The CIA mole whose cash deposits outpaced the hunt for him

On February 21, 1994, FBI agents arrested Aldrich Ames in Arlington, Virginia. The CIA officer had spent nearly a decade supplying Moscow with secrets about American intelligence operations. His access came from the same career that should have made him useful against Soviet intelligence: he spoke Russian and specialized in its services. The FBI dates his approach to the KGB to April 16, 1985, when he volunteered at the Soviet Embassy in Washington and soon received $50,000.

The money eventually provided a trail. According to the Justice Department inspector general, a joint CIA-FBI team had compelling circumstantial evidence by August 1992. Investigators had linked meetings with a Soviet diplomat to large cash deposits, often made on the next business day. Credit card records showed monthly charges reaching $30,000. Yet no team member or CIA manager recommended opening an FBI investigation at that point. Officials waited for the joint team’s final report in March 1993.

The subsequent surveillance was concrete and patient. The FBI says it watched Ames make a chalk mark on a mailbox on October 13, 1993, signaling a planned meeting in Colombia. Agents later observed him and his handler separately in Bogotá. Searches of his home uncovered material tying him to Russian intelligence. Ames and his wife pleaded guilty on April 28, 1994; he received life without parole. Rosario Ames received a 63-month sentence later that year.

The inspector general’s 1997 review distinguished that successful investigation from the years preceding it. Senior FBI managers had not understood the scale of the Soviet-source losses, and coordination with the CIA repeatedly faltered. The review attributed the compromise and execution of at least ten intelligence sources to Ames’s disclosures. ABC News reported in January 2026, citing the Bureau of Prisons, that Ames had died in federal custody at 84.