One of the worst traitors in American history has died. Aldrich Ames was a CIA officer who spent years spying for the Soviet Union before he was arrested in 1994. Ames died, fittingly enough, in a federal prison. His legacy offers important lessons for American policymakers contending with growing espionage threats.
Ames died on Monday at the Federal Correctional Facility in Cumberland, Maryland. He was 84 years old. As the longtime national security correspondent Walter Pincus observed, Ames was responsible for the “most damaging breach” in the CIA’s history, “reportedly causing the deaths of at least 10 recruited CIA or allied intelligence agents.” Ames was a double agent for nine years, beginning in the mid-1980s and ending with his arrest by the FBI in February 1994.
