Ames was born in River Falls, Wisconsin, on June 26, 1941, to Carleton Cecil Ames and Rachel Ames (née Aldrich). His father was a college lecturer at the Wisconsin State College-River … See more

Ames returned to the CIA during the summer of 1960, as a laborer and painter. He then became an assistant technical director at a See more

In March 1993, the CIA and FBI began an intensive investigation of Ames that included electronic surveillance, combing through his trash, and installing a monitor in his car to track … See more

Ames is incarcerated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons as prisoner #40087-083, serving his life sentence in the medium-security Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in See more

• Vitaly Yurchenko was a KGB officer in the Fifth Department of Directorate K, "the highest-ranking KGB officer ever to defect to the United States". In August 1985, he defected to the … See more

Rafi Eitan, the Israeli handler of Jonathan Pollard, alleged that Pollard was blamed for some of Ames' crimes. Pollard went on to serve thirty years … See more

• In 1996, Ames was used as a plot device in Frederick Forsyth's novel Icon, published by Bantam Books.
• In 1998, Ames' story is dramatized in the film Aldrich Ames: Traitor Within, starring See more