In the late 1960s, Britain's intelligence services had been damaged by the discovery of KGB moles known as the Cambridge Spies

Overview Debates Related claims Topics

United States intelligence agencies utilized former Nazi intelligence networks and personnel to gather Cold War intelligence after World War II

During the Cold War, the primary ideological competition occurred between rival nation-states

British domestic intelligence agency MI5 conducted surveillance on British politician Nye Bevan over multiple decades

The Central Intelligence Agency covertly promoted American Abstract Expressionist painters, including Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, during the Cold War through cultural fronts

Former KGB senior archivist Vasili Mitrokhin defected from Russia to the United Kingdom in 1992

Ben McIntyre first learned of the Redwood case, an intelligence operation involving a Soviet spy in Iran, from a former officer a decade before writing about it

If the Soviet Union had gained control of Iran, it would have controlled the Strait of Hormuz and the global oil trade

The Soviet Union planned to support a coup by the Iranian Communist Party to overthrow Ayatollah Khomeini's government

Iran was a key state during the Cold War, primarily due to its oil reserves

British novelists Graham Greene, John Buchan, Ian Fleming, and John le Carré were all former spies

Author Ben McIntyre's books are based on declassified archives and interviews with living witnesses

Under the Shah in the 1970s, Iran was aligned with the West and acted as a buffer state against communism

For his book, Ben McIntyre interviewed Ian McCready, the MI6 handler for Vladimir Kuzichkin

Vladimir Kuzichkin's primary motivation for spying was to obtain Western medicine for his erectile dysfunction to save his marriage

John le Carré invented espionage terms that were later adopted by actual intelligence services

The high value of Vladimir Kuzichkin's initial intelligence, including a list of KGB officers in Iran, convinced MI6 that he was a genuine source

Some MI6 officers later regretted the decision to share intelligence on a Soviet plot with Iran due to the resulting slaughter and the strengthening of the Ayatollah's regime

By the late 1970s, MI6 was simultaneously running two high-level KGB officers: Vladimir Kuzichkin and Oleg Gordievsky

The KGB viewed the power vacuum in post-revolutionary Iran as a strategic opportunity

The Soviet plan for Iran included an invasion by the Red Army from Afghanistan to support a new communist government