soviet union spies3 cold war spies W r i t i n g

“The Cambridge Five” – Soviet Union Spies

3 Cold War Spies: Motives & How they got Caught

Did espionage affect the course of the Cold War or did the Cold War spawn forty years

of mystery, international intrigue, spy wars and periods of spy mania, leading to the

largest national security state in history? Starting with a fresh look at the case of Julius

and Ethel Rosenberg — how they got caught and whether or not they were guilty – and

ending with the saga of Edward Snowden and the NSA surveillance controversy — this

course examines the Cold War’s most important spy cases and operations to better

understand the interplay between the world of secrets and the world of statecraft and

technology. After all, the global conflict was a clash between governments with opposing

ideologies as well as a war between intelligence agencies.

Other topics include the rise of superpower espionage and the face-off between the CIA

and the KGB, the role of technological (spy satellites, planes, submarines, intercepts)

versus human espionage (spies), Berlin as spy-city and the Berlin Tunnel, a tale of two

spy-novelists (Ian Fleming & John Le Carré), LSD and mind-control, defectors, moles

and mole-hunting, the rise of the spy bureaucracy, spy motivations, spy catchers, and

scientific-technical espionage. We will look closely at the case of Edward Snowden and

his NSA revelations as a legacy of the Cold War enabled by 9/11 and the Patriot Act. We

will close with a discussion of, and debate about the CIA torture report.

A research paper or project, 8-12 pages.

The body of the paper should be double-spaced with margins normal 1-inch sized

margins on the top, bottom and sides. The footnotes or endnotes should be single-spaced.

4. You should expand the annotated bibliography you developed for the mid-term proposal

and include both primary and secondary sources. Divide primary and secondary sources

into separate sections.

5. Choose an appropriate title. A good title is both snazzy and captures the essence or

argument of the paper. All papers must have a title.

6. Aim for an argumentative edge and do have a thesis statement.