Rosario Ames Denies She Spied in CIA Mole Case : Espionage: Suspect tells of anger toward husband, insists knowing nothing of his intelligence activities.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. —  A distraught Rosario Ames said Tuesday that she had no knowledge of her husband’s activities in the intelligence world and is bitterly angry over the shattering of her family’s life by the couple’s arrest on spying allegations.

In her first interview since her arrest on Feb. 21, Ames contended that portrayals of her as a “Mata Hari” figure in an alleged conspiracy that funneled CIA secrets to the Russians could not be further from the truth.

“I never worked for the Soviets,” she said in the hourlong interview, which was conducted in the presence of her attorney, William B. Cummings, at the Alexandria city jail. She is being held there awaiting possible federal grand jury indictment or a plea bargain in her case.

The Colombian-born Ames and her husband, Aldrich H. Ames--a 31-year CIA veteran--were arrested on espionage conspiracy charges. The FBI alleged that Aldrich Ames had been paid at least $2.5 million by the Soviets and later the Russians to spy for them as a CIA mole since 1985.

Rosario Ames and Cummings indicated that they expect another extension of the deadline for grand jury action in the case as they work out details of a plea bargain with government prosecutors. The Times reported April 7 that Aldrich Ames, 52, has indicated willingness to cooperate with investigators as they try to assess damage done by his alleged spying, but only if they recommend leniency for Rosario, who is 41.

In the interview, Rosario Ames recounted the difficulties of being held in jail for nearly two months and broke down in tears as she pointed to a photograph of her 5-year-old son, Paul, saying: “He is the one who keeps me going.”

She told of struggling with “anger, resentment and bitterness” toward her husband--feelings that now have settled into “great sadness and bewilderment.”

Asked the source of her anger toward her husband and whether she felt “that he brought all of this upon the family,” she said: “I don’t know if I want to. . . .”

Cummings, who had set the ground rule that Rosario Ames would not discuss evidence in the case, cut her off, saying: “I think that’s probably too close.”

Ames also waved off questions about excerpts from government wiretaps on the couple’s phones that depict her as a driving force in her husband’s alleged spying.

In one recorded conversation, included in an unusually detailed FBI affidavit, Rosario Ames cautioned her husband against carelessness in carrying sensitive documents or cash, apparently from his Russian handlers, in suitcases that he was checking as airline baggage.

In another, she berated him, allegedly for failing to leave a timely signal for the Russians, saying: “Well, honey, I hope you didn’t screw up.”

Asked to comment on the recordings, she said: “I would love to, but I can’t right now. Maybe in the future I will be able to.”

“Her position is that the tapes do not reflect the nature of her relationship with her husband,” Cummings said.

“Yes, he’s right,” Ames said.

“Beyond that, it’s not something we can discuss right now,” Cummings said.

Rosario Ames did strongly challenge the government’s describing her as “a paid source for the CIA” in Mexico City in 1983, where she was working as a cultural attache for the Colombian Embassy.

Her relationship with the agency involved permitting a CIA friend from the U.S. Embassy to use her apartment for “certain meetings he needed to conduct with people that he couldn’t have at the office,” Ames said. She also introduced the CIA friend, whom she did not identify, to friends from diplomatic circles in Mexico City, she added.

“I was never interviewed, officially hired, or met anybody else from the CIA,” she said. “I was never asked to, and he (her CIA friend) knew better than to ask me to betray my country, Colombia.”

She dismissed as “absolutely false” reports that Aldrich Ames, who is known as Rick, recruited her for CIA work while both were in Mexico.

She said she did not know that Aldrich Ames--whom she said she met at a Diplomatic Assn. function in Mexico in 1982--was in the CIA until he proposed marriage just before leaving Mexico in 1983.

Ames said she was shocked to find he was with the agency, and that “I didn’t like it too much.”

“I share this cultural prejudice, I guess, of the CIA that most Latin Americans feel,” she said. “When you mention the CIA in Latin America, people imagine all sorts of terrible things--not without good reason in a lot of cases.”

Whenever Rosario Ames was asked about evidence cited in the FBI affidavit or whether any CIA colleagues took part in her husband’s alleged activities, she denied having knowledge of her husband’s work.

“I have no idea about it,” she said. “I have very little knowledge of Rick’s work or his superiors.”

As for incriminating evidence that the FBI reportedly recovered from Rick Ames’ computer during a search of the couple’s home after their arrest, she said: “That’s my husband’s computer, not mine. So I can’t answer that.”

She said she maintained a separate word processor at home where she kept her graduate work.

In a court hearing, Leslie G. Wiser Jr., supervising FBI agent in the case, testified that Rosario Ames volunteered a series of damaging statements to agents after her arrest, stating that she learned of Ames’ alleged spying in 1991 and later cooperated in his efforts.

She also reportedly told of accompanying her husband last September on a drive into Washington from their suburban Virginia home to look for a signal from his Russian handlers verifying that they had picked up a package of classified documents left for them at a so-called “dead drop.”

Cummings cut off questions about those statements, noting: “That’s an area of some disagreement at this stage, so we don’t want to use that.”

Ames said that when she said goodby to her son on the day she was arrested, she expected to be back later that day or the next.

“They told me I would be back if I helped them,” she said.

The boy has since gone to Colombia with his grandmother and aunts, a trip that Rosario said he had been asking to make, and has been told only that his parents are traveling.

She said she has had one telephone conversation with the boy since her arrest, “and it was bad. We both cried a lot. . . . When I called, he sort of broke down.”

Ames acknowledged seeing a Washington psychologist, a visit approved by the court, and that “it helped.” She said she is taking medication that has helped “to a certain extent.”

“I have one special inmate friend, and (she has been) a very important factor in keeping my sanity,” Ames said. “She talks me out of my depression. . . . She’s been here awhile, so she knows the best ways to survive here.” Ames’ sharpest comments were aimed at a nanny who worked for the Ameses four years ago and who has said in interviews that the mother had frequently spanked the child and that the nanny was instructed to keep the infant out of the house most of the day.

Ames dismissed the statements by Maria Trinidad Chirino as “the most horrible lie I ever heard.” She said she fired Chirino for keeping her son out of the house for most of a day, without permission.

Elsewhere Tuesday, CIA director R. James Woolsey said that he expected many more U.S. espionage cases to be developed, largely resulting from the collapse of communist rule in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

“The CIA has come across a good deal of counterintelligence information,” Woolsey said on NBC’s “Today” show. “People should not have the impression that the Aldrich Ames case is the only counterintelligence case.”

Referring to documents and other information that has become available, Woolsey said that “we have been able to come up with a large number of leads with respect to people who undertook espionage during the Cold War, in this country and in other countries, in several parts of the American government.”

He said he was referring to cases outside the CIA, but declined to say if he was implying espionage by current or former State Department or White House officials. Declaring that it often takes months or years to build espionage charges against a suspect, Woolsey said that Americans “are going to see a number of these over the years to come.”

Wright is a special correspondent and Ostrow is a Times staff writer. Staff writer Robert L. Jackson also contributed to this story.