Alright, let's say war breaks out between the Warsaw Pact and NATO between 1980 and early 1985. Timeframe chosen because that was when it was most up in the area and a lot of the rings were rolled up in the later 1980s. Something similar to in Red Storm Rising with the conventional invasion of Germany, no nukes, etc. The interesting thing about this scenario is that there were a great number of different spy rings both sides were operating against each other that could have had a tremendous effect. The most significant ones I am aware of are listed here.
The Soviets had:
-John Walker and his associates: Almost certainly the most damaging spy on here. Sold cryptological and technological secrets from 1968-1985 that allowed the GRU to read all encoded U.S. Navy traffic. We might have been in a worse situation in that regard than the IJN was at Midway and later; at least the Flag Officer's code stayed unbroken. What I can gather from my reading is that the Navy didn't have *any* secrets from the USSR during that period. Side note: I'm not sure if the USMC uses Navy codes because they're part of the Department of the Navy and work closely with them, but if they did the NATO efforts in Norway, Iceland, etc. where the marines were supposed to go could be seriously compromised. Walker also sold technological secrets to the Soviets that allowed them to close most of the gap between their submarines and ours in under a generation.
-Aldrich Ames: CIA officer who sold the Soviets the names of most agents the CIA had, including some extremely valuable ones. Also sold tons of other classified data.
-Robert Hanssen: FBI official who did the same thing, selling the identities of agents to the USSR.
-Clyde Lee Conrad: U.S. Army NCO who sold secrets including many units' wartime General Defense Plans (GDPs) and other info on nuclear weapons sites, troop movements, and NATO strategy. His judge said at his trial that, "If war had broken out between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, the West would have faced certain defeat. NATO would have quickly been forced to choose between capitulation or the use of nuclear weapons on German territory. Conrad's treason had doomed the Federal Republic to become a nuclear battlefield."
The West had:
-Oleg Gordievsky. KGB rezident (senior ranking officer similar to station chief) at London embassy. He was a perfect foil to Walker because they were uncovered within weeks of each other in mid-1985 with Walker being arrested and Gordievsky being whisked out of the country to the West for his own safety. He was able to generate extremely high quality political information on the Soviet leadership, identifying how paranoid they were during Able Archer and flagging Gorbachev as the heir apparent years before it became public knowledge. He is very significant because if the decision had been made to go to war he would have had intimate knowledge of it. Soviet plans called for extensive spetsnaz and intelligence operations in NATO countries, which Gordievsky would have been informed of as ranking KGB officer in Britain. His espionage would have made it incredibly difficult for any Soviet maskirovka or effort at strategic surprise to succeed. If NATO had been given even two weeks of warning it could have made a tremendous impact, allowing us to start REFORGER and Britain's Transition to War plans, call up reserves, etc.
Dimitry Polyakov: GRU Major General who retired in 1980 but remained valuable even in retirement.
If there are any others I forgot to mention sound off down below.
My question I guess is what impact do think these guys would have had on their respective sides and the overall war? Who had the overall edge? It's pretty hard not to give it to the Soviets but Gordievsky was a really damaging leak. When you're fighting the absolute best militaries in the world qualitatively on prepared ground they've been rehearsing to defend for decades it's really hard to win without at least some degree of strategic surprise.
The Soviets had:
-John Walker and his associates: Almost certainly the most damaging spy on here. Sold cryptological and technological secrets from 1968-1985 that allowed the GRU to read all encoded U.S. Navy traffic. We might have been in a worse situation in that regard than the IJN was at Midway and later; at least the Flag Officer's code stayed unbroken. What I can gather from my reading is that the Navy didn't have *any* secrets from the USSR during that period. Side note: I'm not sure if the USMC uses Navy codes because they're part of the Department of the Navy and work closely with them, but if they did the NATO efforts in Norway, Iceland, etc. where the marines were supposed to go could be seriously compromised. Walker also sold technological secrets to the Soviets that allowed them to close most of the gap between their submarines and ours in under a generation.
-Aldrich Ames: CIA officer who sold the Soviets the names of most agents the CIA had, including some extremely valuable ones. Also sold tons of other classified data.
-Robert Hanssen: FBI official who did the same thing, selling the identities of agents to the USSR.
-Clyde Lee Conrad: U.S. Army NCO who sold secrets including many units' wartime General Defense Plans (GDPs) and other info on nuclear weapons sites, troop movements, and NATO strategy. His judge said at his trial that, "If war had broken out between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, the West would have faced certain defeat. NATO would have quickly been forced to choose between capitulation or the use of nuclear weapons on German territory. Conrad's treason had doomed the Federal Republic to become a nuclear battlefield."
The West had:
-Oleg Gordievsky. KGB rezident (senior ranking officer similar to station chief) at London embassy. He was a perfect foil to Walker because they were uncovered within weeks of each other in mid-1985 with Walker being arrested and Gordievsky being whisked out of the country to the West for his own safety. He was able to generate extremely high quality political information on the Soviet leadership, identifying how paranoid they were during Able Archer and flagging Gorbachev as the heir apparent years before it became public knowledge. He is very significant because if the decision had been made to go to war he would have had intimate knowledge of it. Soviet plans called for extensive spetsnaz and intelligence operations in NATO countries, which Gordievsky would have been informed of as ranking KGB officer in Britain. His espionage would have made it incredibly difficult for any Soviet maskirovka or effort at strategic surprise to succeed. If NATO had been given even two weeks of warning it could have made a tremendous impact, allowing us to start REFORGER and Britain's Transition to War plans, call up reserves, etc.
Dimitry Polyakov: GRU Major General who retired in 1980 but remained valuable even in retirement.
If there are any others I forgot to mention sound off down below.
My question I guess is what impact do think these guys would have had on their respective sides and the overall war? Who had the overall edge? It's pretty hard not to give it to the Soviets but Gordievsky was a really damaging leak. When you're fighting the absolute best militaries in the world qualitatively on prepared ground they've been rehearsing to defend for decades it's really hard to win without at least some degree of strategic surprise.