Original subtitles

One of the CIA's greatest spies,

Dmitri Polyakov,

is caught by the KGB

and strip searched.

His head is held in an arm-lock

to prevent him taking poison.

[man speaking German]

INTERPRETER: The invisible front,

that's what it was in the Cold War,

and for us it was war.

The soldiers may have been on alert,

but for us and the others who went out into the cold,

it was actual war.

D ♪

NARRATION: Dawn on the 16th of July, 1945.

Allied scientists at Los Alamos leave

for the New Mexico desert,

to watch the test of the first atomic bomb.

They have been working for years

under a blanket of total secrecy.

Ted Hall, at 19,

was the youngest scientist on the project.

HALL: I was there.

Or at least I was there in a truck or lorry

some distance away.

It was considered to be a safe distance away.

I can't remember if there was

any signal circulated

that the test was about to be made.

But anyway, the damn thing went off,

and it was a rather awesome sight.

NARRATION: For Ted Hall,

the Cold War had begun the year before.

I decided to give atomic secrets

to the Russians

because it seemed to me that it was important

that there should be no monopoly,

which would turn one nation into a menace

and turn it loose on the world

as Nazi Germany developed.

There seemed to be only one answer

to what one should do.

The right thing to do was to act

to break the American monopoly.

NARRATION: Others thought the same way.

The KGB had several sources inside Los Alamos,

unknown to one another.

The scientist Klaus Fuchs and Ted Hall

both passed on details

of how to detonate nuclear weapons by implosion --

a principle so new to Soviet science

that there was no equivalent word in Russian.

In 1949,

the Soviets exploded their first atom bomb.

Triggered by implosion,

it copied key elements of the American bomb

that destroyed Nagasaki.

The atom spies had saved the Soviet Union

perhaps two years of research.

Ted Hall was questioned by the FBI

in March, 1951,

but not charged, for lack of evidence.

A month later,

KGB agents Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

were sentenced to death.

Amid the anti-Soviet fervor of the time,

they became the only spies ever executed

in peacetime America.

HALL: It was gruesome.

And certainly brought home the fact

that there were flames consuming people,

and that we were pretty close to being consumed.

NARRATION: The intelligence war was lopsided.

The KGB operated in the West,

but the CIA confronted a closed world.

Trains crossing the Finnish border into Russia

were sealed by steel shutters.

The United States faced a long famine of information.

MAN: This lack of understanding

of how the Soviet system functioned,

would dog us in CIA

throughout the entire Cold War,

whether it was the Soviet Union itself

or the carbon copies of the Soviet Union

in East Germany and in Cuba,

and you name it.

NARRATION: Most early infiltration operations

into the Soviet Union

were doomed from the start.

Western agents were betrayed by KGB spies,

like the British intelligence officer

Kim Philby.

Philby came to public attention

because of his association

with fellow double agents Guy Burgess

and Donald Ma clean.

NARRATOR: Philby, on the right, holds a press conference

to deny charges that he was involved

in the disappearance of Burgess and Ma clean.

REPORTER: Well, if there was a third man,

were you, in fact the third man?

No, I was not.

Do you think there was one?

No comment.

Well, Mr. Philby, the disappearance

of Burgess and Ma clean is almost as much

of a mystery today as it was when they went away

about four years ago or more.

Can you shed any light on it at all?

No, I can't.

[ Man speaking Russian ]

INTERPRETER: Philby told us a lot about those missions.

He told us about the numbers of people.

He told us about the coordinates,

where and how the operations would be carried out,

whether they would be parachuted in

or sent in by sea.

Those areas were of course surrounded

by Soviet counterintelligence

and they were caught.

The normal routine was

that the agents were interrogated.

Some were very hostile and kept silent.

In doing so,

they signed their own death warrants.

NARRATIONI In 1953,

Soviet émigré Mikhail Kudriavtsev

parachuted into Russia

to spy for the CIA.

[speaking Russian ]

After we were dropped in, we were tied up

and taken off to the KGB.

When the investigator from Moscow arrived --

and he arrived suspiciously quickly by nightfall...

I got the impression that they had been

waiting for us,

that somehow the KGB knew we were coming.

NARRATION: Kudriavtsev saved his life

by telling the KGB everything

and agreeing to parrot a prepared statement

at this heavily stage-managed press conference.

[ Kudriavtsev speaking Russian ]

INTERPRETER: This is me.

Before we spoke at that conference,

we were given scripts

that we had two days to learn by heart.

NARRATION: Kudriavtsev told the world of his great error

in ever thinking ill of the Soviet Union --

let alone trying to topple it.

[speaking Russian ]

It was hard for me to say those things --

very hard.

But I had to do it,

in order not to be taken back to the Lubyanka.

You begin to believe

that this was a service

that really had enormous coverage

and that everything we did --

you know, not a sparrow could fall

without this enormous KGB finding out about it

because in terms of our own individual experiences,

we know -- or we knew --

that the operations we were involved in

had been betrayed by people like Kim Philby.

NARRATION: The KGB put vast arrays

of captured CIA equipment on show.

The West had suffered failure abroad

and betrayal at home.

It was back to the drawing board.

[explosions]

The Korean War provided further blows

to the CIA's self-confidence,

highlighting gaps in forecasting

and assessment.

MAN: The CIA was wrong about the start of the war.

They were wrong about the Chinese involvement

and intervention in the war.

And they were wrong about the capabilities

of the North Korean forces.

I think the Korean War,

in terms of its intelligence failures,

left a lot of lessons for the policy community

and the intelligence community.

And one of those lessons was

that indeed, we would have to get

better technical intelligence

and make more of a commitment

to signals intelligence and communications intelligence.

And with this, you get resources put

with the National Security Agency,

under the Pentagon,

in order to develop a capability

to intercept messages around the world.

And this produced extremely vital information

to the intelligence community.

NARRATION: Berlin was a communications nub,

where countless Soviet Bloc phone and teleprinter lines

cries-crossed beneath the city.

To intercept them,

The Americans and British drove a tunnel

deep into the Soviet sector.

MURPHY: The purpose of the Berlin tunnel

was to tap the communications lines

of the Soviet forces in East Germany,

in Poland,

and their links with Moscow,

in order to provide current intelligence

on those forces,

and also early warning.

The lines from the taps

would come down into the tunnel itself,

and first they would be amplified,

because then we had to run the lines up

into the area of the warehouse

where we had hundreds and hundreds of recorders

that operated day and night

and recorded every single bit of this stuff.

[ Overlapping conversations ]

NARRATION: From the start,

this operation was betrayed to the KGB

by a source inside British intelligence --

George Blake.

I was secretary at the meeting

at which this tunnel was being planned,

and so I was able

to draw a very simple sketch

which showed how the tunnel was going to run

and what cables it was intended to attack.

NARRATION: Blake had served as a British intelligence officer

in Seoul.

Captured by the North Koreans,

he witnessed the West's bombing of civilians.

BLAKE: When I saw these enormous

American flying fortresses

flying low over what seemed to be

defenseless Korean villages,

I felt a feeling of shame.

I felt very acutely

that I was on the wrong side

and that I should do something about it.

Blake went home to Britain

in the first group of POWs

released from Korea

after the 1953 armistice.

How did you find the food out there, Mr. Blake?

Well, the food was adequate but monotonous.

It was monotonous, was it?

- Very monotonous. - Anything special?

I mean, any odd things they gave you to eat?

No, just rice and turnips, mainly.

Pretty impressive diet, isn't it?

Three times a day.

NARRATION: Blake slipped back into British intelligence,

only now he was a KGB spy.

I was given a Minox camera,

and I carried that Minox camera with me

whenever I went to work...

like I carried my wallet with me.

And the reason was that I never knew

what important documents

I might find on my desk

which were worthwhile photographing.

NARRATION: Blake's warning about the tunnel

gave the KGB a problem.

To move against it risked exposing him.

[speaking Russian ]

This was an argument not to take

any measures against the tunnel,

not to send any disinformation down the tunnel,

not to show that we knew anything about the tunnel.

This was a very important consideration

because as long as Blake remained

inside British intelligence,

we knew he'd be of great value to us.

[ Overlapping conversations ]

NARRATION: So the Berlin tunnel operated

courtesy of the KGB,

and the CIA basked in a signals intelligence bonanza.

We got military order of battle

on the Soviet forces in Germany

and in Poland.

We got information

which came from Moscow --

for example, on the whole reorganization

of the Ministry of Defense.

But the real, real kicker in all this was

the fact that we got something

we never expected to get --

we got all kinds of personality data,

operational data on the operations

of the Soviet military counterintelligence.

So that we were, at that point,

totally on top, we thought,

of the counterintelligence picture

in Berlin.

NARRATION: But the KGB was just choosing its moment

to pull the plug on the tunnel.

They warned me beforehand

that it was going to happen,

so I was rather on tenterhooks,

and you can imagine,

what the outcome would be.

NARRATION: Heavy rain one April night in 1956

caused a cable failure,

giving the KGB the excuse it needed --

turning the West's intelligence feat

into a Soviet propaganda victory.

Obviously, there --

I mean, there was a feeling of, you know,

of great unhappiness.

On the other hand, you know,

you just sort of shrugged your shoulders

and said, "Well, we were lucky it lasted that long."

NARRATION: Five years later,

George Blake was himself betrayed,

and sentenced to 42 years in prison.

He had given the KGB the names

of nearly 400 agents working for the West,

supposedly on condition that they wouldn't be harmed.

BLAKE: During my trial,

which was held in camera,

so everything could be said there,

there was no mention at all --

it wasn't part of the prosecutor's case --

that I had been responsible for the death

of any number of agents.

NARRATION: But armed with Blake's names,

Moscow simply waited

until they had sufficient additional evidence.

MAN: George Blake had that innocent mind in a sense.

He's still a very naive man.

He didn't want to know

that many people he betrayed

were executed.

And I think

we even discussed this subject at one point,

and he wouldn't believe it.

He would say,

"Well, I was told that this would not happen."

It did happen. He was not told.

As the Cold War intensified

through the 1950s,

pressure on the CIA increased.

The West was desperate for detail

about the size and strength of Soviet forces,

glimpsed and photographed

at Moscow air shows or May Day parades.

It was the Soviet missile force

which worried the CIA the most,

and about which they knew the least.

There was limited human intelligence

about the missile deployments

in the Soviet Union.

There were some communications intelligence

which would suggest

that this facility or this town

may be involved in missile activities,

because of communications with known missile sites.

But what we were missing

was any firm, hard evidence

of actual deployment of missiles.

NARRATION: From 1956,

American technical superiority started providing answers.

The CIA's own reconnaissance plane,

the U2,

flew high over Russia to photograph Soviet bases.

But in four years of searching,

found no operational

intercontinental ballistic missile launch sites.

Then in 1960,

the Americans successfully launched

a satellite fitted with a camera.

After 17 orbits,

the film capsule was ejected,

caught mid-air,

and brought back to earth for analysis.

A subsequent flight confirmed the existence

of just one Soviet ICBM launch site.

The rest of the puzzle's pieces were provided

by perhaps the greatest spy of the Cold War.

MAN: This is a photograph of Oleg Penkovsky,

colonel in the Red Army,

with all of his medals which he earned

during World War ll --

a handsome soldier

and a great American patriot.

This photograph was taken in the hotel

in London in April 1961,

after one of our meetings,

where Oleg Penkovsky on the left

and me on the right

enjoying a small glass of wine.

NARRATION: Penkovsky provided further reassurances

about the limitations of Soviet power.

BULIK: While they were still a serious threat,

no question about it, they were strong militarily,

absolutely strong militarily,

but they were not as strong

as our estimators had felt,

and he helped us bring it down

to the level where they really were.

They were not ten feet tall.

They were about my size, six foot two.

NARRATION: Penkovsky revealed

the Soviefs lack of atomic warheads

and their problems with guidance systems.

He acted out of resentment

that his career in military intelligence had stalled

but also out of fear that Khrushchevs adventurism

would bring disaster on the world.

Khrushchev told Kennedy, "I want peace.

But if you want war, that is your problem."

But Penkovsky told the CIA

that Khrushchev was bluffihg.

"Kennedy should be firm," he said.

"Khrushchev is hot going to fire any rockets.

He is not ready for any war."

If you can get into the mind

of the Khrushchevs of the world...

then you've got a weapon

that no technical amount of information

can give you

and this is what Penkovsky was able to give us.

NARRATION: Penkovsky's information

was critical to the United States

during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

U2 photographs revealed the presence on Cuba

of Soviet missiles,

for which Penkovsky had already handed over

the operating manuals.

With the world closer to nuclear conflict

than at any time in the Cold War,

intelligence experts were summoned to the White House

to brief President Kennedy.

The first question the President asked was,

"How long before they can fire those missiles?"

And Art Lundahl said,

"Well, Mr. Graybeai is the missile expert."

So he turned to me.

I stood up behind the President, McNamara, and Rusk,

and for the next probably five to ten minutes

they fired one question after the other.

In answer to the President's question,

"How long can they fire these missiles?"

I replied primarily on the combination

of intelligence sources,

but mainly Penkovsky's information,

which told us how these missiles operated

in the field.

NARRATION: The CIA assessment is said to have bought the President

three precious days' breathing space.

Ironically, Penkovsky himself was now

under KGB surveillance.

The last time Joe Bulik had seen him

was in Paris.

BULIK: I never had the feeling that he was in danger,

otherwise I would have insisted that he stay.

In fact, forced him, if I had to kidnap him.

But I never really had the feeling that he was --

at that time, our last meeting in Paris,

I never felt that he was in danger.

NARRATION: Back in Moscow,

Penkovsky sent what seemed like a routine message.

BULIK: We'd gotten a signal from Penkovsky

that a dead drop was loaded,

and then we sent Dick Jacobs to service that dead drop.

He was arrested, and as soon as that happened,

we knew the case was over. It was dead.

And that Penkovsky was in the hands of the KGB.

Punkt.

[speaking Russian ]

The chief KGB interrogator

was Alexander Zagvozdin.

[speaking Russian ]

We questioned him not once, not 10 or 20 times,

but perhaps 100 times.

He realized that his actions

were punishable by death,

and he used to ask me,

"Will I be executed?"

I never said he wouldn't.

I never said he wouldn't be executed.

I used to say one thing --

"Only if you confess everything

and repent fully,

can you hope for mercy."

That's probably why Penkovsky's life was not spared.

He didn't confess everything.

I know for sure that Penkovsky was shot.

I can't tell you anything else.

I know his body was cremated.

I don't know any more,

and I'm not interested.

NARRATION: Not all spies wound up famous.

These are the home movies

of Galina and Mikhail Fedorov,

KGB officers who operated under deep cover

for 20 years.

They were never caught.

In the event of war,

they would be in place to spy behind enemy lines.

The KGB never lacked recruits.

Some served for money, some for ideology,

and some for the sheer excitement

of living a secret life.

[speaking Russian ]

I love espionage.

Why'?

Because there is this smell of adventure,

the smell of risk,

the smell of uncertainty.

Because when you go off to meet an agent,

you never know whether you're going to be arrested.

It adds color to life.

[ explosion ]

I need O07.

No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die.

[ Luibimov speaking Russian]

Spy mania in London started

about the time I arrived.

In 1961,

we used to be asked everywhere.

We were very popular.

We would be invited to private parties,

and the attitude towards us was good.

But as the '60s went on,

there were those big disasters --

with Blake and the other KGB spies.

And you had the Profumo scandal,

with the prostitute Christine Keeler.

That shook Britain up a bit.

After that, when I turned up somewhere,

people would ask, "Are you a spy?"

So I'd say, "Of course, I'm a spy!"

NARRATION: Western governments grew weary

of the huge KGB presence in their midst.

In 1971, the British expelled

105 Soviet intelligence officers,

identified by a defector.

Technology increasingly assumed the burden

of spying-

NARRATION: Satellites could now intercept

radio communications and data

from test launches of the oppositiorfs missiles.

Film taken in space

no longer even had to be returned to earth.

The satellite would take the picture of the sky,

and this image could be beamed back

to an analyst at his desk

in the United States

who could actually see what was happening

in the international arena without leaving his desk.

NARRATION: Here lay the greatest intelligence successes

of the Cold War --

through photography and electronic eavesdropping,

each side received huge flows of information,

often too much for the analysts to handle.

Technological spying even played a part

in helping the superpowers edge towards peace.

The technical systems were almost essential

to our arms control process.

We learned just all kinds of things

about Russian military systems

from the photographs

and from the electronic listening.

At one point, when we were negotiating

the SALT ll arms control treaty,

I had to go to the Senate and say,

"|f you ratify this treaty,

this is how closely I can monitor it

and check on whether they are complying

with the terms of the treaty."

[electronic beeping, chirping ]

NARRATION: Despite a fleet of spy ships,

listening posts worldwide,

and sputniks overhead,

Soviet technical intelligence lagged behind the West.

Even so, they claimed to have cracked

the ciphers of over 6O countries,

obtaining many codes by theft and blackmail.

Soviet technical intelligence was far inferior

to Soviet human intelligence.

The Soviets were extremely good

at persuasive tactics,

which would ultimately bring many people

into their ideological embrace.

NARRATION: KGB spying methods

spread beyond superpower conflict --

routine surveillance of ordinary citizens

by the East German secret police, or Stasi.

The Stasi inhabited a moral world of its own.

Interrogations were routinely filmed...

and they had cameras everywhere.

[Speaking German ]

Relations between the various

areas of counterintelligence

and with the department which handled interrogations

were very amicable.

There were all sorts of people there,

and it was a friendly atmosphere.

They weren't the kind of devious types

who'd use atrocious methods

to force confessions out of people.

[Speaking German ]

[Speaking German ]

Well, terrible things did happen.

There were many cases of injustice,

particularly in the later years

which really bothered me.

Reprisals were taken against people

solely on the grounds that they had

different political opinions,

or against people who wanted a different,

better form of socialism.

NARRATION: Vera Wollenberger joined the East German peace movement

in 1981,

encouraged by her husband Knud.

[Wollenberger speaking German ]

INTERPRETER: My personal motivation for opposing state policies

was the decision in the early '80s

to station nuclear missiles in the GDR

and to introduce military instruction in schools.

NARRATION: Vera and her family were constantly harassed

by the Stash

who burgled her house

and made sure she lost her teaching job.

Her husband stood by her throughout.

In 1988,

Vera was arrested on her way to this demonstration.

Her crime -- carrying a banner

which bore Rosa Luxemburgs words,

"Freedom is how free your opponent is."

She was interrogated and imprisoned.

In 1991,

after the collapse of the GDR,

Vera got access to her Stasi file,

in which she learned

that the main informer against her

had been her own husband.

[Speaking German ]

I can't really say how I felt.

It was such an extreme situation,

rather as if one had died for a moment,

and then returned to life.

The surprising thing was

the reports were written as if about a stranger,

not about a wife.

To him I was an enemy of the State,

and he had done everything to fight me --

the enemy.

NARRATION: Some "enemies of the State"

received more drastic treatment.

In 1978, Bulgarian intelligence

asked the KGB to help them kill

the émigré writer and broadcaster,

Georgi Markov.

Markov was murdered at a London bus stop

by a stranger who "accidentally" prodded him

with the tip of an umbrella.

The Bulgarians were given a choice of weapons,

and finally they picked up

this umbrella

8S a COVE!"

To shoot the man with a poisoned pellet.

It was not supposed to be uncovered

because the pellet would dissolve in his body

within 24 hours, if I recall correctly.

I did not conceive, I did not plan,

I was not involved in any execution,

but I was aware.

And I always say

that knowledge does not imply misdeed,

does it?

Do you suppose I would go

over to the United States or UK

and announce publicly?

I would hang myself.

NARRATION: The temptation was always there

for the spymasters to earn favor from the leadership

whether by covert action,

or just slanting a routine report.

[speaking Russian ]

When we drew up reports,

of course we dramatized those bits

which pointed out the threat to the Soviet Union.

By emphasizing the right things,

I'd ensure that my report would go

straight to the top --

to the Politburo.

If the report was dull and boring

it would just get filed away.

This was the problem

with all suppliers of information.

We'd tailor it to get a high rating from Moscow.

NARRATION: But did it matter if spies skewed their reports?

How much did political leaders heed

their intelligence services?

I would argue that we probably exaggerate

the significance of intelligence.

Once policy-makers decide on a course,

I don't think correct intelligence

or incorrect intelligence is going

to bring any great changes in that course.

NARRATIONI 1988.

Kim Philby is buried with full honors

in a Moscow cemetery.

He first betrayed Britain

half a century before,

passing a wealth of secrets to the KGB.

And yet converts were never wholly trusted.

To the end, the KGB opened his mail

and bugged his phone.

It seemed as if the age of the spy was over.

In fact, throughout the '80s,

the CIA had been carefully establishing agents

within Soviet intelligence and defense circles --

precious sources like avionics expert,

Adolf Talkachev,

seen here on his way to a meeting in Moscow

with his CIA contact.

The KGB suddenly started to arrest

the CIA's most important Soviet spies.

WOMAN: In 1985,

we began to lose cases,

by which I mean Soviet officials working for us

and some of them disappeared.

This led us to believe that something was wrong.

It did not lead us to believe,

"Aha, there must be a mole."

NARRATION: Then the West lost General Dmitri Polyakov,

of Soviet military intelligence.

Polyakov had retired after 18 years of spying,

when the KGB pounced.

He had been recruited while at the United Nations

in New York.

Polyakov returned to Europe in 1962

on the Queen Elizabeth.

His picture was taken by the ship's photographer

at the Captain's dinner.

Seated just a few tables away,

the FBI man who recruited him,

John Mabey.

He said, "|'m dissatisfied with the way

things are in the Soviet Union.

The government does not

look out for the people.

They're headed on a course of war

with the United States,

and they can't possibly win it.

And the only people that are gonna suffer out of this

are the Russian people."

We'd met on the Queen Elizabeth

every day that it was at sea,

sometimes twice a day.

We reviewed literally thousands of pictures

of Soviets who had been in the United States

or stationed around the world

and he identified a number of them

by picture and by name.

GRIMES: Polyakov was our crown jewel.

He worked for us for so many years,

and he achieved such a rank

that rather than us

loomng at an organization

through the eyes of one of our sources,

looking at that organization from the bottom up,

with Polyakov eventually we were able

to look at that organization, the GRU,

his organization from the top down

as well as look at the KGB,

and the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs,

and the Communist Party apparatus.

NARRATION: In 1991, Sandy Grimes joined the team

investigating the CIA's agent losses.

In charge, Jeanne Vertefeuille,

now suspicious there was a KGB mole in their ranks.

Trying to pin down

a counterintelligence case

when you're looking for a mole

is always a very difficult and long-term job.

When we compiled a list

of how many people could have done it,

we came up with 198 people.

NARRATION: The mole hunt took three years,

homing in on CIA counterintelligence officer,

Aldrich Ames.

The FBI filmed him secretly in Bogota in 1993.

AM ES: I was walking up and down,

wondering what had happened to my KGB contact,

who had been there an hour earlier.

I was reasonably alert,

but I didn't see the surveillance.

And I suppose it was frustrating for the FBI

because they were scared to death

of me seeing the surveillance

so they had to stay way back.

As a result, they never saw me doing anything.

They had no evidence of any operational activity

on my part.

NARRATION: The FBI staked out Ames' house

and tapped his phones.

The breakthrough had come from CIA analysis

of his bank statements.

GRIMES: We had just received records

from one of the banks Rick had,

and Dan is reading these things off

and I'm entering them in the computer,

and my God, it was unbelievable.

On 17 May, Rick would have --

had reported having had a lunch

with his Soviet contact Chuvahkin.

18, May, there's a deposit

into his checking account for $9,000.

NARRATION: On the 21st of February in 1994,

Ames was arrested for spying,

along with his wife Rosario,

after years of high-living.

Shock, depression,

instant recognition, you know.

You know, one's life flashes before one.

A sense of things coming to an end.

But no sense of relief.

It's much more painful than that.

NARRATIONI In April 1985,

Aldrich Ames had walked

into the Soviet Embassy in Washington

and started selling secrets to the KGB.

They paid him a total of $2.7 million.

Well, the reasons that I did what I did

in April of 1985,

were personal,

banal,

and amounted really to kind of greed and folly.

As simple as that.

VERTEFEUILLE: I attribute it heavily to Rosario.

She was the one who was interested in spending money

and who liked to live high on the hog

and I think he wanted to sort of to buy her love

and the way to buy her love

was to get her expensive things.

NARRATION: Ames had no illusions

about the real price of his treachery.

AMES: I knew quite well,

when I gave the names

of our agents

in the Soviet Union,

that I was exposing them

to, uh...

the full machinery

of counterespionage and the law,

and then prosecution, and capital punishment

certainly in the case of KGB and GRU officers.

Obviously these folks

I knew would have to answer

for what they'd done.

And certainly, I felt...

I inured myself

against, you know,

a reaction to that.

NARRATION: Dmitri Polyakov was one of the 25 agents

betrayed by Am es.

10 were executed

and one committed suicide.

One alone was smuggled to safety

by the British Secret Service.

[speaking Russian ]

I was seized by the KGB in May 1985.

I was put under house arrest,

but I managed to escape in July --

alive, well, and safe.

I was lucky.

The others were shot

in the dungeons of some KGB prison,

after long months of continuous threats

and interrogations.

They lost everything --

family, children, work,

and then their lives.

They spent a year, two years,

or in the case of General Polyakov,

nearly three years

expecting to die at any minute.

NARRATION: Polyakov was tried in secret,

critical of the Soviet leadership to the end.

He had given the West

precious information on Soviet missiles,

nuclear strategy, chemical and biological warfare.

Yet so many spies paid with their freedom,

or their lives,

in destructive cycles of tit for tat.

AM ES: The men like Polyakov

QQVE Up names,

they gave up secrets.

I did the same thing,

for reasons that I considered sufficient

to myself.

I gave up the names

of some of the same people...

who had earlier given up others.

It's a nasty kind of circle,

with terrible human costs.

Aldrich Ames is sewing a life sentence

with no remission.

Dmitri Polyakov was sentenced to death.

He was executed in 1988

with a bullet in the back of the head,

then buried in an unmarked grave.

For half a century,

the spies had peered intently at each other

through a fog of ignorance and deceit.

They produced ever more realistic appraisals

of their opponents' strength.

But very few were able to answer

the toughest question --

"Does our enemy intend to fight us?"

Despite the CIA and KGB's vast resources,

the answer lay hidden not in a satellite photo,

or an agent report,

but in the minds of their opponents.