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 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 went on to identify 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 said in an eight-page statement he read to the court.
Ames's espionage spanned nine years, during which he received approximately $2.5 million from the Soviet Union for his betrayal of the country.
The money funded a lavish lifestyle, including a new Jaguar car and foreign holidays.
Ames had a 31-year career at the CIA, starting in 1962, thanks to his father, who was also an analyst at the agency.
His first marriage to fellow CIA agent Nancy Segebarth began to crumble under the strain of his alcoholism and debts.
In Mexico City, he met his second wife, Maria del Rosario Casas Dupuy, who later became implicated in his crimes.
By 1994, thanks to a mole hunt, Ames was apprehended. He cooperated with authorities, which led to a plea deal that secured a lenient sentence for his wife, who served only five years.
Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey condemned Ames as a malignant betrayer of his country, highlighting the dire consequences of his betrayal.
