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Former KGB and SVR officer Alexander Zaporozhsky was convicted on charges of espionage after he was lured back to Moscow in 2001. Zaporozhsky began his service with the KGB in 1975, eventually rising to the rank of Colonel. In the early 1990s he began working as a spy for the United States, code named “Scythian”. He provided information that helped contribute to the arrests of Aldrich Ames in 1994, Jim Nicholson in 1996, and Robert Hanssen in 2001. He was likely the most valuable US asset within the Russian government for many years. After retiring from the SVR abruptly in 1997 he moved to the United States with his family, confident that his betrayal of his organization had never been discovered. Once in the US he entered the CIA’s defector resettlement program. Under Section 9 of the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949, up to 100 foreigners each year may enter the United States as permanent residents regardless of their admissibility under other immigration laws if it is deemed “in furtherance of the national intelligence mission”. Zaporozhsky flourished for the next several years, opening his own business with ties to Eastern Europe. But he had not escaped the notice of the SVR. Word reached him of an invitation to an upcoming KGB reunion in Moscow in 2001. Naively believing he was in the clear, Zaporozhsky returned home to see his old comrades and was immediately arrested at the airport. In 2003 he was sentenced to 18 years of hard labor and remained in prison until 2010. In the meantime, his wife Galina passed away of natural causes in the US. He was only released after the capture of the famed Russian Ten spy ring by the FBI. Those ten agents were quickly exchanged at the Vienna Airport for Zaporozhsky and three other former assets of Western intelligence agencies. For episode 115 of the Spycraft 101 podcast I spoke with Joseph Augustyn, former chief of CIA’s defector resettlement program. We discussed how defectors are transported here and treated once they arrive, and the complications that almost inevitably arise along the way. The episode is available now. #cia #defector #russia #coldwar #spies https://t.co/OxZ92QR0r3