He's a spy and the intelligence he provides is worth billions of dollars!
It's a spy story that turns the Cold War around. The protagonist of the story is an engineer in a top-secret design laboratory in the Soviet Union, an airborne radar expert, working deep within the Soviet military establishment. But he passed thousands of pages of secret Soviet documents on technology, military, and aviation to the United States. In six years, he met 21 times with CIA officials on the streets of Moscow, never to be discovered by Soviet security agencies. The engineer was also one of the CIA's most effective spies during the Cold War, providing the United States with intelligence that no other spy had ever obtained.
One night in February 1978, while driving away from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, the CIA moscow station manager heard someone knocking on his window. A man on the side of the road handed him an envelope. The contents of this letter were enough to shock the Americans - the top-secret research and development details of the Soviet Union in military technology ... This person provided information that provided important value for the United States to surpass Soviet aviation in the future in the Cold War.
In the years that followed, the Russian engineer, Adolf Grevich Torkachev, cracked secrets of secret Soviet military research. He used his access to provide the United States with thousands of pages of information on the latest advances in Soviet aviation and radar technology, thereby helping Americans study the possible future direction of the Soviet Union.
During the forty years of america's global confrontation with the Soviet Union, he was one of the most effective and valuable spies working for the United States. At the same time, Tolkachev also took great personal risks (and was later executed).
In the early days of the Cold War, the CIA never really gained access to espionage on the streets of Moscow. The agency never recruited intelligence officers in Moscow because it was too dangerous for any Soviet citizen or official they might have recruited — "very dangerous," one officer recalled. The recruitment process itself, from the first moment of identifying and approaching a possible spy, is fraught with the risk of being discovered by the KGB (the National Security Council of the USSR) and will be executed if the agent spies are caught.
To understand the purpose of the United States in obtaining intelligence, it is necessary to recall the long and difficult operation of the CIA to infiltrate the Soviet Union.
▶ What is the CIA?
The CIA was born during the Pearl Harbor attack. Despite early warnings from the United States, japan successfully attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The sneak attack killed 2,400 U.S. soldiers, sank and damaged 21 warships of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, and drew the United States into war.
The United States has long been informed of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. But intelligence is scattered between different agencies, and no one has pieced together scattered pieces of intelligence. A subsequent congressional investigation concluded that this fragmented intelligence led the U.S. government to make a wrong judgment that led to a sneak attack on the United States. Because of this, the CIA was established by the National Security Act of 1947, signed by then-U.S. President Harry S. Truman, and passed by the U.S. Congress to replace the Strategic Intelligence Agency, which was disbanded in October 1945.
The creation of the CIA reflected congressional and President Truman's determination not to see Pearl Harbor again. Truman wanted the CIA to provide high-quality, objective analysis to better safeguard national security, and it became the first centralized intelligence agency in U.S. history.
But later developing, the CIA's early plans soon changed, largely because of the growing Soviet threat, including the blockade of Berlin, Stalin's tightening control of Eastern Europe, and soviet construction of atomic bombs. The CIA quickly expanded beyond espionage and covert operations beyond intelligence analysis. As the Cold War escalated, the CIA's powers gradually expanded, and the United States intended to use the CIA to infiltrate the Soviet Union and subvert governments around the world.
The CIA's struggle with the Soviet Union never escalated into a direct battle between superpowers, and it was fought in the shadow of war and peace. It was staged in what Secretary of State Dean Rusk once called "the back alley of the world."
The Cold War began as a contest between the war-torn nations of Europe, but then spread widely and evolved into a contest of ideological, political, cultural, economic, geographical and military power. Two of the main forces were the Soviet Union and the United States.
At the beginning of the Cold War, the CIA did not have a presence in Moscow, nor did it have its agents on the streets of the capital of the world's largest and most mysterious party. It was unable to identify and recruit Soviet spies as it had done elsewhere.
The reason was the KGB, which was experienced, proficient in all kinds of scouting, and omnipotent. By the 1950s, the KGB's years of experience in carrying out Stalin purges, eliminating threats to Soviet rule during and after the war, and stealing secrets from the U.S. atomic bomb made the KGB even stronger. It is even impossible for foreigners to strike up a conversation on the streets of Moscow without arousing suspicion.
In Washington, policymakers are nervous about a possible war in Europe — and eager for early warning. A lot of information is available from publicly available sources, but that's not the same as real, insightful intelligence. Outside the Soviet Union, the CIA tried to gather intelligence from refugees, defectors, and immigrants. In third countries, Soviet diplomats, soldiers and intelligence officials were contacted. The CIA's Secret Operations Team recruited a secret army from refugee camps in Europe. About five thousand "volunteers", trained as "post-nuclear guerrillas", entered the Soviet Union after the American atomic bomb attack on Japan. In addition, the United States sent paratroopers to the Soviet Union to monitor or contact resistance groups. But most of them were caught and executed. The head of the secret operations unit, Frank M. G. Wisner dreamed of infiltrating the Soviet side and crushing it. Through psychological warfare and underground assistance — arsenals, radio, propaganda — Wesner hoped to try to persuade the people of Eastern Europe to get rid of their "oppressor," the Soviet Union. But almost all of these attempts to sneak into enemy lines in covert operations ended in failure. The intelligence generated was negligible, and the Soviet Union was unwavering.
▶ The turning point in intelligence acquisition!
Tolkachev was an engineer and designer, unlike others who betrayed the Soviet Union and became agents of the United States. He was not part of a Soviet party and did not serve in the army or security apparatus. Because of his treatment and other problems, Tolkachev had always been very dissatisfied with the Soviet Union, and by chance, he found the American intelligence agency and worked for it for a long time.
What made Tolkachev's espionage even more striking was that he passed material to the CIA under the watch of the KGB. Most of the 21 intelligence relays took place within three miles of the main entrance of the KGB headquarters. However, the KGB never found the spy and his men.
The intelligence from Tolkachev involved complex diagrams, specifications, blueprints, and circuit boards of airborne radars, as well as disclosures of soviet military research and development plans for the next decade — extraordinary. Two U.S. intelligence and military experts, who spent years examining Tolkachev's thousands of pages of documents, said they had never found any pages contaminated with disinformation and that they cross-checked intelligence with other sources as much as possible.
Tolkachev's message prompted the Air Force to revolutionize its strategy for providing a $70 million avionics system for the most advanced U.S. fighter jets. The details remain confidential. This could be a tactical electronic warfare kit for fighter jets or an airborne self-protecting jammer, later known as the ALQ-165. In later years, jammer projects proved to have many insurmountable technical problems and were never built or deployed in large quantities.
As early as December 1979, the U.S. Department of Defense redesigned the avionics systems of America's most advanced fighter jets based on intelligence provided by Tolkachev. In an internal assessment conducted in March 1980, the CIA spoke highly of Tolkachev's intelligence on the Soviet Union's latest generation of surface-to-air missile systems. "In the past, we could only obtain such detailed intelligence many years after the actual deployment of the new Surface-to-Air Missile System of the Soviet Union!"
In April 1980, another internal CIA memorandum evaluated Tolkachev's anti-jamming test intelligence for Soviet fighter radar systems as "unique." Apparently, the information he provided was not available to the CIA. Just a few months later, the CIA commented that Tolkachev "provided not only exclusive intelligence on the new Soviet fighter jets, but also several new airborne missile systems." In September 1980, a U.S. Department of Defense memorandum similarly praised Tolkachev's intelligence for "playing an incalculable role in enhancing the operational efficiency of the U.S. military system." Tolkachev's leaks "potentially saved the lives and equipment of the U.S. military" and "reshaped billions of dollars in U.S. research and development."
To this day, a portrait of him still hangs from the CIA headquarters in Fairfax County, Virginia, in honor.
Tolkachev opened a window for the United States to understand the Soviet Union's intentions and strength, which was at the heart of the CIA's mission. For the U.S. leadership, it is crucial to understand the Soviet Union's priorities for military research and development, as well as its capabilities — what they can and cannot do. For decades, U.S. intelligence had flaws and miscalculations in the intent and capabilities of the Soviet Union.
Tolkachev's intelligence led the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force to reform pilot training at the Naval Elite Fighter Weapons School (known as Top Gun) and the U.S. Air Force Weapons School's base in Miramar, California. The intelligence gathered from Tolkachev's documents was passed on to aspiring instructors and pilots. It promoted the reform and development of AMERICAN aviation weapons in the later period.
So far, the United States has enjoyed almost complete air superiority over Soviet-made fighter jets for more than 20 years: in the Persian Gulf War of 1991, the U.S. military shot down the MiG-25 over Iraq; in 1995, the United States and its allies forced the Serbs of the former Yugoslavia to recognize the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina; and in 1999, the ethnic cleansing campaign in Kosovo ceased. Both Iraq and Yugoslavia flew Soviet-made MiG fighters. The United States has lost firepower on the ground, but can dominate the air battlefield. Records show that for every six enemy air force pilots shot down in the Korean War, the United States lost one pilot. In the Vietnam War, for every two enemy planes shot down, the United States lost one. As a result of the development of military aviation technology, the damage rate of the air force in the Iraq and Balkan wars fell from 6 to 1 in North Korea and 2 to 1 in Vietnam to 48 to 1. Advances in U.S. aviation technology and pilot training are critical to this achievement. Thanks to Tolkachev's spy intelligence made an important contribution. The United States had a radar blueprint for every major Soviet fighter in the 1980s.
Tolkachev also re-established confidence in the United States in multibillion-dollar weapons systems that took years to develop, especially those designed to strike the Soviet Union at low altitudes. During Torkachev's years of espionage, the U.S. military conducted flight tests and deployments for the terrain-like winged cruise missile. It also made Soviet leaders realize that this was a powerful threat. On June 4, 1984, Anatoly Chernyayev, who later became national security adviser to Mikhail Gorbachev (leader of the Soviet Union and chairman of the Usstro-Defense Conference), attended a military briefing of the Central Committee in Moscow. The briefing was titled "Characteristics of Modern Warfare," and Chernyaev later wrote in his diary that he had seen movies about U.S. weapons systems —"missiles aimed at targets from tens of thousands of kilometers away." Aircraft carriers, omnipotent submarines, winged missiles, like cartoons, can pass directly through canyons and hit targets with a diameter of 10 meters from 2500 kilometers away. Modern technology has made incredible breakthroughs. Of course, the price is unimaginably high."
The espionage of Adolf Grević Torkachev is a Cold War story that still resonates today. Human resources intelligence remains indispensable to national security. As long as it is necessary to understand the adversary — stealing secrets, revealing intent, and cracking classified documents — agents must be recruited who can overcome fear and intersperse to the other side. It is necessary to look directly at their actions, gain their trust, calm their anxieties, share their dangers...
The extent of the damage Tolkachev caused to the Soviet Union is difficult to say in a few words. The CIA also had limited disclosure of information about the leaks with Tolkachev, but it can still be seen that Tolkachev caused immeasurable damage to the Soviet military aviation and air defense industry. He gave Americans a comprehensive understanding of the miG-29, MiG-31, Su-27 next-generation fighter jets and their air missiles, allowing American scientists and engineers to quickly develop electronic countermeasure systems that suppress these systems. More importantly, the exposure of the Tolkachev incident dealt a heavy blow to the Soviet government.
Tolkachev opened a window for the United States to understand the Soviet Union's intentions and capabilities, which were at the heart of the CIA's mission. For the U.S. leadership, it is crucial to understand the Soviet Union's priorities for military research and development, as well as its capabilities — what they can and cannot do. Over the past few decades, U.S. intelligence has been flawed and miscalculated in the intent and capabilities of the Soviet Union.
Through Tolkachev's intelligence, the United States not only balanced the Soviet Union in air defense, Soviet tactical fighters, interceptors, radars, avionics and guidance systems, but also achieved relatively low-cost rapid development.