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The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Readers' Favorite History & Biography (2015)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.
310 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 7, 2015
2298 people are currently reading
23978 people want to read
About the author
David E. Hoffman
8 books326 followers David E. Hoffman covered Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign for the Knight-Ridder newspapers. In 1982, he joined The Washington Post to help cover the Reagan White House. He also covered the first two years of the George H.W. Bush presidency. His White House coverage won three national journalism awards. After reporting on the State Department, he became Jerusalem bureau chief for The Post in 1992, and served as Moscow bureau chief, 1995-2001. He was also foreign editor and Assistant Managing Editor for Foreign News.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,273 reviews
April 25, 2015
I have a deep affinity for espionage tales, and I read and loved David Hoffman's Pulitzer Prize-winning 'The Dead Hand' a few years ago, so I was doubly excited when I saw this in my office two weeks ago. Unfortunately, the book didn't really deliver for me. A lot of the book is built off of the cable traffic between the CIA's Moscow station and Langley, and you can tell. There is a cold, impersonal tone to these messages that filters into the narrative of the book, and the drama and stakes of what's happening is deadened by the feeling of wading through office memos. There's also a very odd narrative choice to not examine Tolkachev's motivation and life before turning traitor until two-thirds of the way through the book. I think it's supposed to keep you guessing about him and create some narrative tension, but it fails to do that and simply frustrates. Moving that chapter earlier in the book would cause the reader to care more deeply about Tolkachev and empathize with him and take the book out of the sea-of-memos-feel. Hoffman clearly knows Russia, but the story he tells here could be better.
April 6, 2017
If you think you have a strong sense of how espionage was conducted during the Cold War, you’re probably wrong. Histories, and the crowded shelves of spy novels set during the era, offer a cursory and misleading view of the day-to-day reality as it was lived by the men and women who worked for the CIA and the KGB. David E. Hoffman’s outstanding tale about one extraordinary Russian spy for the US and his CIA handlers is truly eye-opening. You won’t be able to look at spycraft in what is called humint — human intelligence — the same way ever again.
The Billion Dollar Spy was a Soviet engineer named Adolf Tokachev who provided the US with a prodigious volume of technical data about the USSR’s military capabilities from 1977 to 1985. He served as chief engineer of one of several research and development institutes serving the Soviet air force. Under the noses of his bosses and the KGB alike, he brazenly supplied photographs of many thousands of pages of top-secret data to the CIA, enabling the US to counteract every technical advantage achieved by the USSR in its most advanced combat aircraft. An assessment by the US government of Tokachev’s “production” placed the value at two billion dollars, and that was undoubtedly a conservative estimate. There seems to be little question that Adolf Tokachev was the CIA’s biggest success story ever in human intelligence — at least among those the agency has revealed to researchers. His portrait hangs in CIA headquarters to this day.
Hoffman tells this amazing story with great skill and in minute detail. The book reads like a top-flight spy novel, reeking of suspense. But what is most surprising (at least to me) is the insiders’ picture of CIA operations. To call the agency bureaucratic would be a gross understatement: every single action taken by Tokachev’s handlers and every single word they communicated to him was first painstakingly reviewed not just by the head of the Moscow station but also by his boss, the head of the agency’s Soviet division — and often by the Director of the CIA himself. More often than not, the agency big-wigs second-guessed their field staff, denying multiple requests for money to compensate Tokachev, for the cyanide pill he demanded in case he was discovered by the KGB, and for the spyware he needed to photograph top-secret material he had spirited away from his office at the risk of his life. Yet, as Hoffman writes, “Tolkachev’s material was so valuable back at Langley that he was literally ‘paying the rent’ — justifying the CIA’s operational budget — and helping the agency satisfy the military customers.”
That bureaucratic meddling was the first surprise. The second was the picture of tedium and frustration suffered by Tokachev’s handlers. Pulling off a single exchange of material at a dead drop might require weeks, with the effort aborted several times for fear of KGB surveillance. Face-to-face meetings with the engineer were often even more fraught with fear. Months went by between meetings, sometimes by design, sometimes by misadventure. On a couple of occasions, Tokachev’s wife inadvertently opened the attic window he used to signal for a meeting, creating confusion and anxiety within the CIA station. And the technology designed by the agency’s answer to James Bond’s “Q” sometimes malfunctioned.
Third, though by no means a surprise, is the picture Hoffman paints of the damage suffered by the CIA at the hands of its long-time director of counterintelligence, James Jesus Angleton. When his close personal friend, Kim Philby, defected to the Soviet Union after decades of extraordinarily high-level spying, Angleton apparently went off the deep end into paranoia. (Many of his coworkers thought he was nuts.) As Hoffman writes, “Angleton’s suspicions permeated the culture and fabric of the CIA’s Soviet operations division during the 1960s, with disastrous results . . . If no one could be trusted, there could be no spies.” Hoffman adds that, for Angleton, “everything was labeled suspicious or compromised . . .”
It’s not a stretch to imagine that the CIA opened up its records on the Tokachev affair as a public relations move to counter all the dreadful publicity it has suffered over the past decade and more. After all, such records are normally classified for fifty years, and Tokachev’s career for the CIA ended only thirty years ago.
It’s also sobering to consider the agency’s success with Tokachev in a larger context. As Marc Goodman revealed in his recent book, Future Crimes, Chinese government hackers succeeded in stealing top-secret US military data worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
David E. Hoffman is a Pulitzer-Prize-winning contributing editor to the Washington Post.
The Billion Dollar Spy was a Soviet engineer named Adolf Tokachev who provided the US with a prodigious volume of technical data about the USSR’s military capabilities from 1977 to 1985. He served as chief engineer of one of several research and development institutes serving the Soviet air force. Under the noses of his bosses and the KGB alike, he brazenly supplied photographs of many thousands of pages of top-secret data to the CIA, enabling the US to counteract every technical advantage achieved by the USSR in its most advanced combat aircraft. An assessment by the US government of Tokachev’s “production” placed the value at two billion dollars, and that was undoubtedly a conservative estimate. There seems to be little question that Adolf Tokachev was the CIA’s biggest success story ever in human intelligence — at least among those the agency has revealed to researchers. His portrait hangs in CIA headquarters to this day.
Hoffman tells this amazing story with great skill and in minute detail. The book reads like a top-flight spy novel, reeking of suspense. But what is most surprising (at least to me) is the insiders’ picture of CIA operations. To call the agency bureaucratic would be a gross understatement: every single action taken by Tokachev’s handlers and every single word they communicated to him was first painstakingly reviewed not just by the head of the Moscow station but also by his boss, the head of the agency’s Soviet division — and often by the Director of the CIA himself. More often than not, the agency big-wigs second-guessed their field staff, denying multiple requests for money to compensate Tokachev, for the cyanide pill he demanded in case he was discovered by the KGB, and for the spyware he needed to photograph top-secret material he had spirited away from his office at the risk of his life. Yet, as Hoffman writes, “Tolkachev’s material was so valuable back at Langley that he was literally ‘paying the rent’ — justifying the CIA’s operational budget — and helping the agency satisfy the military customers.”
That bureaucratic meddling was the first surprise. The second was the picture of tedium and frustration suffered by Tokachev’s handlers. Pulling off a single exchange of material at a dead drop might require weeks, with the effort aborted several times for fear of KGB surveillance. Face-to-face meetings with the engineer were often even more fraught with fear. Months went by between meetings, sometimes by design, sometimes by misadventure. On a couple of occasions, Tokachev’s wife inadvertently opened the attic window he used to signal for a meeting, creating confusion and anxiety within the CIA station. And the technology designed by the agency’s answer to James Bond’s “Q” sometimes malfunctioned.
Third, though by no means a surprise, is the picture Hoffman paints of the damage suffered by the CIA at the hands of its long-time director of counterintelligence, James Jesus Angleton. When his close personal friend, Kim Philby, defected to the Soviet Union after decades of extraordinarily high-level spying, Angleton apparently went off the deep end into paranoia. (Many of his coworkers thought he was nuts.) As Hoffman writes, “Angleton’s suspicions permeated the culture and fabric of the CIA’s Soviet operations division during the 1960s, with disastrous results . . . If no one could be trusted, there could be no spies.” Hoffman adds that, for Angleton, “everything was labeled suspicious or compromised . . .”
It’s not a stretch to imagine that the CIA opened up its records on the Tokachev affair as a public relations move to counter all the dreadful publicity it has suffered over the past decade and more. After all, such records are normally classified for fifty years, and Tokachev’s career for the CIA ended only thirty years ago.
It’s also sobering to consider the agency’s success with Tokachev in a larger context. As Marc Goodman revealed in his recent book, Future Crimes, Chinese government hackers succeeded in stealing top-secret US military data worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
David E. Hoffman is a Pulitzer-Prize-winning contributing editor to the Washington Post.
August 29, 2015
A very illuminating non-fiction book based on recently declassified material. The items I found of special interest were:
1. The history of the CIA in the Soviet Union and its progression from the 1950s and the 1980s
2. The development of the spying trade craft and its applications and failures when used in the field, items such as dead drops, electronic dead drops, cameras, transmitters and washable ink.
3. Life and purges in the USSR during the Stalin period and the transition to the more liberal period after his death.
4. The attitude change in the CIA toward espionage from the Carter to the Reagan administrations.
5. The risks that both the CIA case officers and Russian spies took to achieve the gathering of information.
6. The story of dissident writers in the mid-1970s.
The story was well documented and told in a very good narrative form. At times the best information was contained in the footnotes. The writing was very good and kept you interested throughout. The only complaint I had with the book was the sequencing of the story. At times the author took side trips to expand the background of a particular character or life in the Soviet Union and this distracted you from the main story. This was only a small distraction that did not detract from what I thought was a very good book.
1. The history of the CIA in the Soviet Union and its progression from the 1950s and the 1980s
2. The development of the spying trade craft and its applications and failures when used in the field, items such as dead drops, electronic dead drops, cameras, transmitters and washable ink.
3. Life and purges in the USSR during the Stalin period and the transition to the more liberal period after his death.
4. The attitude change in the CIA toward espionage from the Carter to the Reagan administrations.
5. The risks that both the CIA case officers and Russian spies took to achieve the gathering of information.
6. The story of dissident writers in the mid-1970s.
The story was well documented and told in a very good narrative form. At times the best information was contained in the footnotes. The writing was very good and kept you interested throughout. The only complaint I had with the book was the sequencing of the story. At times the author took side trips to expand the background of a particular character or life in the Soviet Union and this distracted you from the main story. This was only a small distraction that did not detract from what I thought was a very good book.
September 4, 2019
Apparently, the CIA has a warm, fuzzy side.
Yep, those hard-nosed manipulators at The Agency have big hearts, full of concern for their foreign operatives. Far from being hard-nosed killers and destabilisers of democratic governments the CIA are actually big ole teddy bears.
Seriously though, Would you have ever guessed that the organisation responsible for toppling Mussadegh, The Bay of Pigs, Pinochet, the School of The Americas, the Contras, renditions to torture-heavy black sites and countless assassinations (and that’s what we know about) could be caring, even soft at times?
I sure as hell didn’t – I’ve always seen the CIA as more of a group of handsomely besuited moral vacuums with a penchant for handing armaments over to bad folks and then looking the other way when those weapons are used for evil.
But this softer side is one of the more surprising elements that comes to the fore in David E. Hoffman’s fascinating book, The Billion Dollar Spy - that the CIA had people in it who genuinely cared about the foreign spies they were working with, and tried their damnedest to stop them getting hurt or killed.
Hoffman tells an incredible story of espionage and high drama. Of course, it’s somewhat of a cliché to say that a non-fic book reads like a spy novel, but in this case, that well-worn phrase is very apt.
During the cold war the CIA didn’t have a lot of success running spies in the USSR. The Moscow office existed under heavy surveillance, in a country where Russian-national spies were shot if they were caught. The Agency had a few people who had approached them outside the USSR – military officers and the like – but they had never turned and then run an agent in Russia itself.
Until Soviet scientist Adolf Tolkachev literally knocked on their (car) door one day at a Moscow petrol station.
From that first meeting, Tolkachev would become the most valuable spy the US ever had in the Soviet world, feeding documents on weapon systems, radars, military plans, and even whole electronic components to his CIA handlers. His intel was valued at billions of dollars and gave the US a decisive edge against Soviet weaponry.
Meeting Tolkachev in Moscow, disseminating his intel without alerting the Russians to the presence of a mole in their system, and arranging the payments and goods Tolkachev demanded became a massive operation for the CIA, operating in the centre of the state that was their declared enemy.
The tools, tricks and gadgets they used to evade the KGB and keep Tolkachev safe read like they were lifted straight from the pages of a Le Carre novel. Dead drops. Pop-up head-and-shoulder cutouts to convince the KGB people who had dived from cars were still in them, disguises, spy cameras inside pens – the whole James Bond.
It makes for fascinating reading, as does the life and background of Tolkachev himself, a man whose wife’s parents suffered terribly under Stalin, and who strove to destroy the Soviet system from the inside. This drive led him to take serious risks in gathering intel for the US, something that kept his CIA handlers (men who appeared to genuinely care about him as a person) under a perpetual cloud of apprehension.
Of course, while reading this book it’s worth considering that the CIA voluntarily turned over the classified documents this account is based on, documents that show the agency as dogged patriots with hearts of gold, reluctant to give Tolkachev a suicide pill on ethical grounds, and constantly encouraging him to think of his health, take it easy on the life-threatening espionage, etc.
No doubt there are genuinely good people in the CIA. However, the agency doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to hand over documents about their less savoury operations – black rendition sites, torture, all the stuff that has made their name synonymous with terror. As great a read as this book is (and it really is fascinating) it has to be considered as somewhat of a PR exercise for an organisation with very, very dirty hands.
However, this doesn’t make it any less fascinating a read, and this is a must look for anyone interested in spycraft, the cold war, or military technologies. It starts off a little slow, but stick with it for fifty pages and you will be rewarded.
Four rather convincing fake beards out of five.
Yep, those hard-nosed manipulators at The Agency have big hearts, full of concern for their foreign operatives. Far from being hard-nosed killers and destabilisers of democratic governments the CIA are actually big ole teddy bears.
Seriously though, Would you have ever guessed that the organisation responsible for toppling Mussadegh, The Bay of Pigs, Pinochet, the School of The Americas, the Contras, renditions to torture-heavy black sites and countless assassinations (and that’s what we know about) could be caring, even soft at times?
I sure as hell didn’t – I’ve always seen the CIA as more of a group of handsomely besuited moral vacuums with a penchant for handing armaments over to bad folks and then looking the other way when those weapons are used for evil.
But this softer side is one of the more surprising elements that comes to the fore in David E. Hoffman’s fascinating book, The Billion Dollar Spy - that the CIA had people in it who genuinely cared about the foreign spies they were working with, and tried their damnedest to stop them getting hurt or killed.
Hoffman tells an incredible story of espionage and high drama. Of course, it’s somewhat of a cliché to say that a non-fic book reads like a spy novel, but in this case, that well-worn phrase is very apt.
During the cold war the CIA didn’t have a lot of success running spies in the USSR. The Moscow office existed under heavy surveillance, in a country where Russian-national spies were shot if they were caught. The Agency had a few people who had approached them outside the USSR – military officers and the like – but they had never turned and then run an agent in Russia itself.
Until Soviet scientist Adolf Tolkachev literally knocked on their (car) door one day at a Moscow petrol station.
From that first meeting, Tolkachev would become the most valuable spy the US ever had in the Soviet world, feeding documents on weapon systems, radars, military plans, and even whole electronic components to his CIA handlers. His intel was valued at billions of dollars and gave the US a decisive edge against Soviet weaponry.
Meeting Tolkachev in Moscow, disseminating his intel without alerting the Russians to the presence of a mole in their system, and arranging the payments and goods Tolkachev demanded became a massive operation for the CIA, operating in the centre of the state that was their declared enemy.
The tools, tricks and gadgets they used to evade the KGB and keep Tolkachev safe read like they were lifted straight from the pages of a Le Carre novel. Dead drops. Pop-up head-and-shoulder cutouts to convince the KGB people who had dived from cars were still in them, disguises, spy cameras inside pens – the whole James Bond.
It makes for fascinating reading, as does the life and background of Tolkachev himself, a man whose wife’s parents suffered terribly under Stalin, and who strove to destroy the Soviet system from the inside. This drive led him to take serious risks in gathering intel for the US, something that kept his CIA handlers (men who appeared to genuinely care about him as a person) under a perpetual cloud of apprehension.
Of course, while reading this book it’s worth considering that the CIA voluntarily turned over the classified documents this account is based on, documents that show the agency as dogged patriots with hearts of gold, reluctant to give Tolkachev a suicide pill on ethical grounds, and constantly encouraging him to think of his health, take it easy on the life-threatening espionage, etc.
No doubt there are genuinely good people in the CIA. However, the agency doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to hand over documents about their less savoury operations – black rendition sites, torture, all the stuff that has made their name synonymous with terror. As great a read as this book is (and it really is fascinating) it has to be considered as somewhat of a PR exercise for an organisation with very, very dirty hands.
However, this doesn’t make it any less fascinating a read, and this is a must look for anyone interested in spycraft, the cold war, or military technologies. It starts off a little slow, but stick with it for fifty pages and you will be rewarded.
Four rather convincing fake beards out of five.
May 8, 2015
This was a fascinating read. Pulling from previously secret documents and based on interviews with people who were actually there, David E. Hoffman tells the incredibly true story of the Russian engineer who, over the course of 6 years, passed along Soviet technology and military research to members of the CIA Moscow Station and saved the Unites States billions during the Cold War. Full of suspense and intrigue, The Billion Dollar Spy is an amazing look behind the scenes of the CIA in the Soviet Union during an immensely tense time in history.
- Lauren W. Doubleday Marketing Department
- Lauren W. Doubleday Marketing Department
October 25, 2023
The Russ spy Tolkachev, who helped the US beyond measure in the 80s, delivered info on "the MiG fighter, the MiG-25 high-altitude interceptor, the MiG-31 interceptor, and the MiG-29 and the Su-27 multi-role fighters..he compromised versions of the SAP-FIR radar and the ZASLON radar..." Sample writing. Do you know what author Hoffman is jibbering about? Of course not.
Hoffman's writing is >> appalling ! He's a hack journalist who was awarded by the CIA a ton of facts which he cannot put into any shape. His book abt a remarkable Russian who worked for the US in Moscow -- until he was betrayed from within -- proves that you can find superior writing in the telephone book, if they are still printed.
Maugham, who was not a journalist, said the profession killed writing. Carl Van Vechten, who was a journalist for 20 years, agreed. They're right. Need any proof? Read this sorriful attempt that is now praised by other journalists, eg David Ignatius, who don't know how to "write" either.
Comprised of cables, communiques, evaluation notes, this snoozer, which is more effective than any sleeping pill, takes amazing substance (with limited knowledge of the key player) and chews it up. You yelp, Stop ! Endless stories of surveillance detection or how to play Hide & Seek in Moscow, arguments over the spy's pay and his repeated request for an L-pill (cyanide), descriptions of the latest in mini-cameras, bios of CIAers of no interest -- well, the trivia, the "filler" here will leave you breathless. None of it is "exciting."
There are 2 or 3 good anecdotes, usually culled from other spy bios, and we learn that spies, c 1980, left packages near phone booths (now all gone), and there were brassieres that had radio receivers (!), markings like a "V" left on traffic signs that meant : Ok, we can meet, and cameras within key chains, pens, lipstick. (Damn, NO smoking-cigarette cues anymoh!) ~~ Spies also used "secret" specially treated paper, fake faces, wigs, and were quick clothes-change artistes. It's all "illusion" coos author. No, honey, it's all show biz. Today, think telecommunications; it's an important new element.
Ah, zo!
The wackiest graf in book (p 61) : The CIA sends the spy's handwriting to an "expert" for analysis. (Have you contemplated your scribbles lately, LOL) ~~ Expert replies : "The writer is intelligent, purposeful, and generally self-confidant. He is self-disciplined but not overly rigid," and it goes on and on.
Take a memo, To the CIA--.
Hoffman's writing is >> appalling ! He's a hack journalist who was awarded by the CIA a ton of facts which he cannot put into any shape. His book abt a remarkable Russian who worked for the US in Moscow -- until he was betrayed from within -- proves that you can find superior writing in the telephone book, if they are still printed.
Maugham, who was not a journalist, said the profession killed writing. Carl Van Vechten, who was a journalist for 20 years, agreed. They're right. Need any proof? Read this sorriful attempt that is now praised by other journalists, eg David Ignatius, who don't know how to "write" either.
Comprised of cables, communiques, evaluation notes, this snoozer, which is more effective than any sleeping pill, takes amazing substance (with limited knowledge of the key player) and chews it up. You yelp, Stop ! Endless stories of surveillance detection or how to play Hide & Seek in Moscow, arguments over the spy's pay and his repeated request for an L-pill (cyanide), descriptions of the latest in mini-cameras, bios of CIAers of no interest -- well, the trivia, the "filler" here will leave you breathless. None of it is "exciting."
There are 2 or 3 good anecdotes, usually culled from other spy bios, and we learn that spies, c 1980, left packages near phone booths (now all gone), and there were brassieres that had radio receivers (!), markings like a "V" left on traffic signs that meant : Ok, we can meet, and cameras within key chains, pens, lipstick. (Damn, NO smoking-cigarette cues anymoh!) ~~ Spies also used "secret" specially treated paper, fake faces, wigs, and were quick clothes-change artistes. It's all "illusion" coos author. No, honey, it's all show biz. Today, think telecommunications; it's an important new element.
Ah, zo!
The wackiest graf in book (p 61) : The CIA sends the spy's handwriting to an "expert" for analysis. (Have you contemplated your scribbles lately, LOL) ~~ Expert replies : "The writer is intelligent, purposeful, and generally self-confidant. He is self-disciplined but not overly rigid," and it goes on and on.
Take a memo, To the CIA--.
June 16, 2018
I hate struggling to finish a book. I typically only read books that I've heard are good (don't we all?), so if I'm not enjoying a book I'll do my best to either convince myself that there's nothing wrong with me and to just give it up or, if that doesn't work, to keep going until I finally just lose patience with it. So it was with "The Billion Dollar Spy".
I've been on a real Russia kick lately, so I've been reading all the good non-fiction on the country and culture I can get my hands on. "Red Notice" by Bill Browder? Excellent. "The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin" by Steven Lee Myers? Terrific. Literally anything by Svetlana Alexievich — fantastic. But this ... just didn't do it for me. I went through the Goodreads reviews and people seem to mostly love it, so really, what am I missing??
No idea.
For me, this was just an unbelievably dull book — one of those books where, as you're reading, you start to think about what you're going to have for dinner, when you last had borsch, whether the upcoming winter will be a cold one ...
And that's not the fault of the subject matter, which, to be honest, is worthy of a much better book. Who doesn't love spy stuff? And set during the Soviet Union?
But reading this was the equivalent of watching a Bond movie through a spyglass, of listening to Stravinsky through the wall of a Stalinki (Stalinist apartment blocks known for their thick walls — to keep out the screams, one would imagine).
Which is to say, it reads like a very dry memo about one of the CIA's agents. It never feels personal, never allows us to get close enough to feel any tension on behalf of the Russian man-turned CIA spy. It's all very by the numbers, like reading 300-odd pages of statistics on Soviet Russia, or a particularly impersonal newspaper article.
If digging through the CIA's archives and reading memos about their agents compels you, then this likely will too. If you prefer your non-fiction to read a bit more Erik Larson though, I'd advise you to skip over this one.
I've been on a real Russia kick lately, so I've been reading all the good non-fiction on the country and culture I can get my hands on. "Red Notice" by Bill Browder? Excellent. "The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin" by Steven Lee Myers? Terrific. Literally anything by Svetlana Alexievich — fantastic. But this ... just didn't do it for me. I went through the Goodreads reviews and people seem to mostly love it, so really, what am I missing??
No idea.
For me, this was just an unbelievably dull book — one of those books where, as you're reading, you start to think about what you're going to have for dinner, when you last had borsch, whether the upcoming winter will be a cold one ...
And that's not the fault of the subject matter, which, to be honest, is worthy of a much better book. Who doesn't love spy stuff? And set during the Soviet Union?
But reading this was the equivalent of watching a Bond movie through a spyglass, of listening to Stravinsky through the wall of a Stalinki (Stalinist apartment blocks known for their thick walls — to keep out the screams, one would imagine).
Which is to say, it reads like a very dry memo about one of the CIA's agents. It never feels personal, never allows us to get close enough to feel any tension on behalf of the Russian man-turned CIA spy. It's all very by the numbers, like reading 300-odd pages of statistics on Soviet Russia, or a particularly impersonal newspaper article.
If digging through the CIA's archives and reading memos about their agents compels you, then this likely will too. If you prefer your non-fiction to read a bit more Erik Larson though, I'd advise you to skip over this one.
July 12, 2018
The quiet dad and engineer named Adolf Tolkachev was a nightmare for the USSR in the 1980s, except they didn't know it. Over a period of six years, his sketches, notes, secret photos, and insights put the USA at least a decade ahead in the type technology I know you've seen yourself.
Consider the in-flight fighter jet cameras whose videos we've seen glimpses of on the news. When Saddam Hussein marched and flew into Kuwait, attempting to overtake the nation, the air superiority of the US over the Russian MIGs was startling to behold. Shock and awe pretty much fit the billing. When we see coverage of precision air strikes, do we even wonder how aviators avoid being shot down by various missiles? Adolf Tolkachev is to thank for that.
This book focuses primarily on Tolkachev whose courage and tenacity were incredible. He was motivated to thwart the regime of the USSR because of its ruthlessness and unfairness. Instead of the CIA attempting to woo him, he randomly showed up at a gas station one day in Moscow. He saw the diplomatic plates on one of the cars and went over to offer his services. Suspecting a trap, the CIA ignored him. And ignored him a second time. And a third!
If you enjoy the TV series The Americans or are a fan of cold war espionage stories, this nonfiction work will be one to get your hands on. In one scene, two US couples in Moscow get dressed up to attend a birthday party at another's home. The double-date outing has them happily chatting while driving through the evening streets, heading toward the party. One of the wives in the backseat holds a big white box on her lap containing a birthday cake. They are being tailed by the KGB, but you wouldn't know it as they banter back and forth, laughing. As they round a city corner, hubby-at-the-wheel slows down and his friend in the passenger seat jumps out of the car, dons the full face mask of an old man and yanks on an old shabby coat.
As soon as he is out of the passenger seat, the wife holding the cake box leans over and places it on the now empty front seat. She pushes a latch on the front, and voila. It pops open as a life-sized Jack in the Box. When the KGB follow-car makes the turn, they still see four profiles - two men up front, two women in the back. The driver occasionally tips the fake-passenger towards him and laughs, making it look like they are sharing a joke. On the side of the street, slowly shambling along is an elderly Soviet man bundled in a beat up coat. The KGB speed past him, disinterested, and he goes on to meet his spy.
There are tidbits in here that are fascinating, truly. Other agents' stories are shared, and you'll recognize at least one infamous double agent's name. That said, the book reads rather drily, and its transitions from topic to topic are pretty abrupt. In sum, while the stories are extremely interesting, the writing here could be better.
If you go into this NOT expecting literary nonfiction like what Hillenbrand and Larson deliver, then it'll be a worthwhile experience. There are more surprises in here than even that life size pop-up. My hat is off to the men and women who risk their lives in this type work.
Consider the in-flight fighter jet cameras whose videos we've seen glimpses of on the news. When Saddam Hussein marched and flew into Kuwait, attempting to overtake the nation, the air superiority of the US over the Russian MIGs was startling to behold. Shock and awe pretty much fit the billing. When we see coverage of precision air strikes, do we even wonder how aviators avoid being shot down by various missiles? Adolf Tolkachev is to thank for that.
This book focuses primarily on Tolkachev whose courage and tenacity were incredible. He was motivated to thwart the regime of the USSR because of its ruthlessness and unfairness. Instead of the CIA attempting to woo him, he randomly showed up at a gas station one day in Moscow. He saw the diplomatic plates on one of the cars and went over to offer his services. Suspecting a trap, the CIA ignored him. And ignored him a second time. And a third!
If you enjoy the TV series The Americans or are a fan of cold war espionage stories, this nonfiction work will be one to get your hands on. In one scene, two US couples in Moscow get dressed up to attend a birthday party at another's home. The double-date outing has them happily chatting while driving through the evening streets, heading toward the party. One of the wives in the backseat holds a big white box on her lap containing a birthday cake. They are being tailed by the KGB, but you wouldn't know it as they banter back and forth, laughing. As they round a city corner, hubby-at-the-wheel slows down and his friend in the passenger seat jumps out of the car, dons the full face mask of an old man and yanks on an old shabby coat.
As soon as he is out of the passenger seat, the wife holding the cake box leans over and places it on the now empty front seat. She pushes a latch on the front, and voila. It pops open as a life-sized Jack in the Box. When the KGB follow-car makes the turn, they still see four profiles - two men up front, two women in the back. The driver occasionally tips the fake-passenger towards him and laughs, making it look like they are sharing a joke. On the side of the street, slowly shambling along is an elderly Soviet man bundled in a beat up coat. The KGB speed past him, disinterested, and he goes on to meet his spy.
There are tidbits in here that are fascinating, truly. Other agents' stories are shared, and you'll recognize at least one infamous double agent's name. That said, the book reads rather drily, and its transitions from topic to topic are pretty abrupt. In sum, while the stories are extremely interesting, the writing here could be better.
If you go into this NOT expecting literary nonfiction like what Hillenbrand and Larson deliver, then it'll be a worthwhile experience. There are more surprises in here than even that life size pop-up. My hat is off to the men and women who risk their lives in this type work.
October 29, 2015
http://www.themaineedge.com/buzz/movi...
Spy thrillers have long been big business in the literary realm. Running the gamut from John le Carre to Tom Clancy to Ian Fleming to Robert Ludlum, these books have long proven to be page-turning delights, telling tales of the shadowy worlds that exist just beneath the surface.
But what if you got your hands on one such spy thriller, only to discover that all that happened within it actually took place?
That’s the question with which David E. Hoffman’s "The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal" confronts the reader. As twist-riddled and compelling as any fictional adventure in espionage, Hoffman’s meticulously researched book might just be the most thrilling piece of nonfiction you’ll ever encounter.
In the days following World War II, the United States was striving to develop its intelligence and counterintelligence agencies. This was the era when the wartime Office of Strategic Services evolved into what became our Central Intelligence Agency. However, as the years passed, it became clear that finding interested insiders in the Soviet Union would prove difficult. Numerous failed attempts and dissent inside the agency itself led many to think that a foothold would never be gained.
But when an unassuming man approached the chief of the CIA station in Moscow and handed him an envelope, there was a shift in the very nature of the ongoing battles for intelligence between these two superpowers. The man - named Adolf Tolkachev - was a high-level engineer working on a number of top projects for a Soviet military design bureau. He was also willing to talk.
The years that followed were a bonanza of technical information, leading to a multitude of revelations regarding the capabilities of Soviet military tech. The thousands upon thousands of technical specifications Tolkachev passed on gave the US the capability to defeat Soviet radar, allowing for an unprecedented dominance of the skies.
There was plenty of classic spycraft at work. Dead drops and miniature cameras and secret codes and furtive face-to-face encounters – it took every bit of CIA ingenuity (not to mention Tolkachev’s courage) to stay one step ahead of the KGB. Despite the fact that the walls had ears and no one could be trusted, this successful partnership went on for years – until betrayal came calling.
The Cold War is ancient history to many of us; it’s easy to forget just what kind of world this was just a few short decades ago. “The Billion Dollar Spy” introduces us to some of the unsung heroes who were fighting a battle that most of us would never see, capturing a snapshot of a unique moment in time.
It’s a story that would manage to be compelling no matter how dry the presentation, but Hoffman makes the moments come alive. The moments … and the people. Ultimately, this book is a vividly rendered portrait of Adolf Tolkachev, a man willing to defy an entire oppressive regime in order to do what he thought was right.
“The Billion Dollar Spy” is the result of Hoffman’s unique combination of skills as both reporter and storyteller. By combing through scads of recently declassified documents and tracking down some of the men who were involved, Hoffman has created something we don’t often see – a piece of nonfiction that is as narratively powerful as any work of fiction. The tension, the twists, the terror and the tears – all of it is rendered that much more powerful by its veracity.
Spy thrillers have long been big business in the literary realm. Running the gamut from John le Carre to Tom Clancy to Ian Fleming to Robert Ludlum, these books have long proven to be page-turning delights, telling tales of the shadowy worlds that exist just beneath the surface.
But what if you got your hands on one such spy thriller, only to discover that all that happened within it actually took place?
That’s the question with which David E. Hoffman’s "The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal" confronts the reader. As twist-riddled and compelling as any fictional adventure in espionage, Hoffman’s meticulously researched book might just be the most thrilling piece of nonfiction you’ll ever encounter.
In the days following World War II, the United States was striving to develop its intelligence and counterintelligence agencies. This was the era when the wartime Office of Strategic Services evolved into what became our Central Intelligence Agency. However, as the years passed, it became clear that finding interested insiders in the Soviet Union would prove difficult. Numerous failed attempts and dissent inside the agency itself led many to think that a foothold would never be gained.
But when an unassuming man approached the chief of the CIA station in Moscow and handed him an envelope, there was a shift in the very nature of the ongoing battles for intelligence between these two superpowers. The man - named Adolf Tolkachev - was a high-level engineer working on a number of top projects for a Soviet military design bureau. He was also willing to talk.
The years that followed were a bonanza of technical information, leading to a multitude of revelations regarding the capabilities of Soviet military tech. The thousands upon thousands of technical specifications Tolkachev passed on gave the US the capability to defeat Soviet radar, allowing for an unprecedented dominance of the skies.
There was plenty of classic spycraft at work. Dead drops and miniature cameras and secret codes and furtive face-to-face encounters – it took every bit of CIA ingenuity (not to mention Tolkachev’s courage) to stay one step ahead of the KGB. Despite the fact that the walls had ears and no one could be trusted, this successful partnership went on for years – until betrayal came calling.
The Cold War is ancient history to many of us; it’s easy to forget just what kind of world this was just a few short decades ago. “The Billion Dollar Spy” introduces us to some of the unsung heroes who were fighting a battle that most of us would never see, capturing a snapshot of a unique moment in time.
It’s a story that would manage to be compelling no matter how dry the presentation, but Hoffman makes the moments come alive. The moments … and the people. Ultimately, this book is a vividly rendered portrait of Adolf Tolkachev, a man willing to defy an entire oppressive regime in order to do what he thought was right.
“The Billion Dollar Spy” is the result of Hoffman’s unique combination of skills as both reporter and storyteller. By combing through scads of recently declassified documents and tracking down some of the men who were involved, Hoffman has created something we don’t often see – a piece of nonfiction that is as narratively powerful as any work of fiction. The tension, the twists, the terror and the tears – all of it is rendered that much more powerful by its veracity.
August 12, 2025
I first opened The Billion Dollar Spy on my Kindle one humid evening in 2019, thinking I’d read a chapter before bed. That was a tactical miscalculation.
By midnight, I was deep in the alleys of Cold War Moscow, following Adolf Tolkachev — a Soviet engineer who decided to gamble everything for the Americans — and I knew there was no way I was sleeping anytime soon.
David E. Hoffman tells the story like a man who’s spent years in the archives and the smoky back rooms, then distilled it into something that moves like a thriller but carries the weight of fact. Tolkachev isn’t a fictional spy with a perfect cover and a dramatic theme tune — he’s a real human being, balancing his life as a husband and father with the clandestine meetings that could, and eventually would, cost him everything.
On the Kindle screen, the starkness of his world felt amplified. No glossy dust jacket, no comforting heft of paper — just text on a pale background, the story unspooling in digital silence. The CIA’s Moscow station comes alive in Hoffman’s telling: the elaborate tradecraft, the dead drops, the ingenious gadgets designed to slip through the KGB’s suffocating net. It’s almost a catalogue of espionage ingenuity — and yet, there’s always that undercurrent of danger.
What struck me most wasn’t the James Bond glamour — there’s none of that here — but the grinding persistence of it all. Years of meetings, messages, careful planning, and constant fear. Tolkachev wasn’t driven by greed or adventure; his motivations were personal and political, born out of deep disillusionment with the Soviet system. That gives the book a moral tension I didn’t expect.
Hoffman writes with the precision of a journalist but the rhythm of a novelist. He doesn’t just give us the facts; he gives us the weather, the shadows, and the tiny gestures that mean everything in spycraft. The betrayals hit harder because they feel inevitable, like the click of a trap closing. By the end, when the net tightens around Tolkachev, I realised I’d been holding my breath through the final chapters.
Reading it in 2019, in a world still wrestling with espionage scandals and shifting alliances, made the story feel less like history and more like a mirror. Technology changes, but human ambition, loyalty, and betrayal? Those stay the same.
When I finally powered down my Kindle, the room was silent, the street outside empty. Tolkachev’s story lingered — not just as a tale of Cold War intrigue, but as a reminder of how one person’s quiet courage, carried out in the shadows, can change the balance of power between nations.
And how, in the end, the cost of that courage is almost always more than the world remembers to repay.
By midnight, I was deep in the alleys of Cold War Moscow, following Adolf Tolkachev — a Soviet engineer who decided to gamble everything for the Americans — and I knew there was no way I was sleeping anytime soon.
David E. Hoffman tells the story like a man who’s spent years in the archives and the smoky back rooms, then distilled it into something that moves like a thriller but carries the weight of fact. Tolkachev isn’t a fictional spy with a perfect cover and a dramatic theme tune — he’s a real human being, balancing his life as a husband and father with the clandestine meetings that could, and eventually would, cost him everything.
On the Kindle screen, the starkness of his world felt amplified. No glossy dust jacket, no comforting heft of paper — just text on a pale background, the story unspooling in digital silence. The CIA’s Moscow station comes alive in Hoffman’s telling: the elaborate tradecraft, the dead drops, the ingenious gadgets designed to slip through the KGB’s suffocating net. It’s almost a catalogue of espionage ingenuity — and yet, there’s always that undercurrent of danger.
What struck me most wasn’t the James Bond glamour — there’s none of that here — but the grinding persistence of it all. Years of meetings, messages, careful planning, and constant fear. Tolkachev wasn’t driven by greed or adventure; his motivations were personal and political, born out of deep disillusionment with the Soviet system. That gives the book a moral tension I didn’t expect.
Hoffman writes with the precision of a journalist but the rhythm of a novelist. He doesn’t just give us the facts; he gives us the weather, the shadows, and the tiny gestures that mean everything in spycraft. The betrayals hit harder because they feel inevitable, like the click of a trap closing. By the end, when the net tightens around Tolkachev, I realised I’d been holding my breath through the final chapters.
Reading it in 2019, in a world still wrestling with espionage scandals and shifting alliances, made the story feel less like history and more like a mirror. Technology changes, but human ambition, loyalty, and betrayal? Those stay the same.
When I finally powered down my Kindle, the room was silent, the street outside empty. Tolkachev’s story lingered — not just as a tale of Cold War intrigue, but as a reminder of how one person’s quiet courage, carried out in the shadows, can change the balance of power between nations.
And how, in the end, the cost of that courage is almost always more than the world remembers to repay.
March 21, 2016
During the early years of the Cold War, the Americans and Russians were intent on discovering information about military research and development, and any other technical information that would be useful in planning for defense and attack in the event of another conflict. Each country tried to infiltrate the other’s highly guarded secrets. Information could be obtained by wiretaps, satellite surveillance, and photographs, but the most valuable information was most often obtained from human intelligence sources.
The Americans had recruited spies in major Eastern European cities, but had never been successful in recruiting a spy within Moscow itself. In January 1977, the chief of the CIA’s Moscow station was at a gas station when a man knocked on his window and gave him an envelope. The message inside was an offer to provide intelligence information to the Americans. Thinking that it might be a KGB trap, the contact information was ignored. Months passed in which the same man persisted in trying to make contact with the Americans. Finally, after many months of trying, the suspicious man again passed an envelope through the diplomat’s car window. Inside was top secret information related to Russian aviation research and development.
The information proved to be priceless. The CIA had finally acquired a reliable, highly placed spy — Adolf Tolkachev. For eight years Tolkachev provided technical documents and research that propelled the American research and development process decades into the future. The technological information passed to the Americans by Tolkachev assisted the military in designing systems that are being used by forces in the Middle East today.
Tolkachev recognized the inherent danger involved with his activities. The CIA took extraordinary precautions to insure Tolkachev’s safety, but never suspected that betrayal could come from an unexpected source. David Hoffman’s meticulous research into the inner workings of the CIA, and its relationship with the Moscow station, has provided the reader with an unforgettable story of courage, stealth, betrayal, and tragedy.
The Americans had recruited spies in major Eastern European cities, but had never been successful in recruiting a spy within Moscow itself. In January 1977, the chief of the CIA’s Moscow station was at a gas station when a man knocked on his window and gave him an envelope. The message inside was an offer to provide intelligence information to the Americans. Thinking that it might be a KGB trap, the contact information was ignored. Months passed in which the same man persisted in trying to make contact with the Americans. Finally, after many months of trying, the suspicious man again passed an envelope through the diplomat’s car window. Inside was top secret information related to Russian aviation research and development.
The information proved to be priceless. The CIA had finally acquired a reliable, highly placed spy — Adolf Tolkachev. For eight years Tolkachev provided technical documents and research that propelled the American research and development process decades into the future. The technological information passed to the Americans by Tolkachev assisted the military in designing systems that are being used by forces in the Middle East today.
Tolkachev recognized the inherent danger involved with his activities. The CIA took extraordinary precautions to insure Tolkachev’s safety, but never suspected that betrayal could come from an unexpected source. David Hoffman’s meticulous research into the inner workings of the CIA, and its relationship with the Moscow station, has provided the reader with an unforgettable story of courage, stealth, betrayal, and tragedy.
July 10, 2022
از درون عجیبترین جنگ دوره معاصر یعنی جنگ سرد، می توان زاویه دید عجیبی رو تجربه کرد، یک زاویه جذاب و البته در واقعیت دردناک..
زاویه دید یک خیانتکار به سرزمین خودش و یا در واقع به دولت سرزمین خودش. البته این کتاب خاطرات یکی از موثرترین جاسوسان خود خوانده تاریخ جنگسرد نیست، برای اینکه شواهد و روند نگاه از جانب نیروهای سیا و دغدغه ها و رویه اداره عملیات جاسوسی درسرزمینی بسیار سخت مثل شوروی است... اما من همیشه نسبت به نگاه خود آدولف تولکاچفِ جاسوس علاقه داشتم که چگونه با این موضوع دهشتناک روبرو می شد شجاعتش را می دیدم و البته ترسهایش را .....
ترسهایش....
و اینکه او برای تمام این احساسات و خطرات و ناامنیهای روانی و جسمی تنها بود. به نظرم او درون اوج و ترس و تنهاییاش غوطه میخورد و این جنبه انسانی او برای من بشدت جذاب و دهشتناک بود.
این کتاب یک ناداستان است اما به اندازه یک رمان حرفهای جاسوسی علاقمندانِ این ژانر رو سیراب می کنه و برای من همیشه درونم محل ارجاعی است به گونه مختلف انسانها که جنگها دگرگونشان کردند.
زاویه دید یک خیانتکار به سرزمین خودش و یا در واقع به دولت سرزمین خودش. البته این کتاب خاطرات یکی از موثرترین جاسوسان خود خوانده تاریخ جنگسرد نیست، برای اینکه شواهد و روند نگاه از جانب نیروهای سیا و دغدغه ها و رویه اداره عملیات جاسوسی درسرزمینی بسیار سخت مثل شوروی است... اما من همیشه نسبت به نگاه خود آدولف تولکاچفِ جاسوس علاقه داشتم که چگونه با این موضوع دهشتناک روبرو می شد شجاعتش را می دیدم و البته ترسهایش را .....
ترسهایش....
و اینکه او برای تمام این احساسات و خطرات و ناامنیهای روانی و جسمی تنها بود. به نظرم او درون اوج و ترس و تنهاییاش غوطه میخورد و این جنبه انسانی او برای من بشدت جذاب و دهشتناک بود.
این کتاب یک ناداستان است اما به اندازه یک رمان حرفهای جاسوسی علاقمندانِ این ژانر رو سیراب می کنه و برای من همیشه درونم محل ارجاعی است به گونه مختلف انسانها که جنگها دگرگونشان کردند.
August 29, 2015
In direct aerial combat over Iraq, the US Air Force downed every Soviet-made fighter that it encountered, without any losses. Next to superior technology, better tactics and pilot training, there was another reason: the United States knew every information about these airplanes, thanks to a Russion spy that saved the US billion dollars of R&D by providing all necesary information it could find about these aircrafts.
In this book, David E. Hoffman tells the story of Adolf Tolkachev, a disgruntles Soviet engineer that provided the CIA with valuable information. From the start, we read how he contacted the CIA in Moscow, how the CIA handled and informed him and how he was able to acquire the sensitive information.
We get a good insight in Adolf Tolkachev, his motivation, his personal life. It is touching to see how he not only asked for money, but also asked the CIA to get him medicine, Russian dissident's books and the latest album of the Rolling Stones.
This is a great book to read if you're interested in the spy activities that went on during the Cold War
In this book, David E. Hoffman tells the story of Adolf Tolkachev, a disgruntles Soviet engineer that provided the CIA with valuable information. From the start, we read how he contacted the CIA in Moscow, how the CIA handled and informed him and how he was able to acquire the sensitive information.
We get a good insight in Adolf Tolkachev, his motivation, his personal life. It is touching to see how he not only asked for money, but also asked the CIA to get him medicine, Russian dissident's books and the latest album of the Rolling Stones.
This is a great book to read if you're interested in the spy activities that went on during the Cold War
September 7, 2021
Through eight years, many bureaucratic changes, and several CIA agents Hoffman follows the life and career of Adolf Tolkachev as he does his best to undermine the Soviet Union. Mostly, though it follows the CIA’s attempt to balance a spy’s life against the army’s insatiable desire for more info and their own agent’s safety.
It is a thriller sometimes, and at others, it’s a detailed report of politics and procedures. Then you are starkly reminded that those petty wrangles could lead to death for many people, and it gets more and more chilling. Every detail of a camera's size, a mark's color, a coat's cut, or a schedule's change could mean death, so they are discussed over and over. That could get a bit dull, but Hoffman intersperses it with personal reminisces and details of daily life in the Soviet Union and the embassy.
The ending is tragic. So, I’m glad he included that last section. While it does little lighten the mood, it does remind you that good can come out of horrible tragedies.
There were only a few ‘mild’ curse words till near the very end then there was one ‘strongly’ vulgar word.
It is a thriller sometimes, and at others, it’s a detailed report of politics and procedures. Then you are starkly reminded that those petty wrangles could lead to death for many people, and it gets more and more chilling. Every detail of a camera's size, a mark's color, a coat's cut, or a schedule's change could mean death, so they are discussed over and over. That could get a bit dull, but Hoffman intersperses it with personal reminisces and details of daily life in the Soviet Union and the embassy.
The ending is tragic. So, I’m glad he included that last section. While it does little lighten the mood, it does remind you that good can come out of horrible tragedies.
There were only a few ‘mild’ curse words till near the very end then there was one ‘strongly’ vulgar word.
September 25, 2022
Ever since I first went to London and, on my first day, Lord Denning was beginning his enquiry into the John Profumo/Christine Keeler affair in the building in which I worked and then when, as a young executive, I attended a secret service training course on counter-espionage when I worked in Whitehall, I have been fascinated with spies and spying so this book had immediate appeal to me. And I am delighted it did for it is an absolutely compelling read as David Hoffman has done some magnificent research into a case of spying that almost defies belief as the protagonists undertake their operations within the purlieus of Moscow, under the very eyes of the KGB!
The whole affair began when, on the evening of February 16, 1978, the chief of the CIA’s Moscow station hears a knock on his car window while out for a drive. An envelope is thrust through his car window by a man standing on the curb and when opened later its contents are a revelation to US intelligence officers. On the neatly written sheets were details of top-secret Soviet research and developments in military technology that were completely new to the United States officers.
After very carefully weighing up their options the US intelligence service decided to follow up the letter and the man concerned turned out to be Adolf Tolkachev, an important engineer in a Soviet military design bureau. Clandestine meetings were arranged and agreement was reached for Tolkachev to supply regular information on Soviet developments in the radar, aircraft and weapons field. The title of the book comes from Tolkachev's original demands for passing on this information; he felt it was worth 'a seven-figure sum' but subsequently agreement was reached that satisfied both parties. His payments were increased the longer the operation went on because he was most diligent and provided information that was completely unknown to the US.
Once the information had been studied it was felt that it saved the USA millions in research and development costs and also changed their forward looking policy on the reshaping of 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. Over time, and in very demanding circumstances avoiding surveillance by Soviet KGB officers, Tolkachev used his high-level access to copy, photograph and hand over tens of thousands of pages and hundreds of rolls of film of technical secrets.
Tolkachev was to become one of the most valuable spies ever to work for the United States in the four decades of global confrontation with the Soviet Union. He and his handlers took enormous personal risks; he in using the many, and varied spy cameras the Americans provided and smuggling papers out of the office to photograph at home and they in setting up face-to-face meetings in parks and on street corners, even devising a 'jack in the box' plan involving leaping out of a moving car to defeat any suspected surveillance.
Eventually when the US had collected every scrap of information on Soviet planes, pilots, and radar systems plus every photograph, circuit board and diagram that could be obtained, Tolkachev brought up the question of he and his family, who knew nothing about his spying activities, being taken over to America; by this time he had access to a suicide pill supplied by the US in case he was confronted. The US began arrangements to do this but before they were able to put anything in place, a surprising betrayal put them all at risk and the meetings were suspended. And they never began again because Tolkachev was arrested and subsequently tried and executed ... but not before he and his handlers had succeeded for years in eluding the feared KGB in its own backyard.
David Hoffman has drawn on previously unseen documents to tell a tense tale of espionage on a grand scale that is a brilliant feat of reporting that unfolds dramatically like an espionage thriller and that is a page-turner from the very beginning. Indeed, for me, I remember that early course I attended and thought at the time, even though it made one seriously think about espionage possibilities, that surely some of the things put across could not happen; well, obviously from this operation, they certainly can!
The whole affair began when, on the evening of February 16, 1978, the chief of the CIA’s Moscow station hears a knock on his car window while out for a drive. An envelope is thrust through his car window by a man standing on the curb and when opened later its contents are a revelation to US intelligence officers. On the neatly written sheets were details of top-secret Soviet research and developments in military technology that were completely new to the United States officers.
After very carefully weighing up their options the US intelligence service decided to follow up the letter and the man concerned turned out to be Adolf Tolkachev, an important engineer in a Soviet military design bureau. Clandestine meetings were arranged and agreement was reached for Tolkachev to supply regular information on Soviet developments in the radar, aircraft and weapons field. The title of the book comes from Tolkachev's original demands for passing on this information; he felt it was worth 'a seven-figure sum' but subsequently agreement was reached that satisfied both parties. His payments were increased the longer the operation went on because he was most diligent and provided information that was completely unknown to the US.
Once the information had been studied it was felt that it saved the USA millions in research and development costs and also changed their forward looking policy on the reshaping of 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. Over time, and in very demanding circumstances avoiding surveillance by Soviet KGB officers, Tolkachev used his high-level access to copy, photograph and hand over tens of thousands of pages and hundreds of rolls of film of technical secrets.
Tolkachev was to become one of the most valuable spies ever to work for the United States in the four decades of global confrontation with the Soviet Union. He and his handlers took enormous personal risks; he in using the many, and varied spy cameras the Americans provided and smuggling papers out of the office to photograph at home and they in setting up face-to-face meetings in parks and on street corners, even devising a 'jack in the box' plan involving leaping out of a moving car to defeat any suspected surveillance.
Eventually when the US had collected every scrap of information on Soviet planes, pilots, and radar systems plus every photograph, circuit board and diagram that could be obtained, Tolkachev brought up the question of he and his family, who knew nothing about his spying activities, being taken over to America; by this time he had access to a suicide pill supplied by the US in case he was confronted. The US began arrangements to do this but before they were able to put anything in place, a surprising betrayal put them all at risk and the meetings were suspended. And they never began again because Tolkachev was arrested and subsequently tried and executed ... but not before he and his handlers had succeeded for years in eluding the feared KGB in its own backyard.
David Hoffman has drawn on previously unseen documents to tell a tense tale of espionage on a grand scale that is a brilliant feat of reporting that unfolds dramatically like an espionage thriller and that is a page-turner from the very beginning. Indeed, for me, I remember that early course I attended and thought at the time, even though it made one seriously think about espionage possibilities, that surely some of the things put across could not happen; well, obviously from this operation, they certainly can!
April 27, 2016
Solid 5 stars!
This book was as engaging as it was entertaining. I had to wait a long time to get my hands on it but it was worth the wait.
Pure cold war thrill, this book combines substance with great storytelling. In the process, it opens a window into the fight for supremacy between the CIA and KGB. How spies operated inside Moscow and how Russian counterespionage functioned.
One of the most interesting discoveries was to see how soviet agents, seemingly infallible from afar, committed mortal human mistakes in executing their duties. e.g.: changing newly imposed security measures in a high security lab due to complaints from secretaries. The processing of the new rules was conflicting with their lunch breaks.
It is also evident in the book that, as mighty as they have been, the best CIA operations didn't happen by design. They came about due to frustrated soviet citizens volunteering information. Personal frustration with the Soviet system seemed to have been the main motivation.
Great book! Highly recommended!
This book was as engaging as it was entertaining. I had to wait a long time to get my hands on it but it was worth the wait.
Pure cold war thrill, this book combines substance with great storytelling. In the process, it opens a window into the fight for supremacy between the CIA and KGB. How spies operated inside Moscow and how Russian counterespionage functioned.
One of the most interesting discoveries was to see how soviet agents, seemingly infallible from afar, committed mortal human mistakes in executing their duties. e.g.: changing newly imposed security measures in a high security lab due to complaints from secretaries. The processing of the new rules was conflicting with their lunch breaks.
It is also evident in the book that, as mighty as they have been, the best CIA operations didn't happen by design. They came about due to frustrated soviet citizens volunteering information. Personal frustration with the Soviet system seemed to have been the main motivation.
Great book! Highly recommended!
September 5, 2023
Published in 2015, The Billion Dollar Spy is an immersive nonfiction thriller that tells the incredible true story of the CIA’s most valuable Soviet asset of the Cold War era. Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David E. Hoffman, this page-turning spy biography brings to light classified details of one of the most important intelligence coups in US history.
Hoffman gained unprecedented access to declassified documents and key figures involved to reconstruct the riveting saga of Adolf Tolkachev, a Soviet scientist who spied for the United States from the 1970s until his death in 1986. Tolkachev was an engineer who worked in a top-secret design laboratory. He was an expert in airborne radar and worked very deep inside the Soviet military apparatus. Through meticulous research and vivid storytelling, Hoffman transports readers back in time to experience the high-stakes cat-and-mouse game that Tolkachev played with the KGB as he risked everything to provide top-secret information to the CIA.
The book opens by introducing Tolkachev, an electronic engineer working at a top-secret Soviet military installation outside Moscow in the 1970s. Driven by discontent with the oppressive Soviet system and desire to promote world peace, he makes contact with the CIA through anonymous letters. Thus begins a years-long covert relationship that yields a treasure trove of intelligence on Soviet weapons technology, some of which the KGB was unaware had been compromised.
Hoffman skillfully captures the nuanced psychology of Tolkachev, portraying him as a complex figure motivated by idealism yet also ambition and desire for prestige in spying. Through documents and firsthand accounts, the reader gains insight into what drove Tolkachev to undertake the immense personal risks of being a mole, even as his actions remained mysterious to his family and coworkers. His motivations feel profoundly human despite the extreme stakes.
Meanwhile, the CIA case officers who directed Tolkachev - collectively referred to as "Ramon" - receive in-depth examination. Hoffman reconstructs their ingenious spy craft methods for secretly meeting Tolkachev in dead-drops and brush passes, from disguise to handling one-time pads for encrypted messages. The operations were handled meticulously yet often nearly went wrong, keeping readers on the edge of their seats.
Tolkachev’s rolls of microfilm provided America with invaluable strategic advantage during the Cold War’s most perilous years, exposing everything from new Soviet bomber designs to weaknesses in their air defense systems. Using formerly classified documents, Hoffman explains the profound impacts on US policy and defense programs. At the same time, the KGB was always hunting for the mole, conducting surveillance on all CIA agents in search of the link.
Woven throughout the geopolitical backdrop is the human drama. Tolkachev lived a constant double life, torn between family and fatherland yet unable to share his secret work even with his wife. Meanwhile, the CIA officers struggled with distance and secrecy from their handler roles. In one heart-wrenching scene, a case officer's attempt to visit Tolkachev's family without revealing their connection highlights the personal toll of their dangerous work.
Tragically, in 1986 the KGB finally closes in on Tolkachev. In a nail-biting finale, Hoffman chronicles the spy's final risky dead-drops and the KGB's surveillance catch-up before they discover his identity. The epilogue explores the aftermath, from changed US-Russia diplomatic relations to the enduring secrecy surrounding Tolkachev even after the Cold War's end. Throughout, Hoffman handles potentially dry historical and technical subjects with pace and resonance.
What makes The Billion Dollar Spy such a tour de force is Hoffman's uncanny ability to imbue true events with all the pulse-pounding suspense of a masterful novel. From first page to last, he commands rapt attention through intimate character portraits, globetrotting locales and propulsive tension that seems to defy the known conclusion. The book has set a new high bar for the nonfiction spy genre.
In summary, David E. Hoffman has produced a nonfiction spy thriller that will enthrall intelligence aficionados and casual readers alike with its brilliant reconstruction of an espionage Cold War epic. Bringing to light secrets kept hidden for decades, The Billion Dollar Spy shines a revealing light on sacrifice, loyalty and geopolitical upheaval through the lens of one man's courageous betrayal. With its breakneck pacing, vivid storytelling and profound research, it stands out as a true tour de force of narrative nonfiction. This landmark work has ensured that Adolf Tolkachev's legacy will finally receive the recognition it deserves.
Hoffman gained unprecedented access to declassified documents and key figures involved to reconstruct the riveting saga of Adolf Tolkachev, a Soviet scientist who spied for the United States from the 1970s until his death in 1986. Tolkachev was an engineer who worked in a top-secret design laboratory. He was an expert in airborne radar and worked very deep inside the Soviet military apparatus. Through meticulous research and vivid storytelling, Hoffman transports readers back in time to experience the high-stakes cat-and-mouse game that Tolkachev played with the KGB as he risked everything to provide top-secret information to the CIA.
The book opens by introducing Tolkachev, an electronic engineer working at a top-secret Soviet military installation outside Moscow in the 1970s. Driven by discontent with the oppressive Soviet system and desire to promote world peace, he makes contact with the CIA through anonymous letters. Thus begins a years-long covert relationship that yields a treasure trove of intelligence on Soviet weapons technology, some of which the KGB was unaware had been compromised.
Hoffman skillfully captures the nuanced psychology of Tolkachev, portraying him as a complex figure motivated by idealism yet also ambition and desire for prestige in spying. Through documents and firsthand accounts, the reader gains insight into what drove Tolkachev to undertake the immense personal risks of being a mole, even as his actions remained mysterious to his family and coworkers. His motivations feel profoundly human despite the extreme stakes.
Meanwhile, the CIA case officers who directed Tolkachev - collectively referred to as "Ramon" - receive in-depth examination. Hoffman reconstructs their ingenious spy craft methods for secretly meeting Tolkachev in dead-drops and brush passes, from disguise to handling one-time pads for encrypted messages. The operations were handled meticulously yet often nearly went wrong, keeping readers on the edge of their seats.
Tolkachev’s rolls of microfilm provided America with invaluable strategic advantage during the Cold War’s most perilous years, exposing everything from new Soviet bomber designs to weaknesses in their air defense systems. Using formerly classified documents, Hoffman explains the profound impacts on US policy and defense programs. At the same time, the KGB was always hunting for the mole, conducting surveillance on all CIA agents in search of the link.
Woven throughout the geopolitical backdrop is the human drama. Tolkachev lived a constant double life, torn between family and fatherland yet unable to share his secret work even with his wife. Meanwhile, the CIA officers struggled with distance and secrecy from their handler roles. In one heart-wrenching scene, a case officer's attempt to visit Tolkachev's family without revealing their connection highlights the personal toll of their dangerous work.
Tragically, in 1986 the KGB finally closes in on Tolkachev. In a nail-biting finale, Hoffman chronicles the spy's final risky dead-drops and the KGB's surveillance catch-up before they discover his identity. The epilogue explores the aftermath, from changed US-Russia diplomatic relations to the enduring secrecy surrounding Tolkachev even after the Cold War's end. Throughout, Hoffman handles potentially dry historical and technical subjects with pace and resonance.
What makes The Billion Dollar Spy such a tour de force is Hoffman's uncanny ability to imbue true events with all the pulse-pounding suspense of a masterful novel. From first page to last, he commands rapt attention through intimate character portraits, globetrotting locales and propulsive tension that seems to defy the known conclusion. The book has set a new high bar for the nonfiction spy genre.
In summary, David E. Hoffman has produced a nonfiction spy thriller that will enthrall intelligence aficionados and casual readers alike with its brilliant reconstruction of an espionage Cold War epic. Bringing to light secrets kept hidden for decades, The Billion Dollar Spy shines a revealing light on sacrifice, loyalty and geopolitical upheaval through the lens of one man's courageous betrayal. With its breakneck pacing, vivid storytelling and profound research, it stands out as a true tour de force of narrative nonfiction. This landmark work has ensured that Adolf Tolkachev's legacy will finally receive the recognition it deserves.
August 28, 2019
This is a great book. And as always, reality trumps fiction.
You've all seen spy movies. I've seen them. Some good ones, too. But when you actually read a story about an actual agent behind the enemy lines, then you realize how things are so vastly different and so much more interesting than the supposed glamor-and-guns nonsense you see on the screen, or even read in fiction books.
The story of Adolf Tolkachev is sad, fascinating, full of compelling detail. I was amazed by how much depth there is in the book, even though it essentially depicts a twenty-odd meetings between CIA operators in the Moscow station and the disgruntled Soviet engineer handing them secrets about Soviet latest aviation radar technology. The stuff that helped the Americans save billions of dollars, years of research, and gave them technological supremacy well into the 90s.
And yet there it is. Meetings between the handlers and Tolkachev. The secret signs, the notes, the letters, the personal items that Tolkachev would request - like toothpaste, pencils and erasers for his son's architectural projects, Western music, books by dissidents, and then some rubles after all. All of this adds a complex human dimension to the story of betrayal and intrigue.
You know how it all ends. Still, you read it and enjoy every page.
Highly recommended.
Igor
You've all seen spy movies. I've seen them. Some good ones, too. But when you actually read a story about an actual agent behind the enemy lines, then you realize how things are so vastly different and so much more interesting than the supposed glamor-and-guns nonsense you see on the screen, or even read in fiction books.
The story of Adolf Tolkachev is sad, fascinating, full of compelling detail. I was amazed by how much depth there is in the book, even though it essentially depicts a twenty-odd meetings between CIA operators in the Moscow station and the disgruntled Soviet engineer handing them secrets about Soviet latest aviation radar technology. The stuff that helped the Americans save billions of dollars, years of research, and gave them technological supremacy well into the 90s.
And yet there it is. Meetings between the handlers and Tolkachev. The secret signs, the notes, the letters, the personal items that Tolkachev would request - like toothpaste, pencils and erasers for his son's architectural projects, Western music, books by dissidents, and then some rubles after all. All of this adds a complex human dimension to the story of betrayal and intrigue.
You know how it all ends. Still, you read it and enjoy every page.
Highly recommended.
Igor
March 29, 2023
Um livro de não-ficção que nos conta o trabalho de espionagem da CIA na União Soviética desde a década de 1950 a 1980.
Este livro culmina de uma coletânea de informações recolhidas de material confidencial e nunca antes divulgado.
O tom da escrita não é o melhor, senti alguma frieza e falta de empatia, para mim o autor não conseguiu passar grandes emoções ao leitor.
Gostava de ter conhecido mais do lado pessoal de Tolkachev, senti que as suas motivações não estavam descritas, faltando camadas e profundidade ao personagem.
No entanto, é uma história que está muito bem documentada e está recheada de informações. Com tanta informação apresentada, para mim acabou por ser uma leitura densa.
Um relato impressionante e muito informativo que irá agradar a todos os amantes da Guerra Fria e de espionagem.
Este livro culmina de uma coletânea de informações recolhidas de material confidencial e nunca antes divulgado.
O tom da escrita não é o melhor, senti alguma frieza e falta de empatia, para mim o autor não conseguiu passar grandes emoções ao leitor.
Gostava de ter conhecido mais do lado pessoal de Tolkachev, senti que as suas motivações não estavam descritas, faltando camadas e profundidade ao personagem.
No entanto, é uma história que está muito bem documentada e está recheada de informações. Com tanta informação apresentada, para mim acabou por ser uma leitura densa.
Um relato impressionante e muito informativo que irá agradar a todos os amantes da Guerra Fria e de espionagem.
February 13, 2023
Cartea descrie activitatea de spionaj a rusiei si cea a statelor unite, in perioada razboiului rece, oferind o atentie sporita activitatii unui inginer-sef de la institutul de cercetare si proiectare militara a urss care, fiind dezamagit si suparat pe politica patriei sale, isi ofera serviciile sale de spionaj celor de la CIA USA, contra unor sume enorme de bani si alte servicii/favoruri.
Cartea e bazata pe fapte reale si descrie evolutia colaborarii, textele scrisorilor, metodele aplicate, utilajul folosit, intalnirile avute, planurile elaborate, personajele implicate etc.
Recomand cartea nu doar celor interesati de spionaj, ci in general, celor interesati de conditia umana si preocuparile ei, aspiratii, vise, frustrari. Dincolo de firul narativ, istoria e un bun material de studiu pt cei preocupati de psihologie.
5/5
Cartea e bazata pe fapte reale si descrie evolutia colaborarii, textele scrisorilor, metodele aplicate, utilajul folosit, intalnirile avute, planurile elaborate, personajele implicate etc.
Recomand cartea nu doar celor interesati de spionaj, ci in general, celor interesati de conditia umana si preocuparile ei, aspiratii, vise, frustrari. Dincolo de firul narativ, istoria e un bun material de studiu pt cei preocupati de psihologie.
5/5
March 3, 2021
Bij dit boek moest ik even inkomen maar eenmaal begonnen zat ik er helemaal in. Het was super spannend en informatief en geeft het beeld weer van een echte spion en wat die spion betekent heeft voor de VS.
November 16, 2015
This book is a detailed investigation of the rise and fall of one particular Russian spy, Adik Tolkachev, who provided the USA with thousands and thousands of pages of technical secrets between circa 1978 and 1985. Most of the well-known Russian spies belonged to the KGB or GRU, and were usually only active when posted abroad, not when in Moscow and under constant surveillance. This man managed to pull off the seemingly impossible : to have more than 20 face-to-face meetings with a CIA officer in the heart of Moscow. That, in itself, makes this story unique and worth being read by anyone with an interest in cold war espionage.
The book is detailed, both in the discussions of tradecraft and in the description of the technical secrets that Tolkachev passed to the West. I found this fascinating reading, because it helped me realize how espionage contains a lot of tedium (daily checks on whether a specific window had been opened between the hours of noon and 1 pm; hours of walking about the frosty streets of Moscow to evade surveillance). All of these details really painted a chilling picture of Moscow in the late 1970s and early 1980s : the omnipresence of the KGB, the scarcity of food and everyday goods, the sheer dreariness of it all. For instance, I found it so interesting that Tolkachev kept asking the CIA for records of American rock music (Deep Purple! Nazareth! Uriah Heep!) or even simple things like good-quality erasers and drawing papers for his teenage son.
The book also provided background on the CIA's evolution as an intelligence agency. From the gung-ho early days, to the paralyzing paranoia of the Angleton years, and then the return to muscular anti-communism under Reagan, the philosophy of Cold War espionage went through several permuations, all of which influenced what the Moscow station could and could not do. The discussions that flowed back and forth between Langley and Moscow are illuminating : it's the typical disconnect between the desk people and the field people. The agents on the ground in Moscow believe in their agent, are concerned about the risks for him, and try to accommodate some of his requests (like a pair of earphones for his son). The folks back at headquarters need to be convinced by the spy's bona fides, force unwanted electronic equipment upon him and keep on asking him to take more and more risks, while simultaneously denying him the cyanide capsule he requests.
Among the book's pluses are the map and chronology at the beginning, the extensive footnotes, the bibliography and the attention to detail. Among the book's weaknesses are some disconnects in construction that seemed to have been inserted for no good reason that I can discern. For instance, the first chapter is about one of the CIA agents going through an elaborate ruse to give the KGB the slip and go meet with Tolkachev. But then the next chapter really starts at the beginning : at the very first contact between Tolkachev and the CIA. So that first chapter, which was probably intended to be a catchy beginning, is totally disconnected from what follows. Similarly, we don't find out about Tolkachev's antecedents until halfway through the book, and even that happens only after we read about his wife's family history (and that even though his wife plays no role in the story). I think that these chapters would have been more impactful if they had been placed at the point in the story where the CIA confirms the identity of the man who keeps on contacting them.
Still, overall the book was a fascinating read, down to the very end where Tolkachev is arrested by the KGB. The CIA can't figure out what happened, until they start to realize that their most precious asset had been betrayed by a former CIA agent.
The book is detailed, both in the discussions of tradecraft and in the description of the technical secrets that Tolkachev passed to the West. I found this fascinating reading, because it helped me realize how espionage contains a lot of tedium (daily checks on whether a specific window had been opened between the hours of noon and 1 pm; hours of walking about the frosty streets of Moscow to evade surveillance). All of these details really painted a chilling picture of Moscow in the late 1970s and early 1980s : the omnipresence of the KGB, the scarcity of food and everyday goods, the sheer dreariness of it all. For instance, I found it so interesting that Tolkachev kept asking the CIA for records of American rock music (Deep Purple! Nazareth! Uriah Heep!) or even simple things like good-quality erasers and drawing papers for his teenage son.
The book also provided background on the CIA's evolution as an intelligence agency. From the gung-ho early days, to the paralyzing paranoia of the Angleton years, and then the return to muscular anti-communism under Reagan, the philosophy of Cold War espionage went through several permuations, all of which influenced what the Moscow station could and could not do. The discussions that flowed back and forth between Langley and Moscow are illuminating : it's the typical disconnect between the desk people and the field people. The agents on the ground in Moscow believe in their agent, are concerned about the risks for him, and try to accommodate some of his requests (like a pair of earphones for his son). The folks back at headquarters need to be convinced by the spy's bona fides, force unwanted electronic equipment upon him and keep on asking him to take more and more risks, while simultaneously denying him the cyanide capsule he requests.
Among the book's pluses are the map and chronology at the beginning, the extensive footnotes, the bibliography and the attention to detail. Among the book's weaknesses are some disconnects in construction that seemed to have been inserted for no good reason that I can discern. For instance, the first chapter is about one of the CIA agents going through an elaborate ruse to give the KGB the slip and go meet with Tolkachev. But then the next chapter really starts at the beginning : at the very first contact between Tolkachev and the CIA. So that first chapter, which was probably intended to be a catchy beginning, is totally disconnected from what follows. Similarly, we don't find out about Tolkachev's antecedents until halfway through the book, and even that happens only after we read about his wife's family history (and that even though his wife plays no role in the story). I think that these chapters would have been more impactful if they had been placed at the point in the story where the CIA confirms the identity of the man who keeps on contacting them.
Still, overall the book was a fascinating read, down to the very end where Tolkachev is arrested by the KGB. The CIA can't figure out what happened, until they start to realize that their most precious asset had been betrayed by a former CIA agent.
January 20, 2016
Adolf Tolkachev's story is one of brilliant courage and heroism. That it ends in tragedy and betrayal only seems to accentuate the stakes that he faced in his struggle to tear down the totalitarian tyranny of the Soviet state. David Hoffman's telling of Tolkachev's story, as well as of the stories of the American spies and diplomats that worked with him, is thoroughly engrossing, describing in detail the meetings, plans, and efforts made to support one of America's most valuable Cold War agents.
Moscow of the late-1970s was a closed city to the espionage efforts of American intelligence agencies. The embassy was bugged and monitored by the KGB constantly. Staffers could not leave the embassy without trailing KGB agents following at an often less than discrete distances. Failed attempts to coopt and develop spies left the station officers shaken and demoralized.
Then a break happened: a man approached embassy staff, claiming to have access to Soviet military technology secrets. But was he the real deal, or just a KGB plant to expose CIA officers working in the embassy? After months of delay, the CIA took a chance on Adolf Tolkachev and found one of the most valuable spies to work for the United States. Over the years, he provided thousands of documents worth billions, giving the US a look at Soviet secrets that would tip the edge in military engagements for coming decade and beyond.
David Hoffman's The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal is a fascinating story, made more so because of how much it contrasts the Hollywood portrayal of espionage and spy craft. Instead of breakneck car chases through Moscow streets, protecting Tolkachev's identity required hours of patient walks through Russian neighborhoods and parks, involved bus trips with multiple stops, double backs, and frequent disguise changes. Spy craft was a work of patience, painstaking efforts, and nerve-wracking meetings. Slow and steady, clever and crafty were attributes more important than an ability to kill, infiltrate a secret facility, or survive an exploding helicopter. Hoffman tells it with fantastic detail, striking the right balance between the minute and the narrative.
As a piece of Cold War history, Hoffman's book is an enjoyable description of a chapter in the competition between the Soviet and American superpowers as it unfolded on the streets of Moscow.
Moscow of the late-1970s was a closed city to the espionage efforts of American intelligence agencies. The embassy was bugged and monitored by the KGB constantly. Staffers could not leave the embassy without trailing KGB agents following at an often less than discrete distances. Failed attempts to coopt and develop spies left the station officers shaken and demoralized.
Then a break happened: a man approached embassy staff, claiming to have access to Soviet military technology secrets. But was he the real deal, or just a KGB plant to expose CIA officers working in the embassy? After months of delay, the CIA took a chance on Adolf Tolkachev and found one of the most valuable spies to work for the United States. Over the years, he provided thousands of documents worth billions, giving the US a look at Soviet secrets that would tip the edge in military engagements for coming decade and beyond.
David Hoffman's The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal is a fascinating story, made more so because of how much it contrasts the Hollywood portrayal of espionage and spy craft. Instead of breakneck car chases through Moscow streets, protecting Tolkachev's identity required hours of patient walks through Russian neighborhoods and parks, involved bus trips with multiple stops, double backs, and frequent disguise changes. Spy craft was a work of patience, painstaking efforts, and nerve-wracking meetings. Slow and steady, clever and crafty were attributes more important than an ability to kill, infiltrate a secret facility, or survive an exploding helicopter. Hoffman tells it with fantastic detail, striking the right balance between the minute and the narrative.
As a piece of Cold War history, Hoffman's book is an enjoyable description of a chapter in the competition between the Soviet and American superpowers as it unfolded on the streets of Moscow.
January 17, 2021
A fun read on how the CIA conducted espionage in the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It's mostly written in a historical / documentary format, though some parts of the story are written more like a thriller spy novel. Of course, this is based on real events, so don't expect James Bond or Jason Bourne. Still, it's educational, entertaining, and makes you realize how crazy spy stories get even in the real world.
A few of my favorite takeaways:
- The Soviet secret police had thousands of agents following everyone, everywhere, all the time—especially any foreigners. As a result, the CIA and its informers had to expend a monumental effort every time they wanted lose their tails, sneaking out of office windows or the back of movie theaters, spending hours navigating streets and subways, dipping in and out of stores, and even intentionally trying to provoke the secret police as a way to check if they still had a tail or not.
- One method for losing a tail really stuck out to me: the "Jack in the Box." You'd head out in a car with 3 or 4 people, and the person in the front seat would have a cake in their lap. The secret police, as always, would have a car tailing you a few blocks behind—enough to see how many people are in your car, but not any real details. To lose this tail, the person in the front seat would first change into a disguise, and then you'd make a 90 degree turn on some street, so for a few seconds, the car tailing you couldn't see what's happening. During this brief window, you slow your car down a bit, and the person in the front seat hops out onto the street, but leaves the cake sitting in the front seat. But this is no ordinary cake: it's a special cake devised by the CIA, where with the push of a button, a cardboard cut out of a person pops up (this is the "Jack in the Box"), so it looks like there is still someone sitting in the front seat. Your car speeds up again, and at this point, the tail has made the turn onto the same street, and what they see is your car, with the same number of people in it, plus some stranger walking down the street.
- The number of tools, techniques, and spy gadgets was pretty wild. They provided spies with tiny cameras that worked in low light; one-time pads to encrypt messages; invisible ink so you could fill one side of a letter with an innocuous message, and the other side with secrets that would only be visible to someone who knew how to chemically treat the paper; and even pens filled with cyanide in case you were caught.
A few of my favorite takeaways:
- The Soviet secret police had thousands of agents following everyone, everywhere, all the time—especially any foreigners. As a result, the CIA and its informers had to expend a monumental effort every time they wanted lose their tails, sneaking out of office windows or the back of movie theaters, spending hours navigating streets and subways, dipping in and out of stores, and even intentionally trying to provoke the secret police as a way to check if they still had a tail or not.
- One method for losing a tail really stuck out to me: the "Jack in the Box." You'd head out in a car with 3 or 4 people, and the person in the front seat would have a cake in their lap. The secret police, as always, would have a car tailing you a few blocks behind—enough to see how many people are in your car, but not any real details. To lose this tail, the person in the front seat would first change into a disguise, and then you'd make a 90 degree turn on some street, so for a few seconds, the car tailing you couldn't see what's happening. During this brief window, you slow your car down a bit, and the person in the front seat hops out onto the street, but leaves the cake sitting in the front seat. But this is no ordinary cake: it's a special cake devised by the CIA, where with the push of a button, a cardboard cut out of a person pops up (this is the "Jack in the Box"), so it looks like there is still someone sitting in the front seat. Your car speeds up again, and at this point, the tail has made the turn onto the same street, and what they see is your car, with the same number of people in it, plus some stranger walking down the street.
- The number of tools, techniques, and spy gadgets was pretty wild. They provided spies with tiny cameras that worked in low light; one-time pads to encrypt messages; invisible ink so you could fill one side of a letter with an innocuous message, and the other side with secrets that would only be visible to someone who knew how to chemically treat the paper; and even pens filled with cyanide in case you were caught.
October 5, 2019
Jei labai trumpai, tai knyga, kuri pakeitė mano vykimo į/iš darbo ypročius. Paprastai visuomeniniame transporte brauzinau soc. tinklus ar šiaip naujienas. Parsisiuntęs į telefoną šią knygą, dar belaukdamas stotelėje autobuso pradėdavau skaityti. Tiesiog nuostabi knyga apie tai, kaip Šaltojo karo metais visą dešimtmetį vyrukas vogė rusų karines paslaptis ir perdavinėjo CŽV Maskvoje. Ir visa tai vyko vos 5km nuo Lubiankos, KGB irštvos. Tikra istorija apie nerealios drąsos vyruką, skyrusį savo gyvenimą kovai su Blogio imperija, būdamas tos imperijos piliečiu. O jo pagalba JAV kariškiai sutaupė MILIJARDUS dolerių ir įgijo ženklų pranašumą ore prieš sovietų naikintuvus, kas ir buvo pademonstruota Operacijos Audra dykumoje metu Kuveite ir Irake. Labai rekomenduoju!
August 24, 2018
A little too much rehashing of material. But otherwise a really deep look at cia spying in the late 70s - mid 80s.
December 12, 2020
The Billion Dollar Spy gets at the crushing paranoia of running intelligence operations at the height of the Cold War in Moscow, right under the nose of the KGB. Adolf Tolchakev was a Russian radar engineer who had grown disenchanted with the Soviet Union, a country that crushed liberty and failed to provide for its people. This middle aged engineer with impeccable credentials began passing notes into the windows of American diplomatic cars (by chance his first target was a CIA officer and not an actual diplomat). It took years for the CIA to decide that Tolchakev was for real, and not a KGB gambit.
They provided cameras, and Tolchakev delivered thousands of page outlining the latest in Soviet R&D for radars, especially high-tech look-down/shoot-down designs which would give Soviet interceptors much better odds against the American bomber fleet. The US Air Force estimated the value of Tolchakev's intelligence as billions of dollars saved in R&D costs.
This book has two themes. The first are the Moscow Rules and operating "in the black". Americans in Moscow were routinely followed by the KGB. Any meetings with agents or transfer of items by dead drop had to be proceeded by breaking surveillance, going black in CIA parlance. Where the Mendez' book Moscow Rules presents this as sleight of hand, entertaining war stories, Hoffman focuses on the isolation and paranoia that agents experience. You could never know if you were clear, and failure would mean the arrest and execution of your agent.
The second is the psychological pressure of being a spy. In being a case agent is hard, being a spy is much harder. Most agents are abnormal in some ways, and the CIA had to balance Tolchakev's demands for cash, a suicide pill, and then consumer goods and medicine only available on the black market, with their fears that he would be unable to explain where the money or goods came from, or take the pill in a moment of weakness. But Tolchakev's desire to hurt the USSR, inspired by dissident physicist Andrei Sakharov and defector MiG-25 pilot Viktor Belenko drove him to stay on the job.
I avoided googling anything from this case, because I hoped that Tolchakev would make it out alive, but he was down in by betrayal from within the CIA, as two officers turned traitors, Edward Lee Howard and Aldrich Ames, turned over information revealing a high level source in the radar institute. The KGB was able to identify Tolchakev as the source, and he was arrested and executed. I've read a fair number of books on the spy game, and this is one of the best.
They provided cameras, and Tolchakev delivered thousands of page outlining the latest in Soviet R&D for radars, especially high-tech look-down/shoot-down designs which would give Soviet interceptors much better odds against the American bomber fleet. The US Air Force estimated the value of Tolchakev's intelligence as billions of dollars saved in R&D costs.
This book has two themes. The first are the Moscow Rules and operating "in the black". Americans in Moscow were routinely followed by the KGB. Any meetings with agents or transfer of items by dead drop had to be proceeded by breaking surveillance, going black in CIA parlance. Where the Mendez' book Moscow Rules presents this as sleight of hand, entertaining war stories, Hoffman focuses on the isolation and paranoia that agents experience. You could never know if you were clear, and failure would mean the arrest and execution of your agent.
The second is the psychological pressure of being a spy. In being a case agent is hard, being a spy is much harder. Most agents are abnormal in some ways, and the CIA had to balance Tolchakev's demands for cash, a suicide pill, and then consumer goods and medicine only available on the black market, with their fears that he would be unable to explain where the money or goods came from, or take the pill in a moment of weakness. But Tolchakev's desire to hurt the USSR, inspired by dissident physicist Andrei Sakharov and defector MiG-25 pilot Viktor Belenko drove him to stay on the job.
I avoided googling anything from this case, because I hoped that Tolchakev would make it out alive, but he was down in by betrayal from within the CIA, as two officers turned traitors, Edward Lee Howard and Aldrich Ames, turned over information revealing a high level source in the radar institute. The KGB was able to identify Tolchakev as the source, and he was arrested and executed. I've read a fair number of books on the spy game, and this is one of the best.
July 18, 2015
Growing up in the '70s and '80s, the Cold War and it's concomitant threat of nuclear extinction was constantly in our faces in the form of television specials and pop lyrics. Who remembers "The Day After" or the lyrics to "99 Luftballoons"?
But I never really understood what was going on in Moscow. "The Billion Dollar Spy" is the fascinating true story of Adolf Tolkachev, a Soviet engineer who for personal reasons wanted to pass critical engineering secrets to the United States. We also learn about other Soviet spies, double agents, the lengths and tricks required to "go black" (escape KGB surveillance), and what life was like for the Soviets in the USSR during this time period.
It's true the book doesn't read like a novel -- because it's not. It is an amazingly well-researched narrative spliced from CIA operational cables and other source materials to be a story-line a lay person can follow and wonder at. I recommend this book for anyone who would like a better understanding of all the CIA did to protect the United States' from losing world position to the Soviets during the Cold War.
But I never really understood what was going on in Moscow. "The Billion Dollar Spy" is the fascinating true story of Adolf Tolkachev, a Soviet engineer who for personal reasons wanted to pass critical engineering secrets to the United States. We also learn about other Soviet spies, double agents, the lengths and tricks required to "go black" (escape KGB surveillance), and what life was like for the Soviets in the USSR during this time period.
It's true the book doesn't read like a novel -- because it's not. It is an amazingly well-researched narrative spliced from CIA operational cables and other source materials to be a story-line a lay person can follow and wonder at. I recommend this book for anyone who would like a better understanding of all the CIA did to protect the United States' from losing world position to the Soviets during the Cold War.
December 17, 2015
Having just read two books in the same genre by Ben MacIntyre, I found this one incredibly dull, repetitious, full of meaningless detail, and a very convincing portrayal of the CIA as an ineffective bureaucracy populated by incredibly obtuse people. Here are two events amusing in their ineptness.
The spy, who lives with wife and 12 year old son in a three room apartment is asked to immediately walk out the door and meet his handler when he receives a call from the handler. After a couple of these calls, the spy has to tell the handler that this is not a good arrangement because his family is getting curious, something the handler had not anticipated.
Our CIA hero goes to great trouble and risk to call the spy during the intermission of a ballet performance only to introduce himself to the spy and tell him that he will be in contact at a later time to make arrangements. If each contact is so risky and worrisome, wouldn't you make it count for more?
I truly hope that this book is a disinformation campaign by the CIA to downplay their abilities because if it is not we, as a nation, have a lot to worry about.
The spy, who lives with wife and 12 year old son in a three room apartment is asked to immediately walk out the door and meet his handler when he receives a call from the handler. After a couple of these calls, the spy has to tell the handler that this is not a good arrangement because his family is getting curious, something the handler had not anticipated.
Our CIA hero goes to great trouble and risk to call the spy during the intermission of a ballet performance only to introduce himself to the spy and tell him that he will be in contact at a later time to make arrangements. If each contact is so risky and worrisome, wouldn't you make it count for more?
I truly hope that this book is a disinformation campaign by the CIA to downplay their abilities because if it is not we, as a nation, have a lot to worry about.
June 25, 2016
Gripping.. more so for non-fiction, and the similarities between the espionage activities and what one sees in the movies is thrilling beyond words..understanding why US had an edge in technology well into the 90s is explained with the work of a man who decided, at great personal peril, to work for the greater good, and ultimately met his end because another self righteous American brat decided he wasn't given his due credit.. worth a read.
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