The Billion Dollar Load

I googled the words “The Billion Dollar Spy” and “Review” simultaneously, and this is what Google AI told me:

“The Billion Dollar Spy” by David E. Hoffman is a highly praised historical account of a vital Cold War spy, Adolf Tolkachev, who provided valuable military technology secrets to the CIA. The book, based on declassified documents and interviews, is noted for its meticulous research, authentic portrayal of Cold War espionage tactics, and engaging narrative that reads like a thriller, offering deep insight into the high stakes and technical aspects of spycraft in the Soviet Union.

Key Aspects of the Book

• The Spy:

  The 2015 book focuses on Adolf Tolkachev, a Soviet engineer and radar expert who became the CIA’s most valuable agent inside the Soviet Union, providing information that justified the CIA’s budget and gave the U.S. technological superiority.

• Meticulous Research:

  Hoffman’s book is lauded for its scrupulously researched content, drawing from extensive declassified CIA documents and interviews with participants.

• Authentic Spycraft:

  The narrative vividly details the clandestine methods used by CIA officers and Tolkachev to avoid the omnipresent KGB, such as secret codes, dead drops, spy cameras, and hidden meetings.

• Real-Life Thriller:

  Reviewers describe the story as both a detailed history and a gripping thriller, pulsing with the dramatic tension of operating in a dangerous and hostile environment.

• Human Dimension:

  Beyond the technical and strategic aspects, the book adds a human layer by showcasing the incredible risks taken by both the spy and his handlers, as well as the motivations behind Tolkachev’s actions.

Why It’s Highly Recommended

• For Spy Enthusiasts:

  It’s considered a must-read for those interested in real-life espionage, Cold War history, and the realities of spy operations.

• Factual Accuracy:

  The Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s journalistic objectivity and neutral stance lend authenticity to the narrative, providing a factual account rather than a dramatized novel.

• Deep Insight:

  The book provides a rare, detailed look into the intricate world of CIA-KGB rivalry, making complex espionage accessible and fascinating for readers.
  
  . . . . . . .
  
  My comments:
  
  It’s interesting that Hoffman tacitly endorses the statements of some of CIA’s many “useful idiots” and probable “moles” (e.g., Leonard V. McCoy, John L. Hart and George Kisevalter) in describing Tolkachev and other ostensible KGB traitors, but he doesn’t mention the counterarguments of former high-level counterintelligence officer Tennent H. Bagley as set out in his 2007 Yale University Press book, Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games and his 2014 follow-up article, “Ghosts of the Spy Wars.”
  
  ”Pete,” who came from an illustrious Navy family, was a Marine lieutenant during WW II and earned a PhD in Political Science at the University of Geneva, was on the fast track to become Director of CIA until a false-defector-in-place, Yuri Nosenko, recontacted him and George Kisevalter in Geneva in February 1964 and told them that he’d been Lee Harvey Oswald’s case officer and therefore knew for a fact that the KGB had absolutely nothing to do with the former Marine sharpshooter and U-2 radar operator during the two-and-one-half years he lived half-a-mile from a KGB school in Minsk.
  
  How fortunate for J. Edgar Hoover!
  
  Bagley wrote scathingly about McCoy, Hart, and Kisevalter eight years before Hoffman used them as sources in The Billion Dollar Spy.
  
  One probable “mole” who isn’t mentioned in Hoffman’s book is Bruce Leonard Solie, the confidant, mentor, and mole-hunting superior of CIA’s father-figure-requiring head of counterintelligence, James Angleton. You can read the article I wrote about “dour, plodding, risk-averse” Solie (which Wikipedia rejected because “not enough established authors have written about him”) by googling his full name.
  
  
  Here’s one example of how Hoffman wittingly or unwittingly perpetuates KGB memes.
  
  He writes in his book that Aldrich Ames betrayed CIA’s spy in the GRU, Lt. Col. Dmitry Polyakov.
  
  Here’s what Bagley writes about Polyakov in his article, “Ghosts of the Spy Wars.”
  
  
  The Mysterious Polyakov
  
  

  For this particular enterprise [of turning the “lemon” of CIA’s 1952 recruitment of GRU officer Pyotr Popov in 1952 — and his uncovering by KGB in 1957 — into “lemonade”], Gribanov and Zvezdenkov chose GRU Lieutenant Colonel Dmitry Polyakov. As a first step, they dispatched him in October 1959 to New York, where he had already served in the past, as a military functionary in the Soviet delegation to the United Nations. The operation was not truly launched until two years later, however, because Polyakov had first to establish himself in his cover position, and then because Gribanov delayed the operation while dealing with an unexpected complication. Having discovered a new, real traitor within the GRU, Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, Gribanov had to weigh the effects on his planned operation. So not until the fall of 1961, after safely “cornering [Penkovsky] like a bear in its den” did Gribanov feel ready to launch the operation.

  
  Polyakov asked an American military officer to put him in touch with the CIA.

  The FBI made the contact, it being their jurisdiction, and for several months they met him secretly in New York (codenaming him “Tophat”). Enthusiastic at the time about what Polyakov was revealing, fifteen years later the FBI looked back and wondered whether Polyakov had been deceiving them during those months. He had wasted their time on useless trails, and nothing he had told them had importantly damaged the Soviet Union beyond what Popov had earlier reported.

  After a few months in New York, Polyakov returned to Russia in the fall of 1962 and was not heard from until years later, when he told via a Moscow dead drop, that he would soon come out again. He did, in 1966, as Soviet military attaché and GRU chief in Rangoon, Burma. Because operations abroad are the CIA’s jurisdiction, the FBI soon turned over contact to the Agency, which continued to meet Polyakov in Burma from then until his tour of duty expired in 1969.

  
  In his early meetings with Polyakov, CIA case officer Jim F[lint]. had the strong impression that he was dealing with a KGB plant, but after a time he noted such dramatic improvement in the reporting that he became convinced that Polyakov was genuinely cooperating. For years thereafter, Polyakov continued direct and indirect contacts with the CIA, turning over priceless military and intelligence secrets first in Rangoon, then in Moscow, and then in two separate tours of duty in New Delhi where he enjoyed the rank of one-star general, making him the highest-ranked secret source that CIA ever had in Soviet Russia. But then, in May 1980, the operation came to an abrupt end. On the pretext of a supposed meeting of military attachés, Polyakov was recalled to Moscow and never heard from again.

  Ten years later, in 1990, out of the blue, the Soviets announced that they had arrested Polyakov, tried him in secret for being a CIA spy, and executed him. Their publicity chose to date the arrest as 1986, the trial and execution as March 1988. It took another dozen years to begin explaining these oddities: the secret trial, so unlike Penkovsky’s; the lack of even a fuzzy explanation of how the KGB had caught Polyakov; the inexplicable dates; and unusual publicity. The only KGB foreign-operations officer who had known of the SCD’s operation, General Sergey Kondrashev (the KGB deputy for disinformation mentioned above), years later revealed to me that Gribanov had sent Polyakov out in the first place.
  
  

  “But they executed Polyakov!” I said. “Why would the KGB execute a man whom they themselves had sent out to commit this treason?”
  
  

  “Because they found out he was giving you more than he was supposed to.”
  
  

  “Found out? How?”
  
  

  Kondrashev answered: “Through some source inside American Intelligence.”
  
  
  He would say no more. But the question hung there: Who could have known exactly how much Polyakov was reporting to CIA? It had to be someone inside CIA’s Soviet operations staff. And someone still undiscovered.
  
  Two Americans who knew something of the Polyakov case were later discovered to have been traitors, but neither of them could be the answer. Robert Hanssen of the FBI had told the Soviets in 1979 about Polyakov’s 1962 cooperation in New York, but of course he knew nothing of what Polyakov later reported to the CIA. And even in the unlikely event that CIA traitor Aldrich Ames had learned the full details of Polyakov’s reporting, Ames did not begin betraying until 1985, five years after the KGB had recalled Polyakov on a ruse and terminated the operation.
  
  Not one of the later-discovered CIA traitors could even remotely have been aware of these details. In fact, only a handful of specially placed CIA operatives even knew that the Agency had a relationship with Polyakov, much less what Polyakov was reporting. In each report that the CIA passed to military and other government agencies it disguised the source and attributed reports on different subjects to different sources. The whole gamut of Polyakov’s reporting could have been known only to his CIA handlers and those dealing with his raw reports.
  
  

  So, the question hangs: Who told the KGB what Polyakov was telling the CIA?
  
  . . . . . . .
  
  My comment: I think it was a former Soviet Russia Division officer by the name of Leonard V. McCoy (see above).