Another fun thing about the Cold War era: false flag terrorism. Operation Gladio was a "stay behind" type mission where terrorist acts were conducted by the government and attributed to fake terrorist groups.

It works like this: say you don't like the resident communist Italian party. Do a few terrorist acts and have a fake communist group claim responsibility. Now make sure to do this right before a big election. Yowza. Wasn't the Cold War era just peachy?