Alexander Dmitrievich Ogorodnik (November 11, 1939 – June 22, 1977) was a

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...

diplomat who, while stationed in Bogotá, was contacted by the Colombian Intelligence Agency and the U.S.

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

to spy on the Soviet Union, operating under the code name TRIGON. He initially showed little promise and claimed he knew only of Colombian political affairs. He was later transferred to the Soviet Foreign Ministry in

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 millio ...

. In this new position, he was able to photograph a great deal of secret

diplomatic cable A diplomatic cable, also known as a diplomatic telegram (DipTel) or embassy cable, is a confidential text-based message exchanged between a diplomatic mission, like an embassy or a consulate, and the foreign ministry of its parent country.Defi ...

s, many of which were sent daily to the

White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in ...

. Ogorodnik eventually requested a

suicide pill A suicide pill (also known as the cyanide pill, kill-pill, lethal pill, death-pill, or L-pill) is a pill, capsule, ampoule, or tablet containing a fatally poisonous substance that a person ingests deliberately in order to achieve death quickly th ...

to be used in the event that he was caught. His chief CIA handler in Bogota, KGB double agent

Aldrich Ames Aldrich Hazen "Rick" Ames (; born May 26, 1941) is a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer turned KGB double agent, who was convicted of espionage in 1994. He is serving a life sentence, without the possibility of parole, in the Federa ...

, was able to supply him with one. However, Ogorodnik threw away the first pen containing the L-pill (lethal pill) and asked for the CIA to provide him with another pen. After much discussion in the CIA headquarters regarding this request, it was eventually approved and his Moscow handler,

Martha Peterson Martha Jane "Marti" Peterson (''née'' Denny; born May 27, 1945), now known as Martha Peterson Shogi, is a former operations officer of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) known for her role in the TRIGON mission. Early life an ...

, delivered the pen through a dead drop. Ogorodnik was betrayed by

Karl Koecher Karl František Koecher (21 September 1934 in Bratislava) is a Czech mole known to have penetrated the CIA during the Cold War. Early life Born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, his father was a Viennese-born Czech and his mother Irena, a Slova ...

, a

Czechoslovakian , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...

translator working for the CIA, and was arrested in 1977. During his interrogation, Ogorodnik offered to write a full confession and asked for his pen. When the interrogator handed him the pen with a cleverly hidden cyanide pill in the cap, Ogorodnik bit on it and died soon after. He was said to have died before he hit the floor. He died without knowing the existence of his daughter, Alejandra Suárez Barcala, that was born from his romance in Bogota with a Spanish woman, Pilar Suárez Barcala, who helped CIA in Ogorodnik’s recruitment.

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* * * 1939 births 1977 suicides American spies against the Soviet Union Soviet diplomats Spies who died in prison custody Suicides by cyanide poisoning Suicides in the Soviet Union {{USSR-bio-stub