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