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Aldrich Ames: Traitor Within

1998, Movie, PG, 97 mins

Aldrich Ames: Traitor Within: Review

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Personal injustice becomes a justification for treason when, after years of unrewarded CIA drudgery, one civil servant embraces infamy over loyalty. With cool precision, this gripping biopic (originally aired on the Showtime cable network) manages to make treachery comprehensible, not as an aberrant evil, but as a byproduct of disintegrating expectations. Until his arrest and conviction in 1994, Aldrich Ames (Tim Hutton) was Chief of Intelligence for the CIA's central Soviet division. After years of watching other company men surpass him, Ames begins to resent the agency and his government's laissez-fair attitude toward espionage. Driven to financial ruin by his ambitious wife, Rosario (Elizabeth Pena), Ames sells the name of a double agent to the Soviet government. Ames then begins playing a deadly game, selling top-secret files of counterintelligence operations involving spies working for the U.S., and he remains undisturbed by the capture and execution of operatives caused by his security leaks. Eliminating all incriminating links and puffed up by his KGB contacts' flattery, Ames is caught unawares by an internal affairs fishing expedition led by Jeanne Vertefeuille (Joan Plowright) and two other senior agents. Vertefeuille's investigative committee doggedly cross-check information until finally obtaining irrefutable proof of Ames's guilt. Craftily designed as a suspense film, this expose of US history's worst spy scandal works on several levels: as a scathing indictment of bureaucratic complacency and office politics; as a Cold War thriller about moles; as an intimate psychological drama of a misfit; and as a modernization of Macbeth. Although this authoritatively directed film grips us in all its guises, it's most unforgettable in the latter incarnation; in increments, Ames's megalomania intersects with his wife's grasping social climbing. Capitalizing on the irony that Ames's arrest only comes after the fall of communism, this docudrama shows how a white-haired posse exposed Ames's arrogance in blaming everyone but himself for his dead-end existence. leave a comment --Robert Pardi
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