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In exchange for the millions of dollars that he had received, Ames had provided scores of names, a number of whom were subsequently executed. (He later alleged that he suspected they were plants anyway – that is, not real spies, but agents intentionally dangled by the Russians to confuse the CIA.) Unsurprisingly, not only were the Russians keen, but they wanted more and Ames, increasingly, was happy to provide it.Īmes’ espionage career finally ended in 1994 when he was arrested: his extravagant lifestyle had finally given him away. When the latter failed to show, Ames brazenly walked to the Soviet Embassy, demanded to speak to the KGB officer in charge and deposited a letter asking for $50,000 in exchange for the identities of several supposed Soviet spies. In April 1985, Ames arranged to meet a KGB officer based in the US. Then, suddenly in the mid-1980s, he had a brainwave: he would sell secrets of limited utility to the Russians. For various reasons, Ames got into debt and grew desperate until he could not find a way out.
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He spent more than three decades in the agency, the vast majority in the Directorate of Operations with a focus on the Soviet Union. Read more | Money, love and revenge: the motivations of spies through historyĪmes was probably the most destructive Soviet spy or ‘mole’ hidden in the CIA.For Tolkachev, the driving factor was ideology, but for the CIA officer who likely betrayed him, Aldrich ‘Rick’ Ames, the impetus was entirely financial. What could be used as an incentive or, in the case of some of those recruited by the KGB, what form of blackmail might be employed? Some writers use the acronym MICE to explain these incentives: people spy for Money, Ideology, Coercion or Ego. Finding such people in a position of access – to documents and people – was tremendously difficult, and it took huge efforts over years to recruit them.Įncouraging someone to work for an opposing intelligence agency usually involved a certain level of psychological manipulation. There were two broad types of human spies: those with an incentive to spy, and those who made the calculated decision themselves to spy and volunteered their services. The Cold War espionage game had begun before World War II came to an end, and although spy technology evolved over the decades, the core elements rarely changed. Tolkachev’s experiences and fate were not unique. At some point in 1985, the KGB learnt of his identity, almost certainly via CIA officers secretly working for the Russians, and Tolkachev was arrested, interrogated and executed. He had to be tightly controlled by the CIA with his information very carefully concealed so that only select individuals knew anything about him. The Russian, Adolf Tolkachev, was a disgruntled engineer and over the next seven years he provided document after document, sharing a wealth of intelligence and saving the US defence establishment so much money that he earned the nickname the ‘Billion Dollar Spy’.įrom his first interactions with the CIA, Tolkachev would have been made aware of the dangers he faced. The result was more than Hathaway could have hoped for.
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This was neither the first nor the last approach the Russian made, but eventually he was able to make contact and Hathaway secured support to recruit him.