Aldrich Ames, who had served as a counterintelligence officer and analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency, was arrested in 1993 after a lengthy investigation into a series of intelligence leaks that had begun in the late 1980s. Over the course of approximately nine years, Ames had passed highly classified information to Soviet agents, leading to the exposure of several CIA operatives and the dismantling of critical U.S. intelligence efforts. On April 28, 1994, Ames pled guilty in a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, to charges of espionage and conspiracy to commit espionage. During the plea hearing, he acknowledged his activities had caused catastrophic damage to U.S. intelligence operations.His cooperation with the Soviet Union and, later, Russia, was driven by financial motives; he received hundreds of thousands of dollars for his classified information. The plea deal included a life sentence without the possibility of parole, marking a significant moment in American intelligence history. The investigation into Ames' espionage highlighted significant vulnerabilities in the CIA's vetting process and raised alarms about security clearances among employees. Following Ames' arrest, the U.S. government initiated a comprehensive review of its counterintelligence strategies to prevent such breaches in the future.