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 protection of the secction concerning detection of spying, 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.
| Date | Topic | Event This list is incomplete; you can help by editing it. |
|---|---|---|
| 1941-08-10 | Nuclear espionage | USSR ! 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 | USSR ! 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 | USSR ! Yuri Modin began leading the Cambridge Five ring of atomic spies. |
| 1946-12-20 | VENONA Project | US ! Meredith Gardner's codebreaking discovered the Soviet spying within the Manhattan Project. |
| 1949 | Nuclear espionage | USSR ! 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 ! Discoverer 4 was the first CORONA satellite with an IMINT camera. |
| 1959-10-15 | Active measures | USSR ! Ukrainian politician Stepan Bandera was assassinated on KGB orders. |
| 1960 | 1960 U-2 incident | US ! 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.) |
| 1962-10-26 | Cuban Missile Crisis | USSR ! Under the pseudonym of Aleksandr Fomin, the KGB Station Chief in Washington proposed the crisis' diplomatic solution. |
| 1964 | Operation Neptune | USSR ! A ruse was used to indicate West Germany's spies remaining from WWII had been exposed. |
| 1985-03-23 | Military Liaison Missions | US ! On a mission to photograph a Soviet tank storage building, US intelligence officer Major Arthur D. Nicholson was killed by a Soviet soldier. |
Famous quotes containing the words cold, war and/or espionage:
“the cold eternal shores
That look sheer down
To the dark tideless floods of Nothingness
Where all who know may drown.”
—Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935)
“The contention that a standing army and navy is the best security of peace is about as logical as the claim that the most peaceful citizen is he who goes about heavily armed. The experience of every-day life fully proves that the armed individual is invariably anxious to try his strength. The same is historically true of governments. Really peaceful countries do not waste life and energy in war preparations, with the result that peace is maintained.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“I cannot think that espionage can be recommended as a technique for building an impressive civilisation. It’s a lout’s game.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)