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Ex-top spy for Russia tells of U.N. operations

He says Russia profited from the oil-for-food program in Iraq.

UNITED NATIONS - A former Russian top spy says his agents helped the Russian government steal nearly $500-million from the United Nations' oil-for-food program in Iraq before the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Sergei Tretyakov, who defected to the United States in 2000 as a double agent, says he oversaw an operation that helped Hussein's regime manipulate the price of Iraqi oil sold under the program - and allow Russia to skim profits.

Tretyakov, deputy head of intelligence at Russia's U.N. mission from 1995 to 2000, names some names, but sticks mainly to code names. Among the spies he says he recruited for Russia were a Canadian nuclear weapons expert who became a U.N. nuclear verification expert in Vienna, a senior Russian official in the oil-for-food program, and a former Soviet bloc ambassador. He describes a Russian businessman who got hold of a nuclear bomb, and kept it stored in a shed at his dacha outside Moscow.

Tretyakov, 51, had never spoken about his spying before last week, when he granted his first news media interviews to publicize a book published Thursday. Written by former Washington Post journalist Pete Earley, the book is titled Comrade J.: The Untold Secrets of Russia's Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War.

"It's an international spy nest," Tretyakov said of the United Nations during an interview last week with the Associated Press. "Inside the U.N., we were fishing for knowledgeable diplomats who could give us first of all anti-American information."

His defection was first reported by the AP in 2001. Shortly after, the New York Times broke the news that he was not a diplomat, but a top Russian spy who was extensively debriefed by the CIA and the FBI.

Some of the people named or referenced by a code name in the book have denied Tretyakov's claims. The Russian mission to the United Nations said Friday it would have no immediate comment.

[Last modified January 27, 2008, 02:17:08]