ICYMI: The Women Who Took Down An American Traitor — Aldrich Ames

CIA officer Aldrich Ames took millions from the Russians — selling out our most important informants — before a pair of savvy women revealed his ‘Circle of Treason’

***Originally published on January 14, 2023 as ‘Dead Drops’ — a reminder that the United States has proven capable of punishing traitors and spies.***

When Ames was brought in after the arrest, Jeanne Vertefeuille said other agents shook his hand but she refused. “There was too much blood on it.”

Ames is spending his life in prison. I wonder if the ghost of General Polyakov visits him in his sleep like Jacob Marley in chains.

‘Too Much Blood’

Jeanne Vertefeuille worked in CIA Counterintelligence when she noticed something alarming. In 1985, the CIA began to lose ‘cases’ - Soviet officials who were working as double agents for the CIA. They were disappearing. Later, she said in interviews that she was led to believe something was going terribly wrong, but she did not yet suspect moles.

But then something shocking happened - they lost one of their most vital Cold War-era spies, Soviet Major General Dmitry Polyakov, who had retired after two decades of spying for the US. It would be eight years before they arrested the key man who sold Polyakov out - Aldrich Ames, a CIA officer who proved to be one of the most deadly double agents in American history.

The two men could not have been more different…

Polyakov was born in Ukraine and became a GRU officer. When he approached US counterintelligence agents during the Cold War, he said it was because he was disgusted with the corruption of the Soviet Communist Party elite. He told agents he wanted to help America because he feared the Soviets would win the Cold War. He believed the Americans were naive. (Author’s Note: History echoes.) In addition, he had lost a son after Soviet leaders denied his request to seek medical treatment in the West for his child. That is when he began spying for the US.

After serving America for 25 years as the most important source in American intelligence history, he was arrested by the KGB in 1986, and executed in 1988. Vertefeuille said General Polyakov did not help America for the money - he barely took any - asking to be paid in power tools or fishing equipment.

But the key man who sold him out - Aldrich Ames - took millions of dollars from the Russians, and as he sold out more than two dozen other men, he knew many of them would be tortured and executed.

Ames had joined the CIA in 1962, and became the chief of Counterintelligence in the Soviet Division. He had been selling secrets to the KGB since 1985, and ultimately betrayed more than two dozen agents for $2.7 million dollars. And it was Vertefeuille and Sandy Grimes - another CIA officer - who were the key CIA officers who led to his capture.

Their book, Circle of Treason - A CIA Account of Traitor Aldrich Ames and the Men He Betrayed, reveals how Vertefeuille was appointed to be the lead investigator, and she identified Ames living well beyond a CIA salary. Grimes had mapped meetings between Ames and the man who proved to be his KGB contact and the subsequent large bank deposits that Ames made. Although each retired before his arrest, they identified the traitor within, and on February 21, 1994, Ames was arrested. (He was the first of multiple moles to be arrested. Others followed - Harold Nicholson, Earl Pitts, and Robert Hanssen.)

Ames was arrested along with his wife, Rosario Casas-Dupuy Ames, who Vertefeuille fingered as the inspiration for Ames’ betrayal.

“He bought her love,” she said in an interview.

Grimes said, “He was the worst kind of traitor. He could have worked for the KGB and given them pages and pages of information that would not have cost somebody their life.”

Instead, he was responsible for at least ten executions of the men he betrayed.

‘To Catch A Mole’

To find the mole, they had compiled a list of 196 people, and Grimes said it was easy to eliminate most of the names. She said Ames’ arrogance and coldness made him the top suspect. But his fatal tell was the arrogance he showed toward them.

“He considered us dumb broads,” Grimes said. “He didn’t think he had anything to worry about. That we would never ever pinpoint him, but he was wrong.”

When he was brought in after the arrest, Vertefeuille said other agents shook his hand but she refused. “There was too much blood on it.”

‘Folly and Greed’

As I listened to Keir Giles during our interview last week on RadPod, I marveled at his 84 second summation of the characteristics of Russian propagandists. He had studied KGB manuals and knew how they exploited the character defects of their targets. I clipped that soundbite, which has now been viewed by thousands of people, and Keir then led me to his source, who had located and translated the KGB manuals - Michael D. Weiss.

In this report, Weiss noted: “The bottom line for spy recruitment comes down to this: look for the losers, especially the ones who want to think they are winners because they hang on to important positions.”

In his translation of the KGB manual, Weiss reported: “People who overestimate their worth and claim special treatment have an insatiable need for success and recognition. When their career collapses due to objective circumstances, or their family life does not bring satisfaction, they are especially close to despair and anger, and react painfully to unfairness. They are capable at that moment of taking the path of revenge against specific persons or the system as a whole which did not give them the opportunity to satisfy their significant needs.”

I recall writing in 2017 about Trump being the revenge president, after reading about a meeting Richard Branson took with Trump - where Branson said all Trump did was talk about revenge.

A desire to exact revenge was among the qualities Keir ticked off in his epic 84-second explainer about Russian agents. You can read the interview transcripts here.

‘Dead Drops’

As intelligence agents began tracking Ames, they found he used chalk to do what they call “dead drops” on a mailbox located in Washington, D.C. The drop was used by Ames and his Russian handlers. The chalk mark was code about a drop he planned to do in Bogotá.

I note this because for all of the cloak-and-dagger around espionage, sometimes it’s really criminally simple. I first made note of that while watching the film about the Russian doping scandal, Icarus, where it was revealed that dirty urine was swapped out with clean urine through a fake electrical socket. Not necessarily genius level stuff.

‘Greed and Folly’

“The reasons I did what I did in April of 1985 were personal and amounted to greed and folly,” Ames said in interview. “Simple as that.”

“I knew quite well when I gave the names of our agents in the Soviet Union that I was exposing them to the full machinery of counter espionage, and the law, and prosecution, and capital punishment, certainly,” he said. “They would have to answer for what they’d done. And certainly I felt, I inured myself against a reaction to that.”

Ames betrayed upwards of 30 agents. Ten were executed. One took his own life, and one was smuggled to safety by the British secret service, after escaping house arrest.

That double agent, Oleg Gordiesvky, said he was lucky. “The others were shot in the dungeons of some KGB prison after long months of continuous threats and interrogation. They lost everything, family, children, work, and then their lives.”

“It’s a nasty kind of circle,” Ames said. “With terrible human costs.”

He should know. He is spending his life in prison. I wonder if the ghost of General Polyakov visits him in his sleep like Jacob Marley in chains.

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(Aldrich Ames espionage activity, above, reveals his allegiance.)

Author’s note: This isn’t the first story I have written about women who take down major criminals. Please read this short report about Eunice Carter - New York’s first black female prosecutor, whose tip from a night court in Harlem led to the arrest of Lucky Luciano. In addition, in 2021, a leaked CIA memo noted that they were losing dozens of informants around the world during the Trump administration* at an alarming rate.

(Original publication date - January 14, 2023 — titled ‘Dead Drops)

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