Cold War states openly justified modeling secret services on the Soviet security apparatus

Evidence

According to Mr. Dulles, the government had to “fight fire with fire,” and then with a disarming frankness by which the former head of the CIA distinguished himself from his colleagues in other countries, he went on to explain what this meant. The CIA, by implication, had to model itself upon the Soviet State Security Service, which “is more than a secret police organization, more than an intelligence and counter-intelligence organization. It is an instrument for subversion, manipulation and violence, for secret intervention in the affairs of other countries.” — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1942