Danger Signs from London to Athens
On May 17, 1985, Oleg Gordievsky, chief of the KGB’s London station, received a cable from Moscow ordering his immediate return. Though recently promoted, he had been secretly working for MI6 for over a decade. The summons, delivered under pretense of a routine debriefing, triggered panic.
At the same time in Athens, GRU officer Sergei Bokhan was told his son was failing military school and urged to return to the USSR. Bokhan had been passing secrets to the CIA for ten years and immediately suspected a trap. Days later, in Moscow, journalist Andrei Poleshchuk was told his father, senior KGB counterintelligence officer Leonid Poleshchuk, had been arrested—for spying.
Aldrich Ames and the Timeline Gap
By year’s end, the CIA’s Soviet networks were shattered. Ten assets were executed, including Leonid Poleshchuk. In 1994, the CIA arrested Aldrich Ames, who admitted to selling secrets to the KGB beginning in April 1985.
He claimed to have handed over the identities of CIA and MI6 assets on June 13, weeks after Gordievsky, Bokhan, and Poleshchuk were compromised. Investigators quickly noted the contradiction: all three men had come under suspicion in May. The CIA opened a new mole-hunt in 1986 to resolve the discrepancy.
Daring Escapes and Silent Executions
Gordievsky, drugged and interrogated but not arrested, signaled MI6 and was smuggled out in a modified Land Rover through the Finnish border. Bokhan fled via CIA extraction after a coded call to the U.S. embassy. Leonid Poleshchuk, lured by a fake promise of an apartment, never escaped.
He was tried in secret and executed in July 1986. His wife was institutionalized, and his son interrogated for months. Andrei eventually emigrated and was given his father’s watch by his CIA handler, known as Joe.
The Search for the Fourth Mole
Neither Ames, nor fellow spies Edward Lee Howard or Robert Hanssen, had access to all the compromised assets. Investigators concluded that another mole may have betrayed Gordievsky, Bokhan, and Poleshchuk. Despite extensive mole-hunting, no one else has been named or arrested.
Interviews with former intelligence officials and the affected agents suggest a breach still unaccounted for. In 1994, FBI agent Leslie Wiser interviewed Gordievsky, who insisted he was recalled in May—before Ames’s alleged June betrayal. Intelligence veterans like Milton Bearden and John Lewis Jr. remain convinced a fourth mole existed. Some suspect there may have even been more.
In May 1985, three Soviet agents secretly working for Western intelligence—Oleg Gordievsky in London, Sergei Bokhan in Athens, and Leonid Poleshchuk in Nigeria—were abruptly exposed.
Each received sudden orders to return to Moscow. All suspected a trap.
Two escaped. One was… pic.twitter.com/lZK9FM9Tco
— Detective Tiger’s Stories (@TigerDetective) June 3, 2025