Valery Martynov was a

double agent In the field of counterintelligence, a double agent is an employee of a secret intelligence service for one country, whose primary purpose is to spy on a target organization of another country, but who is now spying on their own country's organi ...

working as a

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 ...

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 ...

officer as well as an intelligence asset for the US. While serving as a Lieutenant Colonel in the

, he was stationed in 1980 at the Soviet official offices in

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

By 1982, he had become a double agent and was passing intelligence to the CIA and FBI under the code name "Gentile". He was executed in

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

on May 28, 1987, at the age of 41.

Early career and recruitment

Martynov was a lieutenant colonel in the KGB who worked for the

First Chief Directorate The First Main Directorate () of the Committee for State Security under the USSR council of ministers (PGU KGB) was the organization responsible for foreign operations and intelligence agency, intelligence activities by providing for the training a ...

, responsible for foreign intelligence. He and his wife Natalia arrived in Washington in November, 1980, he under the guise as third secretary of the Soviet embassy. He was recruited in 1982 by an

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...

CIA 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 ...

program, and started to feed information to US intelligence.

Contributions to US Intelligence

Martynov provided detailed information about KGB operations, including the identities of Soviet spies operating within the United States and the strategies the KGB employed to recruit and manage agents. His intelligence helped the FBI and CIA identify and neutralize Soviet spies, making him one of the most valuable double agents of his time. He revealed the identities of fifty Soviet intelligence officers operating from the embassy and technical and scientific targets that the KGB had penetrated.

Betrayal and execution

Despite the intelligence he provided, Martynov's fate was sealed when

Aldrich Ames Aldrich Hazen Ames (; born May 26, 1941) is an American former Central Intelligence Agency, CIA counterintelligence officer who was convicted of espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union and Russia in 1994. He is serving a life sentence, without th ...

, a CIA officer who had turned into an informant for the Soviet Union, betrayed him. Ames, motivated by financial gain and possibly a deep sense of resentment toward his agency, provided the KGB with the names of numerous American spies and assets, including Martynov. Moscow was informed in 1985 that two KGB officers at the Soviet Embassy in Washington were secretly working for the United States. According to the

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

: Martynov was subsequently executed in 1987. His wife, Natalia, returned in 1995 to the United States with their two children: Alexander, who became a Virginia police officer, and Anna, who became a financial professional and married Charles Coristine, the owner of LesserEvil (their son,

Edward Coristine Edward Coristine (born December 2005), also known by the online alias "Big Balls", is an American college student and programmer formerly appointed to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and made a permanent federal employee with the ...

, was hired by

DOGE Doge, DoGE or DOGE may refer to: Internet culture * Doge (meme), an Internet meme primarily associated with the Shiba Inu dog breed ** Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency named after the meme ** Kabosu (dog), the dog portrayed in the original Doge image ...

at the age of 19 in 2025).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Martinov, Valery 1987 deaths Double agents KGB agents CIA activities in the Americas Spies for Russia Spies for the United States Soviet spies