Let’s Learn about the Cold War: Part 10 – The KGB

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Sean D. Smith
  • Minot Air Force Base Public Affairs
MINOT AIR FORCE BASE, N.D. --  Soviet and Russian security and intelligence services have been known by different names over the years, but during the Cold War the most prominent was the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti or KGB.

When it comes to international espionage, there are two kinds of spies: legal and illegal. A legal spy is in a target country openly, usually working in a consulate or embassy. They can collect intelligence relatively safely, as they are in most cases protected by diplomatic immunity even if caught. However, because their identities as foreign agents are in the open, it can be more difficult for them to access sensitive information.

During the Cold War, the KGB preferred illegal spies, who had a much easier time getting at their targets. KGB agents in the West used cover identities that were often the identities of real people who were either dead or complicit in the operations.

Before the Cold War, the Soviet intelligence service was already present in the United States, mostly for the purposes of gathering military and technological information. Soviet agents gathered intelligence on weapons and jet propulsion, and most importantly, the atomic bomb.

The KGB didn't limit itself to using Soviet personnel. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were American citizens who were executed for providing information on the atomic bomb to the USSR.

Cold War era espionage practices included and inspired many spy tropes in entertainment: aliases, dead-drops, photographing sensitive intelligence and infiltration operations. KGB agents would join a target organization with the objective of weakening it by cultivating dissent among its members and creating chaos.

McCarthyism and the Red Scare seriously disrupted the lives of many people who had done nothing wrong and who had no ties to communism -- but it also created an environment that made life more difficult for the Soviet intelligence networks in America.

This forced the KGB to turn to a more mercenary mode of operation, approaching Americans and either tricking them or convincing them to share valuable intelligence, a common and effective espionage practice even today.

Sometimes the USSR didn't even have to make the first move. In 1968, John Anthony Walker, a U.S. Navy communications specialist, walked into the Soviet Embassy in Washington D.C. to sell a top secret radio cypher card and negotiate a salary for himself as a spy.

Walker spied for the USSR through the 1970s and into the 1980s, passing along documents and information including forewarning about B-52 strikes, diminishing their effectiveness in the Vietnam War. He was caught and arrested in 1985.

When asked how he could get so much classified information for so long, Walker said "KMart has better security than the Navy."

As the KGB gathered intelligence on the West, the Central Intelligence Agency gathered intelligence on the Soviet Union. 

Next time: The CIA