The Role of Intelligence during the Cold War

Intelligence is the umbrella term referring to the range of activities – from

planning and information collection to analysis and dissemination – conducted
in secret, and aimed at maintaining or enhancing relative security by providing
forewarning of threats or potential threats in a manner that allows for the
timely implementation of a preventive policy or strategy, including, where
deemed desirable, covert activities.1

During the Cold War the U.S. (United States) and U.S.S.R. (Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics) waged an essentially secret war of espionage and counterespionage, where
information was a luxury commodity and survival and security were at the centre of the
dispute. Espionage best describes intelligence of this period where both superpowers had to
coexist politically and avoid the devastation of the previous two World Wars. Cold War
became essentially the substitute of the Third World War, which lasted from 1945 until the
dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Intelligence gathering had the role in avoiding direct
confrontation between the two superpowers. However, it is impossible in a single work to
cover extensively all intelligence events of the Cold War. This essay will focus on the early
years of the Cold War more precisely the years of 1945-1962. It will analyse the early
developments of the Cold War, establishing the parallels with the Peloponnesian War;
explore the linkages between intelligence and international relations by revisiting broadly
the neorealist school of thought as the dominant theory of international relations of this
period. It will attempt to apply the intelligence cycle to describe the developments of
intelligence gathering and its contribution to policymakers. The essay will also explore the
main intelligence events of the epoch in view of the intelligence technological developments
such the U-2 flights, the symbolism of the Space Race and the first deployment of satellites;
the failure of the Bay of Pigs landing and its further consequences on the Cuban missile crisis
and finally will analyze the contribution of the human intelligence.

The first half of the twentieth century of the European history was marked by an
unprecedented bloodshed, which left behind a trace of a massive destruction, millions of
1
Peter Gill and Mark Phythian in ‘Intelligence in an Insecure World’, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011). p.7
1|The Role of Intelligence during the Cold War
causalities but essentially had left Europe divided in a swirl of ideologies, where mutual
distrust, hostility and fear were its main characteristics. Both superpowers instead of
confronting each other directly opted alternatively to spread their domination over the
globe in the name of their ideological framework: capitalism (U.S.) vs. Communism (U.S.S.R).
On April 4, 1949, The U.S. and their Western allies ratified NATO, the military alliance to
contain a probable Soviet aggression. In May 14, 1955, the Soviets responded NATO with
the creation of their own military alliance: the Warsaw Pact. Gaddis pointed out that “the
issue at stake was almost as big as that of human survival: how best to organize human
society.”2 Nuclear threats guaranteed a poisoned but a long lasting peace between the U.S.
and the U.S.S.R., always on the brink of a nuclear confrontation.3 In the same year, the
United Nations (UN), a newly redesigned League of Nations but now with a new powerful
tool - the Security Council, with five permanent major allied powers with effective veto had
the mission to maintain international peace. As Young pointed out “The UN hoped to
commit all states to the idea of ‘collective security’ where international problems would be
settled by conciliation rather than the traditional methods of balance of power, alliances
and war.”4 This essentially was to ensure the full commitment of the prominent communist
nations, the U.S.S.R. and China, but also to assure to the world, that World War carnage
would never happen again, as Woodrow Wilson ever idealized.5 However with Cold War
rivalry the U.S.S.R. and U.S. soon became a catalyst for the breakdown of peace in spheres
where they fought to achieve influence in the Third World.6 In the late 1970s and early
1980s, historians like Gaddis pointed out that, the systemic nature of the international order
was the root cause of the Cold War and nobody was to blame for its trigger. Nye points out
‘It was inevitable, or nearly so, because of the bipolar structure of post-war balance of
power. 7 Before the Cold War, the nature of international structure was multipolar,
composed by several great powers, and hence, stability was maintained through alliances
and balance of power. In the aftermath of the war, just two great powers were in position

2
John L. Gaddis in The Cold War (London: Penguin Books, 2007), p.84.
3
Joseph S. Nye in Understanding International Conflict: An Introduction to Theory and History, 7th edn (New
York: Pearson Longman, 2009), p.117.
4
Charles L. Glaser ‘Realism’ in Contemporary Security Studies, ed. by Allan Collins (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2010), pp. 15-31.
5
Gaddis The Cold War p.88
6
The United Nations During the Cold War (1946-1988). (n.d). Retrieved April 6, 2012, from
<http://www.dadalos.org/uno_int/grundkurs_2/un-entwicklung_2.htm>
7
Nye, Understanding International Conflict p.119
2|The Role of Intelligence during the Cold War
to lead the world affairs – the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. as Nye points out “Bipolarity plus the
post war weakness of the European states created a power vacuum into which the U.S. and
the Soviet Union were drawn.”8 Both Americans and Soviets had different objectives at the
end of the war. Soviets had a rigid commitment to expand its influence through territorial
gains to consolidate its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe e.g. the suspicious bargain
between Hitler and Stalin before the war, which allowed the Soviet invasion of Finland in
1939 and in 1941 the annexation of the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and
significant part of Poland).9 On the other hand, the Americans were more interested in the
post-war world outlook and its pacification through diplomacy, free trade and financial
cooperation in order to prevent another Great Depression as such occurred in 1930s and
hence the Soviet communist containment. Ideologically, both superpowers sought to
protect their status quo and when it was possible expand it; such was the case, the U.S.S.R.
that aimed to expand their spheres of influence, with Stalin in Eastern Europe, Roosevelt
in Western Europe and Germany at the centre of the dispute. As Gaddis points out, “the
Cold War was not just a geopolitical or a nuclear arms race....”10 it was more than that, was
the old security dilemmas that had permanently shadowed the international politics.

Under the neoclassical realism paradigm, Kenneth Waltz Structural Realism and the
Defensive Realism variant where the security dilemma concept lie, asserts that in an
anarchic system peace is fragile due to the structure of the international system, and
analyses closely the inference of unit-level actors. The perception of insecurity within the
international system is the result of the absence of a supranational authority, which is
inherently anarchic; hence, states prioritize their own survival in seeking their own security
by any means. Waltz explains the systemic nature of the Cold war as “The origin of hot wars
lie in cold wars, and the origin of the cold war’s are found in the anarchic ordering of
international arena.”11 In addition, in an anarchic system, miscalculation of their opponent’s
military relative capabilities often results in bloodshed;12 this is why the intelligence realm

8
Ibid., p.119
9
Cold War Theories: World Polarization -1945-1953, ed. by K. W. Thompson, 3 Vols
(Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1981), i (1981), 35-37.
10
Gaddis, The Cold War p.84
11
Kenneth W. Waltz, ‘The Origins of War in Neorealist Theory', Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 18(4)
(1988), 615-28 (p.620).
12
Ibid., p.620
3|The Role of Intelligence during the Cold War
became an important wing of the politics of deterrence. Defensive realism, therefore, argue
that anarchy is the cause of states obsession with security, thus gives rise to security
dilemmas. Defensive realists essentially argue that cooperation and restraint will be the best
options under specific circumstances. Therefore, balancing is a central concept of neorealist
theory; it argues that within an anarchic international system, the states are much safer
when pursuing balancing rather than bandwagon because the latter is a riskier choice. 13 We
can establish parallels of balancing analysing the pre World War Two Soviet-American
relations. The American foreign policy criticized vehemently the Bolshevik Revolution and its
revolutionary doctrine, but with the rise of Nazi Germany, despite the animosity and the
different political ideologies, the former adversaries became allies to defeat a common
threat.14 In a bipolar world, the superpowers in analysis were themselves a security threat
as Donnelly points out “In a bipolar world, each superpower is the only serious threat to the
security of the other. Each, whatever their preferences, or inclinations, must balance against
each other.”15 The sources of espionage were paramount in assessing each superpower
military capabilities measured in the number of nuclear weapons in order to match or
surpass the opponent’s might.

It is useful to revisit Thucydides' inevitability theory of war and the security dilemma to
establish parallels with Peloponnesian War and the Cold War. Back in the early fifth century,
Athens and Sparta were former allies; they had cooperated to defeat the Persian Empire,
just like the Grand Alliance had cooperated to defeat the expansionist Nazi Germany during
the World War Two.16 The Spartans after defeating the Persians turned inward, they
privileged a stable defense alliance to secure their status quo, just like Britain and U.S.
thought that the Soviets would turn inward focusing primarily on their own reparations due
to massive destruction on Soviet territory. On the other hand, the Athenians policies were
more outward orientated, that resulted in a steady and prosperous growth, and so did the
U.S. and Britain in the aftermath of the war.17 When a small war broke up in small
peripheral city-state of Epidamnus, these events compromised the complex set of old

13
Jack Donnelly ‘Realism’ In Theories of International Relations, ed. Scott Burchill et al. 4th edn (Hampshire:
Macmillan Publishers Limited, 2009), pp. 31-56
14
Ibid., p.37
15
Ibid., p.37
16
Nye, Understanding International Conflict p.119
17
Ibid., p.17
4|The Role of Intelligence during the Cold War
alliances to balance power among the city-states and consequently triggered the
Peloponnesian War.18 That is to say that small crisis had always been in the origin of major
wars. Here, Thucydides pointed out that the origins of the Peloponnesian War were a result
of Athenians prosperity and power accumulation, because Athens had never been
challenged before, therefore, that caused apprehension among the Spartans (security
seekers) on whether Athens was a greedy state and if eventually sought to control the
whole ancient Greece; hence, the Spartans had a deep security dilemma. 19 Paradoxically,
the Athenians decision to resort to war may have been precipitated by intelligence
misperceptions and miscalculations about each other’s naval superiority, therefore, these
beliefs made the war inevitable.20 Intelligence failures in the Peloponnesian War and the
Cold War present similarities in how both conflicts had begun.

The Americans and the British had secretly developed the Atomic bomb to end the war
against Germany however; the Manhattan Project had not been secret enough. Soviet
intelligence already had a well organized spy network and successfully penetrated Los
Alamos, the nuclear site where the bomb was being built. Scientist Klaus Fuchs managed to
steal all the secrets and hand them to the Soviets therefore, Stalin was well aware of the
Manhattan Project in the Potsdam Conference in 1945.21 The Americans had acquired an
absolute military capability that could decimate anything without actually deploying any
military on the ground. This fact changed the course of history. Stalin interpreted the
American achievement as an intimidation act and a warning, despite the main objective was
ending the war quickly with Germany. In sequence with the Churchill’s and Truman atomic
bomb revelation at Potsdam Conference, Stalin promptly responded hardening his demands
on the post war concessions and secretly started pursuing his own nuclear program.22 Those
misperceptions dictated the dissolution of the Grand Alliance. Again, distrust,
misperceptions and mutual fear led the allies to fall apart and inexplicably let to the
beginning of another war as Jervis points out:

18
Ibid., p.13
19
Ibid., p.19
20
Glaser, Realism, p.25
21
Gaddis, The Cold War, p.25
22
Gaddis, The Cold War, p.26
5|The Role of Intelligence during the Cold War
 There is no reason to believe that Soviet leaders ever seriously contemplated
launching an unprovoked, all-out attack, at least not after 1950; but when Western
leaders looked at Soviet forces and doctrine, they had to assume the worst. The
buildup of Soviet conventional forces pushed the U.S. to develop larger strategic
forces and more diverse nuclear options that it could implement in the event of a
Soviet attack in Europe, a posture that was bound to threaten the Soviet Union. 23

Throughout the Cold War, Western intelligence community allocated most resources and
time on surveillance systems to estimate Soviet capabilities.24 The primacy of containing
Soviets influenced the intelligence world for decades. Therefore, it is importance to stress
the important contribution of intelligence collection throughout the Cold War, which was
essential for policymakers to avoid a catastrophe as Johnson describes it “The main purpose
of intelligence is to provide accurate, timely, and comprehensive information to the
president and other policymakers to inform decision making.” 25 One of the earliest
examples of the importance of intelligence gathering and the intelligence cycle was George
Kennan’s ‘long telegram’26 and the “Mr. X” article where Kennan, essentially had foreseen
the upcoming struggle as political and economic.27 Kennan expressed his concerns and fears
about the Soviet post-war expansionist ambitions and their plans towards Western nations.
Kennan’s contributions articulated the containment theory and thus inspired one of
Winston Churchill’s most important speeches ‘The Sinews of Peace’ in March 5, 1946 at
Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri where Churchill stated: “From Stettin in the Baltic to
Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.”28 Churchill’s
‘Iron Curtain’ famous words raised concerns in the West. Ultimately, the intelligence

23
Robert Jervis, ‘Was the Cold a Security Dilemma?', Journal of Cold War Studies, 3(1) (2001), 36-60 (p.56).
24
Len Scott ‘International History 1900-90’ in The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to
International Relations, ed. by John Baylis, Steve Smith and Patricia Owens, 4th edn (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2008), pp. 15-31 (p.62).
25
Loch K. Johnson, ‘A Framework for Strengthening U.S. Intelligence’, Yale Journal of International Affairs,
Winter- Spring (2006), pp.116-131 (p.116).
26
See Kennan Telegram: Kennan, G. (1946). George Kennan to James Byrnes ["Long Telegram"]. Retrieved
April 8, 2012, from Harry S. Truman Library and Museum website:
<http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/coldwar/documents/index.php?documentdate
=1946-02-22&documentid=6-6&studycollectionid=&pagenumber=1>
27
Mark M. Lowenthal in Intelligence: from Secrets to Policy, 5th ed. (London: SAGE Publications Ltd., 2012)
p.252
28
Winston Churchill. (1946). The Sinews of Peace. Retrieved March 31, 2012, from The Churchill Centre and
Museum at the Churchill War Rooms website: <http://www.winstonchurchill.org/learn/speeches/speeches-of-
winston-churchill/120-the-sinews-of-peace>
6|The Role of Intelligence during the Cold War
community and politicians understood the importance of the containment of Stalin’s
expansionist ambitions and the communist doctrine. In addition, Stalin earlier in February
1946 stated in his speech that communism and capitalism were incompatible and blamed
the latter as the origin of previous wars.29 On August 29, 1949, the Soviets tested their first
nuclear weapon, and also the Chinese Communist Party took power under the leadership of
Mao Zedong, resulting in an intensification of the Cold War. These events had pressured
Truman to approve the top-secret report NSC-68 that allowed the militarization of the Cold
War and the amplification of surveillance activities. The document also assumed the
deployment of atomic bombs only in last resort.30 The NSC-68 report was adopted as an
official national defence policy during the Korean War.31

The U.S.S.R. had a vast territory and closed society, it was quite impossible to make a way
into it and be able to assess threats under their state police surveillance supervised by the
KGB.32 The Americans attempted numerous manoeuvres to penetrate Soviet territory, but
since the use of aircraft reconnaissance to air balloons with cameras, all attempts were
unsuccessful because the Soviets had always been able to counter U.S. incursions.33 The use
of human intelligence (HUMINT) also proved to be disastrous. Good quality intelligence is
hard to come by, infiltrating a foreign country which may have different language and
culture is always difficult. Different cultural attitudes can easily expose even the most skilful
infiltrator. Assassinations of exposed spies are usually the only way to secure that stolen
information will never arrive to the recipient. U.S. spies were repeatedly captured or killed
due to the notorious Kim Philby34 a member of the famous spy ring Cambridge Five.35 Philby
was at that time an MI6 liaison with CIA and simultaneously a double agent spying for the
Soviet Union that successfully helped the KGB uncover most of the western HUMINT secret
missions.

29
Joseph V. Stalin in Pamphlet Collection: Speeches Delivered at Meetings of Voters of the Stalin Electoral
District. (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1950), p.21
30
James H. Callanan in Covert Action in the Cold War: U.S. Policy, Intelligence and CIA Operations [Electronic
version]. (London: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd., 2010), p.90.
31
See the declassified report in NSC 68: U.S. Objectives and Programs for National Security. (1950). Retrieved
April 5, 2012, from Federation of American Scientists website: <http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsc-hst/nsc-
68.htm>
32
KGB stands for: Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security, former USSR).
33
Gaddis, The Cold War p.72
34
Ibid., p.72
35
See more on Cambridge Five at: BBC History. (n.d.). The Cambridge Spies. Retrieved April 4, 2011 from
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/spies_cambridge.shtml>
7|The Role of Intelligence during the Cold War
On July 4, 1956, everything would change again with the arrival of the new American
reconnaissance aircraft, the U-2. The U-2 airborne surveillance operations made possible
to carry out reconnaissance missions at much higher altitudes, it could operate undetected
on Soviet radars, anti-aircraft batteries, and out of reach of Soviet fighter planes, and at the
same time, it could photograph the Soviet territory in detail, as it had never been possible
before.36 The Soviet anti-aircraft defence’s ineffectiveness would consent the U.S. military
reconnaissance aircraft overfly the Soviet territory with impunity during the following years
despite the Soviet acknowledgement of continued violations of its airspace and
international laws.37 Those technological innovations allowed the U.S. to unmask the Soviet
Potemkin38 strategy and thus perceive that the Soviets could not match the American
nuclear and missile capabilities and hence there was no ‘missile-gap’ nor ‘bomb-gaps’ in
Soviet favour.39 The U.S. realised that Khrushchev had been bluffing about the possession of
intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), confirming the vulnerabilities of an empire
that would still have had a long way to go, to match the technological advances of its rival,
at least not until the launch of Sputnik in 1957 which symbolized the beginning of the Space
Race.40

The spy game would change again, because the U.S.S.R. improved its anti-aircraft
capabilities and simply waited for the U-2 next reconnaissance flight, which would be
remarkably its last.41 On May 1, 1960, the Soviets captured the CIA pilot Gary Powers and
the KGB threatened him with a conviction for spying if he would not collaborate. Powers
forcibly pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a total of 10 years of imprisonment. The Soviet
Union afterwards released Powers on February 10, 1962 in a spy swap with Rudolf Abel, the
protagonist of the ‘Hollow Nickel Case’, an English-born spymaster educated in Scotland,
recruited by the KGB to oversee a spy network in the U.S. and later captured by the

36
Corona: America’s First Satellite Program, ed. by Kevin C. Ruffner (Washington D.C.: CIA - Center for the
Study of Intelligence, 1995) p.xiii, This report was finally declassified in 1995 and reveals the evolution and
effectiveness of the first reconnaissance satellites and its important contribution during the Cold War.
37
Gaddis, The Cold War, p.73
38
Gaddis uses the term Potemkin façade because these types of cities were created to divert attentions of the
reality. Potemkin villages have its origin back in the 18th Century; they were first erected to deceive the
Empress Catherine II during her visit to Crimea in 1787. The same type of constructions can be widely seen in
North Korea.
39
Ibid., p.76
40
Ibid., p.68
41
Ibid., p.73
8|The Role of Intelligence during the Cold War
FBI. 42 The U-2 incident definitely accelerated the commitment to the deployment of
satellites, namely the CORONA reconnaissance satellites, a far less intrusive collection of
intelligence.43 After the U-2 incident, Eisenhower realized that the plane U-2 would be
obsolete once it had fallen into Soviets hands almost intact.44 Within a few months, on
August 18, 1960, the CIA and the U.S. Air Force (USAF) jointly launched CORONA
successfully.45 Moreover, CORONA reconnaissance satellite for the first time in history
provided allowed an extensive photographic coverage of the U.S.S.R., China and the rest of
the world, which provided policymakers with ever timely and accurate intelligence.46
Indisputably, the deployment of satellites was one of the largest intelligence successes of
the Cold War, because it reduced the risk of a surprise attacks and it could evaluate the
Soviet war-making capacity.47

The Cuban missile crisis is widely regarded as the most dangerous phases of the Cold War; it
was the closest moment to the brink of “Mutual Assisted Destruction”48 or (MAD) as Robert
McNamara once dared to call it, that both the United States and Soviet Union ever
experienced.49 The Cuban missile crisis had its origins on the rise of Marxist Fidel Castro to
power in Cuba. The prospect of a communist state just about 90 miles away from the U.S.
was not well received by the Kennedy administration. This pertinent fact alarmed Kennedy
for the danger of the spread of communism in Latin America. Therefore, Castro’s rule in
Cuba left Kennedy in a security dilemma: whether to accept a next-door communist
neighbour or to authorize military intervention to overthrow the Cuban leader.50 The U.S.
tried everything they could to eliminate Castro: from the Bay of Pigs fiasco to anti-Castro

42
Rudolph Ivanovich Abel (Hollow Nickel Case). (n.d.). Retrieved April 9, 2012, from Federal Bureau
Investigation website: <http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/famous-cases/hollow-nickel>
43
Richard Aldrich, 'Grow your own': Cold War Intelligence and History Supermarkets’, Intelligence and National
Security, 17(1) (2001), pp. 135-152.
44
Gaddis, The Cold War, p.73
45
McDonald, A. R. (2011). National Reconnaissance Almanac (Center for the Study of National
Reconnaissance). Retrieved April 12, 2012, National Reconnaissance Office website:
<www.nro.gov/about/50thanniv/almanac.pdf>
46
Ruffner, Corona: America’s First Satellite Program, p.xiii
47
Michael Herman in Intelligence Power in Peace and War, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999),
p.183
48
Gaddis, The Cold War. p.80
49
Ibid., p.80
50
Callanan, Covert Action in the Cold War: U.S. Policy, Intelligence and CIA Operations, p.155
9|The Role of Intelligence during the Cold War
Operation MONGOOSE,51 but everything failed to overthrow Castro regime. Kennedy was
forced to follow a previous decision by the Eisenhower administration, in which it had
previously authorized a CIA led amphibious landing at the Bay of Pigs. The aim of the
mission was to overthrow the Cuban regime as Warner stressed “a CIA-trained force of
Cuban exiles have been sent to seize an isolated area along Cuba's southern coast, allowing
émigré political leaders to return to the island and offer the populace a democratic
alternative to Castro.”52 Castro’s military forces crushed the CIA backed revolutionaries. The
CIA failed to provide the necessary logistics and the so aimed assault on Cuba failed.53 The
DCI54 Allen Dulles and other CIA officers (later consequently retired) misled Kennedy by
ignoring potential tactical errors, such the absence of an accurate intelligence assessment
on Cuba, which in turn failed to provide a clear picture of the situation. Furthermore, the
CIA also failed to advice and consult Kennedy that the operation was in a collision route, and
aggravated the diplomatic and military stalemate with the Soviet Union. 55 The Inspectors
General Survey report later concluded that the reasons of the intelligence failure in Bay of
Pigs were:

The Agency became so wrapped up in the military operation that it failed to

appraise the chances of success realistically. Furthermore, it failed to keep the
national policymakers adequately and realistically informed of the conditions
considered essential for success, and it did not press sufficiently prompt policy
decisions in a fast moving situation.56

In sequence of the unsuccessful landing on Bay of Pigs, Khrushchev was determined more
than ever in assisting his comrades in Cuba. Henceforth, the Soviets begun dispatching
intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) and short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs)

51
The Operation MONGOOSE was a CIA covert operation destined to overthrow the Cuban government. The
covert operation included military, sabotage, political propaganda programs and Castro’s 638 assassination
attempts. See in: Operation MONGOOSE. (n.d.). Retrieved April 8, 2012, from
<http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/ops/mongoose.htm>
52
Michael Warner (2007). The CIA's Internal Probe of the Bay of Pigs Affair: Lessons Unlearned, Retrieved April
1, 2012, from Central Intelligence Agency, Center for the Study of Intelligence website:
<https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-
studies/studies/winter98_99/art08.html>
53
Ibid.
54
DCI stands for: The Director of Central Intelligence.
55
Callanan, Covert Action in the Cold War: U.S. Policy, Intelligence and CIA Operations, p.167
56
See the declassified report in: Kirkpatrick, B. L. (1962). Inspector General’s Survey of the Cuban Operation and
Associated Documents. Retrieved April 7, 2012, from ww.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB341/IGrpt1.pdf
10 | T h e Role of Intelligence during the Cold War
equipped with nuclear warheads to deter another American incursion in Cuba but also to
defend the sole socialist state in the West, whilst trying to buy some time to develop quietly
their ICBMs program.57 Kennedy had been advised about the military deployment, therefore
reintroduced again the U-2 reconnaissance missions to overfly Cuba to photograph in more
detail the Soviet military deployment in Cuba.58 Following the recent events, the U.S. started
preventive contingency planning and military deployments for a probable naval
“quarantine” to increase the American readiness to circumvent offensive weapons entering
Cuba, and in case of Soviet retaliation.59 Khrushchev ultimately believed that the Americans
would attack Cuba and agreed to dismiss his naval fleet and end the confrontations.60
However, the CIA operational flop left Kennedy administration in an embarrassing
bargaining position. Khrushchev in the heights of the Cuban missile crisis skilfully took
advantage in forcing Kennedy to negotiate secretly the withdrawal of the American
intermediate-range missiles in Turkey for those in Cuba.61 The Bay of Pigs failure provide a
good illustration of the ambiguities, and shortcomings in each step of the intelligence cycle,
and its limitations in adopting preventive and corrective course of action, that so often
mislead the policymakers and constrains their performance.

It is also important to highlight the role of the HUMINT during the Cold War. The human
intelligence has its inherent problems and limitations, which were particularly evident
regarding the U.S.S.R. It was extremely difficult to recruit agents in such hostile environment
as Johnson states “Even if successfully recruited, indigenous assets can be unreliable. They
are known to fabricate reports, sell information to the highest bidder, and scheme as false
defectors or double-agents.”62 However, not all human assets were deceptive; agents like
Oleg Penkovsky remarkably contributed decisively to a positive outcome of the Cuban
missile crisis. Penkovsky was senior GRU63 officer spying for MI6 and the CIA between 1961

57
Gaddis, The Cold War, p.77, Raymond L. Garthoff in A Journey Through the Cold War: a Memoir of
Containment and Coexistence, (Brookings Institution Press: Washington, D.C., 2001), p.170
58
Ibid., p.170
59
Scott D. Sagan, ‘Nuclear Alerts and Crisis Management’, International Security, 9(4) (1985), pp. 99-
139(p.106).
60
Ibid., p.110.
61
Gaddis, The Cold War, p.78
62
Johnson, A Framework for Strengthening U.S. Intelligence, p.199
63
GRU stands for: Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye (Soviet Military Intelligence).
11 | T h e Role of Intelligence during the Cold War
and 1962.64 Peter Wright described Penkovsky in his bestseller Spycatcher as “...the jewel in
MI6 crown.”65 Penkovsky was assigned to conduct Soviet intelligence operations against the
West when he established contact with a British business representative, Greville Wynne,
who was actually a MI6, cutout.66 Penkovsky’s reports were sometimes inaccurate, his
statements about the Soviet ICBM were overstated and he failed to provide accurate
information about the status of the Soviet army. Col.Penkovsky asserted that the Soviets
army had about 50 divisions against the 175 held by the American intelligence, which meant
that the Americans were dangerously overestimating the Soviet military might.67 Although
Penkovsky provided a wealthy source of intelligence particularly on Berlin and the Cuban
missile crisis, to disseminate to policymakers.68 In the Berlin crisis his reports were carefully
prepared and taken into account in national intelligence estimates and policy
deliberations. 69 Nonetheless, Penkovsky failed to advance the information about the
construction of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet dispatch of missiles into Cuba. 70 On the other
hand, one of his most remarkable contributions was the information about the
characteristics and operation of the Soviet missiles deployed in Cuba71 which, proved to be
of extreme importance in identifying the missile complexes in Cuba, with the aid of U-2
photographs and experienced satellite photo interpreters on Soviet missiles. They could
decipher and provide additional visual evidence. 72 The most important and extensive
information Penkovsky ever provided was a collection of journals issued between the years
1960-1962 of the leading Soviet military journal, Military Thought (Voyennaya Mysl)
restricted to Army commanders and the Ministry of Defense, which Penkovsky enjoyed free
access.73 The relevance of these documents gave an important account of the Soviet

64
Peter Wright and Paul Greengrass in Spycatcher – The Candid Autobiography of Senior Intelligence Officer.
New York: Dell Publishing, 1988), p.259.
65
Ibid., p.259-260
66
Ibid., p.260, A definition of Cutout: “A mechanism or person that acts as a compartment between the
members of an operation but which allows them to pass material or messages securely.” Mendez, A., Mendez
J. (n.d.). Spy Dust: Glossary of Spy Terms, Retrieved April 8, 2012, from
http://www.themasterofdisguise.com/glossary.html
67
Garthoff, A Journey Through the Cold War: a Memoir of Containment and Coexistence, p.111-112
68
Ibid., p.113
69
Ibid., p.113
70
Ibid., p.113
71
Ibid., pp.113-114
72
Kristie Macrakis, ‘Technophilic Hubris and Espionage Styles during the Cold War’. Isis, 101(2) 2010), 378-385,
(p.383)., Garthoff, A Journey Through the Cold War: a Memoir of Containment and Coexistence, p.
73
Garthoff, A Journey Through the Cold War: a Memoir of Containment and Coexistence, p.114-115
12 | T h e Role of Intelligence during the Cold War
perceptions or misperceptions about the West and their suspicions of NATO.74 In the climax
of the Cuban missile crisis Penkovsky was arrested and executed by the KGB.

In conclusion, it is worth noting that the Cold War was characterized by a bipolar world in
which the discovery of the atomic bomb contributed to deadly standoff that fueled an arms
race. Both the United States and Soviet Union naively believed in the inevitability of
confrontation, as Thucydides, the father of realism had previously analyzed in the event of
the Peloponnesian War. In an ideological warfare, both superpowers believed that their
own ideology would prevail as dominant. The Soviets had idealized a globalized communist
world and thought that the U.S. imperialism could demoralize communism but also
expected a possible U.S. attack. The Americans in turn, believed that the Soviet expansionist
ambitions would surely threaten the free world and would undermine the world peace, but
was essentially regarded as a menace to their capitalist economic model. In addition, each
side believed that the existence of one would be a threat to the existence of the other,
where the interests of one, frequently have displeased the interests of the other, therefore,
often resulted in zero-sum games. Neorealist’s assert that under this circumstances both
superpowers prioritize the identification of the dangerous and provide measures to
counteract them, all because it became a routine, and in result the systemic anarchical
environment become even more hostile and suspicious, thus aggravating the old security
dilemmas. The espionage game contributed decisively to the unfolding events of the Cold
War; hence we can say that the Cold War was essentially intelligence-driven. During these
times we have witnessed unprecedented spy craft technological developments. The United
States due to impenetrability of the Soviet territory and the difficulties of recruiting spies
privileged the development of electronic surveillance methods composed of stealth aircraft,
satellite imagery (IMINT) and other cutting edge technologies to conduct its covert
operations. The Soviet Union in turn appealed to the recruitment and planting spymasters
(HUMINT) at key institutions, stealing secret information, and especially developing the fine
art of double agents75 like Kim Philby, Klaus Fuchs, and George Blake among others, with a
high rate of success unlike their American counterparts. However, despite the importance of
the intelligence during the Cold War, it could not forecast aggressive actions and minimize

74
Ibid.
75
Kristie Macrakis, ‘Technophilic Hubris and Espionage Styles during the Cold War’. Isis, 101(2) 2010), 378-385,
(p.383).
13 | T h e Role of Intelligence during the Cold War
political and ideological misperceptions about the adversary. Furthermore, it did not help to
draft better deterrence policies; instead intelligence assessments like the NSC-68 and the
Doolittle Report76 often fostered competition and fueled an arms race rather than promote
cooperation and peace.

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