Ryan McBeth
@RyanMcBethProgramming·1.1M subscribers·2K videos
The Most Dangerous Spy in CIA History
Posted
February 1, 2026
Views
92,677
Likes
6,367
Comments
437
Engagement
7.34%
February 1, 2026
92,677
6,367
437
7.34%
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Aldrich Ames died on January 5, 2026. He wasn’t just a spy, he was the most damaging mole in CIA history.
In this video, I break down how a career CIA officer with repeated red flags, alcohol problems, security violations, and terrible judgment somehow failed upward into the most sensitive counterintelligence job in the Agency… and then sold it all to the KGB.
We’re going to talk about:
* How Cold War espionage actually worked before cyber intelligence
* How Ames got recruited — and why money mattered more than ideology
* How CIA assets started disappearing one by one
* Why it took nearly a decade to catch him
* And what this case says about the limits of human intelligence
This isn’t a Hollywood spy story. It’s a story about bureaucracy, incentives, blind spots, and how one deeply flawed person caused catastrophic damage, not because he was brilliant, but because the system let him.
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