Helmut Muller Enbergs in the article How successful was the Stasi in the West after all? talks about the operational "successes" of the Ministry of State Security (Stasi) in West Germany. Based on basic premises, i.e., key settings of success, long-term factors of survival, and the realization of values and visions in terms of the satisfaction of service employees, Muller Enbergs detects the success of the Foreign Intelligence Unit, which operated under the acronym "HV A" (Hauptverwaltung Aufklarung) within the Stasi. Statistical indicators indicate the direct operational performance of the Foreign Intelligence Unit. Namely, out of a total of 1,500 associates or informants hired by the Foreign Intelligence Unit, i.e., the Stasi in West Germany, 449 associates or informants successfully penetrated key state institutions (ministries, governments) located in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The key tasks of the Foreign Intelligence Unit were to collect data on the military and other capacities of the NATO alliance and the United States of America (USA) on the territory of West Germany. These tasks were handled by Department XII within the Foreign Intelligence Unit.

In the article A Spider Spinning its Web: East German HUMINT Networks on Nordic Affairs, Kimmo Elo analyzes the operational effects of the Foreign Intelligence Unit on the territory of four Nordic countries: Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland. The Nordic circle of countries was an extremely important area of operational activity of the East German service precisely because of the NATO alliance and geopolitical relations, that is, the intentions of the Soviet Union to dominate that area. However, the key element of this article is methodological in nature and relates to the question of how HUMINT (human intelligence) networks can be exposed and analyzed. Here, understanding the basic postulates of HUMINT, i.e., the general framework of the methodology of gathering intelligence data through human sources, is key.

In the article Operation Synonym: Soviet-Bloc Active Measures and the Helsinki Process 1976–1983, Douglas Selvage writes about the operation of the Russian intelligence service KGB (Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti), which was carried out under the name Synonym and was aimed at political processes, policymaking, and making decisions during and after the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), which was held initially in Geneva and later in Helsinki during the first half of the 1970s. Given that the meetings in Geneva and Helsinki were held with the aim of recognizing the borders of post-war Europe, minimizing political and military tensions between East and West, and improving human rights in the countries of the communist bloc, the Soviet Union considered that it was an extremely important security issue that may result in numerous risks for the existing political order in the country. With Operation Synonym, the KGB tried to influence the shaping of the policies of Western countries and other non-aligned countries that participated in the CSCE follow-up conferences in Belgrade (1977–1988) and Madrid (1980–1983).

In the article Intelligence in Anglo-Polish Relations 1945-1980/1981, Jacek Tebinka talks about the role of the British and Polish intelligence services in the relations between Poland and Great Britain from the end of the Second World War until the Cold War period. Information related to domestic relations and policies towards the Soviet Union, anti-communist structures in Poland, and members of the Polish emigration were of key interest to British and Soviet intelligence structures. Jakub Tyszkiewicz, in the article The impact of analyses prepared by the American intelligence community on U.S. policy toward Poland in 1956–1970, analyzes the effect of intelligence analyses prepared by the American intelligence community on the policy of the American administration towards Poland in the period 1956–1970. The arrival of Wladyslaw Gomulka as the first secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party in 1956 meant, according to American intelligence analyses, the beginning of Poland's independent policy, which was no longer an absolute satellite of the Soviet Union. The death of Soviet dictator Josif Visarionovič Stalin contributed significantly to this.

About the counterintelligence efforts of the Polish intelligence service against Western diplomats in the period 1956–1989, writes Patryk Pleskot in the article Diplomat or Spy? Polish counterintelligence and Western diplomats (1956–1999). Pleskot points out that the Polish counterintelligence structures in the field of intelligence tactics and techniques were catching up with the West, and from the 1960s they began to actively use then-modern technological solutions (the first computers). Pleskot describes the surveillance methods used by the II. Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Department II Ministerstwa Spraw Wewnetrznych) in charge of civilian counterintelligence affairs.

In the article Beetwen Geopolitics and National Security: Polish Intelligence and International Terrorism during the Cold War, Przemyslaw Gasztold-Sen points out that communist structures in Poland often labeled enemies of the regime as terrorists, especially the Catholic Church and the Solidarity movement. Depending on the assessment, the intelligence services of the Eastern Bloc often supported those terrorist organizations (for example, the Red Army Faction (RAF), the Red Brigades, the Basque ETA, etc.) whose actions undermined the security and order of Western democratic countries. After the 1972 terrorist attack in Munich, in addition to the Western countries and the countries of the Eastern bloc, they began to understand the emergence of international terrorism as a threat to national security.

In the article Spying on Europe: Polish Communists' Intelligence against European Institutions during the Cold War, Slawomir Lukasiewicz writes about how Polish and Soviet intelligence structures penetrated European institutions with joint forces, but with an emphasis on the NATO alliance, which they considered to be under complete American control. The European Economic Community (EEC) was considered a political threat and became a key target of Polish intelligence structures during the 1970s. An additional impetus to this was China's policy, which increasingly began to turn to economic cooperation with European countries. In order to penetrate into every pore of the civilian and military sectors, the Polish and Soviet intelligence structures also targeted the recruitment of young officers who were educated at military and civilian schools (e.g., the College d'Europe Bruges, the European University Institute, etc.). Idesbald Goddeeris writes about the process of recruiting informants in Brussels in the article Polish Intelligence in Brussels: The Agent, His Object, and the Subjective Historian. On the example of a case study, i.e., a person named "Eryk" who was recruited by the Polish intelligence service for a long time, Goddeeris presents chronologically and in detail all the steps that the operatives of the Polish and, at the same time, Belgian intelligence services took in order to engage "Eryk", who possessed numerous business information related to American affairs in the field of securing cargo military vessels that transported weapons to Europe. In addition, "Eryk" was often seen in high Polish church circles, which was of particular interest to Polish intelligence.

In the article Czechoslovak Foreign Intelligence Service and Great Britain at the Beginning of the Cold War, Matej Medvecky analyzes the organization and operation of the Czechoslovak intelligence service towards Great Britain in the period from 1945 until the end of the Cold War. The sovietization of Czechoslovakia led to numerous foreign and domestic political changes, as well as personnel and operational changes, mostly in the national security system. Medvecky chronologically describes the key changes in Czechoslovak intelligence structures and details the methodology of gathering information through a network of informants in Great Britain. In the article Early Years of the Canada-United States Foreign Intelligence Relationship, Kurt F. Jensen and Don Munton analyze the effect of intelligence cooperation between Canada and the United States. They also refer to the general concept and importance of intelligence cooperation and information sharing and point out that the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Great Britain, and Australia are the best examples of such practice since 1940 and the "Five Powers Agreement", by which it was institutionalized and prescribed intelligence cooperation that continues actively today.

In the article Austrian "Spies" in the Early Cold War, Dieter Bacher writes about the recruitment of Austrian citizens by foreign intelligence services in the period 1945–1953. Considering the geopolitical position of Austria, but also considering the fact that the massive political and administrative apparatus of the post-war Western Bloc was stationed precisely in Austria (dominantly in Vienna), numerous intelligence services had their own interests in that area. Austria itself was not always exclusively a target of intelligence services but also an area of intelligence activity between East and West. The recruitment of Austrian citizens reflects the post-war staffing problems in the intelligence services, i.e., a reflection of the lack of experienced operatives, which consequently resulted in the engagement of young officers who did not know foreign languages, mainly members of the Soviet and French intelligence services.

In the article Intelligence and Counterintelligence in Denmark, Thomas Wegener Friis writes about the historical development and operation of the Danish intelligence and counterintelligence services. Friis adds a special emphasis to the time of the Cold War when Denmark was in the specific focus of numerous intelligence services of Western and Eastern countries (and even Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and Cuba) precisely because of its geopolitical position and proximity to the Soviet Union.