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Colonel Sergei Olegovich Tretyakov (
Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
: Сергей Олегович Третьяков; 5 October 1956
Pete Earley Pete Earley (born September 5, 1951) is an American journalist and author who has written non-fiction books and novels. Career Born in Douglas, Arizona, Earley became a ''Washington Post'' reporter and also wrote books about the Aldrich Ames ...
: ''Comrade J: The Untold Secrets of Russia's Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War'', Penguin Books, 2007, , see copy of Tretyakov's passport on the back cover.
– 13 June 2010) was a Russian SVR (foreign intelligence) officer, who defected to the United States in October 2000.


Intelligence career

Born 5 October 1956 in Moscow, Tretyakov was a career KGB/SVR officer. Before being posted in New York, he worked in
Ottawa, Ontario Ottawa (, ; Canadian French: ) is the capital city of Canada. It is located at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River in the southern portion of the province of Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the core ...
,
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
. Starting in 1995, he worked in New York in the position of SVR deputy ''rezident'' (station chief) under the diplomatic cover of first secretary at Russia's mission at the
United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoniz ...
. It was later revealed that Tretyakov was a
double agent In the field of counterintelligence, a double agent is an employee of a secret intelligence service for one country, whose primary purpose is to spy on a target organization of another country, but who is now spying on their own country's organ ...
, passing secrets to Washington, from around 1997. He was reported to have been close to
Sergey Lavrov Sergey Viktorovich Lavrov (russian: Сергей Викторович Лавров, ; born 21 March 1950) is a Russian diplomat and politician who has served as the Foreign Minister of Russia since 2004. Lavrov served as the Permanent Represe ...
, Russia's UN mission head.


Defection

In October 2000, Tretyakov disappeared with his wife, daughter, and cat. He told the SVR, in a statement, "My resignation will not harm the interests of the country." It was not until the end of January 2001 that his defection was first reported by the
Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. ne ...
. The news was then broken in the Russian media, which reported that Russia's
Foreign Ministry In many countries, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is the government department responsible for the state's diplomacy, bilateral, and multilateral relations affairs as well as for providing support for a country's citizens who are abroad. The entit ...
was insisting on having a consular meeting with him to make sure he was not being forcibly kept by the US side. On 10 February 2001, it was revealed, with reference to "several American officials familiar with the case," that the defector "was in fact an officer in the S.V.R., Russia's foreign intelligence service, successor to the Soviet-era K.G.B." The timing of his decision was reportedly partly affected by the death of his mother in 1997, the last close family member still living in Russia the state could threaten. Upon defection, Tretyakov was debriefed by the
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, ...
and the
Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...
. He was given one of the largest US financial packages ever for a foreign defector, over US$2 million, and was resettled, along with his family, with a new name in an unknown location.


Later life

His location has since become known to Russian journalists. Alexey Veselovsky, a TV reporter, interviewed Tretyakov in his house in
Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...
before he died. In 2007, Tretyakov and his family were granted US citizenship. In his interviews published in early 2008, Tretyakov maintained that he had never had any sort of problems when he was in the KGB/SVR service, and he never requested any money from the US government; everything that he had received upon his defection was provided by the US government, on its own initiative.Еще один в Нью-Йорке
Grani.ru, 4 February 2008.
He also claimed then that the chief motivation for his defection had been his "growing disgust with and contempt for, what was happening in Russia," he said: "I saw with my own eyes what kind of people were governing the country. I arrived at the irrevocable conclusion that to serve those people is immoral, I wanted nothing to do with them." A second motive he mentioned was to provide a better future for his daughter "in a country that has a future."


Book release

In January 2008, Tretyakov gave several interviews to publicize a book of his experiences, ''Comrade J.: The Untold Secrets of Russia's Master Spy in America after the End of the Cold War'', written by journalist
Pete Earley Pete Earley (born September 5, 1951) is an American journalist and author who has written non-fiction books and novels. Career Born in Douglas, Arizona, Earley became a ''Washington Post'' reporter and also wrote books about the Aldrich Ames ...
. Earley first met Tretyakov through an FBI contact at the Ritz-Carlton in
Tysons Corner, Virginia Tysons, also known as Tysons Corner, is a census-designated place (CDP) in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States, developed from the corner of Chain Bridge Road ( SR 123) and the Leesburg Pike ( SR 7). Located in Northern Virginia between the c ...
; two FBI agents and two CIA were assigned to Tretyakov as an escort. The SVR responded to the book's release by calling it "self-publicity based on treachery." The book's release in
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
was delayed by the publisher because of legal considerations, namely Tretyakov's accusation that former Progressive Conservative MP
Alex Kindy Alex Kindy, M.D. (January 8, 1930 - May 6, 2011) was a Canadian former politician. Kindy was born in Warsaw, Poland. His first attempt at entering federal politics was in the 1962 federal election when he ran as an "Independent Liberal" in the ...
was recruited by an SVR officer at the Russian embassy in Ottawa and paid several times between 1992 and 1993. When promoting his book, Tretyakov said that Russian intelligence was just as active now as in Cold War times, adding that he hoped his book would act as a "wake-up call" to Americans. Claims *
Azerbaijan Azerbaijan (, ; az, Azərbaycan ), officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, , also sometimes officially called the Azerbaijan Republic is a transcontinental country located at the boundary of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is a part of t ...
's UN ambassador Eldar Kouliev (1994–2000, previously a Soviet diplomat) was "a deep-cover SVR intelligence officer." *
United States Deputy Secretary of State The deputy secretary of state of the United States is the principal deputy to the secretary of state. The current deputy secretary of state is Wendy Ruth Sherman, serving since April 2021 under secretary of state Antony Blinken. If the secretary ...
Strobe Talbott was "an extremely valuable intelligence source" who was manipulated by SVR agents to disclose useful information but not a spy. * Canadian MP
Alex Kindy Alex Kindy, M.D. (January 8, 1930 - May 6, 2011) was a Canadian former politician. Kindy was born in Warsaw, Poland. His first attempt at entering federal politics was in the 1962 federal election when he ran as an "Independent Liberal" in the ...
was recruited as a Russian spy. *
KGB The KGB (russian: links=no, lit=Committee for State Security, Комитет государственной безопасности (КГБ), a=ru-KGB.ogg, p=kəmʲɪˈtʲet ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əj bʲɪzɐˈpasnəsʲtʲɪ, Komitet gosud ...
chief
Vladimir Kryuchkov Vladimir Alexandrovich Kryuchkov (russian: Влади́мир Алекса́ндрович Крючко́в, link=no; 29 February 1924 – 23 November 2007) was a Soviet lawyer, diplomat, and head of the KGB, member of the Politburo of the ...
sent US$50 billion worth of funds of the Communist Party to an unknown location in the lead-up to the
collapse of the Soviet Union The dissolution of the Soviet Union, also negatively connoted as rus, Разва́л Сове́тского Сою́за, r=Razvál Sovétskogo Soyúza, ''Ruining of the Soviet Union''. was the process of internal disintegration within the Sov ...
. * Raúl Castro was a long-term "special unofficial contact" for SVR.Pete Earley: ''Comrade J: The Untold Secrets of Russia's Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War'', Penguin Books, 2007, , p. 179 * "The KGB was responsible for creating the entire
nuclear winter Nuclear winter is a severe and prolonged global climatic cooling effect that is hypothesized to occur after widespread firestorms following a large-scale nuclear war. The hypothesis is based on the fact that such fires can inject soot into t ...
story to stop the
Pershing II The Pershing II Weapon System was a solid-fueled two-stage medium-range ballistic missile designed and built by Martin Marietta to replace the Pershing 1a Field Artillery Missile System as the United States Army's primary nuclear-capable thea ...
missiles." Tretyakov says that two fraudulent papers about global cooling were commissioned by the KGB but never published, one supposedly by physicist Kirill Kondratyev about dust storms in the
Karakum Desert The Karakum Desert, also spelled Kara-Kum and Gara-Gum ( tk, Garagum, ; rus, Караку́мы, Karakumy, kərɐˈkumɨ), is a desert in Central Asia. Its name in Turkic languages means "black sand": "" means sand; "" is a contraction of : " ...
, the other supposedly by climatologist Georgii Golitsyn and mathematicians
Nikita Moiseyev Nikita Nikolayevich Moiseyev (Russian: Никита Николаевич Моисеев) (23 August 1917 – 29 February 2000) was a Soviet and Russian mathematician, full member of the Soviet and Russian Academies of Sciences and of the Interna ...
and
Vladimir Alexandrov Vladimir Valentinovich Alexandrov (russian: Владимир Валентинович Александров; born 1938; disappeared 1985) was a Soviet/Russian physicist who created a mathematical model for the nuclear winter theory. He disappea ...
about dust storms after a nuclear war. Tretyakov says that the KGB distributed fake findings to " their contacts in peace, anti-nuclear, disarmament, and environmental organisations in an effort to get these groups to publicize the propagandists' script." and "targeted" the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences journal, '' Ambio'',Earley, pages 161–177 which carried a key article on the topic, "The atmosphere after a nuclear war: Twilight at noon," in 1982. * Tretyakov says that from 1979, the KGB wanted to prevent the US from deploying Pershing missiles in Western Europe and, directed by
Yuri Andropov Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov (– 9 February 1984) was the sixth paramount leader of the Soviet Union and the fourth General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. After Leonid Brezhnev's 18-year rule, Andropov served in the p ...
, they used the
Soviet Peace Committee The Soviet Peace Committee (SPC, also known as Soviet Committee for the Defense of Peace, SCDP, russian: Советский Комитет Защиты Мира) was a state-sponsored organization responsible for coordinating peace movements active ...
, a government organization, to organize and finance demonstrations in Europe against US bases.Opposition to The Bomb: The fear, and occasional political intrigue, behind the ban-the-bomb movements
1982 Article "Moscow and the Peace, Offensive"
* Two chiefs of
Vladimir Putin Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who holds the office of president of Russia. Putin has served continuously as president or prime minister since 1999: as prime min ...
's Federal Protection Service (FSO), Viktor Zolotov and General Murov, discussed how to kill the former director of Yeltsin's administration
Alexander Voloshin Alexander Stalyevich Voloshin (russian: link=no, Александр Стальевич Волóшин; born 3 March 1956, Moscow) is a Russian politician who briefly was chairman of the board of directors of RAO UES, the former Russian state p ...
. They also made "a list of politicians and other influential Muscovites whom they would need to assassinate to give Putin unchecked power." However, since the list was very long, Zolotov allegedly announced, "There are too many. It's too many to kill – even for us." An SVR officer who told about that story felt "uneasy" because FSO includes 20,000 troops and controls the "
black box In science, computing, and engineering, a black box is a system which can be viewed in terms of its inputs and outputs (or transfer characteristics), without any knowledge of its internal workings. Its implementation is "opaque" (black). The te ...
" that can be used in the event of nuclear war. * A claim about privately owned nuclear weapons. Tretyakov described a meeting with two Russian businessman representing a state-created ''Chetek'' corporation in 1991. They came up with a fantastic project of destroying large quantities of chemical wastes collected from Western countries at the island of Novaya Zemlya (a test place for Soviet nuclear weapons) using an underground nuclear blast. The project was rejected by Canadian representatives, but one of the businessmen told Tretyakov that he keeps his own nuclear bomb at his
dacha A dacha ( rus, дача, p=ˈdatɕə, a=ru-dacha.ogg) is a seasonal or year-round second home, often located in the exurbs of post-Soviet countries, including Russia. A cottage (, ') or shack serving as a family's main or only home, or an outbu ...
outside
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 ...
. Tretyakov thought that man was insane, but the "businessman" (Vladimir K. Dmitriev) replied, "Do not be so naive. With economic conditions the way they are in Russia today, anyone with enough money can buy a nuclear bomb. It's no big deal really." * Disinformation over the Internet. He often sent SVR officers to branches of New York Public Library where they got access to the Internet without anyone knowing their identity. They placed propaganda and
disinformation Disinformation is false information deliberately spread to deceive people. It is sometimes confused with misinformation, which is false information but is not deliberate. The English word ''disinformation'' comes from the application of the L ...
to various web sites and sent it in e-mails to US broadcasters.


Death and allegations of foul play

Although Tretyakov died on June 13, 2010, his death was not announced until July 9, 2010. Tretyakov's wife cited
cardiac arrest Cardiac arrest is when the heart suddenly and unexpectedly stops beating. It is a medical emergency that, without immediate medical intervention, will result in sudden cardiac death within minutes. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and poss ...
as the probable cause of death and strongly denied the foul play speculations voiced in the media but called his death quite unexpected. According to the Florida medical examiner's report, Tretyakov died after choking to death on a piece of meat; a cancerous tumor was also found in his colon. Some Russian commentators construed Russia's
Prime Minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister i ...
Vladimir Putin Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who holds the office of president of Russia. Putin has served continuously as president or prime minister since 1999: as prime min ...
's comments about the ultimate fate that is bound to befall "traitors" made on July 24, 2010, while he was talking to reporters about the members of the '
Illegals Program The Illegals Program (so named by the United States Department of Justice) was a network of Russian sleeper agents under unofficial cover. An investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) culminated in the arrest of ten agents on ...
',Putin Sings With Deported Spies
The Moscow Times ''The Moscow Times'' is an independent English-language and Russian-language online newspaper. It was in print in Russia from 1992 until 2017 and was distributed free of charge at places frequented by English-speaking tourists and expatriates s ...
, 26 July 2010.
as a thinly veiled allusion to Tretyakov's death.Обменные нарушения
by Vladimir Abarinov, Grani.ru, 26 July 2010.


See also

*
Mitrokhin Archive The "Mitrokhin Archive" is a collection of handwritten notes which were secretly made by the KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin during the thirty years in which he served as a KGB archivist in the foreign intelligence service and the First Chief Dir ...


References


External links


Comrade J Epilogue

After Words with Pete Earley and Sergei Tretyakov

Former Russian Spy Tells All - The Leonard Lopate Show




* {{DEFAULTSORT:Tretyakov, Sergei 1956 births 2010 deaths KGB officers Russian defectors Double agents Military personnel from Moscow People with acquired American citizenship Russian emigrants to the United States