Verifying Tolkachev
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the United States was the beneficiary of staggeringly important intelligence information transmitted through the CIA by Adolf Tolkachev, a Soviet engineer who held a high position in a Russian military radar design house. Tolkachev provided information that redirected U.S. defense spending and allowed the U.S. Air Force to maintain air supremacy against the Warsaw Pact and other nations that used Soviet air defense platforms and technologies—while saving more than a billion dollars in procurement spending. A recent book by David E. Hoffman categorizes Tolkachev’s importance by its title, The Billion Dollar Spy. Yet before Tolkachev’s information could be considered in U.S. defense planning, it had to be vetted by a team of experts—and I observed the process.
In the late 1970s, I was planning to return to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory when my office received a call from a two-star general asking me to come to the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and give a talk about my travels to Russia and the Russian scientists I had met—travels that required the permission of then-Rear Adm. Bobby Ray Inman, USN, the director of naval intelligence. I graciously declined, reminding the general that I worked for the U.S. Navy and would be returning to Livermore anyway. The next thing I knew, my Navy bosses were encouraging me to give the talk. Because three- and four-star admirals outrank a Naval Reserve captain, I complied.
When I arrived to speak, I found a number of Air Force personnel there, including the assistant chief of staff for intelligence, his aide, one high-ranking officer and others. The assistant chief of staff for intelligence was Maj. Gen. James L. Brown, USAF, and his aide was then-Col. J. Coy Pettyjohn Jr., USAF, who later would retire as a brigadier general. The result of this meeting was that I was re-called to active duty to work with the Air Force for several months after my return to Lawrence Livermore. This arrangement allowed me to retain the necessary security clearances.
While the assistant chief of staff for intelligence was a major general, I was to work with the unnamed high-ranking officer, who was below flag rank. Some of the material from Tolkachev came directly from the CIA to the offices of the Air Force assistant chief of staff for intelligence, where it was turned over to the officer. When he began his military career, he was enlisted, serving as a sergeant in the Pacific theater in World War II. After the war, he attended college, attained a Ph.D. and picked up an Air Force Reserve commission. After a couple of jobs in the private sector, he remained on active duty. It is easy to see how his value could lead to the Air Force wanting to keep him around permanently.
The officer was well-suited to recognize Russian technology’s validity and determine its importance. He had a home in the Washington, D.C., area near a university where he taught physics and electrical engineering. At his home, he had one of the most complete electronic warfare facilities in the world. He usually had his choice of the top Air Force Academy and ROTC students to work with him. Their tours could last one, two or, in rare cases, three years, and for undergraduates, they could include summers.
These capabilities formed the basis for verifying Tolkachev’s intelligence. The officer would receive Tolkachev’s information, and he would lead an analysis of it that might include building hardware from purloined blueprints. When necessary, the officer would take Tolkachev’s material and convert it into hardware at his elaborate home laboratory outside of the Pentagon. In these cases, his home was placed under armed guard. This was also the case when retrievals were being tested in his lab.
With the conclusions he reached, he could go directly to the Air Force chief of materiel and step right into the middle of an industrial procurement. He would change it to conform to what he had picked up from Tolkachev’s material. If a contractor got ahead of itself with too many improvements, the officer would cut the contractor back to where it needed to be, based on what he had determined from Tolkachev’s input.
If anyone ever objected to the officer’s changes—and I don’t know if anyone did—that individual would find himself looking right at several four-star and three-star officers. At one point during this time, the Air Force chief of staff and vice chief of staff both held physics Ph.D.s. As a result, they completely accepted the officer’s findings and conclusions in his evaluations of Tolkachev’s input.
It is difficult to overestimate the officer’s influence. At one point, Gen. Brown came to me and said, “You know how much we rely on [the officer], and there is nobody who can hold their own with him. We brought you on board because of your long-term association with Dr. Edward Teller. Do you know anyone in Teller’s group who could compare with him?” I thought of a few people I knew, but for some reason or another, none could fill the bill. The officer was a unique genius, and I felt no need to amend or challenge any of his evaluations. He had shown me some schematics in photographs that revealed Tolkachev’s hand holding down the drafts so the photos would be in focus.
After I returned to Livermore, my involvement in the verification team faded. At about the same time, Tolkachev was ensnared in a web of betrayal by Edward Lee Howard and later Aldrich Ames. Howard was able to flee the country, later reportedly dying in a fall in his dacha in Russia. Ames remains in prison, serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Tolkachev was arrested in 1985 and sentenced to death, which was carried out in 1986.
Ironically, a similar type of technological competition arose years later. This came at a time when the Cold War had eased and U.S.-Russian joint programs were being planned and executed. During one of these exercises, the Russian team showed a surprise capability in an area in which the Navy consistently had boasted of U.S. superiority. The Navy’s reaction was to deny the results and harass the participants. The officer who reviewed Tolkachev’s material was not there—nor was any equivalent—to drive the Navy back to its drawing board.
While calling Tolkachev the billion-dollar spy certainly is reasonable, his success depended on the U.S. officer and the Air Force management team that supported him. Perhaps it would be appropriate to call the unnamed officer the billion-dollar procurement man.
