Intelligence During The Cold War

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During the Cold War era, the intelligence communities of nations throughout the world were competing to gain the upper hand on what their adversaries were up to. Information about military operations, ability to complete nuclear weaponry and overall knowledge of national strategy were among the top of the list of importance. The use of human intelligence (HUMINT), imagery intelligence (IMINT), open source intelligence (OSINT) and other collection methods were used to monitor one another. A major player in the Cold War, among others, was the former Soviet Union, which is what the world knows today as Russia. Like many nations, the Russian Intelligence Community is made up of multiple agencies which operate in different capacities. Though …show more content…
The collapse of the Soviet Union forced Russia to reorganize and change the way they operated their intelligence community. This reorganization and restructuring of the intelligence community by the Russians is what the current intelligence climate sees today.
Prior to the Cold War ending, the primary intelligence agency for the Soviet Union was known as the KGB, which was responsible for both domestic and foreign political intelligence (Soldatov & Borogan, 2011, pg. 83). Unlike the United States, which use an agency such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or the National Security Agency (NSA) to conduct foreign operations and the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) to conduct domestic operations, the KGB
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During the Cold War the United States directed the majority of its resources to the former Soviet Union. In fact, 85 percent of the CIA budget was allocated to the Soviets during the height of the Cold War, however by 1991 65 percent of those resources were re-directed to looking for other problems such as environmental threats, failed states, and other issues (Kingsbury, 2011). With such a dramatic shift in operational requirements, the CIA needed to find another objective to justify their existence. Understanding the potential for a dramatic reduction in funding the Director of the CIA made a plea to save funding for the CIA during a speech in Dallas Texas. In 1993, CIA Director Robert Gates, expressed his concern for a reduction of funding of the CIA, claiming that while the threat from Russia may no longer be a current issue, there were nations such as Vietnam, Korea and Iraq which posed a threat to the United States (Mann, 1993). However, this claim did not garner support from members of Congress. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan expressed the CIA to be, "an anachronism of the Cold War" and that the very existence of the CIA was no longer necessary (Mann, 1993). This contrast of opinions spoke to the uncertainty of the CIA’s future. Ironically, as the future of the CIA remained unclear, the Russian Intelligence Community was attempting to regroup from the set back of losing

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