From January 1977 to February 1978, Tolkachev attempted to approach cars with U.S. diplomatic license plates in Moscow five times,[REF] coincidentally approaching the CIA Moscow bureau chief Gardner Hathaway at a gas station, but the CIA was wary of counterintelligence operations by the KGB.
Because Tolkachev resisted the use of traditional CIA methods including dead drops and radios, preferring personal meetings, he was able to transfer a much larger volume of classified data, much of it collected using various matchbox-sized cameras.