I Spy with My Little Eye

Wed 30 March 2011

I Spy with My Little Eye

Filed under: #satscene —— Sylvia @ 20:55

On the 26th of March 1941, Aldrich Hazen Ames was born in River Falls, Wisconsin. At the time of his arrest, Ames had compromised more CIA assets than any other Soviet mole in American history.

He began working at the CIA at 16 as a records analyst and ended up in the Career Trainee Program, remaining an employee of the agency for a total of 31 years until his arrest for espionage. He was first asked to investigate and recruit Soviet intelligence officers in Turkey at the beginning of his career. By the mid-1980s, his marriage was ending and his excessive drinking was “noted upon” in his files. In 1985, he offered information to the Soviets in return for $50,000 to allow him to pay his debts and divorce settlement. He continued to trade the names of high level CIA agents in return for cash. 10 agents were assassinated but the CIA initially investigated for espionage techniques from outside, unwilling to believe in a leak within the agency. Although Ames was heavily involved in counter-intelligence and failed at least one lie detector test, he did not appear to come under serious suspicion for years.

Aldrich Ames

While working in Soviet counterintelligence for the CIA, Ames provided over 100 names of agents working undercover in the Soviet Union. For this he was paid $2.5 million, allowing him to live a lifestyle that should have aroused suspicion of the CIA, but somehow did not. Even though he wore a Rolex, drove a new Jaguar, and recently moved into a $540,000 mansion (which he paid for in cash).

The CIA finally put Ames under surveillance in 1993 and arrested him less than 6 months later.

Moral of the story: if you want to keep your finances a secret, don’t wear a Rolex.

71 years later, on the 26th of March 2011, these entirely uncontroversial and definitely not confidential photographs were submitted as Saturday Scenes: