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

Review

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

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David E. Hoffman draws readers into the matrix of spy tradecraft in this chilling, real-life telling of perhaps the most important intelligence leak in the history of the Cold War. His access to CIA operational cables, detailing every movement between American-based Moscow Station agents and Soviet dissident Adolf Tolkachev, reads like a spy thriller from the pen of John le Carré or Martin Cruz Smith. 

America and the USSR were deep in the throes of the Cold War by the mid-1970s. It was widely held that placing active CIA secret agents in Moscow was too dangerous. The KGB swarmed the Moscow streets. Any private citizen or government employee was considered a potential suspect. Several attempts by the CIA to make contact had failed, resulting in capture and deportation of the Americans, and execution of any Russian suspected of collaboration. To infiltrate the highly guarded Soviet military establishment was a coveted but seemingly impossible task.

"THE BILLION DOLLAR SPY is a testament to the damage that can be wreaked by disenchanted technologists placed in sensitive positions in our government or any other to destroy from within."

One frosty morning, a Russian man knocked on the door of a car with American diplomatic plates and handed an envelope to the startled occupant, who was unaffiliated with the CIA. The events that led up to and unfolded after that humble attempt by this specialist in airborne radar would result in a massive reconfiguration of American aircraft and detection devices that would change the future of America’s military complex for decades to come. 

Over a period of eight years, Tolkachev, an angry dissident driven to undermine the country that had murdered his parents, would pass thousands of photographs, detailed drawings and secret documents to CIA operatives under the very noses of the KGB. Through direct contact in parked cars, park benches and darkened alleys, his CIA handlers would exchange the latest models of cameras and film, personal items for his wife and young son, and hundreds of thousands of Russian rubles for this information, later estimated to have saved the American military billions of dollars.

Tolkachev fully understood the daily dangers he faced and did not want to be taken alive. The CIA reluctantly provided him with a pen containing a cyanide pill to swallow in the event of his capture. His son, a bright adolescent, yearned to become an architect but never knew where the inks, special papers and pens to pursue his dream came from. Tolkachev’s wife was unaware of her husband’s activities as he had an attic room, hidden by a panel to photograph smuggled documents to be spirited back to his office the next morning. He would steal moments during his lunch hour to photograph documents in a bathroom stall, or smuggle them in his overcoat under the eyes of security guards.

This story captured my imagination as I read of the early activities in Vienna during the 1950s, which described American OSS activities that preceded the CIA. A few years ago, during a meeting of our book club while discussing a book on the subject, the eldest (but by far the most brilliant) of our group casually mentioned that she had been recruited as an OSS operative in Vienna out of college in the ’50s. She did not elaborate, saying that agents were sworn to a lifetime of secrecy. Later, in a private conversation, she disclosed that her “very minor” job was to locate and mark dead drops and safe houses. Her autobiography, which she had asked me to proofread, was largely targeted to family and friends, but she said not a word about her other life. She told me she wanted to put it behind her, and her extended family never knew about it. This petite woman, still beautiful in her late 80s, apparently took those secrets to her grave as we mourned her passing a year ago. Vienna remains a hotbed of clandestine activity in a world beset by increasing hostility between nations.

THE BILLION DOLLAR SPY is a testament to the damage that can be wreaked by disenchanted technologists placed in sensitive positions in our government or any other to destroy from within.

Reviewed by Roz Shea on July 10, 2015

The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal
by David E. Hoffman

  • Publication Date: May 10, 2016
  • Genres: History, Nonfiction
  • Paperback: 432 pages
  • Publisher: Anchor
  • ISBN-10: 0345805976
  • ISBN-13: 9780345805973