Circle of Treason (30 page)

In addition to the television interviews, there have been five books written about the Ames case so far. Only three of them are worth mentioning. By far the most complete coverage comes from Pete Earley in
Confessions of a Spy
. This is the only book that we, Redmond, Worthen, Payne, and others cooperated with, having been asked to do so
by senior CIA management. This book appeared about a year after other publications, and Earley used the time to do a lot of digging and interviewing, including a trip to Moscow, to round out the story.

David Wise's
Nightmover
contains some interesting material, and he obviously has some good sources among present and former CIA officers. He does, however, make one major error in postulating that Ames' espionage began in Mexico City in the early 1980s, orchestrated by a KGB officer named Igor Shurygin. We and the FBI accept the statements by Ames and Cherkashin that Ames volunteered in April 1985. This coordinates with the facts as we know them. Ames first got access to information on sensitive Soviet cases in September 1983, yet these cases continued to run successfully and productively until the summer of 1985, when they began disappearing at an alarming rate. Furthermore, during the period September 1983 to April 1985 Ames sank deeper and deeper into debt, while in the summer of 1985 his situation markedly improved.

A third book of some interest is Peter Maas'
Killer Spy
. This was written with FBI cooperation and is mainly a blow-by-blow account of the FBI's role in the investigation. As an insider description, it contains material not found elsewhere.

One made-for-television movie also exists. This is
Aldrich Ames: The Spy Within
, with Timothy Hutton playing Ames. It has some value as a psychological study because Hutton does a good job of portraying Ames as a person. However, from a factual viewpoint, it leaves a great deal to be desired. It is decidedly off base when attempting to portray the inner workings of the CIA and the individuals who worked there, as well as some basic facts of the case. This movie was produced by a man who was a friend of Ames' during his youthful University of Chicago phase. He telephoned Jeanne in an effort to get her to cooperate with his project, but she declined.

AMES THE PERSON, AMES THE SPY

A
LDRICH
H
AZEN
A
MES IS AN ALL
-A
MERICAN 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.