The definition of "better" in this game is dependent on what your goals are.
There are three primary things you can do with a foreign IO on your soil in increasing order of difficulty: 1. PNG them 2. Collect on them 3. Flip them. Add in #4 of killing them if you are a certain type of country - very, very rare though and headline worthy.
In fact in some cases it's worth more to let an IO keep stealing secrets, and know what they are, than it is to get rid of them - so these things aren't binary.
edit: I note this distinction because in the case of this article it is discussing specifically officers that the Agency knew were burned - which serves the same goal as kicking them out of your country as they are no longer operationally effective.
The implication was that the Americans were "embarrassed" by how easily their agents were identified (or conformed to a formula of sorts). I don't believe it mentioned if the Soviets were in fact "better" at either spying, or identifying spies.
Mostly because the Soviets did everything under a veil of secrecy -- likely as much to shield their own people from what was going on as the West. This extended to most parts of the government, not just the military/intelligence apparatus.
Comments
There is a strong implication in the article that the Soviets were much better than the Americans at this game.
The definition of "better" in this game is dependent on what your goals are.
There are three primary things you can do with a foreign IO on your soil in increasing order of difficulty: 1. PNG them 2. Collect on them 3. Flip them. Add in #4 of killing them if you are a certain type of country - very, very rare though and headline worthy.
In fact in some cases it's worth more to let an IO keep stealing secrets, and know what they are, than it is to get rid of them - so these things aren't binary.
edit: I note this distinction because in the case of this article it is discussing specifically officers that the Agency knew were burned - which serves the same goal as kicking them out of your country as they are no longer operationally effective.
The implication was that the Americans were "embarrassed" by how easily their agents were identified (or conformed to a formula of sorts). I don't believe it mentioned if the Soviets were in fact "better" at either spying, or identifying spies.
Mostly because the Soviets did everything under a veil of secrecy -- likely as much to shield their own people from what was going on as the West. This extended to most parts of the government, not just the military/intelligence apparatus.