The Billion Dollar Spy Quotes

“This is a country that can’t even make toasters,” he said. “And while they can make missiles, they can’t feed their population.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“The one thing that proved to me you were CIA and not KGB is when you gave me those medicines to test on my daughter. Because the KGB is heartless. They would have given me one pill and said, do it. I knew I was working with a humane organization when you gave me five medicines.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“Soviet authorities had long feared copiers. At its most basic, the machine helped spread information, and strict control of information was central to the Communist Party’s grip on power. In most offices, photocopy machines were kept under lock and key.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“For as long as I can recall, a small scrap of paper has been fastened to our refrigerator door with a proverb from Saint Augustine: “The world is a book, and those who do not travel, read only a page.” With her steadfast support and participation, the world is, once again, a book.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“He ordered a freeze on CIA operations in Moscow—a total stand-down. The Moscow station was told not to run any agents, not to carry out any operational acts.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“the Jack-in-the-Box would spring erect, a pop-up that looked, in outline, like the head and torso of the case officer who had just jumped out.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“In 1966, Angleton wrote that an “integrated and purposeful Socialist Bloc” had sought to spread false stories of “splits, evolution, power struggles, economic disasters [and] good and bad Communism” to a confused West. Once this program of strategic deception had succeeded, the Soviet Union would pick off the Western democracies, one by one.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“He projected a fresh, moralistic approach to government—“I’ll never tell a lie”—and a break with the sordid scandals in Washington”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“Fifteen minutes had already passed, and Tolkachev had one more request. He handed Rolph a piece of paper. When Rolph looked down, he saw it was printed in English in block letters: 1. LED ZEPPELIN 2. PINK FLOYD 3. GENESIS 4. ALAN PARSONS PROJECT 5. EMERSON, LAKE AND PALMER 6. URIAH HEEP 7. THE WHO 8. THE BEATLES 9. THE YES 10. RICK WAKEMAN 11. NAZARETH 12. ALICE COOPER”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“The Americans were dumbstruck. A man with the keys to the kingdom, the ultrasecret codes to Soviet communications, was volunteering to defect.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“The creation of the CIA in 1947 reflected more than anything else the determination of Congress and President Truman that Pearl Harbor should never happen again.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“The CIA was born out of the disaster at Pearl Harbor. Despite warning signals, Japan achieved complete and overwhelming surprise in the December 7, 1941, attack that took the lives of more than twenty-four hundred Americans, sunk or damaged twenty-one ships in the U.S. Pacific Fleet, and thrust the United States into war.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“He met with CIA officers twenty-one times over six years on the streets of Moscow, a city swarming with KGB surveillance, and was never detected.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“Tolkachev was five minutes late to his meeting with the CIA case officer on the night of January 18, 1985. The streets were piled with snow, temperatures plunged to fifteen degrees below zero, and he had trouble finding a place to park. When he arrived, they exchanged verbal paroles, a few pleasantries, and walked back to Tolkachev’s car to stay warm and talk. Tolkachev”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“Edward Jay Epstein, contained”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“The whole time we were meeting, I wasn’t really sure whether you were actually CIA. The one thing that proved to me you were CIA and not KGB is when you gave me those medicines to test on my daughter. Because the KGB is heartless. They would have given me one pill and said, do it. I knew I was working with a humane organization when you gave me five medicines.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“According to Conquest, two days after Sofia was executed, on December 12, 1937, Stalin and his premier, Vyacheslav Molotov, approved 3,167 death sentences—and then went to watch a movie. Not all the executions were approved at such a high level; on a day in October, the secret police chief, Nikolai Yezhov, and another official considered 551 names and sentenced every one of them to be shot.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“Then Turner was selected to work with the whiz kids under Robert McNamara in the 1960s, when systems analysis was all the rage. When Admiral Elmo Zumwalt became the new chief of naval operations in 1970, he put Turner in charge of new initiatives in his first sixty days. Through it all, Turner became convinced the military was hidebound and desperately needed new thinking. He once used systems analysis to study naval minesweeping and showed how it could be done better and faster from a helicopter than from a ship.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“more than 1.8 million of them sent to prison camps. Now nearing the end of the standard eight-year term, the kulaks were soon to return; Stalin feared a wave of disgruntled and embittered people coming home. The hammer fell with a secret police order, No. 00447, in July 1937, which set the pattern for the mass killings of the following two years.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“Much of it was simply letters from worker-correspondents, each known as a rabkor, who wrote short bits and pieces about mills and”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“Saint Augustine: “The world is a book, and those who do not travel, read only a page.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“Soviet pilots had little autonomy. This was slow and clumsy.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“So many people had been declared “enemies of the people” in those years that the orphanages were overflowing.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“Stalin and his premier, Vyacheslav Molotov, approved 3,167 death sentences—and then went to watch a movie.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“It is important to achieve a decisive breakthrough in the implementation of the plan!”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“Rolph secured from the CIA five samples of sedatives suitable for a small child.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“smuggle them across the border in a van, but a four-year-old girl? How to keep her quiet?”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“The biggest hurdle for the exfiltration was Sheymov’s young daughter. Two adults could remain silent for the forty-five minutes or so it would take to”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

“a Pentax ME single-lens-reflex 35 mm camera and lens for copying documents, with a clamp to fasten it steady to a chair or table.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal