Unapproved Trash Dig Caught Spy Agent’s Midnight Move That Led To Ames Called ‘Marvelous Piece Of Insubordination’

Taking heat because surveillance teams had been given the slip by Aldrich Ames, FBI supervisor Les Wiser, without his boss’ approval, ordered a risky pickup of the garbage outside the Ames house. What the FBI found convinced them they had uncovered Russia’s spy inside the CIA.

“It was a marvelous piece of insubordination,” said Robert “Bear” Bryant. Now assistant FBI director for national security, Bryant told reporters Thursday that if Wiser had asked, he would not have let him launch his midnight trash pickup on Sept. 15, 1993, for fear neighbors might tip off Ames that someone was snooping around.

“Everyone was depressed about missing Ames (on surveillance) so they became overaggressive, thank God,” said Bryant’s deputy, John Lewis.

What Wiser’s agents found in their overnight raid on the trash container at the curb outside Ames’ $500,000 Northern Virginia home were seven pieces of a torn-up yellow Post-It note barely more than two inches square.

On it, Ames had printed a message for the Russians. In traditional spy language, he was trying to set up a meeting in Bogota, Colombia, and telling them how to signal him they could do that or give him an alternate meeting site.

Wiser handed the reassembled note to Bryant about 6:30 a.m. Sept. 16 and told him, “We’ve solved it.”“We knew he was the guy when we found that note,” Wiser said.

Bryant, Lewis and Wiser gave reporters an inside look Thursday at key points in their 2-year hunt for a Russian mole inside the CIA.

Ames is now serving a life term without parole; his wife, Rosario, is serving a five-year sentence.

Among other FBI disclosures:One Russian diplomat, whom they did not name, was tossed out of the United States after Ames’ arrest in February 1994 for supervising Ames.

After sentencing, Ames volunteered information the FBI would never have known but for his cooperation, but he still had problems on a polygraph test when asked whether he’s told everything he knows.

They were occasionally dissatisfied with the CIA’s cooperation. The CIA failed to answer FBI questions about Ames’ activities as early as 1986. Ames became a Soviet spy in 1985.