The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal (39 page)

16.
Ibid., 318.

17.
FBI, “Disappearance of Edward Lee Howard,” 7.

18.
FBI report, 7.

19.
Ibid. The FBI report has redacted Mary’s name, but her identity is clear from the context. See ibid., 285–447. Mary reported the divorce, ibid., 57, sec. 1, loose papers.

20.
Howard,
Safe House
.

21.
State Department, Office of the Spokesman, Washington, D.C., Aug. 19, 2002. The department said, “According to Russian police authorities, Edward Lee Howard died in Moscow on July 12, 2002, as a result of a fall in his residence. His body was cremated privately at the instructions of his next of kin.”

1.
Mikeladze,
Ampule with Poison
. The Tropel cameras, library permission sheets, and L-pill are displayed in the film, which includes original KGB archival footage provided to Mikeladze and interviews with KGB officers who worked on the case, including Rem Krasilnikov, then head of counterintelligence, and Colonel Oleg Dobrovolsky, head of the investigation department of the KGB. Mikeladze, interview with author, Sept. 19, 2011, Moscow. Mikeladze said the film was created in 1997 and broadcast that year on Russian television.

2.
A video clip of the sentencing is seen in
Ampule with Poison
.

3.
A confidential source close to the family.

4.
This point figured prominently in the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board investigation of the Howard case. John M. Poindexter, then the White House national security adviser, told Reagan in a cover note for the briefing, “I would invite your attention particularly to the need to ensure that future cases are referred to the FBI on a timely basis for investigation.” John M. Poindexter, “Memo to the President,” Oct. 1, 1986, contained in Regan files, Ronald Reagan Presidential Libruary. Also see Wise,
Spy Who Got Away
, 87–93.

5.
“USSR” folder, President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, Oct. 2, 1986, box 7, Regan files, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

6.
Andrew Rosenthal, “Soviet Linked with Howard Case Executed for Treason,” Associated Press, Oct. 22, 1986. The Tass announcement did not say when.

7.
Libin, “Detained with Evidence,” and a confidential source close to the family. The data on the Kuzmin repressions, prepared by Natasha, are contained at the archive of Memorial International, Moscow.

8.
An informed official said the CIA learned of her appeal only from Libin’s 1997 article. Tolkachev’s substantial earnings remained in escrow and would have been given to Natasha had the CIA known of her request at the time, the official said. The existence of the letter was also confirmed by a confidential source close to the family.

9.
A confidential source close to the family.

1.
This account is based on Larry Pitts, interview with author, Sept. 10, 2013, Colorado Springs, and the following: “Dogfights of Desert Storm,” History Channel, Nov. 5, 2007; Craig Brown,
Debrief: A Complete History of U.S. Aerial Engagements, 1981 to the Present
(Atglen, Pa.: Schiffer Military History, 2007), 51–59; Steve Davies and Doug Dildy,
F-15 Eagle Engaged: The World’s Most Successful Jet Fighter
(New York: Osprey, 2007); Steve Davies,
Red Eagles: America’s Secret MiGs
(2008; Oxford: Osprey, 2012). The author is also grateful to correspondence with David Kenneth Ellis and Robin Lee.

2.
Lieutenant Colonel James W. Doyle (ret.), “1967 Soviet Air Show: Naming the Planes,” U.S. Air Force, National Air and Space Intelligence Center, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. The MiG-25 was given the NATO designation “Foxbat.” Details about the plane were revealed in the Belenko defection. See U.S. Fifth Air Force, “The MiG Incident,” 1976 command history, vol. 3 of 13, obtained under FOIA.

3.
Daniel L. Haulman, “No Contest: Aerial Combat in the 1990s,” Air Force Historical Research Agency, presented at the Society for Military History, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, May 2001, and updated July 8, 2002. For the most part, the Iraqi air force decided not to fight; 137 Iraqi pilots fled with their aircraft to Iran. These tallies do not include ground fire; Iraq shot down fourteen U.S. Air Force planes in the Gulf War. The tallies also do not include a navy loss, the downing of Lieutenant Commander Michael Scott Speicher in an F/A-18 Hornet fighter on January 17, 1991, the first combat casualty of the war. It is not known exactly how the plane was downed. His remains were discovered in Iraq in 2009.

4.
Thomas A. Keaney and Eliot Cohen,
Gulf War Air Power Survey: Summary Report
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1993), 58–62.

5.
The two experts, interviewed by the author, asked not to be identified by name. They had direct access to the Tolkachev positive intelligence for many years.

6.
For example, the CIA overestimated the pace of modernization of Soviet strategic forces in every National Intelligence Estimate between 1974 and 1986. Haines and Leggett,
CIA’s Analysis of the Soviet Union
, 291, from “Intelligence Forecasts of Soviet Intercontinental Attack Forces: An Evaluation of the Record,” SOV 89-10031, March 1, 1989.

7.
Haulman, “No Contest.” These kill ratios refer to aerial combat and the air force, not losses from ground fire, nor losses by the other U.S. military services, but the larger point holds true.

8.
Anatoly Chernyaev,
My Six Years with Gorbachev
(University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 9.

1.
Interagency Intelligence Memorandum 76-010, “Prospects for Improvement in Soviet Low-Altitude Air Defense,” March 1976, top secret, declassified in part Oct. 1999.

2.
The CIA had long struggled with this topic. Howard Stoertz Jr., “Observations on the Content and Accuracy of Recent National Intelligence Estimates of Soviet Strategic Forces (NIE 11-3/8),” July 25, 1978, 5–6, 45–50, Anne H. Cahn Collection, National Security Archive, Washington, D.C.

3.
The Team A–Team B experiment came in late 1976, at a time when support in the United States for the Nixon-era détente with the Soviet Union was crumbling. Hawkish conservatives in the United States, including Paul Nitze, charged the Soviet Union was striving for military superiority and claimed the CIA had missed the threat. The CIA director, George H. W. Bush, consented to an experiment in competitive analysis. The group of outside experts, led by Professor Richard Pipes and largely drawn from the conservatives, were given access to the same raw intelligence used by the CIA’s staff analysts for the annual estimate on strategic forces. Three panels were created, one of them to look at Soviet air defenses. The Team B air defense panel concluded Soviet air defenses were “formidable” and bristling with equipment. “There are 30 Soviet fighters and 100 surface-to-air missiles for each U.S. bomber which will arrive over the coastline,” they declared. “The system is still growing, both in size and performance.” This alarming conclusion suggested the Soviets might be capable of stopping American bombers from reaching their targets, meaning one-third of the U.S. strategic deterrent—the air leg of the triad of land-sea-air forces—could be obsolete. But the outsiders in Team B also saw evidence that the Soviet system didn’t work very well, because the ground-based radar units and the communications networks were slow. The bottom line, Team B insisted, was the CIA just didn’t know. The Team B air defense panel concluded, “Sufficient hard intelligence which would resolve or narrow all of the uncertainties, current and future, is not likely to be forthcoming for some time.” The overall Team A–Team B experiment is described well in Anne Hessing Cahn,
Killing Detente: The Right Attacks the CIA
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998). Also see “Competitive Analysis Experiment: Soviet Low Altitude Air Defense Capabilities,” Feb. 24, 1977, top secret; “Summary of B Team Findings—Low Altitude Air Defense,” no date; “Soviet Low Altitude Air Defense: A Team Briefing to PFIAB, Outline,” no date; and memo for the record, Joint Meeting of “B” Teams, Sept. 9, 1976, all courtesy of Cahn Collection, National Security Archive, Washington, D.C.

4.
Director of Central Intelligence, National Intelligence Estimate NIE 11-3/8-78, “Soviet Capabilities for Strategic Nuclear Conflict Through the Late 1980s,” Jan. 16, 1979, 1:19–23.

5.
National Intelligence Officer for Strategic Programs to Director of Central Intelligence, “Assessments of Soviet Strategic Air Defenses,” memo, Oct. 30, 1981, via CREST.

6.
Director of Central Intelligence and Secretary of Defense, “US and Soviet Strategic Forces: Joint Net Assessment,” Executive version, NI 83-10002X, Nov. 14, 1983.

7.
“Soviet Capabilities for Strategic Nuclear Conflict, 1983-93,” National Intelligence Estimate 11-3/8-83, March 6, 1984, vol. 1, “Key Judgments and Summary,” 9-10. A version of this report provided to the president contains the handwritten notation “Pres has seen 3/8/84.”

8.
Director of Central Intelligence, “Air Defense of the USSR,” Interagency Intelligence memo No. 85-10008, Summary, Dec. 1985. Also see Special National Intelligence Estimate 11-7/9-85/L, “Soviet Reactions to Stealth,” Aug. 1985.

9.
Alfred Price,
The History of Electronic Warfare, Vol. 3:
Rolling Thunder Through Allied Force, 1964–2000
(Alexandria, Va.: Association of Old Crows, 2000), 339–47. A CIA cable, Moscow station to headquarters, March 20, 1980, 200825Z, and Royden, “Tolkachev,” both say Tolkachev’s information prompted the air force to completely change direction on a $70 million avionics package for the most modern U.S. fighter. Details remain classified. This may refer to a fighter’s tactical electronic warfare suite or to the Airborne Self-Protection Jammer, which came to be known as the ALQ-165. In later years, the jammer project turned out to have a number of technical problems that could not be overcome and was never built or deployed in quantity.

10.
Until then, the Soviets had been relying on an aging, propeller-driven aircraft, known as MOSS, for airborne radar. There were only nine of them, two of which had been disassembled. The MOSS system could only track a few targets at a time, could not look down, and was largely outdated.

11.
See “A-50,”
Ugolok neba
(Corner of heaven), an online aviation encyclopedia, in Russian,
http://www.airwar.ru/enc/spy/a50.html
.

12.
Director of Central Intelligence, “Air Defense of the USSR.” Also see Douglas D. Mitchell, “Bomber Options for Replacing B-52s,” Issue Brief No. IB1107, Congressional Research Service, May 3, 1982.

13.
“Relative Concern of Soviets About B-1 and Cruise Missiles,” memo, June 24, 1977, via CREST, declassified in 2005.

14.
Defense Intelligence Agency, “Prospects for the Soviet Union’s Airborne Warning and Control System (SUAWACS),” Special Defense Intelligence Estimate, Aug. 6, 1981, released in part via CREST. Also see John McMahon, director, National Foreign Assessment Center, “Note for: Deputy Director of Central Intelligence,” Sept. 22, 1981, via CREST. Also Interagency Intelligence Memorandum, “Prospects for Improvement in Soviet Low-Altitude Air Defense,” NIO IIM 76-010 J, March 1976, declassified in part by CIA, Oct. 1999, 4.

15.
The data link is reported in Director of Central Intelligence, “Air Defense of the USSR,” 14.

David E. Hoffman is a contributing editor at the
Washington Post
and a correspondent for PBS’s
Frontline
. He was previously foreign editor, Moscow bureau chief, and White House correspondent for the newspaper. He is the author of
The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy
, which won the Pulitzer Prize, and
The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia
.