Arthur D. Nicholson

Arthur D. Nicholson Jr. (7 June 1947 – 24 March 1985) was a United States Army military intelligence officer shot by a Soviet sentry while engaged in intelligence-gathering activities as part of an authorized military liaison mission which operated under reciprocal U.S.–Soviet authority. Military liaison missions were ostensibly liaisons between the British, French and U.S. forces and the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany (East Germany), but they had a known intelligence-gathering secondary mission and an important role to verify that offensive action was not being prepared. Reciprocal groups were authorized and operated by both the British, French and U.S. (in East Germany) and the Soviet Union (in West Germany) during the Cold War. Nicholson is officially regarded by the U.S. Department of Defense as having been a victim of "murder" and the final "victim" of the Cold War.^[1] Nicholson's death led to a U.S.–Soviet crisis and intense negotiations regarding the military liaison missions.