Cold War Espionage: The Secret War Between The CIA And KGB | Secrets Of War | War Stories

this channel is part of the history hit Network [Music] by 1945 the world was tired of War the Axis powers had been defeated and to a large extent destroyed but as the victors divided the spoils new conflicts emerged among former allies at the heart of these disagreements were the fundamental differences between the Soviet Union and the United States one was Communist the other capitalist in the Eastern system the interests of the state were preeminent the Western system emphasized the rights of the individual neither side trusted the other yet neither side wanted a final confrontation an incubus sort of remained over Europe for many years after World War II which was the belief by many military men that one day the Russians would suddenly make a move and head for the English Channel this state of Perpetual tension was called the Cold War now in the second half of the 20th century the United States and the Soviet Union set their intelligence services against each other in a secret and deadly game of global one-upsmanship how many weapons did the other side have what did they plan to do with them not knowing bread fear and anxiety not knowing drove each to build more and bigger weapons of mass destruction racing to be ready for the day when the other would show its hand intelligence became the world's most precious commodity intelligence gathering the world's most dangerous profession for the United States that job fell to the men and women of the Central Intelligence Agency at the outset of World War II the Soviet Union was the largest country on Earth covering one-seventh of the planet's surface by 1946 having absorbed territories previously held by Germany and Japan the Communist Nation now controlled one-sixth of the planet Western leaders had good reason to believe that the Soviets wanted more only months after the Yalta agreement Premier Joseph Stalin had publicly declared that the world was too small to peacefully contain both communism and capitalism war between the systems the Russian dictator said was inevitable the United States brought World War II to an abrupt end with the atomic bomb Western strategists now believe today at least held that trump card against Soviet aggression then one week after Stalin's ominous prediction a ring of Russian spies was caught stealing Atomic secrets in Canada the idea that the Russians might be close to building the bombs and a shutter throughout the Free World on February 26 1946 George Cannon an American Diplomat in Moscow in long-time Soviet Observer sent a secret yet lengthy message to his superiors in the U.S state Department foreign Telegram it was described in considerable detail the Russian system where they came from how they react how they wanted to do business and Agility to people the 8 000 word message described America's former allies is a genuine and highly aggressive threat to the West the Soviet economic system was internally weak the message went on and therefore it was essential for their survival that they'd be an aggressor the soviet-style Communist system needed to acquire and exploit satellite countries in order to survive they could not and would not stop short of total world domination Canon's message caused a sensation in Washington President Harry Truman his cabinet and military leaders all read the telegram Truman was already concerned with Soviet expansionism and inclined to agree with Canon's assessment history hit is a streaming platform that is just for history fans with fantastic documentaries covering fascinating figures and moments in history from all over the world from the Battle of Trafalgar and the revolutionary era right through to the second world war if you are looking for your next military history fix then this is the service for you we're committed to Bringing history fans award-winning documentaries and podcasts that you cannot find anywhere else sign up now for a free trial and War Stories fans get 50 off their first three months just be sure to use the code War Stories at checkout if the Western way of life was to survive the Soviets would have to be contained the United States the president knew was the only country in the world strong enough to stand up to Russia but in order to do this they would need to know how strong the Soviets were and be able to predict their next move in 1945 the war over president Harry Truman had disbanded the United States foreign intelligence service the office of strategic services or OSS foreign [Music] Truman resurrected the idea of a civilian intelligence gathering agency on July 25th 1947 he signed the National Security Act creating the Central Intelligence Agency the new agency was staffed almost entirely by Veterans of the OSS the first four directors would be military men George Cannon's message it called for containment of Soviet aggression but leadership that the new intelligence agency disagreed with that policy the best defense they maintained was a strong offense it was time to bring back some of the dirty tricks the OSS had developed in World War II those are two worlds of intelligence one was intelligence gathering traditional spies people who meet you on park benches and and try to steal documents that was one side the other side was covert action which was much more aggressive overthrowing a government staging a coup d'etat or it would be psychological warfare sending out disinformation covert action is riskier there's a higher return [Music] once the cold war starts both sides realize that there's going to be a lot of Back Alley action it's going to be things happening that are not going to be on the front page of Pravda or the New York Times on June 18 1948 with the endorsement of President Truman a secret and autonomous branch of the CIA was born it was called the OPC [Music] office of policy coordination was wonderfully benign name to throw people off the idea that really it was the department of dirty tricks they were the covert operators they were the hard ball types who wanted to jump Behind Enemy Lines and get behind the Iron Curtain the ultimate mission of the CIA and the OPC was to subvert the Russian hold on Eastern Europe but in 1948 there were more immediate concerns the Communist Party had built a strong presence in Italy and the new agency feared the leftists might win the free elections scheduled for that spring it was perfectly reasonable for the United States to fear that Stalin might have a master plan in which he was going to use the Communist Party in Italy and the Communist Party in France to take over those two countries he wasn't but the United States had no means of knowing it the Italian Communists were being financed from Moscow armed with cash the CIA went to Italy determined to outspend the Russians politicians newspaper Publishers and election officials were bribed the cia-backed Christian democrats won the election it was a big win for the west and soon led to more interventions in Europe the CIA soon had a clandestine station in every country in the world we soon had all kinds of foreign agents operating we set up various organizations front groups to work with various peoples indigenous outcasts Exiles providing them with money inspiration leadership support [Music] there were a few limits on the OPC but there was one basic restraint any and all operations were to be planned and conducted so that the responsibility for these actions could not be directly traced to the United States government it was imperative for The credibility of U.S foreign policy that the president or the state department be able to plausibly deny any knowledge of such actions plausible deniability is the underlying definition of a covert action covert really means plausibly deniable by the president plausible denial is probably better known as spinning their success in swaying the Italian elections left the CIA feeling optimistic if a country could be prevented from turning communist maybe an existing communist system could be overthrown [Music] in the spring of 1949 the United States chose Albania for the cia's first attempt at subversion behind the Iron Curtain LPC got greedy and they thought that they could overthrow communism in Eastern Europe so they hoped to Stage a counter-revolution essentially well of course the Communists were good at counter subversion they had very strong State security and they rolled it all up it was a fiasco pretty much everybody we dropped Behind Enemy Lines in Albania was captured and put on a show trial and shot [Music] there was good reason for the efficiency of Albanian State security and rounding up the cia-backed penetrators they had been tipped ahead of time in each case the informant was a senior British intelligence official with close ties to the CIA his name was Kim philby he'd been spying for the Soviets since the 1930s the Albanian operation had been a cruel yet valuable lesson for the CIA the Soviets were not to be underestimated but neither was the OPC and they were just getting started by 1950 the CIA and its new operations armed the OPC realized they were at a distinct disadvantage when it came to clandestine Warfare for one thing the Russians had been added longer they'd been spying on the world and each other since the tsars had been in power the KGB had the backing of a totalitarian state and was extremely powerful and was well known to the people I mean had a secret police arm KGB guy can grab you in the street and you might not be heard from for a long time if ever CIA has no law enforcement powers never has never will the KGB win in my opinion because they developed more good spies operating in the United States than the United States developed good spies operating behind the Iron Curtain it was easier to keep secrets in a closed society and it was much more difficult to spy in a country when access to that country was controlled and everyone in it was being watched the Communists helped get themselves in power by subversion so they were good at it they knew how to do uh sting operations and to spy and to run covert operations and the KGB was really better than we were at least at the outset and they were very good at sucking Us in making us think that we were having a success drawing Us in and then slamming the door on our hands grown zero in the Cold War was the occupied city of Berlin the line that divided the russian-held sector from that of England France and the United States marked the figurative border between east and west between the Free World and the authoritarian world there were literally thousands of Soviet and East German State security agents in Berlin enough to watch every man woman and child who lived there the CIA operatives had a nickname for the former German Capital they called it kidnap town it was Wild and Woolly it was the Wild West the Soviets would try to kidnap our agents and this guy would be walking down the street and a car would come along and just pull them into the car and he would disappear there was an Unwritten agreement that they didn't kidnap Americans they mostly take our clients Eastern Europeans who are working for us or Germans who are working for us there were other rules of procedure in this deadly game of cat and mouse of Tit for Tat arrest one of their spies and they took one of yours captured spies were not prosecuted but instead exchanged these exchanges usually took place on a bridge like the atlanike which spanned the spray River it marked the border between East and West Berlin assassination was not an option because retaliation was sure to come in kind you're much better off knowing who the top agent is than to shoot him and get rid of him who will replace them you don't know who the replacement is you've identified that agent you're that much ahead of the game then you try to see if you can double that agent back you begin to try to feed him information or open contact with them in other words this is the game sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't actually we had such a tacity agreement not to kill each other you know not to murder each other we met the CIA people all the time I myself did it a lot of time but whenever the purpose to evolve to find out what sort of a man he is whether he is recruitable or non-recruitable and so on but it's well it's a normal procedure for spying in September 1949 CIA and U.S Air Force scientists detected the presence of a radioactive Cloud over the North Pacific which indicated that the Russians had detonated an atomic device somewhere on the mainland of Asia now the Russians too had the Ultimate Weapon of Terror would they use it and if they did how and where would they use it at the annual May Day parade in Moscow in 1948 the Soviets had unveiled a new bomber the tu-4 the fact that they developed the plane so quickly gave rise to the theory that the Russians were far more advanced in their bomber production than previously thought and might actually have more bombers than the United States now that the Russians had displayed the bomb for all the world to see that debate took on new urgency was there a Gap did the Russians have more bombers and atomic bombs than the Americans while the CIA searched for answers the United States stepped up the pace in the arms race in 1953 Dwight Eisenhower came to the American presidency with a pledge to end the Korean War he brought with him a new enthusiasm and respect for clandestine Warfare once he'd negotiated a truce in America's last remaining Hot War he set out to fight the cold one it's only with the uh the election of Dwight D Eisenhower that covert action becomes simply the main activity of the CIA now Truman had been won over it bit by bit but he would go so far and no further Eisenhower was fascinated by covert action he was impressed by what OSS had done for him to help him in Europe during the war and he thought this was a technique that could be more widely applied and he distrusted the use of the army he didn't want to get into that being a general himself so he turned the CIA into a private presidential Army while Harry Truman had authorized covert action against the Soviet Bloc Korea and Southeast Asia Eisenhower saw opportunities for covert action wherever American interests were at stake and the former Supreme Allied Commander especially appreciated the concept of plausible deniability [Music] Eisenhower appointed Alan Dulles xoss by Master is the new director of Central Intelligence the two men endorsed covert action is by far the lesser of Two Eagles neither man had any desire to fight another hot War but both were looking to score a win against the Soviets in the cold one since the 1930s much of the Western World depended on Iran as their oil supplier the Shahs had an agreement with a British oil company which paid them royalties then in 1951 a nationalist named Mohammed mossede came to power undercutting the weak Shah Moss a day nationalized the British oil Holdings turned a cold shoulder to the Shah's Western allies and began to court favor with Russia the United States at risk of losing influence in the Middle East turned to the CIA Kermit Roosevelt grandson to Teddy was the cia's best Middle Eastern operative he had himself smuggled into the palace in Tehran where he met secretly with Reza palavi the young Shah Roosevelt tried to convince this Shah to denounce Moss a day before the Iranian National Assembly pallavi agreed that shortly afterward rioting broke out in the streets and the Shah fled to Rome [Music] Roosevelt said the Shah is a wimp but he still had a plan left he paid ten thousand dollars to some Street Tufts and circus muscle men to Stage a riot favoring the Shah to everyone's surprise the riot escalated and mosa day was forced to relinquish his power the Shah returned to rule as a strong Ally of the western influences that had given him back his throne the cia's success in Iran brought Elation to Washington restoring the Shah through covert means had been relatively easy the entire operation had cost less than two hundred thousand dollars and the cia's involvement in the coup had stayed a secret [Music] this gave the CIA the feeling that they could do anything that if you could if you could get rid of the Communists in in Iran why couldn't you do it elsewhere so they did the next year in Guatemala in 1954 the Central American country of Guatemala seemed on track to become the first country in the Western Hemisphere to turn communists that country is apparently left as president jacobo arbenz had seized the Holdings there of the United troop company and American Enterprise flushed for the success of Iran the CIA organized a Revolt in Guatemala they raised a guerrilla Army deployed a secret Air Force and even chose a leader to replace our bands the cia's man Colonel Castillo armas was virtually unknown in the general population and his army was outnumbered but propaganda broadcasts from Secret CIA radio stations portrayed the rebel leader as the People's Choice for president in command of an overwhelming Force the rebels attacked Guatemala City on June 18th under CIA air support that support had been approved personally by President Eisenhower it was over in a matter of days our bends was driven from power and the cia-backed armas was installed as president and that made them very heady with success the feeling was they were kind of world shakers and World movers and they could probably uh overthrow any government they really put their mind to but the CIA would soon find that success in the Cold War was all too often and illusion illusion [Music] in June of 1950 Civil War split Korea in two the Russians supported North Korea United States and her NATO allies entered the war in defense of the South during the course of this conflict the United States became alarmed as captured American servicemen were displayed in show trials they were shocked further when these servicemen denounced their own country for crimes and aggression against the Korean people how can I go back and face my family in a civilized world how can I tell them these things that I I'm a criminal in the eyes of humanity they are my flesh and blood the CIA suspected the Communists were using drugs to brainwash prisoners in an effort to find out what drugs the enemy was using and develop some means of conquering their effects the CIA began a series of top secret projects that would ultimately be known as MK Ultra these programs tested various drugs on human guinea pigs Army doctors had observed that certain anesthetics made soldiers speak freely while unconscious the CIA experimented with various truth serums for use in debriefing captured agents and they were particularly interested in developing a means of controlling or changing human thought patterns and behavior the ultimate aim of these tests was to create nothing less than a human robot in some cases the persons being tested were volunteers in others they were completely uninformed as to what was happening to them at one point in 1953 seven volunteers were kept on lysergic acid diethylamide better known as LSD for 77 days [Music] following another LSD experiment that November Frank Olson an army scientist who had volunteered to be a guinea pig became severely depressed and committed suicide by hurling himself through a 10-story hotel window sub project 142 of MK Ultra was a series of experiments with animals to see if they could be used as Delivery Systems for microphones cameras and bombs in one case a cat was surgically implanted with a listening device batteries and all in his tail was an antenna for transmitting back to his handlers the CAA scientists took their eavesdropping cap to a park for a test run but before they even got started the animal was run over by a taxi [Music] despite occasional setbacks like the death of Frank Olson the MK Ultra experiments continued until 1975. in that year a senate investigation into CIA activities brought the excesses of MK Ultra into the open causing much embarrassment for the agency the CIA was feeling confident with its successes in Iran and Guatemala but the Americans still hadn't been able to penetrate the Soviet Bloc or hete in 1953 the CIA partnered with British intelligence for a Brazen foray into and underneath the Soviet sector of Berlin the plan was to Tunnel into East Berlin to reach a bank of underground phone cables from there they could tap into secret Communications between Soviet and East German military headquarters the Berlin tunnel operation ran for 11 months not including the year it took for the U.S Army Corps of Engineers to dig it it ran 15 feet below the surface for 300 yards and had six feet of Headroom many of the details surrounding the tunnel remain classified to this day what is known remains a topic of controversy questions still abound as to the genuineness of the intelligence extracted from these phone taps because the KGB apparently knew from the beginning that the West was digging the tunnel one of the tunnel planners a British MI6 operative named George Blake was in fact a KGB spy it was not until 1961 when Blake was betrayed by a Defector and arrested that the CIA learned the truth the KGB had known about the tunnel all along before the first shovel full of dirt was turned why did the KGB wait a full year before alerting the Soviet military that their phones were being tapped in the Years following Blake's arrest interviews with Soviet defectors revealed that the KGB in order to protect Blake from Discovery deliberately failed to inform the Soviet military of the tunnel's existence and the fact that the CIA was listening to their phone conversations George Blake's safety was that important to them foreign at the heart of British intelligence at the time was regarded by them as Priceless and all I can say is that it took a very strong KGB influence to be willing to uh forget the Soviet military so I imagine that most of that stuff is valid today just as it was valid then the CIA had tried with uncertain success to penetrate Soviet security from 15 feet below their next attempt to spy on the Russians would take them more than a mile into the sky [Music] foreign began the CIA had been unable to penetrate the Soviet Bloc far enough to discover just how immediate the Soviet threat was then in 1954 President Eisenhower approved a top secret plan to develop an airplane capable of flying across the Soviet Union North to South without refueling the plane designated U2 would eventually fly at 70 to 80 000 feet higher than Soviet missiles could then reach it was outfitted with a high resolution camera designed by the Polaroid Corporation in order to maintain utmost secrecy responsibility for developing and operating the U2 is given not to the Air Force but to the CIA Eisenhower did not trust the military to be secure and it's hard to imagine but he's the guy who picked CIA to be in charge of the U2 the SR-71 and the corona satellite um it's the kind of thing that the military could have done I think and it probably should have done um but Eisenhower wanted security and he thought the only way to do it was to let CIA run the thing the CIA estimated they could safely fly the U2 over Russia for two years before the Russians would be able to detect the plane and shoot it down but it's now clear that the Soviets tracked the first flight and everyone after that Khrushchev knew it was overflying Russia at 80 000 feet we announced that the height that that plane could fly was 65 000 feet it was flying 80 000 feet because khrushchev's most powerful missile would only go to 65 000 feet so here was this plane flying overhead his missiles unable to reach it and he was Furious fit to be tied the U-2 flights gave the CIA the comprehensive look inside the Soviet Union they'd wanted for 10 years in approximately two dozen flights over a two-year period the U2 pinpointed Soviet air bases allowing the U.S Air Force not only to count bombers and missiles but to specifically Target these sites but the Americans did not hold their advantage for long in 1957 the Russians stunned the West with two demonstrations of technological strength in August they successfully fired their first long-range InterContinental missile and two months later launched Sputnik the first satellite into space it was immediately apparent to the CIA that a country capable of launching a rocket into space was more than capable of shooting down the U2 the flights were halted temporarily the U2 flew only sporadically over the next three years then on May Day 1960 the Russians finally shot one down the Americans thinking the pilot Francis Gary Powers had been killed called the flight a weather plane that went astray but the Soviets had the CIA pilot in hand and displayed him to the world in his show trial the CIA had been caught red-handed an embarrassed American president was forced to take responsibility for this by flight and the Russians scored a major propaganda coup Powers ill-fated Mission brought a halt to the U2 flights over Soviet airspace plausible deniability had sounded good in theory but when the chips were down it hadn't worked the idea was to keep Eisenhower from having to admit that he had approved the flight well eventually Eisenhower himself made the decision that he was going to admit that he didn't be honest with the world and with the American people plausible deniability if it didn't die with the U2 you might as well say it died in review too he simply thought that the U2 was impregnable that the Soviets weren't capable of bright enough to knock it down this was one of the problems we did not think through in some of our covert actions what happens if the things go sour [Music] less than six months after the last U2 flight over the Soviet Union the CIA was flying again this time even higher Corona the world's first spy satellite was successfully launched into space on August 18 1960 after more than a dozen failures since the launch of a rocket ship was difficult to keep secret to the United States publicized the launchings but concealed the Rocket's real mission to the world Corona was a weather satellite known as Discoverer but its real mission was photographing the Russians from space and dropping the film back to Earth in a protective capsule on that first successful flight Corona photographed one and a half million miles of Soviet airspace more than all the U-2 flights combined by the time this particular photographic satellite had finished its work over a period of two or three years the United States had a very good idea of how strong the Russians were militarily in fact the information pulled together over time was sufficiently accurate that when assault one negotiations were going on the Russians finally said we won't tell you all the things that we have we'll use your figures in the 1960 presidential campaign candidate John F Kennedy made political Capital by criticizing the Eisenhower Administration for falling behind Russia in the production of missiles and Warheads this assault put his opponent Richard Nixon in a difficult position as Eisenhower's vice president Nixon was privy to CIA reports which proved there was no missile Gap in fact Russia was having difficulties with her InterContinental missile system but this information was top secret and Nixon couldn't use it to rebut Kennedy's attacks [Music] another Kennedy campaign promise called for assisting the Cuban Patriots who wanted to overthrow Cuban Premier Fidel Castro in a vowed communist with strong Soviet ties here again Nixon was unable to divulge another top secret that the Republican incumbents were already planning a cia-backed invasion of Cuba by a force of exiles Kennedy won the election but both of these issues would soon come back to haunting the CIA began training a lot of Cuban Exiles in Central America the theory that they would go back to Cuba and overthrow Castro and Kennedy inherited this Expedition it's not something he would have initiated himself but he was in the sense trapped by it [Music] on April 16 1961 less than three months after Kennedy took office a brigade of cia-backed Cuban Exiles prepared to invade Cuba The Plan called for a military-style landing in the Bay of Pigs but when preliminary bombings raised an outcry in the United Nations U.S ambassador adlay Stevenson demanded the attack be canceled that hesitation would prove fatal adley Stevenson just really wrecked it if I say you know I'm here at the United Nations giving out this information on my word and you're doing something else makes me look like a liar we're going to have to change things so you don't fly that second flight of airplanes so President Kennedy stood down our second flight of airplanes that wasn't time to call off The Landings but Kennedy canceled the air support by this time Castro's Army was ready and waiting although President Kennedy publicly took blame for the Bay of Pigs Fiasco privately he blamed the CIA both director of Central Intelligence Alan Dulles and his covert Chief Richard Bissell The Man Behind the U2 and Corona successes were forced to resign they have pigs was a horrible setback they lost their director they lost their head of dirty tricks the president United States vowed to quietly vad to break the CIA into a thousand pieces they lost their sort of prime position as the president's action arm it was the end of sort of high Opera covert action but it was not the end of covert action by any means foreign as bad as the humiliation of the Cuban Invasion had been for the new president the failure of the Bay of Pigs only served to intensify ongoing American efforts to depose Fidel Castro now Kennedy wanted him as badly as the CIA did [Music] Premier Fidel Castro had come to power in 1959 and immediately made an enemy of the United States by first seizing American property and then dispatching teams of guerrillas to invade other Latin American countries he'd been in power less than a year when the CIA began considering plans to eliminate him since the CIA did not wish to be directly involved in an assassination plot most of these attempts involved third parties some potential operatives were recruited from South Florida's large population of anti-castro Cuban exiles but the Exiles were infiltrated by members of Castro's secret police who'd been trained by Intelligence Officers from the Soviet Bloc plots against Castro were compromised before they left the United States Mongoose the CIA code name for the government-wide operation to overthrow Castro came under the personal direction of Attorney General Robert F Kennedy Richard Helms the cia's new deputy director for plans found himself under intense pressure from the White House both President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy were obviously very upset by the Bay of Vegas failure and I have many doubt that they decided that they were going to do everything they possibly could to get even with Castro Bobby Kennedy pushed very hard that was made out of it just as hard as he could but there were limits to how fast one can do this kind of thing some of the more imaginative plans to kill Castro bordered on the ludicrous they tried to put poisons on a cigar to give Castro so he would smoke a cigar that would kill him they'd wanted to plant an exploding seashell off the coast of Cuba in the hopes that Castro was a Skin Diver would pick it up why they thought Castro would pick up that particular shell was never clear another plan involved sprinkling thallium salts into Castro's shoes which were expected to make his beard fall out and Destroy his charisma still another plan had the CIA enlisting the help of the American Mafia and putting a hit on Castro The Dons were more than happy to accept the contract Castro's revolution had brought a halt to their gambling operations in Havana and driven them out of Cuba but getting to Castro would prove difficult at least one expedition of mafia-backed Cuban expatriates disappeared soon after landing in Cuba as each plan failed nor was discounted as impractical the CIA and the Kennedy Brothers became more determined to get rid of the Cuban dictator the most ominous effect of the Bay of Pigs episode was that it made the Russians bold Premier Nikita Khrushchev decided Kennedy was weak and stepped up the pressure by sending more arms to Cuba then in another active Soviet belligerence the Berlin Wall went up seemingly overnight the reports came in they're building a wall right in the middle of the city why are they doing this well we didn't understand Lenin's famous saying people must not be allowed to vote with their feet you cannot leave communism you can't walk out because that threatens the whole system so the Berlin Wall was to keep people in not to keep us out in 1960 a disgruntled Soviet Military Intelligence officer Oleg pankowsky began to pass secret documents and photographs to the CIA this material included descriptions of Soviet missile emplacements [Music] two years later in October 1962 a CIA spy and Cuba reported something strange going on in the Cuban Countryside his report prompted a U-2 flyover of the island photographs from this and subsequent flights revealed what the CIA believed were missile sites under construction CIA analysts checked the photographs against the manual of the Russian ss4 medium-range missiles pankovsky had given them in the manual was a diagram which showed exactly what a completed missile firing position should look like by comparing the diagram with the U2 photographs the CIA was able to determine that it would be several days before the missiles could be ready for firing this information gave President Kennedy the time he needed to decide his strategy and to confront and face down Khrushchev manual may have been the most critical piece of intelligence in the Cold War because it prevented what could have been a catastrophic overreaction by the United States the cia's U2 spy flights coupled with the information provided by pankovsky gave President Kennedy the intelligence he needed to confront the Soviets in the Western Hemisphere and to force their hand the Soviets dismantled their missile sites and the crisis was over for the moment the Missile Crisis had passed but operation Mongoose the plan for the removal one way or another of Premier Fidel Castro remained the cia's top priority the agency at the urging of Robert Kennedy continued to shop for Assassins they believed they'd found one in Rolando cobella a Cuban major with access to Castro in the fall of 1963 a high-level CIA staff officer met with Cabela in Paris Cabello is willing to kill the dictator as part of a coup d'etat the Cuban asked for sniper's rifles and poisons he also requested a personal meeting with Robert Kennedy the president's brother that request was denied another meeting was set for the following month on November 22nd kubella met with the CIA case officer who offered him a pen capable of injecting poison with instructions to stick it into Castro at his first opportunity Cabela refused the weapon but asked that the rifles be smuggled into Cuba for him on the day that meeting took place in Paris President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas Texas speculation arose in some corners of Washington that Covello was a double agent actually working for Castro some Senator got the idea that because a CIA man was in touch with Cabela on the day the Kennedy was assassinated he had something to do with the assassination that's nonsense it the conversation that he had this man had with Cabela had nothing to do with assassinating Castro had to do with whether they could organize a coup in Cuba this is exactly what the Kennedys was to try to do there were other interpretations president Lyndon Johnson himself would later tell an advisor Kennedy was trying to kill Castro but Castro got him first the new president sent word to his Central Intelligence Agency that there were to be no more attempts on the life of the Cuban leader Missile Crisis was the most dangerous confrontation of the Cold War it would not be the last but never again would tensions between the superpowers rise to such a boiling point for three more decades the global chess match plotted on and the glacial struggle neither side was willing to commit its most powerful peace skirmishes took place for the most part in the third world Vietnam Central America South America the Middle East Africa superpowers vied for influence Prestige and more power for 28 years the Berlin Wall stood as a symbol of the political economic and philosophical divisions between east and west then in 1989 and 1990 political unrest behind the Iron Curtain led to a reunification of Germany the cold war after 45 years came to an end the wall had come tumbling down could a winner be declared we won the Cold War let's not hide our heads under a bushel here we won the Cold War communism was rejected the evidence that this agency has that we won the cold war is we have a piece of what I think was the most palpable dramatic representation of the Cold War and that was the Berlin Wall we have it on our compound three panels of the Berlin Wall we got a piece of The Rock but how much credit could the CIA take for this victory [Music] see how I did the job that it was supposed to do it slices the thing was to find out what was going on in the Soviet Union how big their military establishment was what they were doing in the way of producing new weapons how many intercontinental ballistic missiles they had Etc but the American people also contributed to this they paid the taxes they paid the bill we won the cold award in effect and less because of anything we did and because communism turned out to be a moral disaster economic disaster and a political disaster and the people of Russia couldn't stand it any longer and the people in Eastern Europe hated it anyway and that's why the cold war came to an end [Music] it was a clear Victory but it had taken a long time 45 years the best evidence of the cia's effectiveness in fighting the cold war is that it was able to buy time as the Cold War progressed by providing a constant window into the closed Society of the Soviet Union the CIA kept fear and paranoia from driving the superpowers into war the world stood on the brink for 45 years but World War III never came in the end one way of life prevailed over another the ideals of one Society gave way to the imagination of the other one system collapsed the other endured the Berlin Wall at last was down and the people were reunion [Music]

Channel: War Stories

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Keywords: military history, war, war documentary, military tactics, war stories, history of war, battles, Full Documentary, CIA, Cold War, Espionage, KGB, Russia, Russia War, USSR, Soviet Union, Korean War, MKUltra, Project MKUltra, Fidel Castro, Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK, Eisenhower, Berlin Wall, Berlin Tunnels

Id: t5Tnpn5ZH1Q

Length: 51min 27sec (3087 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 06 2023