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The Billion Dollar Spy
Cover of The Billion Dollar Spy
The Billion Dollar Spy
A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal
Borrow Borrow

From the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning history The Dead Hand comes the riveting story of a spy who cracked open the Soviet military research establishment and a penetrating portrait of the CIA’s Moscow station, an outpost of daring espionage in the last years of the Cold War
 
   While driving out of the American embassy in Moscow on the evening of February 16, 1978, the chief of the CIA’s Moscow station heard a knock on his car window. A man on the curb handed him an envelope whose contents stunned U.S. intelligence: details of top-secret Soviet research and developments in military technology that were totally unknown to the United States. In the years that followed, the man, Adolf Tolkachev, an engineer in a Soviet military design bureau, used his high-level access to hand over tens of thousands of pages of technical secrets. His revelations allowed America to reshape its weapons systems to defeat Soviet radar on the ground and in the air, giving the United States near total superiority in the skies over Europe.
   One of the most valuable spies to work for the United States in the four decades of global confrontation with the Soviet Union, Tolkachev took enormous personal risks—but so did the Americans. The CIA had long struggled to recruit and run agents in Moscow, and Tolkachev was a singular breakthrough. Using spy cameras and secret codes as well as face-to-face meetings in parks and on street corners, Tolkachev and his handlers succeeded for years in eluding the feared KGB in its own backyard, until the day came when a shocking betrayal put them all at risk. 
   Drawing on previously secret documents obtained from the CIA and on interviews with participants, David Hoffman has created an unprecedented and poignant portrait of Tolkachev, a man motivated by the depredations of the Soviet state to master the craft of spying against his own country. Stirring, unpredictable, and at times unbearably tense, The Billion Dollar Spy is a brilliant feat of reporting that unfolds like an espionage thriller.

From the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning history The Dead Hand comes the riveting story of a spy who cracked open the Soviet military research establishment and a penetrating portrait of the CIA’s Moscow station, an outpost of daring espionage in the last years of the Cold War
 
   While driving out of the American embassy in Moscow on the evening of February 16, 1978, the chief of the CIA’s Moscow station heard a knock on his car window. A man on the curb handed him an envelope whose contents stunned U.S. intelligence: details of top-secret Soviet research and developments in military technology that were totally unknown to the United States. In the years that followed, the man, Adolf Tolkachev, an engineer in a Soviet military design bureau, used his high-level access to hand over tens of thousands of pages of technical secrets. His revelations allowed America to reshape its weapons systems to defeat Soviet radar on the ground and in the air, giving the United States near total superiority in the skies over Europe.
   One of the most valuable spies to work for the United States in the four decades of global confrontation with the Soviet Union, Tolkachev took enormous personal risks—but so did the Americans. The CIA had long struggled to recruit and run agents in Moscow, and Tolkachev was a singular breakthrough. Using spy cameras and secret codes as well as face-to-face meetings in parks and on street corners, Tolkachev and his handlers succeeded for years in eluding the feared KGB in its own backyard, until the day came when a shocking betrayal put them all at risk. 
   Drawing on previously secret documents obtained from the CIA and on interviews with participants, David Hoffman has created an unprecedented and poignant portrait of Tolkachev, a man motivated by the depredations of the Soviet state to master the craft of spying against his own country. Stirring, unpredictable, and at times unbearably tense, The Billion Dollar Spy is a brilliant feat of reporting that unfolds like an espionage thriller.

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  • From the book 1

    Out of the Wilderness

    In the early years of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, the Central Intelligence Agency harbored an uncomfortable secret about itself. The CIA had never really gained an espionage foothold on the streets of Moscow. The agency didn’t recruit in Moscow, because it was just too dangerous—“immensely dangerous,” recalled one officer—for any Soviet citizen or official they might enlist. The recruitment process itself, from the first moment a possible spy was identified and approached, was filled with risk of discovery by the KGB, and if caught spying, an agent would face certain death. A few agents who volunteered or were recruited by the CIA outside the Soviet Union continued to report securely once they returned home. But for the most part, the CIA did not lure agents into spying in the heart of darkness.

    This is the story of an espionage operation that turned the tide. At the center of it is an engineer in a top secret design laboratory, a specialist in airborne radar who worked deep inside the Soviet military establishment. Driven by anger and vengeance, he passed thousands of pages of secret documents to the United States, even though he had never set foot in America and knew little about it. He met with CIA officers twenty-one times over six years on the streets of Moscow, a city swarming with KGB surveillance, and was never detected. The engineer was one of the CIA’s most productive agents of the Cold War, providing the United States with intelligence no other spy had ever obtained.

    The operation was a coming-of-age for the CIA, a moment when it accomplished what was long thought unattainable: personally meeting with a spy right under the nose of the KGB.

    Then the operation was destroyed, not by the KGB, but by betrayal from within.



    To understand the significance of the operation, one must look back at the CIA’s long, difficult struggle to penetrate the Soviet Union.

    The CIA was born out of the disaster at Pearl Harbor. Despite warning signals, Japan achieved complete and overwhelming surprise in the December 7, 1941, attack that took the lives of more than twenty-four hundred Americans, sunk or damaged twenty-one ships in the U.S. Pacific Fleet, and thrust the United States into war. Intelligence was splintered among different agencies, and no one pulled all the pieces together; a congressional investigation concluded the fragmented process “was seriously at fault.” The creation of the CIA in 1947 reflected more than anything else the determination of Congress and President Truman that Pearl Harbor should never happen again. Truman wanted the CIA to provide high-quality, objective analysis.1 It was to be the first centralized, civilian intelligence agency in American history.2

    But the early plans for the CIA soon changed, largely because of the growing Soviet threat, including the blockade of Berlin, Stalin’s tightening grip on Eastern Europe, and Soviet acquisition of the atomic bomb. The CIA rapidly expanded far beyond just intelligence analysis into espionage and covert action. Pursuing a policy of containment, first outlined in George Kennan’s long telegram of 1946 from Moscow and later significantly expanded, the United States attempted to counter Soviet efforts to penetrate and subvert governments all over the world. The Cold War began as a rivalry over war-ravaged Europe but spread far and wide, a contest of ideology, politics, culture, economics, geography, and military might. The CIA was on the front lines. The battle against communism never escalated into direct combat between the superpowers; it...
About the Author-
  • David E. Hoffman is a contributing editor at The Washington Post and a correspondent for PBS's flagship investigative series, FRONTLINE. He is the author of The Dead Hand, about the end of the Cold War arms race, and winner of a 2010 Pulitzer Prize. He lives with his wife in Maryland.
Reviews-
  • Publisher's Weekly

    Starred review from April 20, 2015
    Pulitzer-winner Hoffman (The Dead Hand) returns to the Cold War era in his latest biography, proving that nonfiction can read like a John le Carre thriller. The opening sets a grim tone for what will follow, casting a pall over the account of the successes the CIA enjoyed from a Russian spy, Adolf Tolkachev. Hoffman warns early on that Tolkachev (code-named CKSphere), “the most successful and valued agent the United States had run inside the Soviet Union in two decades,” will be destroyed by “betrayal from within.” But, as in the best genre fiction, giving away the ending actually heightens the suspense. Hoffman recounts the history of the CIA’s efforts to learn what the Kremlin was up to, building up to the moment in 1977 when Tolkachev, an engineer, approaches them to provide incredibly valuable intelligence. The information about Soviet weaponry is estimated to have saved the Pentagon about $2 billion in research and development costs, giving the book its title, and making the end to the operation all the more tragic. This real-life tale of espionage will hook readers from the get-go. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM.

  • Kirkus

    April 15, 2015
    A thoroughly researched excavation of an astoundingly important (and sadly sacrificed) spy for the CIA during the low point of the 1970s. The winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his previous book, The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy (2009), Washington Post contributing editor Hoffman has strong credentials to tell the unheralded story of Adolf Tolkachev (1927-1986), a radar engineer who offered invaluable information on the state of arms technology in the Soviet Union until he was snagged by the KGB in 1985 and executed soon after. The CIA was scrambling to make a connection in the Soviet Union after the loss of the extremely productive spy Oleg Penkovsky for clandestine acquisition of technology for the West in the 1960s, though the agency was hampered by the "long shadow" cast by ultraparanoid chief of Moscow counterintelligence James Angleton, who believed the KGB was employing a "vast 'master plan' of deception," and thus he trusted no one. Once he left in 1975, a younger generation of more enterprising officers trained in Berlin and other Eastern Bloc cities-e.g., Burton Gerber, who advocated for rigorous sifting of genuine sources from phony ones. Consequently, when a Russian engineer at Moscow's Scientific Research Institute for Radio Engineering repeatedly approached American diplomats with his declared access to the development of a "look-down, shoot-down" radar system, they finally paid attention. Given the code name CKSPHERE, Tolkachev was motivated to photograph reams of priceless documents out of deep resentment of the "impassable, hypocritical demagoguery" of the Soviet state. Inspired by famous defectors Viktor Belenko and Andrei Sakharov, Tolkachev also wanted money-the "six figures" that Belenko reportedly got, as well as rock albums for his teenage son, all of which would push him to take too many risks. Hoffman ably navigates the many strands of this complex espionage story. An intricate, mesmerizing portrayal of the KGB-CIA spy culture.

    COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  • Booklist

    Starred review from July 1, 2015
    Pulitzer Prizewinning author Hoffman (The Dead Hand, 2009), using declassified documents from the CIA, interviews, and other accounts, here details the last years of U.S.USSR Cold War espionage. How to trust those wanting to pass information along, when the KGB seemed to have eyes everywhere and a man on every corner? Being caught by the KGB meant instant expulsion from the USSR for U.S. citizens, but for those providing the secretsoften ground-shaking information about Soviet technologythe consequences were much worse: disappearance, execution, even suicide (rather than divulging what they knew and what they had done). Hoffman carefully sets the scene with both cautious and free-wheeling CIA directors and staff and also provides intimate details that prove fascinating and give human faces to these brave participants, including spies often known by code names and encountered in fast drops (e.g., envelopes slipped through open car windows). The book's herowho gave the U.S. technological information worth billions, with the technology still in use todayis Adolf Tolkachev, a Russian engineer, and Hoffman's revealing of him as a person and a spy is brilliantly done, making this mesmerizing true story scary and thrilling. For a fuller history of Soviet espionage, see Jonathan Haslam's Near and Distant Neighbors: A New History of Soviet Intelligence, reviewed below.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

  • Library Journal

    February 1, 2015

    From 1979 to 1985, Soviet military engineer Adolf Tolkachev regularly handed CIA agents stationed in Moscow top-secret materials revealing major developments in Soviet technology. One of the CIA's most valuable spies, he was finally betrayed by a former CIA trainee with a grudge. From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Dead Hand.

    Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

  • Library Journal

    May 15, 2015

    Pulitzer Prize-winning author Hoffman's (The Dead Hand) gripping and informative history covers U.S. espionage against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Focusing on Adolf Tolkachev, who served as a spy inside the Soviet Union for more than 20 years before being betrayed, the author sets out to write the story of a spy and in so doing, chronicles Cold War espionage and an overall compelling tale that draws on secret documents from the CIA as well as interviews with surviving participants. Hoffman succeeds on both accounts. VERDICT This well-written volume will be of interest to many, from general readers interested in espionage to academics looking for research on either espionage or the history of Cold War-era international relations, in particular the long-unavailable history of Cold War spy tactics and the people who took part in them. [See Prepub Alert, 1/5/15.]--John Sandstrom, New Mexico State Univ. Lib., Las Cruces

    Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

  • Publisher's Weekly

    August 31, 2015
    Pulitzer-winner Hoffman returns to the Cold War era in his latest, a biography of Adolf Tolkachev, a Russian engineer who in 1977 approached the CIA offering his services as a spy for America. For over half a decade, Tolkachev gave the U.S. priceless information on the latest Russian technological advances, until his capture and subsequent execution. Woren provides the perfect narration for this book. His deep, well modulated voice brings just the right amount of formal authority to hold the listener’s attention, but never falls into a drone of professorial lecturing. His phrasing, tone, and characterizations, especially his Russian characters, bring to life each clandestine meeting, each secretive exchange of information, and every moment of danger. He pulls the listener into the story and turns what could have been dry and boring into something as captivating and enthralling as a John le Carré spy novel. A Doubleday hardcover.

  • New York Times "In an era of suicide bombers and ISIS beheadings, the spy dramas of the Cold War can seem tame, almost polite affairs. Central Intelligence Agency officers who worked in the Soviet capital complained about operating under "Moscow rules," meaning the relentless scrutiny of the K.G.B. And they knew that any Soviet citizen caught spying faced certain execution. Still, there were rules. Those rules may actually be a reason that David Hoffman's The Billion Dollar Spy, about Adolf Tolkachev, a Soviet radar expert who spied for the C.I.A., is such an engrossing tale. The story played out over several years, almost entirely on the streets of Moscow, in a twilit chess game that pitted American intelligence officers against their Soviet counterparts."
  • Washington Post "The Billion Dollar Spy is one of the best spy stories to come out of the Cold War and all the more riveting, and finally dismaying, for being true. It hits the sweet spot between page-turning thriller and solidly researched history (even the footnotes are informative) and then becomes something more, a shrewd character study of spies and the spies who run them, the mixed motives, the risks, the almost inevitable bad end."
  • Los Angeles Times "[A] dramatic spy vs. spy story, complete with a trove of trade-craft tricks, is the grist for Pulitzer Prize-winning author David E. Hoffman's scrupulously reported The Billion Dollar Spy, a true-life tale so gripping at times it reads like spy fiction ... Hoffman interviewed key players and gained access to more than 900 pages of long-secret CIA files and operational cables to fill in a crucial gap in the Cold War espionage canon."
  • Christian Science Monitor "[The Billion Dollar Spy] packs valuable insights into the final decade of the cloak-and-dagger rivalry between the United States and the former Soviet Union, which came undone in 1989. It is a must-read for historians and buffs of that era, as well as aficionados of espionage ... Hoffman draws on extensive declassified CIA and FBI files and myriad other sources to chronicle how the United States gained and lost one of the elite spies of the Cold War."
  • USA Today "Gripping and nerve-wracking ... Human tension hangs over every page of The Billion Dollar Spy like the smell of leaded gasoline ... Hoffman knows the intelligence world well and has expertly used recently declassified documents to tell this unsettling and suspenseful story. It is an old cliché that any true story about espionage resembles the best of John Le Carré's fiction. That's especially true here. The Billion Dollar Spy reads like the most taut and suspenseful parts of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy or Smiley's People. It's worth the clenched jaw and upset stomach it creates."
  • Dallas Morning News "The Billion Dollar Spy not only chronicles the life and motives of [Soviet engineer Adolph] Tolkachev but also provides a rare look at the dangerous, intricately choreographed tradecraft behind old-school intelligence gathering ... What [Hoffman]'s accomplished here isn't just a remarkable example of journalistic talent but also an ability to weave an absolutely gripping nonfiction narrative."
  • The New Yorker "Hoffman excels at conveying both the tradecraft and the human vulnerabilities involved in spying."
  • Columbus Dispatch "David Hoffman is a scrupulous, meticulous writer whose pages of footnotes and references attest to how carefully he sticks to his sources ... His book's value is in its true-life adventure story and the window it offers into a once-closed world."
  • Departures "The fine first sentence of The Billion Dollar Spy could almost have been written with an icicle. A work of painstaking historical research that's paced like a thriller."
  • Publishers Weekly, starred review "Hoffman [proves] that nonfiction can read like a John le Carré thriller ... This real-life tale of espionage will hook readers from the get-go."
  • Booklist, starred review "Hoffman carefully sets the scene with both cautious and free-wheeling CIA directors and staff and also provides intimate details that prove fascinating and give human faces to t
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The Billion Dollar Spy
The Billion Dollar Spy
A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal
David E. Hoffman
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