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The top leaders of the Soviet Union discussed the case of controversial CIA spy Adolf Tolkachev during the Politburo meeting on September 25, 1986, according to the transcript published today in the Russian original and in English translation by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org).



The Politburo discussion records General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev noting that "American intelligence paid him generously. He was caught with two million rubles," and quotes the KGB Chairman affirming, "This agent handed over very important military-technical secrets to the enemy."



The Russian-language excerpted transcript, published online here for the first time, adds new evidence to the best-selling account of the Tolkachev case written by Pulitzer-Prize-winner David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal (New York: Doubleday, 2015),http://www.davidehoffman.com/. The 1986 record, originally located in the Soviet archives, directly contradicts allegations by former CIA historian Benjamin B. Fischer that Tolkachev "was the perpetrator of an elaborate KGB hoax."

