Photo: Luna-3 satellite. Art via Wikipedia
How The CIA Stole A Soviet Satellite -- Michael Peck, War Is Boring
U.S. spies ‘borrowed’ a moon craft from unsuspecting Russians
In a scheme worthy of Mission Impossible, CIA agents hijacked a Soviet spacecraft and probed its secrets.
When did this happen? That’s classified, as is the country where the caper occurred. In the declassified article on the subject in Studies in Intelligence, a CIA journal, much of the text has been blacked out by the agency’s censors.
But the article, released by the National Security Archive watchdog group, is full of tantalizing clues. Not to mention, it’s a great spy yarn.
The theft occurred when the Soviets sent one of their Lunik—also known as Luna—satellites for an exhibition tour of several nations in the early days of the Space Race. The CIA naturally was interested in the Luna probes, of which more than 40 attempted to orbit or land on the moon between 1958 and 1974.
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My Comment: I would bet that once the CIA discovered who was manufacturing these components in the old Soviet Union .... those manufacturers ended up getting "unwanted visitors" in the night.
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