Brian J. Kelley: My Friend the Spy Expert

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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Russian Who Exposed Femme Fatale Is Identified

Former Russian Spy Now Peddles Spy Gear

Thanks to a Russian military court in Moscow, we now know who told the FBI and CIA about ten Russian “illegals,” who were arrested last year in the U.S., including the femme fatale,  Anna Chapman.

In case you have forgotten, Chapman and her colleagues where caught in June 2010 and accused of being “sleeper agents” employed by the Russian Federation’s external intelligence agency, the SVR (formerly the KGB.)  Illegals are a Russian specialty. Yuri Andropov, who oversaw the KGB from 1967 until 1982, was a huge proponent of dispatching KGB-trained Russians into foreign countries under the guise of being immigrants. Their assignment was to blend into a target country’s society and, if possible, quietly work their way into jobs where they could collect information. In some cases, sleepers were told they might never be called on by Mother Russia unless a war broke out. If that happened, the sleeper agents would be ordered to carry out military assignments, such as blowing up targets.

The idea that your seemingly ordinary next-door neighbor might secretly be a foreign spy is juicy stuff and when Chapman turned out to be both young and sexy, her arrest sparked international headlines. Most foreign intelligence agents conduct their spying activities under the guise of being dipolmats. This gives them immunity from prosecution.  But “illegals” don’t have diplomatic immunity, which means they can be arrested, just as Chapman and her co-horts were. They were later returned to Moscow as part of a spy swap. We sent them ten Russians and they gave us four alleged spies from our side.

When Chapman and the others were arrested on June 27th, my phone began ringing. Everyone assumed that Sergei Tretyakov had told the FBI and CIA about the sleeper agents. Tretyakov is the subject of my book, COMRADE J: The Untold Secrets of Russia’s Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War.  He began working for the U.S. sometime in the mid-1990s and as the deputy rezident of the KGB/SVR’s New York office, common sense dictated that he must have known about Chapman and her pals.

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A Spy Story: Ames, Blood Money and Me

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

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.

Spy Arthur Walker Still In His Brother’s Shadow

Because I have spent much of my career writing about crime and prisons, I have gotten to know a lot of criminals, including some down right evil psychopaths. Occasionally, I  get a note from a prisoner asking me to write a letter to a parole board recommending clemency.

The most recent came from Alice Lundgren, wife of Jeffrey Lundgren, who was executed by the State of Ohio in 2006 for murdering a family of five. The Lundgren cult is the subject of my book, Prophet of Death. I told Alice no.

In the past 37-years, I have written only one letter on behalf of an inmate.

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