Tolkachev, A Worthy Successor to Penkovsky

An Exceptional Espionage Operation
Tolkachev, A Worthy Successor to Penkovsky (U)
Barry G. Royden
From Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 47, No. 3, 2003 - Unclassified Edition
[ http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/vol47no3/article02.html ]
Editor's Note: This unclassified article draws extensively on Directorate of Operations files, which, of necessity, remain classified. Because Tolkachev's story serves as an important case study of Cold War intelligence operations, it is being made available to scholars and to the public in as much detail as possible, despite minimal source citations.
Barry Royden researched and wrote this article while teaching as a CIA Officer-in-Residence at the Joint Military Intelligence College. He recently retired after four decades in the CIA, last serving as Associate Deputy Director of Operations for Counterintelligence. He is currently teaching Counterintelligence at a Directorate of Operations training facility.
v v v
On 20 September 1985, international wire service reports carried a statement distributed by the official Soviet news agency TASS that one A. G. Tolkachev, whom it described as a staff member at one of Moscow's research institutes, had been arrested the previous June trying to pass secret materials of a defensive nature to the United States. Subsequent news stories said Tolkachev was an electronics expert at a military aviation institute in Moscow who was compromised by former CIA officer Edward Lee Howard.
In October 1985, The Washington Post ran a story that described Tolkachev as "one of CIA's most valuable human assets in the Soviet Union." According to FBI affidavits related to the Howard espionage case that were made public, Tolkachev had provided information on Soviet avionics, cruise missiles, and other technologies. The Soviets subsequently publicly confirmed that they had executed Tolkachev in 1986 for "high treason."
Despite the fact that more than 15 years have passed, little additional information has surfaced about Adolf Tolkachev and his work for the CIA. The following is the story of a brave and dedicated man who for over seven years provided the CIA with a huge volume of extremely sensitive and valuable intelligence on Soviet military research and development (R&D) activities. It is also the story of a well-conceived and executed CIA intelligence operation run in Moscow under the nose of the KGB.
The Beginning
In January 1977, on a typically depressing winter evening in Moscow, the local CIA chief left his office and drove to a nearby gas station used by diplomats. While waiting for gas, he was surprised when a middle-aged Russian approached him and asked him in English if he was an American. When the CIA chief answered affirmatively, the Russian placed a folded piece of paper on the car seat and departed. The CIA chief later noted that his was the only American-plated car at the gas station, and it appeared obvious that the man was waiting for an American to appear. The man was calm and clearly had thought out his approach.
The note, written in Russian, was short and to the point. The writer said that he wanted to "discuss matters" on a "strictly confidential" basis with an "appropriate American official." He then suggested a discreet meeting at a given time and place in the car of an American official or at a Metro station entrance. The writer also suggested a signal--a parked car at a certain place and time, facing either one direction or the other--to indicate which meeting arrangement was preferred. The note contained sketches of the exact locations of the two optional sites and where the car should be parked to trigger a meeting.
It would be a long and tortuous process before secure contact would be established between the CIA and this "intelligence volunteer." The KGB had established a pattern in the Soviet Union of running "dangles" (ostensible intelligence volunteers actually controlled by the KGB), which made it risky to respond to any potential volunteer. Dangles were aimed at flushing out Agency personnel so that they could be expelled from the country and to obtain important information on the CIA's methods of operation.
On the other hand, many of the CIA's best agents through the years have been intelligence volunteers. One of the Agency's most famous Soviet agents, Col. Oleg Penkovsky of the Soviet military intelligence service (GRU), volunteered to the CIA in Moscow in 1960. He also experienced great difficulty in establishing contact with Western intelligence. Penkovsky passed letters to two American students, a British businessman, and a Canadian businessman over a period of several months before he succeeded in using British businessman Greville Wynne to open a channel to US and British intelligence. [1]
The CIA ran Penkovsky jointly with the British for a little over a year, and he provided immensely valuable information on Soviet political and military plans and intentions. He also passed data on Soviet missile deployment methods and operations that proved critical to the United States during the Cuban missile crisis. All substantive meetings with Penkovsky, however, were held