Aldrich Hazen Ames is an American former CIA counterintelligence officer who was convicted of espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union and Russia in 1994. He is serving a life sentence, without the possibility of parole, in the Federal Correctional Institution in Terre Haute, Indiana. Ames was known to have compromised more highly classified CIA assets than any other officer until Robert Hanssen, who was arrested seven years later in 2001.
Ames mug shot in February 1994
A young Ames in the 1958 McLean High School yearbook
Replacement of the mailbox used by Ames; a horizontal chalk mark above the USPS logo at Garfield Street and Garfield Terrace NW was a signal that a meeting with the Soviets was needed. The original mailbox is now housed in the International Spy Museum.
The CIA mole hunt team, c. 1990. Left to right: Sandy Grimes, Paul Redmond, Jeanne Vertefeuille, Diana Worthen, and Dan Payne.
Counterintelligence (counter-intelligence) or counterespionage (counter-espionage) is any activity aimed at protecting an agency's intelligence program from an opposition's intelligence service. It includes gathering information and conducting activities to prevent espionage, sabotage, assassinations or other intelligence activities conducted by, for, or on behalf of foreign powers, organizations or persons.
Political cartoon depicting the Afghan Emir Sher Ali with his "friends" the Russian Bear and British Lion (1878). The Great Game saw the rise of systematic espionage and surveillance throughout the region by both powers
The Okhrana, founded in 1880, had the task of countering enemy espionage against Imperial Russia. St. Petersburg Okhrana group photo, 1905
Civilian photo technicians (in back of jeep) working for Counter Intelligence Corps are accounted for at a checkpoint in Potsdam, Germany, July 14, 1945
