Former CIA official Aldrich Ames betrayed 25 U.S. spies to the former Soviet Union, twice as many as previously known, according to excerpts from a book about him released Saturday by U.S. News and World Report magazine.
Ames pleaded guilty to selling Moscow secrets from 1985 to 1994 for payments of more than $2.5 million.He is serving a life sentence without possibility of parole at a federal prison in Pennsylvania and his wife Rosario was jailed for at least four years at a prison in Connecticut.
At least 10 of the agents Ames exposed were executed by the Soviets, but some escaped and are living in the United States.
Among those listed as executed were Valery Martynov, a KGB officer stationed in Washington; Adolf Tolkachav, who gave the United States secrets about Soviet aircraft technology, and Dmitri Polyakov, a Soviet military intelligence officer.
According to the excerpt from the book, "Confessions of a Spy: the Real Story of Aldrich Ames" by Pete Earley and published by G.P. Putnam's Sons, Ames also exposed a recording device planted by the CIA in Moscow that intercepted and recorded KGB messages and a geiger counter installed in a train to count warheads on Soviet missiles on passing trains.
Earley said he interviewed Ames shortly after his arrest in 1994. He said that although Ames was disillusioned with the CIA, his primary motivation was money to buy a large home, luxury cars and expensive clothes for himself and his wife.
The book quoted Ames as saying, "I would love to say that I did what I did out of some moral outrage over our country's acts of imperialism or as a political statement or out of anger toward the CIA or even a love for the Soviet Union. But the sad truth is that I did what I did because of money and I can't get away from that."
Ames contacted an official in the Soviet embassy in Washington in 1983 and offered to become a spy to get money to pay off his debts after leaving his first wife for Rosario, the book says.
He was caught a decade later after CIA officials became suspicious because he was spending so much money on a $69,000 annual salary.
Earley said Ames regarded the agents who were executed because he exposed them as traitors to their country just like him and felt no guilt about their deaths.
The excerpt did not mention last year's arrest of Harold Nicholson, a 16-year CIA officer who has pleaded innocent to charges of selling Moscow secrets for 29 months until his Nov. 16 arrest or say if Ames knew of Nicholson.