17 - Eavesdroppers of the Kremlin: KGB sigint during the Cold War

Abstract

This chapter reveals that since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, a great deal of new information is available concerning Soviet Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) operations during the Cold War from declassified documents, books, and articles published in Russia, and from interviews with former Soviet intelligence officers. The chapter attempts to set out what can definitively be established concerning the SIGINT collection activities of the former Committee of State Security (KGB). This new material indicates that the KGB's SIGINT activities were much larger and more successful than previously believed. Former Soviet intelligence officials have indicated that while SIGINT supplanted Human Intelligence (HUMINT) as the principal intelligence source for the KGB by the early 1970s, internecine warfare within the Soviet intelligence community, and the Soviet Union's inability to develop high-speed computers and other critically important telecommunication technologies prevented Soviet SIGINT from fully achieving its potential.