Soviet Espionage and Cuban Missile Crisis

Critique of US Counterintelligence Efforts in the Cold War

Synopsis of the Cuban , Soviet and US Intelligence Services

Lessons Learned from the Cuban Missile Crisis

John Q . Student

Wright State University

Critique of US Counterintelligence Efforts in the Cold War

Although many Americans hold a negative opinion about the United States counterintelligence efforts , particularly in regard to the CIA and FBI it is not clear that the facts will support this opinion . Much of the criticism of the CIA and FBI stems from abuses where these agencies engaged in illegal

activities against citizens of the United States and other countries , such as wiretaps , illegal surveillance , and illegal searches . These excesses are not , of themselves , sufficient to offset the successes of counterintelligence agencies

During the Cold War , fear of nuclear war by both superpowers kept them from engaging in open , direct confrontations with each other . Instead the two countries engaged in an unknown number of covert operations throughout the third world . The United States and the Soviet Union figuratively , and sometimes literally , divided many countries , between themselves , using the countries and their citizens as pawns in the greater world chess game the superpowers played . Within this Cold War framework , thousands of operations , both covert and open , legal and illegal were staged

It is clear that there have been failures in the United States intelligence community : the 1960 shooting down of Gary Power 's U-2 plane , the Bay of Pigs in 1961 , and the capture of the surveillance ship the Pueblo in 1968 . It is these failures that receive most of the media coverage , Congressional attention and historical investigation . As a result , many Americans know a great deal about counterintelligence failures

It is also clear , however , that there have been successes . These are not so well documented by the media and historians . It was the counterintelligence efforts that discovered the Soviet missiles being built in Cuba in 1961 . It was the counterintelligence agencies that helped overthrow the Marxist Allende in Chile . It was the counterintelligence agencies that flew thousands of U-2 and Sr-71 spy planes that provided a great deal of information

The difficulty is in determining with certainty whether the overall net value of counterintelligence efforts tips in favor of or against United States ' counterintelligence agencies . This is for a variety of reasons

By their very nature , many of these operations were top secret and until recently , were largely unknown to the general public

In hindsight and today 's sensibilities , what was then viewed as a success , may now viewed as a failure . An example is the overthrow of the Iranian premier Mohammed Mossodegh in 1953 which was supported by both American and British intelligence agencies . At the time , it was viewed as a success . Given subsequent events such as the 1979 overthrow of the Shah and the holding of American hostages , this evaluation may be called into question

Even if all information about all the operations were known , and it is slowly being declassified , it is difficult to calculate the...