David E. Hoffman > Quotes

“This is a country that can’t even make toasters,” he said. “And while they can make missiles, they can’t feed their population.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“The one thing that proved to me you were CIA and not KGB is when you gave me those medicines to test on my daughter. Because the KGB is heartless. They would have given me one pill and said, do it. I knew I was working with a humane organization when you gave me five medicines.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“Soviet authorities had long feared copiers. At its most basic, the machine helped spread information, and strict control of information was central to the Communist Party’s grip on power. In most offices, photocopy machines were kept under lock and key.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“The United States cannot predict Soviet behavior because it has too little information about what goes on inside the Soviet Union; the Soviets cannot predict American behavior because they have too much information.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and its Dangerous Legacy

“Katayev’s notes show that the military-industrial complex was indeed as large as Gorbachev feared. In 1985, Katayev estimated, defense took up 20 percent of the Soviet economy.16 Of the 135 million adults working in the Soviet Union, Katayev said, 10.4 million worked directly in the military-industrial complex at 1,770 enterprises. Nine ministries served the military, although in a clumsy effort to mask its purpose, the nuclear ministry was given the name “Ministry of Medium Machine Building,” and others were similarly disguised. More than fifty cities were almost totally engaged in the defense effort, and hundreds less so. Defense factories were called upon to make the more advanced civilian products, too, including 100 percent of all Soviet televisions, tape recorders, movie and still cameras and sewing machines.17”
― David E. Hoffman, The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and its Dangerous Legacy

“the Jack-in-the-Box would spring erect, a pop-up that looked, in outline, like the head and torso of the case officer who had just jumped out.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“He ordered a freeze on CIA operations in Moscow—a total stand-down. The Moscow station was told not to run any agents, not to carry out any operational acts.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“For as long as I can recall, a small scrap of paper has been fastened to our refrigerator door with a proverb from Saint Augustine: “The world is a book, and those who do not travel, read only a page.” With her steadfast support and participation, the world is, once again, a book.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“Saint Augustine: “The world is a book, and those who do not travel, read only a page.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“They handed him his pen, and he bit down on the barrel with the cyanide capsule inside. He died on the spot, before the KGB could learn any more.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“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.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“Soviet pilots had little autonomy. This was slow and clumsy.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“Edward Jay Epstein, contained”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“As long as it is necessary to know an adversary—to steal secrets, uncover intentions, and crack open safes—it will be essential to recruit agents who can conquer their fear and cross over to the other side. It will be necessary to look them in the eye, earn their trust, calm their anxiety, and share their peril.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“The stealing was so common and pervasive as to defy definition as criminal. “Here we are approaching the very core of socialism,” Luzhkov observed. “To a certain degree, everybody was involved, and everybody participated—and under socialism, this means nobody. That was the crucial point, the most corrupting effect of the ‘developed socialism.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Oligarchs: Wealth And Power In The New Russia

“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.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“I replied, ‘Look, all this is risky and dangerous. But it will work.’ ” Forden later became the case officer for one of the CIA’s most productive and significant agents, Ryszard Kuklinski, a Polish army colonel who provided critical intelligence on the Warsaw Pact.34”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“more than 1.8 million of them sent to prison camps. Now nearing the end of the standard eight-year term, the kulaks were soon to return; Stalin feared a wave of disgruntled and embittered people coming home. The hammer fell with a secret police order, No. 00447, in July 1937, which set the pattern for the mass killings of the following two years.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“the CIA case officer could jump out of the car and disappear.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“given the distance from which the KGB followed cars in Moscow, it wasn’t necessary to have a three-dimensional dummy in the front seat, only a two-dimensional cutout.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“possible for a car carrying a CIA officer to slip around a corner or two, momentarily out of view of the KGB.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“The KGB surveillance could be surprisingly unsophisticated.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“known at the CIA as an L-pill. The L stood for “lethal.” The L-pill had been issued to Ogorodnik two years earlier, and he used it to commit suicide soon after his arrest. Guilsher realized that winning CIA headquarters’ approval for supplying one to Tolkachev was going to be very difficult. There were always fears at headquarters that an agent would panic and take the suicide pill unnecessarily or that it would be discovered and betray the spy. On May 1, headquarters cabled, “As we have on previous occasions, we would like to stall on this”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“It is important to achieve a decisive breakthrough in the implementation of the plan!”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“John and Kissa more than once went to a closet to reach for an overcoat, only to find it was missing, apparently taken by the surveillance people to implant a microphone. The coat would mysteriously reappear later.”
― David E. Hoffman

“a Pentax ME single-lens-reflex 35 mm camera and lens for copying documents, with a clamp to fasten it steady to a chair or table.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“Fifteen minutes had already passed, and Tolkachev had one more request. He handed Rolph a piece of paper. When Rolph looked down, he saw it was printed in English in block letters: 1. LED ZEPPELIN 2. PINK FLOYD 3. GENESIS 4. ALAN PARSONS PROJECT 5. EMERSON, LAKE AND PALMER 6. URIAH HEEP 7. THE WHO 8. THE BEATLES 9. THE YES 10. RICK WAKEMAN 11. NAZARETH 12. ALICE COOPER”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“Rolph secured from the CIA five samples of sedatives suitable for a small child.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“smuggle them across the border in a van, but a four-year-old girl? How to keep her quiet?”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal