question. it is very true we had far better technical intelligence. is true our satellites were superior. we could count soviet missile silos and see the number on the back of it cheap with the satellite. we could pick up signals intelligence. we have a lot of advantages a lot of advantages as innovators. the soviet kgb had been good at human source intelligence. they had run agents for years and did a lot of the same things we did. tolkachev case is particularly interesting because for a long time people were saying it could never be done and we did it. we had a human source agent. 21 meetings with the cia were carried out almost entirely within three miles of the front door of kgb headquarters.

>> i hope he eventually was able to come to the u.s. to be a free man. >> he wasn't. he paid with his life. he was caught and executed. [inaudible] >> another question and i think i held you in suspense long enough. tolkachev was caught and executed. >> thank you for coming. those are very critical years to our country. >> yet then we survived it. i don't think they know it but now how they came out without a nuclear war, but we did. >> thank you very much. this! i was born in communist poland so unfamiliar with communism.

i left as a child, but my father spent a year during the war. he lived in eastern poland said he was sent on trans-siberia and he spent a year in siberia. >> hold the microphone up so we can hear you. >> my grandfather died of starvation in siberia. communism was a system where they pretend to pay you and people pretend to work. so it is not a good system. our system has a lot of flaws and hopefully they will be fixed. my question to you is why didn't tolkachev want to come to the united states? after a while he could've asked for asylum. >> it's a good question. this discussion went back and forth for your spirit for a while the cia said would you like to come to the united

states. they prepared a plan to bring him and for a while but for a while but it is interesting that when they said is interesting to monday said hadi told anybody in your family said that have to come to you. i haven't told anybody. he was unwilling to tell his family and i'm willing to believe them. in 1983 the cia said here's an envelope. here's the whole plan. can the united states and spend your years here are putting money into an escrow account and he just handed the envelope back. said it's not my goal to come to the united states. i want to destroy the soviet system. >> my follow up question is now that would is in power, how is this different because he was a criminal that would've been arrested had he not started to work for, i forgot the other guys name. the guy that preceded him.

basically nothing has changed in russia. >> the question is not that has changed in russia with. i'm worried about what happened but i was a couple things. first of all this is not the soviet union. russia survey not a democracy but a soft authoritarianism and people in coffee houses and online still say what they think even if the guy is wiped out the organizations of democracy and certainly has completely removed all the oxygen from competition. he is now number one. there is no number two. the war in ukraine was provoked so there's a lot of bad behavior. as someone who cares about it, we shouldn't confuse with all of russia. an entire middle class benefited from the last 20 years from the amount of openness they did have. the most open time in a thousand years of russian history and we

can hope even with a strong man later, the influences that the americans and western europeans have helped spread will prevail over time. >> i have a question. did the cia take care of natasha and their son after he was executed? >> i tell the story in the book and i don't want to spoil this for you, but it is a sad story and i would urge you to read it. i just don't want to spoil it. i think a lot of people are sometimes surprised to find out that we pay spies money. some spies just do it for money. they saw the documents. he was the fellow who did want money and you will see throughout the book the discussion of how to pay him. misunderstandings and confusion. so you might conclude at first

tolkachev was just greedy. .. attribute to him. i saw the painting when it was on last year and is reproduced in the