← The Rest Is Classified
The Rest Is Classified
15. Crossing the Iron Curtain: The Cold War’s Most Valuable Spy (Ep 2)
00:46:58
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- [00:04]
David McCloskey
This episode is brought to you by our new friends at NordVPN. Now Gordon, you have been a NordVPN user for over a year now and why in the world do you like them so much?
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Gordon Carrera
So many reasons, David, but one feature in particular that I love is that with just one subscription you can keep multiple devices safe up to 10 at once with the NordVPN app. So I've got a lot of phones and laptops around the house which I've used over the years in various places. And to keep the all safe and secure, I do use that NordVPN.
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David McCloskey
You can also protect unlimited devices on your router by using NordVPN, which means that it is perfect for keeping your family safe online when they're using social media, email, banking online, or really anything for that matter.
- [00:48]
Gordon Carrera
If you want to ensure that you're safe online, you should take advantage of our exclusive NordVPN discount. All you need to do is go to nordvpn.com restisclassified and when you sign up you can receive a bonus four months on top of your subscription plan and there's no risk with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee. The link is also in the episode description box.
- [01:12]
David McCloskey
Exclusively on AMC and AMC Plus There's a black cloud that hangs over our family. Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches Return Slasher's out there hunting Mayfair women.
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Gordon Carrera
You can have a battle on your hands.
- [01:25]
David McCloskey
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- [01:27]
Gordon Carrera
I'm going to take care of it.
- [01:29]
David McCloskey
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- [01:32]
Gordon Carrera
It's not a sin to kill the devil.
- [01:35]
David McCloskey
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- [02:22]
Gordon Carrera
I've always strived from the very beginning to gather and to pass on the maximum information possible. And now, under conditions that are more difficult in comparison to the early period of my activity, my drive hasn't changed. I feel that I'm unable to lessen this drive. It is incited to some degree by the nature of my character. In this case, from my own experience, I am once more convinced of the accuracy and truth of proverbs such as, for example, character cannot be broken. So that's Adolf Tolkachev writing to his CIA handlers. Welcome back to the Rest is Classified. I'm Gordon Carrera.
- [03:01]
David McCloskey
And I'm David McCloskey.
- [03:03]
Gordon Carrera
And together we're telling the story of Adolf Tolkachev, this remarkable, relentless character who was driven to spy for the CIA and for the US So valuable he became known, in the words of David Hoffman's book, as the Billion Dollar Spy. And in the first episode, we looked at how he tried again and again to make contact with the CIA in the late 1970s, desperate to do so, amazingly turned down by the CIA or ignored time after time until eventually they basically couldn't ignore that this man seemed to have access to real deep secrets about Soviet military radar, which they really wanted. So we left the story at the end of our first episode with the two sides having finally, after months, after years, having finally made contact, but not yet having met David.
- [04:02]
David McCloskey
Well, that's right, Gordon. The man who is going to run Adolf Tolkachev as his case officer has reached out to Tolkachev, called him actually, during an intermission of the Bolshoi Ballet and called Tolkachev at home and said, we want to get in touch with you. And this case officer uses code name Nikolai to identify himself as being from the Central Intelligence Agency. And I think it is worth, Gordon, a little bit of a, I guess, broader question here, which is, what do you actually, if you're CIA, what are the first things you need to get set up and arranged with Tolkachev to be able to run him appropriately on the streets of Moscow? Because there is actually a significant amount of complexity in getting a case like this going, particularly in kind of the. The hot house of Cold War Moscow.
- [04:54]
Gordon Carrera
That's right, because in the first episode, we looked at just the level of surveillance people would have and CIA officers would have if they're trying to operate in any way in Moscow. So to meet someone, to talk to someone, to just have any contact is a real challenge, isn't it?
- [05:09]
David McCloskey
And that's why the very first thing, and frankly, it's a lot of what in a very inefficient, clumsy way the CIA and Tolkachev had been working out already, is what would be called the commo plan, which is how are we going to communicate with each other and pass information back and forth. It sounds very simple, but it is an essential building block of any human to any human intelligence case like the Tolkachev one is that CIA and the asset have to set up a secure and clandestine means of communication because, of course, what Tolkachev is going to share is stolen information from inside the Soviet system. And if caught doing so, you know he's going to be imprisoned or worse. It's worth a bit of a portrait of the case officer who is going to run Tolkachev and who's going to be really kind of the conductor for this orchestra. So his name is John Gilcher. He's 47 when he starts running Tolkachev, which is relatively old for a case officer. He's fluent in Russian, but speaks with a slight Baltic accent. Gordon. Which, interestingly enough, I've been told that my British accent is that of a balt. And so I think John Gilsher.
- [06:23]
Gordon Carrera
No idea what that means. Literally no idea.
- [06:26]
David McCloskey
John Gilcher's parents were children of the Leningrad nobility, now St. Petersburg. And he is basically a Russia specialist, right? He's got a long track record of working the Russia target. He was involved in the infamous sort of Berlin Tunnel operation. He's helped run Russian cases before. Not from Moscow, though, and he sort of handpicked for Moscow Station by the chief of Station. And he has arrived in Moscow in the summer of 1977. So just as kind of the Tolkachev operation is beginning to kick into gear now there's uncertainty hanging over the entire case because, number one, the CIA doesn't possess corroborating information on anything that Tolkachev is going to provide. So there aren't other sources who can really verify that what Tolkachev will share on these radars and avionics systems is really true. And secondly, and really importantly, from a psychological standpoint, they have absolutely no clue what Tolkachev wants or what is motivating him. And this is a critical piece of the puzzle for any case officer is going to be figuring out what is making this person tick. Why are they doing this? It's an absolutely critical bit of the case, really. And it's something that is going to be of significant interest in Moscow Station and at Langley, because you've got to.
- [07:53]
Gordon Carrera
Know, first of all, what access has he got? You know, does he really have access to the intelligence he says he have? Why does he want to do it? What's his motivation? And that links to how you're going to be able to run an agent effectively, doesn't it? Because you need to understand his motivation and work with his motivations and his character in order to be able to. To run him effectively and for him not to kind of go out of control or to, to do things which are dangerous to him or to you. So, you know, the kind of psychology of understanding what someone is up to is important at this point. They've not met, so they don't really have that on talk. So they're kind of, you know, they're still trying to work out if he's for real or not.
- [08:32]
David McCloskey
Absolutely. And In May, the CIA's Office of Technical Service, it's called OTS, which are kind of the tech and the people who make the concealment devices and do a lot of the, you know, really spy tech kind of stuff. They have officers who do handwriting analysis. And in this period, they actually look at all the letters that Tolkachev at that point passed to the chief of station and they put down a really kind of spookily prescient analysis of Tolkachev the man, just based off of his handwriting, which I find fascinating. And they judge him in this report, Gordon, to be a reasonable, well adjusted individual who appears, quote, intellectually and psychologically equipped to become a useful and versatile asset. And that is exactly what he's going to become.
- [09:21]
Gordon Carrera
I have to say I'm slightly skeptical about the idea you can tell someone's personality from their handwriting. I don't know what they'd make of mine, which is pretty messy. But that's going to be a straight.
- [09:30]
David McCloskey
We'll do a separate pod on that, Gordon.
- [09:32]
Gordon Carrera
But they're kind of grasping at straws. I mean, that's if they're having to go by his handwriting to try and work out whether, whether he's someone they can run. But I guess that's all you've got to go on at this point. And as you're trying to make this initial contact to get the meetings going.
- [09:44]
David McCloskey
Yeah. And I guess, you know, you've got people who can do this kind of analysis and you can't just sit down and ask Tolkachev the question. So let's see if we can get any kind of hint of the man. But back to the commo plan. You know, they got to come up with a way to get into a flow with Tolkachev. So they come up with a plan. CIA comes up with a plan to dead drop the first package. Right. So this is going to be a spot in Moscow where the CIA will be able to put something down and then Tolkachev will be able to come and pick it up. Yeah.
- [10:14]
Gordon Carrera
So just to explain to people a dead drop is a way of passing information or a package to people without them having to physically be in contact together. So you leave it in one place and the other person picks it up at another point from that same place.
- [10:30]
David McCloskey
And in that dead drop, the CIA is going to leave secret writing instructions, questions that the case officers and analysts and bureaucracy have come up with for Tolkachev, and an operational note which is like a. A letter essentially to Tolkachev to talk about aspects of the case. The secret writing is imprinted sort of by the specially fabricated carbon paper. And when Tolkachev was done writing, he'd be able to fold it up. And on the other side is this kind of innocuous letter that began dear Gramps. And it's got this kind of mundane update on. On someone's life totally unrelated to Tolkachev. And the idea is that Tolkachev would mail it and it's going to go to kind of an innocuous overseas address that's controlled by CIA. But of course, Tolkachev won't post it as though he had written it.
- [11:20]
Gordon Carrera
And I love the fact that they leave this package of stuff for him in a dirty mitten, is that right? I mean, that's right.
- [11:28]
David McCloskey
So in a glove, I mean, concealment device.
- [11:30]
Gordon Carrera
So in a glove, which I kind of. I mean, it must be a pretty big, heavy glove, I mean, used by construction workers in the Soviet Union. I mean, and all this stuff is just hidden in a glove which, you know, they've left, what, in a phone booth or something. I mean, it just seems extraordinary to leave all this kind of sensitive material, you know, in a glove in a phone booth for some. I mean, what if someone else just picks it up? I mean.
- [11:53]
David McCloskey
Well, this is the interesting thing about concealment devices is that you are always trying to balance the sort of concealment of. And in particular, I'm talking about a concealment device that's for kind of a dead drop, right? Because you are balancing the concealment of the thing with what I guess you could call flow, which would be the ease of being able for the asset to pick it up or for the case officer to put it down. And so you think about maximum concealment might be something that's hidden behind sort of a mechanism that, let's say is hidden in a brick of a building. And it's very concealed. No one who's passing by is going to see it, but you're going to have to break your flow horribly to pick it up. And so Admitten, and there have been some other. There's other wonderful examples. There's a great book by Wallace and Melton, but Basically it goes through this long history of kind of CIA technology to support these kind of operations. And there are some great examples of concealment devices that are in things like Vietnam War era, you know, hiding devices to actually kind of take pulses of troop movements on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. They would hide these devices in things that were made to look like tiger poop that would be put along the trail and would take these kind of measurements of the sound. There's other great examples of like, you know, nasty looking milk cartons, dead rats that were actually taxidermied, and then you could stuff things in there. So the whole idea is like, how do you, how do you create a concealment device so that nobody else is going to want to pick it up? And I think the dirty mitten is an interesting one because it's actually, you know, commonly worn in this case by Soviet construction workers in Moscow. So it's not a nice mitten that someone might want to pick up and actually use. It's something that would be very common. It's very dirty. So someone even they're interested in it, might look at it and say no thanks. And it's going to be actually just put down by kind of behind a phone booth. And so there's some amount of concealment, but it's going to be easy enough for Tolkachev to remain in flow. You know, he's going to go to the phone booth, make a call, pretend to make a call, step out, and he could quickly pick it up on his way either into or out of the phone booth. So it's got a pretty good balance of concealment and flow. So anyhow, In September of 1978, that Dear Gramps letter arrives at the CIA address outside of the Soviet Union. It had of course been opened by the kgb, which is normal. But the secret writing wasn't found. And Tolkachev has answered a bunch of questions on Soviet radars, tests of new systems, the status of work on weapons, aiming systems for a whole bunch of different Soviet sort of aviation platforms. And Tolkiev also says in this letter that he has a 91 page notebook that he wants to pass to CIA. Whoever is reading that at Langley or Moscow station is like rubbing their hands with glee. Jackpot, right? I mean, it's Christmas time, Christmas come early at Langley. And so on New year's day of 1979, John Gilcher, who is Tolkachev's first case officer, goes back to the phone booth. He's dressed up, he's in disguise actually for this. He's dressed in a plain overcoat and fur cap. He kind of looks like an old Russian man. Again, we've got these great details from the David Hoffman book, the Billion Dollar Spy on this. He calls Tolkachev and Tolkachev comes down to the phone booth and this, this is the first in person meeting between Adolf Tolkachev and an officer of the Central Intelligence Agency. It has been, you know, almost what, two years of talkative, this back and forth. And the first thing on Gilcher's list, which is long for this short meeting, is he wants to know why is Tolkajev doing this? What is possibly motivating him? And I think says, great. Tolkachev has this great line which says. He says, I'm a dissident at heart. You know, and you think back to the kind of background of his family, his wife's family in particular, that we talked about in the last episode of this idea that he has. Ben, you know, and his wife have been so shoddily treated in the past by the system that he has already defected from it and wants to do whatever he can to get rid of it. He is a dissident at heart. Now, Gilcher also says, I think it's a very fascinating point, is it's a sign that that handwriting analysis we read was quite good, which is that Tolkachev, it's New Year's Day. He's not blind drunk as most Soviet men would have been on New Year's Day. Tolkachev is stone cold sober. Tolkachev is not a big drinker. He does not use alcohol much at all.
- [16:48]
Gordon Carrera
And this is a good sign, isn't it? It's a good sign he's not someone who's careering off the edge of things and is, you know, kind of running on booze at this point. So it suggests a seriousness about him.
- [16:59]
David McCloskey
It does. It suggests a seriousness, a level of precision he might be capable of in the operation. I think certainly being a blind drunk wouldn't disqualify you from offering your services to the Central Intelligence Agency. But Gilcher has got to be feeling good about that fact. And interestingly, and this is going to be a thread that just runs through the whole Tolkachev case, which is this issue of money compensation for what he's doing. Tolkachev mentions money right up front. There's a discussion with Gilcher about how much it'll be. They settle on 1,000 rubles a month, which is really not much at all for the risks that Tolkachev is taking. It's probably maybe three times the monthly salary of kind of a mid career academic, which would be around where Tolkachev is. So for the level of risk that he's taking, it's really not much. And Tolkachev says, hey, I want 10,000 rubles for my work. So far, Gilcher, who has been authorized to give some money for this meeting and has some with him, gives him a thousand rubles right there in their first meeting. And, you know, the money piece is probably worth a little bit of a sidebar here because, you know, I think there's a dance here between both sides where the CIA wants to know, well, what do you want this money for? Because you think about overcompensating an asset in Moscow. Well, might he start spending it? If this guy can't control himself and just, you know, the money's burning a hole in his pocket, you know, will he buy things? And then, you know, neighbors, family members start to wonder where they came from.
- [18:37]
Gordon Carrera
There's a famous story about, I think, a British agent in the Soviet bloc who spent all his money on champagne. And just this pile of champagne bottles grew outside his house because that's what he was spending his money on. And there was a bit of a giveaway, I think, for the neighbors. So that's one of the worries, isn't it, with money, is if someone isn't clever about how they use their money, it's going to show up and it's going to give them away. So that's one of the factors. So I guess it's a difficult thing, isn't it, because you've got to show them that they're valued and reward them with money, but make a decision about how much to give them and what they're going to do with it. So again, it goes to that kind of judgment about someone's character.
- [19:13]
David McCloskey
Well, and the CIA, of course, wants to provide him with some compensation. I think the logic there at Langley and Moscow Station would be the money gives us some measure of control, is maybe too strong, but it gives us a formal bond to you that gives us, the CIA, some control, some leverage over your decision making and how the case runs. And so I think Gilcher and Moscow Station are probably thinking we're glad that he's asking for money, but again, yeah, you really do have to kind of balance that measure of sort of leverage and control with your view of the asset in their, and their motivation for, for receiving the money. So in addition to the money, they also talk about a camera and whether Tolkachev is going to be able to take photos at his, at his desk at the Institute. And that is going to be a critical piece of this case as well. Because Tolkachev is not the sort of asset that's going to come fresh out of a meeting with Soviet leadership and be able to just kind of communicate to the case officer, oh, here's what they're saying about disarmament talks or whatever the kind of high level politicking might be. I mean, the value of the Tolkachev case is going to be in his ability to photograph documents. And so here Gilcher and Tolkachev get into some really kind of seemingly mundane details about Tolkachev's life and his day to day sort of pattern because it's going to be critical for figuring out when can he actually take those photos. So, you know, they talk about his home life, they talk about, okay, what's your setup like at work? And at this point in his life, Tolkachev is actually going in the evenings to the Lenin Library for privacy. He's reading, he's writing there. So they kind of start to build a picture of the man from the bottom up. What is this guy like? What does he spend his time doing? And I love these little fascinating details is like, well, Gilcher, after this meeting, he can't go back to the embassy because he's got to stay in pattern. And so he takes this notebook and all of this information and basically goes home and puts it under his mattress, right. And spends that night probably sleeping like a baby with all of this really sensitive stuff under his mattress. And then the next morning, of course, takes it into the embassy when he goes back into work.
- [21:32]
Gordon Carrera
So they've established their first contact and they've got a sense of Tolkachev now. And I guess they've got a plan. I mean, they've got an understanding of his work, of where he might be, but you've got to kind of then build a plan for an ongoing relationship. So how is he going to get information? How is he going to get it out? How is he going to get it to the CIA? That becomes the, the kind of real challenge going forward.
- [21:55]
David McCloskey
Yeah, so that, that Commo plan, you know, absolutely critical to get it right right off the bat, to make it complicated enough so that the KGB cannot follow you, find you, but also simple enough that both sides can work it through. And by the way, also the, the instructions that Gilcher is passing to Tolkachev, of course, all of this is being written in Russian, being edited, written by a group inside CIA that a Lot of the officers who worked in this period will call the poets. And so they're very carefully working out the language to make sure that there's no misunderstandings between Tolkachev and the CIA. And we pass a letter. CIA passes a letter, lays out a set of sites in Moscow that are around Tolkachev's apartment. Each of them has a code name. So the code name could be Ninochka. And so this, the idea is the CIA would call, they would ask, and all these sites have the name of an individual. CIA calls Tolkachev's apartment, they say, you know, is Ninochka there? And Tolkachev will say, oh, you've got the wrong number, which would not have been uncommon at the time in the Soviet Union. And Tolkachev would be, you know, for example, they'd call him. They built kind of a calendar of when this is going to happen. So Tolkachev could be called at home once a month on the date that corresponded to the number of the month. So he'd be called on 1st January, 2nd February, 3rd March and so on. And the plan was that Tolkachev would cover the phone between 6pm and 8pm on those days to await a wrong number call. Because remember again, to his family everything has to look normal. And his family's in the apartment. He's not going to send them out of the apartment. He's only got one phone, there's no cell phones at this time. So he's covering the phone. And then depending upon the name asked for by the caller, Tolkachev is going to be directed to one of those prearranged dead drop sites. And then once a month, on the date that corresponded to the number of the month plus 15 days, so 18 March, 19 April, etc. Tolkachev will be directed to appear at one of several prearranged sites at a specified time according to the month. And so at those sites he could wait for five minutes and then there was a password and a recognition signal that are incorporated into the plan in case someone other than the regular case officer. So in case they have to send someone other than Gilcher to go make the meeting. Right.
- [24:20]
Gordon Carrera
So that is the plan going forward for how they're going to meet. And at this point they've also got a sense of how good he is and how potentially valuable he is as an agent from that initial meeting, haven't they?
- [24:31]
David McCloskey
Well, yeah. And I think this is where once he begins to pass that massive notebook and this thing starts going, the CIA gets a sense that this guy is going to be a game changing asset. So maybe there with this case starting to move, with Tolkachev producing, and with the CIA beginning to frankly lick its chops over the intelligence he is providing, let's take a break and when we come back we'll see how Adolf Tolkachev becomes one of those very few spies that pay all the bills at CIA.
- [25:10]
Gordon Carrera
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David McCloskey
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- [25:52]
David McCloskey
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- [26:45]
Gordon Carrera
The Battleground Podcast Saul, David and I are currently on the ground in Ukraine, observing, reporting and testing the mood of a nation at war as it digests what the triumphant arrival of Donald Trump means for them and their future. That noise you can hear in the background is the train we're traveling on from Kharkiv onto the next stage of our visit. And it's not just a vital interest to Ukrainians. The conflict with Russia and what Trump plans to do to end it is of crucial importance to all of us. We're standing at a hinge moment that will determine the world's history. That's why we're here, and that's why you should listen out For a stream of special battleground episodes that will inform, engage and sharpen your understanding. So stay tuned for some cracking special episodes, starting with our response to Trump's inauguration speech. Combining frontline reportage, exclusive interviews with the soldiers fighting this extraordinary war, and razor sharp analysis from real experts. So do click and follow us wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to the story of Adolf Tokachev. So David, the CIA has got a sense, hasn't it now, of just how good the take is the haul is that's coming from their new spy in Moscow that this stuff is really valuable to their customers.
- [28:13]
David McCloskey
Yeah, this is like Christmas morning at the Central Intelligence Agency, Gordon, because I think in this kind of initial haul it is clear that the CIA is dealing with the real deal here. Right? So there's basically coming out of this all the raw stuff that Tolkachev produces. There's a hundred plus page intelligence report that gets produced that the Air Force, probably the first guy who read it, has like a brain aneurysm because it's so valuable. There are formulas, diagrams, you know, drawings of weapons and electronic systems. There are hand copies of secret documents that authorize the construction of new types of aircraft that are not even at that point known in the West. And it's kind of almost a peek into the blueprints for planes in the Soviet fleet that wouldn't even see the skies for another decade. And Tolkachev again says that his goal is to inflict the maximum possible damage on the Soviet system. He lays out, and again, I think from the standpoint of CIA and kind of the agent handling piece of this, Tolkachev lays out a 12 year plan to spy and the information he's going to provide in each stage. So again, you get this psychological, you know, kind of scrape below the surface here. A really structured, ordered mind and an absolutely fierce determination to do whatever is required over the long term. And Tolkachev also gives a very precise description in here of how secret documents are handled at the institute where he works and how just, just like at CIA headquarters, Gordon, it's possible to check out secret documents during the day and just kind of walk out of the building. There's like no, true. Yeah, no, it absolutely is true. Really. It's one of the, it's one of the things that surprised me was when I went in as a, you know, a young bright eyed analyst, Gordon, I assumed that there was going to be like, there's a bag check, there's some rigorous kind of set of procedures. And what you see in these top secret bureaucracies I guess is that they really are built on trust. And so once you're in, once they've sort of given you the polygraph or tested you, or in Tolkachev's case, I mean, he's sure he's gone through all kinds of kind of background investigations by the kgb. Once you're in, you're part of the team. And even in a highly suspicious system like in the Soviet Union, in order for the work to get done, Tolkachev has to have access to these documents. And so what he can do is, and this is going to be kind of the sausage making of his spying is what he'll do is he'll just check documents out and take them out of the building on his lunch break and take them home and begin to photograph them.
- [31:03]
Gordon Carrera
Being able to photograph them is the key, isn't it? Because we're talking about kind of technical documents, other documents, you can't really, you know, you haven't got time to note them down in a lunch break. You haven't got photocopiers in those days, or at least, you know, not ones that would be easily available. They were pretty heavily controlled, I think, in the Soviet Union, what they were.
- [31:19]
David McCloskey
So KGB frowned on photographs.
- [31:24]
Gordon Carrera
So it's all about the photography. So that becomes the key is using a camera to basically, just as we often think about with these Cold War spies, to just sit there and kind of snap the picks of the documents and do as many as you can in the lunch break under pressure.
- [31:37]
David McCloskey
Are you a Simpsons fan, Gordon?
- [31:39]
Gordon Carrera
I am, yeah.
- [31:40]
David McCloskey
Have you seen that episode where I believe Homer is talking to these, a team of animators for a cartoon, and he asks if the cartoon is done live, and the response is no, it would be a tremendous strain on the animator's wrists and hands, you know, And I think in this case, for Tolkachev to produce this stuff, it'd be a tremendous strain on his wrists and hands. So he needs a photograph. Right. And the amazing thing is that as recently as the, like, late 1960s, so a few years before the Tolkien case, the CIA didn't really have a good camera for use by its agents. And so agents assets in Moscow, they had used this sort of commercially available Minox 3. It worked okay, but it was really hard to do it covertly. The shutter was noisy. It required two hands. So kind of you're going to look conspicuous. You had to have very specific lighting. And of course, if you're photographing documents in an office, you oftentimes don't have control over the lighting. So the Minox is kind of out, right? Initially, Tolkachev is given a model called the Mali, which is based on the Minox. But it had some modifications that CIA had worked on with the contractor. It was named after the designer's daughter, Molly. Tolkachev did not like the Molly. He kind of could tell it was dated. He wanted something better. And the CIA in this period actually was working on one. There's a model called the Tropolis, named for a company in Rochester, New York, that had made it for CIA. It's about a sixth the size of the Minox. It's got this kind of cylindrical design. The film in it was actually based off of film that Kodak had built for CIA to use in spy satellites. So very thin film. It could be fitted into a fountain pen or a cigarette lighter. And, Gordon, this is part of the story that gives me tremendous joy to say, which is that the Central Intelligence Agency, with great beneficence, provided the Tropol design to the Secret Intelligence Service. And they couldn't replicate it. The Brits could not master the level of watchmaking precision that the Central Intelligence Agency brought you because you got more.
- [33:47]
Gordon Carrera
Money in the American side. If you got the money, you can do anything. I think that's the point. Rather than technical ingenuity, that's what I'd.
- [33:54]
David McCloskey
Suggest from that, Gordon. It's t. It's tacky to mention the money. We don't need it. Let's not talk about the money. We may have sabotaged the design, too. We may have provided you with something that wasn't faulty design. We left out.
- [34:05]
Gordon Carrera
They couldn't do it. Spy sabotage.
- [34:08]
David McCloskey
But here's the thing about. So the Trople, it comes with with a risk, right? So Tolkachev is a new agent. And there is absolutely no reason to have a camera like this other than for spying. So he gets caught with one of these, it is game over. A death sentence, most likely, right? So what they settle on the CIA. And Tolkachev is a 35 millimeter pentax for use in his office. So commercially available. There's like, a reason he might have this, right? And they give him two tropes for testing at home to get him comfortable. But say, don't bring these, you know, into the office or anything like that. And interestingly enough, Gordon, there is a painting. There's actually a wall at CIA headquarters at Langley in the F corridor, which is just by the wonderful Langley gift shop and just down the way from the Dunkin Donuts in the cafeteria. And it's got this wall of paintings of really kind of incredibly daring, high impact operations that the CIA has run over the course of its history. And one of those paintings is of Adolf Tolkachev. And in that painting he is holding the Pentax camera over the back of a chair. It's kind of in the low light and he's photographing a document. And the clock in that painting reads 12:30pm which is intentional. It's very near the end of his lunch hour. And it's when he would be at home photographing these documents. And so it's kind of, as a bit of a side note, it's very interesting. Now you have this very bustling corridor at Langley. Obviously we're two generations removed from Tolkachev and his case, but that operation stands as kind of this testament to really him and the work he did all through this camera.
- [36:03]
Gordon Carrera
So they've got the communications plan, the COMO plan, as you put it, they've got the camera to him, he's got his lunch hour in which he can snap as many documents as possible. I guess he gets to work and he becomes incredibly productive, doesn't he? I mean, that's what's astonishing is just how much, you know, to get him back to the drive, to just do as much as he can. When it comes to gathering intelligence from.
- [36:26]
David McCloskey
The institute, the quantities he begins to produce are indeed insane. I mean, in one meeting, Tolkachev shows up with 179 rolls of film. And this is coming again from David Hoffman's wonderful book, the Billion Dollar Spy. And it's too large to put in Gilcher's bag. So Tolkachev actually has to hand him his own briefcase. Right. In other meetings, he's providing as much as 81 rolls of film. I should note here, making us sound like they're meeting all the time, but we're having to sort of compress things a little bit here. But it's not like a daily meeting. I mean, it might be happening once every three, four, five months. And these rolls of film lead to production of thousands of pages of intelligence product in dc, which is absolutely mammoth amount of production. So just to give listeners kind of a hint of some of this stuff, he provides the first documentation of the technical design of a Soviet AWACS platform. That's an airborne early warning and control. So it's basically a flying radar station. The Soviets didn't have one. Tolkachev compromises their blueprints for it. There's extensive documentation on modifications to that mig25 for that look down, shoot down Radar we talked about in the last episode. So basically the ability of a fighter aircraft to see targets below it, right? Missiles, planes. And there are documents on missiles and aircraft that are in research and development that weren't going to be deployed until 1990. And so in these kind of first few halls, Tolkachev has already critically compromised two core Soviet capabilities. The radars on the ground that protect it from attack and then the airborne radars that allow the Soviet Union to attack others. And the way that Tolkachev's information creates real value and almost immediate value in the US Sort of defense system is astonishing. Because what it is, is it's avoided research and development time on the development of countermeasures to those Soviet systems.
- [38:31]
Gordon Carrera
I mean, that's what's so interesting about it, is we often think about spies providing kind of almost like political intelligence. You know, this is going to happen tomorrow, or this is the gossip inside the Politburo or inside Moscow. But this stuff is what's really valuable, isn't it? Because it takes years to develop a new fighter jet or to develop a radar system, or to develop countermeasures to radar system. So if they're starting a 10 year program, you know, to build this kind of fighter jet or radar system and you know about it, and you can build your systems to overcome it or to deal with it, this is the kind of big stuff, isn't it, for intelligence, which makes this technical aspect of the intelligence actually really valuable in a way that kind of, maybe even political gossip isn't necessarily, you know, as long lasting in its impact.
- [39:16]
David McCloskey
Well, yeah. And the political intelligence you mentioned, I mean, it might be helpful to your decision making, but it's very hard to put a dollar sign on that. Like in most cases it's going to be a little squishier. Like how useful was it? Did it really impact our decision or did it not? There's a lot of squish there. But Tolkachev's information basically goes directly to the DOD's, the Department of Defense's bottom line. I mean, there's a memo that the Pentagon produces in this period that says even if Tolkachev's spying were discovered, the value of the information that he had provided wouldn't diminish for probably eight to 10 years. So almost, you know, getting into the late 80s, early 90s, because it would take the Soviets that long to design, test and deploy new technology to replace the stuff that Tolkachev had compromised. So, you know, this information is incredibly valuable to Washington and it is incredibly Sensitive information too. And in fact, the Tolkiev information is so sensitive that only a handful of people at CIA even know his name. Reports from his intelligence are being double encrypted out of Moscow station. And in kind of a pretty interesting trick of the trade, they're eye washed. Which means that the meat of the product, the stuff that, you know, Pentagon planners need to know sort of blended into other sources of information or they obscure the fact that, that it's coming from a human source in Moscow because they need to distribute, CIA needs to distribute the information to generate an impact, right? It needs to go to the Air Force. But they have to protect Tolkachev's identity at all costs.
- [40:56]
Gordon Carrera
And so incredibly valuable. Which is why as we've heard, he's called the billion dollar spy. Because, you know, those are where some of the estimates are. You know, even more, $2 billion I think are some of the estimates. But he also understands how valuable is information is, doesn't he? I mean, I think that's what's interesting about him. He's got a sense of this and money does become part of the conversation. And it's complicated because we talked about him being a dissident and wanting to do it to damage the Soviet Union. And yet he does start to press the CIA about money and about how much he's going to get for this. He's not necessarily going to spend it, but it seems to be a kind of sense of his, the way he wants to be seen as valuable and valued by the CIA. Is that right?
- [41:38]
David McCloskey
I think that hits it exactly, Gordon. This is about what become clear to CIA over time is that Tolkotev doesn't want the money to go out and spend it on stuff. He wants a signal of respect from CIA for the value of his information. Right. And so he starts to ask for more because as we mentioned, you know, the thousand rubles, the couple thousand rubles is just, it's peanuts. And it's I think to him a sign that the CIA doesn't value his information, doesn't value the risk that he's taking. And Tolkachev is going to tell Gilcher, you know, I want what that defector got. The MIG pilot who flew to Japan with the airplane, Tolkachev says that he heard on a Voice of America broadcast that that MIG pilot got six figures. You know, I want six figures. And again, you know, the Hoffman book on this is so fascinating because you see the back and forth and the cable traffic is that there is a tremendous amount of hand wringing at CIA over, well, okay, how much do we actually pay him? What method do we use to pay him? And over what time frame, you know, does, do we give him 100 grand, do we give him 300 grand? Do we open an escrow account somewhere that he can kind of draw on as he wants and, you know, will grow over time? Or maybe we try to compensate him with something else, like do we give him diamonds, jewelry, you know, something he could, he could hide. And In October of 1979, Tolkachev, who's, I think becoming agitated about the money situation at this point, kind of feels like the CIA is slow rolling him. He tells Gilcher in an ops note that by six figures he meant six zeros. So I want millions of dollars. He's not talking in rubles, he's talking in dollars.
- [43:20]
Gordon Carrera
$1 million.
- [43:22]
David McCloskey
$1 million.
- [43:25]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah, that's. He wants the big money. He wants, he wants, he wants the big money. And he wants. Even though he can't spend it, he just wants it because that's what he thinks he deserves or what will signify his value. Yeah.
- [43:37]
David McCloskey
And by maybe the summer of 1980. So after more than a year of real production, finally after this sort of long back and forth, the CIA and Tolkachev hammer out the money issue. And the CIA write up on this is fascinating to have is told that he's going to be paid an annual salary quote equivalent to the salary of the US president for his work in 1979, which is about $200,000 and an even higher salary for each year thereafter that he's in place and productive. They'll hold it in an escrow account that's going to earn interest at 8.75%. And Tolkachev can draw on that account at his discretion. He'll see the sort of officer who meets with him will tell him how much is in it. You could even see statements. And he can take out what he wants when he wants to. But it takes over a year to kind of work this arrangement out to the point where Tolkatchev feels like the CIA is paying him what he's worth.
- [44:36]
Gordon Carrera
I mean, it's interesting, isn't it, because there's note here. The chief of the Soviet division asked the Air Force to give their estimate of Tolkachev's value in 1980. And the answer comes back in the neighborhood of $2 billion. So the fact he wants a million dollars or maybe more, but the value he has is $2 billion. I mean, which is astonishing when you think one person's intelligence can be that valuable. I mean, that must be something close to a record. I guess. So there we have this hugely valuable agent in place, Adolf Tolkachev. We've got the communications plan. We've got him photographing these documents in the lunch break. We've got the awareness of his enormous value. We've got the discussions about money, him wanting more money. But what else does he want? I mean, this is amazing. What he wants is a suicide pill. And I think that is a signal that he knows the pressure that he's under, the risks he's taking, the fact that he might end up dying for what he's doing. And next time on the Rest is classified. We'll find out if he needs that suicide pill as the KGB net closes around him. Thanks for listening.
- [45:48]
David McCloskey
See you next time.