The Cold War - Secrets Within Secrets

During the first two decades of the Cold War, the knowledge available to the American public about the threats to our country was all bad.

The US Intelligence community, the US military, and US citizens were stunned when the Soviet Union detonated an atomic bomb years ahead of the US estimate. Then the Soviets detonated a thermonuclear device years sooner than the US anticipated.

The American public was shocked and dismayed as the Soviet Union racked up technology firsts after first in the space race between the Superpowers – Soviet science seemed to be outclassing the US at every turn

August 1957, the Soviets demonstrate the first ICBM

October 1957, the Soviets launch the first space satellite

April 1961, the Soviets launch the first man into space

Americans knew about the catastrophic danger from a strategic nuclear attack and rightly feared that danger – a danger called Mutual Assured Destruction. They were frightened even more when the open press leaked classified information from National Intelligence Estimates (NIE 11-10-57 and NIE 11-5-58) suggesting that the Soviet “technical and industrial capability” would lead to a Soviet advantage over the US in the number of nuclear attack missiles – ‘the missile gap’.

At the same time, Soviet intelligence, the KGB and GRU, understood the US industrial base could outstrip the Soviet Union in a competition to produce higher quality nuclear weapons in sheer numbers.

The Soviet leadership concluded there was only one path to gain a decisive nuclear attack advantage over the US, the Soviets had to be the first to develop and deploy an effective strategic anti-missile defense.

The Soviet progress developing a strategic anti-missile defense was a secret withheld from the American public. This Soviet progress represented a far greater threat to the survival of the United States than any Soviet firsts in space or the potential missile gap.

The US intelligence community took decisive action in 1961 to deal with the technological threat from the Soviet Union.

The US intelligence community established the Foreign Technology Division (FTD), a national intelligence asset as a part of US Air Force.

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The Cold War Between the USA and the Soviet Union – 1946- 1991

 

Why the term “Cold War?

It was simple, the term Cold War was a useful propaganda phrase for US in domestic and international politics.

The term Cold War was an invented term - politically flexible at any given time to allay fears of war, stoke anger at an enemy, prepare for war, and manage any immediate political message. The term ‘Cold War’ obfuscated the truth and dangers behind the existential threat of nuclear war.

Though the Soviet Union and the US were allies of convenience against Nazi Germany during World War II, the Soviet Union had been an implacable ideological enemy of the US since the 1917 Revolution overthrowing the Russian Czar. The USSR continued to be an enemy behind the scenes during WWII.

During WWII, Stalin directed the Soviet intelligence services, the KGB and the GRU, to conduct a massive intelligence operation to collect information about the American Manhattan Project to develop the first nuclear weapon, the atomic bomb.

The Cold War was marked by incessant wars around the world: Korean War, Vietnam War, Soviet military invasions in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland to suppress political dissent, wars in the Middle East, communist “wars of national liberation” around the world, Soviet invasion of Afghanistan – there was never a time of ‘Cold’, during the Cold War.

The singular factor dominating all else during the Cold War was the potential for a strategic nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union. By the 1960s, both nations possessed a sufficient number of nuclear weapons to totally annihilate each other, and do so in a few hours. ICBM flight times between the US and the Soviet Union were 25-29 minutes after launch. Submarine launched missile flight times between the US and the Soviet Union were 5-14 minutes after launch. Bombers with nuclear weapons could reach targets in 10-14 hours. The nation-ending devastation from strategic nuclear attacks between the two nuclear superpowers generated a new phrase of terror, Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD).

US citizens understood the nuclear threat from the Soviet Union. What the US citizens did not fully understand were the secret games being played behind the senses to gain a strategic advantage for a nuclear first strike.

The US played the arms control negotiations to great advantage. The world praised the US efforts to limit the number of nuclear weapons in the arsenals of the USSR and the US.

The US game was to limit the number of Soviet strategic weapons while the US gained attack advantage through qualitative and technological gains of US weapons capabilities. The US developed the MK-17 silo-buster reentry vehicle for the Minuteman ICBM. US ICBMs and SLBM used solid fuels for reliability and quick launch capabilities. The US multiple warhead  per strategic missile capability was superior to the Soviets. The US industrial base could outpace the USSR in production of strategic nuclear weapons.

The KGB understood these US advantages and how the US was manipulating the arms control deals. However, the international propaganda war forced the Soviet Union to negotiate arms control agreements which in the long term would be highly detrimental to the security of the USSR.

The great uncertainty rested in technological breakthroughs by one of the enemy nations.

The total inability to defend against a strategic nuclear missile strike was the profound weakness for both the US and the USSR.

‘Nuclear Missile Attack Swords of Damocles’ hung over the US and the USSR - hung by a slender thread of a technological breakthrough by one of the enemies to develop and deploy an effective strategic anti-missile system.

The reality was the USSR and the US were pouring massive resources into competing efforts to be the first to develop and deploy a strategic nuclear defense system.

Behind the scenes, an intense intelligence war raged between the Soviet Union and the US to collect information and derail the enemy strategic nuclear anti-missile defense programs.

The Foreign Technology Division super-secret Det 3 Operations Group was the technological ‘point of the spear’ for the US to combat the Soviet effort to gain a strategic attack advantage by building a strategic anti-missile system.

 

Gary Bowser Books, the Peregrine Team Series, are available on Amazon!