ALDRICH HAZEN AMES IS AN ALL-AMERICAN BOY, born in River Falls, Wisconsin on 26 May 1941, the son of a minor academic and a high school English teacher. In 1947 the CIA was founded, with one of its main tasks the collection of foreign intelligence. Casting around for people who might be of use in this endeavor, the CIA’s attention was drawn to Rick’s father, Carleton Ames, who had received a PhD in Burmese history in 1949. Carleton was recruited into the Agency, and the family, consisting of wife Rachel Ames, Rick, and two younger sisters, moved to Washington.
In 1953, Carleton was sent to Rangoon, and his family accompanied him. Unfortunately, aside from his linguistic abilities Carleton had no talents that would make him a success as an operations officer. His tour lasted the minimum two years, after which he returned to Washington, never to serve overseas again. He was assigned to the recently established Counterintelligence Staff and remained there in an analytical position until his retirement.
When the family returned from Rangoon, Rick became a freshman at McLean High School, where he was active in the drama and debating clubs. His mother was a popular English teacher at the high school. After he turned sixteen, he applied for a summer job at the CIA. He worked there for two summers in lowly clerical and maintenance jobs. It was, and is, the practice in the CIA to employ teenage children of its employees for summer work. They are already vetted to some degree because of their parents’ clearances. However, due to their youth they are not polygraphed and do not have access to sensitive information.
In the fall of 1959, Rick matriculated at the University of Chicago. This was his first time away from home and he did not have the self-discipline to study and attend class regularly. As in high school, he was active in a drama group. Eventually he was dismissed from the university, but did not return home right away. Instead he worked temporarily in a local theater.
By early 1962 Rick was back in McLean and applied once again to the CIA. He was hired in June as a full-time clerical employee, assigned to a position in the Directorate of Operations as a document analyst. At the same time he was accepted at George Washington University, and continued his studies part time, graduating in 1967 with a bachelor’s degree in history and a fairly decent grade-point average.
After graduation, Rick applied for officer status through the Career Training Program (CTP). Candidates have to pass intelligence tests, tests on current events, personal interviews, and psychological screening. Rick was successful, although not highly recommended. These were the days of the Vietnam War, and the CIA was pressed to build up its cadres. Perhaps under other circumstances he might not have made the cut. This same year his father retired from the Agency.
Rick was in training from December 1967 to September 1968. Having successfully completed the course for DO operations officers, he was assigned to the then-Soviet Bloc (SB) Division. This is where we first crossed paths with him. He was promoted to GS-09 in June 1968, to GS-10 in June 1969, and to GS-11 in October 1970. (These promotions were non-competitive. All CTP graduates were routinely promoted as far as GS-11 unless they made some serious misstep. After GS-11, their promotions had to be earned.)
In May 1969 Rick married Nancy Jane Segebarth, also a CIA officer. She had joined the Agency in 1964 after graduation from Denison University, and had completed the Career Training Program some time before Rick did. She subsequently worked as an analyst in the Directorate of Intelligence.
In September, Rick, accompanied by his new wife, arrived in Ankara, Turkey to serve as a junior officer in the CIA Station. The Deputy Chief of Station was Duane R. “Dewey” Clarridge, who had transferred from Istanbul to Ankara a year after Rick’s arrival. In his memoir, A Spy for All Seasons: My Life in the CIA, Clarridge's assessment of Rick, while somewhat overdone, is not far off the mark: “He lacked the necessary, fundamental personality skills. . . . He was in the wrong business or, at least, the wrong side of the intelligence trade. He was introverted and devoid of interpersonal skills. He was never going to be effective with foreigners, as he was unable to relate to them, much less bring them along toward recruitment. . . . Perhaps because of all this and his concurrent frustration, Ames had developed an indifferent attitude toward his work.” In his final written review of Ames’ performance, Clarridge recommended that Ames be assigned to analytical work.1
Ames and his wife left Ankara in January 1972. During their tour, she had resigned from the Agency. In those days wives took second place to their husbands when it came to careers. Although she had a higher grade than her husband, she had been assigned to a routine job that did not match her talents and that she did not find acceptable. She never returned to the Agency and indeed always regarded it with a jaundiced view.
After home leave, Ames took a position in SB Division until starting full-time Russian language training in January 1973. He completed the training but never really had a good grasp on the language. Before starting the course he took a language aptitude test and was judged to be somewhere in the middle. However, it is difficult to imagine him spending many hours memorizing declensions, conjugations, vocabulary lists, and stress patterns.
Ames spent the next two and a half years at headquarters in the newly named Soviet and East European Division. Among other things, he served as the desk officer for the operation involving Aleksandr Dmitriyevich Ogorodnik, who was encrypted as AEKNIGHT and later CKTRIGON. Ogorodnik was a Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) officer stationed in Bogota, Colombia, where he was recruited by the CIA in 1974. Ames supported this phase of the operation. Later, Ogorodnik returned to Moscow, where he remained in touch through our station there. In the summer of 1977 he was arrested by the KGB but before he could be interrogated he committed suicide with a cyanide pill that we had supplied to him. Although there are some who disagree, it is generally thought that Karel Koecher, who had been infiltrated into the CIA by the Czech intelligence service and who was involved in the translation of some of the audio coverage of the AEKNIGHT operation, was responsible for providing the lead to Ogorodnik that the KGB was able to capitalize on.
Rick enjoyed his work on this case, particularly one task that took a lot of time and that most desk officers would have shunned. Ogorodnik asked for help in fulfilling his MFA collection requirements. Rick would research and write unclassified responses for passage to Ogorodnik, who in turn provided them to his supervisors for transmittal to Moscow. For his work on the headquarters desk, Ames was promoted to GS-12 in November 1974.
In August 1976 Ames was transferred to New York City. This was his most successful tour. He was not required to spot, assess, develop, and recruit sources of intelligence for the U.S. government. Rather he was assigned to participate in the handling of two important Soviet cases, in close cooperation with the FBI. One of the cases was that of Ambassador and Under-Secretary-General at the United Nations Arkadiy Nikolayevich Shevchenko (CKDYNAMITE). Shevchenko worked in-place for the FBI and CIA before his 1978 defection.2 The other case was think-tank researcher Sergey Fedorenko, discussed in Chapter 12 above.
An incident in connection with this case received a certain amount of attention after Ames’ arrest although it was not considered highly remarkable at the time, and Ames did not receive any official reprimand. Ames was returning from a meeting with Fedorenko and was traveling by subway. He dozed off or got distracted. Right after leaving the train at his stop he realized that he had left his attaché case behind, and that the case contained notes from the meeting. He immediately called one of his FBI contacts, who managed to retrieve the briefcase in short order. Fortunately, no harm was done.
Ames spent five years in New York, a longer-than-usual tour, and a sign that his supervisors were pleased with his work. In January 1979 he was promoted to GS-13.
By the summer of 1981, it was time for Ames to move on. After having turned down some other possibilities, he accepted a direct transfer to Mexico City to head the branch that worked against the Soviet target. His wife did not accompany him because she did not want to give up her prospering business career. This decision marked the beginning of the end of their marriage.
Now a geographical bachelor in Mexico, Ames was free to follow his own inclinations. It appears that he increased his alcohol consumption during this period. He became friendly with a group of embassy officers who enjoyed indulging in long, liquid lunches. Also, there was no one to inhibit his after-hours drinking because he occupied an apartment by himself. Moreover, he was again in a position where he was expected to do his share of spotting, assessing, and development of foreigners toward eventual recruitment. Not unexpectedly, he followed his Ankara pattern of doing little in this arena although he was facile in developing ideas for others to execute.
While it may appear surprising to the outsider, in May 1982 Ames was promoted to GS-14. This was his last promotion, and he received it for the work he had done in New York. The CIA bureaucracy creates substantial time lags between an individual’s achievements and recognition thereof. Performance appraisal reports are normally prepared only once per year. They are then followed by lengthy panels comparing the accomplishments of all officers in a certain grade with the same specialty. The panel’s recommendations are next reviewed and the number of promotions available is established. Lastly, the promotions are finalized and announced.
During his tour in Mexico, Ames had a fateful encounter. He met Maria del Rosario Casas Dupuy, Cultural Attaché at the Colombian embassy. Rosario was already known to the CIA Station. She had been recruited by case officer David S to serve in two roles. First, she agreed to allow her apartment to be used for case officer meetings with agents while she was at work. Secondly, she functioned as what is called an “access agent.” That is, she reported to the CIA on individuals of interest with whom she came into contact. She served as secretary of the local diplomats’ association, known as AMCOSAD, and therefore met representatives from numerous countries. However, according to extant records, she did not do much for the CIA and was paid only the nominal sum of one hundred dollars per month.
Soon after Rick met Rosario, romance began to bloom. Intellectually, they were well suited, although Rosario’s scholarly attainments far outweighed his. Possibly, Rosario was thinking in terms of marrying an American diplomat who would be an ambassador some day. At this point she did not know about his CIA affiliation and, indeed, was very unhappy when she learned the truth.
Although Rick tried to keep the relationship somewhat discreet because people knew that he was married, they did go places together and Rick took her to at least one office party. By the end of his tour, the romance had become quite serious.
Rick left Mexico City after serving a minimum tour of two years. Among other shortcomings, he never obtained a useful grasp of Spanish, and he never brought any of his contacts to operational fruition. Leaving Rosario behind, he headed for Washington and a job at CIA headquarters.
Again, we see the hand of fate. Many have asked why Rick, after a lackluster performance in Mexico, was chosen to head up one of the most sensitive branches in SE Division. Rod Carlson was the group chief in SE who was responsible for three branches. One branch, headed by Jeanne at this time, was responsible for all CI production from defectors and in-place Soviet and East European sources. The second branch was responsible for monitoring all East European developmental operations and recruited sources from a CI point of view. The third, now headed by Rick, had the same responsibilities for Soviet cases. Jobs in these branches, important though they were in the overall scheme of things, were more geared to persons with an analytical or research bent. Therefore they were not always highly popular with operations officers who liked on-the-street work and often there were few applicants for vacant positions. As an officer with overseas operational experience against the Soviet target and observable intellectual capabilities, Rick was a strong candidate and thus got the job.
Not long after Rick had settled into his Washington job, he was joined by Rosario. The precipitating event was the death of her father in December 1983. Rosario had been close to her father, and his death deeply affected her. Rick did his best to console her long distance, but she soon gave up her job and moved in with him in his rented apartment in the Virginia suburb of Pimmit Hills. His wife Nan was still in New York and, for all practical purposes, their marriage was over.
Now Rosario no longer had an income. In her defense, it should be pointed out that she was in the United States on a visitor’s visa, which would have limited her job opportunities. She also had to return to Colombia every few months to renew her visa. However, it seems that she spent her ample free time spending Rick’s money. For a time, Rosario’s mother visited them and joined in the spending spree. As always, Rosario wanted only the best for herself. One cannot imagine her shopping at Wal-Mart. Nordstrom and Nieman-Marcus were more her style. The same applied to dining out. No McDonald’s, but evenings spent at the Palm, Galileo, and other upscale restaurants.
As time went on, Rick could see himself falling ever more deeply into debt as a result of Rosario’s extravagances. Moreover, he was still married to Nan and knew he would have to make some sort of financial settlement with her. She held pension rights to his salary and they owned a townhouse together in Reston, a middle-class Virginia suburb. Along with all this, he could see that he might have reached an impasse in his career. It was still not clear that he had seen his last promotion; however, it was evident that he was not a candidate for fast-track advancement.
Whether there were any precipitating factors is not known, but by the early spring of 1985 Ames had decided that the soundest way out of his financial difficulties was to commit espionage. It is difficult to comprehend that a person would take this drastic step, but the psychological studies of Americans who have committed this crime show that they have one factor in common: narcissism. In their minds, what is important is self-gratification or self-interest. In order to achieve their selfish goals, they generally require substantial sums of money. That they are betraying their colleagues, their organization, the lives of other people, and their country as a whole seems not to weigh in the balance. From what we know, this appears to be true of most of the important American spies of the past thirty years, although revenge can also be a factor, as in the case of Edward Lee Howard, and the rare ideological spy, such as Cuban spy Ana Montes, still exists.
As outlined in Chapter 14, on 16 April 1985, Ames had scheduled a meeting with Soviet embassy arms control specialist Sergey Dmitriyevich Chuvakhin. This was a sanctioned contact, and the planned meeting was known to the FBI and CIA. However, Ames intended to use this contact as a cover for making his approach to the KGB. Ames had suggested to Chuvakhin that they get together for drinks at the Mayflower Hotel, a short distance from the Soviet embassy, and Chuvakhin had agreed. Ames showed up on time, but Chuvakhin never appeared.
Fortified by several vodka martinis while waiting for Chuvakhin, Ames eventually strolled over to the embassy. He knew that the receptionist at the entrance would be a KGB employee and he handed this individual an envelope he had intended to pass to Chuvakhin at the Mayflower. The outer envelope was addressed to the local KGB chief in true name. Inside was a second envelope, this time addressed to the same KGB chief by his operational pseudonym. This was designed to get the KGB’s attention because no one outside the KGB would be privy to this name. Ames had of course gotten it from the CIA/FBI debriefing of either Sergey Motorin or Valeriy Martynov, the two penetrations of the KGB in Washington. (Throughout, we provide the story of these events as Ames told them to the FBI after his sentencing, supplemented by other information on Chuvakhin and local KGB CI chief Cherkashin compiled by the FBI at the time. The version given by Cherkashin in his recent book varies considerably in the details. According to his own statement, Cherkashin retired in 1991, and subsequently had no access to KGB records. Therefore, while the broad outline of events is correct, his recollection of individual episodes may be faulty.)3
The double-wrapped envelope contained a message. According to Ames, he provided information on two or three cases that the CIA Station in Moscow was handling. He says he believed that these cases were being run against us by the KGB, and that he was not giving information that would harm anyone. They would, however, help to establish his bona fides as a CIA insider. Also included in the envelope was a two-page telephone list, containing the names of all SE Division management personnel down to the deputy branch chief level. He says that he underlined his own name because he had no intention of concealing his identity. The message asked for fifty thousand dollars in recompense for the information he had provided. He had chosen this sum because, while he was in Mexico, the KGB had made a recruitment approach to a CIA transcriber/translator, and had offered him that amount. Ames thought therefore that this would sound like a reasonable offer to them. He also suggested that Chuvakhin be used as a go-between because they already had an overt relationship that, halting as it was, had been approved by the FBI and CIA.
Having made his overture, Ames settled down to wait. He knew that no decision could be made locally; the facts would be sent to Moscow, and Moscow would determine what to do next. From time to time, Ames called Chuvakhin with an innocuous-sounding suggestion that they get together, knowing that if the decision had not yet been made, Chuvakhin would put off meeting with him. Then, in mid-May, the breakthrough came. Chuvakhin, who had previously never taken any initiative in the relationship, called Ames and suggested that they get together for a drink at the Soviet embassy and then proceed to lunch at a local restaurant.
On 15 May, Ames showed up at the Soviet embassy as scheduled. There Chuvakhin turned him over to Cherkashin. Because Cherkashin was afraid that the FBI could have bugged the room in which they met, or possibly that Ames was a provocation and had come to the meeting wearing a recording device, they merely exchanged written messages and did not speak out loud to each other. Cherkashin informed Ames that the KGB accepted his offer and that he would be paid the fifty thousand dollars he had requested. Further, they agreed that Chuvakhin could be used as the go-between for the time being.
There was no lunch with Chuvakhin that noon. It was postponed for two days. Then the routine was established. Ames and Chuvakhin would lunch periodically. Each would carry a shopping bag to the lunch, and the bags would be exchanged. Ames’ bag would contain classified documents and perhaps an operational message for the KGB; Chuvakhin’s bag would contain press handouts from the Soviet embassy, plus perhaps money, Russian vodka, and a message from the KGB. After each lunch, Ames would write up an official CIA communication for the FBI and for CIA’s Washington Station, with a ho-hum account of the non-operational aspects of the meeting. His aim was to make the contact seem mildly worthwhile, so that he would not be told to break it off, while at the same time not making it sound so promising that it would attract undue interest.
According to our best calculations, Ames passed Chuvakhin what has become known subsequently as the “big dump” on 13 June. This was a collection of documents that provided information on all of the major cases that the CIA and FBI were running against the Soviet target—information that directly led to the deaths of a number of these assets. The KGB appreciated the value of Ames’ offering because a few months later he received an operational message from them stating: “Congratulations, you are now a millionaire!” The KGB had set aside two million dollars for him.
If we accept Ames’ statements that the big dump took place on 13 June, then we have a puzzle. Oleg Gordievsky, the deputy KGB resident in London and a longtime British source, was recalled to Moscow on 17 May and interrogated, although not arrested. Either Ames has, innocently or deliberately, given the wrong date, or Gordievsky was betrayed by someone or something else.
To deepen the mystery, Cherkashin tells a hard-to-swallow story about a “Washington-based British journalist” providing the KGB with information that tipped Cherkashin off that Gordievsky was working for the British, and Cherkashin told his KGB boss about this case personally during a visit to Moscow in the spring of 1985.4 This simply does not fit with reality. First of all, as far as the FBI has ever been able to determine, Cherkashin did not leave for Moscow until 20 May, while Gordievsky was recalled three days earlier. Secondly, the Washington-based British journalist has all the earmarks of being a false lead planted by Russian intelligence to cover up the real story. Surely Cherkashin had to submit his manuscript to the SVR for approval before he published it, just as we have to do.
One could speculate that the real story of Gordievsky’s downfall has not yet come out, and that the Russians have some good reason for obfuscating. One plausible explanation is that Ames gave up Gordievsky in April when he made his first approach. However, in that event, why are the Russians trying to fool us more than ten years later? Ames readily admits that he gave up Gordievsky, but believes that it took place in June, at the time of the big dump. Surely the date is not important enough to warrant concocting a false scenario. As far as the two of us are concerned, Gordievsky’s compromise still remains a mystery.
On 31 July, Ames and Chuvakhin had a planned lunch meeting at Chadwick’s in Georgetown. To Ames’ surprise and consternation, they were joined by other Soviet officials, including Cherkashin. One reason for placing the two in the same place at the same time had to do with KGB worries about the CIA’s polygraph requirements and their unfortunate attempts to solve the problem. If asked during a polygraph examination whether he had met any KGB officer in Washington, Ames could reply in the affirmative and point to this luncheon. However, despite the KGB’s best efforts, Ames was faced with a dilemma. Up to now he had been dutifully reporting each outing with Chuvakhin, who was not an intelligence officer and not of high interest to the FBI. If he reported this contact honestly, to include Cherkashin’s presence, it would shine a spotlight on him, something he needed to avoid. If he reported the meeting but stated that only he and Chuvakhin were present, he had to consider that Cherkashin was the focus of intense FBI coverage. What if the FBI had him under surveillance that day, and tracked him to Chadwick’s?
When faced with this knotty problem, Ames did what he often did—he procrastinated. Indeed, he never wrote a report on this meeting. He had good excuses for getting behind in his write-ups, because on 1 August KGB CI officer Vitaliy Yurchenko defected and Ames was chosen to be one of his debriefers. Also, he was deep in wedding plans. Thus, despite repeated requests he managed to avoid putting anything on paper. And soon he was in full-time Italian language training, away from the headquarters building except on Fridays and hard to reach by telephone, because he was in class.
Some have tried to give a sinister cast to the connection between Ames and Yurchenko. However, Ames did not choose himself for the job of debriefer; it was chosen for him by division management, probably because he was knowledgeable about the KGB, had some Russian, and was available. Furthermore, he was only one of a team of three CIA debriefers, with the FBI fielding its own team. To cap it off, Yurchenko had round-the-clock guards from the CIA’s Office of Security. (As it happened, Dan Payne, a prominent figure in this book, was one of them.) In sum, before his defection Yurchenko could not know the circumstances he would be held under, and Ames only knew after the event that he would be involved in the debriefing. The two did have one or two semiprivate conversations at an early point but there’s no reason to think they touched on Ames’ espionage activities. And in September Ames left his debriefing activities to start Italian language lessons and had no further contact with Yurchenko.
Rick and Rosario’s wedding celebration was a low-key affair, although he now had enough money to allow for more of a splash. It took place on 10 August, not long after his divorce was finalized. The ceremony was held in a Unitarian Church. It was attended only by family members and a few close friends, including Diana Worthen. Rosario was a Roman Catholic but the Unitarian Church was selected because of Rick’s divorce. Rick himself is not known to have been a churchgoer, or to have had any particular interest in organized religion once he reached adulthood. By this time, Rosario had become a U.S. citizen, which was required by CIA regulations. She had also successfully completed a CIA polygraph.
Ames’ first face-to-face meeting with Vladimir Mechulayev, the KGB officer who was to become his primary handler for the next few years, took place in Bogota in December 1985. As previously agreed in operational notes, Ames waited for his Soviet contact in a Bogota shopping mall. His handler approached him with the proper password or parole. They then proceeded to a Soviet embassy vehicle and drove away to the Soviet compound. Once inside, in a room set aside for the purpose, the two men began to get to know one another. They had a lot to discuss, with emphasis on making arrangements for communications during Ames’ upcoming tour in Rome. The meeting lasted a long time. Ames’ excuse for leaving Rosario and her family was that he wanted to do some Christmas shopping. However, when he did not return in good time, they began to worry about his safety. Luckily, Ames did return before they called the police, but it was a close shave.
In July 1986 Rick and Rosario left for Rome, where Rick was assigned as chief of the Enemy Targets Branch. This meant that he had responsibility for operations not only against the Soviet target, but also against the East Europeans, the Chinese, and the North Koreans.
As far as his espionage activities were concerned, they followed more or less the same pattern that had been developed in Washington. Again, a go-between was employed. This time it was a Soviet diplomat named Aleksey Khrenkov. However, the relationship between Ames and Khrenkov was somewhat different from that between Ames and Chuvakhin. Chuvakhin had always been a reluctant player, and he and Ames never had any conversations relative to the clandestine aspects of their lunch dates. Khrenkov, on the other hand, seemed to enjoy Ames’ company and from time to time stated that it was an honor to be dealing with him. We do not know whether Khrenkov was a deep-cover KGB officer. The CIA had no previous traces on him, but it is certainly possible. It is also possible that he was someone known to us, serving abroad in alias.
The procedure of exchanging shopping bags continued, with Ames handing over large volumes of Rome Station traffic and receiving money, vodka, and innocuous unclassified Soviet embassy handouts in return. It had been arranged with Mechulayev during the Bogota meeting that Khrenkov would be at a certain diplomatic reception in Rome and that Ames should be there too. They would meet casually in the course of the party and strike up a light conversation. Eventually, one or the other would extend an invitation for drinks or lunch. This charade was employed so that Ames would have a cover reason for his acquaintance with Khrenkov. Indeed, as had been the practice with Chuvakhin, at least at first, Ames duly reported each meeting with Khrenkov, describing it as low-key developmental activity. Because the CIA file on Khrenkov contains only three cables, some of this reporting must have consisted only of comments to Station management on the order of “By the way, I ran into Khrenkov the other day, but he didn’t have anything noteworthy to say.” Ames was faced with the same dilemma as in Washington. He wanted to cover himself by reporting his contacts, but he did not want to say anything that would cause anyone to pay particular attention to them. As it happened, he was lucky because senior Station management did not seem overly interested in the Soviet target and he was able to take advantage of this lack of attention.
The meetings with Khrenkov were supplemented by annual visits from Moscow by Mechulayev. After a clandestine car pickup, Khrenkov would drive Ames to the Soviet housing complex where Mechulayev would be waiting for him in a private room. As before, they would have a long sit-down meeting, discussing events so far and making plans for the future. During one of these meetings, Ames told Mechulayev about two cases that he had not included in the big dump. One was Sergey Fedorenko, the think-tank researcher who was run by the FBI and CIA in New York in the 1970s. The other was a Soviet academic whom Rick had also known in New York. It appears that Rick had some residual feeling for these individuals, because of his personal encounters with them, and was somewhat reluctant to betray them. However, by 1986 his loyalty to his KGB handlers overrode these qualms.
It was during one of these Rome meetings that Rick struck a new financial agreement with the KGB. It appears that, having promised him two million dollars in late 1985, there were no plans to pass him additional funds. However, Ames wanted a regular income so it was finally decided to pay him ten thousand dollars per month. He also received a bonus at the time of his son’s birth in November 1988.
Because he was always paid in cash, Ames began to have a money-laundering problem. To alleviate his situation, he opened two accounts at the Credit Suisse in Zurich and traveled there from time to time to make deposits. He would usually drive and take Rosario with him, because Zurich was her kind of town. Ames had bought a second-hand jaguar and, as he drove over the Alps, he pictured himself as the new James Bond. At least that is what he told his debriefers after he had been convicted and sentenced.
In July 1989 Ames and his family left Rome. They took some vacation time, and then proceeded to buy a home in North Arlington and decorate it to their liking. Before leaving Europe, Ames went to Switzerland to withdraw most of his ill-gotten gains from his bank accounts. It was this money that was used to buy the house.
After tending to his personal affairs, Ames reported for duty at CIA headquarters in September 1989. He was assigned as chief of the European Branch in the External Operations Group of the Soviet and East European Division. In this position he had access to information on all developmental cases and recruited assets run by the CIA against the Soviet and East European target in the European area. This was a position that must have been of high interest to his KGB handlers, but he held it for only a few months. In the wake of the upheavals in Eastern Europe he was transferred to be Chief of the Czechoslovak Operations Branch in January 1990, to manage the new opportunities now available in that country. In this position he had much less access to information of value to the KGB.
Another reassignment took place in August. Ames was chosen to serve on a promotion panel, ranking GS-12 officers and evaluating their eligibility for promotion to GS-13. He was now almost completely divorced from regular access to operational information, but no doubt gleaned some juicy personnel tidbits that could be of value to his handlers, should they ever decide to use them. Specifically, he reviewed the files of our officers under non-official cover, our most vulnerable employees. How much of this information he gave to the KGB is unknown. Ames says that he did not supply them with most of what was available to him, at least in any systematic way.
The panel lasted about two months. Ames did not return to SE Division, but moved to the Analysis Group of the Counterintelligence Center for a one-year rotational assignment. There his job was to provide analysis on the KGB. It was in this position that he got access to CIA holdings on the double agents being run by the U.S. military and the FBI against the KGB and GRU. He periodically copied this information from a computer database and passed it to the KGB, thereby compromising pretty much the entire program. He also had access to historical information on some of our most important Cold War cases. This too was passed. Professionally, he wrote a paper on the internal KGB, with emphasis on its regional offices, and one on the KGB’s relationship with Cuban intelligence.
Once his tour in the Analytic Group was at an end, Ames returned to SE Division for a short time. He was assigned to the “KGB Working Group,” and worked closely with the new division chief, Milt Bearden. His job was to think strategically about how the CIA should manage its dealings with the KGB in the future. This effort has been described as “placing a stake in the heart of the KGB,” but the evidence does not support that view. Indeed, as outlined in Chapter 13, the KGB was no longer considered a major adversary and Ames, as instructed by Bearden, wrote short conceptual reports about the new outlook.
Once his temporary assignment to the KGB Working Group was finished, Ames was transferred to the Counternarcotics Center, where he served as the officer responsible for Central Eurasia in the Regional Programs Branch of the International Counternarcotics Group (CNC/ICGRP). He remained in CNC until his arrest in February 1994.
We cannot take credit for assigning Ames to CNC, although it was an ideal place to put him as our suspicions continued to grow, and we kept him there as part of a conscious effort. Indeed we got him promoted to a more prestigious position in 1993. This served two purposes. First, he was required to serve in CNC for another year as part of his enhanced status. Secondly, he now had a private office. This permitted the FBI additional opportunities for video coverage of his activities.
Our interests in the counternarcotics arena are similar to those of Russia, and we have developed a cooperative relationship. Therefore Ames had little access to specific operational endeavors that would have been of use to his SVR handlers. (As previously noted, the foreign operations element of the KGB had metamorphosed into the SVR in December 1991.) However, he was still privy to such CIA matters as personnel assignments, policy and guidance directives, technical developments, and changes in our methods of operation.
Before Ames returned to the United States in the summer of 1989, he and his handlers had worked out a system of two-way dead drops in the Washington area. Ames would put down a package in a pre-arranged location. One drop site was located under a bridge. The package would be covered in dark plastic, such as is used for garbage bags, and would contain classified documents. Ames would then signal to the KGB that he had loaded the drop by making a mark. One such signal was a chalk mark on a mailbox in Georgetown. The KGB followed a reverse procedure. They would load a drop containing money and perhaps an operational note with questions for Ames or directions for future communications. Once they had loaded their drop they would signal to Ames and he would pick it up.
The above procedures worked successfully, but were only carried out a few times a year. just as had been done with Walker in the past, and was being done with Hanssen concurrently, it was possible for the KGB to circumvent FBI coverage. However, each exchange had its risks, and because they were infrequent Ames was limited in the amount of classified materials he could pass.
The drop system was supplemented by annual meetings either in South America or in Europe. As always, Ames preferred Bogota because he had a reason to go there. However, the KGB sometimes insisted on meeting in other venues, to include Vienna and Caracas. There were some hitches in the procedure, with Ames not always showing up where he was supposed to at the scheduled time, because of either his drinking or simple carelessness. At some point Mechulayev was taken off the case. He was replaced by Yuriy Karetkin. We do not know why the change was made, but it may have been caused by KGB management’s concerns over Rick’s undisciplined behavior and their lack of control over him.
Throughout the operation, the KGB and SVR generally paid Ames in non-sequential U.S. hundred-dollar bills but at least once during the Roman phase in Swiss francs or German deutsche marks. During his yearly meetings, he was handed $100,000 to $150,000 in currency. The procedure was for Ames to bring a stash of classified documents from the United States to each overseas meeting. Generally, he placed these in his carry-on luggage or in an empty computer carrying case. When he got his bundle of cash in return, he again used his hand luggage for transportation. In those pre-9/11 days, he relied on the fact that he was traveling as a U.S. official and that he did not fit the profile of a terrorist. Therefore he thought it unlikely that his luggage would be searched.
Not surprisingly, Ames had an ever-growing cash flow problem. His solution was to dribble his currency into the economy in relatively small amounts. He made cash deposits to his various bank accounts, and he paid Rosario’s credit card bills at local upscale department stores and boutiques the same way. Sometimes he had a cash backlog so he hid stacks of bills in his garage, where Rosario had access to them if needed.
We are often asked about Rosario’s role in Ames’ espionage career. As described in Chapter 16, some have concocted a theory that his espionage started in Mexico City in the early 1980s and that Rosario played a significant role from the beginning. However, this theory does not seem to be tenable.
According to stories told separately by Rick and Rosario after their arrest, in 1985 or 1986, when the money started to roll in, Rick explained to Rosario that the new income came from a friend named Bob in Chicago. When Rick was at the University of Chicago back in the 1960s, he had done Bob a favor by arranging an abortion for Bob’s girlfriend. In the intervening years Bob had become wealthy and when he heard that Rick was going to Rome, he asked Rick to take care of his European investments. This was a pretty unbelievable story because Bob did not manifest his existence in any way. He did not send a Christmas card, did not write or phone, and never visited the Washington area. Furthermore, as Rosario should have been aware, Rick had absolutely no qualifications to serve as anyone’s financial counselor.
In any event, Rosario must have known that Rick was up to something illegal because she co-signed his income tax returns each year. These were filled out as if Rick’s only substantial income was from his GS-14 salary, as reflected on his W-2 forms. On the other hand, we tend to believe that Rosario did not know that he was involved in espionage on behalf of the Russians until a year or so before their 1994 arrest. They both told a somewhat muddled story about her having found an operational message in one of Rick’s old wallets. She was upset for two reasons. First of all, this was serious business and could incur severe penalties. Secondly, she did not like Russians, believing them to be uncultured peasants.
All of this did not stop her from enjoying the ill-gotten gains, however. Before Rick made his last trip to Bogota, he and she had a conversation that was recorded by the FBI in which she discussed the money that he was going to get. And when he reached Bogota they had another conversation, this time on their tapped telephone, which indicated that she was anxious that everything would go smoothly and successfully. These conversations, plus her signature on the IRS forms, earned her a five-year prison sentence. After she finished serving it, she left immediately for Colombia, where she still lives today with her family. The family had cared for her son while she was incarcerated. Typically, she accepts no responsibility for what happened, blaming everything on Rick.
What was Rick like as a person? Sandy first met Rick in the early 1970s when they were in the early stages of their careers as SE Division officers. Although they did not socialize outside the office, they came to know one another fairly well in 1975, when they, along with two other Division officers, carpooled. The rides to and from work were enjoyable, consisting of friendly banter and discussions of hypothetical operational scenarios. To Sandy the Rick Ames of the 1970s and early 1980s was simply a nice guy—easygoing, a good conversationalist, and comfortable to be around. Like an absent-minded professor, he was unpretentious in dress and manner. His hair was unkempt, his sock colors often did not match, his shirts were rarely pressed, and he was always late for the carpool whether he was the driver or the rider. However, none of that really mattered to his contemporaries at the office. Rick was just Rick—a gentle sort whose company his fellow officers enjoyed while silently laughing at his goofy physical appearance. This is not to say that he was always happy-go-lucky. Occasionally he became irritated, particularly if his operational judgment was questioned by those at his level. They might be equals, but he was a greater equal. Nevertheless, to this day Sandy insists that there was no way the Rick of those early years could have ever betrayed his colleagues and his country to become one of the most famous traitors of our time. He had neither the anger, the courage, nor the soul to commit such an act.
Jeanne’s contacts with Rick covered the same period, but were more casual. Like Sandy, she remembers him as being mildly unkempt, with hair that badly needed styling, teeth stained from his cigarette habit, and outmoded frames for his eyeglasses. On the other hand, she found him an interesting conversationalist, full of ideas. He was not the sort of person who bored his listener with descriptions of the traffic on his way to work or comments about the cafeteria menu. Like many who knew him superficially in the office, Jeanne as well as Sandy had no idea that his alcohol consumption was anything but normal.
In retrospect, there are some aspects of Rick’s background and persona that warrant comment. First of all, his father’s CIA career was a relative failure, a fact he must have known. Indeed, Rick has stated that he read his father’s personnel file. This is somewhat baffling because he should not have had access to this restricted record. Rick could not or would not explain how it happened. Yet it was important enough for him to have remembered it and mentioned it during his 1994 debriefings.
Rick’s mother, on the other hand, was a popular teacher at McLean High. In contrast to his father, his mother was successful in the career path she had chosen. It must not have been comfortable for Rick to be a student at a school where his mother was a teacher, but we do not know how he dealt with this situation.
Many have commented on Rick’s lack of self-discipline and tendency to procrastination. His unsuccessful career at the University of Chicago is an early example. Certainly he had the intelligence to succeed but, away from home for the first time, he failed to study or attend classes regularly. Throughout his career his managers recorded his inattention to submitting his financial accountings on time. And there was one fairly egregious instance where he neglected to submit a performance appraisal report (PAR) for one of his employees on time, finally handing in a sloppy, superficial product. It was so far below standards that, when the promotion panel convened to review all PARs for the year it was singled out for criticism and a formal memorandum was sent to Rick outlining his deficiency in the matter.
Along with his lack of self-discipline, Rick had a habit of doing only what interested him, and letting other things slide. As someone said, he “never had a boss.” When intellectually engaged, he could do a superior job and could articulate why a certain project was important or why it was necessary to make a specific decision. His work in the counternarcotics center in developing coordination between the countries bordering the Black Sea is an example. Even after his sentencing, he was still interested in how this initiative was faring.
Another example is his behavior vis-à-vis the GTWEIGH case in the summer of 1985. He had an advisory role in operational decisions involving Division sources and developmental cases outside the Soviet Union. For the first time in Sandy’s experience in the Africa Branch, Rick not only exercised his role on one of her cases, but did so forcefully. He was adamant in his disagreement with Sandy on the passage of funds in Moscow and repeatedly argued that the potential risk of compromise to Poleshchuk was too great.
What is of particular interest here, of course, is whether Rick was making this argument because he really believed it, even though he was working for the KGB and the position he was advocating worked against KGB interests. Jeanne believes that Rick was able to compartmentalize. Sometimes he was a straightforward, concerned CIA officer, with no heed to the fact that he was also a KGB spy.
Sandy disagrees with this interpretation. She contends that Rick wasn’t arguing his course of action because he really believed it was correct, even though it worked against KGB interests. She sees his action as a combination of guilt and self-preservation. Even Rick has some soul and it must have been almost unbearable waiting for his actions to culminate in the various arrests. Conversely, in his arrogant mind he could make himself look good by advocating the proper decision. He was in a position to say: “I told you all it was too dangerous. See how smart I am.” Lastly, his advocacy made him an unlikely suspect should GTWEIGH’s compromise lead to an immediate mole hunt.
Along with all this, as Sandy has noted, Rick had some of the attributes of an absent-minded professor. The most famous example of this trait is his behavior in New York, as recounted earlier. After meeting a sensitive asset, Rick took the subway to a rendezvous with the FBI. He got off the train, leaving his briefcase, which contained debriefing notes, behind. Luckily the FBI safely retrieved the briefcase for him.
While Rick would vehemently deny it, both Jeanne and Sandy sensed that, with the exception of his wives, he had a somewhat condescending attitude toward women. Although his first wife Nan outranked him and made more money than he did, which was unusual in those days, he remained extremely proud of her intellectual abilities and achievements. Moreover, after she left the Agency he often spoke glowingly of her work on the 1972 congressional campaign of Democrat joe Fischer, who ran against and defeated a well-known incumbent Republican. The same can be said of Rick’s respect for Rosario and her academic accomplishments. However, outside the house Rick’s offhand comments and demeanor left a different impression regarding his views on the ability of women in the workplace. Also, we had the distinct feeling that he was pleased to know that it was two women that were heading up the investigation of the 1985 compromises, because it would be easier to outwit us.
In the later days of his career, after he had become comfortable with his espionage activities, Rick exuded self-confidence, as if he was certain that he would never be caught. Whether this had anything to do with his attitude toward women, or whether it was associated with his long-held inability to face unpleasant facts, is moot, but it certainly existed. On Sandy’s first morning in the Counterintelligence Center, Rick nonchalantly walked into her work area to welcome her. After some small talk he casually asked about her new assignment. When told that she and Jeanne and two FBI representatives were going to try to find answers to our 1985 compromises, Rick immediately began a lecture on the most basic tenets of a counterintelligence investigation. “Sandy, the first thing you should do is look for differences between the cases we lost and the new sources we are currently and successfully running.” He added that he would be more than happy to offer any assistance. A few months later, Jeanne had a similar experience. The day after Rick had been interviewed by the task force, Jeanne and he happened to be waiting for an elevator at the same time. Rick mentioned the interview, said that he had given the problem some thought and, like he had with Sandy, offered his assistance.
Much has been made of Ames’ alcohol use. As we see it, he certainly abused alcohol on occasion and is best described as a binge drinker. Yet he could use alcohol normally on social occasions and he was not alcohol-dependent in the sense that he slipped some vodka into his orange juice every morning. Interestingly, neither of his two wives, when interviewed after the arrests, considered him a true alcoholic.
Rick probably began drinking early in adulthood. As noted in Chapter 12, there were two DUI incidents at the outset of his career, and he overindulged at two Christmas parties. The only time that his management took official notice of his drinking was in Mexico City. When Rick came back to headquarters after this assignment, he was called in by the Office of Medical Services for an interview. He admitted that he had been drinking too much, but attributed it to the breakup of his first marriage and the subsequent stress. He added that he was now on an even keel and alcohol was no longer a problem.
This was not the truth, however, because on one occasion in Rome he got dead drunk and was picked up by the police. Significantly, this happened while Rosario was away in Bogota visiting her family. She herself drank very little and did her best to limit his consumption when she was on the scene. For whatever reason, Station management never reported this lapse to CIA headquarters. Another binge took place not too long before his arrest. Once again he was out of Rosario’s control, on a trip to meet his KGB handler in Europe. He spent the night in a Zurich hotel. Rosario knew where he was and telephoned him. She got a thoroughly incoherent response when she reached him.
There were also occasions, both in Rome and at headquarters where Rick went out for lunch, had too much to drink, and came back and took a nap at his desk. These cannot have been too frequent, however, because most of his colleagues were not aware of any problem. In general, it appears that overindulgence in alcohol was a solitary pastime. When in company, he drank normally but, as he himself stated during his debriefings, sometimes he felt he “owed it to himself” to go to a bar and knock back a few vodkas.