Rosario Casas Dupuy

María del Rosario Casas Dupuy (born December 19, 1951) is a Colombian academic and retired intelligence officer. During the Cold War, Casas Dupuy worked at the Colombian Embassy in Mexico City, where she met her future husband, Aldrich Ames, and was recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency. In 1994, she was caught and arrested on charges of conspiracy to commit espionage against the United States on behalf of the Soviet Union. After a confession and a negotiated plea bargain, she served four years in prison and then returned to Colombia. She has been involved in academia ever since, as a professor of literary studies and philosophy at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana and the National University of Colombia. She has earned several honorary degrees and regional awards for her works in education.

Early life and education María del Rosario Casas was born in Bogotá in 1951 into what the Colombian press referred to as the "local aristocracy". While she was growing up, her family, and local townsfolk, would often recount the heroic spy stories of her paternal great-grandfather. – a distant relative of Napoleon – was that famous paternal spymaster, serving during the Thousand Days' War by monitoring the activities of Rafael Uribe Uribe. He was also briefly the Commanding General of the Colombian Army.

Her grandfather was , a renowned engineer. He was teaching at the University of Tolima at the time of his death in 1982.

For her master's degree, Casas Dupuy enrolled in the National University of Colombia, and began working on a thesis on the subject of Hegel's ''Aesthetics.

While she was there, she became a temporary delegate to UNESCO and attended the first World Conference on Cultural Policies.

, the former Colombian ambassador to Mexico, described Casas Dupuy as an active, hardworking, and pleasant woman, though she retained her characteristically introverted and serious nature, being a lover of art and not particularly fond of parties.

Career in the Central Intelligence Agency David Samson first approached Casas Dupuy at an AMCOSAD function, assuming she was a new State Department employee based on her fluent grasp of English. Upon learning she was a newly arrived Colombian attaché, he saw an opportunity, later recalling in his case notes that new arrivals are most vulnerable to recruitment as they seek friends and routine. He began wooing her with friendship and practical help, gave her loans to cover her immediate expenses and rides to work, all while carefully gathering information about her personal life, including her alleged history of troubled affairs with married men. They eventually became lovers, despite both having other partners.

Relationship with Aldrich Ames David Samson introduced Rick Ames to Rosario Casas Dupuy at an AMCOSAD tour of the National Museum of Anthropology, but their first meeting was brief. In November 1982, a mutual friend from the Canadian embassy invited them to a dinner party. There, Casas Dupuy and Ames ended up on the floor discussing the works of Umberto Eco, Carlos Fuentes and Gabriel García Márquez. Casas Dupuy thought Rick Ames was brilliant and better-read than any American she had met, while he found her beautiful and intelligent. He asked her to dance, and later, she drove him home in her used car. He invited her up to his penthouse, and they spent the night together. Rosario was arrested at their home in February 1994, while her husband was detained a few streets away. Taken to an FBI office in Tyson's Corner, Virginia, she began confessing within three hours of questioning. Although investigators initially suspected that her prior contact with KGB agent Igor Shurygin in Mexico City in 1982 might have led to her recruitment, they ultimately determined this was not the case. Her cooperation proved extensive, and as part of a plea bargain negotiated to secure her husband's assistance in completing a full damage assessment, the charges against her were dropped. While the couple forfeited their luxurious life in Virginia and most of the $2.5 million in Soviet bribes, they were permitted to retain three properties in Colombia to secure their son's future.

In the wake of the scandal, Casas Dupuy fought to control her own narrative. She gave a revealing radio interview, where she reflected a profound sense of betrayal and disappointment in the man she had married "for pure love". When asked if she would reunite with Ames upon their release, she expressed deep doubt, stating that their relationship was severed by the distrust his double life had sown. She also fiercely denied salacious claims from a former maid, Trinidad Chirino, who had alleged the couple led a life of alcoholism and neglect, dismissing the accusations as a "defamation campaign".

Academic career In the years following her return to Colombia, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union already having occurred, Casas Dupuy returned to education. She has not maintained any of her prior contacts, and has worked for over twenty years as a scholar of the humanities.