Catching a Russian Spy: Agent Les Wiser Jr. and the Case of Aldrich Ames

Aldrich H. Rick Ames was a thirty-one-year veteran of the CIA. He was also a Russian spy. By the time Ames was arrested in 1994, he had betrayed the identities of dozens and caused the deaths of ten agents. The notorious KGB (and later the Russian intelligence service, SVR) paid him millions of dollars.

Agent Leslie G. Les Wiser Jr. ran the FBI’s Nightmover investigation tasked with uncovering a mole in the CIA. The team worked night and day to collect evidence-sneaking into Ames’s home, hiding a homing beacon in his Jaguar, and installing a video camera above his desk. But the spy kept one step ahead, even after agents followed him to Bogota, Colombia. In a crazy twist, the FBI would score its biggest clue from inside Ames’s garbage can.