Aldrich Ames, a CIA officer for more than three decades who was convicted of spying for Moscow and sentenced to life in prison, died on Monday in custody at the age of 84, U.S. authorities announced.

A counterintelligence analyst at the CIA for 31 years, Ames was sentenced in 1994 to spend the rest of his life behind bars after admitting he had sold classified information to the then–Soviet Union for more than 2.5 million dollars.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, his betrayal jeopardized dozens of covert operations and led to the deaths of at least ten double agents who had been working for the United States.

Beginning in 1985, Ames is believed to have passed secrets to Soviet intelligence with the help of his wife, Rosario. The couple’s lavish lifestyle soon raised suspicions: they drove an expensive Jaguar, maintained bank accounts in Switzerland, and ran up annual credit card bills of roughly 50,000 dollars—spending far beyond a CIA salary.

His espionage was uncovered in 1994.

By feeding U.S. intelligence with false information, Ames repeatedly misled CIA officials and, by extension, Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, particularly on Soviet military capabilities and other matters of strategic importance.

His prosecution heightened tensions between Washington and Moscow at a delicate moment, as the Soviet Union’s policy of “perestroika” under Mikhail Gorbachev was giving way to “glasnost” and a broader opening to the West under Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first post-Soviet leader.

The scandal rocked the CIA, prompting the resignation of then–Director James Woolsey and a subsequent overhaul of the agency under his successor, John Deutch. President Bill Clinton called the Ames case “very serious,” warning it could strain relations with Moscow, a view the Kremlin dismissed as exaggerated. Washington later expelled a senior Russian diplomat, Alexander Lysenko, highlighting the diplomatic fallout of the affair.