Sandra Grimes

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sandra Grimes
Occupation Former CIA Operative

Sandra Grimes, also called Sandy Grimes, was part of a small CIA team that helped catch[1] Aldrich Ames, a counterintelligence officer who was subsequently convicted of spying for the Soviet Union.

Early life

Grimes was born in August 1945 to a couple who met in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and worked together on the Manhattan Project. She went to school in Los Alamos, then left and did the rest of her schooling in Denver, Colorado. While in high school she enrolled in a course in Russian language, in which she excelled and gave her the encouragement to later major in Russian language at the University of Washington in Seattle. [2]

CIA career and Aldrich Ames

In October 1966, her former boyfriend informed her that a CIA recruiter was on campus. He told her she "would make a perfect spy."[3] She pursued this due to the fact she desperately needed a job before graduation. Following her interview with the CIA, she was given a position as a GS-06 Intelligence assistant, she needed to have security and medical clearances before she could get a job. When she reported for duty at the Ames building in Rosslyn, Virginia, she and her fellow co-workers became clerical employees.[3] Her first job was working in a guidance division, which was a cover for hunting down Dmitri Polyakov. She trained herself to become familiar with Soviet intelligence services. She eventually worked her way up and was given the duty of replacing a senior intelligence analyst in the Branch.[4] She later became a Soviet and Eastern European Division officer and remained with their counterintelligence group for eleven years, holding various titles and positions.[5] It was through this experience that she gained knowledge of the KGB and the GRU.[5][6]

In the late 1970s, through an organizational change in the CI group, she met Jeanne Vertefeuille, her co-author and friend. Together they made a proposal to create two branches in the CI group, both of which to handle CI dissemination and production. One would deal with the Soviet bloc and the other The Eastern European bloc. Eventually the two branches merged, where Jeanne was the chief and Sandra became the Soviet section chief. [7] She eventually moved on to becoming deputy chief of external operations in Africa. She was eventually brought into a CIA operation in Bonn. An anonymous write-in, involving a man named Mr. X, mentioned that the Soviet sources of the CIA were compromised due to a penetration of the CIA communications. The author demanded $50,000 in a cache or drop dead in East Berlin. In March, 1987, Grimes was removed from her position in Africa and was assigned to the Moscow Task Force. Moscow Embassy Marine Guard Arnold Bracy and Clayton Lonetree allowed the KGB entry to the secure areas within the U.S. Embassy.[8]

During a joint mole-hunt, she was a member of the team who made the first breakthrough in 1992.[9] She correlated times that Ames met with Sergey Dmitriyevich Chuvakhin, his KGB contact, with times that he made large bank deposits in 1985 and 1986.[6]

In early 1991, Grimes resigned from the CIA. [10]

Legacy

In November 2012, Grimes published a book, which gave full account of her handling of the Aldrich Ames case, entitled Circle of Treason with Jeanne Vertefeuille. [11]

ABC has ordered a limited series entitled The Assets set to air in 2014, based on Grimes & Vertefeuille's book Circle of Treason.[12]

Further reading

References

  1. ↑ “Circle of Treason: A CIA Account of Traitor Aldrich Ames and the Men He Betrayed”, The Washington Post, 1 December 2012
  2. ↑ Grimes, Sandra (2012). Circle of Treason. p. 10. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Grimes, Sandra (2012). Circle of Treason. p. 10-11. 
  4. ↑ Grimes, Sandra (2012). Circle of Treason. p. 12-13. 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Grimes, Sandra (2012). Circle of Treason. p. 14. 
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Wise, David (1995). Nightmover: How Aldrich Ames Sold the CIA to the KGB for $4.6 Million. Harper Collins. ISBN 0-06-017198-7. 
  7. ↑ Grimes, Sandra (2012). Circle of Treason. p. 15. 
  8. ↑ Grimes, Sandra (2012). Circle of Treason. p. 17-18. 
  9. ↑ "The People of the CIA ... Ames Mole Hunt Team". CIA.gov. CIA. Mar 12, 2009. Retrieved 4 November 2013. 
  10. ↑ Grimes, Sandra (2012). Circle of Treason. p. 19. 
  11. ↑ Hoffman, David (November 30, 2012). ""Circle of Treason: A CIA Account of Traitor Aldrich Ames and the Men He Betrayed"". Washington Post. Retrieved 4 November 2013. 
  12. ↑ Andreeva, Nellie, "ABC Orders Cold War Limited Series ‘The Assets’ For 2014", Deadline Hollywood http://www.deadline.com/2013/07/abc-orders-cold-war-limited-series-the-assets-for-2014
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike; additional terms may apply for the media files.