KGB/SVR Colonel Sergei Tretyakov: In His Own Words

This is an except from the book Comrade J:

Epilogue: The words of Sergei Tretyakov

In Moscow, lies are being spread about my disappearance and why I escaped. I would like to address these rumors. No one recruited me. No one pitched me. No one convinced me to do what I did. I was never approached by a foreign intelligence service. I was never targeted by U.S. intelligence, I believe, because of my image. I was not perceived as a new Russian democrat, and although I was young, I had a reputation for thinking like the old-style KGB officer. I was considered a tough, untouchable Russian. It is important for me to explain that I was neither seduced nor blackmailed nor bribed. The decision that I made was mine without any outside influence.

It is important for me to explain that I never suffered any unfair attitude inside the SVR. I had a skyrocketing career, promotions, decorations, respect, and a very promising future. I did not have any financial concerns or any need for money.

I've been told some of my former colleagues in the SVR believe I am now living under a bridge, in total poverty and so unhappy that I would immediately return to Russia if only the United States were not holding me hostage. This is nonsense. It is true that I forfeited my professional future, and with the publishing of this book, I am confident the Russian government will now feel legally justified to seize all of our family property and real estate and private possessions in Moscow and our dachas. But neither Helen nor I have had to work a day since we escaped. We are living comfortably and none of us has ever regretted — even for a moment — our decision. Even our beloved cat Matilda seems happier!

Col. Tretyakov to author Pete Earley on why write this book (page 8):

"I want to warn Americans. As a people, you are very naive about Russia and its intentions. You believe because the Soviet Union no longer exists, Russia now is your friend. It isn't, and I can show you how the SVR is trying to destroy the U.S. even today and even more than the KGB did during the Cold War."

PODCAST:

CI Centre Podcast Interview with Pete Earley, author of the book, Comrade J: The Untold Secrets of Russia's Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War

CI Centre interviews author Pete Earley who recently released his new non-fiction book about Col. Sergei Tretyakov, a Russian SVR (former KGB) intelligence officer who ran spies in Canada and the United Nations. While he served as one of the top Russian intelligence officers in New York City, he decided to spy for the FBI and CIA and defected to the US in 2000.

Interview [.mp3 | 14 MB | 00:30:14]

C-SPAN2 Book TV:

After Words: Pete Earley and Sergei Tretyakov, "Comrade J: The Untold Story of Russia's Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War" interviewed by Peter Earnest, executive director of the International Spy Museum

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News Articles

CI Centre highly recommends:

Comrade J: The Untold Secrets of Russia’s Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War by Pete Earley (author of recommended books on the Ames and Walker spy cases)

From 1997 to 2000, a man known as "Comrade J" was the highest-ranking operative in the SVR-the successor agency to the KGB-in the United States. He directed all Russian spy action in New York City, and personally oversaw every covert operation against the United States and its allies in the United Nations. He recruited spies, planted agents, penetrated security, manipulated intelligence, and influenced American policy, all under the direct leadership of Boris Yeltsin and then Vladimir Putin. He was a legend in the SVR, the man who kept the secrets.

Then in 2000, he defected-and it turned out he had one more secret. For the previous two years, he had also been a double agent for the FBI: "By far the most important Russian spy that our side has had in decades." He has never granted a public interview. The FBI and CIA have refused to answer all media questions about him. He has remained in hiding. He has never revealed his secrets . . . Until now.

Top U.N. Nuclear Watchdog a Russian Spy, Defector Says in New Book

......Earley describes in the book how the CIA and FBI introduced him to Tretyakov in a hotel room at the Ritz Tyson’s Corner, near the Washington Beltway, with the idea that they do a book together. Other than that, Earley says, the CIA and FBI had no role in the book, other than vouching for the Russian’s credibility.

........(Congressional Quarterly, 19 Jan 08)

Pete Earley is an author of two other highly respected and recommended espionage books about the Aldrich Ames case and the John Walker case:

Confessions of a Spy: The Real Story of Aldrich Ames by Pete Earley

Family of Spies: Iinside the John Walker Spy Ring by Pete Earley

I want it known that I never asked even for a penny from the U.S. government. When I decided to begin helping the U.S., money was never mentioned by me. What has been given to me — this has all been done by the U.S. government by its own choosing. It was not something I demanded or negotiated. I did not present a bill for services or even once discuss any financial remuneration.

What was done financially, I believe, was done because of genuine appreciation and respect for the risks that I took. I knew nearly all of the Russians who were exposed by Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, and knew they were executed because they were helping the U.S. This means that I was — better than anyone else — fully aware of the dangers that I was taking and the danger that my family was placed in as a result of my actions. Because of my high rank and position, which were uncomparably higher than those of the KGB officers who were executed, there is no doubt in my mind that I would have shared their fates if I had been arrested.

Why, then, did I choose to do what I did — given that I had a promising career and money was not my motivation? Why would I put my life and the lives of Helen and our daughter in jeopardy? There were two reasons. I have tried to express both in this book. But

I will repeat them now, for they explain everything.

The first was my growing disgust and contempt for what has happened and is happening in Russia. These feelings of revulsion first surfaced in Ottawa when I saw a new breed of bureaucrat who was taking power. Neither I nor Helen was naive, nor did we idealize the Soviet system, its immorality, cruelty, repression, and ineffectiveness. Yet it was our motherland, which, like your parents, you cannot choose. I was trying to serve my country the best possible way and was always ready to sacrifice myself defending its national interests. I became extremely enthusiastic and optimistic when Gorbachev came into power and started his famous perestroika and glasnost. Even though he often sounded as if he were an uneducated Russian peasant, I believed that Gorbachev would start a new era of democratization in the Soviet Union. But instead, the Soviet Union ceased to exist, civil war started in different parts of Russia and in the Soviet republics. The economy collapsed, and people became desperate and miserable. Since then Russia has been repeatedly raped and looted by its leadership. I call this process GENOCIDE of the Russian people performed by a group of immoral criminals.

Yeltsin may be best remembered in the West for his impassioned speech outside a besieged White House in Moscow while standing on a tank. But as a president, he was an alcoholic with a deranged mind who surrounded himself with gluttons who stole and robbed and cheated our nation in order to become billionaires. His successor, President Putin, is not a drunk, thankfully. But he was created and chosen by Yeltsin's clan, and for years his presidency was controlled and supervised by the former head of Yeltsin's administration, Aleksandr Voloshin, who remained in his position as chief of staff. In what normal country does a president inherit the administration of the previous president and for years is helpless to appoint his own?

For fifteen years I have waited for any positive changes in the "new" Russia. Working in intelligence for a long time in a high position, I had access to the real information about what was going on in Russian politics. I saw firsthand what kind of people were and are running the country. I came to an ultimate conclusion that it became immoral to serve them, and I didn't want to be associated with them in any way. I developed a strong allergy toward every new wave of Russian leaders. My friends often ask me if I ever met Putin during my years in the KGB/SVR. I explain that of course I did not. Not only because we worked in different regions of the world, but first of all because I was a successful officer working in the Center and Putin was never successful in intelligence and never had a chance to work in the headquarters. He was always kept in a provincial KGB station in a low and unimportant position.

I realized that it didn't matter what intelligence information I delivered to the Center, it didn't in any way affect the Russian people or make their lives better, but only was used to contribute to the totally corrupt political system that didn't show any signs of improvement.

Ironically, I started thinking that I could do something good for my people working not for the corrupt Russian bureaucrats, but instead helping the world democratic leader — the United States of America — to better understand who it was dealing with.

The second reason I decided to escape was my daughter. She deserved a better future — in a nation that has a future.

Those are my two reasons.

Now there is something else I wish to address — why I have chosen to tell my story. I want my new compatriots to know who and what I am, and why I am now in this country. Speaking out enables me to give my qualifications, and after giving them, I can sound an alarm.

"Russia is doing everything it can today to undermine and embarrass the U.S. The SVR rezidenturas in the U.S. are not less, but in some aspects even more active today than during the Cold War. What should that tell you?"

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States and Russia entered into what was supposed to be a new era of cooperation. The Cold War was behind us. We could become friends. Many in the U.S. believe today the old Spy-versus-Spy days are finished. The September 11 terrorist attacks shifted the American public's attention away from Russia toward international terrorism, especially Islamic fanaticism. Russia was suddenly, and is today viewed as, an ally, even a friend of the U.S.

In speaking out, I hope to expose how naive this is. During the Cold War, in the Soviet military doctrine there was the definition of the MAIN ENEMY, which was also used by intelligence as a basic guiding principle. It was the United States, followed by NATO and China. What is the official guiding line for the modern SVR today? The terms have changed. It is now called the MAIN TARGET. But it is exactly the same: the United States, followed by NATO and China. Nothing has changed. Russia is doing everything it can today to embarrass the U.S. Let me repeat this.

This year, Helen, Ksenia, and I became U.S. citizens. We went through the same process as everyone else. The day that we became citizens was one of the very best in our lives. Ironically, as new citizens we have found ourselves easily being offended when we see how natural-born Americans take their liberties for granted. Sometimes I believe only someone who has lived in a corrupt society can truly understand the importance of America's liberties. I find this frustrating.

As a professional intelligence officer who specialized in North American matters, I was studying U.S. history all the time and I could probably lecture as a part-time university professor about it.

Yet it was a totally different feeling and meaning for me when I was refreshing my memory reading the Declaration of Independence before taking the citizenship test. I found its words of special importance.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

I have tried to explain in this book the "causes" that made me separate myself from Russia. The Declaration continues:

. . . Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive . . . it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it. . . . It is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government . . .

My wants and my desires were not much different from those early colonists'. In the end, I came to believe I was not betraying Russia. I felt its leaders had betrayed Russia and me.

If I attempted to return to Russia, I would be immediately arrested, sentenced to death, and executed. But I really don't care what they think about me in Russia, especially in the SVR. I am now an American, and I consider myself — not a traitor nor a spy, but a new patriot.

Excerpted from Comrade J: The Untold Secrets of Russia's Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War by Pete Earley with permission of G.P. Putnam's Sons, a member of the Penguin Group, Inc., (USA). Copyright © 2007 by Pete Earley, Inc.

...."The book is a serious book. We worked very closely for several years. It means that everything is balanced in the book," Mr. Tretyakov said during a brief phone interview.....According to Mr. Tretyakov, when he arrived in Ottawa in 1990 posing as a diplomat, he recruited three spies from the Canadian Centre for Arms Control and Disarmament, a think tank that issued reports on what to do with the stockpiles of weapons accumulated during the Cold War. The spies, who are only identified by code name in the book, slipped Mr. Tretyakov "stolen classified military and political information," the book alleges.....(Globe and Mail, 1 Feb 08)

How should the media handle sensational allegations that one of the most esteemed members of their profession, former Time magazine journalist and top Clinton State Department official Strobe Talbott, was a dupe of the Russian intelligence service? How should they deal with hard evidence that one of their sacred cows, the United Nations, is penetrated by Russian spies? The answer is that most of them will ignore it......With all of these high-powered connections, the story about Talbott being used by the Russians seems to be a story worth reporting or commenting on. However, if the media examine the charges against Talbott, they might have to deal with other evidence and information in the book about how spies for the Soviet intelligence service manipulated the U.S. media.........(AIM, 31 Jan 08)

....Despite the criticism, the book comes with serious bona fides. Mr. Earley is a New York Times best-selling author and built his reputation by writing books about American turncoats Aldrich Ames and John Walker Jr. "I know Pete, and he is a pretty thorough investigative journalist," said Peter Earnest, a 35-year CIA veteran who, like his Russian counterpart, spent most of his time in clandestine service. "This book is carefully written. There isn't a discordant note," said Mr. Earnest, who is executive director of the International Spy Museum and past president of the Association for Former Intelligence Officers........(National Post, 31 Jan 08)

A senior Nunavut government official says he may sue the author and publisher of a controversial new book that alleges an organization he founded, the Ottawa-based Canadian Centre for Arms Control and Disarmament, spied for the Russians.......The book alleges that employees of the now-defunct Canadian Centre for Arms Control and Disarmament were recruited by Tretyakov in 1990 to pass along classified information to the KGB, the Soviet secret police at the time.....(CBC, 31 Jan 08)

A publisher has cited legal considerations in halting Canadian shipments of a book that alleges a former Conservative MP from Calgary was a paid informant for the Russian intelligence service.....The book alleges Alex Kindy provided information that wound up in numerous spy cables in return for thousands of dollars in cash. It says Kindy, codenamed Grey, was recruited in 1992 by Vitali Domoratski, a vice consul actually working in counter-intelligence for the Russians from their embassy in Ottawa......

......But the biggest Canadian fish was allegedly reeled in by Domoratski, one of Tretyakov's officers at the Ottawa embassy. The Ukrainian-born Domoratski is said to have met Kindy, whose parents hailed from Ukraine, at a reception. The two soon became friends. Earley, a former Washington Post reporter, acknowledges that Kindy – a strident anti-Communist – was an unlikely mark for the SVR, the post-Cold War successor to the Soviet Union's ruthless KGB. However, Domoratski reportedly thought Kindy was vulnerable because he needed cash for his re-election campaign. Kyba, who ran Kindy's 1993 campaign, disputes the notion he was hard up for money. "He did not have any problems at all. None at all." Kindy, a physician, was born in Warsaw, Poland. The father of three children was first elected to the House of Commons in 1984, winning the Calgary East riding for the Progressive Conservatives. He won the Calgary Northeast riding in 1988 but was booted from the Tory caucus in April 1990, along with David Kilgour, after they voted against their own government's introduction of the widely hated Goods and Services Tax. Tretyakov says Kindy accepted Russian cash in a series of meetings in 1992 and 1993. The book quotes Tretyakov as saying Moscow was interested in getting Kindy to discuss "various intrigues inside the Canadian Parliament and government. This was intimate information about his colleagues and also details about international maneuvers that were going on." When Domoratski returned to Moscow, his replacement in Ottawa was supposed to become Kindy's new handler, the book says. But the MP refused to speak to him......(Canadian Press, 30 Jan 08)

Former Russian master spy Sergei Tretyakov and journalist Pete Earley speak with frequent Fresh Air guest host Dave Davies, revealing secrets of espionage in America after the fall of the Soviet Union......(NPR, 30 Jan 08; 24 minutes)

Once a senior KGB officer who says he was driven by patriotism, Sergei Tretyakov says he defected in 2000 because he lost faith in post-Soviet Russia and he's now ready to tell his story for the first time. As deputy head of intelligence at Russia's U.N. mission from 1995 to 2000, Tretyakov directed spy operations in New York and at the United Nations. He says his agents included a former Soviet bloc ambassador and a senior Russian official in the Iraqi oil-for-food program.....(Reuters, 25 Jan 08)

Observers who are feeling uneasy about Vladimir Putin's rule of Russia — include me among them — will find grounds for increased worry in an unsettling book by the veteran Washington writer Pete Earley, Comrade J: The Untold Secrets of Russia's Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War (G. P. Putnam's, $24.95, 340 pages. A strong theme of Mr. Earley's splendid book is how corruption pervades post-Soviet Russia, with the explicit blessing of Mr. Putin himself.....

......Not wishing to let the SVR know exactly what secrets Tretyakov revealed, intelligence officers interviewed by Mr. Earley were economical in relating details of what he did as a defecting-in-place. They would not even reveal when he began working for the United States. But one "high-ranking intelligence official" involved in the defection said that Comrade J delivered more than 5,000 top secret SVR cables to the FBI, and more than 100 classified SVR intelligence reports. His material was used to prepare some 400 intelligence reports that circulated as high as the White House level. He named names of persons — diplomats, academics, government officials and others — who spied for the Soviets in Manhattan, at the UN and in Canada, his previous post. He provided insight into President Boris Yeltsin's thinking during debates over NATO expansion, the military campaigns in Kosovo, and elsewhere. He laid bare SVR secrets of Soviet tradecraft that were invaluable to U.S. counterintelligence.....(Washington Times, 20 Jan 08)

The top U.N. official responsible for monitoring the clandestine nuclear programs of Iran and Pakistan is a Russian spy, according to a new book on Moscow’s espionage operations in the United States and Canada. The official is identified only by his Russian code name, ARTHUR, but other sources identified him as Tariq Rauf, 54, a Pakistani-born Canadian who is chief of verification and security-policy coordination at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The job “puts him in direct contact with both inspectors and countries around the globe,” a Canadian online magazine reported last year. “Rauf is responsible for ensuring IAEA scientists get into countries such as Iran and negotiating the access they need to completely verify the use of nuclear material.”.......

.......“When Sergei had recruited ARTHUR [in 1990],” Earley writes, “he worked at the Canadian Centre for Arms Control,” a think tank for experts on nuclear weapons. Later, ARTHUR was “a project director at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, part of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, a California think tank,” he relates. A few years later, when Tretyakov became deputy chief of Russian intelligence in New York, he renewed his relationship with ARTHUR, who had become “a U.N. senior verification expert,” who specialized in the clandestine weapons programs of “rogue states” such as Iran, Libya and his native Pakistan. “I know that he is still employed at the agency and I have no reason to believe he has stopped working for Russian intelligence,” the one-time master spy says in the book. “He hated America.” Rauf’s résumé is identical to Tretyakov’s description of ARTHUR’S career. They are one and the same, according to multiple sources. A former Russian diplomat and arms control specialist who knew Tretyakov well in New York, reviewed the description of ARTHUR and said it appeared to describe Rauf. “The fingered Canadian guy, well, you know only too well who could theoretically fit this reference,” he said on condition of anonymity. Another former Monterey arms expert, when asked whether Rauf might be the spy code-named ARTHUR, said, “Yes, the name you provided is correct.” When contacted for this story, Rauf said a Canadian newspaper reporter had presented him with the same allegations days earlier. He said he had not decided whether to contest the allegations in court. Author Earley said he had examined Tretyakov’s records — photographs, e-mail, even a restaurant napkin on which ARTHUR scribbled notes about Ukrainian missiles — to back up every allegation. “If they want to sue us, fine,” said Earley of all the Canadians that Tretyakov describes as spies. “We’ll just run Sergei up there with our stuff and see what happens.” ........(Congressional Quarterly, 19 Jan 08