Adolf Tolkachev, the Billion Dollar Spy

What is a good spy worth? In the case of this one, an estimate by the US Air Force specialist who used the intelligence gained from this one source to terminate or direct research, “somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 billion…” That was before the source, Adolf Tolkachev, delivered another 179 rolls of film with thousands of pages of Soviet documents.

Spy stories, real spy stories, are never simple and they frequently have tragic endings. They are also often hampered by internal governmental controls that make the operation more difficult for the operations personnel. Fighting through these obstacles is often as difficult as running the operation itself. Meet one man who made this fight and helped America gain clear advantages in the future of air warfare and the author who brought the operation to light many years later.

Burton Gerber, a legendary CIA officer and senior leader and Moscow Chief during much of the operation, will join Washington Post journalist and Pulitzer Prize winning author David E. Hoffman for a discussion of the Tolkachev case.

William D. “Bill” Murray, a retired senior operations officer of the CIA and co-founder of the Council on Intelligence Issues, will be moderating this program.

Please join us for this unique presentation which will bring you deeply into one of the most successful and important US espionage operations of the late 20th century, and then you’ll be able to ask questions via our online platform.

Co-sponsored by the Council on Intelligence Issues.