For safety reasons such events should have attracted the attention of his superiors, as an agent who led such a hectic life risked becoming a target for the enemy; and it is likely that the KGB had ad their eye on him for a while. However, the watershed for this future mole came in 1981, when Ames was appointed to Mexico and as usual, began to behave in a detestable manner. Not only did he continue to drink, but he chose for his companion in debauchery a Soviet diplomat who had been posted to Mexico, and who was the kind of man who naturally belonged in the KGB. Once again, his actions should have attracted the attentions of his superiors: his drunkenness was common knowledge and on several occasions, the Mexican police had to take him home.
However, Ames apparently started making amends when he met a charming university graduate from a good family from Bogota. She was attached to the Columbian embassy and her name was Maria del Rosario Dupuy. No doubt thanks to Ames, she was recruited by the CIA and ordered to infiltrate the group of Cuban students who resided in Mexico. Straight away one might have asked the question that if this young woman was already familiar with the world of intelligence, would she not already belong to some other agency?
Aldrich and Maria quickly became lovers and they later married after Aldrich had had divorced his wife. He returned to the USA in 1983 and suddenly the career of this humble agent took off into the stratosphere when he was offered one of the most sensitive and prestigious positions within the agency: head of CIA's counterintelligence.
In the intelligence service, the rule is to compartmentalise activities to prevent a mole from destroying an entire office. The only exception to this is the department in charge of counterintelligence. The head of such a department is practically the only person to know not only the identity of external sources, i.e. agents operating abroad, but also those operating on home soil. They are able to check every single file because part of their role is to root out moles wherever they may be.
Another responsibility of this very select group was to evaluate the importance of a defector and to determine whether or not they were genuine, or actually an enemy agent. Indeed, a false defector may engage in a form of systematic misinformation in order to try and convince his new employers that there were no moles within his department. They may even lead them down the wrong path so that honest and hardworking agents are dismissed, and the agency itself begins to self-destruct. Finally, counterintelligence must monitor those suspected of being double agents. They would first need to distil some genuine information in order to obtain the enemy's trust, before then progressing onto more damaging and toxic manoeuvres.
As it was the only department to have access to all records and sources, the infiltration of a mole in a counterintelligence department was therefore the ultimate goal for any enemy intelligence service.
Frederick Forsyth
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Each intelligence service has within it a team whose mission is to check the reliability of everyone else, which obviously makes it unpopular. This counterintelligence team has three functions: first, it assists and presides over the debriefing of all enemy defectors in order to determine whether they are genuine, or part of some kind of Machiavellian plan. Using the cover of providing some useful information, a false defector can, in fact, systematically spread more lies by persuading his new employers that there is no traitor amongst them, or guiding them to a multitude of false leads and dead-ends. In this case, an intelligently led ‘transplant’ can result in many sterile years full of vain, pointless efforts. Counterintelligence will then keep an eye on those in the enemy camp who, without letting slip that they’ve changed sides, will agree to ‘collaborate’, but are in fact still working as double agents. Sticking with his superior’s orders, the double agent would then provide his enemy with some genuinely reliable information in order to gain his trust, thus allowing him to sow the seeds of confusion. Finally, the counterintelligence department must constantly check to ensure that its own camp has not been infiltrated and that there are no traitors within its ranks.
Being the head of counterintelligence was therefore a key role, not to mention the overwhelming responsibilities involved. So why was such a job entrusted to an alcoholic with a disreputable past, whose performances up to that point had been merely average and who had only previously held junior positions? There are only two possible explanations: the first is that Aldrich Ames had powerful connections within the agency. However, if this were true then why was he only receiving such a job offer now, when his career had otherwise taken a relatively mundane path? Perhaps there was someone at the top of the hierarchy who felt the sudden need to put Ames in this position? An interested party who were perhaps seeking to hide their own wicked behaviour? The second option does not necessarily contradict the first in suggesting that if Ames was appointed to such an important position, it was because after so many years of mediocrity, he had suddenly demonstrated his skills to his superiors by providing them with firsthand information on eastern countries. The result? He unexpectedly rose in their estimations and so when the time came to appoint a new department chief, his name was among those on the list of possible candidates. The question remains though: how did he get this firsthand information and did he only secure it in order to move his way up the career ladder?
If the second example is correct, then the KGB could well have been the one to provide the information. After
