CIA Officer Convicted of Espionage Dies at 84

(MENAFN) Aldrich Ames, once a senior officer at the CIA whose betrayal to the Soviet Union and later Russia resulted in one of the gravest intelligence breaches in American history, has died at the age of 84 in a federal prison in Maryland, according to a media outlet.

The Bureau of Prisons confirmed his death on Monday. Ames and his wife, Rosario, were arrested in 1994. He admitted guilt to espionage and tax evasion, receiving a life sentence without parole, while his wife was sentenced to just over five years for aiding his activities.

For nearly a decade, Ames supplied Moscow with highly classified information, acknowledging that he had received $2.5 million in payments from Russia.

In a jailhouse interview with a news outlet conducted a day before his sentencing, Ames explained his decision to spy, citing “financial troubles, immediate and continuing” as his motivation.

His case reemerged in public discourse in 2018 with the release of Ben Macintyre’s book The Spy and the Traitor, which revisited the scale and consequences of his espionage.

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