Remembering Sandra Grimes, mole hunter : NPR

[ad_1] <img src="https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2019/12/06/gettyimages-159561542_custom-1860aaec7cfb54d4060a11104a7633777c94f743.jpg?s=1100&c=50&f=jpeg" data-template="https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2019/12/06/gettyimages-159561542_custom-1860aaec7cfb54d4060a11104a7633777c94f743.jpg?s={width}&c={quality}&f={format}" class="img" alt="Sandra "Sandy" Grimes, who worked at the CIA from the late 1960s, at home in Great Falls, Va. As one of the investigators in Operation Playactor, Grimes created a chronology that was instrumental in identifying Ames as a spy." fetchpriority="high"/> Sandra "Sandy" Grimes, who labored on the CIA from the late Nineteen Sixties, at house in Nice Falls, Va. As one of many investigators in Operation Playactor, Grimes created a chronology that was instrumental in figuring out Ames as a spy. Nikki Kahn/The Washington Submit through Getty Photos cover caption

toggle caption

Nikki Kahn/The Washington Submit through Getty Photos Sandra "Sandy" Grimes, who labored on the CIA from the late Nineteen Sixties, at house in Nice Falls, Va. As one of many investigators in Operation Playactor, Grimes created a chronology that was instrumental in figuring out Ames as a spy.

Nikki Kahn/The Washington Submit through Getty Photos Earlier than Sandra Grimes turned a mole hunter, she'd been able to reduce. "I used to be not sufficiently old on the time to retire," Grimes stated in an interview for the Nationwide Safety Archive at George Washington College, "however I used to be glad professionally. I had a household that I needed to spend extra time with."

It was 1991. Sandra Grimes had spent greater than twenty years with the CIA. However she agreed to remain on to assist a colleague examine why the company's informants within the Soviet Union had "gone darkish," as they are saying in spycraft, in 1985 and 1986. They realized they'd been recognized, interrogated, and sometimes executed.

"It was a horrible, horrible reminder of the seriousness of what we did for a residing," Sandra Grimes stated in that Nationwide Safety Archive interview. "We owed all these individuals who had made the sacrifice."

Their investigation led them to look intently at Aldrich Ames, whom they knew as "Rick." He was the CIA's counterintelligence chief for Soviet operations, and knew about the entire company's informants within the USSR.

Rick Ames had episodes of public drunkenness, carried on affairs, which triggered an costly divorce, and married one among his outdated informants. He began sporting tailor-made fits, had his enamel capped, then paid money for a brand new home and acquired a Jaguar. All on a civil servant's wage.

Sandra Grimes scrutinized exercise logs and monetary statements and observed that 3 times after Ames had lunch with a Soviet embassy official in Washington, D.C., he deposited 1000's into his checking account.

"Properly, three matches do not make a conviction, however in my thoughts, Rick was the spy," Sandra Grimes recollected. "It did not take a rocket scientist so as to add one plus one plus one."

Aldrich Ames was arrested in 1994 and pled responsible to espionage, after taking thousands and thousands of {dollars} for his spy work for the Soviet Union. He's nonetheless serving a life sentence.

Sandra Grimes died on July 25 on the age of 79. Her work was essential in catching and stopping a Soviet agent who, the Senate Intelligence Committee stated, "brought about extra injury to the nationwide safety of the US than any spy within the historical past of the CIA."