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

Review

91 of 98 people found the following review helpful. John Le Carre got it wrongBy Mal WarwickIf 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.119 of 129 people found the following review helpful. Unsung But Invaluable Men And WomenBy John D. CofieldHere is a spell-binding story of the late Cold War. In the late 1970s and early 1980s the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in an apparently permanent deadlock in which neither side was able to gain a decisive advantage. Then one evening in Moscow a man knocked on the window of an American diplomat at a filling station and handed him an envelope. That momentary encounter was to lead to a years long and highly productive relationship which gave the US crucial access to Soviet planning and technological developments. It is not overstating things to say that that meeting was one of the turning points of twentieth century history. David E Hoffman is the ideal writer for this riveting tale; with long experience at the Washington Post and PBS and as the Pulitzer Prize winning author of several histories of the Cold War and of Russia.In the 1960s and early 1970s US espionage within the Soviet Union was almost non-existent; thanks primarily to the influence of the brilliant but paranoid James J. Angleton; head of Counter-Intelligence at the CIA. Angleton believed that no Russian defector and no offer of intelligence from Russians could be trusted because they were all part of a complex Soviet plot to mislead the West. It was not until after Angleton was forced to retire in 1974 that the CIA began to develop contacts within the Soviet system; including military and KGB officials who were willing to provide intelligence. The most valuable of these contacts; the so-called billion dollar spy; was the man who rapped on the diplomat's car window. Adolf Tolkachev was an engineer with high security clearances who willingly provided enormous amounts of information over a period of several years.Tolkachev's story makes up the bulk of The Billion Dollar Spy; but there is also plenty of material about other Soviet spies and about the CIA operatives who worked with them. Hoffman does a fine job of recreating the nerve-wracking tension of being on duty at the Moscow station; working for months to plan a meeting with a contact which might last only a few minutes or might not even come off at all. Always there was the threat that the KGB was watching and waiting; which would mean certain arrest and eventual execution for the Soviet spy and exposure and expulsion for the American agents working with him or her. Hoffman does just as good a job of describing the lives of Tolkachev and other Soviet spies; the constant tension and fear under which they labored; the tedious and highly dangerous methods of collecting and copying information for the West; and the effect the stress had on them and their families. I found Hoffman's descriptions of the evasions and tricks played by US agents attempting to evade the KGB fascinating; as was Hoffman's story of the disaffected American who eventually betrayed Tolkachev to the Soviets.This book is almost unputdownable; a fascinating chronicle of the last years of the Cold War. Those of us who lived through the 1970s and 1980s knew of the changes in US and Soviet leadership and of the ups and downs of superpower relationships during that era; but very few would have had any idea of the dangerous careers so many men and women led in those years. The Billion Dollar Spy does much to illuminate the dedication and hard work of some whose names may never be widely known; but who nevertheless played crucial roles at a momentous time in history.1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Enlightening!!!!!!By Rebecca GonzalezThe narrative showed the complex planning of spying. The portrait painted; of a Soviet citizen's daily life; was not pleasant. The complete control exercised by the state was daunting; unpleasant; and sstressful. One can see why Russians defect.