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

by David E. Hoffman

  On this morning, Captain Pitts walked slowly around the aircraft for a visual check, scanned the logbook, then climbed into the cockpit. Once in the sky, he enjoyed stunning visibility in all directions. The plane sloped down from the pilot’s shoulders. The sensation was like sitting on the end of a pencil.1

  Pitts was airborne at 5:00 a.m., flying as the right wingman in a “four-ship,” a formation of four F-15C aircraft. Operation Desert Storm was a military campaign to force Iraq out of Kuwait. The Fifty-Eighth Tactical Fighter Squadron of the U.S. Air Force Thirty-Third Tactical Fighter Wing, known informally as the Gorillas, had already flown three missions into Iraq. Pitts was thirty-four years old and had longed to fly since he was a boy growing up in Anchorage, Alaska.

  In the U.S. Air Force, he had trained for hundreds of hours on the F-15C, but this was his first war—and his first days in combat.

  Pitts and the plane he was flying embodied what the air force and the navy had learned from the debacle of Vietnam. Back then, F-4 Phantom pilots had often been outgunned by Soviet-built MiG fighters flown by the North Vietnamese. The Phantom pilots needed to flip twelve switches to fire a missile; they lost precious seconds to the more nimble MiGs. By contrast, in the F-15 cockpit a pilot could search for, detect, lock on, and fire at an approaching MiG without ever taking his hands off the throttle and stick or looking down from his heads-up display. He just had to move the fingers of his left and right hands on buttons, what pilots called playing the piccolo. The F-15C’s chaff dispensers carried dielectric fibers that were cut to lengths designed precisely to blind MiG radars. The F-15C tactical electronic warfare suite was wired to thwart Soviet avionics. The F-15C could accurately target and fire a missile at an enemy MiG beyond visual range, or so far away that Pitts could not see it.

  In Vietnam, American pilots used rigid tactics, flying in close formations that were easily outfoxed by the North Vietnamese fighters. After the war, the United States transformed pilot training, and a new generation was encouraged to be more flexible and make their own combat decisions. Soviet pilots had traditionally been told what to do from the ground; Americans were trained to know the enemy’s capabilities and counter them on the fly. To help them react faster, data links were built to bring American pilots all the information they needed at high speed. Pitts was a product of this transformation in training. He had flown three “Red Flag” exercises, simulating possible dogfights against a Soviet bloc adversary. He had studied the threat manuals on the MiG-25 and the MiG-29, and his generation of pilots had benefited from information gleaned from constant peg, a top secret operation in which air force pilots trained against older Soviet-built MiGs in the Nevada desert.

  Pitts and the other three F-15C pilots refueled from an aerial tanker and then waited. A bombing mission they were assigned to accompany was canceled. For a while, they remained aloft because of intelligence that Saddam Hussein might flee Iraq. By midday, it appeared Hussein wasn’t going anywhere, and the four-ship returned to their base in Saudi Arabia. Pitts was thinking about getting some sleep.

  Just minutes after touchdown, the Gorillas were ordered to refuel and take off again. The mission was to fly over Iraq to see if the Americans could goad the reluctant Iraqi air force into the sky. In the early days of the war, it was an important objective to win total air superiority. Saddam possessed twenty-five of the fast MiG-25 interceptors and thirty of the latest MiG-29 fighters, with look-down, shoot-down radar, as well as hundreds of older Soviet-built aircraft. Iraq had been at war with Iran for eight years in the previous decade, so it was safe to assume that Iraqi pilots were experienced. But the Iraqis were avoiding an air battle, and not many were flying.

  During the aerial refueling over Saudi Arabia, Pitts and his four-ship got word that two groups of “bogies”—unidentified planes—had been spotted by the powerful U.S. airborne early warning and control system, the E-3 Sentry, or AWACS, another technological triumph that could scan the airspace for hundreds of miles around. The four-ship headed north toward Iraq at slightly over the speed of sound, with Pitts on the right side of the formation.

  Then the bogies became “bandits,” positively identified as Iraqi fighters. Two of them were MiG-29s, and two were MiG-25s. The more modern MiG-29s veered away. But the high-speed MiG-25s were barreling directly at Pitts.

  The MiG-25 once inspired fear in the West, where some thought it was the fastest aerial fighter in the world. But after Belenko flew a MiG-25 to Japan in 1976, it was found to be an interceptor, not a maneuvering fighter. From his training, Pitts knew the MiG-25 was powered by mammoth engines, but he also knew its limitations. The plane was sluggish at low altitudes, and the cockpit set low in the fuselage, so the pilot could not easily see behind him. The turning radius was wide. The radar’s scan was narrow. The MiG-25 was no longer the mystery it once was: the United States knew about every wire and rivet.2

  Two of the F-15Cs peeled away from the four-ship, leaving Pitts and his lead, Captain Rick Tollini, to deal with the MiG-25s. The Iraqi planes circled and came back again, straight at the Americans, who were flying at about fifteen thousand feet.

  Suddenly the MiG-25s turned at “beam,” or ninety degrees away from the oncoming American fighters, and dived to the deck—almost to the ground—covered with a low-lying fog. The break toward the deck was a classic Soviet tactic; at ninety degrees, there was a “notch” where the Doppler radar was weakest and might not see a moving target against the ground clutter. Pitts lost the MiG-25s from his radar. He feared the MiGs would reappear and take a shot at him before he could shoot them down.

  The MiG-25 was not a ballet dancer in the air; it was a hurtling bullet. One of them returned almost instantly. Pitts got a radar signal: the plane was five miles off his nose. He was now at about thirteen thousand feet, but the MiG-25 was barely five hundred feet off the ground, flying left to right in front of him. The MiG-25 rocketed at 700 knots, or 805 miles per hour, faster than the speed of sound. The pilot probably did not see Pitts above him and might not have cared; he was trying to outrun danger. The astounding speed of the MiG-25 “gimballed” the F15’s radar: it zoomed across, left to right, and exited the screen.

  Pitts did not give up. He had lost radar lock again but could visually see the MiG-25, and all his training and his reflexes kicked in.

  “Engaged!” he called to Tollini.

  “Press!” Tollini responded—which meant that Pitts was now the shooter and Tollini would support him.

  Pitts threw the F-15C into an inverted roll, known as a split-S maneuver. The F-15C dived after the MiG-25. The force of the roll thrust Pitts deep into his seat, at twelve times the force of gravity, for several seconds. The F-15C was rated for about nine times gravity. In his headpiece, Pitts heard the onboard computer shout a warning, “Over G! Over G!” But it was too late, his adrenaline was pumping, his decision made. He needed to align his plane’s nose with the fleeing MiG-25 so he could shoot. Pitts dived twelve thousand feet and pulled up a mile or so behind the MiG-25, just slightly higher, and in pursuit. In the old days, an American pilot might have tried to fly under his quarry for a better radar lock, but Pitts enjoyed superb radar coverage in the F-15C and could stay just above and behind. He was in the “six” of the MiG-25, meaning at six o’clock, right behind him, putting the Iraqi pilot in mortal danger.

  If the MiG-25 had blasted straight ahead at full speed, he might have outrun Pitts. But he did not. The pilot banked to the right, an evasive move, realizing that Pitts was preparing to fire. The Soviet-built plane slowed as it turned in the thicker air near the ground. Pitts banked too, but his turning radius was tighter, and his plane far more nimble. Soon he was advancing inside the MiG’s turning circle, closing the gap, slightly behind the wing line of the enemy plane, the most vulnerable position for the MiG.

  Pitts had eight missiles under the F-15C’s belly and wings. He saw a big heat plume behind the MiG-25, an afterburner, so with his le
ft hand he selected a 150-pound AIM-9 Sidewinder heat-seeking missile. He fired the missile with his right hand by pressing a button on the piccolo. But the MiG-25 just as quickly emitted a curtain of flares, which decoyed the missile, and it missed.

  Pitts selected a 500-pound, radar-guided AIM-7 Sparrow missile, and when it locked on the enemy plane, a cue on the heads-up display flashed: “SHOOT.” Pitts fired. The missile was designed to detonate next to the target, but a fuse malfunctioned; it flew right over the cockpit of the fleeing MiG without exploding and fell away.

  Pitts quickly selected another heat-seeking Sidewinder missile. Now six thousand feet behind the MiG, he fired, but flares again threw it off.

  Pitts had never fired a missile in combat; now he had fired three without success. The two planes, their history wrapped up in the Cold War, were thundering across the Iraqi desert, the MiG-25 at three hundred feet and the F-15C just above and behind, both now slower than before, but still at 575 miles per hour.

  On his fourth try, Pitts selected another radar-guided AIM-7 Sparrow missile. This time, it flew right up the exhaust pipe of the MiG and blew it up. The MiG pilot ejected, and Pitts saw the seat whiz by his window. Just as the MiG exploded, another missile pierced the cloud—it was fired by Tollini. The fate of the pilot was not known, but ejecting at such high speed and low altitude is often not survivable.

  Minutes later, Tollini downed the other MiG-25.

  Heading back toward Saudi Arabia, Pitts tried to relax. He was low on fuel. After the rush of the engagement, his hands were shaking. At the tanker refueling, he had to back off, calm himself, and try again.

  The two MiG-29s that Pitts and Tollini had seen earlier were shot down later that day. Three MiG-29s and two MiG-21s were shot down on January 17. The Iraqi losses continued, day after day. By the end of the war, U.S. Air Force planes had shot down thirty-nine airborne enemy aircraft, without losing one.3 Sixteen of the U.S. kills involved missile shots that were fired beyond visual range, at fighters the U.S. pilots could not even see, a remarkable new dimension in air combat, made possible because the U.S. fighters, guided by AWACS, could shoot with little risk of accidentally hitting friendly aircraft.4

  In direct aerial combat over Iraq, the U.S. Air Force downed every Soviet-built tactical fighter that it confronted. The reasons were many: superior technology, finely honed tactics, and vastly improved pilot training. But all of these advantages were bolstered by something less visible. The United States had collected every scrap of information it could find about Soviet planes, pilots, and radars, every photograph, diagram, and circuit board that could be obtained—by any means.

  And for this, there was a spy.

  Adolf Tolkachev’s espionage is a Cold War story, but one that still resonates today. Human source intelligence remains indispensable to national security. As long as it is necessary to know an adversary—to steal secrets, uncover intentions, and crack open safes—it will be essential to recruit agents who can conquer their fear and cross over to the other side. It will be necessary to look them in the eye, earn their trust, calm their anxiety, and share their peril.

  Tolkachev, an engineer and designer, stood apart from others who betrayed the Soviet Union and became agents for the United States. He did not belong to the Communist Party or serve in the military or the security agencies. Most of the others came from either the KGB or the GRU, Soviet military intelligence, including Penkovsky, Popov, Sheymov, Polyakov, and Kulak. Kuklinski, the agent in Poland who passed revealing material about Warsaw Pact war plans, was a Polish army colonel. Ogorodnik was a Soviet diplomat.

  What makes Tolkachev’s espionage even more remarkable is that he passed materials to the CIA literally under the nose of the KGB. Most of the twenty-one meetings were held within three miles of the front entrance of the KGB headquarters. Yet the spy and his handlers were never detected by the KGB. The Moscow station’s painstaking tradecraft—identity transfer, street disguises, surveillance detection runs, the SRR-100 radio monitors—paid off handsomely.

  The nature of the material from Tolkachev—the complex diagrams, specifications, blueprints, and circuit boards from airborne radars and the disclosure of Soviet military research and development plans stretching a decade into the future—was extraordinary. Two U.S. intelligence and military experts who examined thousands of pages of Tolkachev’s documents over a period of years said they never found a single page contaminated with disinformation, and they cross-checked the intelligence as far as they could with other sources.5

  Tolkachev opened a window on Soviet intentions and capabilities, which were at the core of the CIA’s mission. For the leadership of the United States, it was vitally important to know Soviet priorities in military research and development, as well as capabilities—what they could do and could not do. For decades, there were holes and misjudgments in U.S. intelligence on Soviet intentions and capabilities.6 But when it came to air defenses, Soviet tactical fighters, interceptors, radars, avionics, and guidance systems that would confront Americans in any hot war, Tolkachev delivered.

  His intelligence arrived just as the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Air Force were undertaking the revolution in pilot training in classrooms at the navy’s elite Fighter Weapons School, known as Top Gun, in Miramar, California, and the U.S. Air Force Weapons School at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. No scrap was too small for those preparing to fight the next American air war. Intelligence gleaned from Tolkachev’s documents was briefed to Top Gun instructors and pilots.

  As a result, the United States has enjoyed almost total air superiority over Soviet-built fighters for more than two decades: in the Persian Gulf War of 1991, in which Pitts downed the MiG-25 over Iraq; in 1995, when the U.S. and its allies forced the Serbs of the former Yugoslavia to recognize the independence of Bosnia-Herzegovina; and in 1999, in stopping an ethnic cleansing campaign in Kosovo. Both Iraq and Yugoslavia flew Soviet-made MiG warplanes. There were American losses to ground fire, but the United States dominated the skies. The record is stark: for every six enemy aircraft air force pilots shot down in Korea, the United States lost one. In Vietnam, the United States lost one airplane for every two enemy planes shot down. Thus, the kill ratios went from six to one in Korea, and two to one in Vietnam, to forty-eight to zero for the air force in the wars in Iraq and the Balkans. The impressive advances in American technology and pilot training were essential to this achievement.7 But Tolkachev’s espionage also contributed; the United States possessed the blueprints of radar in every major Soviet fighter of the 1980s.

  Tolkachev also provided the United States with renewed confidence in weapons systems that cost billions of dollars and took years to develop, especially those designed to strike the Soviet Union at low altitude. The terrain-hugging, winged cruise missile was flight-tested and deployed in the years of Tolkachev’s espionage. The Soviet leaders knew it was a potent threat. In Moscow on June 4, 1984, Anatoly Chernyaev, who later became Mikhail Gorbachev’s national security adviser, went to a military briefing at the Central Committee. The briefing was titled “The Characteristics of Modern Warfare,” and Chernyaev wrote in his diary afterward that he saw films about American weapons systems.

  “It was amazing,” he wrote, “missiles homing in on their targets from hundreds and thousands of kilometers away; aircraft carriers, submarines that could do anything; winged missiles that, like in a cartoon, could be guided through a canyon and hit a target 10 meters in diameter from 2,500 kilometers away. An incredible breakthrough of modern technology. And, of course, unthinkably expensive.”8

  The “winged missiles” were not a cartoon; the U.S. cruise missile was a reality. The Soviet radars could not see them coming, and the CIA knew why.

  A Note on the Intelligence

  Adolf Tolkachev’s espionage produced intelligence so voluminous that the U.S. military and intelligence community continued to draw on it for valuable details well into the 1990s. The information became pa
rt of the finished intelligence reports of the era that were sent to the White House and policy makers, many of which are now declassified. The highest-level reports, National Intelligence Estimates, blend reporting and analysis and include details from many different sources. They do not mention Tolkachev by name. But they reflect the impact of his spying.

  In March 1976, a year before Tolkachev first volunteered, a U.S. intelligence memorandum described Soviet air defenses as deficient, including the lack of a look-down, shoot-down radar and weapons capability.1 That was the view of the CIA’s in-house analysts, but in the summer and early autumn the CIA sought a second opinion about Soviet capabilities. In an unusual experiment, the CIA allowed an outside team of hawkish experts and analysts to critique its annual estimate of Soviet forces. Among other things, the critique examined Soviet air defenses.2 The outside team, known as Team B, was quite uncertain. It found evidence that Soviet air defenses, measured by equipment, were becoming “formidable” but, given operational problems seen in troop exercises, could be “marginal,” and the actual situation was unknown because “hard intelligence” was lacking.3 Thus, the CIA had multiple answers to sort out: Soviet air defenses were weak, or strong and growing stronger.

  The United States needed a better answer. The Soviet Union possessed the longest borders in the world, about thirty-seven thousand miles. To stop intruders, it needed weapons and radars both on land and in the air. If there were gaps in its air defenses, they could be exploited. Within a few years, Tolkachev provided the answer: the system was weak, and the vulnerability could be exploited.

  In 1979, a National Intelligence Estimate reaffirmed the Soviets had “major technical deficiencies in their ability to intercept penetrators at low altitudes.”4 In 1981, a CIA internal memorandum noted that the Soviet Union had little capability against low-flying targets, Soviet air defenses were technically crude, and “they rarely practice low altitude air defense operations.” Moreover, the command-and-control system for air defenses was poor, and its troops “are not among the best and often perform poorly in training exercises.” The bottom line, the memo concluded, there is “a widely held feeling that the Soviets are really quite inept in this area.”5