For forty years the superpower conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union dominated the world stage. In popular culture the conflict produced a plethora of “spy” books and films about the daring exploits of intelligence agents. In contrast, the scholarly investigation of the role of intelligence in the Cold War had to await the gradual opening, since 1990, of “Top Secret” archives. It is now time to make a first attempt at assessing the role that intelligence played in the overall development of the conflict. Did intelligence help to avoid the Cold War becoming “hot”? We have invited three prominent intelligence scholars to give their views
