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Well... Why didn't KGB use {some book} as a tool to undermine USA? Didn't USA have any weak points to attack culturally? I've heard similar stories and they do

Well... Why didn't KGB use {some book} as a tool to undermine USA? Didn't USA have any weak points to attack culturally? I've heard similar stories and they don't sound good for USSR if you think of it. Your enemy deploys a new kind of weapon on your turf and you can't answer.

SamReidHughes 12y ago
They did other stuff like helping the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War.
- philwelch 12y ago
  And the Civil Rights Movement, perhaps ironically.
TheGrassyKnoll 12y ago
Wasn't Beavis and Butthead a KGB plot ?
rdtsc 12y ago
Books were not interesting for them because US didn't censor books. But they did other stuff. For example, read "Spy Handler: Memoir of a KGB Officer" that is written by one the senior counter-intel people from KGB (he handled Ames and Hansen). He talks about some "projects" and "operations" KGB did in this regard. Here is a few of them (some already mentioned): * Planted rumors in newspapers (AIDS was created by US scientists to kill off the black people) [ I remember hearing this one as an urban legend ] * US sometimes naturalized ex-German active Nazi supporters. Sometimes the Soviets had better archives and trails left than what Americans had. In one case they shamed and pointed at one of the Dept of State workers who was concentration camp guard (and lied about it). These ones I heard from other places (usually growing up they pop-ed up as "urban legends"). * Planted rumors that US was importing Latin American children and extracting their organs. * When US was dropping bombs in Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam war, I remember hearing that US deliberately designed their cluster bomblets to look like toys, made them not explode on contact with the ground, with a hope that a child would find them, start playing with it and then it would explode. Message was "US deliberately targeted children with advanced weaponry"
- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
  "Books were not interesting for them because US didn't censor books" Did for a while: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Chatterley%27s_Lover#United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Chatterley%27s_Lover#Unite... Lady Chatterley's Lover was one of a trio of books (the others being Tropic of Cancer and Fanny Hill), the ban on which was fought and overturned in court with assistance by publisher Barney Rosset and lawyer Charles Rembar in 1959
- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
  "* When US was dropping bombs in Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam war, I remember hearing that US deliberately designed their cluster bomblets to look like toys, made them not explode on contact with the ground, with a hope that a child would find them, start playing with it and then it would explode." You're thinking of the BLU-43; the Soviets used a similar design in Afghanistan.

SamReidHughes 12y ago

They did other stuff like helping the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War.

philwelch 12y ago
And the Civil Rights Movement, perhaps ironically.

TheGrassyKnoll 12y ago

Wasn't Beavis and Butthead a KGB plot ?

rdtsc 12y ago

Books were not interesting for them because US didn't censor books. But they did other stuff. For example, read "Spy Handler: Memoir of a KGB Officer" that is written by one the senior counter-intel people from KGB (he handled Ames and Hansen). He talks about some "projects" and "operations" KGB did in this regard. Here is a few of them (some already mentioned): * Planted rumors in newspapers (AIDS was created by US scientists to kill off the black people) [ I remember hearing this one as an urban legend ] * US sometimes naturalized ex-German active Nazi supporters. Sometimes the Soviets had better archives and trails left than what Americans had. In one case they shamed and pointed at one of the Dept of State workers who was concentration camp guard (and lied about it). These ones I heard from other places (usually growing up they pop-ed up as "urban legends"). * Planted rumors that US was importing Latin American children and extracting their organs. * When US was dropping bombs in Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam war, I remember hearing that US deliberately designed their cluster bomblets to look like toys, made them not explode on contact with the ground, with a hope that a child would find them, start playing with it and then it would explode. Message was "US deliberately targeted children with advanced weaponry"

GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
"Books were not interesting for them because US didn't censor books" Did for a while: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Chatterley%27s_Lover#United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Chatterley%27s_Lover#Unite... Lady Chatterley's Lover was one of a trio of books (the others being Tropic of Cancer and Fanny Hill), the ban on which was fought and overturned in court with assistance by publisher Barney Rosset and lawyer Charles Rembar in 1959
GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
"* When US was dropping bombs in Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam war, I remember hearing that US deliberately designed their cluster bomblets to look like toys, made them not explode on contact with the ground, with a hope that a child would find them, start playing with it and then it would explode." You're thinking of the BLU-43; the Soviets used a similar design in Afghanistan.