CIA Official Held as Russian Spy : Espionage: Agent and his wife are accused of taking $1.5 million from Soviet Union and later Russia. Clinton calls allegations about high-level mole ‘very serious.’

WASHINGTON —  A veteran CIA official, who had far-ranging access to intelligence secrets, and his wife were charged Tuesday with spying for the former Soviet Union and later for the Russian Federation in return for $1.5 million.

With the arrests, Aldrich Hazen Ames, 52, who served for two years as chief of the CIA’s Soviet counterintelligence branch, becomes the highest level agent to be accused of being a “mole” while still working for the agency. His wife, Maria Del Rosario Casas Ames, 41, once was a paid CIA source in Mexico City.

While President Clinton described the espionage case as “very serious,” Secretary of State Warren Christopher told the senior diplomat at the Russian Embassy here that the United States was “outraged” and suggested that the Russians should recall at least one of their intelligence officers as a sign of contrition.

Vladimir I. Chkhikvitchvill, deputy chief of Russia’s diplomatic mission, had no reply, according to officials at the State Department.

Other U.S. officials said that they hoped the Russians would respond quickly with a gesture that would bring the episode to an end and avoid damaging U.S.-Russian relations.

Even so, U.S. officials said the damage to American intelligence could be devastating.

“He had access to the most sensitive data of all,” a former senior intelligence official at the CIA said. “He would have had all of the operational details in terms of the identities of our people there (in the former Soviet Union) and how we went about our business.

Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, likened the potential impact to that caused by notorious spies John A. Walker Jr. and Ronald Pelton. Walker, a Navy warrant officer, and Pelton, a National Security Agency official, gave crucial U.S. defense information to the Soviets in the last decade.

Authorities said that Ames and his wife continued their spying activities until they were arrested by FBI agents Monday. Ames was taken into custody on his way to work, while his wife was arrested at their Arlington, Va., home.

They were arraigned Tuesday on federal charges of conspiracy to commit espionage. If convicted, they could face maximum sentences of life in prison.

According to an affidavit unsealed in federal court in Alexandria, Va., Tuesday, Ames met with intelligence officers of the Soviet KGB and its successor, the SVRR, beginning in 1985 and provided them with classified information on CIA operations and personnel. That information allegedly included the identity and code name of a CIA source inside the Soviet counterintelligence division in 1990.

Ames and his wife are accused of using “dead drops” in the Washington area--prearranged locations where agents drop off material and pick up payments--and “signal sites”--a prearranged place where agents communicate simple messages--without ever meeting face-to-face with the Russian contacts.

The Ames were arrested after extensive physical, video and electronic surveillance, officials said. U.S. agents tapped their telephones, rummaged through their trash, examined ribbons and disks from their home computer and printer and followed the couple to various sites.

The federal complaint claims that the Ames, who have a 5-year-old son, deposited more than $1.5 million in payments from the Russians in banks here and abroad, including two Swiss bank accounts.

Ames earned an annual CIA salary of $69,843. Financial records showed his take-home salary totaled $336,164 from April, 1985, through last November. Over the same period, however, records show that he and his wife spent at least $1,397,300.

Their purchases included a residence in a prosperous Arlington neighborhood. They paid $540,000 in cash for a home there in 1989--a transaction that caught the attention of real estate agents in the Washington suburb. Other expenditures, according to the affidavit by FBI Agent Leslie G. Wiser Jr., included a $25,000 down payment on a 1992 Jaguar, $99,000 in home improvements, $165,000 in stock and security purchases, $25,000 in Georgetown University tuition, where Mrs. Ames is a part-time student, and $455,000 in credit card purchases.

Ames also owns two condominium apartments and a farm in Colombia, his wife’s birthplace, according to the affidavit.

Counterintelligence experts expressed incredulity over Ames’ spending habits and Skip Brandon, who retired in January as acting assistant director of the FBI’s intelligence division, indicated that they were part of the “mosaic” of information that led authorities to suspect him.

Brandon noted that the financial affairs of those holding government security clearances are reviewed every three to five years and that this review has grown more systematic and careful in recent years.

However, Ronald Kessler, who has written several books on FBI and CIA operations, said it was a tip from a former KGB employee that led authorities to Ames and his wife. Kessler said that the source provided the information to the FBI nearly two years ago.

Brandon and several government sources insisted, however, that no single source or event led to the arrests.

FBI Director Louis J. Freeh said that “FBI agents worked doggedly on this case--not for months, but for years--with the CIA’s unwavering assistance every step of the way.”

“I would be very leery of anyone from any quarter who suggested there was a prime moving event,” said a U.S. intelligence source.

“This did not come from any one source. . . . There was active information developed over a number of years, including from advanced analytic techniques. It was not the result of any one tip-off or smoking gun. . . . This was an accumulation of evidence from all sources. It did not come at a specific period of time.”

Until his arrest, Ames, who joined the CIA 31 years ago, was working as an operations officer in the counternarcotics center at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., where he was responsible for developing information that would help stem the narcotics trade in the Black Sea area.

In addition to heading the Soviet counterintelligence branch in the CIA’s Soviet-East European division from 1983 to 1985, Ames saw duty in Washington, New York, Mexico City, Rome and Ankara, Turkey, according to the FBI affidavit.

To his neighbors, Rick Ames was known as a friendly, outgoing man who seemed to work hard and spend his free time cultivating his backyard vegetable garden and taking care of his son, Paul.

“He wasn’t at all flashy or ostentatious--anything but,” said William Rhoads, a retired foreign service officer who lives nearby.

Other neighbors said that they saw Ames’ Jaguar and knew he had spent some money remodeling his kitchen. But many of them had remodeled too, and fancy cars like Jaguars were not unknown in their neighborhood, where most houses cost more than $400,000.

“I didn’t see any signs that they were greedy,” said Tommye Morton, a writer of historical romance novels who lives across the street.

Ames told neighbors that he worked for the State Department, specializing in Eastern Europe. But he said little about his work, did not discuss international affairs and betrayed no particular disgruntlement with U.S. policy, neighbors said.

The neighbors knew his wife to be reserved and dedicated to her post-graduate studies in philosophy at Georgetown University.

Official Moscow was silent when the Ames arrest was reported Tuesday evening. Yevgeny Primakov, director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, was on an official visit to Slovenia, and a spokesman in Moscow declined to comment.

But one of Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin’s closest advisers, Mikhail N. Poltoranin, called the incident “nothing special.”

“They (the Americans) work for us, our people work for them,” Poltoranin said, asserting that even such close allies as England and the United States spy on each other. “Intelligence is intelligence,” Poltoranin said.

He faulted Russian spy handlers for possibly recruiting an agent who spent heavily and indiscreetly.

“Of course, we should not recruit such idiots who do not know how to live, but in principle, this is a necessary process,” Poltoranin said.

Times staff writers Sonni Efron in Moscow and Jim Mann, Doyle McManus, Paul Richter and Michael Ross in Washington contributed to this story.