What Happened to America's Best Spy in the Soviet Union?

In 1961, Soviet military intelligence officer Dmitri Polyakov, posted to New York, approached the FBI and offered to spy for America. For about 25 years, as he rose to general in the GRU, he passed secrets to the FBI and CIA (codename TOPHAT), asking for power tools and fishing gear instead of big money. He exposed well over a hundred Soviet agents and illegals, survived a counterintelligence investigation his superiors refused to approve, and turned down a new life in America. After he retired, CIA officer Aldrich Ames walked into the Soviet embassy in Washington in 1985 and sold the KGB the names of America's agents, Polyakov's among them. He was arrested in 1986 and executed on 15 March 1988. At the Moscow summit that summer, President Reagan reportedly asked Gorbachev about an exchange. He had already been dead for months. Sources: "Dmitri Polyakov", English Wikipedia; Espionage History Archive, "Washington's GRU General" (2016); History News Network on Eric Dillon's "Soday, "1988: Dmitri Polyakov"; FBI,"Aldrich Ames" (famous cases). #history #coldwar #spy #cia #kgb #shorts