Psr just Diplomatic Correspondent and jerusalem correspondent. From 1995 to 2001 he served as Moscow Bureau chief and later as Foreign Editor and assisting manager editor for the foreign news. Please join me in welcoming david e. Hoffman to the Louisville Free public library. [applause] thank you so much. Thank you all for coming here tonight. Its a weeknight and i know a lot of you probably have other things to do and its really exciting for an author to come to louisville and see so many people interested. A book takes years and years to write and im going to give you the best of it in 35 minutes and answer your questions. I would like to thank the Louisville Free public library. I would like to thank lisa. I would like to thank Library Foundation for making this talk possible and i hope that after i had spoken for a little while that youll have some questions because i can possibly get everything i wrote in this book into 35 minutes. The book is about spying. A cia man wrote a generation ago that like war, spying is a dirty business. You peel a well be espionage he said and despised job is to betray trust. I would and add to that a spice job is to steal, to steal secrets. So why do people do it . Why would a man with a family, a career, a good salary in his time, why would he risk everything, risked his life to spy for another country, another country that he had never been to one that he admitted he didnt have a lot of romance for why did he do it . Im going to talk to you tonight about why the billiondollar spy did what he did. The story begins in the late 1930s, and the early 1940s. In june 1941 hitlers germany invaded the soviet union by surprise. And a month later were meetings like this july, on july 21 waves of german bombers attacked moscow the capital of the soviet union and they reached moscow. Hitler had ordered that moscow be destroyed from the air. The first wave of bombers dropped 140 tons of high explosives. 46,000 incendiary bombs, 130 people were killed and tens of thousands scrambled into the deep moscow subway stations to stay safe from the bombs. Looking up at the sky at that time was a young 14yearold teenager adolf tolkachev. Tolkachev lived in moscow at the time. He was too young to go off to war but i think he and all those thousands of people crowding into the subway stations to stay safe ask themselves how did the bombers get through it . Moscow was surrounded by 600 large searchlights, 800 antiaircraft guns but the german bombers got through because what the soviet union really needed was radar. Radar was a New Invention in the 1930s and he could give Early Warning of airplanes in flight but the soviet union was way behind in radar. It had only the most primitive kind. It could even tell the speed. They desperately needed better radar and that was all the muscovites under the bombs on the warm summer night in july and august of 1941. The city was up in flames. Most of the city of moscow was built out of wood, Old Buildings just charred. One bomb hit the kremlin. He went through the roof and it landed there on the floor but it was pretty frightening. So tolkachev didnt go to war. He went to school. He went to school to study radar went to the equivalent of a high school where he studied electronics in radar. When the war was over he was sent to the equivalent of the university, Technical University to study radar. In fact he spent the whole rest of his career becoming an engineer and a scientist to build better radar for the soviet union. It got much more sophisticated in the years went by. The cold war came in radar became very important in the cold war. I will explain that in a minute but lets just pause and think a little bit about tolkachevs life. A secret institute to build radar where he was assigned after the university he met a young woman named anne pasha. Natasha worked in the Antenna Department. Tolkachev was an engineer and natasha had had a very tough life. Her mother had worked in the Timber Industry in moscow in the 1930s. She was a communist party member working in a government administration. One night the secret Police Showed up at her apartment. She was arrested on the spot and taken away. It was september 1937, the middle of stalins purges. Enemies were perceived to be everywhere. Natashas mother was accused of being a subversive and she was shot. Natashas father was scared. He ran to a friends house and he hid in his friends apartment for a week. Her father was a newspaper editor. He was editor of a party newspaper. A week later he too was arrested. He was sent to the gulags for years. When this happened natasha was only two years old. You can imagine how terrible it must have been. One night her parents just disappeared and her world turned upside down. She grew up in the war years and after in an orphanage. After the war her father finally was released from the gulags. He came back from the camps. He was still so frightened that he didnt come to moscow right away but eventually when he felt it was safe he found his daughter and told her everything that had happened to their family but then he died just shortly thereafter. When natasha was a young Woman Working she met and married adolf tolkachev. It was 1957. He was 30, she was 22 and things seem to be getting a little better for them. 1957 was the year of sputnik. Things in the soviet union seemed to be looking up. There was a little bit of optimism because the war was over. Stalin was dead. Khrushchev had taken over and there was a period which was a period of optimism. Many young people thought despite the horrible things that happen to the country in the last few decades maybe there was a better life ahead. In 1965 tolkachev and his wife natasha had a baby son, their only child. In the late 1960s working at this Radar Institute tolkachev began to feel things werent quite right. He began to get disenchanted with what was happening around him. First of all assad came to crashing and especially with the soviet invasion of czechoslovakia in 1968, crushing the Democracy Movement known as the prada spring. And natashas department, the Antenna Department they had kind of a pro forma vote one day. How many people in department supported the soviet invasion of czechoslovakia and of course you can imagine in a soviet police state you were supposed to raise your hand yes. Natasha was the only employee in that department who raised her hand, no. She was brave and she was courageous and she hated the system that had ruined her family. By the 1970s, things got worse the tolkachevs young son was growing up. He lived in a society that is plagued by shortages, red lines. The years of stagnation is what the soviets themselves called it something began to eat away at him. It wasnt only the long lines for bread or the fact that they lived in the nucleararmed country that couldnt even make a pair of jeans, he began to feel anger. He was angry at the past and what it happened to natashas parents and he was angry at the present. He didnt act on this anger right away because his young son was growing up and god forbid he thought i dont want to do anything that would bring upon my family what happened to natasha and her parents but by the mid1970s tolkachev began to read the writings of another scientist who was also working the secret military institute and had started to speak out about this state of affairs. His name was Andrei Sakharov and tolkachev was inspired by sakharov and also by the dissident writer sosin eatin. Solzhenitsynss books came home and natasha brought them the carbon paper dogeared copies that were passed from person to person. While sakharov insults in eden were in the limelight as dissidents tolkachev was in the shadows. He fixed radios with a soldering gun and tackled other home repair projects with great satisfaction. He was a real loner even to those in his family. Never once did his young son talk about what he did there. He liked to go on an isolated camping trip in the rugged baltic sea area the soviet union rather than take a free pass to some fancy soviet style resort. By the mid1970s tolkachev was really getting burned up and deciding he had to do something but what . He told the cia the source of his anger was that everything in the soviet union was going wrong and bad trait he said soviet politics literature and philosophy had been in that quote and mashed for a long time in such an impassable hypocritical demagoguery and ideological empty talk that he couldnt stand it anymore. Hes tried to ignore everything in public life. He likes the theater but he couldnt even go anymore to the theater was so bad rate hed never been a communist party member so he thought maybe i will write up some leafleting go out on the street like a dissident and of course within five minutes he realized that wasnt a very good idea because he could easily be arrested as natashas parents had been. Its worth recalling that lots of families, millions and millions report apart buys dollars purchase. A lot of people in the 1970s like tolkachev for sick and tired of the years of stagnation these people did not act on their feelings. Adolf tolkachev did. The idea of what to do finally came to him one day in september 1976. An elite soviet Fighter Pilot defected from the soviet union in his plane and flew his plane from the far east right to japan without telling anybody and he landed that plane at a civilian airport in japan and said i want asylum and here is to make 25 pretty climbed out of the brandnew soviet airplane that the west had feared. The west believed it was probably the fastest fighter plane in the world. They had never seen one before and here was a soviet Pilot Landing the plane right there at gate c5 in saying i want asylum and here is the plane. The mid20s i was so mysterious to the west the minute the pilot landed the United States secretly said the team of experts to japan to take that plane apart down to the rivets. It was an intelligence windfall. They wanted to find out what was in it and how well it would perform. This was the cold war inexorably fighting each other across boundaries in europe and all around the world. So is tolkachev heard about this on the voice of america listening to a shortwave radio in his apartment. The voice of america was sometimes jammed but oftentimes he got through and he heard about this pilot affecting andy thought you now, as he later told the cia i decided right then and there im going to do with that pilot did. Tolkachev didnt think he was going to leave the soviet union but he would defect within. He would strike back at the soviet system by taking secrets that were enhanced file drawers and then the fault of his institute. The topsecret loop runs of radars and military planning and betray them. But betray them to who . Tolkachevs highrise. Apartment building in moscow was just a few blocks on the American Embassy. He often went jogging in the morning around the American Embassy compound. He knew where the guard shacks were, where the americans part their cars and bread they filled their cars up with gasoline. He spent hours and hours jogging and looking patiently trying to find the license plates of americans right there in moscow. Those plays have a special code at the beginning in soviet times. It was do for it. There was this gas station the diplomats filled up there and he found some cars. Just a few months after the Fighter Pilot had defected one evening around 6 00 p. M. In january of 1977 tolkachev showed up at the gas station and there was a man getting out of his car that said do4. He had written him a note. He went up to the man and he said are you an american . The man said yes and then tolkachev again relying on his memory said i would like to talk to you. The american man said now wouldnt be a good time. It would be difficult to talk here in tolkachev in the third sentence he remembers said oh it would be difficult and then he took his little note, he put on the mans front seat and went away from the gas station very quickly so no one would see him. What he didnt realize was that he had just approached the head of the cia and moscow. [laughter] so when the cia had noticed the station chief got back to the office with the note of course he was very interested. He opened it up. It was wrapped very tightly and four layers of tape, some glue in several layers of paper. The station chief side note saying i am a russian engineer and i would like to help. I would like to cooperate with you but he didnt say who he was her word to find them or what his home number was at the station chief sent a cable to cia headquarters in virginia saying this man approached me and by the way ever pre reproduce this in the book sake of read for yourself at the bottom line is cia headquarters that it might be a trap. The kgb often sent people to send notes like this and make approaches and it was sometimes a real trap. Headquarters said dont respond. In the note that tolkachev had proposed another meeting headquarters said dont go, dont do it. Tolkachev didnt give up. In the next few months about once a month he kept trying. He kept finding that car going up giving note saying id like to talk to you that the cia station chiefs that i can do it, no and ignored him. The last time in may of 1977 tolkachev was so mad he had a package and he went up and banged on the hood of the cia mans car an the cia man refused to talk to him. Long story short in the next few months is cia finally realize this guy is probably not a kgb. Maybe we ought to find out what hes trying to tell us and they began in a teen 79 in an espionage operation to run tolkachev as a spy but in 1979 they had never met him. The first meeting was on new years day after sunset. The city was quiet. It was dark and extremely cold. This was a big gamble for the cia because they knew really for decades but in this time particularly the kgb had teams swarming over moscow. They knew that one false move could get a man arrested and executed in for a long time they had been afraid to meet with agents or spies on the streets of moscow. It was just too dangerous. But this operation that began on new years day 1979 and showed something different. It showed that it could be done. In the past the cia had used impersonal methods like dead drops, fake bricks, fake logs to communicate with their agents. This time tolkachev said i dont want to do any of that. I want to meet with u. N. Look you guys in the eye. I want to shake your hand and talk to you. Tolkachev was like that. He had to let off steam. He had to have personal contact with the cia that he was risking his life for. His first case officer from the cia the man who he met with was john gilts are. John was the son of russian immigrants. He had wonderful russian Language Skills and be built up trust with tolkachev. One day he said to him by her you doing this . Tolkachev was a bit vague. He said im a dissident at heart he wasnt really clear what that meant but over time he trusted gil sure enough to explain more. They met the cia and other case officers met gorbachev 21 times on the streets of moscow. Tolkachev said im not spying because i love your country. He wrote to the cia i have never seen your country with my own eyes and unseen i do not have enough romanticism. Tolkachev portrayed his own country out of anger and revenge. He told the cia over and over again he was bound and determined to do as much damage as possible to the soviet union in the shortest possible time. Tolkachev even told the cia he had a plan that he said at seven stages. It will take 12 years and heres what ill give you. This guy was an engineer. Everything had to be orderly and what they want in return . Aside from avenging this burning hatred of the soviet system he wanted money and he got a lot of money. He couldnt buy anything with money in that time and moscow. He couldnt even buy a decent pair of shoes. He wanted the money is a sign of respect and at one point the cia offered to pay him more than the salary of the president of the United States. He never really got that money but he got worthless current state but he could sit and look at them and feel respect i suppose but he also wanted things like a decent razor blade which you couldnt get in the soviet union and he wanted good pencils and erasers for his son who was studying architecture in school. His son wanted western rock music and oneday tolkachev said to his case officer can you get me the following and he handed the man a list written and block letters in english. It said led zeppelin, pink floyd uriah heap, the who and so on. This was a big deal for tolkachev. He wanted headphones for his son in stereo catalogs. Once tolkachev got careless. He didnt hide the cameras and the spy equipment he was using to get the materials for the cia and his wife discovered what he was doing. Natasha as i mentioned to you had her own very deep feelings and she said what are you doing . He said look, i wont do it anymore. I will stop and she begged him to stop because she said look what happens to my family. She was every bit as antisoviet as he was. She hated the system even more but she didnt want harm to come to the family and tolkachev didnt stop. He continued. So how did he do at . Tolkachev discovered there was a huge gap in the security of this topsecret agency. He discovered he could put his secret documents in his coat pocket especially in the winter with a big heavy coat, carry them home on the lunch hour make copies and bring them back after lunch. It was a 20 minute walk from his front door to the place where he worked and stick them in the files before closing and nobody would know. So the cia had a big problem though with this. Obviously they were really thrilled that there were so many secret documents but there were no photocopiers. He couldnt just take them to a kinkos or someplace and have them xerox. All of them were under lock and key so the cia had to come up with a camera. Percy gave tolkachev a very small spy camera so small it could fit into a fountain pen or her lipstick. It was hard to hold and it did work very well at first. Some of the pictures didnt come out so then they gave tolkachev the ultimate weapon. They gave him a pentax 35millimeter normal camera bought at a camera shop and a clamp and tolkachev clamp the camera to the back of his kitchen shared and he aimed it at th