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That was the least of what Ames and his wife were up to. They had a secret that would become too big to conceal. Over the next nine years, according to a detailed affidavit released last week by federal prosecutors, Ames allegedly sold the KGB and its successor agency, the MBRF, the names of Soviet agents who had been recruited by the CIA, as well as valuable secrets about U.S. surveillance of the Soviet Union. During that time, the couple made dozens of large cash deposits to two Virginia banks and transferred other sums to banks in the U.S. and abroad. Eventually these transactions totaled $1.5 million -- all of it allegedly paid to the Ameses first by the Soviet Union, then by Russia, in exchange for national-security secrets. Last week Ames, 52, and his wife, 41, were arrested in Arlington, Virginia, and charged with conspiracy to commit espionage. If convicted, they could face life in prison.
In Washington officials speculated that the Ames case could prove to be the worst betrayal of intelligence agents in U.S. history. With Ames refusing to talk and his wife only hinting that she might cooperate, spymasters and legislators could only guess at the extent of the damage. Ames knew the true names of virtually all the Soviet agents, and later Russian ones, being recruited. As many as a dozen CIA operations may have been compromised as a direct result of the Ameses' activities, resulting in the execution of as many as 10 Soviet agents. There was no indication that Ames had passed along military secrets, but the possibility that he tipped off Moscow to virtually every CIA intelligence-gathering operation against the Soviets in recent years poses grave questions about America's security apparatus in the post-cold war era.
Politicians were quick to ask those questions. Democrat Dan Glickman of Kansas, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, pledged an "extensive, exhaustive review" of the case. Republicans in both chambers demanded a "rethinking" of the Clinton Administration's close ties to Russian President Boris Yeltsin and threatened to halt aid to Russia if Moscow didn't come up with some explanations -- and fast.
The Administration took several steps to calm the mounting fury. President Clinton demanded that Moscow immediately withdraw from Washington any Russians involved in the alleged espionage, and called for cooperation in U.S. efforts to assess the damage. A high-level CIA team was dispatched to Moscow to obtain information from the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. After they returned empty-handed, Clinton ordered the expulsion of Alexander Lysenko, a Washington-based Russian "diplomat" who is reputedly the MBRF's top-ranking official in the U.S.
The most uncomfortable questions have more to do with U.S. intelligence failures than Russian perfidy. When and where was Ames recruited? Did he recruit his wife -- or was it the other way around? Why did their activities go undetected for so long? Given his GS-14 salary of $69,843, why didn't their $540,000 house and $65,000 Jaguar raise alarms? When did CIA and FBI investigators begin to catch on? If it was as early as 1986 and no later than 1991, why did investigators wait so long to make the arrests? Most important, are there other moles burrowed within the CIA?