A DOUBLE agent who sold secrets to the Soviets has died in prison, aged 84.
Aldrich Ames was a crooked CIA counterintelligence officer who was behind one of the most damaging intelligence breaches in US history.
His treachery lead to the death of at least 10 CIA spies, after he shared the identities of more than 30 agents.
Over nine years, Ames was paid more than $2.5 million by Moscow for CIA secrets.
He was jailed in April 1994 after admitting to selling secrets to the Soviet Union and Russia.
The double agent died behind bars on January 5 at the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland, where he was serving a life sentence without the chance of parole.
As well as divulging identities, the 31-year CIA veteran gave enemies details of satellite operations, eavesdropping, and other spy procedures.
Ames began slipping secrets to the Soviets in April 1985, when he took $50,000 to hand over the names of CIA agents to the KGB.
He was in debt, and went on to give up the identities of virtually all of the CIA’s spies in the Soviet Union.
Known to the KGB by code name Kolokol (“The Bell”), the spy sold secrets while based in Virginia, Rome and Washington.