April 30, 1993
April 24, 1994
An expensive divorce and spendthrift new wife led to one of the worst acts of treason in US history.
For 31 years, Aldrich Ames served as a CIA counterintelligence specialist but was also a KGB double agent for the last nine years of his career.
And, by the time he admitted selling secrets to the Soviet Union in 1994, he’d compromised more highly classified CIA assets than any other traitor – at least 10 of whom were executed.
Ames had basically blundered into a career with the agency, starting as a lowly clerical worker before being accepted on to their trainee programme.
He proved better at paperwork than at recruiting agents but he progressed through the ranks, despite an inattention to detail that once saw him leave a briefcase full of classified material on a New York subway.
Ames’ performance suffered as his weakness for women and heavy drinking increased.
However, in spite of being fully aware of this, in 1983, his superiors posted him to a department in Washington where he had access to all CIA plans and operations against the KGB and Soviet military intelligence.
Later that year Ames was divorced and admitted to having an affair with Maria del Rosario, a cultural attache
in the Colombian Embassy. The divorce settlement saw him agree to pay the couple’s debts and support his ex-wife financially.
Meanwhile, Rosario spent thousands phoning her family back home and went on shopping sprees.
When Ames was arrested, the CIA found more than 60 purses, 500 pairs of shoes and 165 unopened boxes of tights in their home.
Ames later admitted this financial pressure led him to contact the KGB.
In 1985, he first provided information and asked for $50,000 which was quickly paid.
Each time he met his Russian contact, Ames was passed tens of thousands of dollars and he eventually pocketed $4.6 million from Moscow.
The information he provided caused the CIA’S network of Soviet-bloc agents to disappear at an alarming rate with several killed thanks to the spy codenamed Kolokol – “The Bell”.
The CIA set up a team to hunt for the leak and, in 1989, one of Ames’ colleagues reported he was enjoying a lifestyle way beyond his means, including paying cash for a Jaguar and $540,000 house.
Ames made no attempt to hide his lifestyle but the CIA only focused on him when it was noticed he’d had cosmetic dentistry and bought tailor-made clothes.
Ames and Rosario were arrested in April, 1994. She was sentenced to five years, while Ames is serving life without parole.
Monica Seles was stabbed in the back by a crazed tennis fan during a match in Hamburg.
The 19-year-old world No 1 suffered a half-inch deep wound but loner Gunter Parche, obsessed with Steffi Graf regaining top spot, was given a suspended sentence.