CIA Spy Whose Espionage Haul Hit $4.6m Dies at 84
Lavish lifestyle, luxury cars and wife’s spending spree raised red flags
By Nasir Dambatta
Aldrich Hazen Ames, one of the most destructive traitors in U.S. intelligence history, has died at 84, closing the final chapter of a greed-fuelled betrayal that crippled American spy networks during the Cold War. Ames died while serving a life sentence for selling U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union and later Russia.
Behind the espionage was not ideology — but debt, excess and luxury.
Crushed by mounting personal debts and desperate to fund an extravagant lifestyle for his second wife, Rosario, whose appetite for designer shopping far outpaced his CIA salary, Ames made a fateful decision: he put a price tag on American secrets.
Between 1985 and 1994, Ames pocketed an estimated $4.6 million from Soviet and Russian intelligence — one of the largest payoffs ever made to a U.S. spy. The money flowed freely, and so did the spending.
He paid cash for a luxury Jaguar, a purchase wildly inconsistent with a mid-level CIA officer’s earnings. He upgraded homes, cleared debts overnight and banked unexplained deposits — all while colleagues watched with growing suspicion.
His second wife, Rosario in handcuffs
His wife’s lavish shopping sprees later emerged as a key red flag, one that U.S. intelligence agencies would acknowledge as an early warning sign they failed to act on.
The cost of that greed was catastrophic.
Ames exposed more than 30 Western agents operating inside the Soviet bloc, a betrayal widely believed to have led to arrests, executions and the collapse of major U.S. intelligence operations at the height of the Cold War. Entire networks went dark. Trust was shattered.
He was arrested in 1994, pleaded guilty to espionage and tax evasion, and received life imprisonment without parole, a sentence reflecting what prosecutors described as “incalculable damage to national security.”
Ames died behind bars, leaving behind a legacy that intelligence agencies still cite as a warning: the most dangerous enemies are sometimes driven not by ideology — but by greed, debt and desire.
