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 Chicago theater until February 1962. Returning to the 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 his movements. From November 1993 until his arrest, Ames was kept under virtually … 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 U.S. via Rome, only to return to the Soviet Union three months later. Ames was … 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 in prison for passing classified information to Israel. Eitan stated that Pollard never exposed American agents in the Soviet … 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