"Mole"

Exactly twenty years ago, in March 1988, Major General of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff Dmitry Polyakov was shot. For a quarter of a century he worked for American intelligence agencies - first for the FBI, and then for the CIA. “Tophat”, “Bourbon”, “Donald” are just some of the operational aliases of this dexterous, intelligent, cold-blooded and cynical professional. Polyakov extradited 19 illegal immigrants (and each of them is a piece of goods, huge amounts of money are spent on preparation), more than one and a half hundred foreign agents and revealed the affiliation of about 1,500 people with Soviet military intelligence. Behind these numbers are broken human destinies, often death. This is precisely the main fault of the traitors, as I see it, and not in their “fight against the system.”

The then CIA chief Woolsey called the traitor general a “diamond,” meaning that others who worked for the United States turned out to be of lower dignity. Polyakov was already “on a well-deserved retirement,” that is, retired, when he was presented “on a silver platter” by CIA officer Aldrich Ames, who had been working for Soviet foreign intelligence since 1985. Without Ames, everything could have remained hidden, and the general of the Soviet military intelligence, Polyakov, would have been buried with honors and under gunfire. Now the place of his burial is unknown even to close relatives - these were and, it seems, remain the rules of “farewell” to traitors. By the way, Dante placed them in the ninth circle of hell.

In this whole story, what occupied me most (and still occupies me) is the question of how Polyakov could have been a “mole” for so long (as they call “our people” who work for “strangers”)? Several years ago I had a rare opportunity to communicate with Army General Pyotr Ivanovich Ivashutin (now deceased), who led the GRU for almost a quarter of a century.

“From the first meeting I had an intuitive mistrust of this man. He sits without raising his head and won’t turn in my direction. I didn’t let him go abroad anymore,” the recorder reproduces the words of the patriarch of military intelligence.

The head of the GRU personnel department, a former employee of the central committee of the CPSU, Izotov, took Polyakov to his civilian recruitment department. However, Ivashutin ordered Polyakov to be transferred to military intelligence, where there are no agents and, therefore, fewer secrets. At that time, the third faculty of the Academy of the Soviet Army (Military-Diplomatic Academy) was created in a separate building, so as not to be confused with future employees of strategic intelligence. And Polyakov worked there for seven or eight years. And when the head of the GRU was on one of his business trips, Polyakov was sent to India as a military attache. The order was signed by Ivashutin’s deputy Meshcheryakov.

“Why does betrayal happen?” - I asked naively. “Listen, do you understand the essence of intelligence?” - Ivashutin responded somehow sharply, with a question. “I’m afraid that, as a layman, it’s unlikely.” -- “Each intelligence officer tries to recruit another intelligence officer in order to get more through him. Therefore, naturally, anything can happen..."

Colonel General Alexey Molyakov, who at that time was the head of military counterintelligence of the Moscow Military District, could tell a lot about the most famous “mole”. He now chairs the National War Foundation. The photograph depicting Polyakov’s arrest also includes General Molyakov, who participated in the operation. But Alexey Alekseevich, like many of his colleagues from the special officers, did not want to talk about a sensitive topic, no matter how much I asked him.

The only one who told me about his meetings with Polyakov was Ivashutin’s long-term adjutant, Igor Popov. On the wall of his apartment in a house not far from the Aquarium hangs a gift from Polyakov - two half-meter-tall figurines of English colonial soldiers in India, masterfully carved from a rare and expensive wood.

“Apparently, he was bringing a gift to Pyotr Ivanovich, but he was away,” the ex-adjutant told me. “Okay,” he says to me, “here’s a gift for you.” When it was discovered that Polyakov was a traitor, I took down the wooden soldiers from the wall and was going to burn them. I thought maybe there was some kind of “bug” installed there. I tapped the figures and examined them - everything was clean. The wife says: “It’s a shame to throw them away, they’ve taken root here.” They left it like that.”

And then in Popov’s apartment it seemed to me that a radio microphone hidden in the depths of the wooden colonial soldiers was transmitting our conversation to an unknown spy center. By the way, Polyakov brought gifts to many people. GRU old-timers say that he presented the same Izotov with a silver service. Then it turned out that it was bought with CIA money...

Lieutenant General of the Foreign Intelligence Service Vadim Alekseevich Kirpichenko, with whom I met several times during his lifetime, told me. During the years of perestroika, Russian and American intelligence officers, who had recently worked against each other, began to gather for friendly gatherings. At that time it was believed that the Cold War was in the past and an era of cooperation had arrived. And the Americans at one of the meetings confessed: “If only you knew what sources we had in your highest echelons of power!” I don't think they were bluffing. Here is one of the proofs. When Aldrich Ames took a position at the CIA in 1983 that allowed him to see how deeply the Americans had gotten into Soviet secrets, he didn’t even believe it at first. The Soviet Union, in his words, resembled “a piece of Swiss cheese, riddled length and breadth with holes that moles had gnawed through.”

And now I am tormented by another, no less pressing question: if Polyakov managed to spy without suspicion for a quarter of a century and even rose to the rank of general, then even now some “mole” is digging with all his might, and on someone working “in the cold” ( expression of the spy writer John Le Carré) have the scouts already brought the treacherous sword? And today not only brains and capital, but also state secrets are flowing out of the country in a powerful stream? Most likely it is. Maybe we will find out about this in twenty years. Maybe we will never know.

Nikolay Poroskov, “Vremya Novostei”