One of the most notorious spies in U.S. history, Aldrich Ames, died on Tuesday at the age of 84. As a CIA officer, Ames sold highly classified secrets to the Soviet Union starting in the mid 1980s.
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
One of the most notorious spies in U.S. history, Aldrich Ames, died yesterday at the age of 84. He was serving a life sentence in federal prison in Maryland. Before being caught, though, he did a lot of damage. As a CIA officer, Ames started selling highly classified secrets to the Soviet Union for nearly a decade, starting in the mid-1980s, which led to the arrest and execution of numerous agents recruited by the CIA. We’re joined now by John McLaughlin, who’s with the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He also served in the CIA when Ames was arrested. Welcome.
JOHN MCLAUGHLIN: Thank you, Juana.
SUMMERS: Just start if you can by telling us who Ames was and about his career in the CIA before he began spying for the Soviets.
MCLAUGHLIN: Ames was a – what we would call an operations officer – a case officer – who worked in different parts of the world, operating undercover and meeting foreign nationals and attempting to recruit them as assets – as spies for the CIA. Eventually, he gravitated to the division at CIA that worked on the Soviet Union. And as he rose in his career, he became an officer in what we called the counterintelligence area of the Soviet office.
SUMMERS: How did he begin spying for the Soviet Union? Like, what was his motive?
MCLAUGHLIN: Well, motives are always hard to define in the case of spy cases. We tend to use an acronym – MICE, M-I-C-E – which stands for money, ideology, compromise and ego. Those four characteristics are things that we often look at when we’re trying to understand spying. Ames is an odd case, but I think money was a big factor. And I would say in an odd sort of way ego – that is, people get a thrill sometimes out of spying. And in his case, I’m not sure it was a thrill so much as it was a kind of cynicism about the fact that his career hadn’t gone as well as he hoped. So there was a kind of ego factor, but I would say the big driver was money.
SUMMERS: Can you describe or characterize the type of information that he shared with the Soviet Union?
MCLAUGHLIN: In the first instance, and what brought to our attention the possibility of what we would call a mole in our midst, was the disappearance of a key agent – I would say one of the very best, most productive agents the CIA ever had in Moscow. His name was General Polyakov, and he reported to us for years on many aspects of Soviet policy. As one person said, he didn’t so much prevent the Cold War or end the Cold War as he did from keeping it from going hot. He began to run into trouble and then eventually disappeared. And in fact, subsequently we learned and know now that he was executed by the Soviets in 1988, and in all likelihood that his identity was given to them by Rick Ames.
SUMMERS: What sort of impact did the information that he shared have on the CIA, and what was the scope of the information that he shared?
MCLAUGHLIN: The thing that everyone talks about is that he identified our assets, and at least nine or 10 of them were executed by the Soviets after being investigated in the Soviet Union and identified.
SUMMERS: Did you know him personally?
MCLAUGHLIN: I met him a few times.
SUMMERS: Well, what was your impression of him, then?
MCLAUGHLIN: My impression of him comes mostly from people who knew him better and would comment on him. And he was, I guess, a so-so officer in terms of his professional performance and had a number of personal characteristics that ultimately drew attention to him as the search for a mole narrowed down. I mean, the agency started with about 160 suspects. In other words, when you have a spy, you ask yourself who in your midst had knowledge of the kinds of information that are certifiably being lost. So he gave himself away by spending too lavishly on his lifestyle.
Ultimately, the people who discovered this and the investigating team was most importantly driven by two outstanding women who began to notice a correlation between times when he would meet with Soviets at the embassy, which he was authorized to do for purposes of just general discussion, but they noticed a correlation between the times when he met with them and the times when there were large bank deposits by Ames.
SUMMERS: Looking back at this entire story, do you think that something like this could happen again today?
MCLAUGHLIN: Yes. I have no reason to believe that. I’m not in the intelligence world at this time. But at the end of the day, this is a human activity. At the end of the day, humans are humans and they have emotions, and the issue of trust is as emotional an issue as anything else. There’s a reason why this part of the intelligence world is called the wilderness of mirrors – because you’re constantly looking 360 degrees to understand what is going on.
SUMMERS: John McLaughlin is a professor at Johns Hopkins University. Thanks so much.
MCLAUGHLIN: Thank you, Juana.
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