08. Tetrykov dies

08. Sergei Tretyakov Dies (July 16, 2010)

Sergei Tretyakov, reportedly, a former top Russian spy who defected to the United States after running espionage operations at the United Nations, has died aged 53. Although Tretyakov died on June 13, 2010, his death was not announced until July 9, 2010. No cause has been released. Tretyakov was born on October 5, 1956 in Moscow. He joined the KGB, rising quickly through its ranks to become second-in-command of its office in New York from 1995 to 2000.

In an odd timing of the events, his death was announced on Friday, July 10 by his wife and friend Pete Earley on the same day that Russia and the United States completed their largest spy swap since the hazy days of the Cold War. Earlier on Friday, 10 Russian spies rounded up in an FBI swoop in June were deported and flown straight from New York to Vienna, where they were exchanged for four top ex-Russian spies as Moscow and Washington seek to warm ties long chilled by an atmosphere of growing suspicion.

The spy saga fueled suspicion that Tretyakov had tipped off US authorities about the alleged Russian agents, who were mostly living under the cover of unremarkable American suburban lifestyles. But in announcing his death, his widow Helen Tretyakov told WTOP radio in Washington that her husband did not know the arrested group of 10. Tretyakov told US officials when he was debriefed about Russia's "illegal" operations but was not personally familiar with the people who were arrested, Earley said, citing an "informed" source.

Sergei Tretyakov was perhaps the most important Russian spy to have defected to the United States since the end of the Cold War. He is thought to have revealed details of Russian spying operations in America, and of an operation to skim half a billion dollars from Iraq’s Oil for Food program.

Tretyakov began supplying American officials with information around 1997, when he was officially an aide to the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Sergei Lavrov. In reality Tretyakov was an officer with the SVR spy agency that succeeded the KGB, and by the time he turned his coat had been running all Russia’s espionage operations at the UN for two years.

The haul of information he brought with him included thousands of classified cables and documents, as well as charming snippets of so-called “tradecraft”, such as the revelation that, for fear of being bugged, Russian spies liked to call contacts from the pay phones at Bloomingdale’s department store. Other colorful details from the world of espionage, notably the story that he once met a Russian businessman who claimed to keep a nuclear bomb at his dacha, were less comforting.

He named Strobe Talbott, the deputy secretary of state under President Clinton, as an “extremely valuable intelligence source” who had been “tricked and manipulated by Russian intelligence”. Talbott has always denied any wrongdoing. Tretyakov also said that Golda Meir, the Israeli prime minister who died in 1978, had been a KGB target, though he did was not confirm whether she had been secured as an informant for the spy agency.