ABSTRACT
The early history of CIA espionage in the Soviet Union and its satellites was featured by the transition from "illegal" to "legal" operations. Even during the illegal phase of operations into the Sino-Soviet orbit, many of CIA's sources in the inner circle were Soviet or other nationals who were temporary or permanent residents. They had no need to cross frontiers surreptitiously or carry forged papers; they moved about legally. Most of them were recruited in the course of local operations around the periphery of the Soviet Union. In West Berlin, for example, one of CIA's local contacts in the early fifties was a young German who worked as a courier into East Germany. Other "legal sources within the Soviet Union were a by-product of counterintelligence work in the Munich area against the KGB headquarters in Karlshorst. A Ukrainian nationalist, for example, was visited by an East German woman with a letter from his family in the Ukraine.
