CIA’s Intelligence Art Collection

The painting is compelling.  The spy looks tense, perhaps a bit rushed.  He casts a sidelong glance at the clock on the table as he photographs a document spread out on the chair in front of him.  It is thirty minutes past midday—his lunch hour—and he is an agent of a government not his own. 

His name is Adolf Tolkachev—an electronics expert who has access to highly-classified Soviet military intelligence. Tolkachev will become known as the “Billion Dollar Spy” because the secrets he stole saved the US government enough research and development money to fund CIA for a year. But it cost him dearly. Tolkachev was betrayed by a mole at CIA and executed by the Soviet government in 1986. His is one of many gripping stories told through the paintings of CIA’s Intelligence Art Collection.

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