In 1983, at the request of the chief of the KGB’s Counterintelligence Directorate, Anatoli Kireyev, a covert link named after a 19th-century Russian poet was established with the Central Intelligence Agency’s Directorate of Operations, represented by Burton Gerber. An initial meeting was held in Vienna, and thereafter the channel was used for the CIA to give an assurance that the arrested American journalist Nicholas Daniloff was not associated with the CIA and to request the KGB’s assistance in finding the Beirut station chief, William Buckley, who had been abducted in March 1984.