“Traitors always finish badly. They usually end up on the streets from booze or drugs.”
Vladimir Putin on Colonel Poteyev
Colonel Aleksandr Poteyev
A year ago… Interfax has reported that “According to certain information, Colonel Poteyev died in the U.S.” To this day, the information has neither been confirmed, nor denied. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY
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Russian media were unable to obtain comments from American diplomats concerning Poteyev’s death.
“According to certain information, Poteyev died in the U.S. At the moment the information is being verified.”
“The reason and circumstances of his death are unclear. Another source confirmed having received the information from abroad but said that this might be disinformation intended to have Russia forget about the traitor.” [Interfax report]
Colonel Aleksandr Poteyev — the former deputy head of the Direction S department, which carries out reconnaissance for Russia in America — made headlines in the summer of 2010 after a spy scandal erupted in the U.S.
Ten Russians spying for Russia in the U.S. were sent home in exchange for four Russians spying for the U.S. in Russia.
The FBI uncovered a conspiratorial group of “sleeper agents” that gathered information on U.S. foreign policy and on Americans’ perception of Russia’s foreign policy.
Poteyev was the individual to hand this network over to the U.S.
Russia’s counterintelligence was unable to recover him in time. It failed to notice that just before defecting the colonel’s son left for the U.S., where Poteyev’s wife and daughter were already living.
The Russian authorities admitted that their spies in the U.S. had failed. President Vladimir Putin immediately met with them and promised to find them good jobs.
The most sensational representative of the spy group, Anna Kushchenko, who had taken the surname Chapman from her former British husband, got the best deal of all.
Anna Chapman — For 10 years, Colonel Poteyev collaborated with the CIA and “handed over” a network of “sleeper agents” to the Americans. The most famous of these agents was Anna Chapman.
Sleeper-cell supergrass gets 25 years for exposing Chapman & Co
The man who blew the cover of a group of Russian agents in the U.S. last year has been found guilty in absentia of treason and desertion by a Moscow court. Intelligence Colonel Aleksandr Poteyev fled the country before the scandal last June [2010] which saw 10 agents, including Anna Chapman, arrested.
Putin’s Message to Russian “Sleeper Agents” in the West
REFERENCES
Runaway Russian intelligence agent dies in the U.S. — Russia Beyond the Headlines
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Colonel Alexander Poteyev is Dead. Maybe…
One Year Ago — “Colonel Alexander Poteyev is Dead. Maybe…”
Intel Today 