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The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)'s security against Soviet espionage was devastating. Open sources reveal more than 60 spies unmasked, named, and accused of directly stealing NATO secrets on behalf of Soviet intelligence services, the State Committee for Security (KGB) and Main Intelligence Directorate, while NATO's own secret report estimated 300 spies. These unmaskings attested to the efficacy of Western counterintelligence, but nevertheless evidenced deep and sustained infiltration by Soviet agents. This study, unfortunately, may only be considered preliminary because it is the first one to examine the totality of espionage within NATO during the Soviet years, even though the complete historical record remains inaccessible. Second, most of the information has been gleaned from journalistic sources. Third, the real damage of stolen classified materials remains elusive owing to laws that prevent disclosure. Absent a practical way to verify compromises, NATO officials had little recourse but to assume that Moscow possessed all classified information exposed to spies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Cold War, France remained a soft touch for Soviet intelligence. Among the large communist population—war veterans and about 25% of the postwar electorate—Soviets found fertile ground for recruiting agents and collaborators who would betray their country, although it is fair to say most philosophical and political communists did not engage in espionage. Spy rings led by the State Committee for Security (KGB) and Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) controllers in the Russian embassy's rezidence overwhelmed French security precautions. In addition, the Soviet espionage apparatus maintained an extensive infrastructure in the Moscow Center that supported quantitative intelligence collected in France on a massive scale. The addition of agents from satellite countries stretched French counterintelligence beyond its limits. All this is not to say that French security was completely ineffective. Security agencies unmasked spies and arrested hundreds for espionage; so too, hundreds of Soviets with diplomatic immunity were expelled. French security also benefited from consequential defections of Soviet agents and the crowning but fortuitous achievement of a mole inside the KGB itself. But poor French security exacerbated deteriorating relations with the United States and compromised North Atlantic Treaty Organization secrets. Regardless of the détente between East and West, Soviet espionage continued unabated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Having made extensive use of FBI records, including its voluminous SIS history, congressional archives, and other primary sources, Tromblay has done a yeoman's job of identifying the FBI's activities in the world arena, from the SIS in Latin America to today's transnational terrorism and a multitude of subjects in between too numerous to mention. Darren E. Tromblay is a prolific writer on contemporary intelligence and national security matters. Abolished in 1947, SIS nevertheless influenced the Central Intelligence Agency's development and institutionalized an enduring system of legal attachés or "legats" that still represent the FBI in American embassies and consulates around the world. [Extracted from the article]

By the outbreak of World War II, French intelligence services had accumulated encyclopedic knowledge of Germany's military establishment. France, for example, had an embedded mole in secret German communication centers who supplied high-value intelligence for more than a decade and gave vital Enigma encryption secrets to the Allies, and it had another formidable agent who unmasked German spies and "turned" officers in Abwehr, Germany's principal spy agency. German intelligence boasted of penetrating the Deuxieme Bureau, France's most important intelligence service, and secret sessions of the Senate. In truth, neither France nor Germany could hardly conceal secrets from one another. France's success in intelligence, however, has been obfuscated by the ignominious Fall of France in a few short weeks as well as France's failure to anticipate the audacious German attack through the Ardennes. Arguably less a shortcoming of intelligence, this failure was more a question of France's leadership and its colossal inaction against the German Western Offensive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the end of 1999, Colonel Vladimir Putin, ex-KGB intelligence officer, installed himself as president and has ruled the Russian Federation for more than twenty years as an intelligence dictatorship, in which he has accumulated billions of rubles in personal wealth. While little of the above is hardly new in historical studies, Woolsey and Pacepa's portrayal of Russia as the first intelligence dictatorship will intrigue readers. And perhaps Russia is succeeding, according to Woolsey and Pacepa, because the new generation seems so gullible. [Extracted from the article]

After the Bolsheviks consolidated their newly won power, they looked toward the Western democracies to achieve additional victories. Under cover of diplomatic recognition, trade agreements, and local communist parties, Soviets sent numerous clandestine agents abroad to pursue national security objectives, including theft of military and industrial secrets on a large scale. France, Britain, and the United States were the main targets in which, organizationally, Soviet intelligence used a consistent pattern. As an existential threat, France was the first priority until displaced by the fear of German rearmament. France represented a rich resource for advanced military and industrial technology that the Soviets needed to transform Russia's infrastructure. In 1935, France and Russia signed a mutual defense pact that effectively ended Soviet espionage in France. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the history of Soviet espionage in the U.S. from 1924 to 1933. Topics explored include the establishment of the Amtorg Trading Corporation in New York in 1924 which served as the center of Soviet intelligence operations, the diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union in the U.S. in 1933 following the election of then U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the U.S. government investigation of communist activities led by then Representative Hamilton Fish of New York.

Lydia Stahl was a spy for the Soviet Union's military intelligence service known as the GRU. A polyglot who spoke at least five languages, Stahl was active in Helsinki, New York, and Paris from the early l920s until December 1933. At this time, French security agents of the legendary Deuxieme Bureau arrested her in Paris as part of a large spy network that included a married American couple. Despite her denials the French Court of Corrections sentenced Stahl to five years in prison, subsequently reduced to four on appeal, and then, after serving her sentence she disappeared from the historical record. On the eve of World War II her disappearance coincided with Stalin's wholesale purge of Soviet institutions and organizations, including officers of the Red Army and its GRU. This article reconstructs Stahl's life mainly based on extensive files of the FBI that reveal details of her espionage activities in New York and Paris. Additionally, the article corrects many errors and myths that unfortunately have been taken at face value and perpetuated in espionage literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]