Nagesh Bhushan Chuppala The spy who bled America Aldrich Ames, the Central Intelligence Agency officer whose betrayal of secrets to the Soviet Union and later Russia ranks as one of the most devastating in American history, has died behind bars. He was 84.Ames passed away on January 5th at the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland, where he was serving a life sentence without parole. The Bureau of Prisons confirmed the death but disclosed no cause. A 31-year veteran of the CIA, Ames began spying in 1985, motivated chiefly by greed. Over nine years he received around $2.5m from the KGB and its successors, funding a conspicuously lavish lifestyle—a Jaguar, a $540,000 home in Virginia, exotic holidays—on a salary never exceeding $70,000. In return, he compromised more than 100 clandestine operations and exposed the identities of over 30 agents working for the West, at least ten of whom were executed. His access was extraordinary: as head of the Soviet counterint...