Aldrich Hazen Ames (; May 26, 1941 – January 5, 2026) was an American counterintelligence officer with the Central Intelligence Agency who was convicted of espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union and Russia in 1994.
Ames was responsible for the arrest and eventual execution of numerous Soviet and Russian officials secretly working on behalf of the United States Intelligence Community. He served a life sentence, without the possibility of parole, in various federal prisons until his death in 2026 at the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland. He had compromised more highly classified CIA assets than any other intelligence officer until the arrest of FBI agent Robert Hanssen in 2001. Both Ames and Hanssen were recruited by Victor Cherkashin, a high-ranking KGB officer.
Aldrich Hazen ("Rick") Ames was born in River Falls, Wisconsin, on May 26, 1941, to Carleton Cecil Ames and Rachel Ames (née Aldrich). His father was a lecturer at the Wisconsin State College–River Falls, and his mother a high school English teacher. Aldrich was the eldest of three children and the only son. In 1952, his father began working with the Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Operations in Langley, Virginia. The following year, in 1953, his father was posted to Burma for three years, and the family relocated there. Carleton received a "particularly negative performance appraisal" in part because of serious alcoholism, and spent the remainder of his career at CIA headquarters in Langley.
Ames attended McLean High School in McLean, Virginia. Beginning in 1957, following his sophomore year, he worked for the CIA for three summers as a low-ranking GS-3 records analyst as part of a program to give temporary jobs to children of CIA employees. Ames was responsible for marking classified documents for filing as well as making fake money to be used in training programs for "the Farm", where CIA trainees began. Two years later, in 1959, Ames entered the University of Chicago, where he planned to study foreign cultures and history. His "long-time passion" for theater, however, resulted in failing grades, and he did not finish his second year.
Ames returned to the CIA during the summer of 1960 as a laborer and painter. He then became an assistant technical director at a Chicago theater until February 1962. Returning to the Washington metropolitan area, Ames took full-time employment at the CIA doing the same sort of clerical jobs he had performed in high school. While taking his first polygraph examination, Ames claimed to have committed a crime, which was considered no probability of deception. When asked to elaborate on the offense, Ames confessed that he and a friend not affiliated with CIA, while drunk, stole a delivery boy's bicycle and went joyriding; this confession had not been considered grave enough to disqualify Ames from a security clearance.
Five years after beginning his work for the CIA, Ames completed a bachelor's degree in history at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He did not plan to have a career with the agency, but after attaining the grade of GS-7 and receiving good performance appraisals, he was accepted into the Career Trainee Program despite several alcohol-related brushes with the police. In 1969, Ames married a fellow CIA officer, Nancy Segebarth, whom he had met in the Career Trainee Program.
Ames was assigned to Ankara, Turkey, and Nancy then resigned from the CIA because of a rule that prohibited married partners from working from the same office. Ames's job in Turkey was to target Soviet intelligence officers for recruitment. He succeeded in infiltrating the communist Dev-Genç organization through a roommate of student activist Deniz Gezmiş and a beauty pageant contestant whose boyfriend was participating in a movement to overthrow the Turkish government. In spite of this success, Ames's performance was rated only "satisfactory". His superiors considered the spies recruited to be of sufficient value, but a remark was made that Ames was "unsuited for field work and it is recommended he spend the remainder of his career at CIA headquarters". Discouraged by the critical assessment, Ames considered resigning from the agency.
In 1972, Ames returned to CIA headquarters, where he spent the next four years in the Soviet-East European (SE) Division, where he was responsible for managing assets and his skills were better utilized. His performance reviews were "generally enthusiastic". Nevertheless, his excessive drinking was noted, and two "eyes only" memoranda were placed in his file.
In 1976, Ames was assigned to New York City, where he handled two important Soviet assets: Sergey Fedorenko, a nuclear weapons expert with the Soviet mission to United Nations Headquarters, whose name Ames would later give to the KGB; and Arkady Shevchenko, a United Nations under-secretary-general who in 1978, with Ames's help, became the highest-ranking Soviet official to defect to the West. Ames's performance was rated excellent, and he received several promotions and bonuses, being ranked above most operations officers in his pay grade. However, his tendency to procrastinate in submissions of financial accounting was noted. His inattention to detail also led him to commit two security violations, including once leaving a briefcase containing classified operational materials on the New York City Subway, which the FBI recovered and determined as being uncompromised. Ames later said he received a verbal reprimand but no documentation of the matter.
In 1981, Ames accepted a posting to Mexico City while his wife remained in New York City. His evaluations in Mexico were mediocre at best, and he engaged in at least three extramarital affairs. In October 1982, Ames began an affair with María del Rosario Casas Dupuy, a cultural attaché in the Colombian embassy and a CIA informant. He married her in 1985, and fathered a son with her, Paul Ames, who was born in 1989. Despite CIA regulations, Ames had not reported his relationship with a foreign national to his superiors, even though some of his colleagues were aware of it. His lackluster performance reviews were again partly the result of his heavy drinking. At a diplomatic reception in Mexico City, Ames got into a loud, drunken argument with a Cuban official that "caused alarm" among his superiors.
In September 1983, Ames was transferred back to the Southeast Asia division at CIA headquarters. His reassignment placed him "in the most sensitive element" of the Department of Operations, which was responsible for Soviet counterintelligence. Ames had access to all CIA plans and operations against the KGB and the GRU, Soviet military intelligence. In October, he formally separated from Nancy; in November, he submitted an "outside activity" report to the CIA, noting his romantic relationship with Rosario. Ames later remarked that Nancy made little fuss about the affair and quickly agreed to a divorce, but made it well known she was keeping most of their joint assets. The divorce was finalized on August 1, 1985, and nine days later he married Rosario.
As part of the divorce settlement, Ames agreed to pay the debts that they had accrued and provide Nancy monthly support for three and a half years, totaling approximately $46,000 ($114,000 in 2024). Ames thought the divorce might bankrupt him, and later said that this financial pressure was what had first led him to consider spying for the Soviets. Rosario had also proven to be a heavy spender, going on shopping sprees and phoning her family in Colombia at a cost of $5,000 a month. After his arrest, the FBI discovered 60 purses in the Ames' house, more than five hundred pairs of shoes, 165 unopened boxes of pantyhose and multiple designer dresses, noting "at least a dozen looked like they were not yet worn". Also discovered were six Rolex watches.
Ames routinely assisted another CIA office that assessed Soviet embassy officials as potential intelligence assets. As part of this responsibility, and with the knowledge of both the CIA and the FBI, Ames began making contacts within the Soviet embassy.