Aldrich Ames, who has died in prison aged 84, was the most senior CIA officer ever to be exposed as a Russian spy. Ames betrayed more than 30 allied agents, at least 10 of whom were executed by the classic KGB punishment of a bullet in the back of the head, and more than 100 clandestine US and British espionage operations.
The US and British agents betrayed by Ames included Maj Gen Dmitri Polyakov, a senior member of the GRU, Soviet military intelligence, who supplied top level information to the CIA, the US foreign intelligence agency, for more than a quarter of a century, and Oleg Gordievsky, an MI6 agent inside the KGB, who, when he was outed by Ames, was the KGB rezident or head of station, in London.
