Spy vs Spy, redux

A court in the Czech capital Prague has begun hearing a 50-year-old Cold War murder case in which the wife of a senior French politician was killed. . .

Two former agents of the communist-era secret police are accused of sending a parcel bomb disguised as a cigar box. . .

Prosecutors say the Soviet KGB got the two Czechoslovak agents to send the bomb in 1957. . .

Mr Tremeaud - the intended target - was working for the EU's earliest precursor, the European Coal and Steel Community.

According to prosecutors, the KGB hoped that by killing him and blaming neo-Nazis, they could destroy the Franco-German rapprochement driving the fledgling European integration.

From the BBC. Yet another reminder that the Cold War was far from cold. I must look up a reference to link, but I recall reading some years back an estimate of the number of political assassinations in western Europe carried out by Soviet agents, and the toll came to several hundred. The awareness of which -- along with my own memories of growing up under the shadow of nuclear armageddon -- leaves me shaking my head whenever I walk by campus posters bewailing the present-day "climate of fear".

Posted by David on June 12, 2006 9:06 PM