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Soviet Influence in the United States: The Espionage Activities of Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen

This article is being published as part of a series related to the museum’s temporary exhibit From Spies to Satellites: The Cold War Era. The exhibit will be on display June 1 – Sept. 1, 2025.

During the late Cold War and into the 1990s, Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen infamously betrayed U.S. intelligence to the Soviet Union (and later Russia). Ames was a veteran CIA officer, and Hanssen was a veteran FBI agent—each used their insider access to spy for Moscow, causing catastrophic losses to U.S. intelligence. Below we present well-documented details of their espionage activities, drawing on primary sources from the era and authoritative government accounts. Both cases illustrate the gravity of Cold War mole hunts and their aftermath in the U.S. intelligence community.

Aldrich Ames—CIA Officer Turned Soviet Mole

FBI mugshot of Aldrich Hazen Ames after his arrest on February 21, 1994. Ames’s betrayal led to the collapse of numerous U.S. spy operations and the execution of at least ten U.S. assets by the KGB. (FBI Photo)

Aldrich Hazen Ames was a 31-year CIA counterintelligence officer who began spying for the Soviet KGB in 1985, while assigned to the CIA’s Soviet-East European Division. On April 16, 1985, Ames voluntarily walked into the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C. and offered secrets to the KGB. In return, he received an initial payment of $50,000 and, over the next nine years, over $2 million from the Soviets. By 1989, the KGB paid Ames $1.88 million.

Using his position handling CIA counterintelligence cases, Ames handed over highly classified information on virtually every CIA and FBI source operating against the USSR. This included the identities of Soviet officials secretly working for the U.S. Many of these assets were promptly arrested by the KGB; at least 10 U.S. intelligence sources were executed as a direct result of Ames’s treachery. Beyond human sources, Ames also sold countless operational secrets—CIA and FBI plans, technical operations, and counterintelligence techniques—crippling intelligence efforts against the Soviets. U.S. officials realized something was terribly wrong when vital Soviet sources started disappearing. By the late 1980s, CIA leadership observed that “Russian officials who had been recruited by them were being arrested and executed,” indicating a mole in their midst.

Ames’s Tradecraft

Ames met periodically with KGB handlers and passed documents using “dead drops”—concealed caches where he would leave packets of classified papers to be picked up by the Soviets. In exchange, the KGB would leave him bundles of cash in similar dead drops. Ames’s espionage continued even after the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, as he spied for Russia’s SVR (the KGB’s successor) into the early 1990s. Notably, Ames’s wife, Rosario, also participated—helping handle payments and conveying messages—for which she later pled guilty as an accessory.

Detection and Arrest

Despite Ames’s attempts to mask his activities, his sudden, unexplained wealth raised suspicions. By 1993, Ames—officially earning a moderate government salary—had spent over $600,000 on a new house and luxury cars, far beyond his means. The FBI opened a mole investigation in May 1993, focusing on Ames’s finances. For 10 months, FBI agents conducted intensive surveillance of Ames: they searched his home (finding clandestine documents linking him to Russian intelligence) and tracked his movements. In October 1993, the FBI caught Ames making a telltale “chalk mark” on a neighborhood mailbox—a signal to his KGB handlers about a planned meeting. The next month, FBI surveillance observed Ames meeting a Russian agent in Bogotá, Colombia, confirming his espionage activities. With evidence in hand, the FBI moved to arrest Ames before he could flee. On the morning of February 21, 1994, Ames was arrested by FBI agents outside his Arlington, Virginia, home while heading to CIA headquarters. His wife, Rosario, was arrested the same day for aiding his espionage.

A photograph showing the arrest of Aldrich Ames outside his suburban Virginia home in 1994. (FBI Photo)

Aftermath

Faced with overwhelming evidence, Ames and his wife both pleaded guilty on April 28, 1994, to espionage-related charges. Ames was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, and Rosario Ames received a 63-month sentence. In court, Ames admitted he had “conspired for nine years with Soviet and Russian intelligence services.” He was unabashed about his motive: large sums of money to pay debts and finance a lavish lifestyle. As part of his plea deal, Ames cooperated with debriefers, recounting how he compromised the identities of numerous CIA and FBI human sources, fully aware many would be executed by the KGB. He also forfeited all assets from his spy payments—about $547,000 was turned over to the U.S. Victims Assistance Fund. Ames remains imprisoned to this day. His betrayal, described by U.S. officials as “exceptionally grave” damage to national security, prompted sweeping internal reviews at the CIA and FBI to tighten security and hunt for any additional moles.

Robert Hanssen— FBI Agent Turned Spy

Official FBI photo of Robert Philip Hanssen. A career FBI counterintelligence agent, Hanssen was arrested in February 2001 after 15 years of spying for Soviet and Russian intelligence. (FBI Photo)

Robert Hanssen joined the FBI in 1976 and rose to become a skilled counterintelligence agent. But in 1985 – the same year as Ames’s betrayal—Hanssen volunteered to spy for the KGB. Using the code name “Ramon Garcia,” he began selling U.S. secrets to the Soviets in exchange for cash and diamonds. By the time of his arrest in 2001, Hanssen had received over $1.4 million in payments from the KGB/SVR. Like Ames, Hanssen’s espionage continued even after the Cold War, persisting into the 1990s and beyond. He is often described as the most damaging spy in FBI history.

Scope of Betrayal

From 1985 to 2001, Hanssen systematically abused his insider access to feed Moscow U.S. intelligence secrets. He worked in key FBI units tracking Soviet intelligence and later in national security and counter-espionage roles, giving him wide access. Hanssen used encrypted communications and dead-drop sites in the Washington, D.C. area to pass documents to his KGB handlers, mirroring many classic spy techniques. The classified information he gave up was staggering in scope—it compromised “numerous human sources, dozens of classified U.S. government documents, and technical operations of extraordinary importance.” Among the losses were top-secret U.S. counterintelligence techniques and ongoing investigations. He also tipped off the KGB to at least two Soviet officials working as U.S. double-agents (Valery Martynov and Sergey Motorin)—agents who, once exposed (ironically first by Ames and then independently by Hanssen), were recalled to Moscow and executed for treason. Hanssen’s betrayals dealt a “grave blow” to U.S. intelligence, derailing critical operations and leading to the death of informants. He even compromised an FBI investigation into a State Department official (Felix Bloch) by alerting the KGB. All told, an FBI damage assessment in 2001 called Hanssen’s espionage “possibly the worst intelligence disaster in U.S. history.”

Tradecraft and Secrecy

Notably, Hanssen was never exposed by routine surveillance or financial flags—his tradecraft was meticulous. As a counterintelligence expert, he was keenly aware of FBI investigative methods and took elaborate steps to avoid detection. He insisted on never meeting the Russians in person, communicating only through encrypted text and dead drops. He refused to travel abroad to meet handlers and never revealed his identity or employer to them, referring to himself only by code name. Hanssen also constantly checked FBI files for any hint of an investigation that might target him or his drop sites. He lived modestly to avoid flashy signs of wealth, often hiding cash profits or investing them quietly. In one letter to his KGB contact, Hanssen acknowledged the extreme risks he was taking, writing that “I know far better than most what minefields are laid and the risks.” This cautious approach enabled Hanssen to spy under the FBI’s nose for years.

Unmasking the Mole

It wasn’t until after Ames’s 1994 arrest that suspicions firmly shifted toward an unidentified second mole still operating. Throughout the 1990s, FBI and CIA analysts noticed certain secrets were still leaking, indicating another insider was spying. Initially, investigators wrongly suspected a CIA officer and spent years chasing that lead. The break in the case came in late 2000: U.S. intelligence managed to obtain original Russian KGB/SVR files—via a paid Russian source—that identified an American spy code-named “Ramon” (Hanssen). With this evidence, the FBI rapidly built a covert case against Hanssen. In December 2000, FBI leadership lured Hanssen into a special assignment at headquarters (under the ruse of a promotion) so they could watch him closely. They surreptitiously installed cameras and monitoring devices in his office, had coworkers report on his actions, and assigned a surveillance specialist, Eric O’Neill, to pose as his assistant and report on Hanssen’s activities. After weeks of surveillance, the FBI confirmed Hanssen was still actively working for Moscow in early 2001.

Finally, on February 18, 2001, the FBI set a trap to catch Hanssen in the act. They learned he planned to make a secret dead drop that day in Foxstone Park near Vienna, Virginia—a location he had used before for passing packages to the Russians. As Hanssen placed a bag of classified documents under a footbridge (the “Ellis” drop site) and walked back to his car, an FBI arrest team swarmed in and captured him red-handed. Inside the drop package was a trove of U.S. secrets Hanssen intended for Moscow, and in his car and home, the FBI found more evidence of espionage. Hanssen’s 15-year spy career had finally come to an end.

Aftermath

Hanssen’s arrest sent shockwaves through the FBI. Then-FBI Director Louis J. Freeh described Hanssen’s alleged crimes as “the most traitorous actions imaginable” for an FBI agent. In July 2001, to avoid the death penalty, Hanssen pleaded guilty to 15 counts of espionage and conspiracy. The Justice Department announced that Hanssen had operated as a Soviet/Russian spy for fifteen years, and his plea bargain required “full, complete” cooperation with U.S. interrogators to assess the damage. In exchange, Hanssen received a sentence of life in prison without parole (he was spared execution but would spend the rest of his life behind bars). He also forfeited all illegal earnings (approximately $1.4 million in cash and diamonds) and relinquished his FBI pension. During debriefings, Hanssen coldly admitted to volunteering for the KGB in 1985 and betraying “some of the most sensitive human and technical sources of information in the U.S. Intelligence Community.”

The “Ellis” dead drop site in Foxstone Park where Hanssen would eventually be arrested while attempting to leave classified files for his handlers. (FBI Photo)

Hanssen’s betrayal had far-reaching consequences: it spurred extensive reforms in FBI internal security (including stricter background financial checks and mole-hunting units) and strained U.S.-Russian relations in the early 2000s. He remained incarcerated at the federal supermax prison in Colorado until his death in June 2023. Both Hanssen and Ames are now synonymous with the cost of insider betrayal during the Cold War— each caused incalculable damage to U.S. intelligence capabilities and trust, damage that authorities have spent decades trying to mitigate.

A View from the Other Side—Spy Handler by Victor Cherkashin

One of the Soviet Union’s senior counterintelligence officers, Victor Cherkashin, had direct involvement with both the Ames and Hanssen cases from the KGB side. Cherkashin served as a KGB rezidentura chief in Washington, D.C. from 1979 to 1986, during which time he helped manage some of the KGB’s most valuable Americans. In fact, Cherkashin personally oversaw the recruitment of CIA officer Ames in 1985 and the handling of FBI agent Hanssen (particularly during Hanssen’s early espionage in 1985–86). After retiring, Cherkashin authored a memoir titled Spy Handler: Memoir of a KGB Officer—the True Story of the Man Who Recruited Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames (co-written with Gregory Feifer, published 2005).

This book offers a first-person account from the KGB’s perspective on these spy cases. Cherkashin provides fascinating details of how Moscow viewed and ran Ames and Hanssen, and he recounts the cat-and-mouse games of Cold War espionage from the handler’s side. Spy Handler is a valuable supplemental resource for understanding the context of these betrayals, though readers should be aware of its inherent biases. As a former KGB man, Cherkashin’s telling is understandably colored by his loyalties and experiences. A CIA review of Spy Handler notes that Cherkashin at times displays nostalgia for the Soviet era and a tendency to present a moral equivalence between KGB and FBI/CIA espionage actions.

Sources

Further Reading

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