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The Shadow Dossier — The CIA's Highest-Paid Traitor · The Shadow Dossier

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  the shadow dossier act i a career officer with
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  growing debts aldrich ames spent over 30 years
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  as a cia officer working his way into positions
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  with access to some of the agency's most sensitive
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  information including the identities of soviet
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  citizens secretly working as american intelligence
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  assets inside the ussr By the mid -1980s, Ames
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  was facing a divorce, mounting personal debts,
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  and a lifestyle he could not support on a mid
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  -level government salary, circumstances investigators
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  later identified as the immediate pressure behind
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  what followed. In April 1985, Ames walked into
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  the Soviet embassy in Washington and offered
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  to sell classified information to the KGB, an
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  act of espionage that would ultimately prove
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  more damaging to American intelligence operations
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  than almost any other single betrayal of the
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  Cold War. What made Ames' betrayal so catastrophic
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  wasn't the volume of documents he passed, though
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  that volume was substantial. It was the specific
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  nature of what he handed over. The identities
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  of Soviet and Easter Block officials who had
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  been secretly recruited as American intelligence
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  assets. Men and women whose entire value depended
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  on absolute secrecy, and whose exposure carried
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  a near -certain death sentence. Over the following
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  years, at least 10 CIA and FBI sources inside
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  the Soviet Union were arrested and executed as
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  a direct result of information aims provided,
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  and several others were imprisoned. The scale
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  of loss essentially gutted American human intelligence
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  capability inside the Soviet Union for years.
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  An intelligence catastrophe that took the CIA
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  a considerable time to even fully recognize was
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  happening, let alone trace to its source. Act
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  3. The money that should have been a giveaway.
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  Ames was paid extraordinarily well for his betrayal,
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  ultimately receiving over $4 .5 million from
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  Soviet. and later russian intelligence across
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  nearly a decade of espionage making him one of
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  the highest paid spies in the history of american
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  counterintelligence what has troubled investigators
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  and outside observers ever since is how visibly
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  ames's lifestyle changed during this period and
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  how long it took anyone inside the cia to connect
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  those changes to a possible security problem
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  Ames paid cash for a house well beyond what his
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  salary could explain. He drove an expensive new
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  car. He made large cash deposits and spent freely
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  in ways that, in hindsight, should have drawn
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  scrutiny far earlier than it actually arrived.
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  For years, this financial evidence sat largely
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  unexamined, a failure later attributed partly
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  to institutional reluctance within the CIA to
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  seriously suspect. one of its own senior officers,
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  and partly to simple gaps in how the agency monitored
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  its employees' personal finances at the time.
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  By the late 1980s, the CIA and FBI had grown
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  increasingly alarmed at the pattern of compromised
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  assets inside the Soviet Union. recognizing that
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  the losses were too systematic and too specific
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  to be explained by ordinary tradecraft failures
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  or bad luck. This recognition launched an internal
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  mole hunt that stretched on for years, hampered
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  by the difficulty of investigating within an
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  agency built by necessity. around compartmentalized
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  secrecy, or even determining who theoretically
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  had access to the compromised information required
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  painstaking, slow reconstruction. Investigators
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  eventually narrowed their focus to aim specifically
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  after finally cross -referencing his unexplained
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  wealth against the timeline of compromised assets.
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  And after placing him under sustained physical
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  and financial surveillance beginning in 1993,
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  monitoring his meetings, his bank activity, and
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  his communications closely enough to build a
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  case that would hold up in court. Act V. Arrest,
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  confession, and the reckoning afterward. Ames
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  and his wife Rosario. who was aware of and complicit
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  in his espionage, were arrested by the FBI in
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  February 1994. Facing overwhelming evidence,
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  Ames pleaded guilty rather than proceed to trial
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  and was sentenced to life in prison without the
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  possibility of parole. Rosario received a shorter
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  sentence in exchange for her cooperation. The
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  aftermath inside the CIA was severe and lasting.
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  An internal review found extensive institutional
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  failures, including the agency's slow response
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  to years of financial red flags and a broader
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  culture that had made it difficult for internal
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  suspicion to translate into serious investigative
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  action against a fellow officer. Several senior
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  CIA officials faced disciplinary action. And
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  the case prompted significant reforms to how
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  the agency monitored employee finances and conducted
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  internal counterintelligence review going forward.
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  Ames remains in federal prison today. What his
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  case ultimately demonstrated. beyond the specific
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  human cost of the assets he betrayed, was how
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  vulnerable even the most secrecy -obsessed intelligence
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  agency in the world could be to a threat from
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  entirely inside its own walls, and how long an
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  institution built to distrust outsiders could
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  take to seriously distrust one of its own. This
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  concludes declassified file number 0035 of the
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  Shadow Dossier. the CIA's highest paid traitor.
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  What dangerous secrets await in our next file?
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  official declassification. This is the Shadow
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  Dossier. Thank you for listening.