Starting in 1995, he worked in New York in the position of SVR deputy rezident (station chief)[2] under the diplomatic cover of first secretary at Russia's mission at the United Nations.
[6] The news was then broken in the Russian media, which reported that Russia's Foreign Ministry was insisting on having a consular meeting with him to make sure he was not being forcibly kept by the US side.
[7] On 10 February 2001, it was revealed, with reference to "several American officials familiar with the case," that the defector "was in fact an officer in the S.V.R., Russia's foreign intelligence service, successor to the Soviet-era K.G.B.
[9] He also claimed then that the chief motivation for his defection had been his "growing disgust with and contempt for, what was happening in Russia," he said: "I saw with my own eyes what kind of people were governing the country.
"[9] In January 2008, Tretyakov gave several interviews to publicize a book of his experiences, Comrade J.: The Untold Secrets of Russia's Master Spy in America after the End of the Cold War, written by journalist Pete Earley.
"[4][5] The book's release in Canada was delayed by the publisher because of legal considerations, namely Tretyakov's accusation that former Progressive Conservative MP Alex Kindy was recruited by an SVR officer at the Russian embassy in Ottawa and paid several times between 1992 and 1993.