"It's an international spy nest," Tretyakov said of the UN

From oil for food scandals, Anti-American information to a nuclear bomb stored in a shed

UNITED NATIONS -- A former Russian top spy says his agents helped the government steal nearly $500 million from the UN's oil-for-food program in Iraq before the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Tretyakov, former deputy head of intelligence at Russia's UN mission from 1995 to 2000, names some names... a Canadian nuclear weapons expert who became a UN nuclear verification expert in Vienna, a senior Russian official in the oil-for-food program and a former Soviet bloc ambassador. He describes a Russian businessman who got hold of a nuclear bomb, and kept it stored in a shed at his dacha outside Moscow.

Tretyakov, 51, had never spoken out about his spying before this week, when he granted his first news media interviews to publicize a book published Thursday. Written by former Washington Post journalist Pete Earley, the book is titled "Comrade J.: The Untold Secrets of Russia's Master Spy in America after the End of the Cold War."