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The Billion Dollar Spy
The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal | David E. Hoffman
5 posts | 16 read | 12 to read
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.
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Kaarin
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Bailedbailed

DNF. There are some solid facts and anecdotes here. But ultimately the prose is so dry I couldn‘t power all the way through it.

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Pedrocamacho
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Pickpick

This is the true story of Soviet military researcher and CIA secret source, Adolf Tolkachev. It is a compelling and interesting read. Tolkachev had a well-earned grudge against the Soviet Union and chose to settle it by turning over details of Soviet military radar research year-after-year, for well over a decade.

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Waterstones
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Pickpick

Our Non Fiction book this month is the astonishing true story of Cold War spy-craft and espionage. The Billion Dollar Spy reads like the best thriller novels, gripping, eerie and hard to put down.

#waterstones #bookofthemonth #billiondollarspy

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Skybariline
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Pickpick

Adolf Tolkachev, a Soviet military design engineer with a high level security clearance, aided the CIA's Moscow station during the Cold War between 1979 and 1985, providing information worth billions of dollars to U.S. weapons capabilities, until his work was compromised by an unlikely source. The second half of this book is especially engaging, as the stakes become higher and even more dramatic.

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Slynn71
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Ice cream, pie, coffee & espionage!!!