22. This Spy Avenged the US… Only for an American Spy to Pull One Over on Him on Behalf of the USSR
Unfortunately, Tolkachev’s precautions failed to save him from one risk over which he had no control: the incompetence of those for whom he spied. Tolkachev risked all to infiltrate the Soviet Union, commit treason, and betray his country to gift the CIA with some of the Soviet Union’s most sensitive scientific data. In exchange, the CIA turned a blind eye to evidence of treason and betrayal in its own ranks. Two traitors from within the CIA would eventually doom Tolkachev, betray him, and do him in by fingering him to the KGB.
The end of Tolkachev began with Edward Lee Howard. A former Peace Corps volunteer, Howard went on to earn a master’s degree in business administration, before he got hired by USAID in 1976. He joined the CIA in 1980, but revelations of past drug use derailed his career, and he was eventually fired in 1983. Disgruntled, he contacted the KGB and began to spill secrets, before he finally defected to the Soviets in 1985. Among the secrets he spilled was information that put the KGB on Tolkachev’s trail.
