Introduction
During the Cold War, and especially in the 1970s, Soviet intelligence carried out a substantial and successful clandestine effort to obtain technical and scientific knowledge from the West. This effort was suspected by a few US Government officials but not documented until 1981, when French intelligence obtained the services of Col. Vladimir I. Vetrov, “Farewell,” who photographed and supplied 4,000 KGB documents on the program. In the summer of
1981, President Mitterrand told President Reagan of the source, and when the material was supplied, it led to a potent counterintelligence response by CIA and the NATO intelligence services.