Spies are supposed to be cunning and ingenious, but these are a few that put that idea to shame.
Gunshots, explosion, intense foot-chases, more explosions, a beautiful woman or four, fistfights, gunshots, another explosion and memorable death scenes — the hallmarks of the one and only James Bond series.
With the release of the 24th James Bond film Spectre on the horizon, let us take a look at some spies throughout history who were notably less suave and less loyal than Mr. Bond.
Meet Mr. Aldrich Ames, a former member of the Central Intelligence Agency. He was known for sleeping on the job, sleeping with agents from other countries (three times), getting drunk and fighting cops. Despite this abhorrent reputation, Ames was promoted to an elite Soviet team situated in Washington D.C.
Because of his questionable sense of ethics, Ames proceeded to betray the CIA in 1985 to the Soviet Union in order to earn himself a lot of extra money. However, Ames apparently decided that he wasn’t big on being covert and secretive about his illegal activities. Instead of setting up a discreet location to trade documents for cash, Ames went straight into the Soviet embassy, had his lunch there and walked out stuffed with cash.
Nine years and $4.6 million later, Ames was arrested after his coworkers and superiors noticed that Ames had acquired a shiny new Jaguar and a $540,000 house. He is now spending the rest of his life in prison for committing treason.
Ames isn’t the only shifty guy a spy agency has placed too much faith in. We now get to take a look at Michael Bettaney. Bettaney was a member of MI5, the British version of the CIA. Although Bettaney often sang Nazi ditties, vocally pronounced his support for Adolf Hitler and drank quite a bit, his superiors promoted him to the Soviet desk.
Bettaney, like Ames, wasn’t schooled especially well in the art of subtlety and decided that he too wanted to make a whole bunch of money by selling massive amounts of government and military secrets. Strangely, Bettaney, just like Ames, almost got away with his illicit activities. After two years of hard work, Bettany arranged a “holiday” to Vienna, where he would meet with Soviets and make a fortune.
Unfortunately for both the Soviets and Bettaney, the Soviets decided that Bettaney was poorly-designed bait for Soviets to swallow and called MI5, informing them of their mole. As Bettaney served his 14 years in jail, the Soviets were eternally disappointed for missing such a wonderful opportunity.
However, neither Ames nor Bettaney could match up to the antics of Adolf Tolkachev. Tolkachev was a Soviet radar operator who had become disillusioned after witnessing his family’s treatment in Stalinist Russia. Tolkachev finally decided that to get back at the poor treatment, he would start leaking information to the Americans in 1976.
Of course, instead of doing something logical like a coded message or leak, Tolkachev decided that he would ostentatiously chase after vehicles with American diplomatic plates, yelling for their attention, despite the fact the KGB often tailed such vehicles. Tolkachev also left notes on these cars with statements that he was willing to reveal important secrets about the Soviet Union.
Richard Hwang is a student at Athens High School. What spies do you think are idiotic? Email him at rhwang999@gmail.com.
