The Agency: Inside the CIA Page #3

---

before they stopped at Berlin.

The only problem?

They didn't leave.

With a new adversary,

barely two years after

the greatest war

in history, this new

agency would have to be

successful and be able

to adapt quickly.

Many wondered if another

war was on the horizon.

One thing was certain. In

this new rising conflict,

the men and d men of the

Central Intelligence

Agency would be the frontline.

As the shellshock of World

War II began to fade,

global leaders met at a series

of conferences to discuss

the future of

war-ravaged Europe.

Russia would control,

or the Soviet Union

would control, uh, Central

and... and Eastern Europe.

So that led to the situation

where Russia actually, uh,

assimilated the Baltic

States as part of Russia,

and then, they

caused a, uh, other,

what they called,

satellite nations,

Czechoslovakia, Poland,

East Germany, uh, Hungarar

Romania, and so forth. They

put their puppet regimes

into those countries where

technically they weren't

part of Russia, but in... as

a matter of fact, uh,

Moscow controlled all of them.

The Allies had learned

a hard lesson from World

War I and sought to handle

post-war Germany

differently this time.

The US and the Allies,

uh, instituted:

...in order to try rehabilitate,

uh, the countries

in... in Western Europe,

as contrasted

to... to the post-World War I

approach, where the Iron Fist

literally put Germany and others

in a position that... well,

they had greatatifficulty

in recovering.

After World War II, the

idea was to aid a recovery.

The Soviet Union,

on the other hand,

had a different idea.

Russians in Eastern Europe

were pulling out

whatever they could

from the Eastern

European nations.

As the Soviets began to

mine Europe for resources,

lines were drawn across

Berlin, now the epicenter

of the Cold War. Berlin

was the... the center

of so many intelligence

activities,

that, uh, it was incredible.

There was agents

all over the place in Berlin,

and a lot of double agents

and maybe triple

agents and so forth.

It was probably the golden age

of, uh, clandestine operations

in, uh, Berlin.

Well, Berlin was

an interesting venue

during the Cold War,

of the Soviet Union and its

intelligence services,

Berlin became a divided city.

It was divided

between the British,

the French,

American, and Russian

sectors, but eventually,

East Germany and West Germany.

But this new line dividing

East and West Germany, guarded

by scattered checkpoints, did

little to stop the flololo

of people leaving the

communist-controlled

territories to the east.

It didn't take long

for those under

communism to understand

that that was not the way to

go and... and the flow of people

uh, from East

Berlin in the east,

into West Berlin, uh, was

such that the Soviets

could no longer, uh, stand that.

So they built the Berlin Wall.

Homes were destroyed, and

entire city blocks walled

down the middle as

Berlin quickly became

a militarized fortress.

The city slowly dissolved

into chaos as families

were separated

and rioting escalated.

[music plays]

As Berlilibecame a police state,

intelligence officers scrambled

to secure Nazi scientists

with valuable information

and skills. There was

something of a race for those

scientists in Germany,

particularly those

who had worked

on the... on the missile

program there.

The German V-2 Missile

Program created

the world's first long-range

combat ballistic missile.

Over 3,000 of these weapons were

launched against Allied targets

during the war. The Allies

had seen the effects

of these weapons, and

knew that to secure

the missile technology would

prove a powerful deterrent

against the Soviet Union.

Of course,

it didn't take much imagination

to foresee what type of weapon

could be carried

on a V-2 rocket.

[music plays]

German scientists became

instrumental in the creation

of atomic weaponry

on both sides

of the so-called "Iron Curtain,"

the imaginary line dividing

the east from the west.

The bombing of Hiroshima

and Nagasaki essentially

ended World War II,

but it also created a

dangerous technology gap

between the Soviet Union

and the United States.

It wasn't long, however,

until the Soviet Union would

narrow the gap with the help

of the Soviet Intelligence

Agency working in

the United States,

The Soviets had their spies

collecting intelligence

on the atomic bomb.

Joseph Stalin,

head of the Soviet Union,

knew about the American

atomic bomb in

detail, even before

President Harry Truman

knew about the atomic bomb

The Soviet Union's

nuclear program

moved ahead quickly

with the help of spies

in the US, and there was soon

a neck-and-neck arms race.

Russia had a long history

with spying, and the

KGB traced its roots

to the Russian

Revolution of 1917.

They, early on, formed a

very active... intelligence

capability against

their own people.

When the Bolshevik Revolution

took place in 1917, and,

uh, Lenin took over,

communism took over,

the Sov... Russia,

and converted it into

the Soviet Union,

the first thing that he did

was he pulled together

an intelligence service.

They were the key

to his controlling the

Soviet Union and its people.

They were the first

modern state

to begin practicing terrorism

against their own people.

Uh, to suppress dissent, uh,

to unru... uproot dissidence,

anybody who seemed

inimical to the regime,

that early intelligence

capability,

used against their own people,

and against out... outsiders,

took on different names.

The NKVD, the OGPU,

and so forth, up

through our time,

when it was the KGB. And

with the help of the KGB,

much of American society had

been infiltrated at the end

of the war. And

during that period,

the Soviet Union, through

the KGB and working

in part through the

Communist party,

had developed, we know, at

least around 250 recruited

American secret sources

in this country.

uh, Hollywood people in

there, uh, media, uh,

they had people in

the White House,

in the Treasury, and so forth.

They had infiltrated

every branch of

the US government

during World War II.

They had two spies

in the White House sitting

beside President Roosevelt.

How many sources did we have

Moscow in the Soviet Union?

And the answer is

a big fat zero.

KGB agents had placed themselves

in positions of power

in nearly every major

department of the US government

by the start of the Cold War,

and things were heating up.

But the agency was about to

make the biggest mistake

of its history. People,

uh, a aund the world,

remember the Bay of Pigs, if

they... they don't remember

anything else. It

was said to be

a CIA disaster.

The Cold War had spread

across the planet.

Britain, France, the

United States, Canada,

and eight other

countries formed NATO,

as states picked

sides in a cold war

that was gradually heating up.

The Korean War had been fought

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes