The summer of 1959 saw tensions between the USA and the Soviet Union experience an unprecedented thaw. The two global superpowers decided it would be a good idea to each stage an exhibition in the other’s country. Designed to encourage cultural exchange and to increase mutual understanding, in truth, it was more a means to show off the latest technology and propagandize.It was the Soviet Exhibition in New York that paved the way for one of the CIA’s most successful covert operations of the Cold War – one that the enemy wasn’t even aware of until decades later. This is how the USA, with a little help from their friends in Mexico, kidnapped a space probe from right under Soviet noses.