After the war, he leaves the military and is recruited by the CIA and works for some time in a menial job in a Los Angeles pizza restaurant while shadowing a KGB cell. Later, he becomes a handyman, a drunk and a hobo. Eventually he is re-recruited by the CIA for their Firefox operation, supposedly because of his knowledge of Russian, his combat experience in Vietnam and his knowledge of flying Russian aircraft; he is already fluent in Russian (his mother was Russian) therefore only requires 3 months of training, learning to fly a replica MiG-25 as well as a simulator of the Firefox.