Dmitri Polyakov

This article is about the Soviet general. For the tennis player, see Dimitri Poliakov.

Dmitri Polyakov Дмитрий Поляков
Born	(1921-07-06)6 July 1921 Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union
Died	15 March 1988(1988-03-15) (aged 66) Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Cause of death	Execution by shooting
Nationality	Soviet
Education	Frunze Military Academy
Children	3 (1 predeceased)
Espionage activity
Country	Soviet Union
Allegiance	United States
Agency	Red Army GRU
Active	1941–1946 (Red Army) 1951–1980 (GRU)
Rank	Major General
Codename	BOURBON, ROAM, TOPHAT

Dmitri Fyodorovich Polyakov (Russian: Дмитрий Фёдорович Поляков; 6 July 1921 – 15 March 1988) was a Major General in the Soviet GRU during the Cold War. According to former high-level KGB officer Sergey Kondrashev, Polyakov acted as a KGB disinformation agent at the FBI's New York City field office when he was posted at United Nations headquarters in 1962. Kondrashev's post-Cold War friend, former high-level CIA counterintelligence officer Tennent H. Bagley, says Polyakov "flipped" and started spying for the CIA when he was reposted to Rangoon, Moscow, and New Delhi. Polyakov was suddenly recalled to Moscow in 1980, arrested, tried, and finally executed in 1988.

In the CIA, Polyakov was known by code names BOURBON and ROAM, while the FBI he was referred to as TOPHAT.

Early life

Dmitri Polyakov was born in Soviet Ukraine in 1921, the son of a bookkeeper. He graduated from Sumy Artillery School in June 1941 and served as an artillery officer during the Second World War, becoming decorated for bravery.

After completing his studies at the M. V. Frunze Military Academy and GRU Training Courses, Polyakov joined the Soviet Union's foreign military intelligence agency, the GRU. Polyakov's first mission was with the Soviet delegation to the Military Staff CommitteUnited Nations from 1951 to 1956, directing a ring of Soviet spies. His follow-up overseas assignments included Rangoon (1965–1969) and New Delhi (1973–1976 and 1979–1980), where he was posted as Soviet Military Attaché.

GRU officer and double agent

On his second assignment to New York in 1959–1961, Polyakov approached counterintelligence agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to offer his services as an informant. Polyakov maintained that he was a Russian patriot, motivated to become a double agent because of his disgust with the corruption of the Communist Party elite. His CIA contact from New Delhi believed that Polyakov's service in World War II was a factor in his decision to become a double agent, while another CIA agent who handled his case for fifteen years said: "He articulated a sense that he had to help us out or the Soviets were going to win the cold war, and he couldn't stand that. He felt we were very naive and we were going to fail." Victor Cherkashin suggested that Polyakov was embittered because Soviet leadership denied him permission to take his seriously ill son, the eldest of three, to a hospital in New York where he could get adequate medical attention for polio. His son died as a result of the illness and, soon after, Polyakov approached the Americans.

Former CIA counterintelligence officer Tennent H. Bagley argues—in his 2007 book Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries and Deadly Games and elsewhere—that Polyakov was a Kremlin-loyal triple agent when he contacted the FBI in late 1961. Bagley further argues that Polyakov and another Soviet intelligence officer, Major Aleksei Kulak, who literally walked in to the Bureau's New York City field office a few weeks after Polyakov, provided U.S. intelligence agencies with KGB disinformation that sent the agencies on "wild goose chases" and deflected attention from KGB/GRU false-defectors and true "moles" in U.S. intelligence.

About a year after his initial contact with the FBI, Polyakov was posted back to Moscow where he was able to access GRU documents to identify double agents, exposing Frank Bossard, a guided-missile researcher in the British aviation ministry, and United States Army Sergeant Jack Dunlap, a courier at the National Security Agency. In the late 1960s, while stationed in Rangoon, Polyakov gave the CIA all the intel the GRU had on both the Vietnamese and Chinese military. Around this time he also passed on information about the (alleged) growing Sino-Soviet split, which would later be used by Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon in their opening of relations with China in 1972.

In his books "Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries and Deadly Games" and "Spymaster: Startling Cold War Revelations of a Soviet KGB Chief", and in his online PDF, "Ghosts of the Spy Wars", former CIA counterintelligence officer Tennent H. Bagley says he was told by former high-level KGB officer Sergey A. Kondrashev that Polyakov was sent, in early 1962, to the FBI's New York City field office to feed disinformation to it, and that he did so until he returned to Moscow in late 1962. Bagley says Polyakov was recruited by the CIA in 1965 after he was posted to Rangoon, Burma, and that he spied for the Agency from then until he was recalled from New Delhi, India, to Moscow in 1980, at which time he disappeared from the CIA's "radar". Bagley says Kondrashev told him that an unnamed "mole" in the CIA had reported to KGB headquarters what Polyakov was telling the CIA, and that Polyakov was arrested, tried, and executed because the KGB realized he was telling the CIA more than he was supposed to.

Arrest and execution

Polyakov was arrested by the KGB in 1986, six years after his retirement from the GRU. His contacts at the CIA had no information about what had happened to him. Only later did it become clear that he may have been betrayed by two moles for the Russians: Robert Hanssen in the FBI and Aldrich Ames in the CIA. In 1988, Polyakov was sentenced to death for treason, and subsequently executed.

Legacy

According to the official story, Polyakov remained a CIA informant for twenty-five years as he rose through the ranks, eventually becoming a general. CIA officers speak in superlatives about the kind of information he provided. CIA officer Jeanne Vertefeuille said, "He didn't do this for money. He insisted on staying in place to help us. It was a bad day for us when we lost him." Polyakov insisted on being paid only $3,000 a year and accepted this payment mostly in the form of power tools along with fishing and hunting equipment. Sandy Grimes said that Polyakov was "the best source at least to my knowledge that American intelligence has ever had and I would submit, although I certainly can't be certain, but the best source that any intelligence service has ever had." She also noted, "This was a man of tremendous courage...In the end, we won. The Cold War is over and the Soviet Union was dissolved." Former CIA director James Woolsey said, "Polyakov was the jewel in the crown" and in a 2001 interview he told a reporter, "What Gen. Polyakov did for the West didn't just help us win the Cold War...it kept the Cold War from becoming hot."

Some CIA and FBI officials, including Deputy Director William Sullivan, believed that, at some point, Polyakov was turned by the Soviets and made into a triple agent who deceived the West with disinformation. Others, like former Soviet Russia Division Counterintelligence Chief Tennent H. Bagley (mentioned above) later came to believe that Polyakov had been a KGB agent in the U.S. in 1962, and that he later "flipped" and became a spy for the CIA when he was posted abroad.

Among the important information Polyakov provided:

• Evidence of the rift between the Soviet Union and China. This information played a crucial role in Richard Nixon's decision to open diplomatic relations with China in 1972.
• Technical data on Soviet-made antitank missiles. While the US never fought the Soviet Union directly, knowledge of these weapons proved invaluable when Iraq employed them in the Gulf War.
• Proof that British Intelligence official Frank Bossard was a mole for the USSR.