How the CIA ran a ‘billion dollar spy’ in Cold War-era Moscow

EXCERPT | An agent who worked deep inside the Soviet military helped the United States command the skies.

The spy had vanished.  He was the most successful and valued agent the United States had run inside the Soviet Union in two decades. His documents and drawings had unlocked the secrets of Soviet radars and weapons research years into the future. He had smuggled circuit boards and blueprints out of his military laboratory. His espionage put the United States in position to dominate the skies in aerial combat and confirmed the vulnerability of Soviet air defenses — showing that American cruise missiles and strategic bombers could fly under the radar.

In the late autumn and early winter of 1982, the CIA lost touch with him. Five scheduled meetings were missed. KGB surveillance on the street was overwhelming. Even the “deep cover” officers of the CIA’s Moscow station, invisible to the KGB, could not break through.

On the evening of Dec. 7, the next scheduled meeting date, the future of the operation was put in the hands of Bill Plunkert. After a stint as a Navy aviator, Plunkert had joined the CIA and trained as a clandestine operations officer. He was in his mid-30s, 6-foot-2, and had arrived at the Moscow station in the summer. His mission was to give the slip to the KGB and make contact.

Espionage is the art of illusion. Tonight, Plunkert was the illusionist. Under his street clothes, he wore a second layer that would be typical for an old Russian man. The birthday cake was fake, with a top that looked like a cake but concealed a device underneath, created by the CIA’s technical operations wizards, called the jack-in-the-box. The CIA knew that KGB surveillance teams almost always followed a car from behind and rarely pulled alongside. It was possible for a car carrying a CIA officer to slip around a corner or two, momentarily out of view. In that brief interval, the CIA case officer could jump out of the car and disappear. At the same time, the jack-in-the-box would spring erect, a pop-up that looked, in outline, like the head and torso of the case officer who had just jumped out.

Then came an espionage operation that turned the tide. The agent was Adolf Tolkachev, an engineer and specialist in airborne radar who worked deep inside the Soviet military establishment. Over six years, Tolkachev met with CIA officers 21 times on the streets of Moscow, a city swarming with KGB surveillance.

Tolkachev’s story is detailed in 944 pages of previously secret CIA cables about the operation that were declassified without condition for the forthcoming book, “The Billion Dollar Spy.” The CIA did not review the book before publication. The documents and interviews with participants offer a remarkably detailed picture of how espionage was conducted in Moscow during some of the most tense years of the Cold War. 

Tolkachev was driven by a desire to avenge history. His wife’s mother was executed and her father sent to labor camps during Stalin’s Great Terror of the 1930s. He also described himself as disillusioned with communism and “a dissident at heart.” He wanted to strike back at the Soviet system, and did so by betraying its military secrets to the United States. His CIA case officers often observed that he seemed determined to cause the maximum damage possible to the Soviet Union, despite the risks. The punishment for treason was execution. Tolkachev didn’t want to die at the hands of the KGB. He asked for and got a suicide pill from the CIA he could use if caught.- Read More at Washingtonpost

How the CIA ran a ‘billion dollar spy’ in Moscow

With court approval, NSA resumes bulk collection of phone data