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I knew quite well, when I gave the names of our agents in the Soviet Union, that I was exposing them to the full machinery of counterespionage and the law, and then prosecution and capital punishment.

Aldrich Ames

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Aldrich Ames
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: May 26
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More quotes by Aldrich Ames

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I saw a limit to what I was giving as kind of a scam I was running on the KGB, by giving them people that I knew were their double agents fed to us.
Aldrich Ames
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Because interrogations are intended to coerce confessions, interrogators feel themselves justified in using their coercive means. Consistency regarding the technique is not important inducing anxiety and fear is the point.
Aldrich Ames
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The national security state has many unfair and cruel weapons in its arsenal, but that of junk science is one which can be fought and perhaps defeated.
Aldrich Ames
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I handed over names and compromised so many CIA agents in the Soviet Union.
Aldrich Ames
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You might as well ask why a middle-aged man with no criminal record might put a paper bag over his head and rob a bank. I acted out of personal desperation.
Aldrich Ames
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The resistance of policy-makers to intelligence is not just founded on an ideological presupposition. They distrust intelligence sources and intelligence officials because they don't understand what the real problems are.
Aldrich Ames
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I came into the Agency with a set of ideas and attitudes that were quite typical of people coming into the Agency at that time. You could call it liberal anti-communism.
Aldrich Ames
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When Reagan was elected, I felt that the Agency had gone much more into the service of a political tendency in the country with which I had already felt very strong disagreement.
Aldrich Ames
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Let's say a Soviet exchange student back in the '70s would go back and tell the KGB about people and places and things that he'd seen and done and been involved with. This is not really espionage there's no betrayal of trust.
Aldrich Ames
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The Soviet Union did not achieve victory over the West, so was my information inadequate to help them to victory, or did it play no particular role in their failure to achieve victory?
Aldrich Ames
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The FBI, to its credit in a self-serving sort of way, rejects the routine use of the polygraph on its own people.
Aldrich Ames
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The use of the polygraph has done little more than create confusion, ambiguity and mistakes.
Aldrich Ames
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The difficulties of conducting espionage against the Soviet Union in the Soviet Union were such that historically the Agency had backed away from the task.
Aldrich Ames
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Perhaps my information hurt the Soviet Union more than it helped. I have no idea. It was not something I ever discussed with the KGB officers that I was dealing with.
Aldrich Ames
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Historians don't really like to carry on speculative debates, but you could certainly argue that the likelihood of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe was extremely, extremely low.
Aldrich Ames
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To the extent that I considered the personal burden of harming the people who had trusted me, plus the Agency, or the United States, I wasn't processing that.
Aldrich Ames
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The human spy, in terms of the American espionage effort, had never been terribly pertinent.
Aldrich Ames
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My little scam in April '85 went like this: Give me $50,000 here's some names of some people we've recruited.
Aldrich Ames
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The U.S. is, so far as I know, the only nation which places such extensive reliance on the polygraph. It has gotten us into a lot of trouble.
Aldrich Ames
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No one's interested really in knowing what policies or diplomatic initiatives or arms negotiations might have been compromised by me.
Aldrich Ames