Engineer-turned-spy invaluable to Cold War-era CIA

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This article was published 22/08/2015 (4022 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Cold War dominated world history in the latter half of the 20th century.

It was a global competition for spheres of influence between the United States and the Soviet Union, the two superpowers that emerged after the Second World War.

Author David E. Hoffman, a contributing editor at the Washington Post, has written a gripping true story of Cold War espionage.

While the Cold War never escalated into open military combat between the U.S. and the Soviet Union it was contested, Hoffman remarks, “in the shadows between war and peace.”

On the front lines of this struggle was the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Founded in 1947, the CIA was originally intended to provide objective analysis of intelligence, but its role quickly expanded into espionage and covert action.

There was one place, however, where the CIA had not been able to gain a foothold: the Soviet Union, and especially Moscow.

It was simply too dangerous. Moscow was swarming with KGB, the Soviet secret police.

Soviet dictator Josef Stalin had created a brutal, closed society rife with suspicion.

The CIA’s fortunes in Moscow were to change dramatically in the late 1970s, Hoffman writes, when Soviet engineer and radar specialist Adolf Tolkachev clandestinely contacted the CIA and offered to spy for the Americans.

After some initial caution — the CIA had to ensure Tolkachev was not a “dangle,” a plant controlled by the KGB to mislead the Americans — the agency realized he was legitimate and a productive, albeit risky, relationship began.

Ultimately, Tolkachev was to meet with CIA officers 21 times during six years on the streets of Moscow. Most of these meetings, Hoffman observes, were held within five kilometres of KGB headquarters.

At these meetings, Tolkachev passed to the CIA diagrams and documents he would smuggle out of his laboratory, take to his apartment, photograph with a camera supplied by the CIA, and then return to the laboratory.

Sometimes, he would even photograph documents in the washroom at the laboratory.

What motivated Tolkachev to take such risks? He detested the Soviet regime, and wanted to damage it as much as he could, describing himself as a “dissident at heart.”

The intelligence Tolkachev provided to the CIA was invaluable. The U.S. Air Force estimated Tolkachev’s material had saved it about $2 billion in research and development costs.

Tolkachev had “unlocked the secrets of Soviet radar and revealed sensitive plans for research on weapons systems a decade into the future.”

The Tolkachev operation, however, ended badly. He was betrayed by a disgruntled former CIA employee who defected to the Soviets. Tolkachev was arrested and executed in 1986.

Hoffman’s narrative is an intense, dramatic and ultimately tragic story of what he calls “the shadow war against communism.”

 

Graeme Voyer is a Winnipeg writer.