Spycraft - Melton [72]
Seven months before that first personal meeting with Tolkachev, samples of his initial letters and notes were studied by an OTS handwriting analyst. The graphologist, who received no identifying information about Tolkachev, not even his nationality, or background on the case, returned a report that concluded:
The writer is intelligent, purposeful, and generally self-confident. He is self-disciplined, but not overly rigid. He has well-above-average intelligence and has good organizing ability. He is observant and conscientious and pays meticulous attention to details. He is quite self-assured and may plow ahead at times in a way which is not discreet or subtle. All in all, he is a reasonably well-adjusted individual and appears intellectually and psychologically equipped to become a useful, versatile asset.18
A year later Tolkachev would describe his motivation:
I have chosen a course which does not permit one to move backward, and I have no intention of veering from this course. My actions in the future depend on [my] health, and changes in the nature of [my] work. Concerning remuneration, I would not begin to establish contact for any sum of money with, for example, the Chinese Embassy. But how about America? Maybe it has bewitched me, and I am madly in love with it? I have not seen your country with my own eyes, and to love it unseen, I do not have enough fantasy or romanticism. However, based on some facts, I got the impression that I would prefer to live in America. It is for this very reason that I decided to offer you my collaboration. But I am not an altruist alone. Remuneration for me is not just money. It is, even to a greater extent, the evaluation of the significance and the importance of my work.
Tolkachev had studied “opto-mechanical radar training,” graduating from the Kharkov Polytechnical Institute in 1954. He worked as a “leading systems designer” in a large open office with twenty-four other people. Earning 250 rubles a month plus a 40 percent “secrecy bonus,” he lived with his wife and son in a ninth-floor apartment consisting of two rooms plus a kitchen, bath, and toilet. Though above average for the typical Soviet, the cramped quarters would later complicate his clandestine work.
Following the first personal meeting in January 1979, the CIA realized that Tolkachev, in contrast to Polyakov and Penkovsky, had no familiarity with basic tradecraft, such as dead drops or countersurveillance. His job and personal status precluded any secure way to provide the kind of training TRIGON had received outside the USSR. Under those circumstances, the decision was made to continue personal meetings in Moscow as the primary means for communicating.
For the next eighteen months Tolkachev was safely met every two or three months. During those meetings Tolkachev passed information while the case officer refined operational details of the elaborate communication system customized to accommodate the agent’s circumstances at work and home. Every three months Tolkachev was given the opportunity to pass material to his handler via a dead drop. If the dead drop was to be used, there was a “ready to receive” signal left at a prearranged public site. The signal would have been as simple as a lipstick mark on a telephone pole or a colored thumbtack left on a wooden signpost, invisible to anyone who might pass by. Once the package had been received, the next day the case officer put up a “recovery” signal confirming that the dead drop had been “cleared.”
Tolkachev could also initiate a dead drop any Monday by making a mark at a predetermined location. The case officer would reply that he was “ready to recover” the following Wednesday by using a “parked-car” signal.19 The same night Tolkachev saw the signal he would “fill” the dead drop.
Despite the greater safety of dead drops, Tolkachev preferred personal meetings and argued they were no more