’70s Delhi man was CIA: Russian TV

In the backdrop of the Mitrokhin Archives II controversy, the erstwhile KGB added its own twist on Wednesday night, with a documentary alleg...

In the backdrop of the Mitrokhin Archives II controversy, the erstwhile KGB added its own twist on Wednesday night, with a documentary alleging that no less than the Soviet military attache in New Delhi in the 1970s was a CIA mole, who over a quarter of a century helped US intelligence uncover 1500 intelligence officials and 19 Soviet and 150 foreign undercover agents.

Based on archival material and the recollections of former military counter-intelligence officers, the Channel 1 documentary said Colonel Dmitry Polyakov of the Glavnoye Razvedovatelnoye Upravlenie (GRU)—the early 1960s intelligence arm of the Soviet general staff—had volunteered to work for the CIA during an assignment in Washington.

The film, Lyubyanka: Life on the Eve of Execution, alleged that Polyakov had in the early 1960s passed on to the US the names of KGB and GRU agents active in South-Asia while he was posted as Soviet military attache in Rangoon., At the same time, he also managed to win the favour of his bosses in Moscow, and was appointed Military Attache in New Delhi in 1972.

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During Soviet Leader Leonid Brezhnev’s India visit, “Colonel Polyakov made a good career … on the basis of inputs provided to him by the CIA from its moles in the Indian government,’’ the film said.

On his return to the Soviet Union, Polyakov was promoted to the rank of GRU major-general, in charge of training undercover agents. He continued supplying the CIA with information, including names and aliases of future Soviet military agents, the documentary alleged.

In 1978, Polyakov returned to New Delhi, again as military attache. However, he was recalled to Moscow in 1980, after he was shortlisted among nine Soviet generals suspected of leaking sensitive information to the CIA.

The documentary claimed that Polyakov’s identity as a CIA mole was finally established by double agent Richard Ames, arrested by the FBI in 1994 on charges of espionage in favour of the Soviet KGB.

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However, Polyakov had been sentenced to death on treason charges seven years earlier, in November 1987, the film said. In May 1988, during his Moscow summit with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, US President Ronald Reagan offered to swap the double agent for an arrested KGB spy in the United States. ‘‘The man you are talking about has been executed two months back,’’ was Gorbachev reported response. —PTI

Parichay Kumar, Superintendent of Police (Patna East), who reached the spot, said: "We have been talking to the driver of Rajkumar Yadav. Prima facie, it looks to be a case of land dispute and money transactions."

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