Book Review | Comrade J: The Untold Story of Russia’s Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War

CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence
Studies in Intelligence, 2008

Comrade J: The Untold Story of Russia’s Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War

By Pete Earley. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2008), 340 pp

Reviewed by Hayden B. Peake, curator of the CIA's Historical Intelligence Collection

Sergei Turanov, Comrade Jean, and Comrade J were among the codenames used by Sergei Tretyakov, a KGB and SVR intelligence officer until he defected to the United States in October 2000 with his wife and daughter. KGB defections were not uncommon during the Cold War, although they dropped sharply as their utility diminished after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The new Russian government abolished the KGB and established a separate foreign intelligence service now designated the SVR. Sergei Tretyakov is the first member of this service to defect to the United States. He sought out Pete Earley to tell his story because Earley had written two fine books about American traitors, John Walker who was a KGB agent, and Aldrich Ames, who spied for the KGB and the SVR.

In Comrade J, we learn that Tretyakov’s childhood goal was to be a KGB officer like his father. To this end, he learned French and English, graduated from the Moscow Institute of Foreign Languages, where he was spotted by the KGB. Formally recruited after graduation, he joined the CPSU and attended the Red Banner Institute, where he learned the tradecraft of his chosen profession. After a boring assignment in Moscow, where hard work and additional duties for the party earned him good marks, he was sent to Canada. Inspired by the Gorbachev reforms, he succeeded in recruiting several important agents and gained the attention of the right people at KGB headquarters. After the coup of 1991, his dissatisfaction increased and in Canada he and his wife considered not returning to Russia, an option they at first rejected because of the impact the move would have on family members at home. After a year back in Moscow during which he watched as several of his colleagues were arrested and executed as CIA agents (thanks to Ames), Tretyakov was assigned to the New York Residency in April 1995. He never returned to Russia.

For the traditional reasons of security, the details of his defection are not revealed in Comrade J. Earley does describe some of Tretyakov’s operations in Canada and America with emphasis on sources developed and agents recruited, some of whom he names. In the category of “special unofficial contact,” he mentions former US deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbot, stressing that Talbot was not an agent and implying that the SVR did not realize that their contacts with him were routine, not secret communications. Tretyakov also reported on the SVR penetrations of the United Nations and the operations and personnel of the SVR residencies to which he was assigned. Tretyakov’s descriptions of bureaucratic infighting and his functions as deputy resident and later as acting resident suggest that in some respects the profession has changed little from KGB days.

Of particular interest from the US point of view, the book reveals that for three years before his defection in October 2000 Tretyakov worked for the FBI, providing details of residency operations and personnel. Ten months before his defection, the FBI encouraged him to leave but could not tell him the reason: it was hunting a mole who might learn about him. When Tretyakov’s defection became public on 30 January 2001 and Robert Hanssen was arrested on 18 February 2001, the press presumed Tretyakov was the one who gave him up. The FBI assured Earley that this was not the case.

Finally, as with all unsourced defector memoirs, one must deal with the question of accuracy. In this case, the narrative contains two technical errors worth noting: (1) reference to Tretyakov as a double agent is incorrect, and (2) the statement that the CIA calls its employees “agents” is wrong.(48) Recognizing that independent assessment of Tretyakov’s story is desirable, Earley includes a chapter with comments from “a high-ranking US intelligence official” that addresses the kinds of material Tretyakov provided and affirms that it included names and “saved American lives.” Further detail is attributed to other “intelligence sources,” as, for example, the fact that the bug planted in the State Department conference room in the late 1990s had a “miniature battery…recharged with a laser beam.”(323) If correct, someone would have had to have line-of-sight access to the battery, but no comment is made on this point.

In the end, although Earley has provided another well told espionage case study, he leaves the curious hoping for a second volume containing more details of Tretyakov’s work for US intelligence.

More information on Col. Sergei Tretyakov