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

by David E. Hoffman

  Rolph wrote to headquarters that “sudden acquisition” of the records might raise eyebrows and demand “uncomfortable explanations.” He added, “We know that records of the type he has requested are occasionally available in Moscow (on the black market) but the cost is generally high. If we knew his son already had a sizeable collection, adding a few more (cut by European companies) would probably do little harm. We would not, however, want to be his son’s sole supplier.” The stereo catalog might be easier to hide, he added, but “how his son might handle this ‘windfall’ is a big unknown.” Would Tolkachev next ask them for a turntable and speakers? The tussle over the L-pill was still fresh in everyone’s mind. The Moscow station did not want to reject such a simple request from Tolkachev, but they were worried about his security. They decided to pause, tell Tolkachev of their concern in December, and ask him how the records would be handled and stored. If Tolkachev could obtain a reel-to-reel tape player, they thought, the CIA might provide the music on tapes. That would be harder to trace.4

  Day after day, with his Pentax camera clamped to the back of a chair, Tolkachev copied documents. The rolls of 35 mm film he gave to Rolph in October produced 920 frames containing 817 pages. Soon, headquarters was pressing Moscow for more at the behest of the “customers” of intelligence, primarily the air force, the navy, the National Security Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency. When he met Guilsher in 1979, Tolkachev had turned over five circuit boards from the RP-23 radar project and schematic drawings to go with them. The schematics were rushed to headquarters for translation and the electronics sent elsewhere for inspection and analysis.

  Now, in the fall of 1980, headquarters wanted Rolph to ask Tolkachev for some additional circuit boards, or pieces of electronic equipment. The military customers were becoming insatiable, Rolph thought. He worried they were pushing so hard they might endanger Tolkachev’s security. Rolph had always respected the logic in Tolkachev’s method: removing documents, then returning them the same day. Nobody was the wiser once the papers were safely back in the files. But hardware was another story. If a piece of hardware was missing—because it could not be replaced—an internal investigation would most certainly result. This demand for electronics and spare parts could sink them.

  Gerber resisted a suggestion from headquarters that they give Tolkachev a wish list of electronic parts. Just because Tolkachev had “passed a piece of equipment one time in the past does not shed any light on his continued access, his ability to remove such equipment safely or the degree of risk involved,” he wrote. If they pressed Tolkachev for more spare parts, Gerber added, “he might consider that we are squeezing him and consequently become either more demanding or more difficult.” Or, Gerber speculated, Tolkachev might get reckless and take chances to steal more circuit boards, endangering his security. “Armed with a list of specific material requirements, CKS is type of person who may manufacture transparent and dangerously insecure means to procure the items.” Gerber suggested that they simply ask Tolkachev at the next meeting whether he could get his hands on any more electronics and added, “We believe it is of major importance to ensure that [Tolkachev] does nothing to harm his security.”5

  On Monday, December 8, 1980, at 8:25 p.m., Rolph went to see Tolkachev in a wooded park at the Moscow Zoo, located near Tolkachev’s apartment building. Tolkachev often passed the zoo while walking to work. They had planned the meeting months earlier, and Rolph wanted to stick to the schedule, even though superpower hostility seemed to be ratcheting up again. On November 4, Ronald Reagan had been elected fortieth president of the United States. Then, in early December, there had been a scare over a possible Soviet invasion of Poland. In the end, Soviet troops didn’t cross the border, but the Moscow station was braced for heavy KGB surveillance. Rolph was determined to go ahead with the meeting. “Just get it right on the street,” Gerber told Rolph.

  That night, the park seemed empty. Rolph intended to spend more time with Tolkachev than he had during the hurried meeting in October. Rolph carried with him a shopping bag, typical for any Russian on the street, with parcels wrapped to look like ordinary purchases of a Muscovite on the lookout for food and goods.

  Tolkachev seemed relaxed. They strolled in the park like two old friends. Rolph was listening for surveillance on his SRR-100 radio but heard nothing; his eyes scanned the park for unwanted attention, but all was quiet. The park was so close to Tolkachev’s apartment tower that Rolph could see it rise above the tree line.

  Rolph reached into his shopping bag and gave Tolkachev the wrapped pen. Inside was the L-pill and the instructions. “This is what you wanted, the means for self-destruction,” he said. He did not see the point of emphasizing once again that he hoped Tolkachev would never have to use it. Tolkachev looked pleased that at last he had the suicide pill in his pocket. Rolph asked him to examine the concealment at some later date and tell the CIA if he wanted something different from a fountain pen.

  The CIA’s technical division had worked for months to replicate the library permission sheet and the building pass for Tolkachev. Rolph gave Tolkachev the fakes, based on the drawings and photographs Tolkachev had provided in October. It was too dark to see them, but Rolph asked Tolkachev to examine them and report back later. The CIA had replicated the library permission sheet with just a few signatures. The fake building pass was not as urgent, but Rolph still hoped it might prove useful. He also remembered to bring batteries for Tolkachev’s Pentax camera, small flat disks that were scarce in Moscow. Tolkachev was delighted. Rolph felt that his reaction said a lot about the man. Tolkachev was intent on photographing as much as possible, and the batteries would allow him to keep working without interruption.

  Worried about Tolkachev’s security, Rolph proposed some new procedures. On the day of a planned meeting, he said, Tolkachev must first signal he was ready by turning on the light in his kitchen between 12:15 and 1:00 p.m. The Moscow station would send someone out—maybe one of the wives—to check. The signal was code-named svet, or “light,” and visible from the street. If the light was off, the CIA would not come to a meeting. Rolph also gave Tolkachev new plans for an “emergency call out” once a month, to be used for an impromptu meeting only if absolutely necessary. It was dangerous, but if Tolkachev had urgent developments or faced a real threat, it might be worth the risk. Rolph also suggested they set up a signal site at a market near the zoo. When Tolkachev’s car was parked in a designated spot by the market at a preordained hour, it would indicate he was ready for a meeting.

  For the first time, Rolph described to Tolkachev the capability of Discus, the CIA’s agent communications device. He explained that the handheld units would allow them to send burst messages on the street while standing some distance away from each other, say several hundred meters apart. The device gave them a way to pass intelligence wordlessly and without actually meeting each other. Tolkachev brightened at the prospect of using it. Rolph said he would attempt to have Discus ready for the next meeting.

  As they walked, Rolph asked Tolkachev whether he could get more circuit boards or electronic parts like those he gave to Guilsher a year earlier. Would it even be possible? Was it safe? Instead of brushing off the request, as Rolph assumed he might, Tolkachev said matter-of-factly that it was possible. He asked Rolph if the CIA could prepare a list. As it happened, Rolph already had one—sent from headquarters in the weeks before—and he gave it to Tolkachev. Rolph didn’t ask him to look at it; they could barely see in the dark.

  Rolph then spoke to Tolkachev about the CIA’s worries over the rock music, approaching it gently, not wanting to trigger any anger or disappointment. If the albums were discovered, Rolph said, he was afraid they could get Tolkachev into trouble. How would he explain them? Are they available on the black market? Where do you plan to keep them? Will you have to hide them from friends and visitors to the apartment? Would your son’s friends start asking uncomfortable questions?

  Tolkachev
grew animated, and his eyes flashed self-confidence. He told Rolph that he would have no difficulty explaining the presence of the albums in his apartment. They are all available on the black market in Moscow, he explained, but he was personally reluctant to go there. Tolkachev said he would accept the music on tape, if necessary, and told Rolph he already owned a Hitachi cassette player, about three years old, which he had purchased at a komissiony magazin, a store where people could sell their possessions on consignment, usually clothes but occasionally electronics.

  Time was running out. Tolkachev gave Rolph a ten-page handwritten note, in which he proposed to finally settle the issue of his compensation.6

  At the last minute, Rolph remembered there was an urgent question from headquarters. In August 1980, the United States had revealed the existence of “stealth” technology, making airplanes nearly invisible to radar. What did Tolkachev know about the Soviet response to the American “stealth” airplanes? And was there a Soviet stealth? Tolkachev said he had heard of the “invisible airplane” but didn’t know the answer and didn’t want to pass on information to Rolph about which he was uncertain.

  They had been walking for twenty minutes. Rolph reached into his bag and pulled out two slender books in Russian as New Year’s gifts from the CIA. One was a tract by Andrei Sakharov, the nuclear physicist turned dissident, whom Tolkachev admired. The other was a thin volume by Anatoly Fedoseyev, a prominent Soviet radar and electronics designer who had developed the vacuum tubes that were used in land-based radars that ringed the Soviet Union. Fedoseyev had received the highest state awards, including Hero of Socialist Labor and the Lenin Prize. He went to France in May 1971 as a ranking member of a Soviet delegation to the Paris Air Show, then defected to the United Kingdom. His disillusionment with the Soviet system had closely paralleled Tolkachev’s—the shortages, the dysfunction, the failures of socialism. Fedoseyev described it in a book, titled “Trap,” that Rolph now handed to Tolkachev.

  Sakharov had defected, ideologically, from the Soviet system. Fedoseyev had defected physically. Tolkachev had defected, too, in his own way, landing hammer blows from within.

  He thanked Rolph, but his voice trailed off. The hour was late. They shook hands, and he disappeared.7

  At CIA headquarters, a turning point came in early 1981. Reagan entered office determined to ignite a sense of activism and renewed energy in the CIA, an instrument in his larger campaign to aggressively confront the Soviet Union. In a shift from the doubts of the Carter years, Reagan’s approach to the world was unapologetically muscular and grounded in a belief in American exceptionalism, that the United States was the “last best hope of man on earth,” as he often declared. Those who risked their lives for the United States around the globe—sailors, soldiers, aviators, and intelligence officers—carried a special mystique for Reagan; he believed, as the aviation pioneer General James Doolittle had suggested a generation before, that it was worthy to go to almost any length to protect freedom in the face of totalitarianism. To lead the CIA, Reagan chose William J. Casey, a New York lawyer and Republican stalwart who had served in the Office of Strategic Services in London during World War II and been chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission in the Nixon years. Casey, who served as Reagan’s 1980 campaign manager, was a rumpled, slightly stooped figure with wisps of white hair. His speech was often slurred and hard to decipher. But he was possessed of a rigid certainty about what he wanted to do. His appointment signaled a desire for espionage that was more daring and forward leaning. While Turner had sought to minimize risks, Casey relished taking them; while Turner had distrusted human sources, Casey demanded recruitment of more agents.8 Casey also shared Reagan’s enduring antipathy toward Soviet communism, which dominated his thinking and drove his judgments.

  On a cold morning in Washington, January 15, 1981, five days before Reagan was to take the oath, Turner, the outgoing CIA director, arrived at Blair House, the historic guest quarters across the street from the White House, where Reagan was staying. He was met by Reagan, the vice president elect, George H. W. Bush, who had been CIA director before Turner, and Casey. The occasion was Turner’s final intelligence briefing, to share with the new president the nation’s most closely guarded and sensitive intelligence secrets. As they sat in a private room, Turner outlined a covert action program in Afghanistan to support the fighters opposing the Soviet occupation. He described how U.S. Navy submarines had secretly tapped Soviet underwater communications cables. These were truly audacious operations. But the jewel of all jewels, he told Reagan, was a human source who worked in a Moscow military research institute. He not only provided hard documentation of Soviet radar and avionics capabilities in the present but also revealed research and development a decade into the future. His name was Adolf Tolkachev, and his intelligence was worth billions.9

  Two months later, on March 10, 1981, the beat-up old beige-and-green Volkswagen van rattled out of the U.S. embassy compound in Moscow. Once again in disguise, Rolph slipped past the guards. His mission, to meet Tolkachev, was extremely delicate because he was carrying Discus, the CIA’s electronic messaging device. Rolph did not want to get caught with it, nor did he want the KGB to ever lay their hands on one. For fifty minutes, he watched for possible surveillance from the van, zigzagging around town. Rolph heard some KGB transmissions on his radio, but they seemed unrelated to him. He then took off the disguise, stepped onto the street, and walked for an hour, listening carefully and watching. No signs of surveillance anywhere. At 9:05 p.m., he arrived at a meeting site, code-named anna, located in a park, and spotted Tolkachev, standing at a phone booth. He and Tolkachev began to walk and talk, choosing paths randomly through the park. A few people walking dogs and just strolling saw them but paid no attention.10

  Rolph informed Tolkachev that the CIA had accepted his plan for the money. It was a deal—no questions asked. Tolkachev seemed satisfied and said no more about it.

  Tolkachev reported that the CIA’s replica of the library permission sheet was excellent. He had already replaced it, but the building pass was still not right. The color of the cover was off; it would not work. The cover and the inside page holding his photograph were made of different materials that the CIA had not adequately replicated. Nor did they properly reproduce the color of the swirls on the inside paper.

  Rolph handed Tolkachev another parcel. Inside, he said, you’ll find the elektronniy pribor, the electronic equipment, or the Discus. Be very careful, Rolph insisted, and read all the instructions before using it. Rolph repeated, “Read the instructions,” and Tolkachev said he understood. Rolph also emphasized that Discus was for use when there was an urgent message that could not wait until their next meeting. He tried to keep the tone upbeat and confident: we want you to use it, he said, perhaps over the summer when we are not meeting regularly.11

  Rolph did not reveal to Tolkachev that he and Gerber had serious doubts about whether Discus would be useful at all. In the Moscow station, one of the most basic principles of espionage was don’t ever carry out operational acts without a solid justification. The Discus required operational acts, but for what? Tolkachev’s great value was in the thousands of documents he copied, not short electronic bursts. As a practical matter, the CIA never had time to train Tolkachev or practice on the device with him.12

  Gerber and Hathaway argued back and forth for months about Discus. Hathaway was a headstrong believer. The CIA’s prized spy in Warsaw, Ryszard Kuklinski, was given an earlier version, called Iskra. Despite some malfunctions, Kuklinski used it to warn the CIA in January 1981 that plans were being drawn up for the Polish military in the event of martial law. In response, Hathaway sent a congratulatory note to the Warsaw station. “I hope this is the first of many, many more to come,” he wrote. Later, after a second Kuklinski transmission, headquarters cabled to the Warsaw station that the spy “obviously likes his new toy.”13

  Hathaway felt that Tolkachev would like it too. The dream, t
o use technology for covert communications, was broadly shared among operational people at headquarters. They always attempted to push beyond where the KGB might be looking. In covert communications, that sometimes meant deploying an early version of technology, like the Discus; the thinking was that the most secret of all technologies is the one that the other person doesn’t suspect exists.14

  But Gerber responded that it was never that simple. Moscow case officers were under surveillance far more than in Warsaw. Why scramble a station officer for a message that might say, “Hello, all is fine”?

  Despite the doubts, the Moscow station complied with Hathaway’s request. The Discus was now in Tolkachev’s hands. Rolph also gave him forty-two AA batteries.

  Tolkachev handed over fifty-five rolls of 35 mm film that he had taken since their last meeting. He told Rolph that he might have only five to ten more rolls by June and didn’t anticipate much production over the summer; with the warm weather, he could not wear the overcoat to hide the documents at lunchtime. He also planned a monthlong vacation.

  Rolph knew that a lot of what Tolkachev planned to steal for the CIA had already been taken, well ahead of his own seven-stage, twelve-year schedule.15 But just as Tolkachev reached this point, the appetite at headquarters was mushrooming. They seemed to want Tolkachev to produce fifty or a hundred rolls of film every time. Rolph was irritated at the demands but could see what was happening. 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. So headquarters was naturally inclined to push the envelope. They asked, can he just check out a few more things? Rolph felt that Tolkachev had single-handedly built a Brooklyn Bridge, and now headquarters wanted him to build a Golden Gate Bridge as well. Still, Rolph carried a letter that had been sent by headquarters, with a list of forty-five wide-ranging questions about Soviet weapons systems. He gave it to Tolkachev and asked for answers at their next meeting.