When he arrived every morning at the mission on 67th Street, Poteyev would take an elevator up to the eighth floor. In the lobby were two steel doors. There were no signs, but one was for the rezidentura—the intelligence station—of the GRU, military intelligence. The other door led to the SVR’s rezidentura, where Poteyev worked. Officers would pull out a small piece of metal and touch the head of a screw in the lower right corner of a brass plate by the door. That would complete an electric circuit—sometimes giving the person a tiny jolt—and the bolt would slide open. Behind the door was a cloakroom. Under the watchful eye of a camera, everyone would have to leave their coats as well as any electronic items in a locker to make sure nothing could be smuggled in or out. Next came another solid steel door with a numeric lock that required a code. Beyond it, the GRU and SVR offices were known as “submarines” since they were tightly enclosed to prevent FBI surveillance. Special teams had been flown from Moscow to create the structure, which sat on top of springs, creating a space from the main building structure to prevent cameras and listening devices being inserted. The walls were several inches thick and coated with wires that vibrated to emit a white noise. There were dedicated electrical and ventilation systems. On the SVR side there was a corridor ninety feet long with offices on either side. These were given over to the different “Lines” with different roles—one carried out technical interception; another, Line X, looked for technological secrets; VKR studied American intelligence; PR sought political contacts and information. Poteyev would walk into an office in the far corner of the floor.
Poteyev was a Line N officer. These are the spies under diplomatic cover whose job is to support the work of Directorate S illegals. Sometimes this can mean doing the legwork to establish a false identity—they were the ones traipsing around graveyards and church registries looking for names of dead children. They would also be in charge of getting hold of documents or visa applications so that Moscow Center can produce convincing forgeries. It could also mean supporting illegals directly. The whole point of illegals is that they do not appear Russian, so direct contact with anyone from the embassy is kept to an absolute minimum. But there might be moments when some kind of indirect contact is required—it could be an emergency signal left somewhere if something is going wrong—that might require a Line N officer checking every week to make sure there is not a chalk mark at a particular place. Or there might be documents or cash to leave in a dead drop for an illegal to pick up. Line N officers might also pass off new documents to an illegal transiting through their country or they might meet an illegal in a third country (often Mexico or somewhere in Latin America for US-based illegals).
There were 60 SVR officers based in New York in the late 1990s. They were running about 150 sources. As well as the mission, there was the Russian Consulate at East 91st Street, close to Central Park. Poteyev would likely have lived in a large, dingy tower on West 255th Street, in Riverdale in the Bronx, that was the residential compound. The rooms were small and smelly, with plenty of cockroaches. There was a small bar with cheap liquor and cigarettes, even a sauna, a swimming pool, and a school so that the Russians were not too tempted by the bright lights and enticements of the city on their doorstep. Surrounded by a chain security fence, the compound had been built on a steep hill. This allowed antennas to be placed that could intercept communications, and on the nineteenth floor, Line VKR—foreign counterintelligence—ran a system called “Post Impulse,” which tracked FBI signals. If they saw several FBI signals in the vicinity of one of their SVR officers they knew they might be under surveillance. In New York, the top mission for the SVR spies was penetrating the US mission to the UN; next was the missions of other permanent members of the Security Council—the United Kingdom, France, and China, followed by Germany and Japan and other NATO countries. Next were New York financial institutions, then the universities like New York University and Columbia, and finally Russian immigrant groups and foreign journalists.
From the day he arrived at the Russian mission to the UN, Poteyev had been closely observed by the FBI. They did this to all Russian officials using observation posts, surveillance teams, and bugs. But the FBI and CIA had a particularly good insight into what was going on at the Russian mission to the UN while Poteyev was there. That was because they already had a spy on the inside. Sergei Tretyakov was technically a first secretary but actually the deputy SVR resident since his arrival in 1995. A rotund, outgoing character, Tretyakov was one of those who looked at the SVR in the mid-1990s and saw only decay. When he visited Yasenevo, he remembered how it had grown grimy in his absence. The bathrooms, once spotless, now looked more like you would expect in a railway station. People looked unkempt and were drinking and leaving the office early. Jobs had been cut and many had gone off to make money. Disillusioned, he began working for the Americans and would spend the late 1990s providing highly valuable intelligence, including the names of undercover SVR officers across the United States and their agents.
The two Russians would have known each other, but Tretyakov did not introduce Poteyev to the Americans. Keeping agents separate was a vital principle of tradecraft or else the risk would be that one of them—if discovered or turned—could compromise the other. Tretyakov would, though, have been able to tell the Americans all about the officers in the mission, including Poteyev, which may have aided their understanding of him and whether he could be approached. In October 2000, rather than return to Russia, Tretyakov simply disappeared. SVR operations in North America were dealt a huge blow. But the SVR did not know things were even worse than they feared. There was another spy.
Poteyev was watched for some time by the FBI. FBI teams study every Russian diplomat, building up a file on them. What is their work pattern? Does their routine make them look like a real diplomat or might they be a spy? What kinds of things do they do in their spare time? As well as hoping to catch them in the act of espionage (always difficult), the counterspies are looking for “the hook”—the aspect of their life you can cast your line toward and hope it catches so you can reel them in. Sometimes they will be overheard on the phone talking in a way that sounds like high-minded ideological disillusionment but other times it is because they are observed gazing longingly at large plasma screen TVs in shop windows as they walk downtown.
What motivates such people to turn against their country and spy? Occasionally in the Cold War there were genuine ideological turncoats. But money and general disillusionment were more of an issue for Russian spies in the 1990s. They had watched the ideology they had signed up for disappear and their savings evaporate. Some literally became chicken farmers. Meanwhile, they could see others back home cash in in the new world of crony capitalism. Why—after all their service—should they not have some little nest egg to prevent their family from struggling? That was one reason. But the truth is that simple answers rarely suffice. Each case is unique. If you speak to those who target Russians, they say the simple notions of motivation rarely apply. The reality is much harder to unpick. It is sometimes tempting to reduce it all to something like money or grievance or ego. But, one old hand explains, the Russians are complicated. They are all maneuvering in their bureaucracy against each other, sometimes sleeping with each other or their partners, collecting compromising information on each other, and holding grudges for some slight inflicted on them years ago—any of which could lead one of them to suddenly decide to turn. Another former spy has a different take. In post-Soviet Russia it was not the people you expected to turn who did. Rather than unhappy, low-level intelligence officers, it was more senior ones who changed sides. They had got far up the tree but then realized they were not going to go any further since when you reached a certain level, politics and corruption took over and it did not matter how good you were. That was the moment you might be willing to turn.
What was the case with Poteyev? Russian spies would later bitterly attribute