From the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning history The Dead Hand comes the riveting story of a spy who cracked open the Soviet military research establishment and a penetrating portrait of the CIA’s Moscow station, an outpost of daring espionage in the last years of the Cold War
While driving out of the American embassy in Moscow on the evening of February 16, 1978, the chief of the CIA’s Moscow station heard a knock on his car window. A man on the curb handed him an envelope whose contents stunned U.S. intelligence: details of top-secret Soviet research and developments in military technology that were totally unknown to the United States. In the years that followed, the man, Adolf Tolkachev, an engineer in a Soviet military design bureau, used his high-level access to hand over tens of thousands of pages of technical secrets. His revelations allowed America to reshape its weapons systems to defeat Soviet radar on the ground and in the air, giving the United States near total superiority in the skies over Europe.
One of the most valuable spies to work for the United States in the four decades of global confrontation with the Soviet Union, Tolkachev took enormous personal risks—but so did the Americans. The CIA had long struggled to recruit and run agents in Moscow, and Tolkachev was a singular breakthrough. Using spy cameras and secret codes as well as face-to-face meetings in parks and on street corners, Tolkachev and his handlers succeeded for years in eluding the feared KGB in its own backyard, until the day came when a shocking betrayal put them all at risk.
Drawing on previously secret documents obtained from the CIA and on interviews with participants, David Hoffman has created an unprecedented and poignant portrait of Tolkachev, a man motivated by the depredations of the Soviet state to master the craft of spying against his own country. Stirring, unpredictable, and at times unbearably tense, The Billion Dollar Spy is a brilliant feat of reporting that unfolds like an espionage thriller.
The Billion Dollar Spy
A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal
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Creators
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Release date
July 7, 2015 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781101913932
- File size: 343133 KB
- Duration: 11:54:51
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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AudioFile Magazine
Narrator Dan Woren's bass voice fits this thrilling account of how the CIA gained totally unexpected information about Soviet technology during the Cold War. In February 1978, agents in Moscow were approached by military technology researcher Adolf Tolkachev, who subsequently transferred tens of thousands of pages of military secrets to the U.S. The story does not end well for Tolkachev--sloppy counter-espionage work by the U.S. led to his betrayal and eventual execution. Woren's pacing, inflection, and Russian accents are all well done. Those familiar with the Russian language may cringe a bit at his pronunciation of Russian words, but this is a minor hitch in an otherwise splendid production. M.T.F. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine -
Publisher's Weekly
August 31, 2015
Pulitzer-winner Hoffman returns to the Cold War era in his latest, a biography of Adolf Tolkachev, a Russian engineer who in 1977 approached the CIA offering his services as a spy for America. For over half a decade, Tolkachev gave the U.S. priceless information on the latest Russian technological advances, until his capture and subsequent execution. Woren provides the perfect narration for this book. His deep, well modulated voice brings just the right amount of formal authority to hold the listener’s attention, but never falls into a drone of professorial lecturing. His phrasing, tone, and characterizations, especially his Russian characters, bring to life each clandestine meeting, each secretive exchange of information, and every moment of danger. He pulls the listener into the story and turns what could have been dry and boring into something as captivating and enthralling as a John le Carré spy novel. A Doubleday hardcover.
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Formats
- OverDrive Listen audiobook
subjects
Languages
- English
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