Pyotr Semyonovich Popov (; July 1923 – January 1960) was a colonel in the

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

military intelligence Military intelligence is a military discipline that uses information collection and analysis List of intelligence gathering disciplines, approaches to provide guidance and direction to assist Commanding officer, commanders in decision making pr ...

apparatus (

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). He was the first GRU officer to offer his services to the

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...

after World War II. Between 1953 and 1958, he provided the

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with large amounts of information concerning military capabilities and espionage operations. He was codenamed ATTICJeffery T. Richelson (1997),
A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century
',

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...

, p258 for most of his time with the CIA, and his case officer was George Kisevalter. In 1953 Popov was a GRU officer stationed in

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

, a case officer working against Yugoslav targets. Popov first made contact in 1953 by slipping a letter into the parked car of a

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diplomat in

, offering to sell Soviet documents. He seemed to be motivated by a deep anger at what he felt was government exploitation of the peasants of

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, including his own family. While stationed in Vienna, Popov was able to provide documents such as the 1951 Soviet army field regulations, and after a July 1954 home visit to the Soviet Union, information regarding Soviet nuclear submarines and guided missiles. In 1955 Popov was suddenly transferred to

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to work with illegal agents being sent to the West. He continued to provide counterintelligence and military information. In April 1958 Popov told Kisevalter that a senior KGB official had boasted of having "full technical details" of the

Lockheed U-2 The Lockheed U-2, nicknamed the "''Dragon Lady''", is an American single-engine, high–altitude reconnaissance aircraft operated by the United States Air Force (USAF) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) since the 1950s. Designed for all- ...

spy plane, leading U2 project director Richard M. Bissell, Jr. to conclude the project had a leak. On 1 May 1960 a U-2 was shot down over the Soviet Union, in the

1960 U-2 incident On 1 May 1960, a United States Lockheed U-2, U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, spy plane was shot down by the Soviet Air Defence Forces while conducting photographic aerial reconnaissance inside Soviet Union, Soviet territory. Flown by American pil ...

. Popov was dismissed from the GRU in November 1958, and placed on reserve status. In January 1959, after incriminating evidence was found in his apartment, he was run as a double agent for three months. He was then arrested in October 1959, and sentenced to death in January 1960.John L. Hart (1997), "Pyotr Semyonovich Popov: The tribulations of faith", ''Intelligence and National Security'', Vol. 12, Iss. 4, 1997; included in Hart's ''The CIA's Russians'' (2003)
here
/ref> It was never proved how he was exposed, but one possibility is that U.S. surveillance in October 1957 of one of Popov's agents led to suspicion falling on him. Reportedly, Margarita Nikolievska Tairov, an "illegal" agent trained for work in the United States, was scheduled to meet another agent (in fact, her husband, Igor), identified as Walter Anthony Sjoa. Travelling as Mary Grodnik, she noticed she was under surveillance, allegedly all the way from Berlin Tempelhof Airport. (Certainly, her entirely innocuous behavior, and her husband's, including their abrupt disappearance, suggest they suspected something was amiss.) She reported this, and the matter was thoroughly investigated by Moscow. The investigation pointed to Popov, who had been the woman's control officer in

. He may also have been exposed by British double agent

George Blake George Blake ( Behar; 11 November 1922 – 26 December 2020) was a Espionage, spy with Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and worked as a double agent for the Soviet Union. He became a communist and decided to work for the Minist ...

, who inadvertently learned the CIA was using a senior Soviet intelligence officer stationed in

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as a mole. Other sources indicate a coded letter to Popov, sent by the CIA and intercepted by the

KGB The Committee for State Security (, ), abbreviated as KGB (, ; ) was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, Joint State Polit ...

, led to his arrest (this may be a misunderstanding – Popov passed a letter to British intelligence, of which Blake became aware). More recent evidence suggests Popov was already under suspicion prior to the Tairov incident, due to a leak of a private speech by Marshal Zhukov at which Popov was present. Popov was executed by Soviet authorities in 1960. Former CIA Soviet Russia counterintelligence officer Tennent H. Bagley believed Popov was not detected by Soviet surveillance but was betrayed in Washington D.C. by Edward Ellis Smith, a CIA security officer who had served as Popov's dead drop serrer-upper who had recently been fired from the American Embassy in Moscow, and another, unknown-to-Bagley, CIA officer. Bagley, Tennent H. ''Spy Wars'', 2007.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Popov, Pyotr Semyonovich 1923 births 1960 deaths CIA agents convicted of crimes GRU officers Soviet anti-communists Soviet people executed for spying for the United States People executed by the Soviet Union by firearm Executed people from Kostroma Oblast Russian people executed by the Soviet Union Executed Soviet people from Russia