Yet this squabble to gain information sometimes had devastating effects. In the late 1960s, the US military continued to pursue their research, fully aware that the future widespread use of chemical or biological weapons on the battlefield was uncertain, especially when one has far more effective nuclear weapons! The aim was for an arsenal made up of a smaller and more sophisticated neutron bomb, the so-called ‘clean bomb', that could kill people without destroying everything around it. In short, President Nixon took the decision to decrease research into chemical and biological materials, without destroying any existing stocks. However, the game of misinformation did not stop and an American double agent called Cassidy sent his Soviet contacts some very worrying information that US researchers had developed a frighteningly powerful nerve gas. In retaliation, Moscow sent its own scientists into overdrive. The paradox of this story is that thanks to the Americans, Moscow actually created a terrifyingly efficient chemical weapon, even though the US had actually given up trying to develop one in the first place.
Polyakov was found to have been one of those responsible for this act of misinformation regarding the invention of this new weapon of mass destruction. After the double agent Cassidy, the Soviet general had indeed helped to inform Moscow about America's alleged success with chemical weapons. But had he misinformed Moscow at the instigation of
the US? Or did he feel that it was his duty to alert the authorities in his home country? In sum, was Polyakov a traitor or a loyal servant to Moscow?
Before we can answer this, we must first look at the fall of Polyakov. According to the Soviet version, which paradoxically is also supported by the CIA, the KGB began to have their suspicions about him in 1980. Polyakov was approaching sixty and about to enter his retirement, which he enjoyed for several years with his family, indulging in his favourite pastime: woodworking.
The reality seems quite different, especially if one believes the Americans who were told of the affair very late in the day. In 1994 they had just captured a spy called Aldrich Ames,106 who had been working in the CIA. When questioned by his colleagues, Ames reported that he had denounced Polyakov to his Soviet contacts in the early 1980s.Yet Ames was not the only one who betrayed Polyakov. There was another famous double agent who was unmasked at the beginning of the third millennium, Robert Hanssen,107 who turned out to be just as greedy as Ames and who also claimed to have denounced Polyakov. The only difference between Ames and Hanssen was that the latter had worked for the FBI. This meant that the two main American intelligence agencies had been infiltrated. This double treachery almost acted as a retrospective tribute to James Angleton, who throughout his life had claimed that a ‘big mole' (his expression), was raging at the heart of US intelligence!
What is most surprising is the announcement by the Soviets themselves, through Pravda, that Polyakov had been a double agent working for the Americans. Ordinarily, any information that dishonoured their country or the communist regime was usually kept quiet so why make it public five years or so after Polyakov's supposed trial and execution? The only plausible explanation is that Moscow wanted to legitimise the mass of information Polyakov had provided to the CIA, which for the most part had been based on the idea of misinformation. However, in order to make the false data more credible, there had to be some genuine facts included in there as well. As a result, Polyakov was arrested and there was no way that the CIA could doubt the veracity of the enormous amount of intelligence that he had provided.
This means that Polyakov was not a traitor and the best evidence for this is the fact that in spite of all the CIA's demands, the GRU general never considered the option of moving to the West. If he had been a double agent for the Americans, then he was risking the death penalty should his identity be discovered. Another factor that supports this case is that he never received any money from the CIA. As a passionate woodworker and hunter, the only gifts he accepted were those of carpentry tools and a hunting rifle: very little payment for a spy of his calibre.
The final piece of evidence relates to the idea that the FBI traitor Robert Hanssen supposedly denounced Polyakov to the KGB in 1980. However, according to Pravda, Polyakov was not unmasked until the mid-1980s. So why the five year wait and thus allow him time to continue meeting with his former colleagues?
The question remains though as to what really happened to Polyakov? One can imagine that the Soviets took advantage of his natural or accidental death and invented the story in order to poison the CIA. The Polyakov mystery had never really gone away and is still being debated among the best intelligence specialists. However, on one last note, it cannot be left out that this patriot sometimes worked for his own personal benefit by using the links that he had forged with his CIA case officers, in order to help his own agenda. Yet if you are working for peace, does that still count as betrayal? Judging by the testimony of Robert Gates, a former CIA director and then Secretary of Defence under President Obama, ‘Top Hat' rendered a great service to the world. He maintains that Polyakov gave the CIA top secret documents concerning the Red Army's high command, which thus allowed the United States to accurately assess the Soviet nuclear threat and the inability of their intercontinental missiles: an evaluation that convinced Washington
