[rramadass]

No, you understood it wrong. He could just be the conduit for goods and nothing more. It is for the entire Scientific/Engineering establishment in the USSR and its allies to figure that out.

One way might be by simple black-box behaviour testing of gizmo-x received in the USSR vs. the same done in a legal company in the US/Europe/Japan and then narrowing down the problem.

I will bet my bottom dollar that the same thing is going on even today (w.r.t. the usual suspects like China/Iran/etc.) given how crucial Technology has become to maintaining Economic/Military superiority.

[Cupertino95014]

OK, that was a reasonable reading of "he can get complete systems with some deformities/problems to the Soviets and then have them reverse engineer the system while correcting/fixing the problem parts/deformities"

All he could possibly know is "this thing may be sabotaged." I suppose that is some help to the Soviets.