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February 25 - August 2, 2024
The operation was code-named CKELBOW, and it ranks as one of the most ingenious and daring of the Cold War. The heart of it was the underground wiretap on the sensitive data line running from the nuclear weapons facility at Troitsk to the Defense Ministry in Moscow. The CIA and the National Security Agency placed a listening tap on the cable by sneaking into one of the manholes along the route.
On August 11, 2014, the CIA hung a portrait of Tolkachev at headquarters alongside other paintings that depict the agency’s greatest operations. The portrait by the artist Kathy Krantz Fieramosca of New York shows Tolkachev in his apartment, his hands grasping the Pentax 35 mm camera, photographing a secret document illuminated by two desk lamps. A clock shows 12:30 p.m., the end of the lunch break. At the unveiling ceremony, a senior CIA official said that Tolkachev is portrayed in the painting with “fierce determination,� “intense concentration,� and, knowing his fate if caught, “a trace of
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