Reddit reviews Trust but Verify: Imagery Analysis in the Cold War
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Well, this is called Intelligence as you mention in your text and we may have to break down by categories in order to provide a proper answer. We should talk about HUMINT, ELINT, SIGINT, OSINT, MASINT, etc etc to see which one did better.
On one hand the Soviet Union was extremely effective gathering technical intelligence, got a lot of info from Western organizations that saved them years of experimentation/development -like the atomic bomb-These success being mainly achieved through sympathizers to the Soviet cause, as mentioned by toryhistory. Soviets were also very efficient in eavesdropping. When they tried to deploy their own agents they seems to have struggled unable to cope with western lifestyle as opposed to Soviet propaganda.
US was very efficient using satellites and planes to gather intelligence and gives them a good picture of Soviet capabilities. On the other hand deploying agents agents (part of HUMINT) beyond the Iron Curtain was almost impossible, they typically depended on defectors walking into the US (or British) embassies.
A good reading on US satellite intelligence program is:
Trust but verify by D. Lindgren
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Trust-But-Verify-Imagery-Analysis/dp/1557505187
Somehow polemic the so called "Mitrokhin Archives" that gives insight into the KGB methods, worth reading.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sword-Shield-Mitrokhin-Archive-History/dp/0465003109/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368440267&sr=1-3&keywords=mitrokhin+archive
The subject is massive really.