want to take over the case.

By July 1985, Ames stopped reporting to the FBI and the CIA on his meetings with Chuvakhin. He verbally reported some of his contacts to the CIA office he was supporting, and the CIA office passed on the relevant operational details to the FBI. The FBI was aware that the meetings continued and requested that the CIA follow-up to ensure that Ames submitted formal reports of the meetings, as required by both organizations. The FBI presumed that the CIA knew of the meetings and that Ames was simply slow in getting the paper work done. According to FBI officials:

There were two or three times that our people either went over there and finally actually sent a communication over asking CIA why aren't we receiving any of the reports of these meetings. But the reports were never forthcoming and neither CIA nor FBI, followed up. Also, the reports that were made were not shown to his current bosses in SE.

The CIA did attempt to get Ames to provide reports of his meetings with Chuvakhin after he had been reassigned to Rome, but Ames never responded and no further action appears to have been taken.

In fact, there appears to have been a breakdown in the monitoring of Ames's operational relationship with Chuvakhin. Ames's immediate supervisor in SE Division had given his approval for the contacts between Ames and the Soviet Embassy official in early 1984. On the other hand, this manager did not have supervisory authority over the operation against Chuvakhin, a role correctly assumed by the officers in the CIA field office responsible for monitoring CIA contacts with Soviets within the U.S. (These officers had also approved Ames's contacts with Chuvakhin.) Yet the field officers did not monitor his contacts closely, and did not keep Ames's SE Division management well informed about the case, or alert Ames's direct supervisors when Ames failed to report regularly on his meetings.

Senior SE Division supervisors in 1985 who were in positions to know both about Ames's counterintelligence role at headquarters, as well as about CIA field office operations targeted against Soviet Embassy officials in Washington, have stated that they were unaware of his meetings with Soviet Embassy officials and would have disapproved such meetings had they known of them, in light of Ames's sensitive position in the counterintelligence branch.

Ames received, in addition to the initial payment of $50,000, regular cash payments during his subsequent luncheons with Chuvakhin, in amounts ranging between $20,000 and $50,000. At some point between October and December 1985, the Soviets told him he would be paid an additional $2 million, above and beyond the recurring cash payments. He was advised that the Soviets would hold the money for him. Ames has said he did not solicit this money and never made any additional request for money beyond his first meeting, but that the KGB promise of $2 million "sealed his cooperation."

Ames maintained several local bank accounts in his name, as well as in his new wife's name, where he would regularly deposit the cash he received from the Soviets. When Ames received a payment from the KGB, he generally broke it down into smaller cash deposits -- in increments under $10,000 in order to avoid bank reporting requirements which might have led to inquiries by banking regulators.

Sometime after his marriage to Rosario, Ames developed a cover story to explain his increased wealth in order to hide the true source of the funds. His co-workers recalled that Ames did not dispel the notion that Rosario came from a wealthy and established family in Colombia. Ames explained to several colleagues that Rosario had a share of the inheritance and the family business, which continued to generate substantial revenue. Ames claims that he did not express this in the presence of Rosario or close friends since they would know that this was untrue. However, at least one colleague recalls Rosario being present during conversations in Rome when Ames discussed Rosario's family wealth.

Personal and Professional Developments:

In addition to initiating his relationship with the KGB, Ames's personal life and CIA career also changed during this period. On 1 August 1985, Ames was given final approval for his divorce from his first wife. On 10 August he married Maria de Rosario Casas Dupuy in the Unitarian Church in Arlington, Virginia.

At the same time Ames's personal life was taking a new course, there was a significant development in his professional responsibilities. On August 1, 1985, Vitaly Yurchenko, a colonel in the KGB, defected to the United States, and Ames was selected as one of three CIA officers to conduct the debriefings of Yurchenko. Yurchenko was considered one of the most important Soviet defectors in the CIA's history and provided a wealth of information regarding KGB operations targeted against the United States (including the information which led to the identification of Edward Lee Howard, as explained above). In all, Ames debriefed Yurchenko on 20 occasions during August and September 1985. At times he was left alone with Yurchenko. But there is nothing on the record to indicate either that Yurchenko was aware of Ames's relationship with the KGB or that Ames communicated this information to Yurchenko. Ames does admit to advising his KGB contacts at the Soviet Embassy of everything Yurchenko was providing in his debriefings.

During the course of these debriefings, Ames took Rosario to the safe house where Yurchenko was staying, again violating CIA regulations. While the Chief, SE Division was upset by this, it does not appear to have prompted any official action.

In October 1985, Ames left the debriefing effort to begin full-time language training for a new assignment in Rome. During this training, as previously noted, Ames continued to meet with Soviet Embassy official Chuvakhin. Ames had requested assignment in Rome in 1984, but this request was not approved until July 1985, after Ames had begun his espionage activities. While the new assignment did not offer the same level of access to CIA operations as his job in the SE Division, Ames said the KGB never suggested that he attempt to change it.

In early November 1985, shortly after Ames had begun language training, Yurchenko had a change of heart and turned himself in at the Soviet Embassy in Washington. He was soon on his way back to Moscow. There is no evidence that Ames played any direct role in this episode.

1986 Polygraph Examination:

At the conclusion of language training and prior to departing for Rome, Ames was required to take a routine polygraph examination on May 2, 1986. This was his first polygraph since 1976. Ames would subsequently state that he might not have made the decision to commit espionage in April of 1985 if he had known that he was going to be polygraphed the next year. Ames recalls being "very anxious and tremendously worried" when he was in formed that he was scheduled for a polygraph exam in May of 1986, one year after he had begun his espionage activity for the KGB.

Ames was tested on a series of issues having to do with unauthorized contacts with a foreign intelligence service, unauthorized disclosure of classified information, and financial irresponsibility.

Ames gave consistently deceptive responses to issues related to whether he had been "pitched" (i.e. asked to work for) by a foreign intelligence service. The CIA examiner noted Ames's reaction to the "pitch" issue but apparently detected no reaction to the other counterintelligence issues covered by the test. When Ames was asked about his reaction during the session, he explained that he was indeed sensitive to the "pitch" issue because, he stated, "we know that the Soviets are out there somewhere, and we are worried about that."

Next the CIA examiner asked a follow on series of questions relating to the "pitch" issue, in order to ascertain why Ames had appeared to give a deceptive response. Ames responded that since he had worked in CIA's Soviet and Eastern Europe (SE) Division, he had been involved in pitches to potential assets. Also, he hypothesized that he might be known to the Soviets because of a recent defector. He further stated that he thought he might be reacting because he was preparing to go to Rome in July 1986, and had some concerns that he might be pitched there. From this, the polygrapher surmised that Ames had gotten his concerns off his chest, and there was nothing more to tell. Once again, the polygrapher went through the CI questions on the polygraph machine, focusing on the pitch issue. This time, the CIA examiner deemed Ames truthful and concluded the examination, characterizing Ames as "bright [and] direct." The examiner's supervisors concurred with the assessment that Ames was non-deceptive.

According to the FBI, which examined Ames's polygraph charts in June 1993, the deception indicated in Ames's response to the pitch issue in 1986 was never resolved, even though the CIA examiner passed Ames on this exam. Also in the opinion of the FBI, significant deceptive responses by Ames were detectable to questions dealing with unauthorized disclosure of classified material. No additional testing or explanations for these deceptive responses, however, were noted in Ames's polygraph file.

2. July 1986 to July 1989

Ames's Rome Assignment:

Ames's managers generally judged his performance in the SE Division as successful, yet in order to advance as an operations officer, Ames needed overseas experience.

According to the CIA IG report, Ames's supervisor had recommended a Rome assignment to him. Ames applied for a position in Rome dealing with Soviet operations, and in July 1985, was approved for the job. Ironically, the European Division Chief who approved Ames's assignment was one of the senior officers who, when stationed in Ankara in 1972 as Ames's supervisor, recommended that Ames was better suited to work at headquarters because of his poor performance.

A message from CIA headquarters to Rome, advising of Ames's forthcoming assignment there, described him as "highly regarded by SE Division management....," but a senior SE Division officer who knew Ames told the CIA IG that his transfer overseas was seen as a good way to move a weak performer out of headquarters.

Ames's Access to Information:

After completing Italian language training, Ames, accompanied by Rosario, arrived in Rome in July 1986, where he began his assignment as chief of a branch which, among other things, dealt with Soviet operations. As a branch chief, Ames had access to the true identities of CIA agents, the details of planned agent meetings, and copies of the intelligence reports produced by these agents. He participated in weekly staff meetings where intelligence assets and potential asset recruitments were discussed. He coordinated double agent operations of the U.S. military services and received sensitive intelligence reports about worldwide events.

Ames provided whatever he felt was important to the Soviets. Ames has stated that he routinely carried shopping bags full of classified documents out of the office. After Ames's arrest, the FBI was able to confirm that during his tour in Rome, Ames also received and responded to specific tasking by the KGB about past CIA penetrations of the Soviet intelligence services. In recent debriefings, Ames also admitted to providing extensive data to the KGB on the identities of Soviet and Eastern European officials who were cooperating with the CIA.

While Ames had ready access to considerable information of interest to the Soviets, some of Ames's colleagues in Rome stated in FBI interviews that he frequently showed interest in areas unrelated to his immediate area of responsibility. Unfortunately, none of those colleagues ever made this a matter for the record. One officer told FBI investigators that Ames was always asking a lot of questions, saying he was keeping abreast of intelligence information. Other former colleagues in Rome reported that near the end of Ames's tour, he often asked questions about cases which had no relation to his past or current post.

Ames's Meetings With Soviets:

Early in his tour in Rome, Ames began meeting and initially reporting on his contacts with Aleksey Khrenkov, his new Soviet intermediary. Code named "Sam II," this official, a Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs officer employed at the Soviet Embassy in Rome, served as the liaison between Ames and the KGB.

Ames's meetings with Khrenkov were widely known and accepted within Ames's office, but his supervisors and co-workers assumed he was meeting with Khrenkov to develop him as an intelligence source. Initially Ames informed his superiors in Rome and at CIA Headquarters that the relationship between him and Khrenkov was evolving, and could lead perhaps to a recruitment. At the same time, Ames downplayed the potential of this operation. According to the IG report, Ames attempted to dampen his superiors' enthusiasm for the case by explaining Khrenkov was of limited operational value.

Nonetheless, this operational guise gave Ames the cover to meet overtly with Khrenkov. It was during these meetings that Ames would turn over classified documents and receive new instructions. Ames failed to submit reports documenting many of these meetings, as required by CIA regulations, and his supervisors do not appear to have closely monitored this relationship.

Some of Ames's colleagues in Rome began to suspect that Ames was not reporting all of his meetings with the Russians. According to the CIA IG report, Ames's supervisor was aware that Ames was in contact with a Soviet embassy officer, but apparently did not query him about the relationship or ensure that he was documenting all of his contacts. One of Ames's subordinates in Rome told the FBI after Ames's arrest that she had suspected Ames was not fully documenting the relationship between himself and the Soviet official. In fact, she had searched the office data base to see whether Ames was reporting all of his contacts. Although she concluded that he was not, she did not notify any senior manager.

KGB Meetings and Payments:

In addition to his regular meetings with his Soviet embassy contact "Sam II," Ames met three times in Rome with a KGB official from Moscow, whom he called "Vlad," whom he had previously met in Bogota, Colombia in December 1985. "Vlad" would travel to Rome for the meeting. "Sam II" would pick up Ames in his car, and drive him into a Soviet compound for an evening rendezvous. Ames has said he used a light disguise for these car rides, pulling a hat over much of his face, and crouching low in the car when they drove through the streets of Rome and into the Soviet compound gates.

During these meetings in the Soviet compound, which took place without the knowledge of U.S. officials, Ames and "Vlad" would typically talk for three to four hours about the information Ames provided, and future meeting plans. Then Ames would be driven out of the compound. Ames has claimed that he often drank heavily before and during these meetings.

At most of his meetings with "Sam" and "Vlad," Ames received cash payments that typically varied from $20,000 to $50,000 per meeting. In order to handle this large influx of cash, Ames opened two bank accounts in Credit Suisse Bank in Zurich -- one in his name, and one in the name of his mother in law. In the latter account, Ames was listed as the primary trustee. Many of his cash deposits in these accounts were in large amounts for example, one deposit was for over $300,000. The CIA investigation later determined that Ames deposited a total of at least $950,000 into the Swiss bank accounts while he served in Rome.

In order to discourage undue scrutiny of his finances by banking officials, Ames avoided frequent or high dollar electronic bank transfers from Rome into his Swiss bank accounts, instead traveling to Switzerland on several occasions with large amounts of cash which he deposited directly into his accounts. Some of these trips were made without the knowledge of his CIA superiors, in violation of regulations requiring that all overseas personal or business travel by CIA employees be approved by CIA officials.

Aldrich and Rosario Ames also spent a considerable amount of his KGB earnings while in Italy. Recent debriefings of officers who served with him indicate there was a general awareness among his co-workers that Ames was affluent. One officer has described Ames's spending as "blatantly excessive," and stated that everyone knew and talked about it. Many of his colleagues were aware that Ames and his wife took numerous personal trips throughout Europe -- to Switzerland, London and Germany. One colleague knew that the Ameses had telephone bills totaling $5,000 monthly. In fact, according to the CIA IG report, the Rome security officer brought Ames's spending and drinking habits to the attention of the senior CIA officer in Rome, but the perception that Ames had created -- that Rosario came from a wealthy family seemed to diffuse any security concern over the Ames's extravagant spending habits. No mention of these issues was included in Ames's personnel or security file.

Ames's Professional Record in Rome:

Ames's job performance in Rome was mediocre to poor. Of the four job performance evaluations Ames received during his Rome tour, the first two commented positively on Ames's personnel management skills, but noted he needed to do more work in developing new leads. In his second evaluation, Ames's supervisor wrote, "He handles no ongoing cases; his efforts to initiate new developmental activity of any consequence have been desultory.." This was an extremely critical evaluation of an operations officer. The last performance appraisal in Rome, written by a different supervisor, noted Ames's performance was inconsistent and that "his full potential has not been realized here in Rome." One of Ames's senior managers recently commented that he felt Ames had been a "terminal GS-14" and a lackluster, "middleweight" case officer.

As in previous tours, Ames was persistently late in filing financial accountings of his official expenditures. According to the CIA IG report, Ames blames this on sheer procrastination on his part. This problem was widely known among Ames's supervisors. In fact, Ames's supervisor in Rome confronted him with this problem, leading Ames to close out his account and use his personal funds to pay for job related expenditures. He submitted his expenses for reimbursement, but Ames's new supervisor in Rome made him reopen his operational account.

Ames's job performance was further marred by his alcohol dependency, which resurfaced in Rome and was well known within the office. Once again, however, there was no official record made of his drinking problems. In post arrest debriefings, former Ames's colleagues stated that Ames would go out for long lunches and return to the office too drunk to work. One of his Rome supervisors recalled that Ames was drunk about three times a week between 1986 and 1988. Another colleague commented that in 1987 Ames was very upset when he failed to get promoted, and he began to drink even more heavily. One of Ames's supervisors reportedly once described Ames to a colleague as "one of the worst drunks in the outfit."

On at least two occasions, Ames's alcohol problem came directly to the attention of his supervisors. In the first instance, Ames returned from a meeting with "Sam II" unable to write a message for transmission to Washington, as directed by his supervisors. On the second occasion, Ames became drunk at an embassy reception in 1987. He got into a loud argument with a guest, left the reception, passed out on the street, and woke up the next day in a local hospital.

Ames's supervisor orally reprimanded him for this latter incident. According to the CIA IG report, Ames recalls that his boss came to his office after the incident, and "in an almost sheepish way" attempted to counsel him. The official recalled that he warned Ames another such incident would result in his being sent back to Washington. But no official action was taken as a result of the incident.

Ames's drinking apparently took a personal toll as well. According to the CIA IG report, Rosario Ames told FBI debriefers that alcohol was partly to blame for damaging her marriage to Rick. She said her marriage had fallen to pieces during their Rome tour, and they had numerous fights.

Conclusion of Ames's Tour in Rome:

Although Ames's performance had been mediocre at best and his alcohol abuse well known, Ames's superiors extended his two year assignment in Rome for another year. CIA headquarters officials approved the extension to July 1989.

Near the end of his Rome assignment, between May and July 1989, the KGB provided Ames with two documents which were later retrieved during the FBI investigation into Ames's activities. The first was a financial accounting which indicated that the KGB had provided Ames by that time with approximately $1.8 million dollars, and that $900,000 more had been set aside in his name in Moscow. CIA officials have since speculated that the KGB probably provided this influx of funds to motivate Ames to continue spying for them after he returned to Washington.

The second document was a nine-page letter which showed that Ames would be given another $300,000 in two meetings prior to his departure from Rome. The letter also listed KGB questions for Ames to answer once he returned to headquarters from his Rome assignment. The KGB's top priority was "information about the Soviet agents of CIA and other (security services) of your country." Other priorities included information about double agent operations and leads on possible recruits for the KGB within the CIA. This document also included a new communications plan for Ames's use when he returned to Washington, D.C. Known as an "impersonal" communications plan, the new guidelines were established to increase the security of Ames's communications with the KGB. They proposed dates in the coming year for Ames to pass documents and receive money through impersonal clandestine communication sites, also known as "dead drops."

The new communications plan also called for Ames to meet with his senior KGB officer at least once yearly outside of the United States. Meetings were planned for Bogota, Colombia on the first Tuesday of every December, with additional meeting sites, such as Vienna, Austria, listed as alternative sites if needed.

On July 20, 1989 Aldrich and Rosario Ames returned to Washington, D.C. from Rome.

Compromises Confirmed:

By the fall of 1986, as Ames was beginning his tour in Rome, CIA officials had learned of numerous additional intelligence sources who had been arrested or executed. The magnitude of the disaster was apparent. In the words of one CIA officer: "There was a huge problem, (a perception) shared all the way up to the top of the Agency, including Mr. Casey."

According to the CIA IG report, Agency officials now knew that as many as 30 CIA and FBI Soviet operations had been compromised or had developed problems between 1985 and 1986. (Each case represented an individual who was providing useful information, but who may or may not have been a fully recruited individual).

After his arrest, Ames acknowledged that he informed the Soviets about approximately ten top level cases as part of the information he passed on June 13, 1985. Overall, Ames has acknowledged providing the Soviets with information on over a hundred Soviet and East European cases during his espionage. In addition, Ames had access to several hundred other Soviet and East European operational endeavors that he may have passed to the Soviets, but he says he is unable to remember specifics. Even in the fall of 1986, the damage to CIA's Soviet program was seen as immeasurable. In November 1986, the chief of the Soviet Counterintelligence Group in the SE Division wrote a memorandum to his senior management outlining his concerns. The memo described "45 Soviet and East European cases and two technical operations that were known to have been compromised or were evidencing problems." Further, in a January 22, 1987 memo to CIA managers, he added, "It seems clear, if only from the statistics, that we have suffered very serious losses recently and that not all these compromises can be attributed to (Edward Lee) Howard. In fact I am not aware of any Soviet case we have left that is producing anything worthwhile." It is not clear whether and to what extent either of these memoranda was sent outside SE Division.

Even though the magnitude of the losses was clear, CIA's initial responses (as described earlier in the report) were limited to reviewing the compromised cases, examining the possibility of a technical penetration, and tightening the compartmentation of ongoing Soviet cases within the SE Division.

It was not until October 1986, that CIA management took its first significant step to resolve the 1985 compromises. The Chief of the Counterintelligence Staff named a four person analytical group known as the "Special Task Force" (STF) within the counterintelligence staff of the Directorate of Operations. Two of the team members were experienced Soviet operations officers who also had significant counterintelligence experience. The remaining two team members were annuitants, who were retired operations and counterintelligence specialists, one of which had significant Soviet operations experience. The senior CIA managers who ordered the creation of the Special Task Force did not require that the team include individuals trained in investigative techniques or financial reviews. Rather they were looking for seasoned officers who had operational or counterintelligence experience, and who understood the Directorate of Operations. According to the CIA IG report, there was a commonly held belief, apparently shared by successive Deputy Directors for Operations, that a small team was preferable because it reduced the chance that a potential "mole" would be alerted to the investigation.

The STF was tasked to look at all the cases known to be compromised and to identify any commonalities among them. Some of the questions the Task Force considered were:

- What CIA offices had been involved in the compromised cases, or had known about them?

- Within these offices, which CIA employees had access to the information?

- How many of the compromises could be accounted for by the Edward Lee Howard betrayal and, of those remaining, how many could be explained by other factors, such as poor operational procedures by CIA officers?

The Task Force analyzed all of the compromised cases, searching for patterns or other indicators which could shed light on the catastrophe. The CIA IG report indicates, however, that the STF did not create a formal list of suspects who had access to the compromised information and did not initiate investigations of specific individuals who were considered likely suspects. The IG report also notes that the team did not conduct a comprehensive analysis of cases that had not been compromised, which might have shed light on the similarities among those cases that had been compromised. According to the then Chief of Counterintelligence in the SE Division, CIA management was supportive of the special task force review, but did not apply pressure on them or attach undue urgency to the investigation:)

People ask me whether (my supervisors) bugged me about it (the investigation). I said, no, they didn't bug me about it because they don't call up their doctor every five minutes and say, do I have cancer. But we kept them informed. I mean, they did not put a lot of pressure on us, but they encouraged us...The problem was that we didn't make progress in it and we didn't get any answers.

In October 1986, the same month the CIA established the Special Task Force, the CIA and FBI learned that two Soviet sources who had worked closely with the FBI had been arrested, and were about to be executed. The FBI responded by creating its own six person analytical team known as the "ANLACE Task Force" which worked full time to analyze the compromise of its two sources.

CIA and FBI Cooperation:

The CIA and the FBI task forces shared some information informally, and in December 1986, held the first of eight "off-site" conferences (conducted between 1986 1988) to discuss the compromised intelligence sources. The CIA briefed the FBI regarding the compromises it was aware of, and the FBI in turn provided briefings on a series of investigative leads it had received in the mid-1970s, but could not resolve, which related to possible penetrations of the CIA. The FBI believed these old leads might hold the key to the 1985-86 compromises. The December 1986 "off-site" meeting with the FBI prompted at least one CIA participant to raise concerns to the Chief of the CIA's SE Division about the FBI's inquisitiveness regarding CIA organization and activities. Pointing out that the FBI had disclosed its own "dirty linen" at this meeting, the CIA participant wrote "a conscious decision has to be made here concerning the degree to which we are going to cooperate with, and open ourselves up to, the FBI..."

In general, throughout the 1986-1988 period when the joint agency meetings were held, the CIA gave the FBI information pertinent to its cases and gave detailed summaries of its own compromises as it learned of them. On the other hand, the CIA did not give the FBI open access to its operational files. It was explained to the Committee that this had been standard operating procedure between the two agencies where there was no information indicating a specific human penetration of the CIA.

Indeed, in opening the second joint meeting between the CIA and the FBI in March 1987, the head of the CIA's counterintelligence staff praised the cooperation between FBI and CIA officials and noted that "the concept of SE Division, Office of Security, CI Staff, and the FBI working together is something previously unheard of." The IG report on Ames also concluded that, while the CIA and FBI had experienced problems in dealing together in the past, the Ames case was an exception. It stated, "All-in-all, coordination between CIA and the Bureau on the Ames case was exemplary."

The Lonetree Case:

In late December 1986, several months after the CIA and FBI had created their respective task forces, a Marine security guard at the U.S. Embassy in Vienna, Austria, Clayton Lonetree, confessed to a CIA officer that while previously serving at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, he had had a relationship with the KGB. In February 1987, in the course of the ensuing espionage investigation by the Naval Investigative Service, a Marine guard who had served with Lonetree, Corporal Arnold Bracey, told investigators that Lonetree had told him that he (Lonetree) had let the KGB into the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

This information had an immediate and dramatic impact upon the Special Task Force at the CIA. Task Force members hypothesized that had KGB officials been able to enter the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, they may have been able to obtain access to CIA operational records maintained there. The Task Force (and many other U.S. Government elements) spent several months trying to deter mine whether such an entry had occurred, and whether the KGB had gained access to CIA records.

In the meantime, Bracey had recanted his earlier statement to investigators, and Lonetree, in debriefings following his criminal conviction, denied he had ever allowed the KGB into the Embassy -- an assertion confirmed by polygraph examinations. By the end of August 1987, most of the Special Task Force was persuaded that the Lonetree case was a "dry hole" in terms of explaining the 1985 86 Soviet compromises. The CIA IG Report on Ames indicates that while the STF was able to rule out Lonetree as the cause of the compromises, the possibility of a human penetration remained. According to the head of the team, the STF was forced to go "back to square one." The "mole hunt" was not renewed until 1991.

Ames, then serving in Rome, saw the Lonetree case as a fortuitous development. In September 1987, Ames wrote a message to the KGB on his personal home computer speculating that Clayton Lonetree would divert attention from his own case.

Part 2

An Assessment of the Aldrich H. Ames Espionage Case and Its Implications for U.S. Intelligence, Part 1

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence 01 November 1994 Part One

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
01 November 1994
Part One