Ann's Reviews > The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

This book is a detailed investigation of the rise and fall of one particular Russian spy, Adik Tolkachev, who provided the USA with thousands and thousands of pages of technical secrets between circa 1978 and 1985. Most of the well-known Russian spies belonged to the KGB or GRU, and were usually only active when posted abroad, not when in Moscow and under constant surveillance. This man managed to pull off the seemingly impossible : to have more than 20 face-to-face meetings with a CIA officer in the heart of Moscow. That, in itself, makes this story unique and worth being read by anyone with an interest in cold war espionage.

The book is detailed, both in the discussions of tradecraft and in the description of the technical secrets that Tolkachev passed to the West. I found this fascinating reading, because it helped me realize how espionage contains a lot of tedium (daily checks on whether a specific window had been opened between the hours of noon and 1 pm; hours of walking about the frosty streets of Moscow to evade surveillance). All of these details really painted a chilling picture of Moscow in the late 1970s and early 1980s : the omnipresence of the KGB, the scarcity of food and everyday goods, the sheer dreariness of it all. For instance, I found it so interesting that Tolkachev kept asking the CIA for records of American rock music (Deep Purple! Nazareth! Uriah Heep!) or even simple things like good-quality erasers and drawing papers for his teenage son.

The book also provided background on the CIA's evolution as an intelligence agency. From the gung-ho early days, to the paralyzing paranoia of the Angleton years, and then the return to muscular anti-communism under Reagan, the philosophy of Cold War espionage went through several permuations, all of which influenced what the Moscow station could and could not do. The discussions that flowed back and forth between Langley and Moscow are illuminating : it's the typical disconnect between the desk people and the field people. The agents on the ground in Moscow believe in their agent, are concerned about the risks for him, and try to accommodate some of his requests (like a pair of earphones for his son). The folks back at headquarters need to be convinced by the spy's bona fides, force unwanted electronic equipment upon him and keep on asking him to take more and more risks, while simultaneously denying him the cyanide capsule he requests.

Among the book's pluses are the map and chronology at the beginning, the extensive footnotes, the bibliography and the attention to detail. Among the book's weaknesses are some disconnects in construction that seemed to have been inserted for no good reason that I can discern. For instance, the first chapter is about one of the CIA agents going through an elaborate ruse to give the KGB the slip and go meet with Tolkachev. But then the next chapter really starts at the beginning : at the very first contact between Tolkachev and the CIA. So that first chapter, which was probably intended to be a catchy beginning, is totally disconnected from what follows. Similarly, we don't find out about Tolkachev's antecedents until halfway through the book, and even that happens only after we read about his wife's family history (and that even though his wife plays no role in the story). I think that these chapters would have been more impactful if they had been placed at the point in the story where the CIA confirms the identity of the man who keeps on contacting them.

Still, overall the book was a fascinating read, down to the very end where Tolkachev is arrested by the KGB. The CIA can't figure out what happened, until they start to realize that their most precious asset had been betrayed by a former CIA agent.