Top 10 Most Damaging Spy Missions in History

[Sanguine]

28 Mar 2019
We Are The Mighty | By Shannon Corbeil

The Espionage Act of 1917 defined espionage as the notion of obtaining or delivering information relating to national defense to a person who is not entitled to have it. The Act made espionage a crime punishable by death, but there are always men and women willing to risk it — for country, for honor, or maybe just for some quick cash.

Whether they infiltrated the enemy's ranks or sweet-talked the details out of careless persons who ignore all those "loose lips sink ships" posters, these are the most notorious spies with the most successful espionage missions in history, ranked by the operations they disrupted, the damage they dealt, and the odds stacked against them.
10. Aldrich Ames — COLD WAR

Aldrich Ames is a 31-year CIA veteran turned KGB double agent. In 1994, he was arrested by the FBI for spying for the Soviets along with his wife, Rosario Ames, who aided and abetted his espionage. Following his arrest and guilty plea, Ames revealed that he had compromised the identities of CIA and FBI human sources, leading some to be executed by the Soviet Union....

https://www.military.com/undertheradar/2019/03/27/top-10-most-damaging-spy-missions-history.html?ESRC=eb_190329.nl

Very interesting read.

[Sanguine]

During a nearly year-long investigation into his subterfuge — and his subsequent trial — it was revealed that Ames had been spying for the Soviets since 1985, passing details about HUMINT sources, clandestine operations against the USSR, and providing classified information via "dead drops" in exchange for millions of dollars.

It took less than a year to identify Ames' perfidy enough to convict him.  Was "American Intelligence" just more efficient back then?