the world. As a result, both countries have their  own specialised and expansive security agencies,  

the Central Intelligence Agency –  or CIA – and the Federal Security  

Service of the Russian Federation – or FSB. Established shortly after the Second World  

War in 1947, the CIA has been responsible  for the gathering and analysis of highly  

sensitive information from all over the world on  behalf of the United States' federal government.  

The FSB was formed more recently, in 1995, as a  modern replacement for the Soviet Union's KGB.  

It's tasked with various responsibilities such  as counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism  

operations, surveillance, border  security, and investigating any  

violations of Russia's federal law. We previously covered how the CIA and  

KGB fared against each other in 'CIA vs KGB  – Which Was Better During the Cold War?',  

but how do their modern, present-day equivalents  hold up? We're pitting the CIA and the FSB  

against each other, to see if we can determine  which of them is the superior spy agency. 

So, what do each of these agencies actually  do? The main role of the CIA is to serve as the  

United States foreign intelligence service,  meaning that they are designed to gather  

intel internationally. The CIA, in theory,  holds less jurisdiction to operate on home  

soil. Any investigations and operations that take  place within America itself are usually handled  

by other agencies, such as the Federal Bureau  of Investigation, otherwise known as the FBI. 

This is actually the first key  difference between the CIA and the FSB.  

While the CIA's focus is on external threats  and intelligence gathering, the FSB's role  

is to safeguard the Russian state from within. While the nature of the FSB is perhaps more akin  

to the FBI, that doesn't mean they haven't been  involved in some CIA-style secret and dangerous  

operations., or that they don't have some pretty  gnarly skeletons in the closet. So, with that in  

mind, how do the two spy agencies compare in  terms of their dark and duplicitous deeds? 

Let's start with one of the many secrets  that the CIA likes to keep under wraps.  

Did you know that the Central Intelligence  Agency has a top-secret assassination unit?  

Conspiracy theorists and even official sources  have linked the CIA to a number of infamous,  

high-profile and historically significant  assassination attempts, from Cuban revolutionary  

Fidel Castro to Osama Bin-Laden. However, it was  revealed that in response to the September 11th  

attack on the World Trade Centre, US President  George Bush authorised the Central Intelligence  

Agency to use a covert assassination unit in order  to track down and eliminate members of Al-Qaeda. 

Journalist Evan Wright highlighted that this  marked the “first time the U.S. government  

outsourced a covert assassination service  to private enterprise” as the CIA brought in  

private contractors to carry out their secretive  assassinations. The entire operation was even  

hidden from Congress themselves, meaning that  the CIA had the power to abduct or kill anyone  

they believed to be associated with Al-Qaeda,  without their actions being traced back to the  

US government. That's a scary level of power  and freedom for an organisation to be granted,  

made even more scary by the fact  it was kept top secret for so long.  

No information about these assassinations was  known to the public until almost a decade after  

President Bush had authorised the CIA to conduct  them, and there's even rumours that the CIA are  

still using private security contractors to  carry out assassinations to this very day. 

The FSB has just as many dark secrets of their  own, however. For example, did you know that  

the FSB runs their own covert kill squad? No?  Well, that's probably because they don't want  

you knowing. Meet the Alpha Group. These guys  are one of Russia's toughest military squads,  

an elite team run by the FSB themselves. Very  little is known about the actual directive of  

the Alpha Group, although many believe it's their  job to act under direct orders from Russia's  

political leaders, meaning these guys most likely  answer to President Vladimir Putin himself – a  

leader infamous for killing off critics. So, what exactly is the Alpha Group? Officially,  

they're a sub-group of Spetsnaz, Russia's special  forces. First established by the KGB in 1974,  

control over the Alpha Group was assumed by  the FSB when they were founded to replace the  

KGB in 1995, and the Alpha Group has been in  their back pocket ever since. Their main job  

is to act as a counter-terrorism unit, responding  directly to any violent attacks that may occur.  

Of course, that doesn't mean the FSB couldn't  find other uses for their private elite squad. 

One of the Alpha Group's most famous operations  – the Nord-Ost siege – took place under the  

newly-instated FSB only seven years after  the Federal Security Service was established.  

On October 23rd of 2002, a group of almost  forty Chechen terrorists stormed a concert  

hall in Moscow taking 916 people hostage during  an in-progress performance of a musical called  

'Nord-Ost'. Several days of failed negotiations  later, the FSB authorised a head-on assault,  

deploying Alpha Group to eliminate  the threat and rescue the hostages. 

However, this wasn't to be any small  feat. The Alpha Group soon found that  

the entire concert hall had been rigged with  explosives that could be remotely triggered  

by the terrorists at the slightest  sign of anyone trying to get inside,  

which would very likely have killed everybody  inside. Given this tricky situation,  

the FSB instructed the Alpha Group to pump  a nerve gas through the ventilation system  

as a way of incapacitating the terrorists  while they gained access to the concert hall. 

“With precise fire from the silenced weapons,  all terrorists in the hall were eliminated.  

We shot without fail - hitting the body could lead  to the explosives' detonation. That's why we aimed  

for their heads,” said one anonymous former  officer of Alpha Group. Apparently, it took as  

little as five minutes for the team to eliminate  every single one of the terrorists inside the main  

concert hall, and a further ten to track down  and take out any stragglers in adjacent rooms. 

The Nord-Ost siege was over in a quarter of an  hour, and while challenging for the elite Alpha  

Group, the FSB's direction and coordination  resulted in them saving hundreds of civilians.  

However, sixty-seven were killed in the siege and  a further sixty-three died in hospital shortly  

after, supposedly as a result of the nerve  gas that was pumped into the concert hall,  

and ambulances being unprepared to treat  any hostages that were exposed to it. 

Naturally, the CIA has plenty of operatives  of its own at its disposal, enough to rival  

the FSB's Alpha Group. What you probably didn't  know, is that some of them may even have psychic  

powers. It sounds like something taken straight  from David Cronenberg's Scanners, or even  

the MK-Ultra offshoot responsible for giving  Eleven her powers in Netflix's Stranger Things,  

but the CIA are supposedly highly interested  in the application of psychic abilities. 

According to declassified  documents released in 2017,  

they tested the abilities of one Uri Geller.  Geller is a British-Israeli TV illusionist,  

best known for bending spoons supposedly  with the raw power of his mind.  

While this is a trick that has long been  met with scepticism from the British public,  

Uri Geller's illusions allegedly managed to draw  the attention of the CIA themselves. According  

to Geller himself, the Central Intelligence  Agency wanted to ascertain if the entertainer  

was truly clairvoyant and telepathic. He even  made the claim that “They wanted me to stand  

outside the Russian embassy in Mexico, and erase  floppy discs being flown out by Russian agents.” 

This was all a part of a bizarre CIA  programme known as 'Stargate' – yes,  

exactly like the movie – which was focused  on recruiting 'psychic warriors' to operate  

on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency.  After all, gathering intelligence becomes a  

much easier job when you've got an operative  that can literally read an enemy's mind. 

The strangeness of the CIA's activities doesn't  end with private assassins and psychic powers  

though. In fact, in a classic, old-school  spy fashion, the Central Intelligence Agency  

may have perfected the recipe for invisible  ink. Often synonymous with spies, invisible  

ink is a great way to conceal top secret  instructions for undercover operatives  

or to keep highly-sensitive information  classified and away from any prying eyes.  

Featured within those same declassified documents  from 2017, is the CIA's own recipe for homemade  

invisible ink; just like grandma used to make! The recipe goes as follows “Make a silver print,  

fixed and bleached in mercury chloride.  To make visible, dip in hypo.” Okay,  

so maybe not the easiest concoction to recreate.  The report featuring this recipe also includes  

instructions on how to open sealed letters without  the recipient knowing, as well as what to do with  

messages that are printed with invisible ink  on the human body. According to the report,  

in order to destroy any secret messages  written on a body, that body needs to be  

thoroughly scrubbed down, and washed with lime  or lemon juice to hide any traces of the message. 

Russia's own intelligence agency has their own  preferred modus operandi, of course. During  

March of 2018, in Wiltshire Cathedral City, UK,  father and daughter Sergei and Yulia Skripal  

were found on a bench with foam spilling from  their mouths after being exposed to a deadly,  

poisonous nerve agent known as 'Novichok'. Skripal  was an intelligence officer who'd been moved to  

the UK in 2010 as part of a spy exchange.  This assassination was eventually linked,  

after an investigation conducted by the UK  government, to agents working for the GRU,  

another of Russia's intelligence services. Far from the James Bond-style spy thriller  

mystery of the CIA and their invisible ink, this  incident was far more tragic. While the attack was  

carried out by the GRU, it's important to remember  that the FSB could very easily conduct a similar  

attack, after all, they've already proved their  fondness for nerve agents in the Nord-Ost siege. 

It's fair to say that the nations of Russia and  America haven't always had the best relationship,  

and trust between the two countries has  never quite recovered since the Cold War.  

This is something that can be seen mirrored in  the interactions between the CIA and FSB. The  

ever-present rivalry between the United States  and the Russian Federation persists even today.  

It is widely believed that the FSB was directly  involved in the email leaks that undermined  

Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.  Additionally, they have also played a hand in  

supporting a number extremist parties in Europe,  murdered Chechen opposition leaders in both Turkey  

and Austria, and perhaps most infamously of all,  influenced the 2016 US presidential election. 

On January the 10th 2017, a dossier  published by Buzzfeed – albeit unverified and  

uncorroborated – suggested that the FSB had been  collecting compromising evidence on Donald Trump.  

Many suspected that the goal of this was to  blackmail the would-be president into acting  

as Vladimir Putin's puppet at the head of the  US government. Whether this was true or not,  

President Trump's actions towards Russia have been  seen by many as soft, and many military members  

considered his defense of Russia even after  learning of bounties put on US troop's heads  

by Russian agents, as tantamount to treason. The CIA aren't above interfering in Russia's  

affairs either, though. Decades prior to the 2016  election, they recruited a Russian official who  

gradually began to climb the ranks of the  country's government. This informant within  

the Kremlin became one of the CIA's most valuable  and protected resources, feeding them information  

that pointed to the potential involvement of  Russia and the FSB in the 2016 election. However,  

this informant, who served as the CIA's only eyes  into the inner workings of the Russian government,  

was eventually extracted from the country for  his own safety, with the CIA still protecting  

his identity to this day; although some believe  it may have been the ill-fated Sergei Skripal. 

So, which is the better spy agency? In one corner,  secret assassins, psychic powers and invisible  

ink. In the other, highly-skilled elite spec  ops team and a lot of nerve agents. It's almost  

took close to call, we'd like to think that CIA  assassins with powerful telepathic abilities could  

hold their own against the FSB, and who knows,  maybe somewhere in the world, in the shadows  

where civilians aren't allowed to look, a fight  like that is going on, and we'd never even know. 

But if we're keeping our feet firmly  rooted in the realm of reality – meaning,  

psychic warriors need to be discounted, and  secret mind control projects like MK-Ultra  

are just seen as expensive and unethical  failures – we feel like we need to give  

this one to Russia. While the CIA's history  as a spy agency is definitely illustrious and  

influential – just ask the many countries  and organisations they infiltrated – they  

don't quite match up to the calculated  ruthlessness of the modern, Russian FSB.  

Not to assassin shame you or anything, CIA, but  at least the FSB doesn't need to subcontract its  

extra-judicial murders. Just saying. Better enjoy this show while you can,  

in case some shadowy government agents  come knocking at our door after this one. 

Now be sure to check out “CIA vs KGB –  Which Was Better During the Cold War?”  

and “CIA Project Stargate & Other Declassified  Secrets - How Successful Were They?”.