Vasily Matrokin walked into the U.S. Embassy in Riga Latvia in 1992 and tried to defect.

He was turned away.

CIA officials who handled defectors overwhelmed at the time by hundreds of Russians trying to get to the West,

said they were not interested.

Matroken was not a spy, after all, just essentially a librarian. Paul Redman,

then head of CIA counterintelligence, argued to bring Matroken in. No one listened. So Matroken went to

the British embassy in Latvia, where after long discussion, he was allowed to defect.

This is probably one of the most, if not the most important defector that I've seen in the 20th century.

Matrokin had been in charge of the KGB's top secret archives.

Angry with his government's constant lies to its people,

he began secretly taking notes on what he was reading, smuggling those notes out of KGB headquarters in his socks or trousers.

For more than a decade, he buried the accumulating paper in trunks under his house.

When he defected, the British help Matrokin smuggles six trunks of his notes out of Russia.

He is absolutely unique.

John Martin, former Justice Department espionage prosecutor,

said until now, Matrokin and his secret files

have been one of the West's most closely guarded secret.

A lot of the information was like reading the other side's mail to simply learn what the enemy

has been doing all these years in such detail, in such volume, and such accuracy is very

amazing.

He now lives in a safe house in Britain.ain officials assume he still has a price on his

head but matroquin insisted that some of his work be made public and it will in a book to be

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