Vladimir Potashov risked his life to raise a handmade replica of the old Russian tricolor above a red Soviet flag at a brutal prison camp deep in the Ural Mountains.
That brief moment six years ago, in plain view of KGB agents and a foreign human rights delegation, explains better than words why Potashov became a spy.He sometimes wonders what flag Aldrich Ames can raise from his prison cell.
Ames is the American CIA operative who betrayed his country to the Soviet Union by revealing the names of dozens of people spying for the United States, Potashov among them. At least 10 of those Ames betrayed were executed.
Today, thousands of miles and a lifetime away from the terrors of the gulag, Potashov is building a new life here with his wife and 2-year-old son.
Ames received an estimated $2.7 million from the Soviets for his efforts.
Potashov, who worked as a disarmament expert, received no money for giving the United States his assessments of how the Soviets would bargain in treaty talks.
"Ames did it just for money. He knew those he had to protect would be murdered, would be killed. Why doesn't he show the Russian flag from the American jail? What kind of flag can he show?"
After Ames revealed him in 1986, Potashov endured almost six years of torture and beatings in Perm 35, the most notorious prison camp in the Soviet gulag.
In a new book "Confessions of a Spy," Ames says he did no significant damage to national security.
"I didn't betray my country," responds Potashov, chain smoking as he sits at his desk with a copy of the book. "I really tried to change my country to the way it is now.
"I always believed in the ideals of the old Russia expressed in the tricolor," he says. Potashov recalls how he stole paint and a bed sheet in prison to make the Russian flag with its horizontal red, white and blue stripes.
Although Potashov lost his teeth and weight to the beatings, gruel and radioactive drinking water in prison, he never lost faith that he was right.
"Russia is a new country," he says.
After the Soviet Union's collapse, Russian President Boris Yeltsin ordered Potashov released in 1992.
"Would any U.S. president release Ames?" he asked.
After his release, Potashov slipped out of Russia during a shopping trip to Poland and sought asylum in the U.S. Embassy.
His Russian wife had left him while he was in prison and he remarried in this country.
Potashov makes a living as an interpreter and hopes to become an American citizen this year.
"I was right. And God watched over me," Potashov says. He says he could forgive his betrayer, but only if Ames shows regret for the Soviets who died.