The Rest Is Classified - 15. Crossing the Iron Curtain: The Cold War’s Most Valuable Spy (Ep 2)

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

Was it possible to avoid KGB surveillance in Moscow as a CIA agent at the height of the Cold War? What motivates someone to spy on their country for an opposing power? And how did Adolf Tolkachev manage to smuggle out the top secret documents the CIA needed to defeat the USSR? Adolf Tolkachev has been recruited by the CIA as a mole inside a highly sensitive government department in Moscow. His job: to sneak top secret documents out to offer the US a glimpse of Russia's defence capabilities. Despite his initial success, Tolkachev knew the risks if he was caught by the KGB. But, could he justify those risks? Find out as Gordon and David share the latest instalment of the story of Adolf Tolkachev. ------------------- Pre-order a signed edition of David's latest book, The Seventh Floor, via this link. ------------------- Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ www.nordvpn.com/restisclassified It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! Email: [e-mail] Twitter: @triclassified Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Callum Hill Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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? 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 them all safe and secure I do use that NordVPN. 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. 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 slash rest is classified. And when you sign up, you can receive a bonus for 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. Calling all sellers, Salesforce is hiring account executives to join us on the

cutting edge of technology. Here, innovation isn't a buzzword. It's a way of life. You'll be solving customer challenges faster with agents, winning with purpose, and showing the world what AI was meant to be. Let's create the agent-first future together. Head to salesforce.com slash careers to learn more.

Hey guys, you know what this playground could use? A wine country, huh? A redwood forest would be cool. Ski slopes! Wait! Did we just invent California? Discover why California is the ultimate playground at visitcalifornia.com 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 already 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. And I'm David McCloskey. And together we're telling the story of Adolf Telkachev, 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. 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.

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. 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. 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? Cause 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. 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? 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 have been working out already, is what would be called the Como 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 Gilscher. 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 Gilscher- I have no idea what that means. Literally no idea. John Gilscher'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 Tolpachev 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 some of 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 know, first of all, what access has he got? Does he really have access to the intelligence he says he has? Why does he want to do it? What's his motivation? That links to how you're going to be able to run an agent effectively, doesn't it? You need to understand his motivation and work

with his motivations and his character in order to be able to run him effectively and for him not to go out of control or to do things which are dangerous to him or to you. The 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 chat. So they're kind of, you know, they're still trying to work out if he's for real or not. 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 really spy tech kind of stuff,

they have officers who do handwriting analysis. In this period, they actually look at all the letters that Tokachev at that point passed to the chief of station, and they put down a really kind of spookily prescient analysis of Tokachev 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. I have to say I'm slightly skeptical about the. You can tell someone's personality from their handwriting. I don't know what they make of mine, which is pretty messy, but

that's going to be a strain. We'll do a separate part on that Gordon. 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 and get the meetings going. Yeah, and I guess 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 Como plan, they've 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 Tokachev will be able to come and pick it up. Yeah. 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.

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 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 talk to Jeff and the idea is that talk which I would mail it and it's going to go to kind of an innocuous overseas address that's controlled

by CIA but of course talkative won't post it as though he had written it and I love the fact that they leave this package of stuff for him in a dirty mitten. Is that right? I mean, so in a glove, I mean, basically- It's a concealment device, yeah. A concealment, 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 sensitive material in a glove in a phone booth for someone. I mean, what if someone else just picks it up? This is the interesting thing about concealment devices is that you are always trying to balance the 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 you 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, you know about maximum concealment might be something that's hidden in, 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 a mitten and there have been some 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 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 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 if 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 gonna be easy enough for Tolkachev to remain in flow. You know, he's gonna 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 Tolgachev 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 in Moscow station is like, rubbing their hands with glee. Jackpot. Right? It's Christmas time. Christmas come early at Langley. And so on New Year's Day of 1979, John Gilsher, 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 Tokachev and Tokachev comes down to the phone booth. And this this is the first in-person meeting between Adolf Tokachev and an officer of the Central Intelligence Agency. It has been, you know, almost what, two years of talking to this back and forth. And the first thing on Gilshir's list, which is long for this short meeting, is he wants to know why is Tolkachev doing this?

What is possibly motivating him? And I think this is great. Tolkachev has this great line, which says, he says, I'm a dissident at heart. 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 been, 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 Gilshir also says, I think it's a very fascinating point, is it's a sign that that handwriting analysis we've read was quite good, which is that Tolgachev, it's New Year's Day, he's not blind drunk as most Soviet men would have been on New Year's Day. Tolgachev is stone-gold sober. Tokachev is not a big drinker. He does not use alcohol much at all. And this is a good sign, isn't it?

It's a very 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. 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 Gilscher has got to be feeling good about that fact. And

interestingly, this is going to be a thread that just runs through the whole Tokachev case, which is this issue of money, compensation for what he's doing. Tokachev mentions money right up front. There's a discussion with Gilscher about how much it'll be. They settle on 1000 rubles a month, which is really not much at all for the risks that Tokachev is taking. It's probably maybe three times the monthly salary of

kind of a mid-career academic, which would be around where Tokachev is. So for the level of risk that he's taking, it's really not much. And Tokachev says, hey, I want 10,000 rubles for my work so far. Gilshir, 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. 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. There was a bit of a giveaway, I think, for the neighbors.

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. That's one of the factors. I guess it's a difficult thing, isn't it? 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. 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. So I think Gilscher 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 and their motivation 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 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 talks or whatever the kind of high level politicking might be. I mean, the value of the Tokachev case is going to be in his ability to photograph documents. And so, here, Gilshur and Tokachev get into some really kind of seemingly mundane details about Tokachev's life and his day-to-day sort of pattern because it's gonna 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,

Tokachev is actually going in the evenings to the Lennon 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.

It's like, well, Gilshir, 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. 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 kind of real challenge going forward. Yeah. So that that comma 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 instructions that Gilsher 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 work 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 the idea is the CIA would call, they would ask, and all these sites have the name of an individual. CIA calls Tokachev's apartment. They say, you know, is Ninochka there?

And Tokachev 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 the 1st of January, the 2nd of February, the 3rd of 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 can't 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, Tolgachev is going to be directed

to one of those, you know, pre-arranged 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, et cetera, Tolgachev will be directed to appear at one of several pre-arranged sites at a specified time according to the month. 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 Gilshur to go make the meeting.

Right. 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? 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. This episode is brought to you by our new friends at NordVPN. Now, David, what do you find useful about NordVPN? Well, I really like NordVPN's Threat Protection Pro, which is an incredibly powerful and effective antivirus tool. It is integrated directly into the NordVPN app Threat Protection Pro, which is an incredibly powerful and effective antivirus tool. It is integrated directly into the NordVPN app and allows you to browse safely and smoothly

while also protecting you from phishing and other cyber threats. It can often be hard to distinguish fake websites from real ones or phishing texts that appear to be real, but Threat Protection Pro will prevent you from accessing these dangerous things. So NordVPN is actually the first and only VPN app to receive the certification that their anti-phishing software is reliable. So to stay secure online, you should take advantage of our exclusive NordVPN discount. All you need to do is go to NordVPN.com slash rest is classified. When you sign up, you can receive a bonus four months on top of your plan. And there is absolutely no risk with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee.

The link is also in the episode description box. Patrick Bishop here from 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 travelling 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. Yeah, this is like a Christmas morning at the Central Intelligence Agency, Gordon, because I think in this kind of initial hall, 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 Tokuchov 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, 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 Tolgachev 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 the agent handling piece of this, Tolgachev 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 Tokachev 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, yeah, no, it absolutely is true.

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, oh, there's a bag check. There's some rigorous kind of set of procedures. What you see in these top-secret bureaucracies, I guess, is that they really are built on trust. Once you're in, once they've sort of given you the polygraph or tested you or in Tokachev's case, I mean, he's gone through all kinds of kind of background investigations by the KGB.

You know, once you're in, you're part of the team. And even in a highly suspicious system like in the Soviet Union, you know, in order for the work to get done, Tolgachev 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. 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 there were. So KGB frowned on photocopiers, unsurprisingly. 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 pics of the documents and do as many as you can in the lunch break under pressure. Are you a Simpsons fan, Gordon? I am, yeah. 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 responses?

No, it would be a tremendous strain on the animators 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 Tolpich outcase, the CIA didn't really have a good camera for use by its agents. And so agents assets in Moscow,

they had used the 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, Tolgachev 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. Tolgachev did not like the Molly. He kind of didn't 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 Tropal 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 tropal 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 to the cameras. That's only because you've got more money in the American side. If you've got the money,

you can do anything. I think that's the point rather than technical ingenuity. That's what I'd suggest. Gordon, it's tacky to mention the money. We don't need to, let's not talk about the money. We may have sabotaged the design too. We may have provided you with something that wasn't, wasn't quite accurate. Spy sabotage. But here's the thing about this.

So the tropal, it comes 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 C9 tolga chip 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 tropells 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 and 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 12.30 PM, of a chair, it's kind of in the low light, and he's photographing a document. And the clock in that painting reads 1230 PM, 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. So, they've got the communications plan, the commo 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 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 Gilsher's bag.

So Tolkachev actually has to hand him his own briefcase. In other meetings, he's providing as much as 81 roles of film. I should note here at 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, this might be happening once every three, four or five months. And these roles 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 MiG-25 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, Tolgachev 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. The way that Tokhachev's information creates real value and almost immediate value in the U.S. 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. 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. If they're starting a 10-year program 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. 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 DODs, 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 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 this information is incredibly valuable to Washington, and it is incredibly sensitive information too. And in fact, the Tolkutchev 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 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. And so incredibly valuable, which is why, as we've heard, he's called the billion dollar spy,

because those are where some of the estimates are, even more, $2 billion, I think, are some of the estimates, but he also understands how valuable his 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. 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 the way he wants to be seen as valuable and valued by the CIA. Is that right? I think that hits it exactly, Gordon. This is about what we come clear to CIA over time is that Tokhachet 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 ruples, the couple thousand ruples is just it's 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 Tokachev is going to tell Gilscher, you know, I want what that defector got. The MiG pilot who flew to Japan with the airplane, Tokachev 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 timeframe? 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 you know in October of 1979 Tolkachev who's becoming agitated about the money situation at this point kind of feels like the CIA is slow rolling him He tells Gil sure in an Ops note that by six figures. He meant six zeros. So, you know, I want millions of millions He's not talking in rubles. He's talking in our million dollars Yeah, that's he wants the big money 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. 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 Tokachev hammer out the money issue. And the CIA write up on this is fascinating. Tolkachev 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 gonna 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 Tolkachev feels like the CIA is paying him what he's worth.

I mean, it's interesting, isn't it? Because, you know, there's no 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 you know, the fact he wants a million dollars or maybe more, but the value he has is $2 billion, which is astonishing when you think one person's intelligence can be that valuable. That must be something close to a record, I guess. 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. See you next time.