Who is Aldrich Ames a CIA insider who became a soviet spy, led luxurious life with secret payments and…

Aldrich Hazen Ames, the former CIA counterintelligence officer who spied for the Soviet Union and later Russia in one of the most consequential espionage cases in US history, has died in prison at the age of 84, officials confirmed on Friday. The double-agent sold American secrets to the KGB between 1985 and 1994 and compromised hundreds of operations, resulting in the death of at least ten Western agents. Death in Custody at Age 84 According to the Bureau of Prisons, Ames died in a federal facility in Cumberland, Maryland, where he had been serving a life sentence without parole. The spy, who died in custody, spent nearly 30 years working for the CIA before he became a double agent for nearly a decade. He was indicted in 1994, found guilty, and imprisoned where he died on Friday. Espionage: From CIA Counterintelligence Officer to Soviet Spy Ames, who was born in 1941, first joined the CIA in the early 1960s. He later became part of the agency’s Soviet counterintelligence branch. In April 1985, under severe financial pressure, he approached the Soviet Embassy in Washington D.C., to offer intelligence on American operations and assets. For nine years, he sold information to the KGB about the CIA and its Western intelligence partners, and Western agents operating in the Soviet Union that were used to arrest and kill operatives. Ames was paid more than $2.5 million by Moscow for this and was able to afford a lavish lifestyle using his legitimate CIA salary as well as his Soviet payments to cover for it, but this spending and the foreign bank accounts he used raised suspicion with investigators and led to his arrest. Trial and Imprisonment Repeated failures of American spy operations by the mid-1990s had become a major issue for the CIA, leading to a joint investigation with the FBI to track down the culprit. Ames was later identified as a suspect and after months of surveillance, he was arrested with his wife, Rosario Ames, outside their home in Arlington, Virginia, on February 21, 1994. He pleaded guilty to espionage and tax evasion and was sentenced to life in prison. His wife, who had assisted in his activities, was later given a more lenient sentence of more than five years. In the nearly three decades after his death, his case has become one of the most serious intelligence failures in US history. But the reforms that were instituted in the aftermath of the arrest has seen the CIA and FBI learn many lessons that have helped them manage some of these challenges in the years since.