Aldrich Ames, one of the most notorious traitors in US intelligence history, has died at the age of 84 while serving a life sentence in federal prison. His death has reignited scrutiny of a case that exposed deep vulnerabilities inside the CIA and led to the collapse of some of its most sensitive Cold War operations.
Ames, a senior CIA counterintelligence officer, secretly spied for the Soviet Union and later Russia for nearly a decade. His betrayal, motivated largely by money, resulted in the exposure of numerous intelligence assets and is widely regarded as one of the most damaging espionage cases ever uncovered in the United States.
