Genovefa Etienne and Claude Moniquet
117
Beyond the exceptional size of the case, what is really interesting about Aldrich Ames is that, after being recruited by the KGB in 1985, he was still working for the democratic Russia of Boris Yeltsin in 1991: clearly the regimes may change, but the spies remain the same. Moscow never denied Ames’ activities and General Mikhail Kolesnikov, the Chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces, said after Ames’ arrest that he had ‘worked for Russia in the United States’ and had ‘protected Russian interests by unmasking Russian spies who had passed information back to the US’. For the CIA, the most worrying aspect was that Aldrich Ames had managed to stay in his position for so long and was thus able to continually thwart any security investigations, including the sacrosanct lie detector tests, which the men and women of the agency were regularly required to sit. According to James Woolsey, the CIA Director, what was even more serious was that Ames ‘did not have access to all the information that would have allowed the KGB to expose US agents in recent years’. There had to have been other moles within the CIA. In any case, this particular situation cost two of the agency’s top executives their jobs: Deputy Director of Operations, John McGaffney and the Director of Near East Operations, Frank Anderson.
And so the CIA once more began its search for the mole and the suspicion soon fell on Ames, but also on whoever was protecting him. Aware of the situation, the Russians decided to take matters into their own hands: they sacrificed Ames in order to protect the identity of the other man who, in their eyes, was far more important.
The head of counterintelligence, who continued to display a shocking lack of judgement, was obviously doomed and the Russians had no hesitancy in denouncing him. Sometimes in the world of intelligence, as in life, you have to make drastic choices: and the Russians had no qualms in doing so. The Americans then began to play their own game after suspecting that there had to be another man even higher than Ames. However, in order not to create an even bigger scandal, they pretended to believe that he was the only mole. So as to hide the truth, they declared that it was his lifestyle that had attracted the attentions of the FBI and even invented the absurd story of him going to the Soviet embassy to offer his services.
Edouard Sablier
118
The Ames affair clearly exposes the weaknesses within the CIA and thousands of files will have to be opened in order to see the full extent of the damage. Any operations that Ames was privy to, whether near or far, are hopelessly compromised. All CIA agents, as well as those in other security organisations, who were stationed in Russia are now probably unusable. The anger expressed by Congress is a major threat to not only the future of central intelligence, but also for future relations with the new Russia: ‘we are not carrying the can for the Russians so that traitors like Ames can make millions’, proclaimed a Republican congressman from New York in the House of Representatives. Another declared that ‘given the magnitude of assistance the Russians are asking us and others for, it is incredible that they can still find the money to pay their spies’.
The Ames case resulted in two important resignations within the CIA: those of Deputy Director of Operations, John McGaffney and the Director of Near East Operations, Frank Anderson. Had one of these men been Ames' protector? The man who is now retired somewhere in Europe? Another name is mentioned in an article written by Pascal Krop that was published in L’Evenement du Jeudi in 1996. The man in question was Milton Bearden, the head of the CIA's eastern European section, who was accused by one of his colleagues of warning Ames that people were beginning to suspect him: an accusation he later admitted to. Now retired, he lived in Bonn and would soon publish a book on the struggle between the CIA and the KGB.
[Gordievsky’s story:
Serious, competent, disciplined and intelligent, this officer had shown himself to be the perfect KGB agent until 1973. He had first worked at the headquarters in Moscow, before being sent to Copenhagen where here was responsible for dealing with the ‘illegals', i.e. those agents with no diplomatic status. At the end of the 1960s he returned briefly to Moscow, before going back again to Copenhagen, where in 1973, he made contact with the SIS (Secret Intelligence Service) of Great Britain. Like General Polyakov, he was acting out of conviction, rather than monetary reasons, because he could not bear the harshness of the regime, nor the lack of democracy and corruption that went with it. As far as the West was concerned, he was an ideal recruit due to the fact that his various positions meant that he had an intimate knowledge of the KGB and its operatives.
After another visit back to the USSR in the early 1980s, Colonel Gordievsky (as he was now), was given the role of KGB Resident-designate in to the Soviet embassy in London: the most important posting after that of Washington. However, in May 1985 he was suddenly ordered back to Moscow, on the understanding that his appointment needed to be ‘formalised', and where he was due to meet with several KGB bigwigs. There was no reason for him to be wary as the treachery by Aldrich Ames had not yet produced its full effects. Despite this, however, his mind was certainly not at ease as he prepared to make the journey back to Moscow. After all, being recalled so soon after his appointment seemed very strange, but he left anyway, although without his wife and two children
Soon after arriving in Moscow, Gordievsky started to have a bad feeling. The official who examined his diplomatic passport was surprisingly slow and for some reason made a phone call before handing
