Musk's "Big Balls" Staffer Has a Curious KGB Connection

A Quirky Espionage Footnote to the Saga of "Big Balls" aka Edward Coristine

By now, everyone following the Musk/DOGE saga is familiar with "Big Balls"—true name Edward Coristine. He’s one of Musk's team of tech bros who was briefly fired for making racist social media posts, and then brought back to continue working for DOGE. Turns out, Big Balls has a KGB connection that links, in a quirky way, to my own time in Moscow as a CIA officer in the 1980’s. Let’s connect the dots. A warning at the outset — although juicy, this story falls into the category of "curious espionage footnote", and is not a major revelation. If you're an espionage nerd, you'll find it interesting. Otherwise, well, you were warned. I’ll try to have some fun telling it.

1. A Defector Departs—With an Escort

It's November 1985. I'm in Moscow doing my thing for the CIA, working on a plan to shake surveillance and meet GTCOWL, an elusive KGB major who briefly volunteered to CIA, met me once in April 1985, and now has disappeared. We’re desperately trying to figure out why things have started going badly. Three months earlier we got a partial answer when Vitaly Yurchenko, a KGB general, defected to the CIA in Rome and revealed that the CIA had been penetrated by a mole code-named "Mr. Robert"—a young officer who had been fired just prior to his assignment to Moscow. Sitting in the Moscow station, reading the cable from Rome with this information, we instantly knew that "Robert" was Edward Lee Howard. Here’s Ed’s FBI wanted poster:

Ed and I had shared the "pipeliner" office in the USSR branch at CIA Headquarters, and I was there the day security came around to escort him from the building. According to Yurchenko, the disgruntled Howard had volunteered to the KGB, and it was Howard who was responsible for the arrest of the CIA’s most valuable Soviet agent in Moscow, Adolph Tolkachev, a few months prior to Yurchenko’s defection. Still with me? I know it’s complicated. Espionage tends to be like that. Here’s Tolkachev being arrested, and you can read more about him in David Hoffman’s excellent “The Million Dollar Spy.” The KGB officer in the black leather jacket is Vladiir Zaitsev — more about him in a minute.

The arrest of Tolkachev took place in June 1985. Now, moving back to November 1985 and Yurchenko’s redefection — everyone on the US side is trying to figure out. Was Yurchenko real? Did he really defect and the have second thoughts? (It happens.) Or was the original defection a deception operation all along? To be sure, Yurchenko was a bit of a flake. A big part of his motivation was to be reunited with a lover in Canada, but when he went there and presented himself to her, she said no thanks. He also thought he was dying of stomach cancer but it turned out to be indigestion. (Not kidding.) So it was hard to now what to believe. It’s "wilderness of mirrors" stuff, to be sure. Now, Yurchenko holds a press conference denouncing the U.S., then boards an Aeroflot flight for Moscow.

2. Yurchenko’s Escort — Valery Martynov

As Yurchenko climbs the stairs to the Aeroflot flight, accompanying him are two KGB officers from the Washington rezidentura. One of them is Valery Martynov. Martynov had been posted in Washington under diplomatic cover and had access to sensitive information, mostly in the realm of science and technology. Martynov had been recruited by the FBI several years earlier and had been working as a double agent for the FBI.

The plane lands in Moscow. At Sheremetyevo Airport, the delegation disembarks. But it’s not Yurchenko, the returning defector, who is grabbed—it’s Martynov. The arrest team that grabs him is led by Vladimir Zaitsev, a senior officer in Group Alpha, the KGB’s elite counterintelligence and special operations unit. (He’s the same one we saw in the Tolkachev arrest photo.) I would get to know Zaitsev some months later when I got to experience the “hospitality of the KGb” when they arrested me in March 1986. (That whole tale is told here: New Russian Documentary “Spy Dust” — Story of My Arrest by KGB in Moscow.)

Back to Martynov. As he walks through Sheremetyevo, Zaitsev and his team grab him, pull him into a side room, and take him into custody. Here are some KGB photos of the arrest. Here’s a photo of Martynov and the arrest team. Note the way they’re holding is mouth — this is because in 1977 when they arrested another CIA spy, Alexander Ogorodnik, he managed to bite down on a cyanide pill and kill himself. Zaitsev isn’t going to let that happen again, so in many of the arrest photos from 1985 you see this. Zaitsev is the one leading over him. In the background is another ‘old friend’ of mine - Sergey Terkhov, who was the countrintelligence officer running the investigation in my case—and, evidently, Martynov’s.

Martynov was arrested, tried, and in 1986, he was executed. His wife was able to leave the USSR and ended up in the US. And that’s how we come to Big Balls.

3. The Martynov–Big Balls Connection

Martynov was one of a dozen spies for the CIA and FBI who were arrested in 1985–86. The main culprit wasn’t just Ed Howard, the turncoat Moscow-bound CIA officer. The real damage came from Aldrich Ames, the CIA’s chief of Soviet counterintelligence, and Robert Hanssen, an FBI counterintelligence officer. Three moles, not one.

Martynov, recruited by the FBI, had been passing information for years. And here’s where the modern twist comes in: Martynov is the grandfather of none other than “Big Balls” - Edward Coristine. Go figure.

4. What Does This Mean?

As I said at the outset, (you were warned), this is a quirky espionage footnote to the Big Balls saga, not a major revelation. Is there more to it than that?

Some are now clamoring that this information might have gotten in the way of Coristine getting a security clearance, had anyone bothered to require one. I don’t think so. First, you can’t hold someone responsible for what their granddad did, and anyway — what he did was sacrifice his life for the USG, so how could you hold that against him?

But in the grand scheme of things, this is more of a historical curiosity than a major revelation. Still, if you're into espionage history, this is one of those odd intersections where past and present unexpectedly collide.

This has been an enjoyable side journey for me. If you made it to the end, you’re officially an espionage nerd, congratulations! (There are a lot more tales to tell, most of them more meaningful than this one.)