Which is not really an argument as to the veracity of what he said.
I mean yes, technology was "stolen" all the time - from BOTH sides. F-117 stealth technology is based on research done in USSR. In 80ties, the US people happily took a ride in the first MiG-29s delivered to us in the 1980s and "stole" technology from there.
And yet, we don't go running around claiming that all USA flight technology achievements are based on CIA agents stealing tech and thus diminishing everything people Lockheed etc. did.
If you actually look at declassified primary sources you'll see that a huge amount of effort went into eastern designs as well and the impact of "stolen" technology is actually rather limited due to the differences in approaches of R&D teams.
Enjoy this chapter from a book on the subject of GRU: http://militera.lib.ru/research/suvorov8/04.html
For example for your Manhattan project thing is the classic example of how misleading such simplified outlook on the world can be. GRU stole the information about US atomic bomb, but then the info wasn't really used (because it wasn't trusted) and the USSR bombs ended up being developed independently. See this post for more: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/21zc0v/how_d...
This is actually a rather common occurence - even in things like USSR copying the US bomber design it showed that the technology and approaches to it were suffciently different that stolen plans weren't really that useful for plain copying. They did provide invaluable direction for R&D of course.
Let me be clear - I'm not even remotely claiming that USSR didn't attempt to copy technology or attempt to benefit it. I'm just a bit annoyed at the amount of Americans that reflexively try to erase contributions and hard work of a lot of USSR's engineers and scientists with this naive and simple dismissal. I understand that it's driven by what's effectively 50 years of propagands (from both sides!), but in 2017 we should do better. We have declassified sources now.
That's like saying that all Soviet technology is based on research done in UK and France. You know: Newton, Lavoisier, Pascal, Boyle, Joule...
> happily took a ride in the first MiG-29s delivered to us in the 1980s and "stole" technology from there
Take a ride == stole technology?
Are you serious?