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Of course the Soviets have had their share of intelligence failures. During the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, the KGB failed to detect Israeli preparations for crossing the Suez Canal, and underestimated the maneuver's importance once it was under way. In New Delhi, the resident KGB team concluded that Indira Gandhi would easily win re-election in 1977. More embarrassing was the gambit of Vladimir Rybachenko, who served in Paris as a UNESCO official. Shortly before Soviet Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev arrived in Paris on a good-will visit in 1976, Rybachenko was caught receiving secret documents that described a French Defense Ministry computer system. Rybachenko was expelled. Then there was the gift by Colonel Vassili Denisenko, the Soviet military attaché in Switzerland, to an under cover KGB spy of 13 years.
Denisenko gave a pair of golden cuff links bearing the hammer-and-sickle crest to Swiss Brigadier General Jean-Louis Jeanmaire. When Jeanmaire wore them, Swiss security agents had their first clue to his treachery; he was sentenced to an 18-year prison term.
Western analysts believe the KGB has several flaws that result from its enormous size and the Soviets' authoritarian mentality. KGB agents overcollect, flooding the district and home offices with so much data that the agency does not or cannot efficiently separate the significant from the trivial. This may explain why, according to a defector, KGB field men in the Middle East reported on Israel's plan to strike Egypt in 1967, but the word never got to Egypt. The society that creates KGB inefficiencies is also an enormous advantage to the agency, permitting it great latitude without measurable objection from its populace. After all, the agency is charged with silencing domestic critics, including any who would make so bold as to criticize the KGB.