My summer reading list last year included a number of books about cold war spies. While I may have written at this blog about some of those books, this one got neglected.
It's fact based story of Adolf Tolkachev, "The Billion Dollar Spy," by David Hoffman. Tolkachev was a Soviet scientist who undertook the dangerous task of supplying the CIA with secrets about Soviet research and accomplishments in weapon development.
Beginning in the late 1970s, he sneaked documents out of his top secret working area, took them home, photographed them, and got them back in place during his lunch time. It was a very risky project. And he eluded capture for a number of years.
But a traitor in the CIA named Edward Lee Howard ratted him out. Tolkachev was apprehended by the KGB and ultimately executed, presumably after they had extracted all the information they could out of him. A portrait of Tolkachev photographing documents hangs in CIA headquarters.
The billion dollars in the book title refers to the estimated amount of money he saved the U.S. from research made unnecessary by the materials he was able to share.
Related:
Author's website: David E. Hoffman;
Book Review | The Billion Dollar Spy;
The Billion Dollar Spy.
------
3:04 PM 3/8/2020
Comments