Aldrich Hazen Ames is a former Central Intelligence Agency

Central Intelligence Agency

The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...

 counter-intelligence

Counter-intelligence

Counterintelligence or counter-intelligence refers to efforts made by intelligence organizations to prevent hostile or enemy intelligence organizations from successfully gathering and collecting intelligence against them. National intelligence programs, and, by extension, the overall defenses of...

 officer and analyst, who, in 1994, was convicted of spying for the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 and Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

. Until the arrest of Robert Hanssen

Robert Hanssen

Robert Philip Hanssen is a former American FBI agent who spied for Soviet and Russian intelligence services against the United States for 22 years from 1979 to 2001...

 seven years later, Ames compromised more CIA assets than had any Soviet mole

Mole (espionage)

A mole is a spy who works for an enemy nation, but whose loyalty ostensibly lies with his own nation's government. In some usage, a mole differs from a defector in that a mole is a spy before gaining access to classified information, while a defector becomes a spy only after gaining access...

 in American history.
Aldrich Ames was born in River Falls, Wisconsin

River Falls, Wisconsin

River Falls is a city in Pierce and St. Croix counties in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. The population was 15,000 at the 2010 census, making it the second largest city in the Twin Cities Wisconsin suburbs, which is the eighth largest metropolitan area in the state...

, to Carleton Cecil Ames and Rachel Ames (née Aldrich). His father was a college lecturer, his mother a high school English teacher.