Cold War: Stevens in thick of it

Bob stevens talks about his military career as an intelligence officer during the Cold War.

Published: Monday, April 1, 2013 at 6:48 a.m.
Last Modified: Monday, April 1, 2013 at 6:48 a.m.

Bob Stevens is fluent in Russian. It's an interesting language to know in the modern world, but during the Cold War era, the skill was invaluable.

Stevens put that skill to use for 25 years in the U.S. Army. For most of his military career, the 79-year-old was stationed in West Germany, staring across the Berlin Wall at Soviet Russia. Stevens, a Hendersonville resident, joined the Army in 1952 at age 18 and launched a career in Cold War intelligence. He served three years in an intelligence unit.

Stevens left the Army in 1955, but re-enlisted in 1957. He requested to go to the Defense Language Institute. At the time, it was known as The Army Language School. He spent the next 47 weeks learning Russian.

“I did not know one word of Russian,” Stevens said.

He was fluent when he graduated from the course, however, and had mastered all the nuances of the language.

As the early 1960s approached, that skill would prove more useful than Stevens ever imagined. After a brief stop in Frankfurt, Germany, the Army wasn't through educating Stevens. They sent him back to the U.S., where he attended Georgetown University. He majored in languages again, but this time focused on Russian and German.

“Suddenly, I was a wellarmed hot shot,” he joked.

He headed back to Germany as a second lieutenant and became a member of a unit called TAREX, also known as Target Exploitation. It's a secret group that Stevens said people don't know much about. The group was part of the National Security Agency, and Stevens was part of a three-man detachment in West Berlin.

At this point, the Berlin Wall divided West and East Germany. Tension was hight. The Cold War was raging.

“We had access to special intelligence,” Stevens said. That information was shared with the U.S. Military Liaison Mission. The mission was a key instrument in America's eyes and ears on Russia.

Germany was divided into four sectors. The U.S., England and France had different sectors in the western half of the country, and each had its own liaison mission. Russia had something similar in the eastern half.

Stevens' detachment would filter intelligence and point the mission in the right direction. The mission, in turn, would send out tour officers who would photograph Russian activities. It was all about gathering the big picture through intelligence agencies and then the mission's work on the ground.

He returned stateside to Washington at Arlington Hall Station, which was run by the Army Security Agency. He was far away, but still involved with Russia. As he continued working in Washington, Stevens earned a master's in Soviet Area Studies at American University.

As a captain, Stevens returned to Germany and studied even more Russian in the Bavarian Alps at the U.S. Army Institute for Advanced Russian and Eastern European Studies. It was a total “immersion” in Russian culture, Stevens said. He had become an expert on Russia.

With that expertise, the logical next stop in his military career was Vietnam, Stevens joked.

The U.S. was fully engaged in Vietnam when he arrived in 1969. He initially served as a company commander for an intelligence unit. There were 550 men in his company. After six months, he became a J2 for the Military Assistance Command in Vietnam. He was the intelligence officer in charge of Vietcong infrastructure.

“Anything that was going on in Vietnam, it basically came through us,” he said.

After one year and one day in Vietnam, Stevens returned to a familiar place. He spent the next two years in Heidelberg, Germany, as the chief of current intelligence. He would enter his office each day to stacks of intelligence that had recently been gathered. He took all that information from various sources and searched for links to other intelligence.

The intensity in Germany in the 1970s was real, Stevens said.

“Every day there was indications that there could be war,” he said.

There were at least 20 divisions of the Soviet Army operating in Eastern Berlin, he said, and that knowledge kept the tension strung tight.

In 1972, he got the call that he'd been waiting on. Stevens went to work for the U.S. Military Liaison Mission. As an assistant operations officer, he was entrenched in the complicated interworking of U.S.Russia relations in what essentially was ground zero of the Cold War.

The true heroes of the Cold War were the tour officers, he said. Once they received directions to potential Soviet targets, they drove across the border to take photographs. They were safe as long as they were in their cars. When they exited their cars to take photographs or tape recordings, they were open to be shot by the Russian Army. That happened in 1985 when Arthur Nicholson became the last casualty of the Cold War.

“These are guys that are true heroes, but no one knows about them,” he said.

In 1973, Stevens returned to the United States to Fort Huachuca. He retired from the Army as a major in 1974.

He began teaching at colleges in California and then at age 62, he returned to school and earned a law degree from the Monterrey College of Law.

Since then, he has taught at schools including Mars Hill College and AB Technical College. He's been in Hendersonville for the past 10 years.

During his career, he lived through parts of a war that most people never heard about.

“It was a really interesting time,” he said. “It's an interesting part of the war that no one knows anything about. For us, it was just about doing our job.”

Reach Millwood at 828-6947881 or at


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