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Dmitri Polyakov: The most important CIA source whom Ames betrayed was Polyakov, the legendary top hat. So valuable was Polyakov, a general in Soviet military intelligence, that the CIA provided him with special high-tech equipment that it reserved for its most important agents. He was, for example, given a high-speed "burst" transmitter and a clock for his Moscow apartment that lit up in response to a radio signal to inform him that a dead drop, or hiding place, had been cleared by the CIA. Over the years, Polyakov provided the CIA with data on Soviet strategic missiles, antitank missiles, nuclear strategy, chemical and biological warfare, crop diseases and civil defense. In 1980 Polyakov returned to Moscow, having successfully spied for the U.S. for two decades. Approaching retirement age, he could look forward to living out his years peacefully in Moscow with his family.
Until Aldrich Ames turned him in. In 1990 the Soviets announced that Polyakov had been caught; they later said he had been executed in 1988. Polyakov had been one of a kind. "He didn't do this for money," the CIA's Jeanne Vertefeuille told a colleague. "He insisted on staying in place to help us." Tears came in her eyes when she spoke of the general.
"It was," she said, "a bad day for us when we lost him."