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In March 1988, the Soviet Intelligence Service arrested and secretly executed a retired major general in the capital, Moscow, who was Polyakov, known as the most valuable spy of the United States during the Cold War, who had been lurking in the Soviet Union for 25 years, resulting in the complete exposure of more than 1,500 agents and causing immeasurable losses to the Soviet Union.
What exactly did the major general do while undercover? Why did he provide intelligence to the United States?
A list was provided for the West, with 1500 agents exposed
During his spy career, Polyakov successively provided the West with 19 foreign intelligence officers serving the Soviet Union and a list of more than 150 KGB and GRU agents, and directly led to the complete exposure of 1500 Soviet agents, causing a heavy blow to the Soviet Union.
In addition to leaking the list of Soviet agents, Polyakov also did a big thing that shocked the Soviet Union, he quietly leaked Soviet anti-tank missile secrets to the United States.
This provided great help to the US military in the second Gulf War. The US military relied on the information provided by Polyakov to quickly crush the Iraqi army. Polyakov also betrayed a spy who provided intelligence to the Soviet Union, he was the British spy Bossard, during his time as a spy, Bossard used his position to send a large amount of American missile technology to the Soviet Union.
After receiving Polyakov's list, the CIA sent someone directly to arrest him.
Also exposed was Captain Maria Dobnova, who had been lurking in the United States for many years in the Soviet Union, disguised herself as a senior beautician and opened a high-class beauty salon in New York.
Many senior American officials like to go to her shop. It was as a beautician that Dobnova obtained a lot of high-value economic and military intelligence for the Soviet Union.
The most important of these pieces of information was the acquisition of some details of the concessions that the United States intended to make when it negotiated with Khrushchev in 1959, which allowed Khrushchev to achieve a lot of results in the negotiations.
When the CIA learned that Dobnova was an officer in the GRU, she immediately went to Dobnova's home to try to arrest her, and the moment they rushed into her apartment, Dobrova opened the window and chose to commit suicide by jumping off the building.
Before that, Dobrova had vaguely sensed that something was wrong and destroyed all the secret documents, which made the CIA empty.
Not only that, Polyakov also revealed to the United States the secret documents of the Soviet Union's internal staff, which was written and published by the Soviet General Staff and published once a month, and Polyakov provided more than 100 issues to the Americans.
The main content of this top-secret document documents some military strategies of Soviet strategic experts, the ideas of nuclear war, and the feasibility assessment of war.
It was from this document that the United States understood the Soviet attitude toward war and often took the initiative in negotiations with the Soviet Union. Because of Polyakov's betrayal, the Soviet Union suffered huge losses.
The young child fell ill and became a spy for the United States
In 1945, World War II finally came to an end, but two years later, the world fell into the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union in private struggle became more and more fierce, spies on both sides continued to send back hostile information, fighting a protracted war without smoke of gunfire, quietly changing the pattern of the world.
Among the many spies, Dimitri Polyakov, as a Soviet, did the work of fighting for the Americans, becoming the strongest agent in the FBI.
Dimitri Polyakov was born in 1921 to a family of accountants in Ukraine. In 1941, at the age of 20, after the outbreak of the Soviet-German War, Polyakov decisively joined the army, was assigned to the artillery unit to fight, and after World War II, because of his outstanding military talent, he was sent to the military academy for further study.
At this time, he did not know that soon after, he would lose his name, become a spy who betrayed the motherland, and bid farewell to the peaceful life now.
After graduation, Polyakov became an excellent artillery lieutenant. Later, Polyakov was favored by the GRU and transferred from the front-line troops to the intelligence service, and the Soviet Union had two intelligence organizations, one called the KGB, and the other was the GRU, which was the intelligence headquarters of the Soviet army.
The Soviet Union and the United States have been fighting a fierce espionage war, not only stealing each other's intelligence, but even plotting against their intelligence personnel.
Many intelligence personnel on both sides have infiltrated the top of the country and stolen a lot of confidential information. Compared to the well-known KGB, the GRU was more secretive, and even many Soviets did not even know about this intelligence agency.
Polyakov, because of his innocent background, was soon reused by the GRU, and after rigorous training by the GRU, Polyakov became a spy.
Polyakov worked extremely hard, and during his tenure, the rank gradually rose from second lieutenant to admiral, which shows that he was a man of firm faith and purpose, so why did Polyakov give up his great future in the Soviet Union and become a spy for the United States?
In 1959, he was sent to the United States New York Soviet Mission to the United Nations to do intelligence gathering, during which time he made an important decision, he took the initiative to contact the United States counterintelligence agencies and provide them with Soviet intelligence.
Surprisingly, Polyakov's decision to act as an American spy was not because of the temptation of money, but because of his antipathy to corruption within the Soviet Union.
The trigger that made Polykov an American spy was his son. Polyakov's identity was not only a Soviet general, but also the father of a child, when his son was seriously ill and urgently needed to go to the United States for treatment, he immediately submitted an application, but the request was rejected by his superiors.
Without timely treatment, Polyakov's child eventually died of a serious illness. So he was utterly disappointed with the bureaucracy that was now prevailing in the Soviet Union and headed for proactively providing intelligence to the United States.
With a salary of only $3,000, what did Polyakov do
As a Soviet, Polyakov wanted to provide intelligence to the United States, which seemed like a trap no matter how it looked, and the CIA naturally did not believe it.
Unexpectedly, the Soviet general spent years proving his loyalty to skeptical U.S. intelligence officials. When he began to secretly pass on Soviet intelligence to the CIA, the skeptical crowd immediately changed their attitudes.
Polyakov secretly collected a large amount of shocking information and hid it in fake stones. Agents disguised as fishermen with a secret information interlayer on their rods would take the information in the U.S. Embassy's trolley, which would be transmitted over the radio as they passed through the CIA headquarters.
In addition, Polyakov used his position in the Soviet Union to expose the espionage activities of Dunlap, an employee of the US Security Service.
Dunlap is American and has access to a large number of radio security ciphers for work reasons. In 1960, after coming into contact with the Soviet GRU, Dunlap became a Soviet intelligence provider, intercepting a large number of U.S. Security Service radio ciphertexts for the Soviet Union.
In 1963, Dunlap was unfortunately found dead in his car, but the US police failed to find the murderer after many searches, and his death was also included in the police file.
In fact, Dunlap's death was related to Polyakov, because Polyakov, as a Soviet general, had access to the core secrets of the GRU, and the list he provided to the United States contained Dunlap's name.
And Dunlap died with the marks of being beaten, which is likely left by American agents during interrogation. Since then, he has ostensibly been a Soviet agent, but in fact he has secretly served the United States.
Polyakov lived a very simple life, not only refusing to accept a large amount of remuneration, but also insisting on only taking a salary of only $3,000 a year, and this money could not be paid in cash.
He also asked for many small things, such as lighters and pens, which when he returned to Moscow were given to his colleagues in the GRU as human contacts. Kessler recalls that Polyakov also accepted payments for items such as power tools, shotguns, and fishing gear.
In terms of money and expenses, Polyakov, unlike other Soviet agents, did not have the habit of smoking and drinking, and loved his wife very much.
As the Cold War continued, Polyakov passed on information about the Vietnam War and a list of Soviet military technology to the United States, and these documents alone filled nearly 25 drawers.
It is worth noting that among the many pieces of intelligence provided by Polyakov, some of them also indirectly affected Sino-US relations. After Polyakov returned to Moscow, he saw important information about the deterioration of Sino-Soviet relations and passed it on to the CIA.
From this information, the United States judged that the tensions between China and the Soviet Union indirectly contributed to Nixon's visit to China in 1972.
Delayed arrests, secret executions
After losing so many agents in succession, the GRU top brass gradually realized that there were probably spies sent or plotted by the United States at the inner core, but after many investigations, they had been suffering from no evidence and could not determine who it was.
It was not until 1979 that the Soviet agent Hansen, a spy for the US FBI, reported Polyakov's spy status to the Soviet Union. Gruu immediately began an investigation into Polyakov, but still could not find tangible evidence.
In June 1980, the Soviets drew up a list of suspects that recalled Moster, including Polyakov, in order to keep them under control. After returning to the Soviet Union, Polyakov applied for retirement and lived a peaceful life.
In 1986, Ames, a Soviet spy lurking in the CIA, provided evidence that Polyakov was a spy for the United States. Ames was ostracized and promoted by many people in the CIA, and chose to defect to the Soviet Union and become a Soviet spy in the United States.
He decided to provide the Soviet Union with a large list of U.S. agents lurking in the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union would have to pay him about $3 million a year. After the Soviets successfully bribed agent Ames, they obtained the accurate list and identified the American spy Polyakov, after which the GRU urgently recalled Polyakov to Moscow.
The KGB intelligence group did not arrest Polyakov in order to cover up and protect Ames. It was not until March 1988 that a large number of KGBS secretly went to the home of Polyakov and arrested him, and on March 15, he was secretly executed.
After Polyakov was secretly shot by the GRU, even his body was buried in a hidden place, and no one knows where it is. Ames, who confessed to Polyakov, was later arrested and imprisoned by the CIA and sentenced to life imprisonment.
In June of the same year, when US President Ronald Reagan visited the Soviet Union, he proposed to Gorbachev the intention of exchanging spies to exchange Polyakov for his return, but did not expect that Polyakov had been secretly executed.
It wasn't until January 1990 that a message was published in Pravda, code-named "Donald F." The mysterious spy was executed, and the identity of the spy was not written on it, but the article stated that the mysterious spy was executed with the highest level of punishment, and the United States analyzed that the mysterious spy was likely to be Polyakov.
Surprisingly, after doing so many things that betrayed the Soviet Union, Polyakov was proved to be a patriot in some documents published in the United States. He had shown that he was born Russian, died a Russian ghost, and that what he did was for the sake of his motherland.
Although Polyakov provided intelligence to the United States, he was based on his clear understanding of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union and understood the consequences of the war between the two countries, so he chose to tilt part of the intelligence to the United States in order to achieve the purpose of weakening part of the Soviet Union's strength and maintaining a balance between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Throughout his life, Polyakov rose through the ranks to at least become a spy, as a provider of Soviet intelligence, effectively harmed the interests of the Soviet Union, brought immeasurable losses to the Soviet Union, whether it was to balance the situation between the United States and the Soviet Union, he will be recorded in the history of the Soviet Union as a sinner of the Soviet Union.