MEET CIA CLANDESTINE SERVICE LEGEND SANDY GRIMES

 

    Meet long-time veteran of the CIA clandestine service, Sandy Grimes. Grimes, along with her now-deceased colleague Jeanne Vertefeuille, were  instrumental in capturing Aldrich Ames, the infamous CIA officer turned traitor.  Meet with Sandy Grimes from 1-4pm on Thursday, June 4, 2015 at the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. Visit the Spy Museum on June 4th and “Meet A Spy” – uncover the world of espionage and intelligence from people who practiced professionally. Tickets are FREE! No reservation required. Click HERE for details on this event.
     Here's the story of Sandy Grimes, a legend in the CIA, which I abstracted from four OSINT sources (Wikipedia,  "Aldrich Ames Criminal Complaint"- cryptome.org, the AFIO WINN, and through ABC News archives):
     Grimes' spy career began in 1966, when a CIA recruiter visited her college campus. He told her she "would make a perfect spy" and she accepted simply because she needed a job before graduation. Following her interview with the CIA, she was given a position as a GS-06 Intelligence assistant and reported for duty at the Ames building in Rosslyn, VA, where she became a clerical employee. 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 and eventually worked her way up and replaced a senior intelligence analyst in the Branch. She later became a Soviet and Eastern European Division officer and remained with their counterintelligence group for eleven years, holding various titles and positions. It was through this experience that she gained knowledge of the KGB and GRU.

Journey the Caribbean with CIA spymaster Corey Pearson! First 3 complementary episodes sent immediately.
 
     In the late 1970s, through an organizational change in the counterintelligence (CI) group, she met Jeanne Vertefeuille. 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 with the Eastern European bloc. Eventually the two branches merged, where Vertefeuille was the chief and Grimes became the Soviet section chief. 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 dead drop in East Berlin.
   

Grimes worked for CIA during Cold
War era.

  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.
     During a joint mole-hunt, she was a member of the team who made the first breakthrough in 1992. 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...she connected the dots!
     In early 1993, Grimes resigned from the CIA.

Robert Morton, Ed., Ed.S. is a member of the Association Of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) and writes the online spy novel series "Corey Pearson- CIA Spymaster in the Caribbean".  The views expressed on this site do not represent those of any organization he is a member of. Contact him on the Secure Contact Form