Countries with major counterintelligence failures are presented alphabetically. In each case, there is at least one systemic problem with seeking penetration agents when few or none may actually have existed, to the detriment of the functioning of the national service involved. Many of the individuals named have separate articles in Wikipedia. The emphasis here is on both national-level counterespionage problems, and how the individuals eluded detection. German counterespionage failures Wilhelm Canaris Red Orchestra Otto John Russian and Soviet counterespionage failures The Czarist Russia had a secret police before the Soviet Union, and modern Russia still has intelligence services that may have been impacted by events during the Soviet period. While there were penetration accusations after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the great mass of large-scale accusations and purges, after Stalin consolidated power but before WWII, tend to blur into the Great Terror. After Stalin's death, Lavrenti Beria, heading state security, attempted to gain control, but was shot and his subordinates purged. Anatoliy Golitsyn Yuri Nosenko Oleg Penkovsky Oleg Penkovsky was a UK-US defector in place, in an extremely key position in the Soviet system. His position was such that he not only was able to provide information about what the Soviets had learned about the West, but also about the real capabilities of the Soviets. A book, The Penkovsky Papers, was prepared, posthumously, with assistance from US intelligence. A 1976 Senate commission stated that "the book was prepared and written by witting agency assets who drew on actual case materials." Much of the material provided by Penkovsky has been declassified. Petr Popov Adolf Tolkachev Vladimir Vetrov One example of counter-intelligence in action involves the case of Soviet defector Vladimir Vetrov, codenamed "Farewell," who gave several classified documents in 1981 to French Intelligence detailing industrial espionage committed by the Soviet Union in various western nations in a collection called the Farewell Dossier. The information was passed on to the Central Intelligence Agency, who exploited it by secretly preparing sabotaged "intelligence" for Soviet spies to collect. After the Soviet's incorporated the flawed industrial technology, it caused numerous technical failures in the USSR including a massive oil pipeline explosion which damaged the economy. Igor Gouzenkov UK counterespionage failures A group of Soviet sympathizers, in respected positions in British society, formed the Cambridge Five, sometimes called the Cambridge Four, and it has never been established how many active agents were involved. Of these, the most