Word: polyakov
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Russia's celebrity cosmonaut, Valery Polyakov, came home this morning after a record 439 days in space, landing on a snowy steppe in Kazakhstan at 7 a.m. (11 p.m. EST Tuesday). Fit, trim and ready with high-fives for earth-bound colleagues, the 52-year-old physician exclaimed "It's Mother Earth" as he and two other cosmonauts emerged from their Soyuz descent capsule. Left behind: a new three-person crew on thespace station Mir, including U.S. astronaut Norman Thagard. (He aims to break the more modest American record of 84 straight days in space...
Both CIA agent Aldrich Hazen Ames and Russian informant Dmitri Polyakov ((ESPIONAGE, Aug. 8)) were double agents. But General Polyakov's altruistic nature was evidenced by the fact that "he would not accept much money" for passing Moscow's secrets to the U.S. This behavior, coupled with his commitment to remain in Russia to right the wrongs within the Soviet system, shows that he was the antithesis of Ames, a piece of profit-oriented garbage. Why is someone like Ames extended the courtesy of a life prison sentence? It would seem his very existence poses a security threat...
...Polyakov acted for love of country, and he may even have prevented World War III. He is dead. Ames was motivated by love of money. He lives. In espionage, as in life, there is no justice...
Using such tradecraft, Polyakov obtained more than 100 issues of the classified version of Military Thought, a strategy document produced monthly by the Soviet general staff. The periodical contained frank assessments by leading Soviet military strategists. Said Robert Gates, a career Soviet analyst and CIA director for President Bush: "There were a lot of debates at the time over Soviet military strategy and doctrine in terms of how their forces would be used in a war." Polyakov's purloined documents "gave us insights into how they talked to each other about these issues, whether they thought that victory...
...knows where Dmitri Polyakov is buried -- or how he died. When sentenced to what Russians euphemistically refer to as vyshaya mera -- the highest measure of punishment -- the condemned person is taken into a room, made to kneel, then shot in the back of the head. It was part of the Stalinist tradition. To save his country from that legacy, Polyakov chose to betray its rulers. And betrayed by another betrayer, he lost his life...