During the Cold War, the Polish, East German, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Romanian, and Czechoslovakian intelligence agencies often acted on behalf of the KGB where their personnel might be likely to exploit local sympathies and gain better results. Their representatives were often required to report their recruits to the local KGB rezidentura, in case “a horse was already being run by another stable,” and were directed by the KGB to exploit particular émigré groups. For example, the Polish UB was especially active in Chicago, where there was a large expatriate community, and the Czech StB concentrated on former refugees and people who had been sympathetic to Czechoslovakia since the Munich Crisis of 1938.
Western counterintelligence agencies invariably considered all Eastern Bloc adversaries, with the exception of the Yugoslavs, to be Soviet satellites.