Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, April 10, 1994                   TAG: 9404100109
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

AMES HELPED DEFECTOR SET UP NEW LIFE IN U.S.

As a CIA counterintelligence official, Ames had been assigned to debrief Serguey Fedorenko after the Soviet became an FBI informer at the United Nations during the late 1980s. Although Ames' bosses at the agency "made a pass at him [Fedorenko]," they "decided he was rather dubious," a former CIA official recalled, either because he offered little information or because they had doubts about his sincerity.

But an FBI search of Ames' car and house after his Feb. 21 arrest turned up 14 monthly Virginia bank statements in Fedorenko's name and listing Ames' address. Informed sources confirmed that Ames had assisted the Soviet in building a new life here.

Why Ames helped Fedorenko may be one large or small piece of the puzzle intelligence officials are trying to put together to explain a series of disasters that befell U.S. operations during the 1980s, and Ames' possible role in them.

Did Ames use an unsuspecting Fedorenko to get inside an FBI operation? Was the Soviet a double agent? Or was the Ames-Fedorenko relationship simply one spy reaching out a hand of personal friendship to another, a meaningless episode unrelated to the larger world of Cold War gamesmanship in which Ames allegedly played such a big part?

The only person who knows for sure is Aldrich Ames and he, so far at least, is not talking. But prosecutors and senior intelligence officials are hoping that what sources said is Ames' concern for his family will convince him to strike a deal with them and answer this and many other questions.

Ames and his wife, Rosario, have been in the Alexandria jail since their arrest seven weeks ago. Prosecutors have charged in court that Ames received at least $2.7 million from the Soviet and Russian governments for supplying them highly sensitive intelligence information beginning in 1985.

Meanwhile, additional details are emerging about Ames' relationships with Fedorenko and KBG Col. Vitaly Yurchenko - the one-time defector who escaped back to the Soviet Union three months after his arrival here in 1985 - providing tantalizing hints that Ames could answer some of the most vexing counterintelligence questions of the 1980s.

Yurchenko's Aug. 2, 1985, arrival reception in the United States at Andrews Air Force Base occurred just three months after prosecutors say Ames, a veteran agency counterintelligence operative, received his first cash payments from the then-Soviet government for passing on secrets about U.S.-paid communist agents.

Ames was the only agency questioner who spoke Russian, and, according to one source, suggested that Yurchenko be given $1 million plus a lifetime salary.

When Yurchenko surprised the CIA and redefected back to the Soviets three months after his arrival in the United States, he claimed he had been drugged and had not truly defected. He cited the $1 million offer as a sign of U.S. corruption.

Some CIA officials, who still are not sure whether Yurchenko was a genuine or planted defector, now look at Ames' $1 million payment suggestion, which was approved at the top level of the agency, as possibly being part of a plot by the KGB.