During the Cold War, which agency was more efficient, influential and powerful, the CIA or the KGB?

During the Cold War, which agency was more efficient, influential and powerful, the CIA or the KGB?

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That's entirely dependent on where you live, but the KGB was the more feared organization (within its respective sphere of influence) for obvious reasons.

>KGB was the more feared organization (within its respective sphere of influence) for obvious reasons.

I think that right there is what solidifies the KGB as the superior organization. You knew they were there and you knew they were watching and listening in on you, but they were still covert enough for you to not know exactly how

If they were so superior then why did they lose?

Both were just as good. Modern perception favours the KGB as being the more dangerous and powerful because entire generations were raised to be afraid of them while being told the CIA were good bois who dindu nuffins bad ever except protect us from the KGB.

Perhaps it was part of their plan?

KGB. Authoritharian/totalitarian societies will obviously have better intelligence services.

Nazi Germany proves that isn't remotely true.

MI6 was the first foreign and possibly the first global intelligence agency made, I think, and was probably the best due to it being the first. Because if you're first in intelligence, you know exactly from the beginning what is going on and what isn't. And Britain wasn't exactly an authoritarian/totalitarian society tbqh.

Now, I've read excerpts from Legacy of Ashes, and the author tells me that the CIA was actually a shitty organization to start with and often fucked itself over and its operations on a daily basis. Which is why they needed to lie to their superiors so much to prevent them from knowing that they, the CIA, did a bad job.

I would say KGB is probably the better one, in respects to CIA. But MI6 will forever be the best foreign intelligence agency.

Actually I would list them as following rank
1. MI6
2. KGB
3. CIA

>one toppled numerous governments
>the other killed a bunch of Russians

gee whiz I wonder

the KGB because they invented liberals and Civil Rights which still oppress me to this day

Thank KEK based Trumpepe is gonna throw all the SJWs out of helicoppters

The CIA might have had 100's of retarded ideas, from psychich warfare to gay bombs, but they were magnificent in turning South America into a civil-war torn Hellhole alternatively propping up fascist dictators and nationalist guerilla fighters while destroying the US with the import of crack cocaine and later herion from Afghanistan.

>brit detected

Not a Brit, I'm actually an American who is being unbiased. In terms of work history, MI6 has always done a better job than both CIA and KGB combined.

They didn't. The KGB outlasted the CCP and now runs Russia, as well as most of the satellite states. Putin is ex-KGB.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Pujol_García
Reminder.

That's an interesting way of looking at it

>They didn't

They kinda objectively did.

>Putin is ex-KGB.

One person isn't an entire organization.

>The KGB outlasted the CCP and now runs Russia

Even if we accept that absurd premise, merely continuing to exist isn't really winning.

>continuing to exist isn't really winning.
It is compared to "not existing"

CIA focused more on keeping their covert status in missions while the KGB focused more on mission success. As a result, the KGB would complete more missions and blow their cover more often.

>merely continuing to exist isn't really winning.

They were once the intelligence arm of a party that ran a state. They are now the state itself. Meanwhile, the CIA is beholden to political interests. One has hands free and the other has one hands tied. From a classical intelligence standpoint, you'd rather be the KGB. From a civilian standpoint you'd rather be American.

Congrats on your edginess of choosing an anglo service other than your own, anglo.

"Not existing" applies to the Soviet Union, the entity that the KGB existed to protect. If a bodyguard's client is killed in an assassination but the bodyguard survives did the bodyguard win?

Putin is former-KGB so that means that modern Russia is run by the KGB. If we accept that premise, then modern day America is controlled by the WWE.

Gorbachev declined to exercise the military option, and ultimately resigned peacefully. You are making an analogy to things that did not take place.

This is like when the CIA could have operatives on Bin Laden the very week of 9/11, but Bush wanted to delay and give the Taliban an ultimatum instead. Was the failure to capture Bin Laden then a failure of the CIA? Or was it a failure of command?

Clearly both scenarios were a failure of command, not intelligence.

>KGB under MI6 when the Cambridge Five happened
The brits suffered one of the most important introduction of double agents at the top of their spy ring, I don't think that qualify as top of the pops quality.

Do you know anything about the people in power in Russia, or are you just making pseudo logically sounding statements without actually verifying in fact, that the highest echelons of the Russian state are not ex-kgb operatives of whom Putin is a figurehead?

>"Our research has shown that ... 78 percent of the Russian elite have signs of being siloviki," Olga Kryshtanovskaya, who has studied the Russian elite since 1989, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

>Putin served as a lieutenant-colonel in the KGB during the Cold War. Under his government the number of siloviki, as former military or security service officials are known, has increased dramatically and their influence has spread beyond government.

>"Before in the Soviet Union there was a politburo which was not a KGB organization so there was a brake, a balance on the KGB," Kryshtanovskaya said.

>"Now there is also a 'politburo' but it is made up exclusively of siloviki so there is no brake on the hawks," she said.

>Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, Putin's deputy chief of staff Igor Sechin, FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev and drugs tsar Viktor Cherkesov are among the best known siloviki but the new study turned up surprises too.

Yes well, obviously all intelligence agencies have their faults but CIA has spilled the beans more imo than either MI6 or KGB.

Within the past five years, maybe. But that was due to giving information sharing to newbie agencies. They should have cut the number of agencies, not increased them.

Stasi