 | |
| Author | David E. Hoffman |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | History, espionage |
| Publisher | Doubleday |
Publication date | 2015 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover and paperback) |
| Pages | July 7, 2015 pp (first edition) |
| ISBN | 978-0-385-53760-5 |
The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal is a non-fiction history book by David E. Hoffman.
The book covers the life of Russian engineer Adolf Tolkachev, nicknamed the "Billion Dollar Spy", who was executed by the Soviet Union after being caught passing information on classified radar technology to CIA agents.
The book received mostly positive reviews. [1] [2] Lawrence D. Freedman, writing for Foreign Affairs , described it as a "must-read" and praised it for "[describing] in such detail what it meant to run American agents in Cold War–era Moscow". [3] Bob Drogan of the LA Times said that "To his credit, Hoffman describes the drab reality of most espionage work: long waits, endless paperwork, bumbling bureaucracy and often shoddy equipment." [4] Kirkus Reviews described it as "an intricate, mesmerizing portrayal of the KGB-CIA spy culture". [5]
A thriller movie based on the book was announced in 2021 starring Mads Mikkelsen and Armie Hammer. [6]
Charles McCarry was an American writer, primarily of spy fiction, and a former undercover operative for the Central Intelligence Agency.
Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence). A person who commits espionage is called an espionage agent or spy. Any individual or spy ring, in the service of a government, company, criminal organization, or independent operation, can commit espionage. The practice is clandestine, as it is by definition unwelcome. In some circumstances, it may be a legal tool of law enforcement and in others, it may be illegal and punishable by law.
Spy fiction is a genre of literature involving espionage as an important context or plot device. It emerged in the early twentieth century, inspired by rivalries and intrigues between the major powers, and the establishment of modern intelligence agencies. It was given new impetus by the development of fascism and communism in the lead-up to World War II, continued to develop during the Cold War, and received a fresh impetus from the emergence of rogue states, international criminal organizations, global terrorist networks, maritime piracy and technological sabotage and espionage as potent threats to Western societies. As a genre, spy fiction is thematically related to the novel of adventure, the thriller and the politico-military thriller.
Leonard Cyril Deighton is a British author. His publications have included cookery books, history and military history, but he is best known for his spy novels.
Aldrich Hazen "Rick" Ames is a former CIA counterintelligence officer who was convicted of espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union and Russia in 1994. He is serving a life sentence, without the possibility of parole, in the Federal Correctional Institution in Terre Haute, Indiana. Ames was known to have compromised more highly classified CIA assets than any other officer until Robert Hanssen, who was arrested seven years later in 2001.
Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky, CMG is a former colonel of the KGB who became KGB resident-designate (rezident) and bureau chief in London, and was a double agent, providing information to the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) from 1974 to 1985. After being recalled to Moscow under suspicion, he was exfiltrated from the Soviet Union in July 1985 under a plan code-named Operation Pimlico. The Soviet Union subsequently sentenced him to death in absentia.
Operation Gold was a joint operation conducted by the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the British MI6 Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) in the 1950s to tap into landline communication of the Soviet Army headquarters in Berlin using a tunnel into the Soviet-occupied zone. This was a much more complex variation of the earlier Operation Silver project in Vienna.
Mads Dittmann Mikkelsen, is a Danish actor. Originally a gymnast and dancer, he rose to fame in Denmark as an actor for his roles such as Tonny in the first two films of the Pusher film trilogy, Detective Sergeant Allan Fischer in the television series Rejseholdet (2000–2004), Niels in Open Hearts (2002), Svend in The Green Butchers (2003), Ivan in Adam's Apples (2005) and Jacob Petersen in After the Wedding (2006).
Adolf Georgiyevich Tolkachev was a Soviet electronics engineer who provided key documents to the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) between 1979 and 1985. Working at the Soviet radar design bureau Phazotron as one of the chief designers, Tolkachev gave the CIA complete detailed information about projects such as the R-23, R-24, R-33, R-27, and R-60, S-300 missile systems; fighter-interceptor aircraft radars used on the MiG-29, MiG-31, and Su-27; and other avionics. He was executed as a spy in 1986.
Benedict Richard Pierce Macintyre is a British author, reviewer and columnist for The Times newspaper. His columns range from current affairs to historical controversies.
Fedora was the codename for Aleksey Isidorovich Kulak (1923–1983), a KGB-agent who infiltrated the United Nations during the Cold War. While working in New York, Kulak contacted the FBI and offered his services. Kulak told his American handlers there was a KGB mole working at the FBI, leading to a decades-long mole hunt that seriously disrupted the agency. It's not clear whether Kulak was acting as a double agent supplying false information or whether his information was legitimate.
David Emanuel Hoffman is an American writer and journalist, a contributing editor to The Washington Post. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 2010 for a book about the legacy of the nuclear arms race.
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Bridge of Spies is a 2015 historical drama film directed and co-produced by Steven Spielberg, written by Matt Charman and the Coen brothers, and starring Tom Hanks in the lead role, Mark Rylance, Amy Ryan, and Alan Alda. Set during the Cold War, the film tells the story of lawyer James B. Donovan, who is entrusted with negotiating the release of Francis Gary Powers—a U.S. Air Force convicted pilot whose U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960—in exchange for Rudolf Abel, a convicted Soviet KGB spy held by the United States, whom Donovan represented at trial. The name of the film refers to the Glienicke Bridge, which connects Potsdam with Berlin, where the prisoner exchange took place. The film was an international co-production of the United States and Germany.
In 1995 it was revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency had delivered intelligence reports to the U.S. government between 1986 and 1994 which were based on agent reporting from confirmed or suspected Soviet operatives. From 1985 to his arrest in February 1994, CIA officer and KGB mole Aldrich Ames compromised Agency sources and operations in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, leading to the arrest of many CIA agents and the execution of at least ten of them. This allowed the KGB to replace the CIA agents with its own operatives or to force them to cooperate, and the double agents then funneled a mixture of disinformation and true material to U.S. intelligence. Although the CIA's Soviet-East European (SE) and Central Eurasian divisions knew or suspected the sources to be Soviet double agents, they nevertheless disseminated this "feed" material within the government. Some of these intelligence reports even reached Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, as well as President-elect Bill Clinton.
David Henry Blee served in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from its founding in 1947 until his 1985 retirement. During World War II in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), he had worked in Southeast Asia. In the CIA, he served as Chief of Station (COS) in Asia and Africa, starting in the 1950s. He then led the CIA's Near East Division.
Don Smith was a Canadian writer of detective and spy fiction. He is best remembered for his Secret Mission series of novels, starring the businessman-turned-spy Phil Sherman.
Michael James, better known by the pen-name Michael Hartland, is a British thriller writer, who also writes for radio and television. He was the thriller critic of The Daily Telegraph, has written for other broadsheet papers including The Times, The Sunday Times and The Guardian and is a BBC Radio-4 broadcaster.
Agent Running in the Field is a 2019 novel by British writer John le Carré, published on 17 October 2019. It was le Carré's final novel to be published before his death in 2020.
Gray Day: My Undercover Mission to Expose America's First Cyber Spy is a 2019 non-fiction book by Eric O'Neill, published by Crown Books, about his mission to collect evidence against Robert Hanssen, an employee of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) who spied for Russia.
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