Skip to Main Content

The Sixties: Spies & Espionage

This guide covers the decade 1960 - 1970

Spy vs. Spy

Much of the Cold War was conducted by espionage. The Soviets had their spy agency, the NKVD, which later became the KGB. The British had their spy agency, MI6. But the United States was late to come to the spy game. Because of the lack of decent intelligence, the United States was caught unawares on December 7, 1941. The United States had warnings but they were not heeded. To prevent this from happening again, the Central Intelligence Agency was created in 1947.

The CIA saw as part its mission the shaping of public opinion in foreign country through the promotion of literature. This was made clear in a 1953 government report: "In most parts of the world, the radio and television are still novelties; magazines have low circulation; and newspapers circulate mostly among political groups whose opinions are already formed...Books--permanent literature--are by far the most powerful means of influencing the attitudes of intellectuals." (White, p.9)

15 things to know about the CIA

  1. The CIA's mission: "Preempt threats and further US national security objectives by collecting intelligence that matters, producing objective all-source analysis, conducting effective covert action as directed by the President, and safeguarding the secrets that help keep our Nation safe."
  2. The CIA is not a law enforcement agency.
  3. CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) was created by the National Security Act of 1947.
  4. The Director of Central Intelligence Agency originally was the President's principal intelligence advisor.
  5. CIA funded elections in Italy to prevent Communist takeover in 1948.
  6. CIA sponsored radio stations that included Radio Free Europe to broadcast behind the Iron Curtain and Radio Liberty into the Soviet Union..
  7. CIA responsible for coups in Iran and Guatemala in 1953-1954.
  8. CIA flew copies of George Orwell's Animal Farm from West Germany into Poland by balloon in 1955.
  9. The CIA had its own air force (U2 spy planes & Air America transport planes).
  10. CIA organized Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961
  11. CIA conducted the anti-Viet Cong Phoenix Program.
  12. CIA secretly funded a number of literary publications (Paris Review, Encounter), cultural organizations (The Congress For Cultural Freedom), and anti-communist works (Doctor Zhivago).
  13. CIA operated Corona Spy Satellites 1959 -1972.
  14. CIA's Project MK-Ultra experimented with hallucinogenic drugs.
  15. CIA illegally spied on American citizens on US soil in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Source: The Central Intelligence Agency: An encyclopedia of covert ops, intelligence gathering, and spies

10 other well-known intelligence agencies

  1. DGSE (French Directorate-General for External Security)
  2. FBI (American domestic intelligence)
  3. GRU (Soviet military inteliigence)
  4. MI5 (British domestic intelligence)
  5. MI6 (British foreign intelligence)
  6. Mossad (Israeli intelligence)
  7. NSA (National Security Agency code breaking)
  8. NKVD (Soviet pre-KGB agency)
  9. OSS (Office of Strategic Services, WWII American intelligence agency)
  10. Stasi (East German intelligence)

Spy Talk

  • asset, individual performing a variety of roles.
  • blown, discovered.
  • brainwashed, psychological technique to change person's loyalties.
  • bugging, electronic eavesdropping.
  • burnt, compromised
  • code, use of symbols and letters to represent other letters and words in secret message.
  • cover name, alias.
  • cover story, false biography.
  • covert, concealed and deceptive activity.
  • defect, change sides.
  • double agent, person working for two organizations, loyal to one, betraying the other.
  • drop, place to leave message.
  • legend, invented name and bio of an agent.
  • mole, hostile spy secretly burrowing into another organization.
  • neighbor, another branch of an intelligence service.
  • overt, legally gained information.
  • resident, head of Soviet spy ring.
  • spook, American name for spy.
  • terminate with extreme prejudice, murder
  • wet job, operation in which blood is shed.

Source: Spycraft Secrets: An Espionage A - Z. by N. West.

10 Major Espionage Events of the Cold War

  1. Venona Project decodes Soviet secrets.
  2. Klaus Fuchs gives atomic secrets to Soviets. 
  3. Julius and Ethel Rosenbergs executed for spying.
  4. Operation Gold. CIA digs Berlin Tunnel.
  5. U2 Spy Plane Incident.
  6. Cambridge Five, British spy ring.
  7. Profumo Scandal in Great Britain.
  8. U2 flights confirm Soviet missiles in Cuba.
  9. John Le Carrê's The Spy Who Came In From the Cold published.
  10. Guillaume Affair in West Germany

Source: Legacy of Ashes: the history of the CIA by T. Weiner

Espionage Figures

  • Rudolf Abel (KGB operative in US)
  • Aldrich Ames (CIA agent, spied for the KGB)
  • Elizabeth Bentley (American,Soviet agent and FBI informer)
  • George Blake (British diplomat, Soviet agent)
  • Guy Burgess (British intelligence, Soviet agent)
  • John Cairncross (British intelligence, Soviet agent)
  • Morris Childs (American, Soviet agent and FBI informant)
  • Klaus Fuchs (German physicist at the Manhattan Project, Soviet agent)
  • Reinhard Gehlen (West German spymaster)
  • Günter Guillaume (West German government official, East German agent)
  • Anatoliy Golitsyn (Soviet defector to US)
  • Igor Gouzenko (Soviet defector to US)
  • Robert Hanson (FBI agent, spied for the KGB)
  • Roger Hollis (British, Director General of MI5)
  • Klaus Fuchs (German, atomic spy for the Soviets)
  • Donald MacLean (British diplomat, Soviet agent)
  • Melita Norwood (British civil servant, Soviet agent)
  • Oleg Penkovsky (Soviet defector to US)
  • Pyotr Popov (Soviet defector to US)
  • Kim Philby (British intelligence, Soviet agent)
  • Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (Americans, Soviet agents)
  • John Walker (US Navy communications specialist, spied for the KGB)
  • Markus Wolf (East German spymaster)

Source: Who's Who in Espionage by Payne & Dobson.

Spycraft

  • beacon, electronic device to monitor location.
  • black documentation, documents used to conceal identity.
  • bra camera, miniature camera concealed in a brassiere.
  • concealment devices, such as a cigarette that hides microfilm.
  • cover story, made to conceal agent's true identity.
  • damage assessment, to assess damage after impact against organization.
  • diplomatic cover, agent traveling as a diplomat.
  • direction-finding equipment.
  • disinformation, false information designed to achieve a result.
  • ferret flight, aircraft testing hostile ground defense systems.
  • front company, commerical cover used to provide plausible employment for agents.
  • ​honey trap, use of sexual relations.
  • journalistic cover, agents posing as journalists.
  • letterbox, method of indirect communication between agent and case officer.
  • matrix theory, methodology analysts use to illustrate their craft. 
  • MICE, mnemonic for the four motivations for traitors: Money, Ideology, Coercion, Ego.
  • microdot, microscopic photograph.
  • mouse trap, property used to lure adversary and detain them.
  • narrative, true or false account of an event.
  • radio transmission.

Source: Spycraft Secrets: An Espionage A - Z. by N. West.

15 Things to know about the KGB

  1. The KGB replaced the NKVD. It was formed in 1954 by the Soviet government and broken up in 1991.
  2. KGB is the Russian abbreviation for the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security).
  3. The KGB was known as "the sword and shield of the Communist Party."
  4. The KGB was a Soviet secret police, foreign intelligence, and border security organization, a combination of the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security and Secret Service in the United States.
  5. Until the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, the KGB was the largest spy and state security organization in the world.
  6. Two KGB agents became leaders of Russia (former Soviet Union): Yury Andropov (1982) and Vladimir Putin (1999).
  7. The KGB often used blackmail, infiltration, and assassination as tools to gain intelligence and promote Soviet policies.
  8. In foreign legal residences, the KGB was divided into 4 divisions: political, economic, military strategic intelligence, and disinformation.
  9. KGB overseas personnel were either agents (provided information) and controllers (relayed information to Moscow and kept track of agents).
  10. The KGB used Russian-born agents who secretly adopted identities as loyal citizens of another country. Often it would be years before the agent was activated for intelligence purposes.
  11. The KGB used the spread of disinformation as a tactic to discredit its enemies.
  12. In the case of war, the KGB developed behind-the-lines sabotage operations.
  13. The KGB suppressed the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 and the"Prague Spring" in Czechoslovakia in 1968.
  14. In 1979, KGB Special Forces assassinated the Afghan President, allowing Moscow's choice to replace him.
  15. Three of the most successful KGB recruits in the United States were Navy communications specialist John Walker (1968), FBI agent Robert Hanson (1979), and CIA officer Aldrich Ames (1985).

Source: Near and distant neighbors: a new history of Soviet intelligence by J. Haslam.

Spy Work

  • case officer, handles a human source.
  • code breakers.
  • COMINT, communications intelligence (part of SIGINT).
  • cooptee, someone who takes a limited, temporary intelligence role.
  • ELINT, electronics intelligence gathering (part of SIGINT).
  • engineer, bomb maker.
  • FISINT, Foreign Instrumentation Signals Intelligence (part of SIGINT), signals detected from weapons testing.
  • fellow traveler, a person, though not a member, who sympathises with a group's aims and policies.
  • forger, responsible for forging documents.
  • GEOINT, geospatial intelligence.
  • handler, agent handling a defector.
  • HUMINT, human intelligence gathering.
  • mole hunter, counterintelligence officers in pursuit of hostile penetration of the organization.
  • OSINT, open source intelligence gathering.
  • SIGINT, signals intelligence gathering.
  • renegade, officers who become hostile to their former agency.
  • reports officer, drafts reports for headquarters.
  • Romeo (or Raven), a male honey trap agent.
  • Swallow, a female KGB honey trap agent.
  • talent spotter, someone who is responsible to discover potential defectors.

Source: Spycraft Secrets: An Espionage A - Z. by N. West.

Additional References

  • Goldman, J. (2016). The Central Intelligence Agency: An encyclopedia of covert ops, intelligence gathering, and spies. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, an imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC.
  • Haslam, J. (2016). Near and distant neighbors: a new history of Soviet intelligence. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
  • Jeffreys-Jones, R. (2015). In spies we trust: the story of Western intelligence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Payne, R., & Dobson, C. (1985). Whos who in espionage. New York: St. Martins Press.
  • Saunders, F. S. (2013). The cultural cold war: the Cia and the world of arts and letters. New York: New Press.
  • Weiner, T. (2008). Legacy of Ashes: the history of the CIA. New York: Anchor Books.
  • West, N. (2016). Spycraft Secrets: An Espionage A - Z. Stroud: The History Press.
  • White, D. (2019). Cold warriors: writers who waged the literary cold war. New York: Custom House/HarperCollins Publishers.
  • Whitney, J. (2016). Finks: how the Cia tricked the worlds best writers. New York: OR Books.