Home » Aldrich Ames

Brian J. Kelley: My Friend the Spy Expert

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Brian Kelley telephoned me shortly after my book,  Confessions of a Spy: The Real Story of Aldrich Ames, was published in 1997 and invited me to lunch. At the time, he was working at the CIA and was especially interested in my trip to Moscow where I had met with the KGB (now called the SVR) and also with the relatives of Soviet General Dmitri Polyakov, one of the CIA’s most important assets until he was exposed and executed.  

Soft spoken, intelligent and personable, Kelley impressed me with his knowledge of the Ames case and his questions about Polyakov. I liked him instantly, but didn’t think much about our lunch until August 1999 when I got a telephone call from a friend who worked at the CIA.

“Brian Kelley has been accused of being a Russian spy?” he declared.

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A Spy Story: Ames, Blood Money and Me

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If you’ve read my book, Confessions of a Spy: The Real Story of Aldrich Ames,you already know that I was able to interview the CIA traitor, Aldrich Ames, for eleven  days without government censors listening to our conversations.    This is because federal  prosecutors had notified everyone – Ames’ defense attorneys, the FBI, the CIA, and Justice Department – that Ames was not to be interviewed by the media, except for the officials who mattered the most — the deputies in charge of the jail.

When the U.S. Attorney prosecuting the case discovered that I had slipped into the jail, he was not happy.

Ames asked me to go to Moscow and gave me a handwritten letter to show his KGB (now called SVR) handlers. He also told me his “parole,” which in spy lingo, is the secret word that only his SVR contact would know. Using that word would verify that he’d sent me.

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Putin says “Traitors always end badly” But “illegals” can end up in Playboy

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“Traitors always end badly. They finish up as drunks, addicts, on the street…”
This is what Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said recently during a visit in the Ukraine. He also told reporters that he had met earlier in Moscow with the ten Russian “illegals” who had been expelled from the U.S. for being agents of the Russian government.
While Putin said the illegals would “have interesting, bright lives,” he explained that traitors never are happy after they betrayed their homelands.

Sergei Tretyakov, Nathan Hale, and Benedict Arnold? Is there a difference between our traitors and their’s?

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The CIA turncoat, Aldrich Ames told me that one country’s traitor is another country’s hero.
But is that true?
Ames said it was true because the end result was betrayal — the breaking of an oath and allegiance to one’s homeland.

Sergei’s Death. Mistakes. Nonsense and a Chuckle

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I’ve been a journalist for more than three decades, but I’ve never had a day like yesterday.
My morning began at 5 a.m. when I announced on my blog that my good friend, Sergei Tretyakov, had died unexpectedly on June 13th. We became good friends while collaborating on Comrade J. I posted this news after speaking several times during the week to Helen, his wife, and to several sources in the U.S. government familiar with his case.

Sergei Tretyakov, Russian Spy ‘Comrade J,’ Dead at 53

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I am sorry to announce that my good friend, Sergei Tretyakov, the subject of my book, Comrade J: The Untold Secrets of Russia’s Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War, died unexpectedly on June 13th in his home with his wife, Helen.
Sergei was 53.
Helen asked those of us who were his friends to not immediately reveal his death until an autopsy could be performed under the supervision of the FBI. She was concerned that Sergei’s former colleagues in Russia’s SVR, which replaced the KGB as Russia’s foreign intelligence service, might attempt to use his unexpected death for propaganda purposes.