Pyotr Semyonovich Popov

Pyotr Semyonovich Popov (Russian: Пётр Семёнович Попов; July 1923 - 1960) was a major in the Soviet military intelligence apparatus (GRU). He was the first GRU officer to offer his services to the Central Intelligence Agency after World War II. Between 1953 and 1958, he provided the United States government with large amounts of information concerning military capabilities and espionage operations. Codenamed ATTIC, for most of his time with the CIA, Popov's case officer was George Kisevalter.

In 1953 Popov was a GRU officer stationed in Vienna, a case officer working against Yugoslav targets. Popov first made contact in 1953 by slipping a letter into the parked car of a United States diplomat in Vienna, offering to sell Soviet documents. He seemed to be motivated by a deep anger at what he felt was government exploitation of the peasants of Russia, including his own family. Whilst stationed in Vienna, Popov was able to provide documents such as the 1951 Soviet army field regulations, and after a July 1954 home visit to the Soviet Union, information regarding Soviet nuclear submarines and guided missiles.

In 1955 Popov was suddenly transferred to East Berlin to work with illegal agents being sent to the West. He continued to provide counterintelligence and military information. In April 1958 Popov told Kisevalter that a senior KGB official had boasted of having "full technical details" of the Lockheed U-2 spy plane, leading U2 project director Richard M. Bissell, Jr. to conclude the project had a leak. On 1 May 1960 a U-2 was shot down over the Soviet Union, in the 1960 U-2 incident.

Popov was dismissed from the GRU in November 1958, and placed on reserve status. In January 1959, after incriminating evidence was found in his apartment, he was run as a double agent for three months. He was then arrested in October 1959, and sentenced to death in January 1960.

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