What's the point announcing it to the world? They only needed NATO higher-ups to know it existed, which is pretty likely given the state of Cold War espionage.
That's what I meant by the "world" -- the adversary, not everyone on the street. How could they be sure that NATO leadership knew though. Feed it to a double agent?
The publicly released statements, from defectors and others, these many years after seem to indicate they haven't done that. I certainly don't know the truth but it would seem they would want to make sure to let the other side know unambiguously that this exists and that it works well. (Now maybe I am missing a part of the strategy that discourages this?).
No, but I think that you're missing any evidence that the relevant intelligence groups didn't unambiguously know that it existed. That it works well? My guess is that if it works well, or doesn't really work at all, US intelligence would probably be more likely to have evidence of that than wikipedia.
