Introduction:  The wife of accused spy Aldrich Ames, Rosario, grew up in a middle class family in Colombia yearning for a more glamorous lifestyle.  Similarly, her husband had similar yearnings and liked to play many roles. 

   Judy Woodruff, Anchor:  It may have been the worst crime in the final years of the Cold War.  Two spies, a husband and wife, who sold secrets that got other people killed.  The CIA has a catchword for why people betray their country- MICE.  M-I-C-E.  Money, Ideology, Compromise, Ego.  In this case, three of those four temptations may have been festering for years.  Here is CNN's Special Assignment's Brian Barger and his story of two blind mice. 

   Brian Barger, Investigative Correspondent:  Cartagena- Columbia's playground in the Caribbean.  A favorite vacation spot for the Latin elite.  Artists, intellectuals, and in recent years, a couple of spies.  

   Rick and Rosario Ames often vacationed here.  While in Cartagena, they stayed in this apartment with Rosario's family.  In Bogota, Columbia's capital, they stayed at this penthouse.  According to court documents, the FBI believes both properties were purchased with Soviet spy money. 

   Money and Columbia would prove recurring themes in the alleged conspiracy.  More than $1 million passed through accounts held by Rosario's mother.  Spy proceeds were allegedly used to purchase three properties here.  And it was here in Bogota just last November that Ames allegedly made his final face-to-face contact with Russian intelligence agents.

   The FBI says Rick and Rosario Ames planned to retire in Columbia, a country that has no extradition treaty with the U.S.  Instead, they were arrested.

   Ames said his wife didn't find out about his spying until 1992, and that she pleaded with him to stop.  But the U.S. government charged that Rosario actively supported her husband's spying after she learned about it.  Voted most likely to succeed in her high school yearbook, there were few indications that Rosario, an introverted bookworm, would someday have a bent for cloaks and daggers. 

   Piedad Bonnett, University Friend:  [through translator] Rosario was a very nervous person.  When I think about Rosario's nature, there is nothing that indicates a spy. 

   Barger:  Perhaps her first contact with the spy world came in 1982, when she worked for the Colombian government.  That's when she became a paid informant for the CIA, according to U.S. officials. 

   Why people spy has long been debated among philosophers, psychologists, and, of course, prosecutors.  Be it for love, for money, belief, or despair, the motive is often deeper than simple greed. 

   In the case of Rosario, friends from her university days explored ideology as a possible motive. 

   Bonnett:  At the university, there was Trotskyism, Maoism, a lot of sympathy for the Cuban revolution. 

   Barger:  Rosario did attend meetings of at least one Marxist group, but her flirtation with the left seemed to have little lasting impact. 

   Bonnett:  There is nothing in the Rosario that I knew that would indicate that she had the commitment to communism. 

   Barger:  If Rosario had few ideological commitments, money was often a concern.  She was born into Columbia's upper class, but her family had little money. 

   Monica Boza, Childhood Friend:  We all knew that she wasn't economically well-off. 

   Barger:  Yet Rosario attended two of Columbia's most expensive schools.  First, the American school in Bogota, and then the prestigious University of the Andes. 

   After graduating, Rosario began teaching at the university.  She moved uptown with her mother to this house.  Friends recall the rent was beyond their means; they borrowed to make ends meet.  Then, at age 29, Rosario made a momentous decision, leaving her job at the university to become a Colombian diplomat in Mexico City. 

   Bonnett:  The only thing that is not in her plans is that a Mr. Ames from the CIA appears. 

   Barger:  If there was little in Rosario's life to suggest she might become involved in espionage, everything in Rick's life suggested he would.  His father was a spy for the CIA.  His first wife also worked at the agency.  And after high school, Rick himself landed a job at the CIA.  His apparent credentials- good grades and a flair for acting. 

   Michael Horwatt, High School Friend:  I don't think it was an accident that his life in high school was primarily drama.  He played a lot of roles. 

   Barger:  Years later, in Mexico City, Rick Ames played the role of diplomat when he met Rosario. 

   Ignacio Umana, Former Colombian Ambassador to Mexico:  [through translator] I thought he was a diplomat, not from the CIA.  Rosario told me that he made her very happy, that she would marry him one day. 

   Barger: There was something else the ambassador didn't know.  Rosario was also working for the CIA as a paid informant.  As diplomats in Mexico City, Rick and Rosario lived a lifestyle that seemed to parallel the Mexican elite.  Expense accounts and well-connected friends in government and in the arts. 

   But the affluence around them disguised the underlying reality that they were simply public servants with modest incomes.  Money became a pressing concern for Rick and Rosario after 1983, when Rick was transferred back to Washington. 

   Rosario lost her salary from the Colombian embassy, and, according to the U.S. government, she also lost her income as a CIA informant.  In a court hearing last month, Rick Ames said that he was in debt by 1985, and had come to believe the espionage business had become irrelevant, and a self-serving sham. 

   At the time, Ames was CIA Branch Chief, in charge of Soviet counterintelligence.  Part of his job- to convince KGB officers to work secretly for the CIA.  Instead, the KGB recruited Ames. 

   Frederick Rustmann, Jr., Chairman, CTC Intl. Group:  What happened to Rick was that the Soviet KGB officer was a better case officer than Rick Ames was, and Rick Ames was more vulnerable to recruitment.

   Barger:  Ames's one time superior, Fred Rustmann, thinks money is only part of the story.

   Rustmann:  Rick thought he was smarter than everybody else, and he wasn't.  His promotion level wasn't progressing the way he thought it should.  There are other motivations for recruitment.  One of the best is revenge.  He wanted to stick it to the agency.

   Barger:  If living well is the best revenge, Rick Ames certainly took his.  In 1989, the Ames paid $540,000 cash for their Virginia home.  And each morning, Rick shuttled to work at CIA headquarters in his new Jaguar.

   Rustmann:  He was all of a sudden a real, real important guy and he was pulling the wool over a lot of people's eyes. 

   Barger: Ames had CIA colleagues believing he inherited his newfound wealth from his wife's rich Colombian family.  But Rosario's family wasn't rich.  The CIA did not bother verifying the source of Ames's money, which colleagues say only bolstered his confidence that he wouldn't get caught. 

   Horwatt:  I'm not sure that he had a sense of who he was.  His amusement was trying on other personalities, trying on roles. 

   Barger: What role could he have been playing? 

   Horwatt:  I'm gonna fool 'em all.  I'm gonna fool them all.