Cia And kgb
There were two main agencies involved in Cold War espionage: the CIA (USA) and the KGB (USSR).
CIA The CIA had started out as the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which would conduct espionage missions for the allies in World War 2. The organization was then dissolved in 1947 and became the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The main purpose of the CIA at the time was dealing with the Cold War. In 1948, it was given an early objective: to conduct operations that went against foreign states or groups, or to support friendly foreign states or groups without giving away that the US government was involved. The CIA was also helped out by the NSA, which was formed in 1952 and meant to gather information by acquiring and decoding radio traffic. The CIA was also assisted by the FBI, who monitored and dealt with threats on American soil. In 1961, the CIA supported the Bay of Pigs (aka the Invasion of Cuba) by providing weapons and training to 1500 Cuban exiles. The goal was to liberate Cuba from the control of Fidel Castro. The invasion failed. The CIA also had pilots fly U-2 planes over Soviet Cuba to gather information. It was this tactic that helped the CIA discover that the Soviets were building a missile base in Cuba, which would eventually trigger the Cuban Missile Crisis.
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KGBIn Russia, the intelligence gathering agency was known as the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB), which meant Committee for State Security. The KGB monitored both domestic intelligence and threats as well as other nations' plans. The Soviets already had a better grasp of espionage considering that Russia has had spy organizations that date back to the 1800s. The Soviets had actually begun using informers and agents in the west in the 1930s, before World War 2 had begun. In fact, the Soviets' nuclear program was helped along because they had received a lot of information and multiple blueprints from spies who had infiltrated the Manhattan project. During the time of Joseph Stalin, the KGB had taken on many assassination missions and was even considered to be the most ruthless spy agency at the time for their cold approach to the espionage game. It has even been confirmed that one of the assassinations that they were responsible was that of Leon Trotsky, the co-founder of the Soviet state.
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