Cold War espionage

Cold War espionage

Cold War espionage describes the intelligence gathering activities during the Cold War between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Because each side was preparing to fight the other, intelligence on the opposing side's intentions, military, and technology was of paramount importance. To gather this information, the two relied on a wide variety of military and civilian agencies. While several such as the CIA and KGB became synonymous with Cold War espionage, many other organizations played key roles in the collection and analysis of a wide host of intelligence disciplines.

Soviet espionage in the United States during the Cold War was an outgrowth of World War II nuclear espionage, and Cold War espionage was depicted in works such as the James Bond and Matt Helm books and movies.

Chronology
Date Topic Event    This list is incomplete; you can help by editing it.
1941-08-10 Nuclear espionage Flag of the Soviet Union.svg The GRU reestablished contact with Klaus Fuchs, who transferred from the British Tube Alloys program to the US Manhattan Project in 1943.
1942 Nuclear espionage Flag of the Soviet Union.svg US communist Jacob Golos placed the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg cell of engineers in direct contact with Soviet intelligence operatives in New York.
1944 Nuclear espionage Flag of the Soviet Union.svg Yuri Modin began leading the Cambridge Five ring of atomic spies.
1946-12-20 VENONA Project US flag 48 stars.svg Meredith Gardner's codebreaking discovered the Soviet spying within the Manhattan Project.
1949 Nuclear espionage Flag of the Soviet Union.svg A Mossad agent assumed, seeing CIA agent James Jesus Angleton dining with Cambridge Five mole Kim Philby, that the former had turned the latter into a triple agent.
1959-06 Corona (satellite) US flag 48 stars.svg Discoverer 4 was the first CORONA satellite with an IMINT camera.
1959-10-15 Active measures Flag of the Soviet Union.svg Ukrainian politician Stepan Bandera was assassinated on KGB orders.
1960 1960 U-2 incident US flag 48 stars.svg Pilot Francis Gary Powers' Lockheed U-2 spy plane was downed by a Soviet SAM (he was convicted of espionage & exchanged in 1962 for spy Rudolph Abel.)
1963-10-26 Cuban Missile Crisis Flag of the Soviet Union.svg Under the pseudonym of Aleksandr Fomin, the KGB Station Chief in Washington proposed the crisis' diplomatic solution.
1964 Operation Neptune Flag of the Soviet Union.svg A ruse was used to indicate West Germany's spies remaining from WWII had been exposed.
1985-03-23 Military Liaison Missions US flag 48 stars.svg On a mission to photograph a Soviet tank storage building, US intelligence officer Major Arthur D. Nicholson was killed by a Soviet soldier.

External links

  • [1] NOC by NicholasAnderson. eBook published 2008, traditional book published by Enigma Books 2009. Fictionalised (as stipulated by UK law) autobiography of a British SIS/MI6 intelligence officer's stories from the Cold War. Original non-fiction version vetoed in 2000 per UK Official Secrets Act and appeared in banned books listing in 2003 as seen at http://www.fatchuck.com/z4.html