Vladimir Vetrov Vladimir Ippolitovich Vetrov ( ) ( 10 October 1932 - 23 January 1985 ) was a high - ranking KGB spy during the Cold War , who decided to covertly release valuable information to France and NATO on the Soviet Union ' s clandestine program aimed at stealing technology from the West . Vetrov was assigned the code - name Farewell by the French intelligence service DST , which recruited him . He was known by that name throughout NATO ' s intelligence services . The code - name was chosen as an English word so that the KGB would assume he worked for the CIA if it learned his codename . His history inspired the book " Bonjour Farewell : La Vérité sur la Taupe Française du KGB " ( 1997 ) by Sergei Kostin . It was loosely adapted for the French film " L ' affaire Farewell " ( 2009 ) , starring Emir Kusturica , Guillaume Canet and Alexandra Maria Lara . Authors Sergei Kostin and Eric Raynaud have published a more complete and updated account of the Farewell dossier under the title " Adieu Farewell " ( Laffont , Paris , 2009 ) . This title is now available in English for the first time , thirty years after the events ( Farewell , AmazonCrossing , Aug . 2011 ) . Biography . Vladimir Vetrov was born in 1932 and grew up within the Soviet system . After college , where he studied electronic engineering , he was enlisted in the KGB . He lived in France for five years , beginning in 1965 when posted there as a Line X officer working for the KGB ' s ' Directorate T ' , which specialized in obtaining advanced information about science and technology from western countries . While there , he befriended Jacques Prévost , an engineer working with Thomson - CSF . Vetrov returned to Moscow at the end of his posting . There , he rose through the ranks of Directorate T , eventually supervising the evaluation of the intelligence collected by Line X agents around the world , and passing key information to the relevant users inside the Soviet Union . Having become increasingly disillusioned with the Communist system , he decided to defect for purely ideological reasons ( he never accepted payment for his material ) . At the end of 1980 , he contacted Prévost and offered his services to the West . Between the spring of 1981 and early 1982 , Vetrov gave the DST almost 4 , 000 secret documents , including the complete official list of 250 Line X officers stationed under legal cover in embassies around the world . Included was a breakdown of the Soviet espionage effort to collect scientific , industrial and technical information from the West to improve its own efforts . Members of the GRU , the Soviet Academy of Sciences , and several other bodies all took part in such efforts . Vetrov also provided summaries on the goals , achievements , and unfilled objectives of the program . He identified nearly 100 leads to sources in 16 countries . This information received by DST allowed France to expel 47 KGB agents from France on April 5 , 1983 . To justify these expulsions , the Director of cabinet of the French Dept of Foreign Affairs showed to the Soviet Ambassador a secret document received from Vetrov - the list of the KBG agents operating in France . This simplified a lot the Soviet investigation to find out the identity of Vetrov . In February 1982 , after heavy drinking caused by a cooling - off period imposed by the French , who were fearful of his discovery through too much contact , Vetrov stabbed his mistress during an argument in his car ( she survived ) . When a man knocked on the car window , Vetrov thought his spying had been discovered , so he stabbed and killed the man . He happened to be another KGB officer . Vetrov was arrested , tried , and sentenced to 12 years in jail in the fall of 1982 . While in jail , Vetrov carelessly revealed in letters that he had been involved in " something big " before going to jail . The KGB eventually discovered that he was a double agent . As part of his confession , Vetrov wrote a blistering denunciation of the Soviet system , " The Confession of a Traitor " . News of his subsequent execution reached France in March 1985 . The information which Vetrov provided enabled the western countries to expel nearly 150 Soviet technology spies around the world ; the French expelled 47 Soviet spies , most of whom were from Line X . This caused the collapse of the Soviet ' s information program at a time when it was particularly crucial . The U . S . created a massive operation to provide the Soviets with faulty data and sabotaged parts for certain technologies , as a consequence to the Farewell Dossier . Vetrov was also responsible for exposing the spy Dieter Gerhardt , a senior officer in the South African Navy who had been spying for the Soviets for 20 years .