Aldrich Ames, a CIA officer who became one of America's most damaging double agents, has died aged 84.
The former counterintelligence officer, who was serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole, died on Monday at the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland, CBS News reported.
Ames was jailed on 28 April 1994 after he admitted to selling secret information to the Soviet Union and later Russia.
He compromised more than 100 clandestine operations and divulged the identities of more than 30 agents spying for the West, leading to the deaths of at least 10 CIA intelligence assets.
Seeking money to pay debts, Ames began providing the KGB with the names of CIA spies in April 1985, receiving an initial payment of $50,000.
Known to the KGB by his code name, Kolokol (The Bell), Ames identified virtually all of the CIA's spies in the Soviet Union, for which he was well rewarded.
To my enduring surprise, the KGB replied that it had set aside for me $2 million in gratitude for the information, he read in a statement to the court.
Over nine years, Ames admitted receiving about $2.5 million from the Soviet Union for his betrayal.
The cash fueled a lavish lifestyle, including a new Jaguar car, foreign holidays, and a $540,000 house.
Ames' 31-year career at the CIA began in 1962 with the help of his father, a CIA analyst.
His first marriage was to fellow agent Nancy Segebarth in 1969, but after alcohol problems and security violations, his life began to unravel. After a stint as the head of the CIA's Soviet counterintelligence department, Ames met his second wife, Maria del Rosario Casas Dupuy, a CIA asset charged as his accomplice.
His espionage came to an end after a 1994 mole hunt, leading to his arrest and a plea deal benefiting his accomplice.
At the time, CIA Director R. James Woolsey condemned Ames as a malignant betrayer of his country, noting that the agents he betrayed died because a murdering traitor wanted a bigger house and a Jaguar.\
