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How the CIA 'kidnapped' a Soviet moon probe during the space race

"And the Soviets were none the wiser. Sound like something from a movie script? It really happened."

Relations between the United States and the Soviet Union were unmistakably edgy, a superpower rivalry fueled by differences in political ideology and economic pursuits, with both nations striving to influence the world by showcasing their technological and military prowess. (Image credit: CIA)More recently, in June 2020, John Greenewald, founder of the Black Vault, an archive of over two million pages obtained from the government by the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), published the document in a non-sanitized form that notes, as a subhead: "Getting factory markings from inside a Soviet upper-stage space vehicle." "We spent almost an hour on this, one man in the cramped nose section trying to get the orb into precisely the right position and one in the engine compartment trying to engage the threads on the end of a rod he couldn't see," the document points out.

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