Thirty-six years after he was arrested and convicted, the most successful double-agent to ever work inside the Central Intelligence Agency died this week at the Federal Correctional Institution at Cumberland, Maryland. From 1985, when he began selling secrets to the Soviet Union, Aldrich Hazen Ames compromised over 100 CIA operations, enabled the execution of ten high-level sources, and helped plant disinformation which made its way to three United States presidents. An official investigation concluded he “caused more damage to the national security of the United States than any spy in the history of the CIA.” watch @praveenswami explains in @theprintindia #Explorer the most important lesson of the Ames case—which is how easy it was for him to get away with it. Like all bureaucracies, intelligence services—even the best ones—tend to be mired in process and procedure.
