Introduction In 2013 the television channel FX aired a new series titled The Americans. The premise of the series is that the KGB developed and infiltrated a net- work of “illegal” Soviet citizens into the United States.1 The series focused on two main characters who appear to be part of a normal American family. They own a house in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., own their own travel agency, and suffer the standard family issues associated with American families during the 1980s. Yet, all is not as it appears, as the two “Americans” are actually highly trained and developed KGB “illegal” operatives who are intent on collecting intelligence and getting American citizens to provide the latest information on defense programs such as the strategic defense initiative, stealth aircraft, military operations in Latin America, and U.S. policy in Afghanistan. This popular television program, which is high drama, is not in fact just a great tale from Hollywood but rather is based on true events caused by the KGB and its development of KGB officers through its Directorate “S” program. For the duration of the Cold War and even in the aftermath, spies and tales of espionage have captivated the imagination. The fact that the West- ern press occasionally found a “true” story and published its exploits only further fueled the fascination of the clandestine exploits of the spies on both sides of the Cold War. This public fascination with the “war in the shadows” did not wither as did the Cold War itself. In fact, as the archives of the former Soviet Union opened and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) declassified volumes of documents from its Cold War operations, the public finally got a look at the people, operations, and structure of some of the intelligence operations associated with the Cold War. The objective of this book is to provide a chronological narrative of how the governments of the Soviet Union and United States strove to maintain a strategic advantage through the use of intelligence operations, using a wide variety of means. In the quest for more and better national
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