Aldrich Ames spent nearly a decade selling secret information to the Soviet Union, harming more than 100 covert operations and killing at least 10 Western intelligence assets. On April 28, 1994, the dual agent was sentenced to life imprisonment. In February of that year, the BBC spoke with a spy who was betrayed by Ames but told a story alive.

In 1985, Soviet agents working for the CIA suddenly began to disappear. These Western intelligence sources are accepted, interrogated by the Soviet Intelligence Agency (KGB) one by one, and are often executed.

Oleg Gordievsky is one of the dual agents. As head of the KGB station in London, he has been working secretly at the British Foreign Intelligence Agency MI6 for many years. But one day he found himself in Moscow, after asking about drug use for five hours, exhausted and faced the possibility of death of the shooting squad. Gordievsky nearly escaped his entire life after car boots smuggled him from the Soviet Union.

Afterwards, Godivsky tried to figure out who gave him. "For nearly 9 years, I have been guessing who the man is, who is the source of betray me, and I don't know the answer," he said in an interview with BBC Tom Mangold in a February 28, 1994. "Two months later, Gordievsky was in the experienced Aldrich Ames Aldrich Ames conforties and Alldrich Ames conforties and of Allos and Oultroom and confortial and conformity and and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip and conforceip two months later.

On April 28, 1994, Ames admitted that he leaked more than 30 agents who monitored the West and compromised more than 100 secret operations. The betrayal of the KGB code name Kolokol (The Bell) It is well known that Ames' betrayal resulted in the execution of at least 10 CIA Intelligence assets, including General Dmitri Polyakov, an Soviet Army intelligence officer, who has provided information to the West for more than 20 years. Ames, the most destructive KGB mole in American history, was convicted and sentenced to no parole.

Just like British spy Kim Philby became a Soviet agent in the 1960s, it also shocked the British institutions, "It's now Washington's turn to stare at the incredible gaze within the range of Ames' damage."

It was Ames' role as head of the Soviet counterintelligence department of the CIA that caused this damage. It gave him almost unrestrained access to confidential information about the secret U.S. operations against the Soviet Union and, crucially, his agents’ identity in the field. Ames's position also means he can sit in the report of other Western spy agencies. This is the most valuable spy in Britain, Gordievsky, Colonel of the KGB, who is moving important intelligence to two British services MI6 and MI5, to contact him. Mangerd said the meetings would create a weird situation where “the top defectors of the KGB defectors were reported by the top Moore moles”.

"Americans are very thorough and very good at debriefing," Goldivsky said. "I'm very enthusiastic. I like Americans. I want to share my knowledge with them and now I realize (Ems) is sitting there. It means everything, all the new answers to the new information, he has to pass on to the KGB."

Ames has been exposed to the world of spies since he was a child. His father was a CIA analyst and after he dropped out of school, he helped his son find a job at the agency. But Ames' later decision to betray the intelligence service would be driven by ideological doubts rather than his money needs.

Initially, Ames showed hope as a counterintelligence official. He was sent to Turkey in the late 1960s with CIA agent Nancy Segebarth, who was tasked with recruiting foreign agents. But by 1972, his boss called the CIA headquarters and felt that he had not cut off work on the spot. Back in the United States, he learned about the Russians and was appointed to take on-site operations against Soviet officials.

His father's struggle with alcohol fell into a CIA career, and likewise, Ames' own heavy drinking began to derail his progress. In 1972, he was found by another agent, drunk and in a compromise with female CIA employees. Ames' lack of attitude towards work didn't help the situation, which led him to leave a briefcase full of confidential information on the subway in 1976.

To get his career back on track, Ames accepted his second overseas release to Mexico City in 1981, while his wife stayed at her New York home. But his actions and continued excessive drinking meant he did not distinguish himself as a CIA official. In 1981, he was involved in a traffic accident in Mexico City and was so upset that he could not answer police questions and even recognized a U.S. embassy official coming to help him. After a special drunken blasphemy remark with a Cuban official at the embassy’s diplomatic reception, his superiors suggested that the CIA assess his alcoholic addiction when he returned to the United States.

Ames also continues to engage in extramarital affairs, one of which will be his turning point. At the end of 1982, he began to establish relationships with the Colombian cultural annex that recruited the CIA Maria del Rosario Casas Dupuy. Their romance became more and more serious until Ames decided to marry Rosario with his first wife and bring her back to the United States.

Although he hasn't performed well with the CIA, Ames continues to fail upward. After returning to the agency's headquarters in 1983, he was appointed head of the counterintelligence department of the Soviet operation, giving him extensive access to information about secret CIA activities.

Ames agreed as part of a divorce agreement with Nancy to repay the debt they paid as a couple and pay monthly support. Ames' money problems were aggravated by the expensive tastes of his new wife, Rosario, her love for shopping orgy and the calls she often calls her family, and Ames' money problems were out of control. He would later tell Arizona Senator Dennis DeConcini that it was his debt escalation that led him to consider selling his chances. "I felt a lot of financial pressure, and in retrospect, I obviously overreacted," Ames said.

FBI agent Leslie G Wiser was involved in the investigation that led to Ames' arrest, he said in 2015 historic history of witnesses to the BBC.

On April 16, 1985, Ames entered the Russian Embassy directly in Washington, DC. After entering the room, he passed the receptionist's envelope containing some dual agent names, showing his certificate as an insider of the CIA, and a note asking for $50,000. He claimed in a Senate report that he initially thought it was a one-time deal to lift him out of the financial black hole, but he quickly realized that he "crossed a line and that I can never back down."

Over the next nine years, Ames received payments to pass a large amount of top-secret information to the KGB. He will use confidential documents – detailing new state-of-the-art technology from connected listening devices to Moscow space facilities to nuclear warheads capable of calculating Soviet missiles – wrap them in plastic bags and take them out of the CIA. Because his role involves official meetings with Russian diplomats, he is often able to meet his handlers face to face without raising suspicion. He will also leave a package of confidential documents on a secretly pre-arranged website called "Dead Drops".

"For example, if he was going to drop, he would put a chalk mark on his mailbox, and the Russians would see that chalk mark, and then they would know that the drop was full of the file," Wiser said. "Later, when they retrieve the file, they would go and erase the chalk mark. Then, he would know that the transfer of the file is safe, secure."

As Ames leaked secret intelligence information, the KGB could identify almost all the CIA spies in the Soviet Union, effectively shutting down its U.S. covert operations. "In the United States, I don't know that any other spy or moles have caused such loss of human life in terms of human assets," Wiser said. The sudden disappearance of so many CIA assets did cause alarms and triggered a search for moles inside the agency in 1986, but for the best part of a decade, Ames will continue to slide under the radar.

He earned a generous income for his betrayal, earning about $2.5 million from the Soviet Union. Ames has hardly tried to hide his newfound wealth. Although he never paid more than $70,000 a year, he bought a new $540,000 home in cash, spent tens of thousands of dollars on home renovations, and bought a Jaguar. It was his luxury lifestyle and spending that would put him in the spotlight and led to his arrest by Wiser's FBI team in 1994.

Ames worked with authorities after being accepted by the FBI. He detailed the extent of his espionage in exchange for a plea agreement that sentenced Rosario to leniency, who admitted that she had known about the cash and meetings with the Soviet Union. She was released five years later. Ames, the highest CIA official of all time, continues to be exposed as a dual agent to sentence him to life sentences in the U.S. federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.

To this day, Ames showed little remorse for his actions or the death they caused. "He has a high opinion of himself," Wiser told Ames. "He regrets being caught. He does not regret being a spy."

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