Western Intelligence and the Collapse of the Soviet Union: 1980-1990: Ten Years that did not Shake the World

Western Intelligence and the Collapse of the Soviet Union

Western Intelligence and the Collapse of the Soviet Union 1980–1990 Ten Years that did not Shake the World

David Arbel and Ran Edelist

FRANK CASS LONDON • PORTLAND, OR

First published in 2003 in Great Britain by FRANK CASS PUBLISHERS Crown House, 47 Chase Side, Southgate London N14 5BP and in the United States of America by FRANK CASS PUBLISHERS c/o ISBS, 5824 N.E.Hassalo Street Portland, Oregon, 97213–3644 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Website: www.frankcass.com Copyright © 2003 David Arbel and Ran Edelist British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Arbel, David Western intelligence and the collapse of the Soviet Union: 1980–1990—ten years that did not shake the world 1. Espionage, British—Soviet Union 2. Espionage, German—Soviet Union 3. Espionage, American—Soviet Union 4. Soviet Union—Politics and government— 1985–1991 5. Soviet Union—Politics and government—1953–1985 I. Title II. Edelist, Ran 327.1′24′047′09048 ISBN 0-203-01160-0 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-7146-5401-9 (cloth) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Arbel, David [′Ivaron. English] Western intelligence and the collapse of the Soviet Union: 1980–1990: ten years that did not shake the world/David Arbel and Ran Edelist p.cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7146-5401-9 (cloth) 1. Intelligence service—United States- History-20th century. 2. Intelligence service-Europe, Western-History-20th century 3. Intelligence service-International cooperation 4. Soviet Union-Politics and government-1985–1991 I. Edelist, Ran. II. Title. JK468.I6A84913 2003 327.1273047/09/048–dc21 2002041498 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher of this book.

Contents

Preface

v

Surprise

vii

Acknowledgments

viii

Introduction

ix

1

The Threat

1

2

The Myth

48

3

Conceptual Conformity

112

4

The Great Surprise

169

5

The Writing on the Wall

174

6

Why the West Failed to See the Writing on the Wall

199

7

Politics and Intelligence

239

8

The Relevance of Strategic Intelligence

273

Epilogue: From Strategic Blind Spot to Operational Blunder

284

Appendix A:

Glossary

301

Appendix B:

List of interviewees

304

Select Bibliography

307

Index

314

Preface

When the worst terrorist atrocity in American history occurred on 11 September 2001, the intelligence agencies of the United States and most of the Western world were taken completely by surprise. Ten years earlier, in 1991, those same organizations were surprised when the Soviet Union collapsed, although they invested enormous resources in intelligence and waged a campaign against the Soviets across the entire globe. This book sets out to explain why Western intelligence failed to diagnose the Soviet Union’s terminal condition, despite the many obvious symptoms, and, worse, why the intelligence agencies failed to convey what they did know and did assess correctly to the political echelon. Although the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the terrorist actions against the United States in 2001 were very different events, we thought it would be useful to analyze, albeit in abbreviated form, why the intelligence agencies failed to foresee and preempt what President George W.Bush called “a declaration of war on America.” The last chapter of the book deals with that. In the course of gathering material for this book, dozens of people were interviewed: government officials, academics and intelligence personnel. Most were from the United States and Russia, the others from Britain, Germany, France and Israel. The interviewees included foreign ministers, intelligence chiefs and experts on the Soviet Union and communism. Written material was also used, including biographies of the secretaries of state in the 1980s, as well as classified documents released by the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Intelligence Council, the body responsible for national evaluation in the United States. Despite this abundance of source material, we have not produced an academic book. It is rather an attempt to share with our readers, in jargon-free language, the impressions the authors gained from their interviewees, many of whom played key roles in the last decade of the Cold War, and the trends that emerge from the CIA documents on the relevant topics. Every one of the interviewees readily admitted to having been surprised by the collapse of the Soviet Union. They differed only in the reasons they gave for their blindness. Clearly the capacity to understand historic turning points as they

vi

occur is limited, however sophisticated the intelligence-gathering machinery at work. Moreover, politicians, it seems, often fail to heed the intelligence evaluations they receive. They tend to adopt them only when they reinforce what they think in any case, and regard them with suspicion or ignore them when they cannot be reconciled with their world views and political agendas. Given the frequent failures of intelligence agencies it might have been expected that the use and funding of intelligence by politicians would gradually diminish. This has not happened. The politicians, it seems, are not yet ready to forego intelligence, even if they are not always ready to listen to what it has to say. The intelligence failure of 1991 was in the main a failure of the CIA’s Intelligence Directorate, responsible for the national estimate. The current failure to prevent the terrorist attacks is much worse. It was an operational blunder. The 1991 failure produced a surprise, which was “positive.” The fact that Western intelligence failed to note the disintegration of the Soviet Union was not a matter for a commission of inquiry. But the failure to uncover and prevent the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had very serious consequences. It has already had a traumatic effect, and it requires a thorough inspection of the intelligence agencies.

Surprise

“I was surprised,” says Lawrence Eagleburger, US secretary of state in 1992. “Although by the end of the 1980s I was aware that the USSR was changing rapidly, I don’t think it was possible at the time to say it was about to collapse.” “I was surprised,” says James Baker, Eagleburger’s predecessor at the State Department. “We were mainly surprised by the speed of the collapse. Not only was our intelligence surprised, so was Gorbachev. Actually, we were all surprised.” “I was surprised,” says George Shultz, Baker’s predecessor. “The collapse was a surprise even though at the end of President Reagan’s terms of office, we felt that the Cold War had to all intents and purposes ended.” “I was surprised,” says Robert Blackwell of the CIA, senior Sovietologist at the National Intelligence Council during the second half of the 1980s. “We did not think that the USSR would collapse.” “I was surprised,” says Professor Dimitri Simes, director of the Nixon Institute in Washington, “when I realized that the USSR had collapsed.” “I was surprised,” says Paul Goble, director of the Jamestown Foundation, an expert on Soviet nationalities and former senior US government official. “None of us imagined that the Soviet Union would simply cease to exist.” “I was surprised,” says Serge Schmemann, New York Times correspondent in Moscow at the end of the 1980s. “Neither I nor the US Embassy staff estimated that the USSR was about to collapse. We assumed we would go on living with the Soviets well after the year 2000.” “I was surprised,” says Richard Pipes, professor of Russian history at Harvard University. “We had a good understanding of the changes that were taking place, we thought they would be significant, but we did not think that they would lead to collapse.”

Acknowledgments

First, we would like to thank the many interviewees whose names appear in this book. Most of them came from politics, the academic world or the intelligence communities in the US, Russia, Britain, Germany, France and Israel. We are thankful for their time and readiness to share with us their knowledge and long experience in world politics. Their combined contribution made this book possible. We would also like to thank our friends Reuven Merhav, former director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, for his valuable comments on the Hebrew edition of this book; Rami Tal, a prominent journalist and editor, for his useful editorial suggestions; and Leslie Susser, for his professional translation, which captured the letter and spirit of the original Hebrew text.

Introduction

In 1991, one of the most decisive strategic, geopolitical, and social changes of the century, certainly since the Second World War, took place: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and communism, its ideology, vanished in a blink of history’s eye. The collapse, its timing and the speed with which it happened took politicians, Sovietologists and the media by surprise. The world’s two most powerful intelligence agencies, the CIA and the KGB, were caught napping. Thousands of years of history have taught that the struggle for survival in an unegalitarian world brings war in its wake—tribal, religious, or national. At the dawn of civilization, the fear of attack led to the establishment of early warning systems, the forerunner of modern intelligence services. Today these intelligence organizations enjoy special status, prestige and lavish budgets. Even when their failures are exposed, as they frequently are, they still seem to possess an esoteric brand of wisdom and knowledge. The secrecy in which they are shrouded helps create an aura of power, and suggests a special capacity to understand and shape political and strategic change. But although intelligence services must bear the brunt of the failure to foresee the collapse of the USSR, politicians, too, were partly to blame: they were captive to preconceptions and policies that prevented them from understanding the fundamental changes in the Soviet Union, even when they were well informed. History is replete with examples of the selective and often manipulative use made by decision-makers of intelligence information and evaluations; even the intelligence organizations themselves, which are assumed to be above personal, clique-based or political intrigue, are not immune from such abuse. In no Western country was an early warning given of the impending collapse of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, there were no public calls for the dismissal of the heads of intelligence agencies, nor was their responsibility ever investigated. The parliaments of the Western world, like the media, refrained from taking the matter up, apart from the odd meaningless question or occasional shot from the hip. This is what happened in the United States, although it invested some $30 billion per year in intelligence whose main objective was to find out what was happening in the USSR and where it was headed. In what was then West Germany, where devel opments in the USSR and its satellites were of crucial

x

significance, the BND was not asked to explain to its government or to the public why it had not prepared the political echelon for the collapse of the communist regime in East Germany—though the bill for this failure is still being footed by the German public. British intelligence—one of the world’s best —accepted the American evaluation of the Soviet Union instead of forming its own, leaving its country’s political leadership as much in the dark as everybody else. Embarrassing surprises were common in other celebrated intelligence organizations too, in the closing years of the twentieth century. Yuri Andropov, KGB chief in the early 1980s, did not properly assess Afghani reaction to the Soviet invasion. Israel’s vaunted intelligence service was late in understanding changes in the Palestinian nationalist movement. Britain’s MI6 failed to foresee the Argentine invasion of the Falklands, and all Western intelligence agencies were surprised by Saddam Hussein’s march into Kuwait. The espionage agencies’ chief responsibility is to be the sniffer dogs of the countries they serve. It is up to them to collect information and to provide evaluations to enable politicians to form clear-headed policy. Over the years, many of the agencies turned into powerful and sophisticated organizations and monopolized information gathering, evaluation and clandestine activities. Often the fate of countries, especially in critical periods, seemed to depend to no small extent on the quality of their intelligence machinery. Yet the failure to foresee the Soviet collapse was common to the entire intelligence community: from the CIA to the KGB, through the Israeli Mossad, the British MI6, the French DGSE, the Italian SIM, and up to the small Scandinavian services and Japanese intelligence, which comprises several organizations, each of which successfully hid the little it knew from its rivals. Unlike Hollywood scenarios celebrating the brotherhood of thieves, the struggle against the USSR was a conspiracy of the “good guys” and it was waged with the fervor of a holy Crusade. To fight the totalitarian faith that characterized the communists, the West armed itself with a similarly total commitment; the CIA’s struggle against the USSR took on a semblance of service in the army of the Lord. Like all religious wars, it too had its holy texts, in the form of intelligence evaluations, and its faith, in the reality they depicted, with any contradictory reports tantamount to blasphemy. With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that the information available in the 1980s should have enabled intelligence services to conclude that Moscow had ceased to be a strategic threat and was sinking rapidly, creating a new international reality and a need for a new international order. However, even when US intelligence officers occasionally sensed that the evil empire was no longer an empire, and not all that evil, they did not succeed in conveying this message to the political echelons. They themselves may not have grasped that their findings indicated an imminent Soviet collapse, or they may have found it easier to fall into line with conventional wisdom—that the USSR was and would always be the enemy.

xi

American intelligence’s evaluation failure blinded not only other Western intelligence services, which depended upon it, but also Sovietologists and the media in the US and most of the free world. The veil of secrecy in the USSR, coupled with Western intelligence’s systematic leaking of “inside” information, created an anti-Soviet front in the West as a whole. The result was a mental paralysis that prevented identification of imminent change at the door and blocked the development of new policy options. In October 1991, Melvin A.Goodman, a former senior CIA Soviet analyst, testified to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He argued that intelligence evaluations of the USSR were “cooked”, or in plain language, falsified, at CIA management level. Many American intelligence personnel, as well as committee members, reject his accusations outright. But whether “cooked” or not, these and other intelligence materials found their way to CIA contacts abroad and served as a basis for the joint analyses of the Western intelligence services. They seeped through to politicians who used them to shape policy toward the USSR, especially when these evaluations reinforced their own ideas and political agendas. Throughout the Cold War, this was the circular routine of a relentless crusade, which in later years even reached outer space. The destructive consequences of the failure to understand the changes in the Soviet Union were felt with particular poignance in the Third World, which CIA director William Casey defined as “the main battlefield against communism.” It was in those tormented parts of the world that the struggle was waged between the American way of life and the Soviet brand of Marxist-Leninism. The whole world was the arena. Europe became a nuclear hostage, and the Third World the battlefield. In fact, the two powers made common cause in an effort to wage the struggle far from their own territories, in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Though the confrontation between the great powers was known as the “Cold” War, it exacted more than 20 million victims, from Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia in the Far East to Ethiopia, Somalia, Angola, Mozambique and many other African lands, through several countries in the Middle East and all the way to Nicaragua, El Salvador and Grenada in Latin America and the Caribbean. Not all the so-called “small wars” fought since the Second World War were sparked directly by Moscow and Washington; but there was not one which was not exploited by the superpowers, each against the other, acting on the principle that “He who is not our friend is our enemy.” This was one of the areas where intelligence should have explained to policymakers that not every tribal clash in a far-flung corner of Africa was part of the global conflict and that Soviet political and economic activity in a specific state could be of a coincidental, temporary nature, not necessarily part of a master plan for global domination, or a move likely to activate the “domino theory.” Exact data on intelligence expenditure are difficult to obtain, and it is still more difficult to single out the allocations spent for activities vis-à-vis the

xii

USSR. Nor is it possible to assess how much of that activity was really necessary and how much was used for sheer propaganda or simply to satisfy the politicians’ needs. The total budget of all Western intelligence services in 1991 alone was some $40 billion, with the American share coming to $28 billion, $3 billion of which was earmarked for CIA activities. The KGB’s First Directorate, the CIA’s counterpart, spent 4.9 billion rubles that year, or about $7.4 billion at 1991’s official exchange rate, but any direct comparison is questionable because of the unclear definition of the Directorate’s mandate. Most states do not publish details showing the intelligence share in the defense budget. Therefore it is difficult to isolate what may seem today to have been a waste of public funds; the extent of the threat that was averted will never be known, nor whether the sums expended were justified. The failure to predict the Soviet collapse was chiefly the fault of intelligence evaluators. Personal, political and ideological conflicts within the services played a part, as did their relations with politicians, decision-makers and other intelligence agencies. Conversations with many of the people who watched the collapse of the USSR produce the same answers: “We didn’t think.” “We didn’t appreciate.” “We didn’t know, and even if we had known, we wouldn’t have acted differently.”

1 The Threat

THE IMPACT OF THE NUCLEAR FEAR ON INTELLIGENCE What caused the blind spot? Why did so many leading experts, people with rich diplomatic, intelligence and academic experience, fail to grasp that the Soviet Union was rapidly approaching its imperial demise? Why did they not realize that it had ceased to be a threat to the West, and that it was doomed to disintegrate? Perhaps, more than anything else, it was the nuclear threat that hovered over the world throughout the Cold War that prevented the intelligence community from shaping objective assessments. Both the CIA and the KGB believed that their early warning systems for conventional attacks were good enough to provide timely alerts on enemy deployment, as well as reliable and continuous intelligence in the course of hostilities. But the nuclear factor made both sides’ intelligence analysis and assessment bodies largely irrelevant. The threat was ever-present, and it became a part of consciousness. Intelligence services were not prepared to accept responsibility for assessing if and when the enemy would make use of its nuclear weapons. It preferred to leave it to the politicians to decide how to respond to the threat. Questions like whether to launch a preemptive nuclear attack or opt for a second strike option, decisions at the heart of foreign and defense policy and the build-up of military forces, were outside the domain of the conventional intelligence networks. There was no practical use for intelligence evaluation of the nature of the threat and its validity. The threat lay in the very existence of nuclear arsenals in the hands of the enemy. It was a total threat that demanded total response. During the nuclear arms race, the two superpowers continued to produce conventional weapons, as if they could have waged a conventional war without taking the bomb into account and without resorting to their nuclear stockpiles. The introduction of tactical nuclear arms into the conventional battlefield swept away the barrier, if it ever existed, between the two forms of war and made direct US-Soviet military confrontation considerably less likely. Even when it seemed during the mid-1980s that the substitutes for direct confontation—like

2 WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION

the proxy wars in the Third World—were a pointless and immoral exercise, the built-in inertia of the doomsday machine kept it trundling along as if were not linked to any logical framework, moral or utilitarian. What eventually halted the nuclear race was the Soviet collapse, not Western policies or military power or American intelligence. Americans believe that the seeds of the superpower conflict were sown in the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. Russians are convinced that the West’s wish to destroy them dates back at least to the French revolution. But it was only after the Second World War, with the creation of the two blocs and the development of the atomic bomb, that these beliefs became frighteningly real, waxing or waning over the next 45 years as the situation heated or cooled. Here were the two strongest, biggest families on the block in terms of territory (excepting China) and nuclear stockpiles, each intent on its own version of a global mission— driven sometimes by megalomania, sometimes by ideology. On one side was capitalism, on the other communism, but behind it all were conflicting economic interests, historic rivalry, military tension and differences in mentality. On both sides there were people skilled enough and insane enough to slaughter each other with a hitherto unknown efficiency. It was the nuclear demon that turned all of this into global lunacy. The genie had popped out of the test tube at Los Alamos in 1945 and was still at large. It was intelligence, at least according to its role-definition, which should have averted the tailspin that began with the Cold War and continues to this day. Professional assessment of data should identify real dangers and discard false suspicions, paranoia and hysteria. But what actually happened was that the intelligence communities on both sides joined the East-West struggle like fighting units, giving free rein to interests and emotions alien to professional intelligence analysis. The critical results: they failed to disseminate the fact that the balance of fear had put nuclear attack beyond the realm of the possible; they failed to diagnose the USSR’s maladies as incurable; and they failed to identify the point in time at which the USSR started down the path to inevitable disintegration and ceased to constitute a threat. Following the Second World War, Western intelligence adopted the view that the USSR was bent on expansion, geographical and ideological. The confrontation entered the Cold War era after the Soviets completed their domination of Eastern Europe, and broke America’s nuclear monopoly. Before setting off on the nuclear route, American military personnel and scientists involved in the nuclear project exchanged views and information with the politicians for whom they had created the bomb, in an attempt to formulate rules for the uncharted road ahead. In 1946 a commission was appointed including scientist Robert Oppenheimer, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission David Lilienthal, and Secretary of State Dean Acheson. Intelligence representatives were conspicuously absent. The commission recommended that atomic research and development be carried out in future within the framework

THE THREAT 3

of international cooperation, to prevent independent development of this weapon of mass destruction. Bernard Baruch, President Harry S. Truman’s representative in talks with the Soviets, shot the proposal down, claiming that adequate safeguards were unattainable. Baruch may have been right, but intelligence failed to offer a monitoring regime that could have made it work. Since Truman never ordered that this be done, the world may have missed a chance to control the spread of atomic weapons at a time when the monster was still in its infancy. There were more committees. Robert Oppenheimer, later a chief advocate of nuclear weapons control, was appointed by Acheson to chair one of them. Scientists, political scientists and administration officials, including McGeorge Bundy, were on it; a senior and influential member was Allen W.Dulles, who was about to be appointed director of the CIA. One of the panel’s conclusions was that: Basically, and in the long term, the problems arising from the release of atomic energy directly affect the human race’s ability to conduct its affairs… Even with strict international control, it is hard to foresee how war will be waged in the future if one of the sides is tempted to make use of atomic weapons… Under these conditions, the use of nuclear arms is a matter for continuous alarm since 1946. By 1949 it was already clear that if it got out of control the monster would kill its creator. The question of whether the USSR had the interest, intention or ability to initiate nuclear war became irrelevant. From now on, fear of the Soviet bomb became the motive force, and there was no intelligence input to try to diffuse it. By this time it was clear that the nuclear threat called for unambiguous decisions, which could be taken only by an elected politician responsible for shaping policy and executing it. Truman, the first US president to use the bomb (and the last, so far), was also the first politician to grasp its significance to the structure and hierarchy of government. In his last speech to the nation before leaving office, in January 1953, he said that nuclear war would claim millions of victims and therefore “such a war is not a possible policy for rational men.” In a world where the speed of an intercontinental ballistic missile across the ocean has to compete with the speed with which the president of the attacked country reaches for the doomsday button, intelligence assessments are worthless. Intelligence is inherently unable to provide decisive, unambiguous answers, and the decision whether to push the button is the politician’s alone. Fateful decisions are not a matter of a momentary whim. They are part of a historical continuum in which ideology and political outlook carry most weight. Where responsibility is the politician/decision-makers’ alone, and the result of the decision is existential, a body that cannot throw light on the basic question—will or won’t the enemy use his nuclear weapons—carries little weight.

4 WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION

Intelligence did provide data and assessments about the other side’s nuclear capacity and in so doing contributed to the spiral of fear. The more information obtained about the other side’s capabilities, the greater the fear, and the pressure to create a still more powerful destructive countermeasure. This put the other side on the defensive, and forced it to respond in kind. Thus the two powers were drawn into an escalating spiral, the results of which remain a permanent threat to humanity. No war has ever reached the First World War’s delirious pitch of slaughter—3 million dead in the first three months. A nuclear war, however, would kill tens of millions with the first strike, destroying entire cities and causing catastrophic environmental damage for generations to come. In contrast to conventional warfare, one principle of the new type of war is that everyone plays the big game. In a nuclear war every man, woman and child in the world will be in the front line, including decision-makers and their families—no matter what type of shelter they take once the button is pushed. The Soviet system for mounting a nuclear strike was “exactly like opening a safe in Switzerland,” explains former Red Army General Dudnik. “Two people, the general secretary and the defense minister, were to press the button together.” In the US the responsibility is that of the president alone. He always carries a plastic card containing the codes he must pass to the Pentagon and the strategic force commander to order a nuclear strike and is accompanied by an officer who carries the briefcase known as the “football” which contains the items needed to activate the American doomsday machine. Should the president decide one fine day that he feels like destroying, say, Moscow, he would call the Pentagon, using the voice identification card which confirms that the speaker is indeed the president of the United States. Then he would look at the list of targets on his plastic card, find the code listed beside the word “Moscow,” and repeat it into the secure telephone he would be using. “Between us and destruction there is only the touch of a button,” pondered Ronald Reagan in his autobiography. He was aware that the US possessed a wealth of theoretical options and responses to a nuclear attack, but with things moving so rapidly, he could not help wondering about their efficiency in real time. A random flash on a radar screen could have created a situation where he would have six minutes to decide whether to start Armageddon. He noted that the Soviets sometimes positioned a nuclear submarine near the US coast that could have turned the White House into a heap of radioactive rubble within six to eight minutes. The American system of nuclear response seems somewhat absurd in view of what might have happened had a surprise nuclear attack come when the president was asleep. The “football,” according to procedure, was in the possession of the White House communications officer, stationed near the telephone switchboard in the basement. On receiving an alert, the officer was to meet the president forthwith in the Oval Office. But the president would have needed at least ten to fifteen minutes from the moment he was woken to reach

THE THREAT 5

the meeting on which humanity’s fate depended. A nuclear missile would reach its target in the United States in five minutes if fired from a submarine or eight to ten minutes from Russian territory. Should this have happened, the White House would have activated the second-strike option, based on the assumption that the US had a sufficiently strong home front to absorb the first strike and to wipe out the advantage the USSR had gained. The USSR, of course, would have been aware of this option, awareness that in theory should have ruined its appetite for a nuclear confrontation. American presidents though were not always fully in control of the “football.” While vacationing at his home in Georgia, President Carter was not convinced that the Soviet nuclear threat was all that dramatic or acute. Overriding the hallowed procedures, he refused to allow the Pentagon to place a trailer near his house for the “football” duty officer, who had to stay at a hotel ten miles from the ranch. President Ford once lost the man carrying his briefcase during a trip to South America. So did President Reagan, and the world never knew that for a few difficult moments its fate had been stuck in an elevator in the White House. And after the 1982 attempt on Reagan’s life, an alert FBI agent removed all the “evidence” from the scene, including Reagan’s identity card for communication with the nuclear strike force, and it was returned only two weeks later. Moreover, President Nixon was updated about the October 1973 nuclear alert only hours after it was declared. The reason: one or more stiff drinks he had imbibed due to the pressures of Watergate. The situation in the USSR was no less idiosyncratic. During the plot against Gorbachev, between the afternoon of 18 August and the morning of 22 August 1991, Gorbachev’s nuclear briefcase was in the possession of his captors. On 25 December 1991, on the eve of the changeover in leadership between Gorbachev and Yeltsin, Yeltsin was was offended by something Gorbachev said, and did not turn up for the ceremony. He sent defense minister General Yevgeniy Shaposhnikov to receive the briefcase in his stead. In May 1981, General Secretary Brezhnev appeared at the annual meeting of KGB senior officials. The agency’s chairman, Yuri Andropov, discussing the nuclear threat posed by the new Reagan administration, reported on a joint effort by the KGB and the GRU military intelligence organization to unmask the US and NATO’s evil intentions. This was the origin of Operation RYAN (Raketno Yadernoye Napadenie—nuclear missile offensive), a major intelligence collection effort, which continued for three years. Oleg Gordievsky, who during the 1980s served as deputy, later head, of the KGB station in London and worked at the same time for MI6, told his British controllers that many top KGB officers regarded Andropov’s warning of a possible Western nuclear attack as somewhat exaggerated. They understood that it was hot air, but, nevertheless, joined vigorously in the new intelligence effort. Senior KGB officer Vassily I.Krivokizha was appointed to coordinate RYAN. In March 1982 he went to Washington to supervise the efforts to unmask the Reagan administration’s nuclear intentions vis-à-vis the USSR. That same month

6 WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION

all Western KGB stations, especially in the US and leading NATO states, were ordered to give top priority to RYAN. In May 1982 Andropov left the KGB for a full-time job in the Politburo, his first step in the race to succeed Brezhnev. His 64-year-old replacement, Vitali V. Fedorchuk, continued to give high priority to Operation RYAN, albeit with less enthusiasm than Andropov. However, Andropov’s election as general secretary breathed new life into the operation. In early 1983, the East European satellite intelligence services were asked to join the mission. In August of that year a cable signed by the then head of the First Chief Directorate, Vladimir Kryuchkov, asked them to look out for indications of US preparations for nuclear attack. The tension between the US and the USSR after the downing of the South Korean passenger plane (KAL007) by Soviet warplanes increased Soviet paranoia. There was another wave of memos and pressure on intelligence to increase efforts to gather information on Washington’s nuclear intentions. NATO’s Able Archer exercise in late 1983 served the Soviets as additional proof. In January 1984, at a meeting of senior KGB staff, Kryuchkov, surveying RYAN’s achievements, declared that the threat of nuclear war had increased. He directed KGB operatives to continue watching the “dangerous preparations” for a possible nuclear offensive. Insane, bizarre, or amusing as it might sound, KGB headquarters kept on pressing for such signs. Reagan’s and Thatcher’s harsh anti-communist rhetoric did nothing to allay Soviet suspicions. The decision to deploy Pershing II and Cruise missiles in Europe merely increased Soviet paranoia. Professional KGB officers found no evidence to support the theory that the US was preparing a nuclear offensive against the USSR, since, in fact, it was not. But for four years in the mid-1980s, Soviet politician/decision-makers and intelligence leaders kept ordering the KGB to find “the evidence,” while KGB professionals did not dare stand up and denounce the directives for the nonsense they were. During the first half of the 1980s, against the background of Brezhnev’s twilight years, Andropov’s grave illness and Chernenko’s senility, the nuclear game reached its most dangerous threshold, with the intelligence community on both sides doing nothing to alleviate mutual fears and suspicions. “During NATO’s 1983 Able Archer exercise,” Gordievsky recalls, “the world was closer to a conflagration than it had been since the 1962 missile crisis.” Here was where the intelligence community should have given President Reagan a reliable assessment, calling his attention to the potential danger against the background of a weakening Soviet regime, and the obvious need for measures to allay Moscow’s fears. But such an approach would not have suited Reagan or CIA Director William Casey, who were both busy increasing the level of friction with the USSR. At the outset of his second term in 1985, however, Reagan, against the position adopted by administration hawks, took steps to limit the nuclear threat and to speed up the negotiations on strategic arms limitations. The first serious

THE THREAT 7

attempts in this direction had been made in the 1970s, during the Nixon administration. Henry Kissinger, who served as national security adviser and secretary of state, tried to link nuclear arms limitation to Soviet consideration for America’s Third World interests. The Brezhnev-Gromyko duo answered “Nyet”— that is, they refused to link Soviet Third World policy to the nuclear race. During Reagan’s administration the Soviets, now weaker, were less stubborn. Later, during Bush’s term, as disaster knocked on the Kremlin’s door, Gorbachev was willing to accept almost any linkage, including one-sided partial disarmament, in return for Western grants. In 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt coined his “Speak softly and carry a big stick,” slogan, which became the basis of American foreign policy. Still, anyone who thought that the US-Soviet dialogue would be carried out with the courtesy of two noblemen about to duel, was soon proved wrong. Following the Second World War, the vacuum left after the dismantling of the old British, French and the Japanese empires was filled by the US and the USSR. Their inexperience in global affairs was one of the factors which led to the nuclear arms race. It resembled a war dance in which the dancer whirls an ever-heavier club and keeps dancing until he is completely dazed. The real skill lies in keeping the stick from falling on his rival’s head or on his own foot. Toward the end of the 1970s American intelligence estimated that a surprise Soviet first strike would comprise 1,300 nuclear warheads carried by intercontinental missiles, and 280 launched from submarines, plus 169 nuclear bombs dropped from airplanes: in total, 1,749 nuclear explosions. But, mused those responsible for preserving the American way of life, the US would still have 530 ICMs and 659 nuclear submarine missiles, for second-strike retaliation. Those who were more cautious and favored America’s striking first calculated that 2,418 nuclear bombs of various types would be dropped on the USSR, resulting in a Soviet second strike of not more than 930 nuclear warheads. The destruction of New York would require two Soviet ten-megaton bombs, while for the destruction of Moscow one ten-megaton American bomb would suffice. US nuclear experts made clear to decision-makers that 67 million communists could be destroyed with 688 bombs of ten to twenty megatons each, while the Soviets would need 167 similar bombs to hit 167 cities of over 500,000 residents each. Not since the vision of the four horsemen of the apocalypse had doomsday calculations been made at such a pitch of horror and gravity. Nevetheless, nuclear programs in Israel, South Africa, India and Pakistan were allowed to develop with the silent complicity of the American administration, because they were seen as part of Western deployment against the international Communist threat. In all these cases, the US was satisfied with a show of empty protest. NUCLEAR POWER IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR The nuclear venture began, as human ventures tend to do, with good, even lofty, intentions, and from a sense, rightly or wrongly, of there being “no choice.” The

8 WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION

debate on the actual development of the bomb began in the early 1940s, and intelligence was even then out of the loop. The motive behind the debate was military expedience, the tone was moral and political; interests and instincts were decisive. On 20 June 1945 the Japanese war cabinet convened to discuss the implications of Germany’s defeat and the successful US Pacific campaign. Japanese Foreign Minister Hideki Tojo (nicknamed “Razor”), backed by Emperor Hirohito, urged entering negotiations with the Americans on surrender. History does not contain many such moments of grace, when would-be Napoleons dedicated to fight to the death, usually of others, are forced to acknowledge defeat, personal and national. An envoy was sent to Moscow to ask Stalin to announce at the Potsdam Conference, where he was about to meet with President Truman and Prime Minister Winston Churchill, that Tokyo was willing to lay down its arms. The Conference opened on 13 July 1945 and Stalin duly brought up Japan’s position, but Truman did not seem to be interested. He was already considering dropping the first atomic bomb on Japan. After lunch one day in the American mission’s quarters, he asked Stalin and Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov to step outside with him. Truman’s behavior seemed mysterious, so at least Molotov thought. Then Truman disclosed that the US possessed an “extraordinary weapon.” “It was hard to read his mind,” Molotov remarked later, “but he seemed to be trying to pass on a message.” Now it was Stalin who showed little interest, and Truman wondered if he had fully grasped the implications. What Truman did not know was that Soviet scientists were already developing a similar bomb, aided by information passed to them by American and British spies, among them Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and Klaus Fuchs. “Truman did not specifically say ‘an atomic bomb,’” recalled Molotov, “but we immediately understood that they had a bomb or two.” In fact, the US had more than “a bomb or two.” There was in place a detailed plan approved by Truman to drop two bombs on Japan in August and three each in September, October and November, with the possibility of increasing the number to seven in December. On 25 July, while still at the Conference, Truman gave the go-ahead to drop the first two bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The intelligence agencies, not having been asked, did not come up with the correct assessment: that the new weapon would change not only the nature of war but international relations as a whole. In deciding on the nuclear option, Truman scrapped US plans for an overland invasion of Japan with an estimated 750,000 soldiers. He feared massive casualties and a drop in morale on the home front. Americans felt a need to avenge the humiliation of Pearl Harbor. Another, subconscious, motive was to justify the $2 billion spent on the bomb. In addition, Truman wanted to end the Japanese war without Soviet help, to avoid having to share the spoils. He wrote

THE THREAT 9

in his diary in Potsdam that he believed the Japanese would surrender before the Soviets entered the picture. Meanwhile, the US Air Force was bombarding Japanese cities, causing casualties in numbers not far below those that could be inflicted by atomic bombs. On 9 March 1945, 334 B-29 bombers dropped thousands of incendiary bombs on Tokyo, destroying 16 neighborhoods and killing about 100,000 civilians. In the ensuing two weeks, General Curtis Le May, commander of the Far East bomber command, ordered continued massive bombardment of four other large cities, claiming about 150,000 victims. Japanese Commander in Chief Yoshijiro Umezu staunchly claimed that the Japanese army could face the Americans despite the bombing, but Hirohito and other more realistic politicians looked for ways to surrender and put an end to the loss of Japanese life. Unfortunately for them, they moved too slowly. On 6 August Colonel Paul Tibbets flew his B-29, the Enola Gay, to Hiroshima with “Little Boy,” as the first atomic bomb was nicknamed. “We did not think they had more bombs than those they dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and even if they had, we did not think they would play a special role in the future,” Molotov said. In other words, the Soviets, who were busy developing their own bomb, had no idea either of what this first step into the atomic era would mean. The US was more nimble. “It’s a mistake to play for high stakes without holding a master card,” US Defense Secretary Henry L.Stimson said before Potsdam. “It is not desirable that the Big Three should convene before the US carries out the Trinity [plutonium bomb test] project.” On 15 July, ten days before Potsdam, Trinity proved successful, and Truman arrived for the conference looking like the cat that swallowed the canary. His atomic monopoly led him to reject Stalin’s and Molotov’s requests that he allow a Soviet general to share in the administration of occupied Japan following its surrender. Truman’s refusal strengthened Soviet determination to develop their own bomb. Stalin was not going to be satisfied at war’s end with second-class power status. He was determined to attain nuclear parity and then supremacy. This was the American intelligence community’s worst hour. It had successfully carried out practical tasks such as collecting data on German, Japanese and Soviet atomic plans, it had recruited German scientists for the US atomic weapons program after the war, but it made almost no contribution to the understanding of the military and political significance of the new weapon. Naturally for wartime, it was military intelligence that set the pace, which was more oriented to military than to political issues or policy assessment, focused more on tactics than strategy and most importantly, was less tuned to the political and diplomatic nuances of the new age. On 6 August 1945, Robert Oppenheimer received a cable in Los Alamos directly from Colonel Tibbets in the Enola Gay, after he had dropped the bomb. Oppenheimer called his team together and informed them of the successful outcome. Sam Cohen, called the father of the neutron bomb, later said that it had

10 WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION

been a wonderful day, because the product had worked wonderfully. Cohen described the team’s reaction to the news as ecstatic—if any of them did not join in the rejoicing, it escaped Cohen’s attention. He himself had no pangs of conscience regarding the future or the past. His credo, as stated in a 1985 media interview, was: this is the world we live in; no one can guarantee that the other side would not use a similiar weapon against the US, if it did not possess a weapon of its own. The argument Cohen was conducting against an invisible adversary was not being waged between the West and the Soviets, but rather on the enlightened wing of the West. Intelligence services played no part because the thrust of the debate was practical, or occasionally moral, with no place for intelligence evaluation. The basic assumption was that atomic weapons contributed to US national security, and no one needed intelligence assessments to reach that conclusion. It was hard to argue with this assumption, when all agreed that the bad guys in Moscow were bad through and through, and had the means to create similar weapons. But it is also hard to argue against the view that if not for the US race to build the bomb, the Soviets would not have been tempted to develop their own means of mass destruction, endangering the entire world. There is one area about which there is no argument: the cost. The US atomic budget has never been fully revealed, but according to one assessment made by a group of researchers working with the Brookings Institute, from 1945 to 1995, $3.9 trillion (in 1995 monetary terms) was spent on nuclear development and maintenance, and it is estimated that future costs will reach about $25 billion a year. Reallocated, these sums might eradicate poverty in half of Africa and establish free education and health services in the other half. The Soviets, from Stalin to Chernobyl, never took the financial—or human— cost of nuclear development into account. There was never any internal, and certainly no public, debate on the need for the bomb, as there was in the West. Soviet political culture had no room for even a chirp of dissent after the general secretary, who was also the commander in chief, had spoken. What the Soviets and the US had in common was that each went ahead with its nuclear program without intelligence input. Stalin and KGB Chairman Lavrenti Beria directed the Soviet nuclear program without any political partner—and certainly not the intelligence services. The Politburo and the Central Committee were kept in the dark, fed only by rumors that “now we can defend ourselves against the American threat.” The Central Committee debated the nuclear issue for the first time in July 1953, after Stalin’s death and Beria’s arrest. The Committee chose to display its muscle by scolding the project director for having carried out tests without reporting to Georgi Malenkov, the then premier. Stalin’s motives for stepping up the Soviet nuclear program (fear of American nuclear supremacy, megalomania, secret plans for conquering the West, and so on) will probably remain a subject for historians and perhaps psychologists. However, the American race to develop its nuclear program was a factor in

THE THREAT 11

Stalin’s decision to speed up the Soviet program, and it also served him as a convincing cover. We will never know whether the West’s fear of the Soviets was justified or vice-versa, because the decision to continue developing the bomb was not based on professional, disinterested analysis. The input of nuclear scientists and the military—industrial complex cannot be considered free of bias, while anti-bomb activists such as Bertrand Russell were considered beyond the pale, because of their exaggerated moral zeal. Paradoxically, it was two American atomic scientists who represented the moral voice of Western society: Robert Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein, who opposed global nuclearization and further development of more powerful bombs. But they were no match for the military-industrial complex with its eagerness to keep developing, especially in light of the subconscious fears stirred up by politicians. Toward the end of the Second World War, Bernard Baruch, Truman’s advisor on nuclear policy, called for a control system which would include an American veto on future atomic weapons development, which would have meant that the US would retain its nuclear monopoly. The Soviets were still partners in the victory over Nazi Germany, but the Western attitude toward them was “respect and suspect”—respect their strength and their contribution to the defeat of Nazism, and suspect their intentions and their expansionist ideology as manifested by the Communist Party’s activities world-wide. Stalin’s “nyet-man,” Gromyko, was Baruch’s opposite number in the US-Soviet talks on controlling the nuclear race. He said “yes” to the idea of limiting the race, but “no,” for obvious reasons, to the American monopoly. The talks collapsed when the US held its fourth nuclear test on the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific in the summer of 1946. Those who thought that a display of Western military resolve would stop the Soviets did not understand the amalgam of Slavic character and Marxist ideology. Stalin, whose response to Truman’s announcement of the bomb had been casual, remained casual when the Bikini test was carried out. After all, it did not stop him from continuing his bid to dominate Eastern Europe. He barred free elections in Poland, in defiance of what had been agreed at the Yalta Conference. Later he took steps to topple the short-lived Czech democratic government and dealt similarly with Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and East Germany, while preventing them from joining the Marshall Plan, which he portrayed as an American plot. Soviet meddling in Greece also stirred up considerable anxiety, when communist guerrilla forces threatened the central government in Athens. Churchill, who considered the USSR no less dangerous a foe than Nazi Germany, warned that all of Europe was becoming communist; intimating that Britain’s fate would have been similar to Czechoslovakia’s, if not for the American bomb. Indeed, despite America’s nuclear monopoly, Stalin completed the communist conquest of Eastern Europe, and set up the security belt he had aimed to around the USSR. Simultaneously, he built up his nuclear power, with secrets stolen from the West, striving all the time for strategic parity. Thus, Stalin laid the

12 WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION

foundation for postwar reality, nuclear power as the deterrent factor preventing a direct and total confrontation between the powers, who, instead, promoted their interests through localized conflicts. THE NUCLEAR RACE BEGINS: THE WAR IN KOREA The development of an atomic force was on the Soviet agenda during the early postwar years, but it was not of supreme urgency, according to General Vladimir Lubov, who looks back with nostalgia at the days when he was chief of staff of the Warsaw Pact. “Did we arm ourselves with atom bombs to attack the United States?” he growls furiously: All we wanted was to rebuild the terrible devastation left by the war. The Americans have never understood what war really means. Battles are fought far from their land and their homes. They’re shocked at the sight of bodies in bags shown on television, but we had 25 million victims and our country was in ruins at the end of the Second World War. Yet people say that the Americans were traumatized by communism. What about our trauma? Does wanting to be ready mean we meant to attack? After all, we knew American retaliatory power was a hundred times greater than ours. Lubov calms down and switches to a cold, businesslike tone: The Americans just wanted to take advantage of our weakness after the war and finish us off, together with socialism. They made no secret of it in the past and they still have the same attitude, even now that the USSR no longer exists. They showed us how serious they were at the end of World War II when they bombed Hiroshima. We knew there was no need for the bomb, the war was about to end, but the Americans wanted to demonstrate that they were the boss, the way they still do. Straight after they dropped the bomb they set up NATO, which we knew was directed against us, even though we’d fought on their side against the Nazis. Under such circumstances, it’s only natural that we should prepare for the worst, isn’t it? Between 1948 and 1950 we had solid information that the Americans had a contingency plan to drop an atomic bomb on us. Its code name was ‘Drop Shot.’ I can tell you with complete confidence that we had no atomic program when the war ended. But when the Americans started to threaten us, we had to prepare to defend ourselves. Asked about the role of intelligence work in evaluating the threat, Lubov shrugs. “We didn’t need intelligence to tell us there was a threat.” Lubov’s opinion is not his alone. Almost the entire Soviet leadership throughout the years of the USSR’s existence believed that the West, headed by the United States, was out to crush the USSR and it was only Soviet power

THE THREAT 13

which prevented this from happening. Echoes of this belief still reverberate years later. In January 1996, four years after the collapse, a debate in NATO on whether former Soviet satellites should be invited to join the organization caused a great deal of anxiety in Moscow. Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachov declared that “Russia will have to re-examine its commitment to international pacts and its nuclear policy, if NATO continues its eastward expansion.” This official protest reflected a current of genuine popular fear of the West in Russia. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the spokesman for the dregs of Slav society, quoted White House, US Congress and NATO documents in his book The Conspiracy to Destroy Russia in support of the theory expressed in its title. It was this primeval fear, according to David Holloway, a student of the origins of the Soviet nuclear bomb that made Stalin the chief progenitor of the Cold War. Like Lenin, Stalin was convinced that war against capitalism was inevitable. He took over Eastern Europe, erected the Iron Curtain and added mystery to the fear he had sown by spinning the web of global, East-West conflict. Other observers claim that Truman and American policy were no less to blame than Stalin for the outbreak of the Cold War. “Roosevelt’s death and Truman’s accession to power signaled a turning point in American policy,” wrote Nikolai V.Novikov, Soviet political attaché in Washington. He described Truman’s first speech to Congress to his superiors in Moscow as reflecting America’s drive for “world domination.” In summer 1945 Truman fired cabinet members who supported cooperation with the Soviets and appointed anti-communist James F.Byrnes as secretary of state. Novikov reported that this reshuffle signified that Truman was going into “full scale battle” against the USSR. “After Byrnes’s appointment,” Novikov wrote, “there is no need to debate the direction the US will take. It intends to combat Soviet influence everywhere with all its power.” The Soviets, ridden with fear, failed to utilize intelligence as a tool for better understanding of the other side. When the US called for dialogue, Novikov’s interpretation to Moscow was: “Truman’s call represents a new tactic, brandishing US nuclear power as an element in international pressure on the USSR to accept American supremacy.” Instead of assessing the strategic implications of the nuclear race, and raising ideas for slowing it down, intelligence agencies dealt with factual reports on the number of nuclear installations possessed by the rival nation, their accessibility and utilization, the quantity of fissionable material, its condition and quality, and followed up with an inventory of missiles and launchers. Because no one ever asked, no one ever said what the results of the nuclear race would be. And the key question in the conduct of global policy became “who would fire first, and when?” The Americans were first to exploit the bomb as a factor in their postwar foreign and defense policy. The starting point was Berlin in 1948. The Soviets had sealed off the city, which was located in the heart of the communist zone, and the Americans responded with a massive airlift to West Berlin. Knowing

14 WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION

that they could not keep on doing so for ever, and perhaps also eager to demonstrate their nuclear power, the Americans flew 90 B-29 bombers, the kind that had bombed Hiroshima, to airbases in Britain. As part of the war of nerves waged by the US, a rumor was spread that the B-29s carried 200 nuclear bombs (in fact, there were none)— implying that the United States was contemplating a nuclear strike, should the Soviets continue to blockade Berlin. Still lacking his own bomb, Stalin blinked first and lifted the blockade. Then he furiously ordered the acceleration of the Soviet nuclear program, whatever the cost. David Holloway claims that Beria, who was in charge of the project, ordered staff “to do whatever necessary to get the bomb, without regard for financial or human cost.” In Krasnoyarsk, Western Siberia, the Soviets constructed the largest installation in the world for building nuclear weapons. There were about 300 to 400 kilometers of tunnels dug out of the rock face, and its plutonium production chamber was the size of a football field. Construction of the site cost $40 billion, which in those days was the total sum of the Soviet annual GNP. In the meantime, the Americans capitalized on the Russian surrender in Berlin to build an anti-Soviet front in Europe. In April 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which gave Western Europe an American nuclear umbrella, was established. Clark Clifford, for many years a central figure in the US defense establishment, said at the time that NATO had made “one simple thing clear” to the Soviets: if they attacked a European state, the US would be forced to drop nuclear bombs on them. At the same time the US developed B-36 planes, which were said to be capable of carrying huge bombs to strike the USSR from US territory. General Hoyt Vandenberg, chief of staff of the US Air Force and Truman’s personal appointment to the hydrogen bomb project, claimed that the cheapest way to protect Europe was with atomic weapons. In August 1949 the Soviets exploded their first atom bomb, in Kazakhstan. The FBI had failed to stop US nuclear secrets from leaking to the Soviet Union, enabling it to become a nuclear power sooner than it otherwise would have done. The CIA failed to predict the timing of the Soviet test, even though they expended no small effort to do so. John Manley, head of the Los Alamos laboratories, said he was stunned by the news of the Soviet bomb, which ended America’s monopoly. At this stage, good government and common sense should have brought the American administration intelligence input predicting the way the world would go, with a nuclear race under way. This did not happen, and instead, the Americans decided to maintain their superiority by developing the hydrogen bomb. The driving force behind this was scientist Edward Teller. “I knew Stalin,” Teller explains today, “and I knew what he was capable of. We went with hydrogen. We had no choice.” Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the first atomic bomb, led the campaign against the hydrogen bomb, which he regarded as “a recipe for genocide.” In the face of the Nazi menace, he had harnessed himself to the production of the atom

THE THREAT 15

bomb. In peacetime, he believed it was appropriate to rein in nuclear development. Claiming that the Americans were strong enough to deter the Soviets, he recommended a stockpile of atomic bombs of relatively low destructive capability as an alternative to investing in the construction of a weapon several times more powerful. President Truman wondered if the Soviets were capable of developing a hydrogen bomb. The scientists told him they were. “Okay,” said Truman, “we’ll go with it.” Thus Oppenheimer lost his battle with Edward Teller, who provided the government with political arguments in addition to his scientific expertise. “If we don’t make the hydrogen bomb,” Teller said, “the Soviets will get ahead of us.” Apparently, this conclusion, on the basis of which Truman made his decision, was also reached without any intelligence input. In 1995 Professor Joseph Rotblat, one of the British scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Rotblat had left Los Alamos eight months before the first nuclear test and the deployment of the first atomic bomb, and since then has been actively campaigning for a ban on nuclear weapons. One of his guests at the Nobel ceremony was Admiral Stansfield Turner, director of the CIA in the late 1970s. In a CNN interview after the Oslo ceremony, Turner said that one of the reasons for the nuclear arms race was the lack of awareness, and therefore the lack of understanding between the two peoples and the two states. The next round of the US-Soviet confrontation occurred in 1950, when Washington again brandished its nuclear capability to achieve an advantage in the field. On 24 June, Communist forces from the north invaded South Korea. At the time the White House was engaged in a furious battle over increases to the defense budget. The invasion was a humiliating military and political surprise, although a CIA paper dated 10 March had estimated that the communist invasion would probably take place in June. But this too had been just another of those papers that no one felt obliged to act on. Documents discovered in the mid-1990s (following the collapse of the USSR) prove that it was Stalin who, typically, encouraged the communists who had taken over in North Korea to complete their “socialist duty” in the South, though he refrained from committing Soviet troops to the mission. General MacArthur used Japanese troops in the campaign to stop the invasion, leading Stalin to push the Chinese into war against US and UN forces, while keeping his own forces out, and then charged them for the weapons he provided. When the Chinese were later subjected to air attacks that caused heavy casualties, Stalin provided air cover. The American administration viewed the invasion as a breach of the postwar global power balance. The US acted through the UN and the Soviets responded by bringing in hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers. The clashes along the border between the two Koreas weakened the American administration, which wavered, as any administration in a similar position would do, between risking large numbers of casualties or losing popularity.

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In the absence of a decisive end to the war the two sides opened negotiations, but the talks were constantly bogged down. Chinese ability to absorb blows and international communism’s ability to deploy troops without regard for casualties, as opposed to Western sensitivity regarding the loss of life, helped to manipulate Western military-political thinking into the atomic maze. Congressman Frank Wilson said: “We are fighting against mad dogs who have no moral sense. One of our boys is worth all of Asia and we have to show them what we’re capable of.” General MacArthur favored using nuclear force and President Truman hinted to reporters that he was likely to approve MacArthur’s request. Dwight D.Eisenhower, who succeeded Truman as president, informed Mao Tse-tung through India’s premier, Jawaharal Nehru, that the nuclear option was being considered. The message caused the communists to resume the talks and finally led to a ceasefire agreement. The Korean War was over, without nuclear weapons having been used. Was the American threat authentic? Some doubt it. But it was clear that the introduction of nuclear weapons did not prevent the outbreak of local wars, and that these did not become shorter, or less dirty and painful. Eisenhower, like Truman, did not base his policy of brandishing the nuclear threat on intelligence estimates. During the Korean War, he tried to enlist Britain’s support for using atomic weaponry, should he decide to do so if the Chinese broke the ceasefire. Jock Colville, Churchill’s envoy, wrote in his memoirs that he could not believe his ears when he heard Eisenhower saying in Bermuda, in reference to a possible use of nuclear weapons: “In due course, all weapons become conventional.” By 1952 the US already possessed a nuclear capability that matched their threats; since the end of the war the defense budget had been tripled from $12 to $35 billion. By 1953 the US had 1,350 bombs, ten times more than the Soviets, and they were ready for the first hydrogen bomb test, which took place at the beginning of that year. The Western world watched the explosion, which was 60 times more powerful than the biggest Soviet bomb. Defining the mood in the USSR at the time, General Lubov says: “We were in a panic. We were convinced that this weapon was meant for us. Every foreign plane that came near Soviet borders was assumed to be bearing imperialist death on its wings.” In June 1953 a Swedish passenger plane was spotted over the Baltic Sea. The Soviet anti-aircraft system went into the paranoid tailspin customary in such situations. Their limited ability to identify airplanes, their ingrained fear of Western attack, as well as tension coiled like a spring, led to the plane being shot down. In the meantime, work on the Soviet hydrogen bomb program was accelerated. At the end of 1953, five months after Stalin’s death, less than a year after the Americans had achieved it, the Soviets had their own hydrogen bomb. The Americans were the first to build the atomic and the hydrogen bombs but the Soviets responded with the first test of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). They were also the first to send a satellite into orbit around the earth and a man into space. The West began to feel that a gap had been created which

THE THREAT 17

had threatening strategic implications, and the result was that the arms race spread into space. Leonid M.Zamyatin, who faithfully served the Kremlin as a journalist, intelligence agent and diplomat, defines Soviet policy at that period as a collage of empty political slogans and knee-jerk reactions. He claims that the West, including its intelligence community, simply did not understand how Moscow really functioned. “Even the shipment of missiles to Cuba was not a planned action, and it developed into the most dangerous international crisis that I can remember. I thought at the time that the possibility of war was one in four or even one in three.” CUBA Zamyatin was in a position to make such statements. As director of the official Soviet news agency TASS, virtually spokesman for the Soviet government, the corridors of power were his regular beat. In 1982, John N. McMahon, deputy director of the CIA, described Zamyatin as the man responsible for the propaganda war against the West. In 1995 Zamyatin was living in one of the luxurious apartments on Stanislavskugo Street in the heart of Moscow, built for the nomenklatura, the communist party bigwigs. Zamyatin says that, the Cuban crisis was blown out of proportion. It’s incredible how accidentally it started. Khrushchev was worried because the Americans deployed missiles close to our border. He thought that if we had missiles 90 miles from Florida, Washington would cool off. He mentioned the idea to Marshal Rodion Y.Malinovsky, the head of the strategic missile command, but nothing actually happened. Around the end of 1961, if I’m not mistaken, Raul Castro and his wife came on vacation to Moscow with Fidel Castro’s wife. At one of the receptions Malinovksy suggested the possibility of placing a few missiles in Cuba, just to ruffle the Americans. Zamyatin pauses. I wasn’t convinced then, and I’m not convinced now, that the strategic implications of this move had been thought through carefully—not by us and nor by Raul Castro. He said it seemed all right to him. Khrushchev never asked for an intelligence or any other kind of evaluation, for a move that proved to have an excedingly high risk factor. They sent Fidel a memo about it. Khrushchev didn’t wait for a detailed response but sent a delegation to look for missile sites. Obviously, it was all done in complete secrecy. The delegation, posing as agricultural experts, went to Cuba in summer 1962. While they were looking at possible missile sites, Fidel went over the papers and noted down his reservations. I don’t remember

18 WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION

exactly what they were, but by the time he transmitted them to Moscow our ships were already on their way to Cuba, carrying missiles that could be equipped with nuclear warheads. The Americans spotted them, Gromyko naturally denied it, and everyone here was happy as if we’d won. But then President Kennedy blockaded Cuba, and the entire picture changed. The atmosphere was tense and dramatic. I don’t remember its like in my 40 years of serving the Soviet regime. Khrushchev was overwrought. Defense Minister Malinovsky, Foreign Minister Gromyko and KGB Chairman Shelepin were strutting around proudly, but to me they seemed quite bewildered underneath it all. We were so worried by the possibility of an American strike that the KGB sent a unit to carry out surveillance on President Kennedy at Hyannis Point. They had a permanent watch on him; knowing his habits, they even wanted to know if he would go to church on Sunday as usual, to learn what we could about the state of alert in the US. For the Kennedy brothers, Cuba was a strategic national test, not only to clear the missiles out of their backyard, but also to prove that they would not be deterred by Soviet nuclear capability. Khrushchev had spoken about “building a 100megaton bomb, but we’re not going to test it because it would break all our windows.” When he was asked why he needed it, he answered (according to Andrei Sakharov) that “this bomb will hang over the head of the capitalists like the sword of Damocles.” It was now, at the height of the Cuban crisis, that Kennedy had to gamble the way Stalin had following the Second World War. Stalin, ignoring US nuclear capability, took control of Eastern Europe, state by state, despite protests, threats and US nuclear superiority. Now Kennedy blockaded Cuba, ignoring Khrushchev’s 100-megaton bomb. The echoes of the winner-take-all dice game rippled through the dacha where Zamyatin and his colleagues sat waiting with a sense of nuclear war on their doorstep. “I’d never seen Khrushchev so tense and irritable,” Zamyatin remembers. He also recalls that Politburo members received no strategic or tactical intelligence estimate during the crisis, as to how far the United States was prepared to go and whether it would risk a nuclear confrontation over Cuba. During the crisis itself, Khrushchev was fed with material on “what they were thinking in Washington, mostly from reports on the diplomatic contacts.” Soviet intelligence was virtually absent during this fateful crisis. In any case, its task was to supply facts: “The general secretary makes the assessments for us.” On what basis? Zamyatin: “Well, on the basis of his ideology and his evaluation of the forces at play at the time.” Today, 35 years after the crisis, Zamyatin comments: Frankly, I wasn’t afraid that Khrushchev would do something stupid. He was a muzhik and he was temperamental, but he was also a very down-to-earth

THE THREAT 19

type and would never have struck first. I was a little worried about Malinovsky and the heads of the KGB who were gung-ho, but I’m convinced that even if they had advised him to strike first, he wouldn’t have been tempted. In fact, it was the staff at KGB Lubyanka headquarters who felt that Khrushchev was mishandling the crisis by overestimating the Kennedy family’s resolve. On the second or third night of the crisis, Malinovsky put the army, including its missile submarines, on top alert. A long line outside the lavatories in the dacha where the entire Soviet leadership was closeted bore witness to the tension. “Even though I trusted Khrushchev,” Zamyatin notes, “it was obvious that a mistake could cost us dearly.” Again, this fear was not based on an intelligence estimate because there was none, but on the perception of the US as an unrestrained aggressor. “If no way out had been found,” says Zamyatin, “and Kennedy had carried out his threat and stopped the boats, the Red Army would have advanced westward until the last Soviet or American soldier was dead.” Then, when they were all on the point of collapse, the long awaited cable from Robert Kennedy arrived. Gromyko and Andropov went into Khrushchev’s room, and after a short time, perhaps only a few moments, we understood that there’d been a breakthrough. I remember someone coming out of Khrushchev’s room with the announcement that Kennedy was willing to talk and I knew the crisis was over. According to Zamyatin, the KGB’s role in the Cuban crisis was minor. Soviet intelligence was not ordered to assess the likely American response, and it never volunteered to do so. Its involvement in a crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war was confined to locating signs of military alert, or to relaying messages. The CIA functioned on a similar plane. Kennedy did not trust intelligence estimates when it came to Soviet intentions, although at the time the Agency was headed by John A.McCone, one of its most able directors. Nevertheless, on the tactical level, the CIA did make a contribution towards understanding the situation. The Agency’s sources in Cuba identified missile emplacements at San Cristobal and on 14 October 1962, U-2 surveillance airplanes were sent out to verify the reports. One plane was downed and its pilot was killed, which induced a warlike mood among Kennedy’s close advisors. McCone showed Kennedy the first aerial photographs of missile pods on board the ships and said he believed they were anti-aircraft and defensive in nature. (A similar missile had downed Gary Powers’s U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union two years earlier). Later three launching sites under construction were identified. Arthur Lundahl, head of the CIA’s national center for photoreconnaissance, was of the opinion that the sites could be used for nuclear

20 WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION

ground-to-ground missiles. On 15 September, the Soviet carrier “Poltava” had been spotted on its way to Cuba. Aerial photographs taken by U-2 planes led Lundahl to the conclusion that certain long pods on the deck contained SS-4 nuclear missiles, which have a range of over 1,500 kilometers. On 16 September, he came to the Oval Office to inform Kennedy of his findings. “Are you sure they’re ground-to-ground?” the President asked. “As sure as aerial photograph findings can be,” answered Lundahl. Those who were present said that it was Lundahl’s tone rather than the words he chose that convinced the President. Kennedy weighed three options: land invasion, air strike, or blockade. A land invasion of Cuba had already been tried (the CIA’s failed Bay of Pigs operation); an air strike could force a Soviet response aimed at Europe’s “soft underbelly,” perhaps West Berlin. Kennedy was not aware that General Piliyev, commander of the Soviet forces in Cuba, had received permission for a nuclear strike at the US at his own discretion, if the Americans attacked the island. Atomic bombs were loaded on B-52 planes. Eighteen ballistic missile bases in the US were put on alert. Polaris submarines were ordered to the North Sea, within range of selected targets in the USSR. The reaction in Khrushchev’s dacha reached panic level, according to Zamyatin, who was there to keep the media informed, and was not allowed to go home. He watched as officers and clerks hurried back and forth from the room where Khrushchev and Malinovsky were sitting. In poker terms, Kennedy had just one question: Would Khrushchev react to his upping the ante by risking a nuclear confrontation? American intelligence did not provide the answer. In 1991, a US-Soviet conference of historians and government officials was held in Havana. When General Anatoly Gribkov (who preceded General Lubov as Warsaw Pact chief of staff), revealed that the Soviets had seriously considered the nuclear option during the crisis, he was greeted with a stormy response. He was reportedly amazed at the strong reaction— after all, were nuclear weapons not like any other? Roger Hilsman, head of the State Department’s research division (INR) in the 1960s, believes that the Soviets did not deploy missiles in Cuba to harm the US any more than the Americans deployed the Minuteman ICBMs in Minnesota to harm the USSR. The step was taken, Hilsman feels, to provide a bargaining chip in the wider power game. In a developing confrontation in which there is a danger of the use of nuclear weapons, it is obviously intelligence’s responsibility to provide the leaders with an accurate assessment of the situation. But can it provide an unambiguous assessment that is not merely based on probability? Clearly, the answer is no. And therefore, this is also the answer to the question of whether the political echelon should act on intelligence evaluations in a nuclear crisis. After all, would any intelligence analyst dare to present an evaluation that, if followed, could lead to nuclear war? In the nuclear world, there is no room for intelligence assessment that leaves key questions open. A hasty decision based on an incomplete analysis could

THE THREAT 21

spark an action or a statement that could light the nuclear fuse and send the whole world up in a mushroom-shaped cloud. Kennedy’s knowledge that the US had many more missile launchers than the Soviets (nine times as many, it emerged later) helped him play his game of nerves without blinking. Here the chief policy-maker was the man throwing the dice, with everyone else, including the intelligence community, his enthralled audience. On the one side were the Kennedy brothers, Jack and Robert, classic products of Western capitalism, and on the other the muzhik-turned-communist, with enough political smarts to have survived the purges of Stalinist socialism after the war. The Cuban confrontation ended in a compromise that enabled each side to pretend that it was the victor. Kennedy pledged to remove the Jupiter missiles the US had previously placed in Turkey, while Khrushchev promised to keep this tacit agreement quiet in order not to tarnish Kennedy’s prestige, and on 24 November 1962, five Soviet ships carrying missiles and launchers to Cuba turned around and sailed back to the USSR. Lessons from the Cuban Missile Crisis permeated both American and Soviet security doctrines and affected both their policies until the last days of the USSR, and, actually even continued into the new Russia. Vladimir Lubov, today a pensioner who works in a military research institute, looks and sounds like the Soviet general he was—heavy of build and gruff of voice. Once chief of staff of the Warsaw Pact forces, he sits in Moscow’s President Hotel at the end of March 1995, and explains the defense problems of the former USSR. For Lubov, introducing the nuclear factor into the strategic equation was simple and straightforward: It wasn’t a question of strategy or politics for us. We faced a genuine military threat that called for a response. The Americans had the upper hand. Don’t forget that we found out during the Korean War that General MacArthur wanted to drop a bomb on China and to bomb us as well if we intervened. So what did you expect us to do? Sit on our hands and let the West pull the atomic rabbit out of its hat each time it wanted to threaten us, to humiliate us, or just to put pressure on us to serve its interests? We knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that even during the Vietnam war there were those in the US government who suggested dropping the bomb—so who’s the crazy one? Who’s the one making irresponsible threats? Robert T.McFarlane’s office in the center of Washington is thousands of miles away from Lubov and Moscow’s President Hotel. Having served as President Reagan’s national security advisor, McFarlane recalls that “what worried [us] most was the nuclear factor. It was the basis for our strategic planning. As a military man I was well aware of the perils immanent in this lethal weaponry. When I served in the NSC, my assessment of the Soviets had to take the worstcase scenario into account.”

22 WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION

During the early 1980s, McFarlane reached the conclusion that it was imperative to find a way to stop the nuclear arms race. While the number of launchers had not increased greatly since 1968, when there were 1,000 (in 1985 the figure rose to a peak of 1,300), the number and destructive power of warheads had risen significantly. Nuclear power did not pose a concrete threat in times of peace, but the threat was there, in the background, and had to be related to, says McFarlane. Intelligence assessment would not have made any difference. The Americans reached this conclusion after many years of study. Both the Americans and the Soviets appreciated that the nuclear arms race meant horrific dangers, as well as vast squandering of resources. And no less important, nuclear supremacy was not enough to deter an aggressor or prevent severe conventional wars, bloody and costly in financial and political terms. Like Vietnam. VIETNAM Many Americans believed until the 1980s that the USSR aspired to dominate the world. Conventional wisdom accepted the “domino” theory, which held that once the Reds had their foot in the door they would take over the house, and later the neighborhood. This theory was the rationale for US policy in Vietnam. The US entered the arena following the French debacle at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong backed by the USSR, attacked the pro-Western South Vietnamese government. This, in turn, brought greater American involvement first through supply of matériel, instruction of South Vietnamese troops outside Vietnam, consignment of instructors, then advisers and finally actual fighting units to Vietnam itself. But the greater the American involvement, the greater were the number of attacks by the North. In Washington the war machine began to roll, and soon television was bringing the horrors of war into American homes, with pictures of black bodybags and coffins draped in the Stars and Stripes. As President Nixon’s national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, who had never rated intelligence assessments highly, announced authoritatively that a South Vietnam defeat would lead to communist control of the whole of Asia. He was echoing his predecessors in the post, all of whom had been backed by the army, the traditional Right, the military-industrial complex and the bulk of the American people. There is little chance that history will enshrine American involvement in Vietnam as a campaign that saved the Western world. Robert S. McNamara, President Lyndon B.Johnson’s defense secretary, admits after 31 years that it was a tragic error. Recently released documents reveal that senior Kremlin officials were amazed when they found that America was determined to take sides in a distant Asian war and sacrifice its own young men, something they themselves were not willing to do, despite the American gibes at “the unbearable lightness” with which the Red Army shed its soldiers’ blood. In the US, the

THE THREAT 23

Vietnamese war developed into a violent, secret battle between civilian intelligence, in particular CIA analysts, military intelligence, and Cold War professionals. At the height of the war in April 1967, General William C. Westmoreland, commander of the US forces in Vietnam, flew from his Saigon HQ to Washington to brief the president. Entering the Oval Office, he saluted with a stiffness that unbent a little when President Johnson waved him in. Also present were Defense Secretary McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk and CIA Director Richard C.Helms. The impression during the preceding months had been that America’s relentless onslaught would eventually destroy the North’s military capability—at least on paper, according to McNamara’s “body count” statistics, a latter-day version of the notched rifle butt. Now Johnson wanted to know how much longer the war would continue and how many soldiers Charlie (the Vietcong) had. Westmoreland produced the intelligence appendix (J-2MACV) of his command’s OB (Order of Battle), claiming that the North Vietnam army numbered 271,301 soldiers. The file had been opened in 1966 and was updated monthly by adding the estimated number of recruits and subtracting the number of victims. According to the file, US ability to kill was greater than Vietcong ability to enlist. “We’re winning the war,” Westmoreland said, and returned to Saigon. A month later, in May 1967, a report signed by Major General Joseph McChristian was placed before Westmoreland claiming that the number of recruits to Vietcong guerrilla units and active political cadres was much higher than the file indicated. Westmoreland responded with disdain and anger, but McChristian was not a man to be ignored. He stood his ground and suggested sending an update to Washington raising the figures given to Johnson by 200, 000. Westmoreland heard him out grimly. “If I send that to Washington I’ll stir up the wrath of God,” he said. McChristian left Vietnam in June 1967, and his replacement, Colonel Hawkins, submitted a similar assessment to Westmoreland. Hawkins was even less conservative than McChristian: he claimed that the discrepancy ran into hundreds of thousands. He vividly recalls Westmoreland’s reaction: “What will I say to the President? What will I say to Congress? How will the media react?” Hawkins asked if the file should be updated in accordance with the new data, and Westmoreland told him: “Check the figures out one more time.” In a bid to understand the difference between McChristian’s and Hawkins’s data and the “official” figures presented by Westmoreland, the Pentagon convened a meeting attended by Colonel Daniel Graham, Westmoreland’s intelligence officer. Graham insisted firmly that the Vietcong had no more than 300,000 soldiers. The figure was higher than that given to the president, but lower than the estimates of the field data collectors. In December 1967, the CIA estimated that US withdrawal from Vietnam would not endanger America’s national security. This report was presented by CIA director Richard Helms to President Johnson, and never seen again. At this

24 WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION

point a CIA officer-analyst, Sam Adams, entered the loop. Adams, a Harvard graduate, had been recruited by the Agency in 1963, when American involvement in Vietnam was still at an early stage. In 1965, when he was sent to Vietnam to assess Vietcong morale, there were already tens of thousands of GIs fighting side by side with South Vietnam forces. He quickly realized that one of the major problems Washington faced was public morale in America. About 1, 100 US military intelligence and CIA officers were stationed in Vietnam at the time. Adams’s task, although not spelled out in so many words, was to assess whether the US Army’s ability to kill, or the Vietcong’s determination and ability to replace their losses and continue fighting would emerge victorious. Back at CIA headquarters in Langley Virginia after his field trip, Adams studied the military intelligence reports that served Westmoreland and were transferred directly to McNamara. He found that the number of Vietcong deserters ranged between fifty thousand to one hundred thousand each year. He added that figure to the official reports of the number of Vietcong casualties, and the result seemed to indicate that it would not be long before the last Vietcong soldier was floating belly-up in a rice paddy. As the war showed no sign of abating, Adams went to Saigon again in January 1966. He interviewed Vietcong POWs and deserters and questioned them about their units. At this stage he realized that “if the official figures of northern losses were accurate, it was hard to see how an army of 270,000 soldiers could keep going for more than a year.” Adams queried the difference with veteran George Allen, who had been in Vietnam long enough to know that sleeping dogs were better left undisturbed. He told Adams only that the official figures were “suspect.” Adams then requested and received permission from his superiors to make a more thorough investigation. In August 1966, he came up with an astounding discovery. After repeated double-checking, he found out that the real figure was an army of over 300,000 Vietcong, a figure that was unlikely to decrease, given the highly active recruiting machine and the great willingness among the communists to make the final sacrifice. Adams’s conclusion was clear: Westmoreland’s promise to achieve a rapid victory was based on misinformation, not to say lies. As an intelligence professional and a patriot, Adams believed that if the military were to receive an assessment proving that their battle plans were based on false premises, they would amend the plans whether or not it pleased them to do so. Confident that he had made “the most exciting intelligence discovery of the war,” as he later said, he sent his assessment “straight to the seventh floor,” where CIA Director Richard Helms was trying to safely negotiate the pitfalls between Langley and the White House. The paper reached Helms as the American administration was waging a bitter battle against Vietnam draft dodgers. An embarrassing disclosure about Vietcong military potential, including publication of an intelligence appendix that seemed to contain falsified data, would

THE THREAT 25

have rocked the administration’s boat, which was in any case being tossed about on stormy waters. This was the most critical and dramatic stage of the confrontation between professional intelligence and policy considerations, and Adams was dragged into it without yet having understood that these were two entirely different worlds. His paper returned from the seventh floor without any comment. Acting on a suggestion that his paper could do with some “enhancement,” he completed a new version a few days later in which he presented new evidence. Whereas official data estimated the population under Vietcong rule at 3 million, Adams’s paper claimed that the figure was twice that. According to this statistic, the war could drag on to the year 2000. And still there was no word from his superiors. After waiting a week, Adams decided to find out what had happened to his paper. Careful scouting revealed that it had been put on “indefinite hold.” Adams, a man with a conscience, according to the testimony of colleague Melvin A.Goodman, returned to his office in a rage, and fired off another memo containing still more evidence to substantiate his case. Once more he traversed the winding corridors and delivered the paper personally to Waldo Duberstin, a senior Sovietologist. Duberstin glared at it and growled: “That damned paper again—Sam, what’s going on? You’re planning to make a splash?” Adams, calling his paper a “working draft,” distributed 25 copies among the relevant departments of the CIA, the Pentagon and the military command in Saigon. Still there was no reaction from the CIA director’s office. It was only in January 1967 that George Carver, Adams’s superior, sent a short memo to the head of the analysis division: “We believe that the number of Vietcong losses that appears in military estimates is lower than the real figure.” Next, Carver, who had decided to gamble on Adams, contacted Walt W.Rostow, Johnson’s national security advisor, and informed him, apparently confidentially, of the discrepancy and its significance. Rostow could not ignore Carver, who was not an obscure figure in Washington, as Adams was. Rostow was also aware that Johnson “was less interested in CIA Intelligence on Vietnam than in its covert operations.” But the very fact that the case had been brought to his attention forced him to report it to the President, who would have to carry the can if the story became public. Playing it by the book, Rostow proposed that the data be examined by a joint military-CIA commission. His assumption was that they would not be able to reach a consensus. The ensuing lack of clarity would enable Johnson to claim that he had not received a sufficiently clear estimate, and the fire would be diverted to intelligence. In that month, January 1967, a joint working team gathered in Honolulu to discuss the Vietcong figures. Adams, who was part of the CIA delegation, was in fighting mood. Still, he was surprised to hear Colonel Hawkins open the session with the remark: “We know that somewhere there are plenty more of the little bastards that we didn’t take into account.” Even so, the figures later presented by the military were lower than Adams’s by about 100,000. A sharp but restrained

26 WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION

battle ensued when Adams realized that military intelligence was simply displaying its original assessment in a more sophisticated fashion. Six months later the commission’s official assessment remained a dead letter. George Carver himself traveled to Saigon and was told by Ambassador Robert Komer that the publication of a new set of data would cause “difficult political problems.” While they were talking, an announcement came through that Westmoreland had requested military reinforcements. Carver reported this to Richard Helms in Washington and suggested to Komer that they leak it to the media, but the idea scared Komer. Helms, for his part, received a furious letter from Westmoreland in which he claimed that the new data, which “included mostly unarmed women and old people,” contradicted the figures given to the media in Saigon. Publication of the new data, he claimed, would cause demoralization and make the task of the military more difficult. In the meantime Adams and other CIA officers waged their own battle at meetings of the joint commission, with each side brandishing its own data and papers. At one such meeting in Saigon in September 1967, Major General Davidson suggested that Adams “pack up and go home.” Adams said nothing, but one of Davidson’s aides roared in a voice which was heard throughout the room: “Adams, you’re full of shit.” These light skirmishes between the CIA and military intelligence were only for the benefit of policy-makers. If all of these spies and analysts could not produce an assessment on which to base firm policy decisions, then both politicians and generals, who in this case were also policy-makers, could choose whichever option they liked. If they made a mistake, they could dump at least some of the blame on the intelligence they had received. The problem was that details of the differences could have leaked to the media. The prospect frightened everyone, including Carver, who supported Adams and was willing to compromise on 299,000 Vietcong soldiers, with the others classified as non-combatants. Adams boiled all the way to the Langley meeting to finalize the estimate. He left Carver his own data and added the customary rider: “If we give in to military intelligence we’ll be idiots as well as crooks.” In November 1967 Westmoreland, armed with his military intelligence data, flew to Washington again to back the President’s policy. “According to the figures,” he said at a press conference, “the enemy is being destroyed.” Adams was still simmering. In January 1968 Richard Helms briefed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, utilizing data he had received from Westmoreland’s military intelligence. Adams boiled up but not over. During this period Colonel Hawkins returned from Vietnam. Adams, who retained a memory of 500,000 Vietcong soldiers, combatant or not, asked him about the military’s new figures. Hawkins shrugged his shoulders and said: “They told me to lower them.” On 31 January 1968, the Vietcong launched the Tet offensive with the aim of taking Saigon. About 84,000 Vietcong soldiers participated in the operation, which failed, but the impudence of an army that was said to be on the verge of annihilation raised eyebrows in Washington. By then the CIA had adopted

THE THREAT 27

Adams’s estimates, but Daniel Graham of military intelligence continued to argue that Adam’s figures were unsound. “The guy’s just crazy,” he said. But Graham was himself later discredited by Richard Kover, a veteran intelligence colleague, who testified in 1983 that Graham did not hesitate to doctor military intelligence estimates whenever it suited him. At the end of March 1968, Adams heard that Walt Rostow was continuing to cite military intelligence data in White House papers. On 1 April 1968, he went to CIA Comptroller Gordon Stewart and lodged an official complaint against Director Helms for ignoring his findings. Two months passed, and Adams went back to the comptroller’s office to ask if he would be breaking a law if he sent his findings straight to the White House. Stewart told him that Helms would not want a paper to go out from Langley accusing the Agency of a whitewash. Laurence White, a senior official in Stewart’s office, told Adams that it was his future that was on the line if he sent the paper to the White House, and that “the Agency would see no possibility of utilizing his talents in the future.” Adams wrote a memo of his conversation with White and sent it to him. White panicked and called Adams back to say that neither he nor Helms had threatened him, and in fact he himself was sending Adams’s paper to the White House “right after the election.” On 8 November, following Nixon’s election as president, Adams was called to Helms’s office and asked if he still wanted his paper to be sent to the White House and if he was sure that the affair had been mishandled by his superiors. Adams swallowed the insult as well as the wild laughter that welled up in him. What worried him, he told Helms, was that the CIA had not stood up to the military. Helms said that he would try to arrange a meeting for him with Walt Rostow. Adams prepared a memo detailing what he planned to say to Rostow and sent it to Helms. Somehow or other, Adams’s memo reached Walt Rostow and Westmoreland’s deputy, General Abrahams. They both responded in writing that they were aware of the possibility that there had been a sizeable error in the military assessment of Vietcong numbers. Adams himself, who had not been invited to explain his allegations, wrote a 35-page memo in which he did just that, and also demanded that Helms’s role be examined. In January 1969 Helms’s deputy responded that “the subject was closed” and added: “The CIA works as a team. If Adams does not accept the team’s decision he can resign.” Here Adams decided to break the rules and send a copy of the correspondence to a member of Nixon’s team at the National Security Council. In response he was informed that the Council had seen the correspondence but had decided not to intervene. At this point Adams decided that enough was enough and abandoned what had become his personal crusade. In 1973, after a few more years of pointless paper-shuffling, he left the CIA and moved to a ranch in North Virginia. In April 1995, Robert McNamara, who had been defense secretary in both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, published his memoirs, which broke

28 WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION

decades of silence. No administration official had ever published such a searing confession of his own guilt and that of the administration he served. “We were wrong. We were very wrong and we owe it to future generations to explain why,” McNamara wrote. He proceeded to explain the reasons for the Vietnam fiasco. The first: “We made a mistake in the way we evaluated the enemy.” The second: “We exaggerated the risk it entailed for the United States.” These were exactly the points which the CIA’s professional assessments, including Adams’s, had addressed. The reason McNamara and his colleagues in the Johnson adminstration, Secretary of State Dean Rusk and National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, as well as the director of the CIA, refused to accept Adams’s evaluation was, as McNamara puts it: “We operated according to what we [emphasis added] considered to be the nation’s principles and traditions.” They were so determined to have their own way that they ignored the Agency assessment that “bombing tactics would not defeat a state such as Vietnam with its vast agricultural tracts.” McNamara also claims that Johnson took a tougher line on Vietnam in order not to appear weak in comparison to his Republican opponent, Barry Gold water, in 1964 elections campaign. Communism was no more widespread in Asia then than it is today. McNamara feels today that the war could and should have been avoided, or that it could have been halted at several key junctures after it started. Intelligence’s responsibility 31 years ago was to fight in real time for its assessments and to stand up for them against the politicians. It might have been able then to persuade the defense secretary to accept what he is prepared to acknowledge today. But the director of the CIA did not dare to challenge the politicians openly or attempt to persuade them to agree to what his professional people were saying: that the South, even with American help, had no chance of defeating communist nationalism in Vietnam; and that a pro-communist victory would not precipitate a domino effect that would bring all the non-communist countries in Asia down with it. Contrary to the apocalyptic prophesies, communist expansion went no further. The domino effect never happened, beyond the countries in which communist rule was established by the Soviet army or where the colonial powers had made such egregious errors as to push their colonies into Moscow’s arms. It was rather the arms race that had a snowball effect, with everyone getting in on the act, big powers and small countries alike. THE BIOLOGICAL-CHEMICAL ARMS RACE AND OTHER FORMS OF INSANITY During the Berlin and Cuba crises and the Korean and Vietnam wars, there were voices calling for the use of American nuclear weapons, or at least for the threat of their use to deter the USSR and its communist allies. Indeed, both powers shaped and carried out policy under a nuclear umbrella. The knowledge that the other side possessed nuclear bombs and that your intelligence could not ascertain

THE THREAT 29

if, when or where they would be used made for a much higher anxiety threshold than simply another Arab-Israeli war or a border skirmish in a remote region of Africa: any war between the powers would be total, with nuclear exchanges and mutual destruction. On 20 March 1983, after the attempted assassination of President Reagan by a deranged American, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger announced that US forces, nuclear included, had been placed on general alert. This move was not based on any intelligence assessment or any information indicating hostile intentions on the part of the Soviets or anyone else. The same day, Secretary of State Alexander Haig, a Cold War warrior and a product of the church and the military, popped up at a press conference in the White House, and told the news-hungry media: “I am in control,” and that no special emergency measures were being taken. His dramatic appearance raised eyebrows not only because of his dramatic tone —that could be ascribed to his personal eccentricity—but because according to the hierarchy, Vice President George Bush should have been the man to report to the nation. Bush was not in Washington, but he was on his way there, and he was indisputably alive and well. Haig quickly vanished into the administration labyrinth. Later he explained to reporters that his outburst—which irked Nancy Reagan more than anyone else— was meant to signal to the Soviets that everything was under control. Asked what interest the USSR had in a shooting incident between two Americans, even if one of the protagonists was the president, Haig said had aimed to assure the Soviets that the US knew they were not behind the shooting of the president. The reporters kept asking, and Haig explained patiently that if the US had believed that the USSR was involved in the attempted assassination, it would have put its forces on alert—something Caspar Weinberger had actually done the moment he learned of the attempt. Haig asserted that by making his announcement and insisting that no special steps had been taken, he had prevented a possibly inaccurate Soviet interpretation of Weinberger’s measures. Even in the Cold War context, this kind of circular reasoning was fairly bizarre: that the Soviets were liable to believe that the Americans would think that Moscow was behind the bid on the life of the president, and had put their forces on alert for fear that the Russians might try to take advantage of the situation. Only a person with a very particular kind of outlook could indulge in this sort of reasoning, and that person would also have to lack any comprehension of how a rival power would react in the nuclear era. Haig certainly never felt any need for intelligence evaluations, as he himself would later admit with candid charm: “I never trusted that bunch at the CIA.” Besides their not always successful efforts to shape policy according to objective intelligence analysis, the Americans had a thriving anti-communist industry, from arms production to show business, Haig to McCarthy, the American Council for Security to the Klu Klux Klan, Ronald Reagan to Bob

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Hope. Their obvious nuclear superiority and sense of humor kept them from sliding into total paranoia or a fatal nuclear confrontation. For their part, the Russians, despite their renowned lack of humor, were pragmatic and desperate enough to know where they stood in the balance of power. “We knew we couldn’t go on with the arms race,” says Major General Nikolai Leonov, who left the KGB in 1991, where he had been chief of information and evaluation, “and we played around with various kinds of bizarre ideas. Intellectual fun and games for the frustrated. It happens in every system.” Leonov describes some of the ideas floating around at the time. “One was to control the world’s supply of oxygen by vacuuming it out of the air. Another was to control the hole in the ozone layer, thereby threatening mass destruction. A third idea was to drill into the earth to a depth of 12 or 13 kilometers and implant a hydrogen compound which, if it were exploded, would rock the entire world.” Leonov emphasizes that, as Vladimir Lubov defined the situation, “these were half-baked ideas, a kind of game-playing, but the ideology they reflected was totally serious: to develop the ultimate deterrent, giving us the upper hand in the conflict and helping us overcome the American threat, which kept growing.” Leonov adds: Of course, we were all against those ideas. We thought they were crazy and we didn’t bring them forward formally, but people did spend time discussing them. I, of course, would have preferred to negotiate an agreement with the US, even if it were just because of the theoretical fear that such weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists, a shocking idea. However, Leonov’s shock did not stop the USSR searching for other, no less bizarre, methods of coping with America’s superiority. Over a period of 20 years KGB scientists made secret experiments in what they called “psychotronics” (brain washing, to the layman) under the codename of “Project Zombie.” As director of the Institute for Applied Psychotechnologies, Dr. Igor Smirnoff, a member of the Soviet Academy for Natural Sciences, dealt with “a technology to control people, open up their psyche like tin cans and manipulate their thinking processes according to the scientist’s will.” The search for ways of influencing the behavior of individuals and societies by beaming electromagnetic rays into the human brain was every totalitarian’s dream. KGB experiments were also carried out on “bombarding” entire communities by a sort of cannon that could “fire” electromagnetic waves. Victor Sidlatzky, a scientist from Kiev, confessed to involvement in experiments of that sort in 1965, and he also claimed that at the end of 1982, immediately after Andropov left the KGB and was elected general secretary of the Communist Party, a secret underground installation was set up not far from Chernobyl to develop this concept. There is something childish, although also ominous, in the desperate search for a wonder weapon or a magic formula to give a ruler absolute control. In 1987,

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Vladimir Volkov, a former senior KGB officer and a government official, published a report on the use of bio-energy systems as a national weapon. One chapter dealt with “developing systems and technologies for controlling from afar an individual’s physical and mental faculties in order to influence the human decision-making mechanism.” In 1991, during the communist plot against Gorbachev, the Red Army used “psychotronic systems” (“a knife to cut the soul,” in Dr. Smirnoffs words) to enlist mass support in the Kiev area on behalf of the conspirators. True, there were no demonstrations in support of Gorbachev or Yeltsin in Kiev, but nor were there for the conspirators. The capacity of this sort of weapon to manipulate the mass subconscious to a specific end, therefore, remains a topic for science fiction or political jokes. A request for confirmation of this story addressed to the Russian Defense Ministry failed to elicit corroboration, but neither was it denied. The response was: “Our policy is not to respond to publications based on unauthorized sources.” In addition to the search for the ultimate semi-fantasy weapon, even though both sides already possessed a nuclear arsenal with enough power to destroy 100 planets, the biological and chemical warfare departments were also working overtime. The question why these forms of weaponry do not draw the same intense interest as the nuclear program is just as interesting as its answer. The Soviet collapse and the Iraqi defeat in the Gulf War helped expose to the world the efforts they were making in these areas. In Western countries, including the United States itself, which were said to be developing similar methods of warfare, the topic is heavily veiled. Following the physical and mental damage caused by chemical weaponry during the First World War, the leading powers of the time convened an international convention in 1925. Most countries signed the charter banning chemical warfare, but many kept their gas masks and went on developing lethal gases. In 1989, Soviet biologist Dr. Vladimir Pasechnik, who had defected to Britain, confirmed that the USSR possessed an impressive and horrifying array of biological weapons. They were able to “fire shells containing concentrated cultures of germs, a small quantity of which could kill half a city of 100,000 inhabitants and at the same time cause a panic of national proportions.” Dr. Pasechnik told MI5 that in 1973, a year after the US and the USSR had signed an agreement banning the development of biological weapons, General Ogarkov established the Institute for Biological Research in Leningrad. This was the Red Army response to the Western threat, and these efforts continued during Gorbachev’s tenure. Anthrax germs were discovered in the city of Sverdlosk, following a “work accident” there. In 1979 the CIA had circulated a report which claimed that the USSR was continuing to develop biological weapons in defiance of the agreement. The American answer to Soviet “ultimate” weapons was clearly influenced by the heritage of Hollywood epics, especially George Lucas’s Star Wars series. It

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suited the United States and Reagan to select the most lethal, but also the most grandiose, option and to lay out big bucks on it, while coldly calculating that it would pay off. The Star Wars project was the biggest and most sophisticated of all. Its fathers were not only Reagan and Haig, but also, among others, Professor Edward Teller and General Daniel Graham—who, as Westmoreland’s intelligence officer in Vietnam, had “defeated” the Vietcong and the CIA by manipulating enemy casualty figures in his intelligence evaluations. The history of Star Wars shows that intelligence had a marginal role, if any, in the decisionmaking process. It is doubtful whether anyone felt that an assessment was necessary, or actually requested one, on the need for Star Wars or any other component of the arms race. “To our regret, but not to our surprise, vital material on US policy issues throughout both the Cold War and the arms race remain classified,” says William Burr, one of the leading Cold War historians. Burr based his research on documents released by the Russian authorities; for American materials he had to use research carried out in government and military bodies such as the Defense Department’s history division. Government researchers themselves were permitted only limited access to presidential, CIA and State Department archives. Some of the documents are still classified to this day. Exaggerated secrecy led the Pentagon to prevent exposure of some of the components of the arms race and, as Burr says, “it is difficult to build a full picture of it even today.” Did the non-conventional arms race bring military confrontation between the powers closer, or is the opposite true? Did it defuse the danger? There is no consensus among international relations experts, and perhaps we will never know the answers. EUROPE, NATO AND THE MIDDLE EAST: THE DANGER OF NUCLEAR CONFLAGRATION? At the end of 1979, while the Soviets were busy with their invasion of Afghanistan, NATO, egged on by America, decided to deploy 572 mediumrange nuclear missiles in several member countries in Europe. Propelling the nuclear arms race forward, in both blocs, were three of the earth’s mightiest forces: preconception, routine and bureaucracy, with the elusive paranoia always in the offing. When Washington developed a new arms system, Moscow sought an appropriate answer; one Pavlovian response after another, ad infinitum. Following NATO’s announcement of the deployment in Europe of the 572 American missiles, the Soviets stormed out of the disarmament talks, redeployed their nuclear submarine fleet, and positioned more SS-20 launchers aimed at NATO states. West European public opposition to nuclear missile deployment on their soil was widespread and vociferous. Thirty-four years of peace had accustomed Europeans to the good, peaceful life, and there was no desire to return to the menacing shadow of war. Western governments tended to accuse the USSR of

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stirring up the internal opposition and, in order to regain public support, they described the Soviet nuclear threat in frightening terms, convincing almost everyone in the West. But, as, John le Carre, who based some of his Cold War novels on intelligence data, said later in a television interview: “The data on the hundreds of Soviet missiles threatening the West was greatly exaggerated. Now we know that only a small number were operational, and they were not as accurate as we had been led to believe.” A similar campaign was waged in the USSR. “Of course we had to deploy nuclear weapons…,” says General Vladimir Lubov, After all, we were facing enemies who had tried to destroy us before and were still trying. We didn’t need nuclear weapons to attack, but to prevent an attack against us. We said it all along. Anyone with eyes in his head could see it, including those who didn’t believe us and thought it was propaganda. Ask yourself who started the nuclear race, who dragged the world into it and why. What did Britain and France need atomic weapons for? Britain believed it needed atomic weapons because of its imperial past and its partnership in the American nuclear effort—British scientists were deeply involved in the Los Alamos program. Ironically, Britain also contributed to Soviet nuclear efforts—through atomic spy Klaus Fuchs. In France, it was a different story. De Gaulle built an atom bomb to assert diplomatic, economic and political independence. A playful exchange between Mitterand and Gorbachev on 25 November 1988, was revealing. Mitterand: “France needs nuclear weapons because the USSR has them.” Gorbachev: “But we only have it because of you.” Mitterand: “But you had it before we did.” Soviet military historian Lieutenant General Dudnik, who studied the human aspect of the nuclear age, is convinced that what goes on in the mind of the man at the top is the vital factor in the game. A man must know when he faces destruction, at what point he is certain to be killed. That awareness is what should guide the nuclear decision-maker. It should make him think twice. That’s the essence of the story of the nuclear option. The important point is to ensure the same protection for the ordinary citizen and the leader who decides on the nuclear confrontation. You can’t put the latter in a bunker and leave the former exposed. But, according to Dudnik, this was not the case, at least in the USSR. “We examined the nuclear shelter situation in various countries to find out which of them was really preparing for a nuclear war. And what did we find? In various locations in our own country there were shelters set aside for the top brass.” One such shelter was under the Communist Party building in Moscow’s Staraya Square. It had an exit to the subway, which was to spirit the top echelons away in

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the event of a nuclear attack. Dudnik is sure that such a policy “had a devastating effect on the morale of people who knew about it” while others believe that circumstances like these contributed to the internal crumbling of the Soviet regime. General George Keegan, who headed US Air Force Intelligence, had 20 years of experience in studying Soviet preparedness for an American nuclear attack. From Marshal Sokolovsky’s writings on Soviet military strategy, he gathered that the Soviets were investing heavily in building an efficient defense against possible nuclear war. He was convinced that the ring road around Moscow was intended to serve as an escape route to a vast underground atomic shelter. From these and other indications, Keegan concluded that the Soviets intended to strike first. Life in the shadow of the bomb has a dynamic of its own. Lieutenant General Dudnik remembers a number of atomic alerts that could have developed into real confrontation. One such was at 13th Army command headquarters in Nizhny Novgorod during the 1973 Yom Kippur War in the Middle East. “One afternoon we were informed that an ultimatum had been passed to Washington. We were instructed to prepare all the divisions for a possible nuclear strike and be ready to strike back. An explanation attached to the orders said: ‘We have told the US that if Israel didn’t hold back, the USSR would have no choice but to intevene.’” Dudnik’s immediate response and that of the people around him was not exactly one of joy at the prospect of war. “We spent a few very difficult hours until it was announced that Israel had agreed to stop the fighting and the alert was cancelled.” Dudnik is still convinced that the world had really been on the verge of nuclear confrontation. However, other top Soviet players differ. Anatoly F.Dobrynin, Leonid Zamyatin, and Valentin Falin, then deputy director of the Communist Party’s International Department, recall the operational alert of Soviet airborne divisions, but do not recall any decision to intervene in the Middle East and they doubt if such a decision would have been taken. Again, in the poker game between the Kremlin and the White House, intelligence did not play a tangible role. True, intelligence had picked up the nuclear alert. But it could not say whether the Soviets were really ready to enter a nuclear confrontation, or whether it was a false alarm. Some years before, during the War of Attrition along the Suez Canal (1967–70), the Egyptians and the Soviets had introduced ground-to-air missiles despite “understandings” that they would not. Neither the US nor Israel responded firmly. But when Brezhnev sent Washington the 1973 ultimatum, the US stood its ground. “Brezhnev blinked first,” says Richard Perle, assistant defense secretary during the Reagan administration. According to détente agreements signed in June 1973, Brezhnev was committed to consult with the US president whenever world peace was endangered. Here is an example of such a consultation: On 24 October, at 9: 35p.m., Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin brought an ultimatum to the State Department for the attention of Henry Kissinger. It stated that if the US found it

THE THREAT 35

difficult to work in partnership with the USSR, the latter might act unilaterally to stop the fighting in the Middle East. According to Richard Perle, there was a sentence in the message that implied a nuclear threat: “Israel is taking a path that will lead to its self-destruction.” Perle says that Kissinger went into the same state of nuclear anxiety experienced by Kennedy during the previous nuclear confrontation, some 20 years earlier, because “we knew that Soviet nuclear forces had really been put on alert.” On 10 October American intelligence had detected an increased alert in three Soviet airborne divisions, and on the following day it was confirmed that all seven Soviet airborne divisions were on operational alert. Washington concluded that Moscow felt it had no choice but to do something to avert what had begun to look like an Arab rout, including the destruction of the entire Egyptian army. Kissinger hurried to the executive building to hand the letter to Alexander Haig, then White House chief of staff, who immediately went to the president. Nixon was preoccupied with his political future—it was the height of the Watergate crisis—and was more concerned about impeach ment than the developing nuclear confrontation. He received the ultimatum in a gloomy mood, partly because of the amount of alcohol he had consumed. He told Haig that Brezhnev’s ultimatum meant the biggest nuclear crisis since the days of the Cuban missiles. Haig assumed that Nixon would react to Brezhnev by placing the US army on immediate conventional and nuclear alert, demonstrating to Moscow what it should have known: a great power does not bow to pressure. This sense was shared by the entire circle of presidential aides who gathered at the White House: Kissinger, Scowcroft, James Schlesinger, Admiral Thomas Moorer, chairman of the JCS, CIA director William Colby, and the State Department’s Joseph Sisco. The meeting resulted in Nixon’s rejection of Brezhnev’s proposal for joint military action in the Middle East, and proposed instead sending in UN troops to keep the ceasefire. Simultaneously, Washington put its armed forces on nuclear alert. Putting the global doomsday machine on “ready” is a signal of intent, like a gunslinger standing in the middle of Main Street with his hand poised over his holster and his eyes narrowed. The Soviets understood the message and feared that Nixon’s difficult domestic situation might lead him to take a rash step. Fortunately for the rest of the world, the Israelis and the Egyptians were too exhausted to fight another round. Israeli intelligence had no inkling of what was really happening. Nor did the Egyptians, which enabled Kissinger to exploit the situation to detach Egypt from the Soviet sphere of influence. American intelligence did not supply, in this case either, any evaluation of Moscow’s real intentions. What would happen if Brezhnev failed to get what he wanted through his threat? Would he be ready to risk a nuclear showdown to get it? The White House’s reaction, as we have seen, was to declare a nuclear alert and to enter negotiations with the Soviets to resolve the crisis. During the Cold

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War era, politicians did not take risks. Not in Moscow either, as the case of Alexander Jilin shows. They prepared themselves to use the bomb, if that was what was decided, although no one on either side had any idea under what circumstances the bomb would be used, other than in retaliation for a nuclear strike. JILIN PHENOMENON AS A SYMPTOM OF AN INSANE WORLD One man who directly experienced the insanity of the nuclear game in the mid-1980s was a young pilot in the Soviet Air Force, Aleksandr Jilin, commander of a squadron of Tupolev 95 bombers at an air base 30 kilometers from Lvov. “No one entered this base, except the personnel stationed there,” he says. “We ourselves hardly ever left it.” Once a fortnight for three years, from 1982 to 1985, Lieutenant Colonel Jilin climbed into his plane and made for the cockpit, glancing back at the two giant metal cylinders in the fuselage, trying not to think about their contents. “I took the American nuclear threat very seriously,” he says, “not only because I understood the theory behind the balance of terror, but because if you fly a plane carrying two primed nuclear bombs over enemy territory as often as I did, you soon realize that this isn’t some kind of sporting competition, but a very serious business.” Jilin would take his seat and look at his watch. At 12 noon exactly he would look through the cockpit window and switch on the windscreen wipers, which were amazingly similar to those in his car, wiggle the 40-meter wing flaps, exchange a few routine words with his co-pilot, and begin taxiing toward the main runway, feeling the plane shudder beneath him. The Tupolev 95 was a twinengined aircraft with the reputation of a reliable and easily maintained work horse, and Jilin knew every bolt in it. The Soviet 50-megaton bomb had been tested from a similar plane in October 1961 at Novaya Zemlya in the Soviet far north. Commander Andrei Dornovtzev piloted that plane, and returned from the mission a lieutenant colonel and a “Hero of the USSR.” The bomb he dropped created a mushroom cloud 64 kilometers high, visible for about 1,000 kilometers. For a radius of hundreds of kilometers “wooden houses were destroyed and roofs of stone houses collapsed… The area was simply erased, wiped clear, flattened,” as General Nikolai Pavlov, who was in charge of the test, described the scene. Jilin did not compare “his” bomb with Dornovtzev’s, nor did he want to think about what such a bomb could do to London or Berlin, his targets. “We just sealed ourselves up, that was the only way you could handle a situation like that.” Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Jilin was born in the Ukraine, in an area of military shipyards closed to foreigners. Although he spent his life in the army and almost never met a foreigner until he came to Moscow, he had already

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realized “at age 12 or 13 that a piece of the puzzle was missing.” However, he also believed with all his heart that America was the deadly enemy. I always thought of American military might as highly efficient and dangerous. I pictured American pilots as the serious, strong type, and that was the ideal I had in mind when I became a pilot and a squadron commander myself. In those days I didn’t think beyond that. To me, what the West called the Cold War was part of our general situation vis-à-vis the West, in particular America. We always had planes in the air and submarines in the sea, prepared to react as quickly as possible if anything happened. The assumption was that America’s first target would be our missile bases. We had to build a system that would stand up to the American network lying in wait for us everywhere, all the time. This was my task as squadron commander. It was only during Gorbachev’s last year in power that they toned down those displays of power. When I was flying those bombs, I didn’t know exactly how the West perceived it, but I figured it all had to be part of some understanding between the USSR and the United States. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to fly around on the border of NATO countries with live nuclear bombs. And indeed, it is reasonable to assume that the American command knew and kept an eye on Alexander Jilin’s journeys with the bomb, a fact that did not reduce the level of anxiety. Only in the last year of Gorbachev’s rule was there a backing away from these shows of strength. On 31 August 1983, Jilin came back from one of his duty tours to learn that a Soviet warplane had downed a Korean Air Lines jumbo jet. The 269 people on board, 60 of whom were American, were killed. Andropov, who was seriously ill and hardly functioning, claimed that the jumbo jet was a spy plane. General Vladimir Lubov admits today that “it was a tragic mistake,” but stresses, “The Americans made spy flights all the time. There was no way of knowing whether this plane contained a nuclear bomb. It left a radar signature identical to American bombers, and it even behaved suspiciously by flying over a secret base.” In 1973 an Israeli warplane shot down a Libyan passenger plane after it deviated from its flight path toward Israeli territory. Such premature firing is characteristic of states who live on the edge of real or imaginary panic. The American response in the case of the downing of the Korean Air Lines jumbo jet was swift. President Reagan announced: “This was a Soviet attack on the entire world,” and the incident developed into an international crisis. It can be assumed that the US was aware of Jilin’s flights with his bombs, but this knowledge did not decrease suspicion and hostility. Far from the television cameras, Reagan noted in his diary that evening that if the Soviets really had made some kind of mistake in identifying the Korean plane, who could guarantee

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that one of them with his finger on the nuclear trigger would not embroil the world in an even more tragic error? This did not worry Jilin. “While we were flying,” he explains, “the bombs weren’t primed, but we had clear instructions as to how to activate them, and the flight engineer was responsible for that. Yes,” he adds after hesitating, “the team could decide to drop the bomb, but there’s no need to get excited. They didn’t choose lunatics for this mission.” The flights usually followed a regular route marked in the “peace map,” adhering strictly to the rules of flight in civilian air corridors. In the event of an emergency they were to locate the target on the “war map” and wait for orders. Occasionally they had training sessions for emergency situations. Three pairs of planes set out to each “goal” in the knowledge that one of them had to get through. “In fact,” says Jilin, “we assumed we wouldn’t come back.” The war map included times of arrival over each target. “I remember that on one particular flight plan I had eleven minutes to reach a certain point near West Berlin to drop a bomb. I don’t think it would have been easier to drop it there because it was a German target. No. I don’t think I hated anyone, not even Germans.” According to the order of battle Jilin trained on until 1985, his mission was to enter Berlin or London air space only after the area had been “softened up” first. There were tactical flights carrying tactical nuclear bombs. The first stage was to destroy air defenses. Then it was the turn of the squadrons whose job was to scatter electronic chaff, and only after that came the planes carrying the strategic bomb. Our aircraft were fairly old and slow, but we didn’t need more because we were covered in all directions by an umbrella. We knew it would work just the way it was supposed to, according to procedures and training. We trusted our aircraft and instrumentation. I remember once that technicians came to install the electronic chaff. Something went wrong in the air, and when the chaff dispersed all the radar screens on the base went on the blink. Mistakes can happen and they can be dangerous. Friends of mine, pilots who served in the Baltic States, told me that one time they flew into heavy cloud and emerged to see lights flashing beneath them. They freaked out. They thought it was an anti-aircraft defense system firing at them until they realized it was the lights of Helsinki, over which they had strayed. Jilin says that nothing like this happened to him because he was strict and didn’t ever allow himself to doze off when he was flying the nuclear route to London. He would fly for a number of hours, until the automatic navigator beeped in a way that always sounded to him as if it were telling him to wake up, even though he never slept on duty. The crew was almost groggy when they returned to base. Debriefing took about three minutes, and then it was straight to the sauna and a reasonably good meal. “Not a feast with caviar, but we had plenty of fruit and

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vegetables.” Each team member was given a glass of vodka, “exactly 50 grams, a small glass, to loosen the muscles, as we say.” At 8:00 a.m. members of two of the crews gathered in the briefing room to listen to weather reports and go over safety regulations. While his crew went to the mess to organize battle rations, Jilin would go to the intelligence officer to be given two sets of maps which were kept in a safe: a peace map and a war map, as well as communication and action codes. He went through the ritual of signing for them. Then they boarded their bus, “which was battered, but went as smoothly as our plane,” and rode to the airfield where they began routine flight preparations. “The atmosphere was perfectly normal,” Jilin recalls; “Just another chore, but there was always great tension. I, at least, who was a commander, had what actors call butterflies in my stomach. Each time, throughout each flight.” Wearing overalls with an oxygen mask dangling from a button on his flying helmet, Jilin supervised his crew of 15 men. Four were permanent members: the senior pilot, co-pilot, navigator and flight engineer. There was another navigator and a gunner who had a perch in a dome over the cockpit. The others were ground technicians and mechanics. Preparations took about three hours, and normally at the stroke of noon he was at the point of the runway from where he could see the base and the crews’ homes. Through the cockpit’s revolving skylight he saw his partner plane moving beside him. On receiving flight approval he pushed the throttle forward and looked at the dials. Sometimes, as he taxied down the runway, he devoted a brief thought to the bombs that were also being shaken back there by the plane’s movements. Then he would begin to climb, the familiar thunder in his ears, taking the long, familiar route from Kiev to Murmansk before veering west along the Atlantic coastline to Britain, keeping carefully to civilian air corridors. The sight of the white cliffs of Dover was his signal to start the journey home along the same route at the same speed, a little above 900 kilometers per hour. Sixteen hours of flying. Next to him sat his co-pilot and behind him was the flight engineer, who shared Jilin’s responsibility for the bombs. The gunner was perched above them, usually quite eager to leave his post for the alcove behind the cockpit that served as the galley: cans, fruit juice, bread, cookies, and tea and coffee for the countless number of cups they drank during the flight. The navigators bore a heavy responsibility and were always tense. One error on their part, one small deviation from the civilian air corridor could lead to unthinkable results. Jilin himself was not afraid of being shot down. If the worst came to the worst, they would abandon the plane through an emergency chute. They all wore parachutes. The only problem was that most of the time they would be flying over the North Sea. More than ten or twenty minutes in those icy waters meant death by freezing. Of course, there was a rubber dinghy that would parachute down with them, but the prevailing winds shaved the odds that crew and boat would hit the water at roughly the same spot. “Anyway,” Jilin shrugs

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like someone who has long since accepted the basic facts of life or death, “a pilot doesn’t ask himself what happens if. A pilot flies.” And they flew. Another cup of tea, another cup of coffee, half-wishing for some small adventure to lift their spirits and break the monotony of the endless engine-roar, to Britain and back, in the company of the Bomb. Lubov is unwilling to comment openly about the way the USSR faced the American threat, but he knows what it takes to defend his motherland. I don’t want to talk about the nuclear program of the Soviet Union, but everything we did was in response to the other side. How could I tell what was in the American planes and submarines that circled our coasts? Perhaps they too were armed with atomic bombs? And perhaps a crazy submarine commander could have fired a nuclear missile at Moscow? After all, we had to protect ourselves somehow. A person can sit around guessing all day long, but I had to give a practical answer, not guess or estimate things I didn’t know. Lieutenant Colonel Jilin personifies General Lubov’s practical answer to the question he posed, and states flatly: “If I had received an order to drop the nuclear bomb on London, I would have done so.” He muses a little, smoothing his thinning, blond hair, and reassures himself: I was a soldier and I had to obey orders, but something must have happened to me during my service. I always was a skeptic, and the fact that I’m here today in a newspaper office, not still in the army, probably proves something. But back then I believed that the Americans were poised to attack and would do so if we showed any weakness. Jilin had a number of reasons for concluding that Soviet policy was in the main defensive. For example, “all our large cities were defended by anti-aircraft units, radar, missiles, and air force squadrons, while Western cities were almost defenseless. Only a power that thought it had an advantage, that planned a surprise first strike, would not worry about defense.” American intelligence officers like George Keegan, however, came to a different conclusion. They believed the Soviets were building dense anti-aircraft defense systems so that they could absorb the American response to their (first) strike. “Our fears,” says Jilin, “were realistic because the US installed missiles ready for action in Turkey, Germany, and the rest of Europe.” As Jilin sees it, then and now, the USSR never threatened the West. We threatened no one—we were threatened. If the West estimated the Soviet threat, let’s say, as a ten, I’d say that was ten times too much. That is, both our ability to make good on the threat and our intention to do so. If

THE THREAT 41

they believed otherwise, then they had a problem with their intelligence or they just didn’t understand the situation. What aim were those flying bombs serving, and the plans to position satellites above, carrying nuclear bombs and waiting for orders? Political advantage? Deterrence of a nuclear strike? A second strike option, or rapid response capability should this be required? They had no function in the crises in Europe after the Second World War, nor in the wars in the Middle East or the Far East. And at the end of 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, it was perfectly clear that the Soviet army would not be able to make use of nonconventional armaments, certainly not nuclear ones. But then nor would the United States be able to make deterrent or interventional use of its nuclear capability to prevent Soviet military involvement in Afghanistan. AFGHANISTAN 1: THE TURNING POINT The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan marks the beginning of the end of the Soviet empire and the collapse of communism, which had been the ideological basis of its existence. The invasion strengthened existing fears, aroused dormant anxieties and enabled Sovietologists in intelligence, Academe and the media to say: “We told you so! The USSR is strong enough to achieve its imperialist ambitions, like territorial continuity to the warm waters.” But in reality, the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan exposed the Red Army’s vulnerability—a weak, confused and even senile leadership, and a lack of popular support, which in the past had been one of the Soviet regime’s most powerful assets. In January 1977, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Jimmy Carter replaced Henry Kissinger and Gerald Ford, Nixon’s successor after Watergate. Carter was the first American president following the Second World War to take office with the genuine conviction that it was both possible and desirable to make the shift from uneasy coexistence to extensive cooperation with the USSR. On entering the White House, Carter found on his desk an NIC (National Intelligence Council) assessment, “Soviet Strategic Capabilities and Goals,” which stated that the Kremlin was determined to achieve military superiority over the US. The annual report Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld placed before Congress at about the same time expressed much the same view. The NIC assessment was signed by CIA Director George Bush, who, earlier in his tenure, had established “Team B,” which was meant to provide another view of the Soviet strategic threat to that produced by in-house research and evaluation experts, who often proved “too soft.” Team B was not the usual breed of intelligence analysts. It comprised confirmed anti-Reds such as Richard Pipes, Paul H.Nitze, as well as Daniel Graham, who made the long journey from Vietnam via the Pentagon to join the team and later was involved in promoting Star Wars. The paper was the last signed by Bush as director of the CIA. Immediately afterwards, he was fired by Carter, who felt that he was too political

42 WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION

for the job, while Bush was convinced that his demotion was politically motivated. Both men were right. George Keegan, still on his alarm-spreading crusade, also retired then, claiming that the USSR had not only caught up with the US in terms of strategic power, but had already overtaken it. In early December 1979, the CIA first reported an increased Soviet military presence on the border of Afghanistan. Toward the end of December, the listening stations of the NSA in Pakistan picked up unusual airplane activity in the direction of Kabul airport. Then came reports of a raid by KGB special forces on the presidential palace and the replacement of Hafizullah Amin (later claimed to have been a CIA agent), by Babrak Karmal, who was a KGB agent. Carter took the news personally. “In the last month,” he said, “I have learned more about the Soviets than in the last two and a half years.” He had believed that US-Soviet relations could be elevated to the next level of détente, and he felt betrayed. For the first time since taking office, he ordered the CIA to engage in covert anti-Soviet activities. “The President was determined to make Moscow pay a high price for invading Afghanistan,” said Admiral Stansfield Turner, the CIA’s new director, “and he pushed the CIA to take action there.” He even made a personal appeal to Egypt’s President Sadat to help the Muslim mujahidin, and sent Brzezinski to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to bolster Islamic aid. Not content with covert action, Carter signaled his intention to strike at the USSR in any and every way; the most highly publicized step was to cancel US participation in the 1980 Olympic Games held in Moscow and to induce most of the free world to follow his lead. At least one CIA senior operational officer was not surprised by the Soviet invasion. He was more surprised that Carter was surprised. “It is simply amazing that Carter claims to be surprised,” he states, “The Agency knew everything we should have known about the Soviets,” he claims, and adds: “We provided the White House with reports about Soviet military preparations which indicated that they were planning the invasion. They didn’t listen because the information didn’t match their ideas about the USSR.” However, Carter’s surprise should not be dismissed lightly. The invasion came as a surprise to many in the USSR as well. The real divide is not between those who anticipated the invasion and those who did not, but between those who chose to accept the USSR’s flagrant violation of the ground rules, and those who called for a firm response. Although he was eager to continue SALT negotiations, Carter was annoyed at the increasing Soviet involvement in Ethiopia, Angola and Mozambique. He decided to adopt the tough position recommended by National Security Advisor Brzezinski over the compromising stance advocated by Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. He decided to stand up to the Soviets everywhere. According to Robert Gates, it was Carter who laid the groundwork for the Reagan administration’s activist Third World policy. From a purely intelligence-oriented aspect, many professionals claim that the failure to obtain specific information on the timing and magnitude of the invasion was rooted in a change in emphasis at the CIA introduced by Turner

THE THREAT 43

(who had been Carter’s classmate in the naval academy) from human intelligence (HUMINT) to electronic intelligence (ELINT). Turner fired 700 operational officers who dealt with HUMINT, which, his critics said, damaged the Agency’s ability to gather information about enemy intentions—the very heart of intelligence. Carter’s reaction was emotional. Reagan, who succeeded him in January 1980, and his intelligence chief, William Casey, both realized that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan could be exploited to create a global anti-Soviet front. American policy and CIA operations were enlisted to accelerate the process. In March 1985, Reagan signed a National Security Directive which defined US objectives: an all-out struggle against the USSR to force a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. The KGB was also taken by surprise by the Afghanistan campaign. “No one ever asked us what we thought about the potential implications of the invasion. For me, it was an indelible personal blow and a national trauma,” complains KGB Lieutenant General Nikolai Leonov, who was head of the KGB’s Information Directorate. “If we had been asked, we would have advised against it.” Leonov says he first heard about the invasion of Afghanistan three hours before it took place, and that the decision to invade was taken by Brezhnev, Ustinov, Gromyko and Andropov. Kryuchkov, who was Leonov’s boss and head of the KGB’s First Chief Directorate, knew of and supported the invasion, but “I know for sure that he wasn’t one of the movers and shakers. I assume that the GRU were in the loop—they had to provide the field intelligence—but no one bothered to update us or to ask us for an evaluation.” Ustinov, Gromyko and Andropov did not need an assessment from Leonov to convince Brezhnev that the invasion served Soviet interests. A few loaded phrases such as “a new regime in Afghanistan could bring the US closer to our borders and endanger our security,” were enough to draw the secretary general into an initiative which was to prove catastrophic for the USSR. Soviet and US defense and policy-making elites probably knew but preferred to turn a blind eye to what was happening in Afghanistan. They knew that secret wars were being waged between the CIA and the KGB in the backyard of Amin’s administration, in preparation for the entry of foreign troops. A few months before the invasion, American intelligence identified a site near Kabul where the Soviets were building an airfield. “The discovery caused us quite a lot of excitement,” says Fritz Emarth, a veteran CIA officer who served in the NSC before moving to the NIC in the second half of the 1980s. He was told that the field was meant to serve the Soviets in a move on Iran, and he took this information absolutely seriously. “Invade Iran? Us?” Leonov wonders, clearly amused. But there were people in Langley who saw this as a serious possibility. During the early 1980s, despite uneasy US-Iran relations, the CIA allocated $100 million to an operation aimed at saving Iran from a Soviet invasion. The Agency recruited a number of

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Iranians, trained them in Germany, and sent them back to Iran to organize dormant fighting units to harass the Red Army in the event of a Soviet takeover. The assumption behind the “Iranian program” was that part of Soviet traditional objectives and present interests was to expand into the warm water zone and especially Iran’s oil fields, a vital Western economic lifeline. Shortly after returning home to prepare for the coming Soviet coup, most of the Iranian CIA enlistees were arrested by Iran’s security forces. Fritz Emarth, a former senior CIA officer, draws a bitter sigh and muses aloud that this blunder may have stemmed from Casey’s having “forgotten” to tell the Ayatollah that he was running a unit to save Iran from the Reds. Emarth explains that the notion of a possible Soviet invasion of Iran was based on information the Agency had about Soviet military exercises from which it gathered that there was a Soviet contingency plan for an invasion of Iran. But the truth was it had no solid information about actual plans or intentions. On 24 December, the Red Army began airlifts of commando units and equipment to Kabul, and at the same time Soviet tanks massed on the border began to enter Afghanistan. Brent Scowcroft is convinced that the Soviet decision to invade was based on a perception of American weakness: “The mid-1970s were difficult times for us because of Watergate and Vietnam.” Believing that the US was hamstrung, the Soviets increased the pressure. The 40th Army sent 1,800 T-62 tanks and 80,000 soldiers across the border at the end of 1979 and advanced through the twisting mountain paths that led toward Kabul, destroying everything they passed through, including the roads. Armed resistance began soon after the invasion, and it quickly became clear that the Soviet expeditionary force was performing with an amazing lack of efficiency. By destroying roads as they advanced, Soviet tanks damaged the very infrastructure their reinforcements and supply commands would need. The tanks found it hard to aim at the insurgents’ strongholds which were entrenched on high land, and they absorbed heavy losses from the RPG (rocket propelled grenade) shells fired at them by the mujahidin. Thousands of Soviet supply trucks and command cars were destroyed. Bases, parking lots and airfields came under constant fire from light arms and mortars. Military equipment was destroyed. At a relatively early stage it became clear that only their helicopters were saving the Soviets from total failure. Dozens of MI-24 helicopters, which had proved particularly useful, were brought in. The Afghan rebels used Dashikas (machine guns looted from Soviet troops) against the helicopters. . a later stage, the Americans armed them with Stinger shoulder missiles, a lethal weapon weighing only 17 kilograms with a supersonic warhead that has a range of six kilometers. Any average Afghani fighter, even if he were illiterate, could operate one after only brief instruction. This forced the Soviet pilots to fly higher than they would have liked, losing much of their lethal potential. It was not only Stingers that America sent to Afghanistan. Casey managed to persuade the Saudis to support the rebels. The blessing of the royal dynasty may

THE THREAT 45

have lifted the spirits of the mujahidin, but the tens of thousands of Saudi national airline meals which were distributed as battle rations helped at least as much, not to mention a generous financial contribution. The war exposed the astonishing weakness of the Red Army, the same army that was supposed to conquer the world for communism. In reality, that mighty force could not overcome a few gangs of impoverished insurgents skulking in the mountains. However, experts such as Richard Pipes were not sure that Soviet performance in Afghanistan necessarily reflected their overall strategic capability and the threat it posed to the Western world. Pipes is convinced that American intelligence shared his view. Military experts explained to him that the Soviet Army had no experience in Third World guerrilla warfare because it was a modern army which had trained for an offensive war in Europe, where terrain and ground conditions were so different. “Napoleon could not subdue Spain,” says Pipes, “although he conquered all of Europe. Hitler’s decision to attack Russia was based on information about Soviet Army operational capabilities during the war against Finland. But when the Germans invaded, they found a completely different Soviet army.” Lubov cannot understand the American fuss over the Soviet invasion. “For us, Afghanistan was a top defense priority,” he explains. “Whatever happened there had direct implications for our security, even more than Cuba has for the US, because we have a common border.” Leslie Gelb, an analyst rather than a general, understands what was behind the Soviet invasion. “But they made a strategic mistake in believing that someone could take control there. It’s one of those places where chaos will always be endemic.” The US, according to Gelb, got involved in order to “make trouble” for the Soviets, and the “strategic idea was to entangle Moscow in a military and political conflict.” In retrospect, the war in Afghanistan was more like the death-throes of a dying giant than the aggressive act of a power about to dominate the world. It was a final ostentatious display by a bankrupt society that insisted on waging a hopeless war over a crumbling piece of property. A wounded bear is probably more dangerous than a healthy one, certainly more than a bear with a full stomach, but at the time no Western intelligence community assessed that this particular bear was dying. The gap between this wisdom with hindsight, and the near-hysterical response of the US administration, highlights the US intelligence failure to see that the Soviets were on the verge of collapse. Western reaction varied from the “We told you so” joy of Red-baiters to the anger and personal humiliation of Jimmy Carter, who perceived the invasion as personal betrayal on the part of Brezhnev and his regime. In the broader context, the invasion of Afghanistan—the Soviets’ first outside of their sphere of influence in Eastern Europe—evoked the trauma of the Stalinist past. The residue of historical memory seems to affect public beliefs, and sometimes even those of the policy-makers. The inclination to introduce what one has learned from history and personal experience into assessments of a

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current situation is natural, but intelligence work requires a professional attitude that is removed from emotional considerations. This may be the root of the professional, perhaps also conceptual, failure of intelligence from the end of the 1970s to understand the Soviet crisis. The Afghan invasion was wrongly perceived as a threat to US interests and an indication of Soviet readiness to expand globally under the guise of the “Brezhnev doctrine,” a term coined during the Cold War before anyone recognized that there were in fact two Brezhnevs. The first Brezhnev, until the Afghanistan fiasco, was sufficiently alert and levelheaded to handle the affairs of the USSR on his own, although he had difficulty grasping reality, the country’s problems, and the way the world was changing. He was a tough communist, survivor of a 1969 assassination attempt, who advocated the tough line expressed by Marshal Andrei Grechko, who had commanded the 18th Army at the battle of Stalingrad, when Brezhnev headed his political department. In April 1967, Grechko was appointed Soviet minister of defense. Two weeks later Brezhnev, who was then a Politburo member, made a speech at a gathering of European Communist leaders in Czechoslovakia. “There is no justification for the permanent presence of the American Sixth Fleet in southern Europe’s coastal waters,” he said. “The Sixth Fleet cruises the area, utilizing army bases in a line of Mediterranean countries. This represents a serious threat to the security of the countries in the region, and the time has come to demand that the Sixth Fleet leave the area.” No member of the Soviet government had ever made such a demand before. The firm Brezhnev-Grechko approach lasted only a few years. Brezhnev dwindled into angry senility and became easy prey for those around him. He was manipulated on the eve of the invasion of Afghanistan, and at the Helsinki conference. A former senior Kremlin official relates: Our approach traditionally was that as we are a superpower, we should take a superpower stance. Brezhnev’s aides consulted with Gromyko, and instructed the secretary general’s staff, and the International Department of the Central Committee, to draft working papers. Gromyko and his aides usually set the guidelines, which were always the same: We will defend the achievements of Socialism, we are in favor of peaceful coexistence, and of course we oppose changes in Europe. Sometimes there were differences between Gromyko’s staff and the International Department or the KGB, but it was never more than a question of semantics, not underlying policy. Sometimes the KGB submitted a paper of its own, as it did in this case. All the papers were given to Brezhnev’s speech writer, who stitched them together in line with his Russian bear image. Brezhnev’s participation in the Helsinki Conference was subject to this process. While he was going over his speech, someone heard him give an angry growl before beckoning urgently to Gromyko. Brezhnev waved the paper at Gromyko

THE THREAT 47

and complained: “Why bring up this business about human rights? Our society has none of those problems!” Gromyko explained that the subject had to be mentioned because it was fashionable and everyone was talking about it. At first Brezhnev seemed about to refuse, and Gromyko looked around helplessly until one of Brezhnev’s aides came up and soothed the general secretary. And that was how the USSR, for the first time, added its voice in support of human rights. Whether Brezhnev softened up in his old age or was manipulated by his aides, Western intelligence agencies never realized that the Soviet Union was no longer what it used to be or what it had seemed to be: an awe-inspiring great power, aggressive, expansionist, united, and omnipotent. It was not only a matter of menacing nuclear power—Soviet conventional military might was also perceived as a serious threat. But whether or not the threat was real, these assumptions hardened into the overall conception that dictated the foreign and defense policies of the West toward the Soviet Union right up to its final years.

2 The Myth

THE RED ARMY’S CONVENTIONAL OPERATIONAL ABILITY In 1985 General Dudnik was on the staff of Marshal Nikolai V.Ogarkov, who commanded one of the Red Army’s five fronts, in southwest Poland. One day, Ogarkov held a combat-readiness inspection in one of the more sensitive sectors of his front. Dudnik learned that the sector commander had been informed six months in advance of the “surprise visit.” Because of the grave implications of such irresponsibility, Dudnik set aside the usual loyalty to colleagues and reported to Ogarkov. “Bring me proof,” said the marshal, and Dudnik had no difficulty doing so, since the practice was common. At the next command meeting, it was decided to carry out a surprise inspection without informing the unit in advance. An officer who was not in on the loop proposed a certain unit, which had been prepared for the inspection. But shortly before the planned visit, Ogarkov announced his intention to inspect a different unit. The commander who had prepared his unit for the “surprise” looked at him as if he could not believe his ears. Then he looked around angrily at the others present at the meeting. “I can’t describe what happened next,” Dudnik recalls. “It almost came to a physical brawl.” “NATO’s view of us,” Ogarkov once remarked at a command meeting, “reflects one of two possibilities: either they don’t take us seriously, or we aren’t a threat to them. Either way, the result’s the same. They are completely complacent.” “However,” Dudnik warns, there’s always a “but” when you talk about the Red Army. We knew we couldn’t compete with the West from the military point of view but we did have our national pride, as citizens of a superpower. I don’t think that any intelligence agency, even our own, could have possibly evaluated our potential power.

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Dudnik had graduated from the Subarov military school in 1950. He studied at a military academy and by the age of 44 he was already a lieutenant general. In 1995, two years after retiring, he was living on a pension of less that $100 a month. “The Red Army,” he says, had no formal doctrine as understood in the West. There was no need for it. We were fed ideology, the tough sort that doesn’t allow questions. Our top brass was cut off from events in the outside world. Even the most senior officers had no access to Western ideas. We did not study foreign languages and had no access to information about the West. The system was hermetic. It was us against the rest of the world, specifically our army facing an enemy army, and the United States was the number one enemy. It was the US that had set up NATO and was training it for a possible war against us. I lectured about it, even though I myself had never read any Western material on the topic. I just knew it, the way the Americans knew that the USSR was evil. Dudnik’s mythological pantheon of enemies had Britain in second place. In 1946, Winston Churchill had made a speech in Fulton, Missouri, where he first talked about the Iron Curtain dividing Europe. It caused the Soviets to cast him in the role of prophet of the next world war. “Of course, we hadn’t read the speech itself,” Dudnik allows, “but we knew that in this speech he had formulated the declaration of the Third World War, and that was enough for us. Actually, our instructors hadn’t read the speech either, but they talked about it as if it were the basis of Western policy toward us.” As a former Red Army general, Dudnik views NATO’s current policy toward East Europe as aimed at “taking control of Russia’s neighbors in order to reach our borders. Anyone who doesn’t understand what that means for us will make the same mistake tomorrow that he made yesterday.” Dudnik speaks cynically and mockingly not only of Red Army doctrine, but also of the Warsaw Pact. They talked to us in slogans. It was all propaganda. Not only to the men, but also to the officers. We used to tell each other that our country loves peace more than anyone else. “The USSR is the leader of the socialist camp and will defend the socialist states.” Everyone knew the slogans, and this was what we had for a doctrine. Dig a little and you’ll find other catchwords too, like “We will abide by a defense doctrine, but we have all we need and in sufficient quantity to foil the enemy’s aggression and destroy him on his own ground for the sake of the victory of socialism.” Whoever recited the slogans most fervently got promoted fastest. Preparations to actually face NATO, according to Dudnik, were a more of a “joke” than a serious military response.

50 THE MYTH

One day in 1986, Marshal Viktor Kulikov, the commander of the Warsaw Pact forces, ordered one of the divisions in Czechoslovakia to station itself at a certain point on the Austrian border. It was a routine maneuver to test combat readiness which should only have taken a few hours. The division had been stationed in Czechoslovakia for 25 years and we assumed they knew the area well. Other troops playing “NATO enemy forces” also took part in these war games and responded to our every move. The result was that the “West German” forces reached their target within hours, while our advance units took two days. I saw for myself Marshal Kulikov’s amazement when he discovered just how slowly our columns moved, how little the advance units, who were meant to prepare for the arrival of the main force, knew of the terrain which they controlled—and in the West they claimed that this army threatened Europe! “I don’t want to talk too much about it,” Dudnik continues, Anyone with eyes in his head can see for himself what happened in Chechnia. I think that if the Americans had understood the inner workings of our army, they’d have been far less alarmed about our prowess. They gathered a heap of information, but they couldn’t, or maybe didn’t want to, draw the right conclusion, preferring to inflate our power. Dudnik is convinced that soldier for soldier, and perhaps unit for unit as well, the Americans are superior. But for sheer numbers, he argues, no army in the world compared to the Soviet army, and this was the heart of the problem. “On the battle field the Soviet commander would pile up the bodies. How many tanks do we have today? Sixty thousand? Fifty thousand may be destroyed on the way, but ten thousand will reach the English Channel.” Thus Dudnik sums up the doctrine of the Red Army, something the West searched for but never found. There was something of a contradiction between the Red Army’s operational capability and the readiness of the individual soldier to sacrifice his life when ordered to do so. But in a technology-rich world, by balancing the two elements, an intelligence expert who was aware of the situation, should have been able to provide a different assessment of the threat from that presented to Western policy-makers. “In fact,” says Dudnik, anyone who knew the Red Army should have grasped back in the early 1980s that it had lost important elements of its operational ability and morale. It was no longer a fighting army. It was a mistake to judge its capability by its size, without taking into account other factors like the corruption at every level, the ramshackle equipment, the disease, and dozens of other built-in flaws.

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General Vladimir Lubov, last Warsaw Pact chief of staff, is a corpulent, aggressive man and, following the collapse of the USSR, he speaks bitterly, bluntly and sarcastically. We would have started a nuclear war? The Americans believed that? They waged a propaganda war against us. They encouraged our allies to secede from the Warsaw Pact. The KGB and the GRU passed me lots of reports about it. Lots of contacts, lots of promises—and what’s left? Yugoslavia, that has disintegrated, for example, and other countries where no one cares if they can feed their people. Lubov says he carried out policy, he did not judge it—but nevertheless he believed in what the Kremlin was doing. We never thought of attacking the West. The Warsaw Pact was purely defensive, and I say so as a former chief of staff… We definitely tried to achieve a strategic balance in weaponry with NATO—not in the number of weapons, but in the level of sophistication, their serviceability and the professionalism of the people who operated them. We had technical difficulties there’s no point in going into. Still, to attack the West? That idea existed only in American minds, and even the Europeans didn’t believe it. Robert McFarlane, Reagan’s national security advisor, says: The Soviets didn’t talk about a first strike against the US but the situation was definitely threatening. Our view was that we couldn’t exclude the possibility that the Soviets would start a war in Europe that would involve nuclear weapons. In other words, in the case of a conventional Soviet attack on Germany, the US would respond with tactical nuclear weapons. Obviously, there would then be a Soviet nuclear counterattack, and we’d all be involved in a nuclear war. Lubov, like the overwhelming majority of those who served the Soviet system, injects Russia’s overwhelming historical burden into everything he says, thinks or feels. The entire history of the USSR and Russia is one of having to face invasions from the West, so we always feared the West and the West always reminded us how justified our fear was. Only 55 years ago we were invaded by Germany, armed by the West after World War I and again after World War II, which claimed 27 million Soviet victims, one in eight of the population, a hundred times the American losses in the war to destroy Fascism.

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Beyond historical claim and counterclaim, the real question is: Was the threat posed by the military preparedness and contingency plans of the Warsaw Pact likely to lead to another world war, this time nuclear? With the USSR and the United States facing each other and armed to the teeth —both exaggerating the threat and preparing to cope with it—it was beyond the power of any intelligence document to allay mutual fears, even if the information it contained came straight from the horse’s mouth. Assessing the substance of the threat was the task of intelligence. The political echelon’s ability to formulate an appropriate response depends on the evaluation it gets from intelligence and its readiness to adopt it. Intelligence is needed to distinguish between phantom threats and the enemy’s real intentions and capabilities, so that the policy-maker will be able to give his generals the right orders. When Warsaw Pact maneuvers were carried out in Czechoslovakia in 1984, they put the emphasis on defense for the first time, in the hope that Washington would get the message. In February 1984, a short while after he was appointed general secretary and shortly before his death, Andropov wrote to President Reagan proposing that the two superpowers explore every possibility of reaching an agreement on a significant decrease in the quantity of mid-range nuclear weapons deployed in Europe, before the US started deploying a new missile system in Europe. Reagan noted in his diary that Andropov’s letter had merely convinced him that the US had to continue with its new missile deployment program in Europe. Reagan did not have to take everything Andropov said at face value, but CIA director William Casey’s job was to pinpoint what was behind the Russian leader’s overture. He should have been trying to find out whether Dudnik’s descriptions or Lubov’s theories, and perhaps the signs of distress and crisis beginning to surface in the USSR, dovetailed with Andropov’s proposal and corresponded with what was known to the CIA. But American intelligence’s estimate of the Soviet military threat does not seem to have changed at all in light of the new emerging trends in the Soviet Union, five years before the collapse. At any rate, Andropov died two weeks after his letter to Reagan. Chernenko, his successor, died a year later and the Gorbachev era began. The new general secretary quickly signaled his intention to change the East— West relationship from confrontation to cooperation. The signals were indirect and required careful examination; one came through the Warsaw Pact maneuvers, an established indicator of the Soviet threat. Until the 1984 military exercises in Czechoslovakia, the Pact had carried out only offensive maneuvers. Now, in 1985, it conducted a first full-scale strategic defensive exercise. Still, it was only in September 1989 that an official, new doctrine was defined, based on a defensive approach. Offensive plans were not scrapped, but were given second priority, and the new strategy focused on defense and counterattack. The NATO commander facing the Warsaw Pact from late 1974 was General Alexander Haig, who was appointed by President Ford on Kissinger’s

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recommendation. Six years later Haig returned to Washington as secretary of state. Haig was a graduate of West Point, and he had learned the political side of his job from Nixon and Kissinger. From his tour of duty in Vietnam as a divisional commander he retained a deep sense of frustration at the defeat, which he blamed on the communists in Moscow and the liberals at home. “The Soviets pulled strings from behind the scenes and then picked up all the goodies, and we were stupid enough to let them do it,” he said during the 1987 election campaign he hoped would put him in the White House. Haig was convinced then, as he is today, that “the USSR did not directly attack the West in the past only because of our policy of deterrence, which had a braking effect on its behavior and its global ambitions.” He saw himself as an uncompromising anti-Soviet warrior and kept NATO in a state of permanent alert, making frequent visits to combat units. He once commented that a lack of discipline would cost the US dear if the Soviets attacked. Until his departure in 1979, Haig ran NATO like a domineering staff sergeant keeping his men on alert. However, during the 1980s, most NATO states were already setting policy that distanced them somewhat from Washington. They disagreed about nuclear policy, trade with the Soviets, financing a gas pipeline in the USSR, and about the way common interests were viewed. The generation that had cooperated closely during the Second World War and had later created NATO gave way to a new generation, critical of US patronage and doubtful about the wisdom of US policy regarding the Soviet threat. A 1984 USA Today investigative report quoted one European who, reflecting a widely held view, claimed: “The West will win a nuclear conflict between the US and the USSR, but Europe will be lost anyway.” Another interviewee added: “The nuclear umbrella doesn’t protect me.” Many of Europe’s young leaders began to think that it would be better to freeze nuclear weapons than to rely on the US nuclear umbrella. The paper held a dialogue with young European leaders and concluded that they did not fear a Soviet invasion and even accepted that Moscow’s obsession with defense meant that the USSR and Europe shared the same concerns. Some of them believed that the USSR would attack only in selfdefense. Generally speaking, the European interviewees were bothered more at having to live in a heavily nuclear environment than by Soviet aggression. The threat was military, the solution political. A major test of relations between NATO and the USSR was not long in coming. The Reagan administration pushed for the December 1979 NATO decision to deploy Pershing and Cruise missiles in Europe. This was a reaction to the massive Soviet SS-20 missile deployment that had begun in 1977, itself sparked by fear of newly developed American missiles, which, in turn, followed the introduction of a new Soviet arsenal. Here, in a nutshell, is the history of the arms race. “The deployment of Pershing and Cruise missiles in Europe,” President Reagan said in 1983, “should not be seen as a threat to the USSR… Their only purpose is that no one doubt American concern for the defense of

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North America and Western Europe.” The Soviets used exactly the same arguments to justify their decision to deploy the SS-20. Europe was flooded by a wave of protest against the installation of a new type of missile on its territory, but to no avail. The main opposition came from the Greens and the various peace movements. It seemed strange to the US that people and movements in France, Germany and Britain, who were within SS-20 range, not to mention the Scandinavians who shared a border with the Soviets, should oppose the installation of weapons intended to protect them. The Reagan administration had no special difficulty dealing with its European counterparts. Most West European governments, fed by American intelligence material, were inclined to agree to deploy the missiles on their soil. The main problem was economic, they wanted their own arms industries to produce at least some of the components of the new defense systems. This was not difficult to solve, but the wave of public protest that caused European governments to vacilate was a different matter. The American intelligence community and most of its Western counterparts were sure it stemmed from some kind of communist plot. The CIA was mobilized to solve the riddle. John McMahon, CIA deputy director, appeared in July 1982 before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence which was discussing Soviet active measures against Western democracies. He told the committee that the KGB was behind the various antimissile protest movements in Europe, granting secret aid to some of the organizations. Unlike his boss, Casey, McMahon was honest enough to admit that “not everything stems from Soviet meddling,” and that “many people in Europe are genuinely concerned about the potential danger inherent in deploying nuclear weapons on their territory. In any case, we have evidence that the Soviets tried to influence Scandinavian peace movements and have worked in other countries through ‘agents of influence’.” Oleg Gordievsky, then deputy head of the KGB London station and a British mole, denies any KGB involvement in Europe’s mass movement against the deployment of American nuclear missiles. The directors of the two West German intelligence bodies, Hans-Georg Wieck and Heribert Hellenbroich, estimated that the protest movements were genuine and autonomous. They found no evidence of Soviet involvement. That there was a need to bolster NATO’s ability to stand up to the Soviet threat required no intelligence input. It was a widely shared assumption. Things, though, looked different from the other side. Moscow feared, not without foundation, that the West was out to change the post-war status quo. The communist leadership and bureaucracies saw NATO’s new posture in Europe as a serious threat to their hegemony in Eastern Europe.

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EUROPE: THE WESTERN THREAT, AS REFLECTED IN WARSAW PACT FILES The 1980s hot spot in the nuclear arms race was Europe, the arena of NATOWarsaw Pact confrontation. The possibility of a war between the communist bloc and the West was discussed soberly at various very serious locales, although by the early 1980s, it was pure nonsense. It was taken seriously because of the intolerable burden of responsibility which politicians feel for their nations, something which frequently fits their ideologies like a glove. Here and there, it also suited the economic interests of this or that group, totally identified, of course, with the politicians in question. The Warsaw Pact, which was perceived in the West as a mailed fist, was in fact an alliance between a coalition of conquered nations and a harsh patron. The lack of trust between them was obvious throughout the Cold War. Over the years, the Soviets struggled to persuade their East European allies to increase their roles in the Pact. During 1977–78, Marshal Ustinov, Brezhnev’s defense minister, found himself arguing with Warsaw Pact colleagues unwilling to up their share in the organization. Hungary refused point blank and Romania regularly avoided participation in Warsaw Pact maneuvers. Western intelligence, however, based its incriminating conclusions more on communist ideology than on Warsaw Pact deployment and field exercises. A more accurate assessment of the dimensions and gravity of the Soviet threat to Western Europe and the way the Warsaw Pact, in turn, viewed the West, became possible after the reunification of Germany, when East German archives fell into the hands of Western researchers. Most of the documents were destroyed, but many thousands of Warsaw Pact papers on West and East German defense relations remained intact. The USSR and its satellites were in no doubt that NATO’s contingency plans included a nuclear option. As early as 1973, the Warsaw Pact estimated “that NATO would utilize nuclear weapons if invaded by Warsaw Pact states to a depth of 100 kilometers.” East German intelligence’s assessment of NATO plans claimed: “NATO’s first strike, without France, will utilize 2,714 nuclear warheads; with France, 2,874 along the front. The second strike will include a total of 1,528 nuclear attacks without France, and 1,624 with France.” For its part, the Warsaw Pact command planned to utilize four attacking forces for a breakthrough on the German front (the Berlin zone). In 1983 the Pact’s deputy commander had stated: “If we don’t take the necessary steps, NATO will be capable of activating more than 5,000 nuclear warheads, 2,800 of which will be used in the first strike.” In the 1981 Warsaw Pact maneuvers under the command of Marshal Kulikov, the underlying assumption was that nuclear weapons would be used in attack. Two years later, in the 1983 maneuvers, Pact orders were: “Fighting will continue until the enemy is destroyed…the unforeseeable implications of the dimension of strategic action forces us to utilize all weapons at our disposal, including weapons of mass destruction.”

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As late as 1988, General Gottwald, deputy director of East Germany’s Military Intelligence, wrote to his superiors that NATO had long harbored plans for selective use of nuclear weapons in case of war. By that time the Warsaw Pact had set up 835 tactical missiles, divided as follows: 205 mid-range missiles under independent command, 380 missiles with attack brigades and 250 tactical nuclear bombs. The targets were nuclear installations and storage facilities in NATO countries, air force bases and commands, military units, and naval units and bases. Former senior officials in the Warsaw Pact admit today that none of the member states knew anything about Soviet nuclear intentions, beyond what could be gathered from their roles in training. This was a routine procedure which could have turned into global catastrophe if any of the contingency plans had been implemented. The danger begins when such information, which automatically includes military doubletalk and data about lethal quantities of weapons, is intercepted by the other side’s intelligence and lands on an analyst’s desk. From there it could well find its way to an easily excitable politician, and the pair would have no trouble claiming (one via intelligence assessment and the other through political statements) that there is a threat to global peace or to the American way of life. The distance from this sound argument to enlarging the Pentagon procurement budget was short. The deskbound analyst’s ability to determine that these plans are part of military routine and not necessarily a threat to global peace depends primarily on his personal courage. To come out against conventional wisdom and deeply rooted preconceptions sometimes takes as much courage as a soldier requires on the battlefield. Until the early 1980s, Warsaw Pact plans indicate aggressive intent based on Soviet military doctrine, set out in 1939 and unchanged ever since. This doctrine stated baldly that the Red Army must carry the war to the enemy’s territory. When translated into Warsaw Pact doctrine, it looks like this: fighting units are to train and organize for rapid attack and prepare to use tactical nuclear weapons. Warsaw Pact strategy was based on opening five fronts simultaneously in north and central Europe. The forces at the Pact’s disposal included: Red Army units stationed in East Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia, the Polish People’s Army, additional forces from Byelorussia and Ukraine, the Soviet Navy in the Baltic Sea, the Polish Navy, the East Germany People’s Navy, and the air forces of all Warsaw Pact states. The plans look impressive—on paper—and the battle orders seem threatening. There were contingency plans to occupy Lower Saxony and Schleswig Holstein and reach France within 13 to 15 days: “The first strategic goal is to remove France from the war as early as possible.” And then “to seize Denmark, Holland, Belgium and Germany, before reaching the Spanish border on the 30th to the 35th day.” It certainly sounds terrifying to any West European, but the fear was unfounded. With all due respect to the generals who made these plans and the NATO generals who drew up the responses, military action normally reflects

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state policy. Assuming that the aggressive intentions of Soviet leaders were veiled in the mists of the Kremlin and of human nature, a reliable intelligence assessment could have been expected which encompassed not only the mental state of the Kremlin-dwellers, but also their foreign policy aims and only then the true state of Warsaw Pact forces. It goes without saying that no analyst would dare to downplay the quality, certainly not the quantity, of enemy weapons brought to his attention and human nature will ensure that exaggeration will always outdo understatement. However, this still does not explain why only after the Soviet collapse did it become clear that the military machine facing NATO was far from being as powerful as believed, something which could have been seen long before. A primeval fear motivated the American defense leadership to position submarines carrying nuclear missiles across the world’s oceans, as planes loaded with nuclear bombs patrolled the open skies, capable of reaching their targets in the USSR at short notice and without fear of being intercepted. The problem was that even this array, streamlined as it may have been, would not have prevented the Soviet Union from destroying the United States—or Germany, or Britain, along whose coasts Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Jilin flew with his nuclear payload in the early 1980s. CAN A NUCLEAR WAR BE WON? Intelligence assessment input into the decision-making process regarding the risk of nuclear confrontation was confined to columns of frightening, often inflated, scientific data detailing the other side’s potential power of destruction. And indeed it scared most politicians and military planners. One of the few who remained sanguine at the prospect of nuclear war was now retired General Daniel O.Graham. In 1976, he claimed that the Soviets had not built up their nonconventional arsenal to prevent a nuclear war, as the US had done, but to utilize nuclear weapons to promote their expansionist ambitions. In 1980, on retiring from the Pentagon, Graham granted an interview to Rolling Stone magazine, in which he avered that the US was capable of winning a nuclear war. Such opinions would generally have been regarded as the bellicose patriotism of yet another battle-hungry general—but Graham was not just another general. He had served as an intelligence officer in Vietnam, held senior posts in the Pentagon, and been a member of the CIA’s “Team B,” providing a second opinion on the Soviet strategic threat. In 1980, after having been part of Reagan’s successful campaign team, Graham was appointed director of the High Frontiers think tank, which functioned as a defense-industry lobby. The US, he said, had no need to panic at the sound of the words “nuclear war.” “People here are convinced that the world will go up in flames if there’s a nuclear war but I say that’s nonsense. We can win such a war.” Graham was of course expressing his personal opinion, but, as a former officer in Military Intelligence and a

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respected member of various government forums, his private opinion carried weight. “The question is under what circumstances the use of nuclear weapons is unavoidable,” says Red Army General Dudnik, explaining the Soviet concept which he characterizes as “developmental:” “When one side thinks it’s in danger and estimates that the use of nuclear weapons may be justified, it steps up its state of alert, leading to a counter-reaction, and from here it’s a short step to a real conflagration.” “We never had a nuclear policy,” he says, “but something akin to a nuclear doctrine was developed during the 1950s, based on Marshal Rotmistriev’s conviction, expressed in an article, that the next war would begin with a preemptive missile strike and that the USSR would win.” Dudnik believes conclusively that this was a typical error of our twisted military mindset, and it played straight into the Americans’ hands. Since we announced that the next war would be decided by a missile strike and in the same breath we claimed we would win it, this could be interpreted to mean that we would start the war. I don’t blame the West for thinking so, even if no one here had any such intention. For us it was a slogan, but the West understood it as a program. Rotmistriev’s article made a splash in both East and West. “The West said that we were planning to make the first strike, while some of our people claimed that the West would use it as an excuse to strike first themselves,” says Dudnik. “Finally the Central Committee tried to minimize the damage by declaring that our policy was neither to strike first nor to start a nuclear war.” Dudnik believes that semantic misunderstandings were at the root of the commotion, and that an experienced intelligence body which understood the way the Soviet mind worked should have known better: “The West chose to call its military-strategic doctrine ‘nuclear deterrence.’ We called them ‘offensive’ weapons. Only at the end of the 1980s did we recognize nuclear weapons as a deterrent. The distinction was made in Gorbachev’s time and was transmitted to the military.” In the 1960s, 20 years before Gorbachev, the USSR dropped another hint about its nuclear strategy. Chief of Staff Marshal V.D.Sokolovsky published his book Soviet Military Strategy, from which the West learned a lot about Soviet nuclear doctrine. Dudnik explains: At the time we all, including myself, were convinced that the West would start the war, and we believed we had the means to win it. It was very simple; you have to understand the Soviet mentality to grasp why we believed in our victory. We said we had the means to make a preemptive strike, but we didn’t intend to strike the first blow. It sounds complicated and it caused a tremendous amount of disagreement within the army. I know that no one in

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the West is capable of understanding the root of the argument, but I can say with complete confidence that not one person in the USSR, including the extremists, ever really thought that we would start a nuclear war. Dudnik remembers clearly how the internal military debate ended: We finally came up with a formula that settled the problem: We will parry with a preemptive strike. A preemptive strike is a military act, a second strike is a political response. This means that if our political leadership thinks that an enemy missile attack is being prepared, it will order a retaliatory strike. The final decision is, of course, the general secretary’s. The group that helps him decide in the event of nuclear attack is not the military department of the Central Committee, as the West thinks, but the Generalitat. Even I, a Soviet general, had difficulty in understanding the function of this body. It had no legal definition or status in the hierarchy. It consisted of a number of military and defense personnel convened ad hoc by the general secretary in his office, depending on the balance of power within the Kremlin and its relationship with the military at any given time. After the crises in Berlin, Korea, Cuba, Vietnam and the Middle East, it was evident that the great powers were not prepared to risk nuclear confrontation, but nor were they ready to stop expanding their influence or protecting their interests around the globe. They did so mostly through conventional methods, like disseminating ideology, economic and military aid, and, as some believed in Washington, also by using the terrorist weapon to advance their cause. Indeed, the question of Moscow’s involvement in terror was the focus of a sharp quarrel between the two powers from the mid-1970s until the last days of the Soviet Union. INTERNATIONAL TERROR DURING THE COLD WAR: MYTH AND REALITY CASEY AND THE DEFINITION OF INTERNATIONAL TERROR In early 1981, one of William Casey’s first actions as CIA director was to request data on Soviet covert operations. The result was published in July, in a document called “Soviet Active Measures.” Containing an exhaustive description of the Soviet Union’s evil intentions and how the KGB implemented them, it was classified “Most Secret;” a shortened, less secret, version was distributed in thousands of copies. While continuing to deepen research and analysis on the USSR in the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence, Casey turned his attention to covert actions, which he

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saw as a lever for weakening the Soviet geopolitical position. He had inherited a slow, top-heavy, and above all cautious agency. Two investigative commissions (one headed by Nelson Rockefeller, the other by Senator Frank Church), had depicted the CIA as a demonic body out of control. The result was an operational restraint which sometimes bordered on near-paralysis. When Zbygniew Brzezinski, Carter’s National Security Adviser, took over, he propelled the CIA into anti-Soviet propaganda operations, aimed at showing the citizens of the USSR that there is life beyond communism—in fact, a far better life. Brzezinski, an activist in everything connected to the containment of communism, supported covert actions aimed at weakening Moscow’s hold on its allies, for example, by providing aid to Yemeni guerillas who aspired to topple the Marxist regime in Aden, and then in 1980 by helping establish resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Stansfield Turner did Brzezinski’s bidding, but without enthusiasm. William Casey, however, needed no urging. As soon as he took over from Turner, he began pressing the Agency to step up activities against the Soviet army of occupation in Afghanistan, and enlisted the president’s support for a special CIA budget of $100 million for training and arming the rebels. However, the memory of past failures, like Cuba and Iran, and the harsh criticism in Congress and the media made CIA executives reluctant to get actively involved in Afghanistan. Moreover, Turner had abhorred covert operations, believing them to be of limited value, and without influence in the overall scheme of national policy. But with Casey in the saddle, the CIA started galloping along paths paved by Brzezinski— paths which no CIA director had taken before. His active ideological partner was to be Alexander Haig, Reagan’s first secretary of state, just back from NATO command in Europe, and more convinced than ever that the USSR was on the point of launching an attack. Not frontal, perhaps, not on New York, but “the Marxist-Leninist devil” had its ways of undermining the West. The fact that a bellicose and vociferous anti-communist general had been appointed secretary of state was a loud enough message in itself, but Haig took it further. At the first press conference after his appointment, he declared: “The USSR is training, funding and aiding international terror.” The intelligence collected in Turner’s time contained no basis for this sweeping allegation. Nor had the INR, the State Department’s research and assessment body, found solid data regarding direct Soviet support of terror. But Haig did not let this stop him. He radiated uncompromising belligerence, he photographed well in uniform, and he had Nancy Reagan’s seal of approval. He was determined to make what he defined as “Soviet involvement in international terror” one of the central tenets of his foreign policy. Ron Spiers, one of his aides, said that Haig had “gone off the rails” as far as terror was concerned, and should be “educated about it.” But Haig was not about to let what he called “defeatist types” undermine his basic beliefs.

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Haig had always believed that the USSR posed a live and real threat to peace in the free world in general and the US in particular. He felt in his bones that the USSR was making cold, calculated and contemptible use of international terror to this end. His theory received an added impetus during his NATO tour of duty. His car was blown up about a week before he left Brussels and he asked the CIA to find out who was behind it. “They told me it was a group of Belgian nihilists. This was a stupid answer. There are no Belgian nihilists. It had been a sophisticated operation, and in my opinion a serious organization was behind it. I asked a friend in German intelligence what they knew about it. In August, about two months after the incident, he called and told me it had been the BaaderMeinhof gang in conjunction with the KGB. The Germans told me they had discovered a plan which showed that the operation had been intended to kill me.” At the end of May 1981, still new in the State Department, Haig received the American intelligence community’s official assessment on international terror. It said that the USSR was supporting various organizations and movements around the world, including some that were engaged in terror, but the authors had found no evidence of active or direct Soviet involvement in terror. Haig brushed it off. In 1995, he says: “I always believed that Soviet intelligence played a part in international terror movements, and now it has been confirmed by Yeltsin’s former legal advisor and other Russian government sources.” Haig is convinced that when the KGB archives are opened, ample proof will be found that terrorist movements were financed, trained and armed by the communist intelligence agencies, which used them against Western targets and to undermine the wellbeing of individuals, especially American and Israeli. Haig’s replacement, George Shultz, considered more balanced and less bellicose than Haig, also believed that “the USSR and its satellites support world terror.” Unlike the secretaries of state, wild or sober, Casey considered himself responsible not only for exposing international terror and its backers, but also for destroying it. He did not consider it necessary to base his judgments on national estimate papers or intelligence findings. Circumstantial evidence was good enough for him, and it all matched his core belief in the evils of MarxistLeninism. “There was constant pressure from Casey to say things that were beyond our professional ability to prove,” says David D. Whipple, who in the early 1980s served as an analyst of international terror. A short while after becoming director, Casey instructed the head of the National Intelligence Council (NIC) to write a paper on Soviet involvement in international terror. CIA experts specializing in the subject provided him with heaps of material, and in April 1981 Casey received his very first national estimate, entitled: “Soviet Support for International Terror.” He glanced at the paper and tossed it aside. It claimed that there was no hard evidence from which it could be inferred that the USSR or any part of it was giving direct aid to international terror. Casey asked Military Intelligence, the DIA, for a second opinion. He knew what the entire American intelligence community knew: unlike the CIA with its

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pretensions to refined professionalism, the Pentagon’s information and analysis team had no inhibitions when it came to badmouthing the USSR. Their job was to defend the US, a task which called for large budget allocations, which would only be made available if it were crystal clear to all concerned that the enemy was mighty, evil and ready to do anything, even utilize terror, to harm US interests and security. But the DIA’s paper also failed to provide what Casey wanted. The findings pointed in the right direction, but were not supported by hard intelligence data and the premises on which the paper was based were flawed. However, Casey was not to be denied. He appointed another team under Lincoln Gordon, a professor and former US ambassador to Brazil. To make the task easier, Casey defined it as “examination of Soviet support for violent revolutions and international terror.” The wide definition enabled the team to conclude that “the USSR does provide a variety of support to Third World national liberation movements and underground organizations, including weapons and military training.” One of the side effects of this policy was “the increase and expansion of violent acts and terror throughout the world.” Although Gordon’s team stated that Moscow was not involved directly in international terror, their paper came closest to what Casey wanted to hear. The final version of the document was classified “Most secret;” defined as a “special national estimate,” it was presented to President Reagan on 27 May 1981 under the expanded title: “Soviet Support for International Terror and Revolutionary Violence.” The paper claimed that, the International Department of the Central Committee maintains political connections, coordinates, and, in many cases, organizes military courses for underground organizations that utilize force to bring about political change. Operational aid is mostly provided by the GRU [Soviet military intelligence] as well as by the KGB [which coordinates military aid for foreign clients]. CIA professionals kept quiet, the findings did not seem sufficiently sound to them. The DIA hesitated, for them the formulations seemed too soft. But for Casey it was enough. The assessment allowed him to stick to his claim that existing intelligence material furnished sufficient evidence of Soviet direct support of and involvement in international terror. It justified an aggressive, global response. The paper was widely distributed and reached Melvin Goodman, then a senior CIA Soviet analyst in the Intelligence Directorate. “When I read that paper I thought it was a rookie’s work,” he says. He drafted a review of the sources of terror, and, based on the intelligence at his disposal, he concluded that it was impossible to determine with certainty that the KGB was actively and directly involved in international terror. “Casey didn’t agree. He used to argue with me about it,” Goodman recalls.

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Casey claimed that Goodman did not understand the USSR and that he could prove the Soviets were at least partly responsible for international terror. Goodman stuck to his view that the paper’s findings were not substantiated by hard intelligence data. “And then one day Casey told me that on his way home from work he’d purchased a book called The Terror Network with his own money.” This book, Casey told Goodman, “taught me more about international terror than anything I ever heard from you.” Its author, reporter Claire Sterling, who had lived in Italy for 30 years as a stringer for several US papers, claimed that tens of thousands of terrorists were being trained in camps in Cuba, Algeria, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, South Yemen, North Korea, East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, as well as in the USSR itself. Goodman thought his ears were deceiving him, but he kept his cool. “I told Casey that to the best of my knowledge large parts of the book relied on disinformation we’d planted in Europe to discredit the KGB, and it wasn’t fitting for us to believe our own propaganda.” Casey did not look convinced, and Goodman suggested that he check out the book’s reliability. Casey mumbled something that sounded like a refusal. Herbert E.Meyer, later Casey’s appointee as deputy head of the NIC, ordered his analysts to read Sterling’s book carefully. They did so, but their assessment did not change. As experts familiar with such material, it was clear to them that most of the book’s findings were not based on hard facts but were a blowback to CIA and DIA disinformation. Goodman himself asked his counterpart in the DIA if they had any facts that were unavailable to the CIA, in order to identify where truth ended and propaganda began. Goodman continued calling everyone who had anything to do with the subject “until in the end,” he says, “I managed to bring Casey to a meeting with DIA officers who had provided Sterling with material on which she based parts of her findings. Casey listened, radiating arrogance, power and disapproval, at least toward me.” The officers’ answers confirmed what Goodman knew, but Casey remained obdurate. As far as the CIA knew at the time, Soviet aid to third parties was no different from that given by the US to its allies. The CIA, like the KGB, provided military and paramilitary training to groups which could hardly have been described as the elected representatives of legal states. The US could have been held responsible on the same grounds as the Soviets for the terror actions carried out by movements and organizations active against the legal regimes in Cuba, Nicaragua, Iraq or Iran. The 1988 Bologna station bombing, which claimed 86 lives, was carried out by an extreme right wing group, financed in part by CIA money transferred through the Italian secret service, as part of the war on communism. But despite the clear link, nobody blamed the Americans for aiding and abetting terror. At the start of Casey’s reign his analysts did not give up. “We sent our assessment on terror to a number of friendly services for their opinion,” says Goodman.

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The British reacted immediately with a report that matched our assessment, and so did most other NATO countries. Actually, all the intelligence agencies, including the French and the Turkish, which were anti-Soviet, supported our thesis that, on the basis of existing material, it was impossible to connect the USSR directly with international terror. “Mel Goodman’s criticism was directed mainly against Bob Gates,” says Richard Kerr, then Gates’s deputy at the CIA’s Intelligence Directorate. “For years they’d had differences of opinions. They both were analysts in the same department and that created a certain tension between them. Mel thought that Gates interfered too much.” Kerr himself felt that Gates was too dominant in urging analysts to relate to problems and topics he considered important, such as Soviet involvement in international terror. “We in the Directorate didn’t believe that Moscow was really guiding or actively supporting international terror. Gates, for his part, felt we didn’t sufficiently emphasize Soviet involvement in terror. He thought there must be a way to link the Soviets to it.” INTERNATIONAL TERROR AS DEFINED BY LEONOV AND THE KGB Nikolai Leonov, who headed the KGB’s information directorate until February 1991, states firmly that the KGB did not engage in international terror. The last case he recalls was in 1959 “when we wiped out a Ukrainian nationalist [Stefan Bandera].” His example though is hardly a case of international terror, but rather an internal affair. Oleg Kalugin, the head of K Directorate (counterintelligence), however, admitted that the KGB was responsible for the 1978 assassination of Bulgarian exile Georgy Markov in London (with a poisoned umbrella). Confronted with this, Leonov shrugs: “Anything Oleg says is his responsibility. It was his operation, or his department’s, not the KGB’s.” In 1959 the Communist Party Central Committee ordered an end to political killings, and that, according to Leonov, was the policy. He saw no documentary proof because the order was passed on by telephone: many decisions that turned into policy directives were passed on that way. “It’s hard to draw the line and decide what’s a terror organization and what isn’t, who represents a national liberation movement and who is just a killer. In my opinion, a terrorist is someone who kills outside the framework of a political agenda,” he argues. At the outset of the communist revolution, the Bolsheviks considered terror against the general population a legitimate means to achieve the revolution’s goals. They launched a campaign of killing that went on before and after the Second World War, while the West either did not understand, or ignored, its dreadful consequences. Stalin slaughtered millions, but it was regarded as an internal matter, nothing to do with the West, beyond the opportunity it presented for anti-communist propaganda.

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During the 1950s, Third World states began to seek ways to liberate themselves from British, French and Portuguese colonialism. The USSR, having no territorial or political foothold in the Third World, where two-thirds of humanity lived, backed the demands for independence and was seen as the chief supporter of movements struggling against colonial rule. Its modus operandi was tailored to meet the situation on the ground, overall Soviet interests and relations with the colonial power, and not on the basis of Marxist-Leninist theory on anticolonial struggles of national liberation. The Soviet regime developed non-conventional means of struggle and laid the ideological basis for them. Sabotage was defined as operations against property, guerrilla warfare as civilian bodies against military targets. There was also straightforward terror, usually against civilians, and of course, wars of national liberation. The classical model for Soviet handling of national liberation movements is Vietnam, although it was not the first such case. They began with propaganda, followed by the supply of political instructors to help shape leadership cadres, the organization of a public protest movement, and the creation of secret cells, trained to carry out terror operations. In the second stage, guerrilla activities were launched and the ground was prepared for the third and decisive stage, enlargement of the movement’s popular base and the shift to open military struggle. American intelligence found the successful Vietnam model hard to forget. After it, intelligence officers were inclined to see every Soviet action outside of USSR borders as a new Vietnam in the making. “As a rule, the formal Marxist-Leninist approach to terror as a means of achieving political goals, or using it within the class struggle, was negative. But there were exceptions, so foreign observers could well have been confused,” says Sovietolgist and former CIA staffer, Professor Galia Golan. She believes that “the Soviet leadership was more resolute in opposing terror carried out by right wing movements, and more forgiving toward left wing terrorists, especially those defined by Moscow as freedom movements attacking Western targets.” Soviet support, according to Golan, was not just moral. Military training was given, weapons were provided, in particular by Soviet satellites, because “it’s embarrassing for a superpower to be caught in something as petty as giving direct support to movements using terror to achieve their aims.” Robert Gates, CIA director in 1991, says flatly that “the USSR, through the KGB and its satellites’ espionage services, was involved in international terror. The Soviets supported not only organizations which they defined as ‘national liberation movements’ but also pure terrorist movements. They provided weapons, money and shelter to the Red Brigades and Baader-Meinhof, directly or via their satellites in East Europe.” Gates claims that anyone who says that the KGB did not know about the aid provided by satellite intelligence services to terror movements is wrong. “At the time there was an argument about the amount of involvement in terror in Germany. We didn’t have direct evidence then. Today,” says Gates in 1995, “we

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know from Stasi archives and other material that the KGB was in fact involved, and also supported Arab terror groups. Abu Nidal, for example, had an office in Poland through which aid from communist states was channeled to his organization.” Richard Kerr, Gates’s deputy, while he served as DI, and later his successor as deputy director of the CIA, is far less certain about the degree of Soviet responsibility and involvement. For my part, I never believed that the USSR was actively and directly aiding terror. The [American] intelligence community also avoided stating that the Soviets guided or activated terror. Soviet aid to international terror, that is, the degree of its direct involvement, is not clear, although Moscow never hesitated to make use of whatever seemed to serve its interests. Kerr says plainly: “We found no evidence of direct Soviet involvement in any terrorist action.” On the other hand, he admits that it would have been impossible for the KGB not to know that Soviet satellites were providing financial and logistic aid to terror groups and giving them shelter and free movement within their borders, “but I think there’s a difference between knowledge and actual deed.” The basic assumption of intelligence analysts regarding terror was that organizations or individuals involved in terror, especially movements with a proven record, could not have operated without a political-logistic base of the sort which only a state could provide. Terror movements could grow and operate on their home ground, where they were familiar with the terrain and could recruit public support, funding, aid and locate hideouts. But terror organizations which operated outside their home countries needed the support of an established body such as a state ready to provide documents, especially passports and visas, and help transfer, for example by diplomatic mail, funds, weapons and messages. They needed safe houses before carrying out operations, and escape routes afterwards. Given these assumptions, it was not difficult to conclude that the USSR was a state that backed terror organizations, even though circumstantial evidence of this kind is unacceptable to the professional analyst. The 1970s saw the emergence of international terror of a new dimension: Palestinian terror organizations began to attack Israeli and Jewish targets around the world. The murder of 11 Israeli sportsmen at the Munich Olympics in 1972 was a landmark on this bloody path, which was strewn with airplane hijacks and a variety of other atrocities, in which citizens of states unlinked to the IsraelArab conflict were also killed and injured. Here too the Soviets and their satellites stuck to the rules of the game. The PLO was seen as a national liberation movement and given generous aid including military training and equipment. But Moscow kept groups who engaged in terror for terror’s sake at arm’s length. There is only scant evidence—

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and sweeping denials—of links between intelligence agencies in some satellites —Romania, East Germany and others—with some of the terror groups. Markus Wolfe, director of Stasi’s foreign intelligence, claimed even decades later that Stasi did not aid terror groups. They wanted nothing to do with Abu Nidal and even deported Carlos the moment they found out he was in East Berlin. Wolfe never forgot that Lenin’s brother had been executed for an attempt on the Czar’s life; and he believed that there is no place for individual terror in the class struggle. There was also, of course, a more practical reason: the USSR’s desire for international recognition for itself and the East European communist regimes, and the fear of providing the West with justification for aiding terror actions by internal opposition groups within in its own camp. Wolfe says that when he learned that the Palestinians occasionally deceived them, and especially after the murder of the Israeli sportsmen, Stasi flatly informed the Palestinians that they would have nothing to do with a second Munich. Other terrorist groups surfaced, particularly in Europe, each with its own Utopian blueprint. Carlos, the Japanese Red Army, the German Baader-Meinhof gang, the French Action Direct, the Italian Red Brigades and many others carried on the business of kidnapping, hijacking and murder under the ideological banner of the struggle against oppression. Casey and his partners could interpret this as a communist slogan, helping them to turn the Kremlin into a peg on which they could hang every terrorist action. When, as the period of détente began and the US lowered its accusatory tone against the USSR, right wingers within the American administration, who were not bowled over by the new atmosphere, conducted a public as well as an internal government campaign against it. In July 1979 an international conference on terrorism was held in Jerusalem. The basic assumption of the participants was that the USSR and its satellites were aiding and encouraging international terror. Senator Henry Jackson, a bellicose hawk if there ever was one, attacked all Western states, including the US, for holding disarmament talks with the USSR, “a state that supports terror.” Brian Crozier, former head of a London-based institute for the study of conflict, was a founder member of a group of Western intelligence service veterans who believed that the Soviets were involved in international terror and that Western intelligence services failed to combat it firmly enough. In May 1975 the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Defense invited Crozier to testify as an expert on international terror. He claimed that the State Department, working to promote détente contacts, was trying to downplay, if not actually conceal, Soviet terror involvement. Crozier told the Jerusalem conference that: “Publications indicate that the terrorists’ main training camps are located in Moscow, Baku, Simferopol, Tashkent and Odessa.” Crozier’s friend Robert Moss, then editor of the Economist’s “Foreign Report,” also blamed “the West’s conspiracy of silence about Soviet involvement in terror, for fear that revealing it could harm détente.” Professor Richard Pipes was one of those whose good fortune had tied their academic careers to jobs in the administration and an ideology they believed in.

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He claimed that the USSR supported international terror because “it was a relatively inexpensive way to undermine Western societies and damage their influence in the Third World.” His positions dovetailed well with the thinking of the first Reagan administration, in which he served on the National Security Council team dealing with the Soviet Union. On 13 May 1981, five months after Casey was appointed director of the CIA, an attempt was made on Pope John Paul II’s life. In those days, under the dark shadow of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Reagan’s administration was searching for anything that could be used to besmirch the enemy the president would later describe as “the evil empire.” The assailant, Ali Agca, was first said to belong to the Turkish Mafia and to be involved in the smuggling of arms, drugs and cigarettes to and from Bulgaria. He was also linked to the Gray Wolves, the military branch of the extremist right wing Turkish National Action Party. According to fragments of information, Agca had been trained in Syria. He told his interrogators that he had carried out sabotage missions against the growing Polish anti-communist movement, Solidarity, on orders from the USSR and Bulgaria, who wanted to get rid of the Pope because his support for Solidarity gave it considerable power. Brzezinski and Kissinger both estimated that the assassination attempt would have grave implications for East-West relations. The information on Agca was passed on to the CIA by General Giuseppe Santovito, director of Italian military intelligence (SID), and Francesco Paizanza, its expert on terror. Almost at the same time, infor mation about Agca’s Bulgarian connection surfaced in an article by Claire Sterling in the September 1982 issue of Readers’ Digest. This was the same Claire Sterling who had served as a conduit of American disinformation in her book The Terror Network. The article, which linked the Bulgarian secret services with the attack on the Pope, provided Casey with another reason to demand that his analysts correct their assessment regarding Soviet involvement in international terror. Once again the analysts failed to meet the director’s expectations. They found no hard intelligence to prove Soviet or Bulgarian involvement in the attempt on the Pope’s life, and they told Casey so. Sterling’s article looked to them like another case of disinformation. Agca later retracted his confession. He alleged that Paizanza had suggested that he implicate Bulgaria in return for a lighter sentence. No other source supported this or anything else Agca claimed during his interrogation. Following the Soviet collapse, no documented evidence was found of Agca’s alleged links with Bulgaria’s secret service. Further investigations in 1992 by the CIA, Italian intelligence and police, and the Vatican security apparatus had the same result. In 1996, 15 years later, it was still not clear who, if anyone, was behind Ali Agca, nor why he tried to assassinate the Pope. Three Bulgarian and five Turkish officials were charged in June 1984 with involvement in the attempt, but all, except for Agca, were released in March 1986 for lack of evidence. In early 1995 Monsignor Richard Mathes, the Vatican cultural attaché in Israel, commented:

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“We still have no evidence of Soviet or Bulgarian involvement in the attempt to assassinate the Pope.” Tad Szulc, author of a biography of John Paul II, reached the same conclusion. Anyone who thought that a dearth of facts regarding the Bulgarian connection would deter Casey either did not know him or did not understand how a committed intelligence chief operates when he has no facts. Casey repeatedly brought up the Bulgarian connection in discussions with his analysts, depicting it as a link in a chain of Soviet terror, which struck the West in 1982, 1983 and 1985. These were the years of the USSR’s rapid decline towards its demise, but this dramatic historical development, with its worldwide strategic implications, remained unseen by the leaders of America’s and the West’s intelligence services. Casey died in January 1987, the month in which the White House released a publication called “National Security Strategy of the United States.” It claimed that “there is evidence of a Soviet connection to the rise in the number of international terror actions carried out through way-stations such as Cuba, North Korea, Nicaragua, Syria and Libya, which themselves are linked to terror organizations.” It is an interesting document, the more so, as the CIA still had no intelligence evidence to support these claims. The enthusiasm displayed by Casey, Haig, Kissinger and Brzezinski (especially the latter) for linking the Soviet Union to the attempt on the Pope’s life was more than a simple exercise in PR. The link served as a brush for tarring Moscow in the eyes of the entire Christian world. Communism as an ideology, and communist states as its representative, had always persecuted all forms of Christianity, as far back as Marx’s “Religion…is the opiate of the masses.” It was not only the American Christian right wing which had a score to settle with the USSR, but the entire Christian world, especially the Polish Church, the cradle that nurtured John Paul II and the Solidarity rebels. In 1978, with Brzezinski in his last days as presidential national security adviser, Washington’s view was that the Pope posed a real problem to the Polish communist regime, as well as to Moscow. The theory was somewhat marred by information received by the CIA during 1981, according to which Moscow had an understanding with the Vatican: the Red Army would not interfere in Poland, and in return the Pope would refrain from supporting the increasingly powerful forces there opposed to the communist regime. Casey realized he could use the assassination attempt to stir up Christian and anti-communist sentiment in order to torpedo moves towards a thaw between Moscow and the Holy See, and he was not about to let such a gift of an opportunity slip through his fingers just because there was a link or two missing from Ali Agca’s testimony. The analysts kept on trying. On 12 July 1985 another paper was submitted to the head of the CIA Intelligence Directorate, arguing that the USSR had no interest in eliminating the Pope, even though it saw him as a focal point for Polish opposition. The paper was based on analysis of contacts between the Vatican and the Kremlin since December 1980, when Vadim Zagladin, a Central

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Party Committee member, had visited the Vatican, the most senior Soviet official to have done so until then. His visit was followed by regular exchanges of messages, with the Vatican trying to dispel Moscow’s fears, and the Kremlin in exchange, loosening the reins and allowing Church emissaries to operate among the Catholics of the Eastern Bloc. The Vatican tended its flock in Poland with caution, for fear that ill-considered measures might provoke Moscow into blocking the process of strengthening the Church was experiencing in the communist bloc. In early 1981 the CIA intercepted a Vatican message explaining that it had no interest in a revolution in Poland, but would prefer to see gradual change there. But the anti-Soviet front—with Casey in the lead—did not accept this approach. Their firm belief that Moscow was the source of all evil was too rigid for CIA assessment to change. To ensure that the president saw things his way, Casey brought Reagan the analysts’ assessment and added the friendly comment: “But we know better.” Charles Fairbanks, deputy assistant secretary of state in the Reagan administration, still cannot understand why the CIA and INR could not support the claim that the Soviets were behind the attempt on the Pope’s life. “From what I saw it looked like a Soviet intelligence operation which got out of hand. Things like this happen in intelligence work. Although I had no actual evidence, I believed that this was their work.” Iran was the most dramatic and foolish arena of terror, the most harmful and the most expensive for the Reagan-Casey administration. The 1979 dethroning of the Shah and the failure of the Desert 1 operation to rescue American embassy hostages from Teheran had been a direct blow to American pride, not to mention economic and strategic interests. Carter reacted emotionally by imposing an arms embargo on Iran; Reagan and Casey went one further by encouraging Iraq’s Saddam Hussein to invade. In early 1983 an intelligence assessment of Iran was included in a special paper under the name of “Soviet Policy in the Middle East and South Asia under Andropov.” The paper argued that “the USSR will continue to improve its relations with elements in the Iranian regime”—a hint that American action against Iran might also lead to global tension. The Iranians, who loathed the Russians almost as much as they did the Americans, banned the Tudeh local communist party and activated the Hezbollah in Lebanon against the US. On 18 April 1983 the American embassy in Beirut was blown up by a booby-trapped car. Among the dead were seven members of the local CIA station, including Robert C. Ames, one of the CIA’s experts on the Middle East and international terror. Casey was shocked. Not since leaving the OSS 40 years earlier had he been exposed to a violent action that took the lives of his men. The March 1984 kidnapping and subsequent murder of Lieutenant Colonel William F.Buckley, who had replaced Ames as head of the CIA station in Beirut, caused Casey additional pain and guilt. Buckley had not wanted the job, but was persuaded to take it by Casey. Outraged by the affair, Casey sought revenge. The

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CIA division handling international terror was elevated to a department. The State Department appointed a special coordinator to oversee American activity against terror groups targeting American and other Western interests. In most Western countries and Israel, which was perhaps the hardest hit by terrorism, organizational changes were made to increase efficiency: lists, profiles and photographs of terror suspects were exchanged and joint, though limited, intelligence operations were conducted, including recruitment, collecting and sharing information in order to thwart terrorist plans. It soon became clear that to fight terror efficiently, perpetrators as well as their supporters had to be identified. Thus the concept of “state terror” was born and guidelines were evolved for defining state supporters of terror. Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran and North Korea matched the criteria; the USSR and East European states were not on the list. There was no concrete proof, and the US preferred not to complicate the already fragile relations between the two blocs. The Soviets felt uncomfortable at being repeatedly charged with aiding international terror. When Casey upped the ante to open accusation, they began to respond. In 1983, Soviet theoretician Vladimir Fedorov published an article in the monthly Kommunist, claiming that terror was a business which hurt those who engaged in it. Federov accused left wing extremists, including the Red Brigades and Turkish terrorists, of wild, purposeless terror operations, and put the onus on the US “which supports the Red Brigades and, through Israel, trains and equips the South Lebanon Army.” Oleg Gordievsky, who defected to the West in 1986, should have known a thing or two about the KGB’s involvement in terror. During his prolonged debriefing by MI6 handlers, he claimed that in secret talks held with Palestinians, Kremlin officials had frequently voiced opposition to terror actions against civilians. They did so, he claimed, because they were afraid that Soviet involvement might legitimize those who wanted to carry out terror attacks against Soviet interests. But parallel to its genteel reservations about Palestinian terror, Moscow turned a blind eye, or more accurately, actually tolerated the presence in East Europe and even in the Balashika training camp in the Soviet Union of a terrorist as notorious as Carlos. In Moscow, as in Washington, the right hand did not always know what the left was doing. In August 1994 Vladimir Kryuchkov, ex-KGB chairman and former head of the First Chief Directorate, met with a former head of Israel’s Mossad, Nachum Admoni. Kryuchkov stated firmly that the USSR was not involved, directly or indirectly, in international terror. He could, of course, have been lying, and it is reasonable to assume that if he had been involved in the spilling of innocent civilian blood, he would have lied—but the heat and anger of his denial seemed sincere. Leonov, then head of the KGB Intelligence Directorate, also rebuts any attempt to link the Soviet secret service with aid for terrorist acts. “The KGB, to the best of my knowledge, was not involved in international terror,” he says.

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On the other hand, Ladislav Bittman, an ex-employee of the Czech intelligence disinformation department who defected to the West in 1968, claimed that the USSR, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Cuba did support terror organizations and provided training, weapons and funding as well as free passage and safe houses to known terrorists. Among the organizations that received aid he listed the PLO, the Basque underground ETA and the Italian Red Brigades. As a defector, Bittman obviously wanted to satisfy his hosts—but he failed to provide hard evidence of KGB, GRU or any other East European intelligence service’s direct involvement in terror acts. A senior CIA officer, former deputy head of its Operational Directorate, says he was not deceived by the Kremlin’s winning ways. He has no doubt that the USSR supported terror “although I didn’t see proof of any direct involvement in specific terror operations. I think that already in the 1960s the KGB set the parameters: indirect aid, yes; direct involvement, no. But as we saw it, they definitely did aid terror.” Advisor on terror to Israel’s premier from 1981 to 1985, former Mossad officer Rafi Eitan says flatly: “Moscow terrorized its dissidents, but was not engaged in active anti-Western terror. East European satellites gave some terror organizations logistic support, especially the East Germans, Hungarians and Bulgarians.” During his career Eitan met Casey several times and heard him express harsh anti-Soviet sentiment, accusing Moscow of trying to undermine democratic governments. He does not recall that Casey substantiated his claims, and he had the impression that the CIA chief saw Russian plots everywhere. He concedes that Moscow did provide military aid, weapons and training to proSoviet regimes who did help terrorist organizations and cites Cuban aid to three underground movements in Colombia. “But,” says Eitan firmly, “while I was engaged in anti-terror activity, I came to the conclusion that the Soviets were not directly involved in international terror.” According to information available today, including some from classified sources, Soviet proxies, (particularly Cuba and Nicaragua), had links with terror organizations and even provided aid to some. East Germany gave limited aid to Baader-Meinhof in the early 1980s. At the end of 1972, Ion Paceca, then head of the Romanian security service (DIE), established links with his PLO counterpart, Hani el-Hassan. The latter was recruited by Romanian intelligence in 1976 and according to Paceca, who defected to the West in 1978, became one of their agents, code-named “Anette.” Romania provided Arafat with blank passports, electronic surveillance equipment and weapons, knowing that these were used in terrorist operations. North Korea, the USSR itself and China also had links with Fatah, and other terror groups within the PLO. Cuba had links and provided aid to underground organizations in El Salvador, Chile, Colombia and Peru. Nicaragua aided the Basque underground in Spain, and subversive groups in El Salvador, Honduras and Colombia. These links and the indirect aid of the USSR and Warsaw Pact states to organizations and individuals, some of whom were engaged in international terror,

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helped Casey and Haig in their crusade against the USSR. Alvin Rubinstein, an expert on Soviet and Third World affairs, does not know of Soviet direct involvement in terror, but feels Moscow knew that at least some of the national liberation movements it helped also engaged in terror. “The Soviets knew that terror-linked individuals were trained in East Europe and had access to weapons, documents, safe houses and free passage in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Romania. If they had really wanted, they could have used their influence to stop it, but they opted to close their eyes. I sensed at least a whiff of sympathy on their part. However,” Rubinstein adds, our hands aren’t clean either. For example, Washington knew that money raised in the US for Irish groups also found its way to the IRA, but it didn’t put a stop to the fund-raising. Does that mean Washington was aiding Irish terror? After all, it’s one thing to allow a group to raise money for humanitarian causes and quite another to allow fundraising knowing it will be used for terror. Were the aid and funds Casey transferred to El Salvador intended for attacks on the Sandinista? That could also be regarded as aid for terror. We did exactly what the Soviets did. We supported a group that opposed the legitimate government by using force, including terror. This too could be interpreted as supporting terror. The superpower conflict created two simple and popular ways to define terror. The first: “The winner is a national liberator, the loser is a terrorist.” The second: “My ally is a freedom fighter, my opponent is a terrorist.” Casey preferred the second definition. In 1982 he traveled to Baghdad to encourage Saddam Hussein to continue the war against Iran, and promised US aid despite Iraq’s place of “honor,” if such a term can be used in this context, on the list of terror-aiding states. Casey’s Iraqi intelligence counterpart during his visit was Barazan Hussein, Saddam’s half-brother, who personally maintained the contacts with the Iraqi-backed terror organizations. In 1986 it emerged that Iraq had received American weapons and intelligence on Iran for several years, despite the fact that it granted shelter and aid to terrorists such as Abu Ibrahim, the reason for Iraq’s being included on the list of terror-abetting states. Not surprisingly, Casey’s visit to Baghdad was not reported to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Gorbachev, who wished to deny the American administration any pretext for linking the Soviet Union to international terror, began openly repudiating his country’s allies who had contacts with such movements. Following an independent KGB investigation, the USSR harshly condemned the financial aid and Soviet-made arms given the IRA by Libya’s Gaddafi. Professor Golan comments: “Gorbachev was opposed to the use of terror because he did not believe it was an effective tool or served Soviet interests. As a rule, those within the USSR who opposed terror were those who supported détente. They were afraid that involvement in terror actions would harm détente and play into the hands of

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its opponents.” For those who opposed terror, détente was a substitute for the politics of power. They included the Central Committee’s Rostislav Olianovski, director of the Eastern Institute, and Yevgeni Primakov, later Yeltsin’s director of Intelligence (RIS), minister of foreign affairs and prime minister. In 1970, the CIA spent $2.6 million backing pro-American Chilean Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei in his election campaign against Salvador Allende. Frei lost, and in 1973 the Agency tried, at a cost of $8 million, to prevent Allende’s re-election, leading eventually to his assassination. CIA activity in Chile was at least in part a business decision: Pepsico’s chief, Donald Kendall, whose business in Chile was threatened by the Allende regime, was a close friend of President Nixon, and may have had at least some influence on American policy towards Chile. Richard Helms, then CIA director, said later that he felt he had been used to serve business rather than national interests. A growing number of Soviet theoreticians used this kind of activity to provide the moral justification for Moscow’s support of Third World countries and political movements, actively fighting the US and US-backed regimes. Gleb Starushenko, director of the Soviet African Institute, regarded aid to movements linked with the USSR as a declaration of support for the right to defend liberty. In 1973, following Allende’s assassination, Starushenko declared that the proAmerican regime erected over Allende’s body should be opposed. He stuck to this line some 20 years later, even after Gorbachev’s election, and waged a vociferous campaign, repeatedly demanding that the Sandinista government be helped to fight CIA-supported groups in Nicaragua. Mikhail Suslov, the Communist Party’s “last ideologue,” was convinced that the sanctity of détente could be undermined when a just war was in question. But the USSR was always careful. Even when belligerence was at its height and the USSR seemed to be winning the struggle for the Third World, when Brezhnev talked at the 1976 Party Congress of “guns at the ready,” he emphasized the need to avoid escalation. And when Andropov and Gromyko spoke of “the right of individuals and nations to fight for their freedom,” they were careful to stress their support for détente and warned that “local wars and terror actions could lead to dangerous instability.” As a rule, the Marxist-Leninist approach towards terror was, in principle, basically negative, since it held that political change could only come about through class struggle. Following the success of the Sandanistas in Nicaragua, the Soviet journal Latin America wrote that the USSR was opposed to guerrilla wars, apart from in areas like Latin America, where this kind of struggle had a “certain legitimacy.” But here too the tone was cautious and reserved, for fear that guerrilla actions, especially of the urban variety, would be dubbed in the West as “leftist terrorism,” and be attributed to Moscow. One Soviet analyst, Colonel Yevgeni Dolgopolov, declared that “a true liberation movement has to be founded on open mass support, and must not engage in conspiracy, terror and covert operations.”

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From 1985, the USSR has been signalling its willingness to join the West in actively combating international terrorism. Vladimir Kryuchkov ordered KGB stations in the West to be in contact with local police to share information about planned and potential terror acts. Signs of the change had appeared even earlier. Arkadi V.Guk, head of the KGB station in London from 1980 to 1984, on several occasions passed on terror-related information to London police. In 1988, Kryuchkov, until then head of the First Chief Directorate, succeeded Andrei Chebrikov as KGB chairman. One of his first public speeches stressed the need for international cooperation against global terror. In December 1988 four Armenians had hijacked a plane to Israel, where Israeli and Soviet security forces worked together to liberate the passengers. Kryuchkov cited it as a successful model for future cooperation, for the KGB with the CIA and other Western intelligence services. But the West was not convinced. The CIA and other arms of the administration did not respond to the Soviet overture, and continued to link the Soviet Union with international terrorism. At the end of June 1989, however, cooperation in the struggle against international terror appeared on the USSoviet agenda for the first time. Only during 1990–91, a year before it collapsed, was the Soviet Union accepted as a partner in the war on terror. Moscow passed its entrance exam in the last few months of the communist regime’s existence; and the United States was ready to incorporate the Soviet Union only when it was clear that its demise was fast approaching. THE THIRD WORLD: WHAT THE STRUGGLE WAS ABOUT In the years following the Second World War, the superpower conflict gathered momentum, and the energies it released sought violent channels of expression. Europe was too sated, too cynical and too civilized to sacrifice its citizens on the altar of superpower rivalry. The Third World was the obvious confrontation zone, the ideal victim. In Stalin’s time the Soviets had not been interested in the Third World, apart from Iran and British Mandate Palestine. Nikita Khrushchev was the first to grasp the strategic potential of those distant, hungry and easily manipulated countries. Along with his efforts to reach strategic arms parity, he began to stick red pins into the map of states shaking off the colonialist yoke and seeking a strong patron with weapons to spare. Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern states which had uneasy relations with the West, such as India in the mid-1950s, Iraq after 1958, Egypt, Syria, Yemen and others seemed to Khrushchev ideal targets, both legitimate and attainable. Soviet policy toward these states was not part of a grand design, but more in the way of a tactical exploitation of local conditions. Khrushchev believed that socialism was superior to capitalism and had more to offer Third World needs and realities. But behind the ideological claim, there lurked strategic motives:

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Soviet military commanders looked at the map and saw that the USSR was surrounded by US military bases in NATO and other countries. Feeling vulnerable to American nuclear bombers and missile launchers, they urged the Kremlin to look for bases to neutralize the American threat. Khrushchev, though he sought to expel the West from the Third World, had been careful not to step on anyone’s toes (with the exception of his abortive Cuban adventure), but then came Brezhnev. The 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia was the world’s first glimpse of the “Brezhnev Doctrine.” Already in Khrushchev’s day pro-Western states bordering the USSR, such as Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and especially India, regarded as a potential ally against China, had been marked as fertile ground for planting a Soviet presence and forcing the West out. Brezhnev responded favorably to Red Army pressure and developed close ties with foreign countries which provided Soviet military bases or at least air and port services. The CIA’s Melvin Goodman believes that “for Brezhnev, unlike Khrushchev, it wasn’t a defensive policy directed against Western encirclement, but a challenge with an unconcealed imperialist aspect.” The ideological base for this policy was formulated by the International Department of the Central Committee, often without intelligence input. In the 1970s and 1980s it was controlled by Mikhail Suslov, a communist hardliner of the old, tough breed. He was followed by Boris Ponomarev. The moment the Kremlin targeted the Third World, the KGB launched a campaign, including disinformation, to discredit the West in Third World eyes. According to KGB Counter-Intelligence Chief Oleg Kalugin, one of the “dirty tricks” approved by the Central Committee was to send racist poison-pen letters to African UN diplomats. The letters were “signed” by extremist American racist organizations, and were intended to stir up antiUS feeling in Africa. After a few more similar operations, including accusations that the US had spread AIDS in Africa, the Africans began to suspect the authenticity of the letters. Corroboration of their forgery was uncovered later on by Soviet defectors debriefed by the CIA. “Until Khrushchev and Bulganin’s visit to India,” says Professor Aleksei Kiva, deputy director of Moscow’s Third World Institute, we had no meaningful links with Third World countries. The region “belonged” to the West and we didn’t believe that those states would ever get independence. It was only after we developed close relations with India and later Egypt that the Third World began to assume a more central place in our thinking. Obviously, this had an ideological aspect. We knew that socialism would better suit developing countries than an exploitative capitalist regime. It has to be kept in mind that many Asian and African leaders thought that way too. Superpower competition in the Third World was also an intelligence struggle. Casey believed, and he had disciples in other services, that a self-respecting

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espionage organization should gather material about everything everywhere, just in case. The working assumption was that national interests required a finger on the pulse, and sometimes on the trigger, in every dark corner of the globe. THE MIDDLE EAST: ISRAEL, EGYPT, SYRIA AND LEBANON Melvin Goodman maintains that the area to which the USSR ascribed top strategic priority in the 1950s and 1960s was the Middle East, particularly Israel. The USSR, for ideological as well as strategic reasons, supported the establishment of Israel as part of the struggle against Britain’s colonialist hold on the Middle East. It even supplied Israel with arms during the 1948 War of Independence through its Czech satellite. Israel’s founding fathers and first leaders were socialists. Some had marked communist leanings. Soviet policy was based on intelligence estimates that time would ripen Israel sufficiently to fall into their hands. But Israel, having to fight for survival against the Arabs, in particular against Egypt, turned to the West. Khrushchev, acting on the notion developed by the powers in their attitude to the Third World—my enemy’s enemy is my friend— turned to Egypt, which was at war with Israel and deeply in conflict with Britain and France. Kruschev gave Gamal abd-el-Nasser political and military support and in exchange, Egypt became a strategic cornerstone of Soviet policy and its springboard to other Arab Middle Eastern states. Ultimately, the Soviet romance with Middle Eastern states ended in failure. Soviet actions were vitiated by the same kind of errors that characterized Moscow’s relationship with many Third World states: a patronizing, powerbased attitude, the supply of flawed arms, insensitivity to local mores and culture. But the main reason for the Soviet failure in Egypt and elsewhere in the Third World was rooted in the Soviet essence itself. Moscow had no chance of convincing others to adopt its economic, social and government systems when these demonstrably did not work in the USSR itself. Soviet intelligence was also to blame for failing to identify the points of friction that led to poor relations on the day-to-day level. More seriously, it erred and misled the Arab states over their military capabilities on the eve of the 1967 war, contributing to their debacle. After two humiliating defeats in 1948 and 1956, the Egyptians, especially Nasser, were wary of a new conflict. But the aggressive winds blowing from the Kremlin in the mid-1960s encouraged the Egyptian leader to go to the brink with Israel. Israel, however, defined the brink by attacking and dealing the Arab states their most agonizing defeat since the Crusades. Announcing his resignation, later retracted, Nasser referred to the “exact calculations” provided by Soviet intelligence from which he had gathered that Egypt’s military capability, backed by the Soviet Union, was greater than that of Israel, supported by Britain and France.

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General Leonov recalls that the KGB was skeptical about Soviet Middle East policy. “We poured a lot of arms and money into the region without ever seeing real results. Actually, our links with the Arabs—even those with whom we reached an intimate relationship—never achieved true partnership.” The last joint Arab-Soviet attempt to impose their order on the Middle East was thwarted by the October 1973 Yom Kippur War. Like most Third World wars, this was a local, almost tribal, conflict, in which the two superpowers tested one another without having to dirty their hands or sacrifice their citizens. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was taken by surprise—as a result of the worst intelligence failure in Israel’s history—and had been pushed back in the initial stage of the war. It took two weeks of bloody fighting in the Sinai Desert and the Golan Heights for the IDF to recover its previously held positions. Israel’s situation was made more difficult by a critical shortage of weapons. But after the US airlifted in essential equipment there was a turnaround in the fighting and in a matter of days an Egyptian defeat looked imminent. At this point the Soviets intervened. Like the US, they did not want their clients to be defeated. The Kremlin threatened to take action if the US did not hold Israel back, and hinted that it would even risk a confrontation with the United States. Richard Perle, then at the Pentagon, saw Brezhnev’s urgent message to Nixon, which raised the stakes from isolated proxy war to potential superpower nuclear conflict. Brezhnev announced that “Israel had set out on the road to self-destruction.” Kissinger interpreted this as a nuclear threat, and still today he is sure “that we were very close to nuclear war.” In fact, neither superpower had wanted a Middle East war. Both Brezhnev and Nixon were preoccupied by domestic difficulties (Watergate, for Nixon) and trying to encourage détente. The US and the USSR certainly did not want to skirt the nuclear brink, but the inner dynamic of the superpower game—with its near rituals and foreseeable outcomes— kept them playing out of commitment to their clients and in the covert hope that their protégé would win, with the spoils going to the patron. The problem, as usual, was with the value of intelligence assessments in the nuclear age. The Soviets studiously avoided actions in the Third World that could have led to nuclear confrontation with the United States. In the Cuban missile crisis they retreated in the face of American resolve. In the Korean and Vietnam wars their low-level intervention did not rate an American response. They stood by their clients, providing political support and generous military assistance: everything short of involving themselves in a war. Even when Israel’s air force downed Soviet pilots in 1970 during the War of Attrition along the Suez Canal, the Soviets kept a low profile and were careful not to deepen their direct military involvement. Kissinger’s statement that the 1973 war had brought the superpowers close to the nuclear brink was widely regarded as a manipulative ploy. He used the Soviet threat, real or not, to exert pressure on Israel to halt the fighting and enter into negotiations with Egypt under US auspices. His hidden agenda was to set in

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motion a process that would culminate in the ousting of the USSR from the Middle East. “Since the Yom Kippur War and their loss of influence in Egypt,” says Melvin Goodman, “the USSR never had any real roots in other Middle East ‘flag states.’ The Soviet presence in Libya, the Popular Democratic Republic of Yemen, Iraq and Syria was always problematic. They never found a substitute for Cairo.” Twenty-three years after the Yom Kippur War, Leonov asks: “What was the point of working with Egypt? It was engaged in an endless conflict with Israel which it dragged us into.” He shrugs, perhaps in acquiescence, and adds: “Egypt was a large and important state, but Western influence there was far more rooted than ours.” In 1982, three years after Israel and Egypt signed a peace agreement under the auspices of a Democratic administration in Washington, both Israel and the US were ruled by conservative right wing governments who regarded the Soviet Union and its allies in the Middle East as the enemy, and states who linked their fate to the United States as friends. Israel was in the throes of battle against the Palestinians and their patrons, the Soviet-allied Syrians, while Reagan and Casey’s US was engaged in an anti-Soviet campaign throughout the Third World. Weakening the Soviet hold on the Middle East, particularly on Syria, was an attractive prize. Syrian leader Hafez el-Assad was too clever to sacrifice his own soldiers in this dangerous game. In his wily way, he encouraged the PLO, based in Lebanon, to fight Israel for him. Alexander Haig, Reagan’s secretary of state, disliked the Soviet-Syria-PLO triangle and supported direct action against it. Ariel Sharon, then Israel’s defense minister, also saw a power play as the way to get things done. Lacking a military background, Premier Menachem Begin followed General Sharon’s lead, deferring to his authority on defense matters. At this point American intelligence presented an assessment that conformed with the views of the Reagan administration, making it possible for them to support Israel’s Lebanon policy. An intelligence paper entitled “Soviet Policy in the Middle East and South Asia” claimed that “the Soviet decision to deploy SA-5 missiles in Syria (a decision taken in Brezhnev’s time and implemented under Andropov) signifies a rise in the Soviet level of readiness to challenge US policy in the Middle East.” That decision to deploy the missiles, manned at first by Soviet personnel, followed a 1982 air clash between Syria and Israel. In the confrontation between Americanmade Israeli fighter planes, the Syrian air force and Soviet missiles, Syria lost 96 planes, whereas Israel lost none—a handsome Israeli achievement which strengthened the concept of a powerful Israel as an anti-communist asset. A strike at Moscow’s ally in the Middle East, in this case in Lebanon, was in the US interest, and a war there came under the policy informally known as “rolling them back.” This was no mere slogan, but a policy carried out wherever Casey and his people found a Soviet citizen in the Third World unable to give a reasonable explanation for his presence there. “During the early 1980s there was a real fear that we were facing a possible comeback of 1950s-style Soviet

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aggression,” explains Richard Kerr, deputy director of the CIA. “Soviet aid to Nicaragua, Soviet meddling in Angola, Ethiopia, Syria, the Vietnam link. It was hard to distinguish between those two threats—the military and the ideological— and we had to do something to stop their advance in the Third World.” An intelligence assessment called “The Soviet Challenge to US Interests” supported Kerr’s view and was tailor-made for Casey. Maps attached to the document showed the spread of the Soviet presence in the Third World, the ports of call where the Soviet navy was serviced: on the Ethiopian island of Dahlak, in Libya’s Tripoli and Syria’s Latakia. The paper had a number of appendices detailing the presence of Soviet diplomats, advisors and military technicians and a list of Third World recipients of Soviet arms. It contained a warning: Moscow feared that the new administration (Reagan) might take steps to block Soviet political and strategic gains in the Third World, and was therefore employing “active measures” to increase friction between the US and its allies. Melvin Goodman did not write that paper. But as an intelligence officer and a student of Soviet affairs, he does not believe that Moscow was looking for confrontation with the US in the Third World. The Soviets were generally “highly sensitive to areas to which the US ascribed strategic importance and careful not to challenge us there directly.” ROLLING THEM BACK “The US struggle against the Soviet presence in the Third World was important, but it should not be exaggerated. Anyway, the really important developments took place in Moscow, not in the Third World,” says Professor Alvin Rubinstein, an expert on the Soviet Union and the Third World. He agrees that the Soviets had an expansionist policy in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Central America, but there was no need to overreact. “In fact, you could also say,” he adds, “that we shouldn’t have worried about their extending themselves over so very many places and spending their time, effort and money. After all, none of it did them any good.” Surprisingly, or perhaps not, Nikolai Leonov, the most senior of the KGB analysts in the 1980s, agrees with Rubinstein. By the end of the 1970s we in intelligence already knew we couldn’t go on expanding all over the world to spread our ideology. Not because of American pressure, but because the economic, political and military burden on the USSR was too great. On our own initiative we explained it clearly and frankly to Andropov, who was KGB chairman at the time. We summarized our thoughts in a tough paper of about 30 pages. I know Andropov studied it carefully for about a week. Then he gave it back to us and asked us to shorten it to ten pages. People in the Kremlin were too busy to read long papers. After a while he told us that he decided not to pass it on to the general secretary and other Politburo members as an

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official intelligence paper. He preferred to present it verbally and sense their reaction. Leonov was not present at the discussion and to this day does not know what effect it had. But he has no doubt that the people who heard Andropov “knew what the paper meant.” In American intelligence, too, there were those who understood what the USUSSR competition in the Third World really meant. In April 1982, the National Intelligence Council put out a paper called “The US-Soviet Competition for Influence in the Third World: How the LDC Play It.” The paper analyzed the pros and cons of the two superpowers in Third World eyes. It claimed that their status and prestige in less developed countries (LDC) was not a question of ideology, but depended rather on their approach to regional and domestic tensions, induced by tribal, religious or political differences. Casey, like Andropov, did not attach much importance to assessments that did not confirm his views. He was not about to waste his time or opportunities to promote his agenda on sterile arguments with eggheads and liberals—nor with young analysts who did not understand how the world really worked. Casey had no problem finding a view to oppose any paper that failed to support his opinions. The writers of a memo issued at the same time, “Soviet Goals and Expectations in the Global Arena,” claimed that since the mid-1970s Soviet determination to challenge the West in the Third World had increased, particularly in Angola, Ethiopia and Afghanistan. The memo stated that the Soviets were also prepared to take military measures (aid and direct involvement) to back their diplomacy. The USSR does not want armed conflict, but the change in the balance of power and the rapid growth in its general purpose forces has led to an increase in its willingness to take risks in areas where it has geopolitical military advantages. Moscow still wants dialogue on arms control and is eager to improve bilateral relations with the US, but not at the cost of its freedom of action in the Third World. Moscow, the memo added, believed in its right to wage an aggressive policy aimed at eroding Western, especially US, influence to the point of readiness to “intervene in crisis points or even to create crisis situations to further Soviet interests, as it did in Afghanistan, Libya, South Yemen and Syria.” Casey could make operational use of this paper, as it pointed to an aggressive Soviet policy. But the memo failed to address a few simple questions: Was the USSR capable of continuing the aggressive overextended policy it described? Was Soviet aid to the Third World effective? Could it go on for long? Or was it likely to fail? (as was the case almost everywhere the Soviets ran up the Red Flag). Most importantly, the paper failed to address the question of whether the

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Soviet Union’s involvement in the Third World was an asset or a liability for Moscow. “Casey ran the CIA in his way, and this applied to the Third World as well,” explains Robert McFarlane, describing how Casey faced a Congress suspicious over allocations for the sort of gray actions he liked. During the early 1980s, while the CIA was still reluctant to provide massive support to the Afghan rebels, Casey was personally involved in raising financial aid for the mujahidin from, among others, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. For the US, Saudi Arabia was more than a key state; it was a strategic partner and an intelligence ally. In 1982, Casey persuaded the royal family to lower oil prices, a ploy aimed, inter alia, at hitting the Soviets’ already depleted foreign currency income by forcing them to reduce the price they charged for Soviet oil. A year later he mobilized Saudi support in the struggle against Iran and its allies in Beirut. Over and above local clashes, Casey waged his global battle with the Soviets like a Sumo wrestler probing for pressure points. He told the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward that if the US ejected the Soviets from just one place, Afghanistan or Nicaragua, it would be an enormous psychological victory. The Kremlin, he argued, would lose its credibility at home and abroad. TO GET THEM OUT OF AFGHANISTAN The war in Afghanistan, like that in Vietnam before it, was the peak of a process of growing great power involvement in a Third World conflict. Superpower involvement in the Third World followed a regular pattern, in which intelligence played a central role. If your client was in control, your intelligence helped further the political, economic and sometimes military interests of his and your governments. When your client was in the opposition, you increased your aid in order to get him into power. In places like Vietnam or Afghanistan, where you were convinced that you had a vital interest, that is, the ability to influence global developments, you moved on to the next square and sent your soldiers to the battle zone. That was the breaking point in the chronology of predictable involvement. While the natives spilled their blood, you could say you were heading off the domino effect and get a national consensus for doing so. But when the cameras started panning along black bodybags waiting to be shipped back home, it turned into an electoral nightmare and caused ferment which even a communist regime could not resist for long. American intelligence, which assumed that the USSR, as a dictatorship, would be able to handle the body count in Afghanistan for years, was mistaken. Casey failed to grasp the self-draining potential of the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan. He expected his team to come up with a program for aggressive and intensive American action to make things as difficult as possible for the Soviets. No one dreamed of the upcoming debacle.

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“We didn’t like the idea of direct American involvement or even aid for the mujahidin in Afghanistan,” recalls Richard Kerr, a top CIA official in the mid-1980s. “Our hesitation stemmed from the many failed covert actions in the past. There was also a moral consideration. You enlist people, they work for your interests and then the conditions change and you abandon them to their fate. The way it was in Laos, for example.” The history of the Cold War is replete with examples of the superpowers encouraging states, organizations, tribes or other groups in struggles that served their interests only to dump them when they became a burden: not only the Kurds, who were abandoned by the Iranians, the Israelis and the Americans, but also the tribes of South Sudan, the Christians in Lebanon, the South Vietnamese— a long and bloody list. “But looking back,” Richard Kerr comments, “from our angle, involvement in Afghanistan was carried out properly and was a success. The Soviets screwed themselves, we only helped to make it happen.” Casey was convinced that the Soviets should have been hit as hard as possible in every possible place, including, of course, Afghanistan. That is the approach that dictated American involvement there. Back in the early 1980s the CIA did not yet know that the Soviets were headed for failure in Afghanistan and would not provide Casey, its new director, with the supporting papers he wanted. Casey bypassed his own organization and brought in the National Security Council (NSC) first under William Clark and then under Robert McFarlane. Their global thinking was based on the principle that any action that weakened the Soviet Union was worthwhile. They did not ask intelligence for evaluations of the local, regional or global repercussions of these actions. They asked it only to help provide aid to the anti-Soviet groups. Handling covert actions is not the NSC’s formal responsibility, but long before Oliver North revealed how he ran the Iran-Contra affair, Casey noted the possibility of using the NSC. Vincent M.Cannistraro, a CIA senior officer in the operational directorate in the early 1980s, was loaned to the NSC and given responsibility for coordinating the Afghan desk. “The CIA was unequivocally opposed to the operation in Afghanistan,” Cannistraro says. “The decision to aid the mujahidin was not the result of an intelligence assessment that we could oust the Soviets from Afghanistan, nor a clear statement that aiding the mujahidin was in the best interests of the US. It was because President Carter had been personally offended by the Soviet invasion, which he thought was a deliberate blow to détente.” Carter’s furious “How can he [Brezhnev] do this to me?” had spilled over to the NSC, the driving force behind American involvement in Afghanistan until the new Reagan-Casey administration took over. Seven years later, the CIA was still reluctant. During an April 1986 visit of a mujahidin mission to Washington, Cannistraro asked his counterpart in the Agency, Thomas Twetten, chief of the CIA Near East Division, to cooperate in entertaining the Afghan guests. Twetten refused, although President Reagan himself received the mission in the White House. “I said to Twetten, ‘The

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President is meeting with them, and you’re still holding back?’ He told me he didn’t want any part of it.” However, Twetten’s boss, Casey, was enthusiastically involved. He organized the visit, he was present at the meeting with the president and encouraged the rebels to ask for what they needed to fight the Red Army. They requested Stinger shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, explaining that the CIA-provided Soviet SAM-7s had not proved effective. “I later found out,” says Cannistraro, “that the SAM-7s obtained by the CIA via a middleman from a plant in Poland were flawed. Soviet military intelligence (GRU) found out about the deal and had the missiles damaged right there at the plant before they were shipped out.” The CIA’s Polish connection, through which the first SAM-7 missiles were shipped to the mujahidin, was part of an American intelligence— defense— industrial network operated by American intelligence. It included two Poles, Thadeusz Koper and Zbigniew Tarka, who worked for Cenzin, the Polish arms trading company, and sold the US advanced weapons from the Eastern bloc. The operation was aimed at supplying American defense industries with Soviet-made weapons for research and development of countermeasures, as well as for cases where the source of aid had to be disguised. Reagan, primed by Casey, understood the importance of the Stinger missiles in combating Soviet helicopters and raising mujahidin morale. He approved the shipment, despite CIA opposition. Production of the Stingers —ground-to-air heat-seeking missiles—had just begun and they had not yet been operationally tested. At the time they cost about $30,000 each. The Pentagon and the Stinger’s producers were interested in acquiring operational experience before reaching out to American and world markets. The Afghan mission’s timing could not have been better. The first five Stingers were fired on 25 September that year from an ambush near an airfield not far from the Khyber Pass. Three Soviet Hind battle helicopters were shot down. The Stingers were indeed good for the rebels and changed the course of the war; unfortunately, when the fighting was over, hundreds of these lethal weapons fell into irresponsible hands. The death toll in the Afghan War was extremely high. During the almost ten years of fighting, close to 1 million of the 17 million inhabitants were killed and 535,000 crippled. One-third of the villages were razed to the ground, two-thirds of the transportation infrastructure was smashed; 5.9 million fled the country and 2 million lost their homes and became refugees in their own land. Ten years after the first tanks crossed the Soviet-Afghan border, General Boris V.Gromov led the last and most successful Soviet attack. After slaughtering enough Afghans to soothe the Red Army’s wounded pride, Gromov began to organize the withdrawal from Afghanistan. On 15 February 1989, he crossed the border back to the rapidly collapsing USSR. “The situation behind me,” Gromov told the media, “is an internal Afghan affair, and as far as I’m concerned they can take care of it themselves.” He did not explain why for close to a decade the leaders of the Soviet Union had considered that very situation decidedly their

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affair. Later Gromov was to say that the decision to invade Afghanistan had been taken by Brezhnev against professional advice. Georgi Arbatov, adviser to five general secretaries, from Brezhnev to Yeltsin, was in hospital, recovering from a heart attack, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. He received a call from Anatoly Dobrynin, Soviet ambassador to the US, who was on the floor above having a checkup. He told Arbatov he had just heard on the radio that Soviet units had entered Afghanistan. Arbatov was later appointed a member of the Central Committee’s restricted commission investigating the Afghan affair. “I heard from Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev and our ambassador to Afghanistan and people who testified before the committee, in fact from every level, the army, even the KGB and Military Intelligence, that the decision to invade wasn’t the result of planning or of well-ordered thinking based on a strategic goal,” Arbatov said later. “We invaded a neighboring country to help someone we thought would secure Soviet interests. This aim was not achieved, and certainly did not justify the price that was paid in blood.” The idea of blaming the late Brezhnev for what appeared to be the USSR’s worst Third World blunder was not original. It was a sort of generally accepted formula. The problem was that Brezhnev had not exactly been in control. He had his first heart attack in 1976, and his health deteriorated to the point at which the Kremlin had to appoint an editor especially to handle all filmed material in which Brezhnev appeared. Her main task was to make his frequently disjointed, confused utterances sound logical. She would go to the film archives, take phrases from Brezhnev’s earlier speeches and splice them into the new film, while cutting the long pauses between sentences. Brezhnev’s interpreters were ordered to “improve” his speeches as they translated them into English. In those circumstances, Defense Minister Dimitri Ustinov and KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov (Gromyko was not consulted) had no difficulty in convincing the ailing Brezhnev of the vital need to invade Afghanistan. The KGB was a professional body, and it informed Andropov “in the frankest possible manner,” according to Leonov, that the USSR was in difficulties throughout the Third World, particularly in Afghanistan. Melvin Goodman, the CIA officer locked in a battle of minds with Leonov, argues that “during the first half of the 1970s the Soviets still had the resources to play the superpower game all over the world. However, by 1977 Brezhnev began to realize that the USSR was in trouble, and his successors understood this as well.” Alvin Rubinstein mentions another significant event that indicated that the USSR was losing ground. “I do not know if it is connected to Afghanistan,” he says, “but in 1984 Chernenko fired Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, following his demand to increase the military budget. Ogarkov insisted that modernizing the army and making infrastructural changes were vitally necessary. Without them the USSR could no longer continue to play the role of a superpower.” There is no doubt that Ogarkov’s dismissal in these circumstances should have been interpreted as a clear sign of weakness, said Rubinstein.

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A year later, when Andropov was general secretary, Arbatov met with General Sergei L.Sokolov, then deputy defense minister. “I told Sokolov straight out that in my opinion nothing good could come from our presence in Afghanistan and that I was also convinced that military intervention would destroy the remnants of détente and the SALT-2 agreements.” Sokolov asked Arbatov what he proposed. “I told him, ‘We have to announce that we would withdraw after six months.’” Solkolov demurred. “It’ll look like a defeat,” he said. Arbatov suggested: “Announce you’re cutting the forces by 10 percent, or least announce that there is an intention to do that.” This conversation came to Andropov’s attention. He furiously accused Arbatov of trying to undermine him. “I told Andropov that our global situation was very bad and we had to do something.” To the best of Arbatov’s recollection, Andropov told him that he needed at least a year “until we achieve our goals.” Looking back, Arbatov feels that “our very poor military performance in Afghanistan saved Poland. If we’d been able to achieve our goals in Afghanistan reasonably quickly, I have no doubt we would have invaded Poland too.” According to Arbatov, the imbroglio in Afghanistan also hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union, because it highlighted its weaknesses. Professor Aleksei Kiva, a Russian Third World expert, is also convinced that “we should not have gone in there.” In those days Kiva worked at a research institute dealing with the Third World. Its director, Professor Kapitsa, held the view that the Soviet direct interest was to provide aid first to bordering states, such as Afghanistan, and then to more distant states such as Angola and Mozambique. Kapitsa’s opinion was Kiva’s bread and butter, so he did not argue. Today Kiva is a little braver, but still some-what hesitant. “I am sure that our politicians wanted to expand Soviet influence to the Third World. The army was interested in the military facil ities it needed, and there were also those who saw in our Third World activity a genuine mission to help developing countries. In any event, we did not go there as the result of a grand design. We were simply exploiting opportunities.” On the other side of the Atlantic, Alvin Rubinstein comments: There were some Soviet academics who took a stand regarding Soviet involvement in Afghanistan, such as economist Oleg Bogomolov, who was one of the first reformists. But he was ignored. I do not know of anyone within the Soviet leadership who had reservations or doubts regarding the wisdom of the invasion or commented on the negative implications for the USSR that might result from military involvement in Afghanistan. In April 1985, a month after taking office, Gorbachev held a special Politburo meeting to discuss Afghanistan. The possibility of withdrawal was hinted at. At that time, five years into the war, disturbing questions were already being asked by mothers whose sons had been killed or wounded. Draft dodgers were increasing in number, the intelligentsia was expressing its opposition,

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newspapers were publishing signed letters of protest. Ordinary people dared to speak out against the war, and for the first time they were not subject to KGB harassment. “The high price the Soviets were made to pay for their presence in Afghanistan forced the Kremlin to re-evaluate and accelerated the decision to withdraw,” says Professor Rubinstein. The Red Army slowly digested the bitter and humiliating truth that the war in Afghanistan could not be won. In February 1986, Gorbachev made a public speech in which he spoke clearly for the first time about the need to withdraw from Afghanistan. By then the mujahidin were carrying out sabotage raids within Soviet territory, in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, under the remote control of William Casey. He had begun to push the idea of such raids in October 1984, and in March 1985 he had Reagan sign a presidential finding (NSDD 166) which authorized action “to deflect the Soviets in any way possible.” In September 1987, Eduard Shevardnadze, Gorbachev’s foreign minister, told George Shultz that the Kremlin had taken a decision to withdraw from Afghanistan within a year, that is, during 1988, asking that it be kept under wraps. In early February 1988, Gorbachev himself repeated this commitment, but in fact, the Soviets had long been passing messages and signals of their intention to withdraw. Washington reacted with skepticism, with Robert Gates, the NSC’s deputy director and the government’s top Sovietologist, setting the tone. General Gromov, commander of the 40th Army, had just launched another Soviet offensive in Afghanistan. Shultz said he believed Shevardnadze, but Gates and Fritz Emarth, then director of the National Intelligence Council, bet Michael Armacost, undersecretary of state, $25 that the Red Army would not leave Afghanistan. A short while later, in May of that year, the Soviets began their phased evacuation. American intelligence had erred twice. It did not warn of the invasion and it failed to read the decision to withdraw. It was to make a third mistake when it did not assess accurately the Najibullah regime’s chances of survival after the Soviet withdrawal. After the Soviet withdrawal, the US lost interest in Afghanistan, which entered its worst ever crisis. The death and destruction caused by a decade of struggle against the Soviet occupation were nothing compared to the havoc wrought by the civil war which intensified as soon as the superpowers withdrew. As it turned out, the Taliban, who emerged in the refugee camps in Pakistan, had the upper hand. But their extremist Islamic leadership, forcefully imposing strict religious law, and giving refuge to al-Qaida, was hardly the kind of government Casey and Washington had in mind to replace the pro-Soviet regime which they helped destroy.

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NICARAGUA American aid to the Afghan insurgents received wide support from the House of Representatives and the Senate, the media and the public. Support was more problematic when it came to other countries where Casey and the CIA “rolled the Soviets back.” Nicaragua was controlled by the Sandinista party, regarded as an enemy of the American people. The party’s leaders were described as Marxist-Leninists, not because this was true, but because Washington did not like them and Moscow did. “According to Lenin,” Reagan once explained, “when the USSR consolidates its position in Latin America it will no longer need to storm the United States, and the last stronghold of capitalism will fall into Soviet hands like a ripe fruit.” Casey agreed; but he had a problem convincing the CIA and Congress that Lenin had meant Nicaragua. In 1985 Casey was very concerned about the possibility that the “creeping communism” in Washington’s own backyard in the shape of the Sandinista “Marxist-Leninist” government in Nicaragua would threaten American interests, not to mention the US itself. The CIA’s Directorate of Operations shipped weapons to the port of Managua behind Congress’s back. Congress, however, learned about the operation through leaks by opponents inside the CIA, and passed a resolution demanding a halt to active American involvement in the destruction of the Sandinista regime. Casey got round this by setting up an operational channel in the National Security Council, outside the agency. He also organized external support from countries which Congress could not supervise. One of these was Israel, whom he asked to provide instructors for Nicaraguan Contra rebel forces. The request was rejected—Israel was aware of congressional opposition— but Soviet-made weapons captured in the Lebanon War were sent to the Contras as part of the effort to topple the Sandinista regime. In retrospect, this was the craziest of all the Reagan-Casey administration’s “rolling-back” operations, and it embroiled them in the Iran-Contra affair. IRAN Memories of Libya in the early 1970s, where the US had lost prestige and money with the dethroning of King Idris, the overthrow of the Shah and the humiliation suffered during the hostage taking episode, made the Carter administration fight back. As part of his bid to get rid of the regime of the ayatollahs, Carter ordered an embargo on arms sales to Iran. Reagan extended the ban and put pressure on American allies to follow suit. Arms dealers who transgressed were prosecuted. At the same time, the US began to arm Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Khomeini’s sworn enemy. Despite his links with the Soviets, the United States saw in Saddam a partner ready to invade Iran at the drop of a hat. Casey’s CIA, via a Chilean arms dealer, Carlos Cardone, sold Iraq weapons it had never received from the Soviets, such as cluster bombs.

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Soon after war broke out between Iran and Iraq, the Kremlin attempted to mediate. But, hoping to profit from the American embroilment, it avoided taking sides. “In most conflict areas,” says Professor Rubinstein, “except for the ArabIsraeli case, Soviet policy was to maintain dialogue with both sides, including pro-American states.” The attitude to Israel was an inseparable part of the way the superpowers viewed the region. The mind games and secret stratagems woven around the Baghdad-Tehran-Beirut-Washington-Jerusalem axis were so convoluted, loaded and amoral, that hardly an eyebrow was raised at the idea of Saddam Hussein, backed in the early 1980s by Soviet and American weapons, fighting Khomeini’s Iran, supported by Israeli and American arms. In 1983 Iraqi military pressure on Tehran was at its height. Fear of defeat and the fall of the Khomeini regime led the Iranians to initiate a sting operation which eventually blossomed into the Iran-Contra affair. Contacts during 1985 and 1986 prepared the ground for the sale of arms to Iran in exchange for its mediation and assistance in the release of Western hostages who had been kidnapped in Beirut. Iran was charged inflated prices, making it possible to channel part of the profits to finance aid for the Contras. Casey needed this circular process to circumvent Congress, which had banned US aid for the antiSandinista rebels. His deputy, John McMahon, opposed the operation, run by the CIA Chief behind the agency’s back, because he did not trust the Iranian arms dealer Manuchar Ghorbanifer, the central figure in the deal. In late 1986 the affair exploded in a scandal which threatened to bring the Reagan administration down. In March, an aircraft working for Casey was downed while flying supplies to the Contras. Reagan admitted afterwards that he had learned of the incident through a newspaper story, although, as president of the United States, he should have received such information in his daily intelligence briefing. He also recalled asking the director of the CIA about it, but Casey assured him that there was no link between the downed pilot and any branch of government. Reagan later discovered that the airlifts had been arranged through the NSC and an investigation proved that members of Casey’s team had been involved. The president magnanimously accepted the malignant brain tumor Casey was later diagnosed as suffering from as a possible explanation for the entire Contra affair. Arthur M.Schlesinger Jr., one of President Kennedy’s special assistants, is less generous: “In 1980, when the Reagan administration took over, there began a systematic erosion of US attitudes to international law, in particular with regard to covert actions. A prime example was the CIA’s operation in Nicaragua, a criminal action against a state that was at peace with the US.” Yet, despite the continuing tension and bitter hostility in relations between the two countries, Washington’s main focus seemed to be to prevent an expansion of Soviet influence in Tehran.

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GRENADA Neither Reagan nor Casey intended to allow the USSR to retain its foothold in Latin America and in June 1982 they received an intelligence assessment which corresponded with their hardline views. The paper, “Soviet Policies and Activities in Latin America and the Caribbean,” asserted that since 1979 Moscow had regarded the area as ripe for revolutionary change. The Soviet modus operandi was to aid revolutionary regimes in Nicaragua and Grenada, as well as other local revolutionary movements, through proxy states. The aid was channeled partly through Cuba, a central link in areas of unrest such as El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. According to the paper, the Kremlin believed that there was potential for strengthening leftist forces in Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Chile. In addition, Moscow was establishing conventional links with other regional states, such as Peru, which for the first time had purchased Soviet weapons. As a result, more than 125 Soviet advisors and military personnel were present in Peru, 2,000–2,500 Peruvians were receiving military training in the USSR, and Peruvian intelligence had established working ties with the KGB. The paper estimated that the USSR might attempt to obtain naval and air services in countries like Nicaragua and Grenada, a move which could have implications for the US presence and defense interests in Panama. The paper also detailed pro-Soviet Communist Latin American parties (legal and illegal) by name and country of origin, and also listed students studying in the USSR. Given this assessment of Soviet intentions, the CIA went ahead with the creation of a network of contacts in Latin America to help secure US interests. One such contact was General Luis Alonzo Discoa (later Honduran chief of staff from 1990 to 1995). In the early 1980s Discoa and his Brigade 316 were trained by the CIA. Some of its officers were later charged with kidnapping and murder. The charge sheet included 184 cases of people who had disappeared without trace, and reports of 24 secret burial sites. The trial, which took place in Honduras in 1996, was beset with typical South American problems: the army refused to cooperate, the defendants disappeared, and the investigators’ bodyguards were wiped out. The case itself could only have come to light through CIA instigation, and, as usual in such situations, an internal CIA commission was established to investigate. John Deutch, who became CIA director in 1995, did not like its findings. Although new at the job, he understood that the commission’s report might spark public criticism of the agency, and he did not want to start off that way. He released an angry but restrained response: “The work of the CIA in Honduras,” he said, “is an example of how not to do things.” But the Reagan-Casey administration of the early 1980s was eager to find a suitable arena in which to prove its determination to face the Soviet threat. Intelligence, as always, provided its government with the necessary evidence. In early 1983, the CIA identified preparations to build an airfield in Grenada. Experts claimed that the length of the runway, 2.7 kilometers, indicated that it

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was not intended solely for passenger planes. The implication was that Soviet MiG fighters would now be based almost on America’s doorstep. Intelligence sources reported that Cuban technicians were involved in the construction of the new airfield, and this information was quickly passed to the president. Richard Kerr, then a senior member of the Intelligence Directorate, comments: “We provided information about Grenada: the Cuban presence, the construction of the airfield, the internal situation and the danger to American students there. We only provided the intelligence. The decision to intervene was made by politicians. However, our reports rapidly became political, as they did in other cases, Panama for instance.” Early in 1983, at about the same time as the Star Wars project was announced, Reagan displayed publicly for the first time satellite photographs showing Soviet monitoring stations in Cuba, arms shipments to Nicaragua, and aerial shots of the Grenada airfield under construction. The President emphasized that Grenada had no air force and left it to the imagination to figure out who might want to use the airfield. General Leonov, the KGB’s expert on Latin America, shakes his head in disbelief. “We never had a presence in Grenada,” he says, “beyond a very small embassy. Grenada constructed the airfield for large passenger planes like the Boeings and Airbus, a vital need for a nation that wanted to expand tourism. The airfield is in operation today, and no one claims that it’s being used for military planes.” Nevertheless, Reagan and his advisors were convinced developments in Grenada might pose a threat to vital US interests in the area, and decided to act. Britain’s Margaret Thatcher made an angry phone call to Reagan: Grenada, she told him, was a member of the British Commonwealth. If order had to be restored there it was Britain’s job. In contrast to their usual unanimity, this time the CIA and MI6 differed in their assessments. The British claimed that, despite Cuba’s active role, the Soviets had only a marginal interest in Grenada. However, this did not persuade Reagan to rescind his decision to use military force. On 19 October 1983 Grenada’s Prime Minister, Morris Bishop, was assassinated. He was replaced by a “Marxist” group. Within two weeks US troops had landed on the island. The 700 armed Cubans in Grenada were forced to surrender. Documents were seized, including a letter from a Soviet general to Grenada’s army commander, congratulating Grenada on joining the revolutionary ranks. But no one took seriously papers found in Grenada purporting to prove that the USSR was planning to turn Grenada into a military base against the US. “The price we paid for our success in Grenada was high,” Reagan said in summing up the action that “saved” the Caribbean: “We lost nineteen of our men and more than a hundred were wounded—but the price we would have paid if we had let the Soviets maintain their foothold in the Western hemisphere would have been much higher. Grenada was meant to be only the first stage.”

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A touching insight into the story was revealed later. Reagan received a letter from a helicopter pilot who participated in the operation. It started by stating that Christmas eggnog would not be the same without nutmeg (Grenada produced about half the world’s supply). “The communists wanted to steal Christmas from us but we stopped them,” the pilot wrote to his president. Leonov shrugs again. “It was political and military madness to claim that Grenada constituted a threat to US security or interests.” Evidently, Reagan did not see it that way. He claimed that not only had the spread of communism been checked, but American citizens could now walk tall. When he talks about the USSR, Leonov sounds resigned, but when he turns to what he calls the Reagan administration’s paranoia, there is more than a touch of irony behind his tired acceptance of defeat. And as he addresses issues of Soviet Third World policy he sounds like a long suffering teacher dealing with a difficult student. We had bases in Grenada or Nicaragua? By the end of the 1970s, before Reagan was elected, we knew that our situation in the Third World was extremely shaky. We in the KGB occasionally made a few suggestions for improvement, but they weren’t concrete, nor were they translated into official assessments. At the most they reflected our thinking about the Third World. I can recall that once we even suggested that the USSR withdraw from most areas in the Third World and concentrate our efforts on a select number of key states, such as Vietnam in the Far East and South Yemen in the Middle East. It was pointless to go on investing in Arab states without receiving anything, ideological or otherwise, in return. The proposal to focus on South Yemen, says Leonov, stemmed from the KGB’s sense that it was the Arab state whose ideology was closest to Marxism. He recommended a strategy which included constructing a longterm aid program, covering perhaps 15 years, to develop Aden’s economy and industry, while sending out a huge number of experts and bringing thousands of South Yemenis to the USSR for education. “This would have demonstrated what the USSR could do for the Third World, and given tangible proof of why links with us were beneficial.” Leonov feels that in Latin America the USSR could have easily made do with the presence it already had in Cuba. There was no need to move to other states such as Nicaragua and Peru, although there were forces there that wanted Soviet aid. “The problem,” says Leonov, was that we also made mistakes. During Brezhnev’s day, Andropov, then KGB chairman, played a decisive role in Soviet policy towards the US but he responded to Reagan’s rhetoric like a politician, not like an intelligence chief. Our problem was that economically we couldn’t let ourselves be drawn into competition with the US, we were under constant pressure

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because of the feeling that the Americans always were ahead of us. I believe that if Andropov had ruled the USSR for a few more years he would have changed our destiny. There’s no doubt in my mind that he would have very quickly grasped that we couldn’t cope with this burden, and he would have accepted the KGB position that we should be satisfied with what we had. It was neither the Soviet nor the American intelligence community that decided that developments in Grenada were a threat. Reagan claimed in 1983 that every state had the right to carry out operations and covert actions if it believed that its interests were threatened, which is what he did in Grenada. Two years later, he set guidelines that served as the ideological underpinning for the support given to the Contras in Nicaragua. He did so by claiming that support for freedom fighters is a type of self-defense and as such in line with the UN charter. More ideological support came from the American Security Council (ASC), which financed a film called Attack and distributed it to hundreds of local television stations. The soundtrack opens with screams over a shot of an armed man firing on a terrified crowd in a town square. This was followed by a montage of firebombs, exploding shells and Sandinista and Cuban units in action. A voice intones in the background: “America is under attack! Murder, sabotage and terrorism. Moscow is behind the strategy…and it’s happening in our backyard…” The scene changes to Brezhnev at a Moscow Party congress, while the voice-over describes his speech as “the Communist timetable for the world revolution… Central America is their next goal.” There are also scenes of the Red Army in action, with Henry Kissinger commenting: “They took Cuba, Nicaragua, Grenada…and now they’re on their way to Mexico.” Another voice says: “If they get there, you Americans will find communism waiting for you on the edge of the Grand Canyon.” Today it is hard to believe that all this was said with profound and inexplicable seriousness in the 1980s, only a few years before the Soviet Union’s final collapse. EL SALVADOR Yet despite the propaganda, Reagan’s convictions and Casey’s resolve, the Congress, the media and most of the American public did not accept the notion that the USSR was attempting to undermine the United States through Latin America. Given the lack of hard evidence, Casey looked for a partner to help him create a smoke screen from behind which he could advance his ideas. In the case of El Salvador, Casey chose Alexander Haig, then secretary of state. In March 1981, Haig’s State Department issued a “white paper” called “US Foreign Policy: The Secret Side of American History.” Eight pages long, the document was sub-titled: “Soviet Involvement in El Salvador.” Its ostensible purpose was to disseminate information to senior government officials, select

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members of the media and members of Congress, and it accused the USSR, Cuba and other communist states of “covert military support of Marxist-Leninist guerrilla organizations in El Salvador.” A thick file of documents was appended, entitled: “Documented Proof of Communist Underground Support of the El Salvador Opposition.” These documents were said to have been found in the El Salvador Communist Party (PCS) headquarters in 1980, and in the “People’s Armed Revolution” offices in January 1981. One was a report detailing PCS Secretary Shafik Handal’s alleged military shopping spree in June 1980 to the US, the USSR, Vietnam, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary and Ethiopia. According to this report, almost 200 tons of arms and ammunition were smuggled into El Salvador, mainly through Cuba and Nicaragua. The paper was assembled to look as convincing as a documented memo, and it was taken seriously by at least some of its recipients. Unfortunately for the author, it also reached the Wall Street Journal, which decided to look into it more carefully. On 8 June 1981, the Journal published an article claiming that the bulk of the information in the State Department paper was not backed up by the attached documents. John Glassman, identified by the Journal as the paper’s coordinator, admitted that there might have been a certain amount of misleading and exaggerated information. That set the Washington Post cross-checking and it found that PCS Secretary Handal had not taken the journey ascribed to him. Nor was there confirmation of the 200 tons of military hardware allegedly smuggled into El Salvador. The Post added that the more they investigated the sources of information, the murkier these became. None of this stopped Reagan from signing a presidential order in December 1981 empowering the CIA to carry out a paramilitary operations in El Salvador. Reagan noted in his autobiography that the agency had told him that Nicaragua’s Marxist government had shipped hundreds of tons of Soviet weapons from Cuba to El Salvador as part of a Soviet plan (in conjunction with Cuba) to dominate Latin America: first Nicaragua, then El Salvador, and next Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Mexico. The two vital questions facing an observer of relations between intelligence and policy-makers are: what precisely did Reagan learn from intelligence, and on what information did he base his El Salvador policy? CIA analyst Melvin Goodman says that “the politicization of intelligence and an inflation of the Soviet threat helped Casey promote aggressive intelligence activity against the Soviets and their Third World proxies. Casey wondered why we weren’t working to undermine the USSR wherever possible.” “All this fuss about analysts,” Richard Kerr groans, “originates from their frustration at realizing that their papers don’t always have influence. But,” he quickly corrects himself, albeit with a degree of resignation in his tone, “intelligence papers certainly do have input in other ways. For example, leaders utilize intelligence when it suits the policies they want to advance.” With regard to Latin America, Kerr feels that it was not intelligence assessments that determined policy, but the decision-makers’ own agenda.

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Oddly, Casey, who clashed with some of his analysts, saw their work as an efficient tool for promoting his policy agenda. The initial stages of his tenure as director saw a further enlargement of the agency to about 20,000, and there was a parallel increase in CIA operational activity overseas. Goodman comments: When Casey wanted to prove a point or justify a specific policy he would ask the Intelligence Directorate for an assessment paper. He was aided by Robert Gates, whom he liked and trusted. Gates believed that Soviet penetration of the Third World was aggressive—in Africa, in Southeast Asia following the Vietnam War, in Latin America and finally in Afghanistan. The Soviets continued to ship arms and send advisors and military aid to Third World countries well into Gorbachev’s tenure. From an intelligence viewpoint, the crucial question is whether its input had any impact on the strategy of US Third World policy. At a meeting with President George Bush, Gorbachev told him that “the USSR will not support anti-US forces.” But the Bush administration continued the rolling-back policy, as if the USSR were still an enemy and a power to be reckoned with, rather than a state on the verge of collapse. This is an example of the gray area where professional intelligence and policy was driven by an ideological outlook clash. Witness NSC officer Peter Rodman, who believed “Gorbachev was lying to Bush when he said that the USSR had stopped its military aid to Nicaragua and El Salvador.” On the other hand, Alvin Rubinstein is aware that “portraying the USSR as the main force behind the unrest in the area was overstated, and the genuine ‘revolutionary’ conditions there were underestimated.” CUBA Melvin Goodman is convinced that Moscow never had a vital interest in Central and Latin America, including Cuba, until the American entanglement with Castro. Cuba fell into communist hands by accident and because of American policy errors. The problem then was that the Soviet presence in Cuba gave Moscow’s intelligence a bird’s eye view straight into America’s bedroom. Washington never got over the fact that a Marxist-Leninist revolution had taken place within a half-hour’s flying time from Miami. US-Cuba relations had been deteriorating since the end of the 1950s, when Fidel Castro overthrew President Batista, “our” man in Havana. The trend continued with the failed attempt to invade Cuba in 1961 (the Bay of Pigs) and the 1962 missile crisis, which brought the two superpowers to the brink of nuclear confrontation. Relations worsened in the 1970s and 1980s when the Cubans, as emissaries of the USSR or in their own right, fought directly against US-supported Third World states. Despite the plethora of intelligence warnings about Cuba, it is doubtful that Havana ever posed a military threat to the US, or

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whether its attempt to export the revolution to the Caribbean and other Latin American states endangered vital American interests. Still, Cuba was regarded as a major thorn in Washington’s side. The USSR’s Cuba story is to a large extent the personal story of KGB General Nikolai Leonov, who was the first to establish contact with the young revolutionaries in Cuba. This was during the late 1950s, when Leonov was serving in the Soviet embassy in Mexico. In 1958, he joined the KGB and in 1960, following two years of training, he was already in charge of the Cuban desk. “I was the first and only officer who worked on Cuba. I knew some of their leaders, whom I met by chance when I served in the Soviet embassy in Mexico in 1956.” Today he still claims that this initial contact came about “accidentally” before he joined the KGB. As a press attaché in the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City, he met Raul Castro and Che Guevarra, “by chance.” When Leonov talks about Guevarra, his tone softens and becomes warmer. “I admired Che,” he says. “He was obsessed with social justice. He was one of those people who don’t care about themselves.” Leonov’s meeting with them took place at the Mexican Revolution memorial in Mexico City’s Avenue de la Reforma, where he “bumped into” a group of young Cubans. One of them, Raul Castro, invited Leonov to his apartment at 49 Empera Street, not far from the memorial. “A few days later I visited Raul and found him sick with a cold, being treated by a doctor. Raul said: ‘Meet Dr. Che Guevarra.’ I remember it well.” Leonov looks around his memorycrowded Moscow apartment: “Raul said jokingly that Che wasn’t his doctor but his aide. Che questioned me about myself, and I answered him.” Che asked Leonov for three books: Dmitri Furmanov’s Chapayev, about a Russian Civil War hero; Ostrovsky’s How The Steel Was Tempered; and a book by Mikhail Sholokhov. “He had chosen well,” Leonov notes with a faint smile. “The books were a good representative sample. Che wanted to understand Russian communism. I promised to get them for him.” Two weeks later, Che came to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City and Leonov gave him the books. “It was our last meeting,” Leonov recalls. But the junior Soviet press attaché continued to follow the deeds of the Cuban revolutionaries. “They planned their invasion of Cuba there in Raul’s flat,” he explains. “By summer that year I knew there was something going on, but naturally I didn’t know any details.” A few months later, the group was arrested by the Mexican secret police. In a search of Raul’s flat, they discovered Leonov’s name and address, and he was expelled from Mexico. He returned to Moscow, joined the KGB, and spent the next few years in training. “People who needed to master an additional foreign language had a one-year course. Those who didn’t know foreign languages had a two-year course, and for people who had to acquire a Far Eastern language, there was a three-year course.” For two years Leonov studied the intelligence business from surveillance techniques to micro-dot photography. When he finished, he felt he was ready for action.

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One February day in 1960, he was called to the director’s office and sent straight to the Kremlin, to join Deputy Prime Minister Anastas Mikoyan on the first high-level Soviet visit to Cuba. “We went there under the cover of a mission to an agricultural exhibition.” Leonov’s task was threefold: translator, expert on Cuba, and bodyguard. “Well, officially I was a bodyguard, but I didn’t carry a weapon.” This initial meeting in Cuba proved crucial for the future relations between the two countries. “Mikoyan was authorized to offer Castro a loan of $100 million and to establish diplomatic links with the new regime in Cuba.” Castro accepted, and Leonov returned from Havana as head of the KGB’s Cuba desk. “Our intelligence didn’t use Cuba for anti-US operations,” he claims. “We continued to run intelligence operations from other states, mainly Mexico.” The turning point in both Leonov’s career and Soviet involvement in Cuba was the CIA’s 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco. Vladimir Semichastny, KGB chairman at the time, called me in to ask about Cuba and the Cubans. There were two big maps on his wall. I used one to explain what was happening according to information we gleaned from the American media, and on the other map I showed him data based on information we got from our station in Cuba. He asked me what I thought was going to happen. I said the invasion was bound to end in a fiasco for the people who had organized it. This was the first intelligence assessment of my KGB career. In November 1961, following the Bay of Pigs fiasco, two GRU officers went to Cuba as intelligence advisors to Castro. It was only at this late stage that a military component was added to the Soviet-Cuban relationship. Leonov returned to Mexico City in 1962, this time under the guise of third secretary in the Soviet embassy. Part of his task was to keep in touch with his former revolutionary friends, now in power in Cuba. Our goal was to aid the Cuban revolution, but in Mexico City we had one of our largest central intelligence stations covering the US. We had more than 20 intelligence officers who ran American sources from Mexico. Some of the sources came to Mexico for debriefing. Occasionally, KGB officers went to meet them in the US. We had a lot of agents and supporters there. They were mostly driven by greed, but there were many, in the States too, who were ideologically motivated. They admired our social system, our scientific and technological achievements. Leonov’s personal perspective, like Casey’s, explains to a certain extent the dynamics of how the other side was understood. “The US was our number one enemy,” he says as if stating a perfectly obvious fact.

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It could never bring itself to accept our existence and our status as a world power. The US was our rival in almost every sphere. Each side managed occasionally to put a spoke in the other’s wheel, but we always lagged behind. The Americans were first to develop atomic weapons and the hydrogen bomb. They began to build ballistic missiles and later multiple warheads, and we had to catch up. They never encouraged us to feel their intentions were peaceful. Leonov’s second term in Mexico City lasted until 1968, when he went back to KGB headquarters to the operational division for Latin America. In 1971, he was appointed deputy director of the information directorate. (This was the year in which 105 Soviet diplomats and officials were expelled from London. The second secretary at the Cuban embassy there, who defected in 1973, told his CIA bosses that, after the expulsion, his embassy had become the center for Soviet espionage.) Leonov was appointed head of the directorate in 1973. He feels that his directorate was better than its CIA counterpart. “With regard to Cuba, for example, the CIA made a lot of mistakes. Castro wasn’t a communist or proSoviet when he started out. Right up to the Bay of Pigs it never crossed his mind. It was American pressure that forced him to turn to us.” It took some time before Castro, ruler of a small, poverty-stricken state, developed ambitions to lead the Third World. With Latin panache he swept the USSR along with him, although the Soviets could not always keep up with his revolutionary zeal. Castro even sent military forces to Angola and Ethiopia, and became a more dedicated communist than the party secretary general in the Kremlin. He certainly served the USSR faithfully, but by the 1970s his passion was out of sync with the mood, ambitions and capabilities of a deteriorating superpower. During the 1980s, the Cubans encountered a new administration in Washington. Now they had to confront William Casey and Alexander Haig, who, as far as the war on communism was concerned, made no distinction between Cuba and the USSR. Both wanted to destroy Castro. Casey wanted to do it clandestinely, while Haig favored direct military action. Lawrence Eagleburger, munching a hamburger and then puffing a cigar in his Pennsylvania Avenue office in Washington, was still convinced in 1995 that the decision to confront the Soviets wherever they set foot was correct. “When Cuba sent forces to Angola and Ethiopia in conjunction with the Soviets and in the service of Soviet interests, it was wise to stand up to them,” he says. Now, when the USSR no longer exists, Eagleburger would consider a change in American policy: “I would ease our policy toward Cuba. This would harm Castro more than continuation of the embargo.” American concern over Cuba, which is on its doorstep, is understandable. But what was the strongest nation on earth doing in East Timor? The US entered Third World states when the old colonial powers bowed out and US intelligence identified “communist penetration.” In the early 1970s, various factions in

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Timor, in Eastern Indonesia, united to demand independence. The Indonesian government responded by sending in troops who set about “cleansing” the rebels, whom they described as “communists.” The invasion took place a day after President Gerald Ford’s official visit to Indonesia in 1975. Philip Leachty, head of the CIA station on the island, says today that he’s ashamed at the way his government lent a hand to the Indonesian government’s crushing of the rebels in Timor. In 1981, when Reagan took office and Casey was appointed director of the CIA, the Indonesian invasion force on Timor was reinforced. Army units cleaned out rebel areas. Amnesty International called it “genocide.” Portuguese premier Mario Suarez claimed that crimes against humanity were being committed there, but the US and Margaret Thatcher’s Britain went on selling Indonesia’s President Sukarno huge quantities of arms ostensibly to block the alleged communist penetration. The rebels were branded communists, and the USSR accused of backing them. This was enough for the West to turn a blind eye and allow the Indonesian government to crush the people of Timor without criticism, let alone international pressure. Yet long after the Soviet Union was no longer around, the war in Timor, and the oppression of its people, continued. But there was a difference. With the Soviets gone, the West and its intelligence services suddenly lost their enthusiasm for the Indonesian cause. AFRICA Africa provides the darkest examples of how the superpowers waged their struggle to the detriment of the world’s weaker populations. In the 1950s, after long decades of colonial rule, the continent began to awake, flex its muscles, and struggle for independence from the British, French and Portuguese colonial powers. For one moment of grace it seemed that the Dark Continent was setting out on a path that would ensure its inhabitants a decent economic and social life in a democratic framework. But the moment was short-lived. Africa’s independence was largely achieved at a time when the Cold War was beginning to grow warm. Instead of angels of redemption to release the continent from the devils of the past and the pressures of the present, they got the CIA and the KGB. Should intelligence officers who submit working papers for politicians take moral considerations into account? This is the subliminal question at the base of all intelligence work. The sober answer is that the question is irrelevant, because an intelligence officer is first of all an intelligence officer, and anything else is the province of bleeding hearts and ivory tower intellectuals. Intelligence officers generally view themselves as totally committed to fight for an idea and for the politicians (who pay their salaries), even when they represent totalitarian regimes and their policies are immoral.

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ANGOLA Zaire covers a territory the size of the US east of the Mississippi, and the country has huge economic potential. Drawing the map of his world, William Casey found that in Zaire he had an ally; the country’s president for life, Mobutu Sese Seko, had been pro-Western for 30 years. Belgium was still seeking gold and diamonds there, and France was also interested, as Zaire bordered on several former French colonial possessions which retained close ties with the “mother” country. Mobutu was quite an attractive ally for the West, but the way in which he ran Zaire and its/his coffers was unusual even in Africa. He was considered a “Western asset” because he allowed Unita underground movement leader, Jonas Savimbi, another “Western asset,” to operate from his territory against the proSoviet MPLA regime in Angola. Savimbi was the CIA’s and BOSS’s, South African intelligence’s, man. He also had contacts with the French, German and other intelligence services that had joined forces to confront the Soviet presence in Africa. The Angola regime was as much Leninist as Antarctica is Buddhist, but its leader, José Eduardo dos Santos, turned to the Soviets in his hour of need. They quickly offered him aid in his struggle against Savimbi, and Castro entered the loop. The Soviets made their strategic calculations, colored them with ideology, and from that point on a murderous inter-tribal war was waged in Angola. Categorized by the superpowers as a war between the good guys and the bad, it lasted much longer than any other African war this century. (Incidentally, Western support was withdrawn from Mobutu and Savimbi when the Cold War ended.) “The truth about our involvement in Angola is that there was no strategic need for it,” says Peter Rodman, one pleasantly warm Washington afternoon. He drums with scholarly fingers on his desk as he speaks. He worked in the NSC during the Reagan administration and in 1995 was a senior researcher at the Nixon Center. “We went in there because it was symbolically important for the US to do so,” he admits blandly. US involvement in Angola “mostly stemmed from Soviet and Cuban activity there.” In his eighth-floor office at Moscow’s IMEMO Institute, its deputy director, Nodari A.Simonia, energetically looks through files for a document he wrote in 1989, after he returned from a mission to Angola. Gorbachev sent him there to meet with dos Santos, “our man against Savimbi, who was their man.” Simonia’s task was to explain to dos Santos that the party was over. There, in the capital Luanda, Simonia discovered that dos Santos not only did not want Soviet aid to cease, he wanted it augmented “and he also asked for Soviet troops.” Simonia returned to Moscow and submitted his recommendations in the spirit of the times: to lower the Soviet profile in Angola. “I did it,” he says, even though it was clear to me that the position of the US and its allies would be strengthened as a result, at the expense of the USSR and Cuba. The game there was a struggle for spheres of influence and interests.

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Soviet policy in the Third World was not aggressive, but it certainly continued to promote what it saw as its interests, in the 1980s as well. Simonia was an academic, but, like all his colleagues in the Soviet system, he was first a servant of the government. Most of the academics working for the communist regime believed in it, but Simonia had known for years that it was not what it was cracked up to be. He was no Che Guevara or Martin Luther King, but did have the courage to be among the first to criticize various aspects of Soviet policy, and in the early 1980s was one of the first men spotted by Gorbachev when he decided to off-load the Third World burden. Angola, according to General Leonov, was a “special case.” He claims that a decision to avoid direct involvement was made in principle in the early 1980s. “Our mission there was ordered to cross the border and assemble in neighboring Brazzaville. At the time Cuban and MPLA forces protecting Luanda were taking a terrible beating. We got urgent calls for help from Cuba, even though they had stepped up their presence in Angola without our consent.” Despite that “lack of consent,” about 30,000 Cuban troops were airlifted into Angola by the Soviets. In any event, the US refused to accept that Cuba was running an independent operation in Angola and insisted that it was a Soviet proxy. Leonov takes a different view: “It was a serious error to see the Cubans as our satellite. Sometimes we thought that we, the USSR, were Cuba’s satellite.” Dmitri Simes agrees: “Castro brought the Soviets into Angola.” Alvin Rubinstein also believes that Cuba had an independent policy and acted according to its own perceived interests. “Castro may have consulted the Soviets, but the decisions were his.” Despite the views of these eminent Sovietologists, Chester A.Crocker, undersecretary for African affairs in the Reagan administration, claims it was the Soviets who insisted on continuing the fighting and Castro who wanted to compromise. Peter Rodman, who concedes that Castro entered Angola on his own initiative, also believes that when the Cuban leader was ready to compromise, the Kremlin would not let him. At the end of 1989 the Pentagon published its annual survey, “Soviet Military Power,” based on intelligence material. It contained an impressive inventory of Soviet stockpiles of military hardware, as well as information on Moscow’s military presence and that of its satellites around the world. Although every bird in every tree had by then announced that the USSR was in the throes of a fatal disease, the Angola section in the survey estimated that “the USSR will continue to provide military aid to Angola to expand its influence there.” The two superpowers left 9 million land mines in Angola in their battle for regional hegemony. Superpower influence has since evaporated, but the land mines remain. Most of the minefields are unmapped and most of the victims go unreported. In 1995 a survey showed that there were 20,000 Angolans who had lost at least one leg. This aspect of superpower struggle for influence in Angola will leave its cruel legacy for many years to come due to Luanda’s inability to cope with the unmarked mines. Replying to a question about the number of

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victims claimed by the war, Angola-born Mimi Kandera said bitterly: “Who cares?” Pressed again for an answer, she shrugged, no less bitterly: “Who’s counting?” Those who did count put the number of victims at about one million. THE HORN OF AFRICA The Cold War boosted the strategic importance of the Horn of Africa, the states bordering on the Red Sea: Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia in Africa and Yemen and South Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula. The superpowers established footholds there, local stations for the CIA and KGB, and waged their Sumo-style struggle to push the other side out of the circle. Other regional states entered the conflict for their own reasons. Israel worked in conjunction with the US, with occasional friction caused by differences of interest or temperament. Ethiopia was the most tempting oasis in this arid region. In the late 1970s, after many years of Western influence, the Soviets stepped in. The country was not ready for a proletarian revolution à la Soviet Marxism-Leninism, but accepted a Soviet presence, and extended port facilities in exchange for war matériel at easy terms. Historically, the first, largest and oldest surviving communist party in Africa had been established in Sudan, Ethiopia’s close neighbor, but it had never attained power. The Soviets did not attempt to convert Ethiopia, Sudan or any other African state to communism. They did not believe that Africa was ripe for Soviet-style socialist revolution. This feeling resulted from a mixture of realistic assessment— disbelief that local tribal frameworks would digest the communist ideal of equality—and the contempt of those who considered themselves too civilized for the “natives.” The Soviets wanted a foothold in Ethiopia for strategic reasons, to displace the West in this important region. They gained it by massive and cheap military supplies, as well as taking the “right” positions in internal struggles and spreading promises for a better future. The Cold War in Africa was carried out with minimal media exposure. The world did not know exactly what was happening there, nor was it overly interested. In any case, much of what was going on was handled through clandestine meetings between station chiefs of the CIA or the KGB and local government or opposition leaders. The world was indifferent, but the corridors of power in Washington, Moscow, Paris and London buzzed with excitement and activity. “During the 1970s,” says Alvin Rubinstein, “the Soviets realized that a new situation had been created. The American army was licking its Vietnam wounds, a noisy anti-war movement had been established in the US, and Congress passed the War Powers Act which forbade a president to declare war without Congress approval.” The American government had had its wings clipped. It had become more cautious and less dynamic. The USSR, on the other hand, was perceived as a rising power. More and more African states preferred to ally themselves with the Soviets rather than the Americans.

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The USSR, where the decision-making process was often quicker, attached special importance to the Horn of Africa, and sought opportunities to penetrate the area. The conflicts between Ethiopia and Sudan and between Ethiopia and Somalia, as well as the Eritrean rebellion led by the ELF, provided the platform. By the time the US realized what was going on, the USSR had already established a presence in Somalia and Sudan, both Muslim countries. After the 1974 uprising against Haile Selassie, the USSR developed a special relationship with the new rulers in Addis Ababa, sacrificing its links with Somalia and the ELF. Bypassing democratic restrictions, the CIA fought back by supporting the southern Sudanese underground against Khartoum and opposition factions fighting the Marxist regime in Aden, and working to undermine the new pro-Soviet regime in Ethiopia. However, this was not enough to preserve America’s interests and presence in the region. During the second half of the 1970s the Soviets established themselves as the leading power in the Horn. The Americans were out. Washington had only itself to blame, having lost its standing through its own blunders, primarily the failure of American intelligence to detect the “winds of change” in Ethiopia. In February 1974, Emperor Haile Selassie had been deposed by a group of military conspirators led by Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam. Haile Selassie was considered Washington’s man; Mengistu, in what seemed like a natural move, turned to Moscow. The coup had surprised both the CIA and the KGB, and came as Moscow was establishing itself in Somalia, which was fighting Ethiopia for control of the Ogaden region. Mengistu’s appeal created a complicated dilemma: to continue to support the current, rather lean ally, Somalia, or to change sides and go for the rather plumper Ethiopia. In a move that was brilliant geopolitically but morally despicable, Moscow abandoned old-time Marxist Mouhamad Siad Bare in Mogadishu, in favor of the “new Leninist” Mengistu in Addis Ababa. Siad Bare immediately turned to the West. The prospect of the West returning to the Horn through Marxist Somalia jolted the Kremlin’s initial calculations, and Fidel Castro took it upon himself to reaffirm communist domination in the area acting, in Washington’s view, as Moscow’s proxy. In 1976 Castro organized a regional conference in the South Yemeni capital of Aden, in an attempt to resolve the conflict between Somalia and Ethiopia, and thereby enhance communist influence in the region. Representatives of South Yemen, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia and Cuba attended. The Somalians demanded sovereignty over the Ogaden province and vowed otherwise to continue the war to the last soldier, their’s or Ethiopia’s. Castro showed a flash of temper, went straight to Moscow and put pressure on the Kremlin to abandon Somalia altogether and shift its support to Ethiopia. By 1978 there were 17,000 Cuban troops in Ethiopia. “Moscow perceived Ethiopia after Haile Selassie as a country in a state of revolution, the first such in Africa,” says Alvin Rubinstein. “They wanted to retain their links with Somalia, but Mogadishu left them no choice.” Dimitri Simes is convinced that the Soviets abandoned Somalia for Ethiopia “simply

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because the latter had greater potential to serve their interests.” The fact that at this stage Ethiopia’s economy was still viable— it earned foreign currency mainly from sales of coffee—and it could pay for arms, made it a greater prize than Somalia. The Soviets stuck more red pins in the map of Africa: Sudan, Tanzania, Angola, Congo (Brazzaville), Mozambique, Mauritania and Mali. They occasionally demonstrated their presence in Ghana, when “their” local tribe took power, and sometimes in Zimbabwe too. The string of Soviet successes raised quite a few eyebrows in the research bodies of Western intelligence services that found it hard to understand what the Africans and the communists had in common. They knew very well that the Soviets themselves were skeptical as to whether Africa was politically mature enough to adopt the socialist system. But there were some Africans who felt that alliance with the communists, especially if accompanied by tanks and planes, suited their tribal character and their developing societies that had just achieved independence. The US, on the other hand, served as a reminder of the colonial past, which had meant the exploitation of African resources with very little invested in local welfare. It would take a generation for Africans to realize that the Soviets were doing just the same, and far less elegantly. During the early 1980s, it became clear that relationships between the USSR and African states were not working out. The advisors sent by Moscow did not fit in socially; Soviet equipment, both civilian and military, proved unsuitable for African needs; and assistance gradually dwindled as conditions in the USSR itself deteriorated. Moscow’s demands for local debts to be paid in hard currency became increasingly insistent. Moreover, the Soviet Union was becoming increasingly reluctant to back the whims of African rulers in their conflicts with tribal chiefs within or across their borders. Strangely enough, just as Soviet influence in Africa started to decline in the early 1980s, US intelligence estimated that the Soviets were on an upward roll in the Third World and CIA Chief William Casey stepped up the “roll them back” policy. Thanks to US aid during the great drought in the early 1980s, the CIA enhanced its presence in Ethiopia. Timothy Walsh, a CIA officer who was posted to Addis Ababa, spent less time on aid than on the struggle against KGB agents. Short of waving a sign “I am a CIA agent,” he did all he could to expose his identity, and when the KGB spotted him, he was expelled by the pro-Soviet Ethiopian government. However, what eventually decided the outcome of US-Soviet rivalry turned to be American economic superiority, and the clumsy, tactless behavior of the Soviet officials on the ground. All the locals wanted from the Americans and the Soviets were some help in coping with the twentieth century, a little attention to boost their dignity and self-respect, and some weapons to kill the enemy next door. During the early 1970s, while the Kremlin’s expanded its influence in the Third World, Kassa Kebede ran a military training camp about 20 kilometers from Addis Ababa where the instructors were Soviets and Cubans. Acquaintance

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with the Soviets soon led Kebede to conclude that they had no chance of success in Ethiopia or in any other African state. “Once a week the Soviet general in charge appeared in my office in the camp to complain, grumble, and make demands.” Kebede had acquired a great deal of experience in the ways of the world from the meetings he had with everyone who was interested in Ethiopia, openly or covertly: Americans, Israelis, Soviets. His impression of the Soviets bears harsh witness to the Soviet image in Ethiopia, in other African states, and in the Third World in general. “Soviet officers of Russian origin looked down on other Soviets at the camp, such as the Kazakhs, who in turn resented them and kept their distance.” Kebede recalls a Soviet instructor complaining that he had not received a Lada car like his Russian counterpart, because, he said, he was Uzbekhi. “At the camp I also had my first glimpse of the difference between the Russians and the Cubans, and I knew that this partnership didn’t have a chance either.” Kebede has only praise for the Cubans: “They were companeros, hot-blooded Latins. They coped with difficulties and problems without complaining all the time like the Soviets.” Cuban influence in Ethiopia was “especially obvious in Addis whorehouses, where they paid with cigars.” Another difference: “The Soviets preferred to spend every cent of their salaries shopping on the black market. They mainly wanted jeans.” Kebede was not surprised when the USSR collapsed. His analysis: “The Soviets, unlike the Cubans, had no real belief in their own ideology. They had an inferiority complex regarding their economic capability and they did not trust their own products.” He explains: “The Lada is quite a good car, but a Soviet would rather have an old Volkswagen than a new Lada.” Kebede recalls the training camp’s film-shows. “When we showed an American Western the Soviet instructors turned up in droves. No one came to Russian movies. If you put bottles of Soviet vodka and American whiskey on the table, no one touched the vodka. They all went for the whiskey.” His conclusion: “How can a power which does not believe in itself dominate the world?” THE THIRD WORLD: A SUMMARY Major General Leonov states firmly that the USSR had already begun to realize back in the 1970s that it could not continue its aggressive Third World policy. It required the investment of dwindling material resources, and by the early 1980s there were already those who talked about quietly slipping out of these nations. The question is not whether Leonov is telling the truth, but what Western intelligence had to say about the Soviet Union’s intentions and capabilities in the global struggle in the Third World at the time. Raymond L.Garthoff, a senior analyst at the Brookings Institute, who studied relations between the two superpowers believes that during the second half of the 1980s both Moscow and Washington began to realize that Third World instability was the outcome of local conditions, and that it was a mistake to allow it to influence fragile US-

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Soviet relations. The fatal error made by hardliners on both sides was that they linked Third World upheavals to superpower relations. Despite Garthoff and others, the Reagan administration maintained its hardline. So did Casey, whose CIA continued to roll the Soviets back with wellpracticed wrath, backed up by intelligence papers. In April 1982, the National Intelligence Council issued an estimate entitled, “The US-Soviet Competition for Influence in the Third World: How the LDCs Play It,” which claimed that the USSR, having established its presence in Third World states, was preparing to defend its achievements. The two central Third World issues were the Palestinian problem in the Middle East and the fate of the black population of South Africa, in both of which the Soviets had meddled. However, the paper concluded, the Third World was beginning to understand that the American economic model was more efficient than the Soviet, and that the US could provide more and better aid to developing countries. Up to this point, the estimate is accurate. But in their strategic and operative conclusions, policy-makers tended to ignore information indicating that the Soviets were on their way out of the Third World. “Casey and CIA policy in the 1980s should be seen in the context of the ‘Reagan Doctrine’”, explains James Baker, who was White House chief of staff, later Reagan’s secretary of the treasury and toward the end of the decade Bush’s secretary of state. Did the White House shape American policy on the basis of intelligence estimates? “I wasn’t involved in intelligence,” says Baker, who was not one of Casey’s fans, “but I think that the intelligence which supported the doctrine was good. The Soviets’ internal difficulties made no difference to us. We planned to confront them wherever and whenever possible.” The actors involved in such dramas are usually nice, polite people, who are direct to the point of brutality when it comes to conducting business or policy. Nothing personal, of course, although everyone comes with some kind of intellectual baggage. “At first I hated the communists,” says Baker. “There was a time when they had a terrible image. I believed that communism was opposed to the values that the US stood for.” “Looking back,” says Lawrence Eagleburger, one of the more perceptive officials of the Reagan and Bush administrations, “perhaps in certain cases resources were wasted on unnecessary wars in the Third World, but in principle our policy was right.” “We understood,” says Peter Rodman, who coordinated Third World activities at the NSC, “that some kind of change was taking place, that the USSR was in a process of cutting down Third World commitments, but they didn’t do it gracefully… They tried to retain their assets… Their policy wasn’t positive or helpful… It seemed as if [Gorbachev] was trying to hold on to his policy at the lowest possible cost to himself.” Rodman, who helped shape the Casey-Reagan Third World policy, is aware that during Andropov’s short reign Moscow began to realize that the Third World had become a burden. He explains the continuation of American pressure thus: “We didn’t create conflicts. All we did was to up the price the Soviets had to pay.

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We saw their difficulties and decided to increase them—in Afghanistan, Angola, Central America and Cambodia our pressure speeded up the Soviet abandonment of the Brezhnev doctrine.” Rodman reflects the mood of the American administration in the 1980s. He finds nothing wrong with the American desire to see the Soviets quit the Third World quickly and unconditionally, abandoning their clients, without any “unpleasantness.” In Rodman’s view, concrete intelligence proof of the USSR’s backing away from its aggressive Third World policy was provided only in the late 1980s, as the Bush administration was starting to get organized. “Until then we saw no dramatic change in Soviet Third World policy.” The first sign, Rodman says, was only in February 1988, when the Soviets agreed “to withdraw from Afghanistan without making it conditional on the cessation of American aid to the mujahidin.” Alvin Rubinstein feels that the most important factor behind the Soviet Third World policy change was economic and could have been predicted. “Gorbachev wanted to revitalize the failing Soviet economy. He knew he needed foreign investment. He had to find a way to transform the USSR from a Cold War rival to an accepted member of the international community which could do business with the West, and this linked up to the need to get out of Afghanistan” and scale down involvement in the Third World. Could it be that the CIA was not sensitive to this nuance, which Gorbachev repeatedly emphasized back in the mid-1980s? And had the CIA been sensitive to it, would the message have been passed on more clearly to policy-makers? Melvin Goodman was not happy with the administration’s assessment of Soviet Third World policy. He claims that “it was flawed. Even the academics weren’t at their best. Except perhaps for Rubinstein’s observations in his book Red Star over the Nile” Rubinstein himself is scathing on America’s understanding of the Third World. “I’d give Eisenhower’s administration a D,” he says. “His policy led to a growth of extremism in several East Asian states. Our actions there did not serve American interests. The American tragedy in Vietnam was partly the result of the Kennedy administration’s overreaction, which it was pushed into by Walt Rostow and McGeorge Bundy.” The same applies to the Middle East. “Take the Baghdad Pact, for example, which America backed but did not join. It contributed nothing to Middle East stability.” Rubinstein grades US Third World policy during the 1970s higher: “I would give it a B. Although I don’t think it should apply to Iran under the Shah, which brings us back to a D.” Rubinstein justifies American aid to Israel, to the Angolan underground Unita movement and to the mujahidin Afghan rebels, but here he thinks that “aid was not accompanied by the right diplomatic strategy,” which could have shortened the war. He compliments the Reagan administration for its contribution to the solution of the conflict in southern Africa and the end of the apartheid regime there. “But one should keep in mind that this policy was forced on the administration by Congress. The fact that the Soviets were in the process of withdrawing from the area also helped.”

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As a rule, according to Rubinstein, Moscow avoided direct military involvement in the Third World, aside from Afghanistan. “In 1956, the Soviets threatened to take military action if Britain, France and Israel did not withdraw from Egypt. However, as far as we know today, Khrushchev was gambling, and he quickly withdrew when his bluff was called.” The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was another gamble, says Rubinstein, and possibly meant entirely internal consumption. “In the early 1960s Khrushchev ordered cutbacks of about 1.5 million soldiers to enable economic development. The army demanded compensation, and the Cuban crisis could have been part of a plan to deflect military budgetary pressure.” The Israeli-Arab 1967 Six Day War, according to Rubinstein, saw the greatest change in the Soviet attitude to the Third World. At the time of the Suez Crisis in 1956, the Soviet Union was not in a position to intervene far from its borders. However, following the Arab military defeat in 1967, the Soviets displayed an impressive ability to airlift vast quantities of military matériel to replace Egyptian and Syrian losses. But despite their improved strategic capability, the Soviets did not send in troops. The policy debate in the Kremlin was decided in favor of massive diplomatic support. Moscow mobilized communist and Third World countries to adopt favorable Security Council resolutions, and severed links with Israel. The huge military airlifts were intended to show the world that Moscow would not allow its clients to be defeated. Rubinstein was not a recipient of CIA papers about Soviet Third World policy, but he knows that “there were Agency analysts who believed that Soviet economic difficulties made further expansion impossible, and that Moscow was starting to look for ways to cut down its involvement.” Those analysts also felt the USSR understood that communist ideology had no chance of being adopted by Third World countries. During the early 1980s, analysts even claimed it was becoming clear that the USSR was looking for ways to minimize its presence there. The Reagan administration’s early 1980s policy was also clear: “We went into the Third World because the Soviets were there.” Why? “Well, American policy during most of the Cold War was reactive. We responded to the Soviets.” And so it was that the world slid into a volatile situation where in Libya, Lebanon, Chad, Angola, El Salvador, Guatemala, Cuba, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Mozambique and the Middle East—in fact, most of the Third World—the superpowers were ready to do battle with each other down to the last African, Asian, Middle Easterner or Central American. At the beginning of the 1980s, according to General Leonov, the KGB understood that it did not pay to invest heavily in the Third World. “It did not give us supremacy over the US there, nor did it help us spread our influence. However, we weren’t going to abandon a policy merely because it proved inefficient or even harmful.” So the KGB searched for a formula to extract communism gracefully from the Third World trap. “We thought about focusing our efforts in a few key states instead of expanding throughout the Third World,” says Leonov. “Vietnam should have been the showcase for what we could do in

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the Far East. In the Middle East we considered South Yemen, whose ideology came closest to Marxism. At the end of the day nothing came of it, because the traditional Soviet policy just kept on going with no one stopping it.” The Kremlin did not buy the KGB’s suggestion, but neither did the CIA show any awareness that Moscow was cutting back in the Third World. It continued the campaign against the Soviets like a fighting unit, rather than a body whose main task was to gather and analyze information. “It took me personally a long time to realize that the USSR was withdrawing from active involvement in the Third World,” says George Shultz. “Until the last minute, I did not believe that the Soviets were really going to withdraw from Afghanistan.” This was the turning point, according to Shultz. “We saw it as a formal end to the Brezhnev Doctrine.” Looking back, it is clear that in 1986–87 the US could have realized that changes were taking place in the USSR, and in 1988–89 it should have been able to see events there in a different light. During 1989, there were many meaningful indications and signals from which intelligence could have concluded that the USSR was on the way to oblivion. The Baltic republics proclaimed sovereignty as a prelude to their demand for full independence. The media in Moscow reported openly on the rapid loosening of the communist grip on Eastern Europe. Gorbachev proposed further concessions on the mutual destruction of nuclear stockpiles and, to Chancellor Kohl, an end to the Cold War. Soviet deputy premier for economics, Leonid Abalkin, declared in a public speech in October 1989 that “the economy is declining month by month” and added: “If we don’t stop the process, the USSR will cease to exist.” A reformist economist named Shimlev said in June 1989 at a congress of people’s representatives: “If we don’t stop the inflation from snowballing, correct the flaws in our economy and deal with the enormous budget deficit, within a year or two we will see economic collapse.” Such plain talk had never been heard in Moscow before. However, the US continued the struggle against the Soviets in the Third World, just as if Casey were still alive. At the end of 1989 the Pentagon issued its annual Soviet Military Power, a publication based on intelligence information. It gave the terrifying list of Soviet weaponry deployed during that year in the Third World: 7,952 tanks, 20,470 artillery pieces, 17 submarines, 37 missile carriers, 2,620 fighter jets, 1, 705 helicopters, 32,210 missiles of various types. The list of items, most of which were rusting away (although still potentially lethal), seemed more suitable for a sales agency than an intelligence body, even though it was accompanied by an assessment of the Soviets’ evil intentions in various parts of the world. In 1988, the USSR was actively involved in efforts aimed at conciliation between Unita, Savimbi’s underground Angolan movement, and the government headed by dos Santos. “Despite the Soviet contribution,” says the Pentagon’s annual survey, “Moscow continued to provide arms to the Angolan Marxist government and will probably go on doing so after the war is over.” That the Soviets continued to provide arms is cited as damning evidence, even though arms-dealing for the USSR, as for the US, Israel, France or Britain, was

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primarily commercial and only secondly a tool of political influence. The Pentagon survey added that $1.9 billion dollars in military aid was transferred in 1989 to Cuba, the USSR’s main ally in the Western hemisphere, and also claimed that the Soviets aided Cuban forces in Angola, Ethiopia and Nicaragua. Massive Soviet military aid was also offered to Vietnam and its puppet regime in Cambodia. The survey described Soviet activity in the Third World as if nothing had changed. Moscow “wants to preserve the Marxist Sandinista government in Nicaragua… Soviet arms continue to stream in… There is proof that these arms also reach the leftist underground in El Salvador… There exists a plan to increase the Nicaraguan army to 500,000 soldiers in 1991 and Moscow is involved in it.” In Panama, where CIA agent Manuel Noriega was undisputed ruler, the Pentagon survey claimed that “the Soviets continue their efforts to form ties with the regime, or any government that replaces him… The USSR is trying to arouse anti-American sentiments… The Soviets are helping local communists organize a communist party.” The section devoted to the Far East and the Pacific begins: “The USSR is seeking to expand the role it plays in Asia and the Pacific…both by diplomatic means and by strengthening economic ties…which indicate that the USSR seeks to dominate the area.” This aggressive activity was attributed to the Soviet Union towards the end of 1989, a mere two years before it ceased to exist. In February 1989, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze visited a number of countries in the Middle East and North Africa. According to the Pentagon survey, his aim was “to help the Soviet Union take an active role in the area… The Soviets are eager to expand their bases in the Middle East…through economic agreements and by the supply of weapons, in particular sophisticated arms, to their loyal clients Iraq, Iran and Syria.” The survey goes on to state that: “In Western Asia, India remains the cornerstone of Soviet policy…Moscow is taking steps to consolidate its relationship with Afghanistan…and with Pakistan… although Moscow’s special relationship with India limits its ability to negotiate with Islamabad.” As for Latin America: Soviet leaders believe that the trends in the region are in their favor and this will enable the expansion of Soviet influence in Latin America, through open and covert actions… Under Gorbachev they will emphasize conventional relations…but parallel to it Moscow will encourage communist organizations to expand their power base and influence… Soviet aid to leftist organizations will be more selective and clandestine and will be conducted mainly through Cuba and Nicaragua and less through Latin American communist parties. Although sub-Saharan Africa was “less central in Soviet strategy, the Kremlin seeks to expand its influence there as well…in particular in states like Tanzania,

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Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Angola, and looks for opportunities to penetrate Namibia and South Africa.” In brief, according to the Pentagon survey: “The USSR wishes to keep open all its options in Africa, be it through military and economic aid, propaganda and disinformation, and other open and covert operations.” The survey’s conclusion was pure craftmanship: “Despite Soviet concern to be seen as non-threatening and cooperative, Soviet policy choices will depend heavily on circumstances, opportunities and the policies of other countries.” This was the way the Pentagon survey dealt with the Third World, leaving the impression that, at the end of 1989, it was business as usual for the Kremlin. The preface to the survey was signed by President Bush and Defense Secretary Richard Cheney. Yet what about possible Soviet collapse? The writing was not only on the wall —the wall itself had begun to buckle. The Berlin Wall was brought down two months after the Pentagon publication, just two years before the USSR disintegrated. The question “How could Washington have issued such a survey at that time?” mirrors the question: “How could the USSR collapse without the intelligence community’s knowing, seeing, or hearing —not to mention warning about it?” Looking back at the Cold War, and without getting into calculations of national security, what could have been foreseen materialized: More than American policy helped to establish democracy in the Third World, the local regimes, often corrupt, influenced American policy. Ironically, the United States influenced the policy of the Eastern Bloc, which chose to adopt democratic norms, more than the policy of friendly countries like El Salvador, Saudi Arabia or Indonesia.

3 Conceptual Conformity

AMERICAN STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE US President Harry S.Truman, was, for a short time, the first (and last) world leader to change the fate of the world by means of the atom bomb. He, in fact, determined the course of the Second World War in the Pacific by approving the first (and last) atomic strikes. The Second World War was total war, which affected large civilian populations. Since then more civilians have become involved in the policies which determine war and peace, and politicians are aware that they need a wide base of support when they opt to go to war. They therefore practice all possible means of persuasion, from sharing information and sometimes even the reasons behind their decisions with the public, to less legitimate means, ranging from spreading disinformation to brainwashing. The Clifford Report, published on 24 September 1946, laid the foundation for the political-security approach that guided the US after the war. It stated categorically that the USSR was the source from which international communism drew its power to threaten the existence of the Free World and went on to determine that the US was the only power capable of mobilizing effective resistance and preventing communism from conquering the world. This was not an intelligence assessment, supported by verifiable evidence, but stemmed rather from the prevailing conception of Soviet policy and communist ideology. This basic approach went unchallenged and it is doubtful whether anyone seriously examined its validity. It was deemed almost axiomatic that the USSR wanted to impose communism on the world. But no one asked to what extent it was prepared to risk the lives of its soldiers in war to achieve that goal. US, as well as other Western intelligence agencies, embraced the unchallenged preconception of Soviet intent as a working hypothesis and acted accordingly. The CIA and the intelligence agencies that preceded it gathered data on the USSR and its satellites and distributed assessments on ideological, economical, political and military trends, as well as on the military buildup of the communist bloc. But they were preaching to the converted. The intelligence consumers—the president, the National Security Council, the State Department, the Pentagon and the military secretaries—were fixated on the same overarching conception. There

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was hardly any difference of opinion between the policy-makers and the intelligence gatherers. All were united in the belief that the USSR was secretly working to achieve global supremacy and was prepared to use military power to achieve its goal. All recited and recycled the principal points in the Clifford Report, reinforced by intelligence data gathered with a view to confirm them. It was a vicious circle. Most of the situation reports of that period warned of the danger of an American failure to prevent more countries falling into communism’s sphere of influence. Fear of the “domino effect” lay at the heart of the “Truman doctrine,” which was meant to cordon off the spread of communism. In July 1947, Truman appointed James V.Forrestal as the first defense secretary with full authority over the military. With the help of his aide, Paul H.Nitze, who was to fill key governmental positions in the coming decades, Forrestal quickly became the Administration’s main architect of Cold War policy. The top bureaucrats who manned the American intelligence establishment at the beginning of the Cold War included Allen W.Dulles, General Walter Bedell Smith, Richard Bissell (the first director of Project U-2), Paul Nitze and, in later years, James Angleton and Richard Helms. They saw themselves as guardians of the eternal struggle against the USSR. Some shared similar backgrounds and education. They also shared a belief in the justice of their cause and the danger of the Red Peril with members of the political elite such as Dean Acheson, Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. Thirty years later Ronald Reagan, Caspar Weinberger, William Casey and their “Californian team” set the antiSoviet tone, as did the “Texans,” led by George Bush, James Baker, Brent Scowcroft and Robert Gates in the years leading up to the Soviet collapse. The common political orientation of the intelligence professionals and the political elite over the years produced a rigid conceptual conformity between the analysts and the decision-makers. Their concept of the USSR, the threat it posed and the way the US should respond was firmly knit. It was not a conspiracy, but reflected the spirit of unity that prevailed in the Administration and governed perceptions of American interests. Richard Nixon’s détente policy was the first step in breaking through the mindset which had determined that any concessions to the USSR were against US interests. It originated in an initiative developed and adopted by Nixon and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger with no substantial intelligence input. During the Carter Administration as well, intelligence had little influence on White House attitudes to relations with the Soviets. From the 1980s the decline of the USSR did find its way into intelligence assessments and began to seep through to the attention of policy-makers, academics, the media and the public. However, even then the CIA did not dare to say or write what was obvious from the data: that the USSR had reached a dead end; could not cope with its problems; was losing its authority and no longer constituted a military threat to the US and the Free World.

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When the Administration did react to the signs of collapse, its response was always a beat or two behind events in the field. President Carter changed his policy toward the USSR following its invasion of Afghanistan. Ronald Reagan began to understand only during his second term that the USSR was changing. George Bush, wary in everything connected with the Soviets, turned “delayed response” into an art form. One of his first decisions on taking office in 1989 was to freeze the policy of thaw adopted by his predecessor. He required a timeout for reappraisal. At a press conference immediately after Bush’s victory in the presidential elections and before he was inaugurated, after Bush and Gorbachev met in New York at the UN General Assembly, Gorbachev intimated that he was interested in carrying on at the point where he and Reagan had left off. “The name of the game is continuation,” he said to Bush. “What guarantee can you give me so that I can reassure businessmen who want to invest in the USSR that perestroika [restructuring] and glasnost [openness] will really succeed?” Bush asked him. Gorbachev looked at him and hissed, “Even Jesus couldn’t answer that question.” Secretary of State James Baker, Bush’s personal friend and confidante, said at the time: “Our challenge is not to run ahead.” Brent Scowcroft, Bush’s national security adviser, called Gorbachev’s policy the “smart bear syndrome”— Brezhnev’s policy packaged more attractively. Bush told Gorbachev that two presidents, Kennedy and Carter, had moved too quickly with the Soviets, thus harming US interests, and that the pace of present developments should be slowed down to allow a policy review. In practical terms this slowdown hampered Gorbachev’s march to reform. With hindsight it could be argued that this may have weakened the Soviet Union and accelerated its disintegration, a process which in fact served the US national interest. However, the haphazard nature of the collapse endangered European stability and led to a dangerous weakening of nuclear arms control. The day after Bush’s election, Henry Kissinger, political guru, servant of many presidents and one policy, visited the president-elect and his wife at their home. Kissinger, the midwife of détente, had scant respect for political leaders, especially those who did not share his views. He concurred with historian Barbara Tuchman that leaders tended to learn little beyond the entrenched views they had adopted long before they came to power, and that these opinions were the sole intellectual capital on which they drew while in office. He and Bush, however, agreed on the need to subdue communism before making peace. Kissinger, owner of a creative, some would say devious, mind, advised Bush to negotiate covertly with Gorbachev for a deal that would end the Cold War and eradicate commnism in Eastern Europe. Well versed in the art of conducting strategic policy through secret diplomacy, Kissinger believed that Gorbachev was ready for a deal and presented the idea to the president-elect as a major departure that would reflect well on Bush’s place in history.

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Bush was skeptical. So was Scowcroft, once Kissinger’s aide and now Bush’s, but Kissinger was insistent. He argued that Gorbachev wanted to continue negotiations while maintaining the fiction of an existing balance of power between the superpowers. Kissinger’s advice to Bush was to promise the Soviet leader, verbally of course, that the US would not undermine Soviet influence in Eastern Europe, in return for Gorbachev’s commitment not to use force there. This ploy was meant to enable a breakaway of Eastern European satellites from the USSR, with the resultant dismemberment of the communist bloc giving the US a decisive edge over its superpower rival. Kissinger had conducted a similar gambit on the eve of Nixon’s election in 1968. He had a channel to the Kremlin through Boris Sedov, a KGB officer operating under the cover of a reporter for the Soviet news agency Novosti. Kissinger knew who he was dealing with, and passed a message via Sedov to Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev that Nixon intended to improve relations with the USSR. Brezhnev replied by letter through the Sedov channel that he welcomed Nixon’s candidacy and promised to work with him with an open mind if he were elected. This, according to the story, was how détente was born— a politician’s version of the Mafia kiss of death. Kissinger wanted to wrap up the process with Gorbachev and limit those involved to Bush and himself. Bush, however, did not move without first consulting his friend James Baker. The latter asked State Department experts for their opinion, which was that Gorbachev should not be given anything when the US could get what it wanted for free. In January 1989, before Bush’s inauguration, Kissinger went to Moscow with a letter to Gorbachev from the president-elect and tried to sell his idea to the secretary-general: the superpowers would initiate a “hands off” policy in Eastern Europe, while maintaining the global balance of power. Gorbachev immediately grasped that it was a ploy whose price was Soviet withdrawal from Eastern Europe. He sent Bush a polite letter promising to cooperate with the president of the United States in “keeping world peace.” In parallel, he launched a diplomatic offensive aimed at persuading the Western Europeans of the genuineness of his new, open foreign policy. On 22 January, a few days after Bush received the letter, his National Security Adviser, Brent Scowcroft was interviewed on ABC television. “Gorbachev seems to be interested in making trouble among our Western allies,” commented the veteran general, who had served four administrations and never believed there would be any real change in the USSR. He added that he was convinced that unlike his predecessors, Gorbachev was trying to promote traditional Soviet interests under the camouflage of a peace offensive. Baker was inclined to reject the Kissinger idea in its entirety. Bush himself said at his first press conference as president that the US “should be cautious,” thus signaling the slowing-down of the Washington-Moscow rapprochement started during the last years of Reagan’s administration.

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In retrospect, it is obvious that Kissinger’s proposal, as well as the Scowcroft and Baker approach, stemmed from a total lack of understanding of the Soviet situation. It seems that it would have been sufficient to get a short update from young CIA analysts about what was going on in the USSR for it to become clear to the administration that there was no need for ploys and stratagems since the USSR was already a bankrupt concern. Bypassing the CIA, headed by William Webster, Bush requested his national security adviser to ask academic experts for an assessment of recent developments in the USSR. Scowcroft passed the task to Condoleezza Rice, a Sovietologist with the National Security Council. On 12 February, she organized a seminar of six experts, including Harvard’s Adam Ulam, the Brookings Institute’s Ed Hewett, and Marshall Goldman, also of Harvard, whose writings at the time predicted that Gorbachev would fail to carry out his ambitious economic reforms. Despite Goldman’s skepticism, most of the Sovietologists felt that Gorbachev was going in the right direction. They believed his policy was aimed at gaining acceptance for the USSR into the family of nations, and that he was willing to pay the price: a move to democratization and enhancement of civil rights. Bush, cautious as ever, asked what would happen if Gorbachev had a heart attack the next day. Most of the experts were sure that the changes he had begun were too deeply rooted for any successor to rescind. Here Scowcroft intervened. “Never say never,” he scolded, and the academics agreed that yes, a coup led by radical elements within the KGB and the army might take the USSR back to its bad old ways. This was also the CIA’s opinion, expressed in one of the assessment papers submitted at the time. Bush wondered if Gorbachev was capable of using force to block the moves towards democracy in Eastern Europe, but most of his advisers thought chances were negligible. This cordial meeting did not effect any change in US policy towards the USSR, which was still considered a demonic entity and potential threat to America. If President Bush did not exactly understand what was going on in the USSR, he certainly thought he knew what was good for the US. Instead of meeting with CIA Sovietologists, Bush invited, more or less privately, Sovietologists whose opinions were, more or less, well known. His low opinion of the agency was reflected in remarks to his White House aides, praising the work of the NSC seminar. A few days later, Bush signed a classified four-page document setting out guidelines for the Administration’s Soviet policy. The paper praises the policy that led the USSR “to recognize reality” and the steps taken toward arms control. The bottom line, however, stresses the continued need for a tough stance: “The USSR is still our adversary who maintains great military strength and it would be thoughtless to abandon the policies which have brought us thus far.” The paper ends with two questions: “Is it in the American interest to aid Gorbachev to implement perestroika and is the USSR willing to pay the political price for this help?”

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About three months after he entered the White House, on 14 March, 1989, Bush received a top-secret document from the National Security Council (NSR 3) which dealt with the Soviet Union. Its opening sentence read: “We are in a period of transition as potentially important as the immediate post-war period.” It allowed that “there was only a small chance that the USSR would return to draconian autocracy.” The paper recommended “making an effort to ensure that the reforms are irreversible.” The writers also warned that Moscow still aspired to retain its status as a world power and its ability to compete with the US. The document used language astonishingly like Bush’s own four years earlier following Konstantin Chernenko’s funeral, in March 1985. Then, after meeting Gorbachev for the first time, Vice President Bush told reporters that “the challenge is not to help Gorbachev, but to put forward US interests.” In many ways, the NSC paper seemed to reflect Bush’s approach to the USSR. It argued that the changes in the Soviet Union would force it to develop a competitive market economy, accelerating the process of democratization, and effecting a transition that was surely in the American interest. Clearly it was better for the Soviets to invest in raising living standards than in expansion beyond their borders. Yet it took three weeks for Bush to convene the NSC to discuss the paper. Secretary of State Baker told him that despite all the fuss made by the bureaucrats, “the paper wasn’t a cannon, it was a toy pistol.” Baker himself was not enjoying the atmosphere bequeathed him by his predecessor George Shultz, who had encouraged Reagan to go forward in improving US-Soviet relations. Bush’s National Security Adviser, Brent Scowcroft, was not happy with the estimate and policy recommendations in NSR3 either, despite its author’s efforts to please the new team at the White House. Forty years of fighting communism could not end just like that, with a document that claimed that the USSR was on a “dynamic path to democratization.” Scowcroft described the paper to his aides as a “big disappointment,” and rebuked them for lacking creativity and failing to identify the direction the US should be taking. Franz Josef Strauss, the Bavarian leader and fervent anti-communist in the 1950s and 1960s, who visited Moscow that winter, observed that the USSR was no longer a military threat to Western Europe. The Bush Administration paid no attention. Robert Gates, then Scowcroft’s deputy, and waiting to be appointed director of the CIA in place of William Casey, continued to see the USSR as a real threat. After having worked with Casey for some years, Gates did not need Strauss to tell him whether or not the Soviets continued to threaten the Free World, nor did he need any assessments from liberal analysts in the CIA. In a speech in Brussels on 1 April that year, Gates doubted both Gorbachev’s sincerity and his ability to stick to his reform policy, and he prophesied “continued crisis and unrest in the USSR.” “What happened to Gates is understandable,” says Melvin Goodman, a longtime rival; “as a rule, the closer to the top you are, the more detached you are

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from the sources, the intelligence material and the assessment process. And you’re more tuned to what the politicians want. They’re the clients and the boss.” Judge William Webster was an exception to that rule. Appointed to head the CIA during Reagan’s term in 1987 after Casey’s death, Webster had no burning ambition to enforce his opinions. He lacked the powerful urge to rule the world that had motivated his predecessor. He was an obedient civil servant who signed the professional assessments without Casey’s passion or pressure, and without Gates’s research and Sovietology background. He continued in the same way under the new president. Bush, who knew Gates well, was waiting for the opportunity to renominate him for the directorship of the CIA. In the meantime, he served as Scowcroft’s deputy. Anything Langley could do for the president, Gates and the NSC could do better. The more Bush’s instinctive caution regarding Gorbachev’s policy of reform deepened, the more suspicious he became of the CIA. At the end of October 1989, Bush planned a summit meeting with Gorbachev. Only a few of his closest aides, including Scowcroft, Gates, Baker and John Sununu, White House chief of staff, were in the know. Bush did not bother to inform Webster, whose view of the Soviet threat was beginning to change and no longer conformed to that of the White House. In fact in March 1990, while testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Webster declared that the Soviet threat to the West was over: no Soviet government in the foreseeable future would try to rescind the changes that had begun in the Eastern bloc. Webster’s statement was supported by an assessment paper issued at the time by SOVA, the CIA branch “watching” (doing the research analysis) the USSR. The paper argued that Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders were worried about the collapse of public order, and it believed that their concern was justified. The situation in the USSR could spark serious instability in the form of mass demonstrations and violent strikes, to the point where alternative centers of power could emerge. For the US this meant, “the internal unstable and unclear situation will prevent the USSR from indulging in ventures outside of its borders.” When James Baker became secretary of state, he found on his desk an assessment paper on the USSR produced by the INR, the State Department’s intelligence branch. It also drew attention to the deteriorating situation in the Soviet Union. Baker, however, did not infer that the communist bloc was about to collapse and that the US should be prepared for such an eventuality. His conclusion was that “our policy of peace through strength is winning and our overall policy of blocking the USSR is proving itself,” and should therefore be maintained. In contrast to the CIA-SOVA and INR assessments, the National Intelligence Council was far more conservative, perhaps because it had to be accepted and approved by the intelligence community as a whole, or perhaps because of its excessive proximity to the decision-makers. What was the root cause of the US Administration’s failure to correctly assess the Soviet situation? Did it result from the failure of the American intelligence

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community to bring it to the attention of the president and the secretary of state? Were the politicians/decision-makers confused by vague and sometimes contradictory assessments? Or did the decision-makers come to their own strategic conclusions and reject the intelligence assessments because they did not suit their own political agendas? Another question that must be addressed is how Western Europeans accepted and supported Washington’s attitude, while providing practically no input toward the American “conception.” THE “CONCEPTION” GAINED SWAY IN EUROPE TOO After the blood of its soldiers had saved Europe from Nazi domination, America girded its loins to secure the freedom of Western Europe from a new-old threat: the Soviet Union and communism. The Marshall Plan was Washington’s main instrument for rebuilding Western Europe’s ravaged economy. The US set up the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in 1949 to counter the military threat from the east. NATO’s major intelligence objectives were to provide early warning of war, acts of terror and subversion. The US took the lead in defining and carrying out the strategic objectives, including intelligence, for the defense of Western Europe. Despite the contempt, sometimes bordering on hostility, each from their respective political establishments, the American and Soviet intelligence services enjoyed higher prestige than their Western European counterparts. Historically, European intelligence had been more a tool for gathering gossip about palace intrigues than a honed instrument for policy management. The king and his advisers or mistresses controlled the affairs of the realm as they saw fit and intelligence heads were part of the court retinue. This tradition survived even when the countries of Western Europe became democracies. Intelligence was expected to serve the political leaders and if it did not fulfill expectations, it was simply ignored. The struggle against the potential threat from the USSR was Western Europe’s central battle zone for more than half a century. Yet in this conflict the European intelligence communities were almost totally dependent on American intelligence. FRANCE Like everything else in post-Second World War France, French intelligence was a product of the war and the influence of General Charles de Gaulle. In the early days of his presidency, he established the Comité d’Action en France, appointing one of his loyal subordinates Jacques Soustel to head the Direction Generate des Services Speciaux (DGSS), which later became the central French intelligence body. De Gaulle, and his successor Georges Pompidou, were not unaware of the importance of intelligence, but were wary of the all-pervasive US influence and regarded intelligence as more of a burden than an asset. Nor did they believe that

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intelligence was an essential tool in their struggle to achieve superpower status for their country. De Gaulle was motivated as much by a desire to free Europe from the American embrace as from the Soviet threat, and hoped to unite the smaller countries around France. This did not happen despite France’s managing to join the nuclear club. Throughout, French intelligence was kept out of the picture. Most of their professionals had worked during the war with American and British intelligence operatives. Even after the war French intelligence operated under American influence and was consequently shunted aside. De Gaulle and Pompidou preferred diplomats for intelligence gathering. Following the Cuban missile crisis in 1963, de Gaulle judged that the Soviet threat was less real than American intelligence projected. In 1964, he ordered his newly formed intelligence body, the Service de Documentation Extérieur et Contre-espionage (SDECE), to cease cooperation with the CIA. It was three years before low-level ties were re-established. The CIA, for its part, did not trust the French government because of de Gaulle’s policies and the French public’s easy-going legitimization of the local Communist Party. The CIA was especially suspicious of French counterintelligence’s dedication to the fight against communist penetration. Anatoly M. Golitsyn, a KGB officer who defected to the US in the early 1960s, claimed that the French government was riddled by Communist infiltrators. The Americans decided to act. President Kennedy sent a personal, CIA-inspired message to de Gaulle. The French president’s off-hand response further fueled the tense relations between the two countries and their intelligence services. The prevailing opinion in France during the 1980s was that the USSR and communism would continue to be an inseparable part of the international scene, at least for the foreseeable future. In 1980, following the Gdansk agreement, which established the Solidarity movement in Poland, Giscard d’Estaing, then French president, expressed his opinion saying that “in seeking solutions, Poland must take into account its geographic and strategic location.” He meant that Paris acknowledged that Poland belonged to the Soviet sphere of influence. According to Alain Gersh, a senior writer for Le Monde Diplomatique, this was a view held by “everyone in France: the media, academics, and the government. I never heard one dissenting voice.” Gersh claims that the secret services, including their research and evaluation divisions, do not play a prominent part in the shaping of French foreign policy. “In fact, I think they play a very small part, if any. They provide papers, but everyone provides papers in France.” French presidents ignored intelligence estimates, but this did not prevent the Defense Ministry and civil intelligence quarreling over the right to present the national estimate. The Defense Ministry emerged victorious, but in the final analysis “François Mitterand was the president and retained his decision-making authority in foreign policy and security,” says Jacques Attali, his close aide;

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“many claim that they were Mitterand’s advisers but no one had any influence over him, certainly not intelligence organizations.” Considering his controversial personal history, details of which gradually came to light after his death, Mitterand’s dissociation from any organization that dealt with gathering and filing information was understandable, especially as he had a sad history of clashes with French intelligence. One such was the 1954 “affaire des fuites” when Henri Navarre, commander in chief of the French forces in Indochina, accused Mitterand of leaking information which contributed to the fall of Dien Bien Phu, a painful episode in French history. Mitterand, who was cleared only after a DST (internal security) investigation, reacted with bitterness. During his presidential election campaign he suggested disbanding the SDECE, accusing it of being a “costly organization” whose main function was to serve American interests. Pierre Marion is one of those straight-backed men who become a little stooped over the years but retain their ramrod posture and carefully trimmed toothbrush mustache. Parachuted into the position of director of French intelligence from a minor post of North American manager of the French aerospace company, Aerospatiale, Marion had never previously dealt with intelligence. In 1981, he was appointed head of the SDECE. He owed his appointment to President Mitterand’s brother Jacques, who was the managing director of Aerospatiale. While he was trying to find his way through the various mazes of the organization he had been appointed to head, Marion was surprised to learn that France had no equivalent to the American national estimate. “There was some paper put out by the Defense Ministry which presented a factual survey of global developments, but this was not the national estimate.” Marion’s next discovery was that the SDECE had a “reasonably good” research and evaluation department that covered the USSR. It had a staff of 12 (of a total of 3,500 in the service) and was run by a “very clever lady. In November 1981, I began to issue a weekly assessment. At first it contained 12 pages, but by 1982 it had reached about 40 with a precis of the major events, relevant data, and a real intelligence estimate.” Marion was forced out of the intelligence service in 1982, but continued to take an active interest in intelligence affairs. So he was somewhat surprised to learn that a few weeks before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Mitterand vowed that Germany’s unification was unacceptable. Marion had held the view that “the Germans were striving for superiority in Europe,” and his assessment was that Germany would eventually be reunited and become the dominant nation in Europe. He did not believe German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who kept telling Mitterand that he supported a strong Europe. “He [Kohl] was always in favor of German unification, but he avoided saying so because he was afraid of our reaction.” Already when taking on France’s top intelligence job, Marion was under no illusion that he would have any say in policy—security assessments. Proof was not long in coming. The French chief of staff invited him to his official residence.

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Marion, who was used to American ways, was surprised to see white-gloved waiters, and even more surprised when his host gave him a“friendly tip” to avoid involving his service in policy evaluations. On 10 June 1981 an awestruck Pierre Marion met Mitterand for the first time and asked “god” (as Mitterand was known) how, in his capacity as head of the secret service, he could best serve his country. Mitterand replied that Marion’s role was to know and to report on anything connected with France’s foreign policy and security. Marion then asked how he should report to the president, and was told: “We will meet once a week for five to 45 minutes, depending on developments and what there is to discuss.” “This,” says Marion, was the beginning and the end of my personal meetings with Mitterand. I almost never saw him again. Once I waited four months to meet with him. He allotted me a few moments although I had repeatedly requested the meeting. It sounds strange, but this was the way Mitterand treated the intelligence services. I was usually in contact with his three close aides, General Jean Saunier, his chef de mission [special adviser], François de Grossouvre and Pierre Beregovoy. I didn’t know what Mitterand wanted, I was never given guidelines or feedback. He adds with a bitter smile, “I met Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin more often than I met Mitterand, my own president.” Mitterand acted according to his instincts and could not be bothered with the evidence, says Marion. His relations with his intelligence chiefs remained distant throughout his presidency and during the crises surrounding the collapse of the USSR and the Gulf War, he did not ask for their assessments or consult with them. When Marion became head of the SDECE, which he later renamed DGSE, and started to organize the Soviet-related side of his work, he was astounded to find that “we did not have even one agent in the USSR.” He set up an intelligence station in Moscow, but it produced nothing during his tenure. “Whatever we learned about the Soviets came from our station in Warsaw and our American colleagues.” The French Intelligence’s monitoring service was more productive, according to Marion. Among its outstanding achievements, was the surveillance of Soviet naval operations in the Indian Ocean, but he concedes that “we never reached the level and scope of the Americans and the British.” The DGSE was in charge of foreign intelligence, but the DST, the internal security service, was considered France’s most professional and influential intelligence service. It employed around 2,000 agents and its mandate was counter espionage, combating terrorism by Basque, Corsican and Algerian groups, and preventing industrial espionage. Marion and Claud Silberzahn, two of the heads of the DGSE during the 1980s, admitted publicly that the service collected

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intelligence on foreign commercial and industrial companies on behalf of the French economy. Marion says that he himself learned a lot from the CIA, which he believes to have been the best of the intelligence services. “I generally accepted the CIA’s views about what was happening in the USSR.” He regarded William Casey, his American counterpart, as a “professional who understood the Soviet threat.” Whenever Casey came to Paris, he first met with Mitterand’s personal adviser. “I never took part in these talks,” says Marion, “and I envied Casey for this and for seeing Reagan when he wanted and having some influence over him.” Marion remembers that Casey was “generally focused on his political goals. He talked about Nicaragua and Iran and asked for our help. He also asked me to present America’s views to Mitterand, to which I agreed. I did not tell him that I had no way to reach the president… “In France the situation is different from other countries,” explains Marion. “French politicians don’t trust the intelligence services, for historical as well as political reasons. I myself never understood why the president retained a secret service he did not trust and never used. Maybe,” Marion reflects, “he needed it as a scapegoat and cover-up for potential political blunders, such as the Greenpeace incident in New Zealand.” The troubled relationship between intelligence and politicians in France has its roots a century ago in the Dreyfus Affair (during which Military Intelligence embroiled the political establishment in scandal). The Ben Barka Affair in the 1960s caused the French government a great deal of embarrassment when it was discovered that French intelligence was involved in the assassination of the Moroccan opposition leader. This case, which left the government deeply suspicious of its own intelligence service, led de Gaulle to put the service under the Defense Ministry’s control. Still, the SDECE continued to be involved in scandals. French movie actor Alain Delon’s Yugoslav bodyguard, Stefan Marcovic, was killed because he was suspected of possessing photographs of President Pompidou’s wife participating in an orgy. It was rumored in Paris that a secret service agent was implicated in the affair, which increased Pompidou’s mistrust of the intelligence service. Mitterand, who believed that French intelligence had attempted to subvert his Socialist Party, established his own private intelligence service. It was an antiterrorist gendarmerie that kept tabs on several thousand people throughout France, relates Marion. “I know they were also monitoring me.” Jean-Michel Bellorgey, deputy chairman of the Socialist Party, headed a 1982 parliamentary commission that examined the role of the secret services in French internal politics. He claims that between de Gaulle’s rise to power in 1958 and Mitterand’s election in 1981, the secret services took advantage of the Cold War phobia and the fear of the “enemy within” to carry out operations of a dubious nature that led to unnecessary scandals. SDECE head during the 1970s, Alexander de Maranches, describes the organization he found when he took up his post as “more like a Mafia than an

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intelligence agency. The organization was involved in political conflicts, smearing rivals, sometimes even the president himself, drug and arms dealing, kidnapping, passing counterfeit money and even murder.” These episodes were hushed up under the State Secrets Law, a particularly tough piece of legislation that established the norm of not washing secret service laundry in public and of ignoring the sexual affairs of political leaders. Perhaps the most significant French contribution to the history of the Western intelligence services during the demise of the USSR was the use of sex to spice up intelligence work. The photographs of Mme. Pompidou’s orgy were a reflection of this. And in the 1980s the tradition was continued by movie star Carroll Bouquet whose steamy social life, in which politicians and intelligence agents participated, eventually erupted in a public scandal. One of Bouquet’s good friends was Jacques Attali, Mitterand’s special adviser until 15 April 1992. “The French intelligence services have always been both unprofessional and dangerous to local politicians,” he says, “and I never considered them of any real importance.” As Mitterand’s adviser, Attali was convinced that “the president always thought the intelligence services contributed nothing of value to politicians.” Asked to rate French intelligence assessments of the USSR, he answers scathingly: “To the best of my knowledge there was never one.” When Mitterand had to make a decision about the USSR, he turned to the relevant department in the Foreign Ministry, the Quai d’Orsay. The main source of information on the USSR was the French Ambassador to Moscow. “Pierre Moral was our best expert on the USSR, and I myself frequently traveled to the USSR to pass on the president’s messages and receive the information we needed.” The general view in French intelligence concerning the USSR, right until its collapse, was that the Soviets were a real threat to the Free World and it was consequently harshly anti-communist. This suited the CIA’s world view and Marion’s—but not Mitterand’s. When he was elected, Mitterand incorporated communists in his coalition government, sparking fears in the French security services that the Soviets would infiltrate the government and the military. Mitterand, for his part, lurked in ambush for any slip on the part of the services and their directors. On 10 July 1985, the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior was sunk in the New Zealand port of Auckland. Greenpeace was demonstrating against France’s nuclear tests in the area, and the wave of protests threatened to sink the government. As usual, no one knew what had been reported to Mitterand, but Defense Minister Charles Hernu and Intelligence Chief Admiral Pierre Lacoste were dismissed. Lacoste’s replacement, General René Imbot, announced after his appointment on 27 September 1985 that he would “weed the fools out of the service.” What he really did was to jail four employees who were suspected of leaking details of the incident to the media. Paris hummed with rumors that intelligence had spread disinformation that the KGB had planted communist activists among the Greens to undermine France’s nuclear program. The DGSE

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leaked a story that the photographer who was killed in the incident was a KGB agent and that research equipment had been found on board the ship monitoring the nuclear test. In October of that year, Gorbachev visited Paris where, despite intelligence’s anti-communist hostility, Mitterand received him with demonstrative warmth. Back in March 1985, at Konstantin Chernenko’s funeral, Mitterand had formed the impression that Gorbachev was a new kind of leader, one of the few opinions he shared with Britain’s Margaret Thatcher. It was not French intelligence evaluations that influenced Mitterand (Attali: “He didn’t believe them”) but a report by French observers present at an event a year earlier, when Gorbachev was still Chernenko’s number two. The conversation had touched on the previous year’s harvest, and Chernenko, the sick old leader, bent toward Gorbachev to ask in a quavering voice: “Since when has Soviet agriculture been in trouble?” “Since 1917,” Gorbachev responded. A French observer who overheard the exchange was bowled over, so was the president. The French intelligence services were less impressed. “In France,” says Alain Gersh, the national mood is determined by the intellectuals, who also set the tone regarding the USSR, while the secret services and the politicians were simply carried along behind them. We thought, of course, that Reagan’s depiction of the Soviet Union as the evil empire was rubbish, because we knew the situation in the USSR. We knew it was a hostile totalitarian state ruled by the KGB. We did not need intelligence to understand that. THE UNITED KINGDOM In all aspects of the anti-Soviet struggle, London of the early 1980s, under Margaret Thatcher, appeared to be a branch of the White House. Thatcher herself was carrying on a passionate ideological affair with Ronald Reagan and the campaign against the communist bloc was one of the more intimate spheres of the relationship. It was not necessary to convince Thatcher of the threat from the East nor was it necessary to convince MI6, the British intelligence service, which maintained particularly close relations with its counterparts in Washington. There was, in any case, an unusual degree of cooperation and coordination between the US and the British intelligence services: MI6 and the CIA, MI5 and the FBI, and GCHQ with the NSA. The Americans financed almost half the monitoring bases on British soil, including Harrogate, the largest. British bases in other countries, such as Cyprus, shared their findings with the US. The British were the only allies who had an office in CIA headquarters at Langley, while a CIA representative had direct in-house access to the British services. The body responsible for the British national estimate is the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC). It bases most of its assessment on information from the Foreign Office, the internal security service (MI5), the foreign intelligence

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service (MI6), Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), and the Defense Intelligence Staff (DIS). British intelligence services are as a rule task-oriented, they collect information and issue evaluations according to specific requests. The evaluation team meets every Thursday to discuss the week’s tasks and on Friday it prepares a draft which is tabled for discussion by the Current Intelligence Group (CIG), which consists of JIC experts, representatives of the ministry which requested the paper, and occasionally, someone from the CIA liaison office. The British assessment of topics of national interest, including the USSR, originates from the JIC, and here too the Soviet collapse came as a complete surprise. MI6, the service that bore the brunt of the anti-Soviet struggle and the responsibility for the assessment of the Soviet threat, was shrouded in greater secrecy than the other services. In mid-December 1985, as Gorbachev unveiled his reform plan, Christopher Keith Gurwen, aged 56, a clergyman’s son, twice married and a father of five, was appointed to head the secret service. The new incumbent had worked for British intelligence since 1952, with postings to the Far East, Geneva and Washington. It was unlikely that Gurwen would be the man to understand the dramatic changes taking place in the Soviet Union and adopt an independent stance vis-à-vis the CIA. British intelligence as a whole took its lead from Thatcher and the CIA. Today its members admit that they overestimated Soviet military power and, as a result, the Soviet threat. British intelligence’s approach to the USSR, like its American counterpart, was more a mind-set than a rational, objective response. Following the Second World War, British intelligence ran networks of agents behind the Iron Curtain. Its most prominent action was Operation Jungle, in which dozens of agents were sent between 1944 and 1955 to the Soviet Baltic States to encourage and unite opponents of the communist regime in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. However, the KGB penetrated the network. About 30 British agents were uncovered and the KGB managed to turn most of them. Some of the British missions became KGB operations that unraveled British antiSoviet espionage activities and fed disinformation to the West. The main blow to the anti-communist efforts of British intelligence was the defection of a number of its senior officers, among them Philby, Maclean and Burgess in the 1950s. The Soviets also managed to penetrate the British establishment as far as Defense Minister John Profumo by using call girl Christine Keeler, who admitted her KGB connections. British intelligence responded by tightening internal security and shrouding itself in increasingly thicker veils of secrecy. British discretion, which even then retained a whiff of the old imperial order, was responsible for a reluctance to acknowledge officially that MI6 had been operating since 1911, during war as well as peacetime. It was only in 1987, when Peter Wright published his revealing book Spycatcher, that the facts about MI6 became public. Even then, despite the ensuing public debate, Cabinet Secretary Sir Robert Armstrong refused to admit the existence of MI6.

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Apart from defections and sex scandals, British intelligence had to cope with accusations of involvement in internal politics. In 1982 the Labour Party set up an internal committee of 27, including party leader Michael Foot, which drew up a secret report claiming that MI6 and MI5 viewed anyone with tendencies left of center as subversive and hostile to the state. The committee called on the government to restrict intelligence activities through legislation. No action was taken during Thatcher’s tenure, but years later her Conservative successor, John Major, appointed a commission headed by Roger Hurn to examine the needs and functions of the intelligence services. Finding that GCHQ, the monitoring service, was inefficient, over-staffed and over-funded, and that its functions had lost much of their relevance after the Cold War, the commission recommended massive cuts. At the same time, the commission concluded that a strong intelligence service was required if Britain wished to retain its status and special relations with the US. During the last years of the Cold War, the overall annual budget for the British secret services reached £1 billion. This is a respectable sum, but falls far short of the $28 billion that the US administration spent annually on intelligence at the same time. The number of personnel in the British intelligence services is also much less, 10,000, compared to around 40,000 in the US. MI6 employs about 2, 000 people compared to nearly 20,000 in the CIA. Apart from the budgets and the number of personnel, what distinguished the British from the American attitude to intelligence is a keen sense of humor. In Reagan and Casey’s day no American would have dared to call the national estimate the “Red Book,” not even as a joke—but this was the British nickname for the JIC’s weekly intelligence summary. Thatcher was said to read it attentively, even if she was less punctilious in accepting its assessments. Given her “iron” character, it is hard to imagine her being influenced by a “book” of any color, and it can be assumed that the JIC assessments were shaded to match her opinions. Most intelligence services, including the CIA, first define the intelligence requirements according to their understanding of what is required to meet national foreign and security policy goals. Then they collect the information that will serve as a basis for their assessment, taking into account what their political boss wants or needs to know. In the British task-oriented system, the intelligence collecting process begins only after the consumers—the Prime Minister, the foreign and defense secretaries, or even the chancellor of the exchequer— transmit a specific request to the JIC. In Thatcher’s day, the heads of British intelligence met only rarely with the Prime Minister, and were unable to supply her with the material necessary to sustain her anti-Soviet zeal. One person who did have more access to Thatcher was Brian Crozier, who arrived at intelligence via a career as a journalist. He saw intelligence as a legitimate tool for policy management and promoting national interests. He also firmly believed that the USSR posed a military and existential threat to the West.

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Crozier began his career as a reporter covering the Indo-Chinese war. On his return to London in 1954 he began to edit Foreign Report, the Economist’s prestigious information newsletter. Foreign Report was noted for its unconventional sources of information and its coverage of political, financial and security topics. Says Crozier: “I had contacts with several intelligence services including the British, American, French, Italian and Dutch, as well as Third World services such as Argentina, South Africa, Taiwan, and, in 1981, also with Israel.” Crozier made a name for himself as an expert on international terrorism and participated in Western intelligence efforts to prove that the USSR was involved in it. To this end he wrote articles, participated in international conferences on terror held in Jerusalem and Washington, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and, from time to time, briefed Margaret Thatcher. On leaving The Economist in 1964, Crozier became an adviser for MI6. At the same time he had a contract with the Information Research Department (IRD), an arm of the Foreign Office established in 1945 by Christopher Mayhew, under a Labour government. The IRD mandate was to disseminate information countering Soviet propaganda and disinformation. Crozier testifies that “we used to issue reliable but non-attributed papers. This was a Foreign Office project, one of the Cold War weapons, and it complemented the MI6 papers.” In 1965, Crozier went to work for the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which was located in Paris and received sizable grants from the Ford Foundation. “It was only later,” he recalls, “that I learned it was funded and run by the CIA.” In 1970, he established the Institute for the Study of Conflicts that he headed for nine years, again mainly funded by “private sources.” In 1977 Foreign Minister David Owen decided to dismantle the IRD. “Communists and members of Britain’s extreme left wing asked hostile questions about my activities,” Crozier says. This development encouraged him to establish a “private intelligence organization” of his own. It contained three Britons, three Americans, two Frenchmen and two Germans, most of whom had previously served as intelligence officers in their home countries. We decided to operate in areas where we felt governments were derelict in carrying out their duty. We took upon ourselves to uncover subversive Soviet activity, mobilize public opinion against communism, and advise on ways to combat it. We had similar ideological views and we agreed on how the West ought to act against totalitarian states such as the USSR. We obtained information for our work from various sources. I had contacts with a number of intelligence services around the world and in the US, including the CIA, the National Security Council and the DIA. Funding came from various sources, mainly from large economic concerns.

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Crozier’s day came in May 1979, when the Conservatives, headed by Margaret Thatcher, replaced Labour as Britain’s government. “I met her for the first time when she was still a member of the opposition. She suggested that I brief her from time to time, and this arrangement continued when she became PM.” The early Thatcher was not an expert on foreign policy and knew even less about intelligence. Crozier provided her with papers he put together on various topics. “Maggie liked him… He had an entrée to Number 10. And obviously he had right wing views,” says Michael Evans a senior reporter of The Times of London. Crozier may also have liked Thatcher, but he was as aware as she that the real center of power was Washington. “Actually, I only saw Reagan twice, but I was in contact with his national security and intelligence advisers, especially Casey, and I had opportunities to pass my ideas on to them.” Crozier recalls that he suggested sending people to Moscow to distribute peace slogans, an operation that was endorsed and funded by the CIA. Later, Crozier and his colleagues, including Elliot Nicholas and Robert Moss, were enlisted on behalf of Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)—the Star Wars project. They wrote articles, gave speeches, and generally lobbied for the SDI in Europe. This joint venture continued until 1986, the year in which Casey fell ill and Crozier’s organization folded for lack of funds. GERMANY West Germany was on the front line of the anti-Soviet struggle and of the intelligence battlefield. It shared a long border with East Germany, one of the regimes closest to the Kremlin. The East Germans had some of the best and most effective intelligence services in the world. West German intelligence-politician relations were no different from other Western European states. “The main reason we were relegated to Pullach near Munich, an hour’s flight from the seat of government in Bonn, is simple,” says Hans-Georg Wieck, head of the BND, Germany’s federal foreign intelligence service, during the second half of the 1980s. “The chancellor didn’t want us near him.” The BND faced a complex problem with emotional overtones. Their main area of conflict was communist East Germany. This was a feud between brothers, but what made it a very big problem was that each brother was backed by a stepfather, who kept them apart. The Germans, who had served these antagonistic stepfathers since their defeat in the Second World War, clenched their teeth and worked hard to make it back into the family of nations. At the end of the Second World War, General Reinhard Gehlen, who served as Germany’s chief military intelligence officer on the Russian front, realized which way the wind was blowing and offered his services to the Americans. His staff exchanged the Wehrmacht uniform for civilian suits and replaced Hitler’s portrait with Truman’s. Their espionage service was called the Gehlen

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Organization, and they continued to gather and analyze the information they collected on the USSR, this time under the wing of William “Wild Bill” Donovan, director of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the CIA’s forerunner. Donovan was the guru and commanding officer of William Casey, the director of the CIA during most of the Reagan years. In 1955 the Allies finally granted the Federal German Government responsibility for its own foreign and defense policy. The Gehlen Organization was renamed the BND, but Bonn’s suspicion of intelligence survived. “Our physical distance from the policy-makers,” says Herbert Hellenbroich, “created a cognitive split between Bonn and Pullach. When American Intelligence had a point to make they went straight to Bonn. Our government believed that if anything important happened they would hear it straight from the US, not from their own intelligence service.” In 1985, when Hellenbroich was appointed head of the BND, he underwent an examination of sorts by Chancellor Helmut Kohl himself, who wanted to know whether he was a member of the right party. “I answered that I was a member of the CDU (Christian Democrat Union), a Catholic and a conservative,” says Hellenbroich, “and that was enough.” The East German foreign intelligence service, better known as the Stasi, was Hellenbroich’s main foe. It employed between 85,000 and 105,000 permanent employees and a similar number of informers. German reunification and the Soviet collapse signaled the start of the great treasure hunt in Stasi archives that uncovered the fact that most BND operatives in East Germany were double agents working for the communists. The more the dimensions of Stasi infiltration of West German government agencies were revealed, the more embarrassing it became for West German politicians and intelligence services. West Germany, unlike the US and Britain, had no single body responsible for the national estimate. Unit 3, one of six that comprise the BND, produced military and political assessments. It was fairly well coordinated with the Defense Ministry but was a bitter rival of the Foreign Ministry. In any event, its evaluation had no “national” status or validity. Once a week, on Tuesday between 9 a.m. and noon, a forum meets in the offices of the coordinator of the intelligence services in the Chancellor’s Office. The forum consists of about ten parliamentary secretaries representing the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Interior and Defense, the international department in the Chancellor’s Office, the presidents of the BND, the BFV (security service) and military intelligence (in Germany a head of intelligence has the title “president”). When Hans-Georg Wieck presented intelligence estimates to this forum, there were occasional casual questions from those present, but he was convinced that the coordinator (in the 1980s, Waldemar Schreckenberger) “was not particularly interested. He took no notes, and no one else was allowed to either.” The German public, too, was critical of intelligence. Manfred Soch, a member of the Green Party who served on the parliamentary Secret Services Supervisory

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Committee, argued that the BND was a total failure. “The BND behaves as if the rules of the game do not apply to it,” Egert Schwann, a senior lecturer in political science at Berlin University, was quoted as saying, “it operates like a vacuum cleaner and picks up everything that moves in the air.” The criticism was motivated at least partly by a distinct and widely held impression that the BND lagged behind developments. It neither foresaw the collapse of the Soviet Union, not the disintegration of the Eastern Bloc, including East Germany. The capacity of German Intelligence to produce independent estimates on the USSR was questionable. BND dependence on the CIA was almost total. Moreover, even if German Intelligence had concluded that the situation inside the USSR was not being accurately reflected by the CIA, one of two things would have happened: either the chancellor would have ignored it as he usually did, or, what amounts to much the same, his views would have been shaped by his direct contacts with the American government. Casey, according to Hellenbroich, would have gone straight to the chancellor anyway. ITALY In Rome everyone behaves like the Romans, except for the Italian intelligence services. Like the French, German and British services, they followed the Americans. The Italian services did not have the money, the knowledge or the desire to make an independent assessment of the Eastern Bloc. “We saw the USSR and communism as a threat to Western democracies, including ourselves,” says Admiral Fulvio Martini, who headed Italian intelligence for most of the 1980s. Martini did his best to avoid the internal political intrigues, which plagued the governments of the day, and concentrated on foreign intelligence. Regarding anti-USSR and anti-communism efforts, he admits today: “We did not have the tools of a global power. We focused our efforts on the Mediterranean area, North Africa and the Horn of Africa, the Arab countries and the Balkans. In those areas we were good.” In Italy, as in other bureaucracies, there are separate independent intelligence services belonging, in Italy’s case, to the military, police and carabineri, as well as an internal security organization attached to the Ministry of the Interior, the Servizio Informazione e Sicuerezza Democratica (SISDE), and the military Servizio Informazione Sicuerezza Militare (SISME). There was also a coordinator of intelligence in the premier’s office, CECIS (Comitato Esecutivo per i Servizi di Informazione e di Sicuerezza). The idea that these impressively named bodies might combine to produce an independent intelligence assessment on the USSR did not occur to Rome, nor, as has been noted, did Italian intelligence harbor any such aspirations. Generally, decision-makers in Rome, who tended to be more politician than statesman, ignored any possible Soviet threat, to the extent that their commitments in Europe allowed them to. The largest Communist Party in

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the West was in Italy, and considerations of internal political balance made open battle against the USSR a hazardous affair. Here the intelligence services, with their close connections to the CIA, entered the picture. One of the main reasons that Italian intelligence adopted CIA assessments and operated according to CIA findings was because it helped them retain their influence on the local political scene. By collecting information from other services and leaking it on behalf of governments and ministers, Italian intelligence indulged in a level of corruption rare even in countries with a tradition of palace intrigue. Intelligence chiefs and senior officials were frequently replaced, as were the governments they served, and those who remained were the professionals who were ready to serve anyone, especially the CIA. The US was a source of anti-Soviet inspiration, as well as a source of finance for many Italian intelligence activities. In 1976 the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee reported that since the end of the Second World War the US had dispensed $75 million to various factions in the Italian intelligence services, and that US Ambassador to Italy, Graham Martin, had given military intelligence head Vito Micelli $800,000 for what was termed “the struggle against communist expansion.” At the time, 1975–76, the communists seemed to be gaining ground in Italy, and President Gerald Ford, his National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger, and NATO commander Alexander Haig, aided by the Italian intelligence services and right wing parties, were conducting an all-out campaign to keep Italy in the Western camp. The CIA was an active participant in this often brutal struggle. In 1972, the CIA allocated $10 million to the election campaigns of “friendly,” that is, anti-communist, Italian politicians. It was the year when three carabinieri were killed by a booby-trapped car in the town of Pateano. During that period, Italy underwent a series of similar terrorist attacks, but the perpetrators and their motives remained a mystery until Vincenzo Vinciguerra was arrested. A member of the neo-Fascist organization Ordine Nuovo (New Order), he had been involved in planting the bomb in Pateano. He later explained the ideology behind the act: “Our movement is pledged to target the authorities, even ordinary people, to create conditions of anarchy. The resulting state of fear will mobilize public support for a strong regime, even at the cost of democracy. We call it the strategy of tension.” Pino Rauti, the leader of Ordine Nuovo, defined the movement’s goal as the destruction of communism. He charged: “The communists introduced the conflict into the heart of Western society—but it seems that Western anti-communist forces still don’t understand this change in strategy.” “After the attack in Pateano,” Vinciguerra says, “the authorities began a massive cover-up—the carabinieri, the Interior Ministry, the immigration police and the customs, civilian and military intelligence, they all knew who was behind the attack. But they decided to hush it up to keep the political peace.” It was only in 1984, due in part to Vinciguerra’s confession, that the CIA’s involvement in the terror activities of the neo-Fascists and their “strategy of

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tension” became known. From 1974 to 1986, General Paolo Inzerelli commanded Gladio, a semi-official anti-communist organization. He admitted that Gladio’s arms were cached in carabinieri warehouses. “The Italian intelligence services, through Gladio, were deeply involved in those incidents,” argued Senator Libero Gualtieri, who headed the Italian parliamentary commission that investigated the affair. “For 40 years they kept secret the activities and even the existence of Gladio, which operated as the arm of one of the Italian intelligence services, combating Soviet communist influence. That in itself is puzzling, because Italians don’t know how to keep a secret.” Gualtieri’s investigation also revealed that “after the attack in Pateano, large quantities of arms belonging to Gladio were found, but this discovery was kept quiet. General Fortunato, the head of Italian military intelligence at the time, admitted ordering the destruction of 139 arms and ammunition caches without informing the Italian government or the Americans.” According to Gualtieri: “A few years later the CIA reduced its support and gradually stopped its (anticommunist) activities in Italy, Germany and Belgium.” The American involvement in internal Italian politics, however, continued into the 1980s. In early 1981, when William Casey took over the CIA, blocking a possible Communist Party takeover in Italy was part of his campaign to stop global communist expansion. To finance his Italian anticommunist efforts, Casey raised $2 million from the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar el Abas. In the struggle against communism, the ends justified the means. Casey enlisted Islam against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and he recruited the Vatican to overcome communism in Poland. Meanwhile Pope John Paul II was directing his own struggle against the Red Square from St Peter’s in Rome. THE WAR OF THE HOLY SEES While master spies in the West were wondering how to draw back the Iron Curtain, it was only natural that many of them would also cast a glance at the Holy See in Rome. It is not necessary to be a believer to know that religion crosses borders. Thousands of Catholic priests, bishops and cardinals in hundreds of corners of the world are on an espionage mission for God, searching for lost souls. Each parish priest reports to his superiors on what’s going on in his community—which, from this point of view, makes the Vatican the largest espionage organization in the world. It has branches (nunziaturie) in many countries and a staff that travel the world. Rome, the center, sends delegations to countries where the population includes those who are firstly lambs of the flock and only secondly citizens of the state. Catholic monastic orders established in many countries, especially Protestant states, have also served as intelligence networks for hundreds of years. The religious espionage tradition continues to this day. The Vatican cooperated with

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the CIA during the Cold War to promote its own agenda, and the Russian Orthodox Church served communism for the same reason. The Popes had information gathering and evaluating systems, just like other heads of state. John Paul II devoted much time and attention to Soviet affairs. His visits behind the Iron Curtain were well planned and handled with special care. In preparation for the visit to Czechoslovakia, for instance, Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, responsible for the Czech desk, gathered local views on a variety of topics of interest to the head of the Church. The information was processed and transferred to the Vatican’s State Department, which prepared briefings for the Pope and other senior churchmen. As a rule, the Vatican takes care to gather information on political and religious rather than military and economic topics, but for a comprehensive understanding of the USSR and communism, it needed information on those subjects too. A superficial look at the Church’s relations with the Soviet regime shows that Catholic and communist interests were diametrically opposed. In fact, ChurchSoviet relations were more like a religious war, with Lenin fighting to overcome Jesus. Following the First World War, the Holy See excommunicated communism, and in 1938 Pius II issued an anti-communist papal bull. For their part, communism’s theoreticians and leaders, from Marx through Lenin to Stalin, held well-known views about the nefarious influence of religion. Stalin, no great shakes at theory, expressed his philosophy on the subject through the wholesale slaughter of priests and expropriation of Church property. What was left of the persecuted Russian Orthodox Church came under the pious supervision of the KGB. The election of Karol Wojtyla as Pope John Paul II in 1978 signaled the Holy See’s entry into the active struggle to extend the Church’s influence in Eastern Europe and the USSR. Following his 1967 appointment as Cardinal of Krakow, the Polish security service pronounced that “the new cardinal had risen by means of his intellectual powers and not because he was anti-communist, and it was not anticipated that he would work against the state.” The KGB thought differently. Brezhnev warned Edward Gierek, general secretary of the Polish Communist party, not to allow the new Pope to be invited to Poland because his visit might encourage and unite Polish anti-communists. Gierek, aware of the deep religious feelings of his people and their boundless pride in a Polish Pope, told Brezhnev that he was powerless to prevent the visit. John Paul’s triumphant return to Warsaw in June 1979 captivated the hearts of the Polish people. Later, the Vatican sent financial aid to the Solidarity movement to strengthen its resistance to the regime, exactly as the American CIA had done through the AFL-CIO Trade Union Federation and Polish churches in the US. In November 1979, the Communist Party’s Central Committee in Moscow approved a secret document on ways of combating Church influence in the communist world. Three years later there was an attempt on the life of John Paul

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II. William Casey, then director of the CIA, was convinced that the KGB was behind the assassination plot. Soviet-Vatican relations began to change during the mid-1980s. Shortly after Gorbachev’s election, in March 1985, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko visited the Vatican and held talks on the establishment of diplomatic ties. In the spring of 1988, Moscow invited representatives of all Christian bodies, including the Vatican, to the millennial celebrations of the advent of Christianity in Russia. The Vatican mission was led by Cardinal Agoustino Casaroli and the question of diplomatic relations was again broached. In December 1989, Gorbachev met with the Pope and they discussed future relations between the Holy See and the Kremlin in a surprisingly cordial atmosphere, considering the previous 70 years of unmitigated hostility between the Kremlin and the Vatican. “For years the Catholic Church was the main, almost the only anti-communist force, and others gathered behind it,” says Monsignor Richard Mathes, the Vatican representative in Jerusalem. “The Vatican had great influence on Soviet Catholic Christians, most of whom lived in peripheral areas of Russia, but the spearhead was Poland.” Mathes, like many of his colleagues, believes there can be little doubt that the activities of the Catholic Church and, in particular, the Pope, facilitated the breakthrough of glasnost and the changes in the USSR. Beginning in 1979, with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Catholics organized a series of protests against Soviet intervention, condemning violations of human rights in the USSR and Soviet atrocities in Afghanistan. Mathes believes that “the events in Poland during the early 1980s and later were the detonator that triggered the collapse of communism. The Pope was a symbol for the Poles, and he was also ‘one of them.’ His dialogue with Polish labor unions contributed to making them a central player in Poland.” Mathes adds: “However, the motivating force was the idea, the belief, not necessarily any specific deed of the Vatican. All we wanted was freedom of worship and an end to the persecution of Church activists, and, of course, over time to increase the Church’s contacts and influence in Poland.” In addition to the activities of the Catholic Church itself, there are a number of organizations linked to the Church, which serve as vanguards and carry out Church missions. One of these is the Knights of the Order of Malta, a group of American businessmen linked to the Vatican and the CIA, which channeled financial aid to Solidarity through the Vatican. Another is Opus Dei (The Lord’s Work), an extreme right wing Catholic organization about which opinions within the Catholic Church itself are divided. A Stasi assessment paper dated 1985 asserted that “the special danger of this elite organization lies in its conspiratorial activity that covers the entire world, its branches that penetrate secretly into every area of society.” The spearhead was in Rome. Careful not to be accused of involvement in the East-West conflict, the Church carried out its struggle against communism in complete secrecy and in its own way. The gray cardinals who have run Catholic affairs for hundreds of years do not trust outsiders. Even the simplest act, such as

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the smuggling of religious artifacts into Soviet territory, or channeling aid to Solidarity, was carried out through intermediaries who did not know who had sent them. The notion that a man of the Church would carry out a secret mission under the auspices of the CIA causes Catholic representatives to smile sweetly and dismissively. Despite their identification with the humility of Jesus, this group knows the world only too well. The clergy, however, do not talk about “policy” and “operations,” but about “spirituality” and “faith.” “The Church’s deeds, and the very fact of the faith that continues to grow in the hearts of all believers, are what facilitated change in the USSR,” asserts Mathes. The CIA liked what the Vatican was doing but did not neglect what seemed to be a more important front. It retained its ramified relationship with European intelligence services, which were important partners in its struggle against the USSR. About 65 per cent of the CIA’s budget was directed to combating communism, and financial support for some of those services was a permanent feature. However, Western European intelligence agencies had no independent coverage of the USSR nor the ability to assess what was going on there. They were dependent on the word handed down by the big brother at Langley and together perpetuated the myth of the big bad communist wolf. HARPING ON THE EXISTENTIAL THREAT The magnitude of the Soviet threat was an important component of the strategy of many interest groups in the US. These included hawks in the administration, the extreme political and religious right, the military-industrial lobby and rabid anticommunists. They exploited every avenue they could to promote their gospel, including television. “Air, sea, and land —the Soviet military build-up is progressing more rapidly than at any time since the war against Hitler.” The words, spoken in richly dramatic tones, were part of a film called The SALT Syndrome and were heard in about 50 million American living rooms. The film was produced by the American Security Council (ASC), which distributed it to some 1,000 television stations free of charge. The ASC had been established in Chicago in 1955 as a private business group dealing with national security issues and supported by several large corporations. The head office was located in an 850-acre ranch in Virginia. Leading ASC members included former FBI agent William Carroll and James Jesus Angleton, later CIA counterintelligence chief and a self-confessed anti-communist who started the agency’s mole hunt. Despite its name, which sounded like that of a government body, the ASC was a private venture. It had a media center in Washington, produced films, and ran a “national security voting index” which listed congressmen’s votes on US defense topics. The index identified Congressmen who voted against defense budgets. The ASC published details of the offending congressmen’s voting pattern, which it sent to their constituencies and the local media. When Congress voted against

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importing chromium, a vital staple of the American arms industry, (from Ian Smith’s Rhodesia because of its racist policies), the ASC marked key congressmen as having voted against national security interests, and brought the names to the attention of their constituencies. The ASC was so concerned for the safety of American society that it was willing to distribute The SALT Syndrome without advertising. It starts with an innocent little girl, standing outside her house in a typical American suburb, as a mushroom cloud looms in the background. A rich voice sets out the American choice: to ratify the SALT 2 agreement, which means Soviet nuclear superiority, or to reject it and thus preserve the American way of life. Battle scenes showing the Red Army fill the screen. “The Soviets increase their military power,” the voice declaims, “and develop new weapons, while American missile capability is frozen at the level of 1967.” Reality was a little different: between 1967 and the early 1980s, when the film was distributed, the USSR lagged behind the US, which had doubled the number of its warheads, deployed the Poseidon and Trident missiles, improved the B-52 bombers and begun to develop a new type of Cruise missile. The demise of the USSR and the disappearance of the communist Eastern European regimes reinforced the need for a new definition of the concept of threat. But the changing strategic environment did not seem to alter anyone’s views. Writing in the monthly journal National Interest in 1993, Robert Tucker claimed that the USSR had constituted the greatest threat to American interests, and the Russians would continue to do so in the foreseeable future. He did not claim that the threat was or would be directed at American territory or the American way of life, but to an undefined American interest. Other contributors to the journal included Saul Bellow, Charles Fairbanks, Richard Pipes, Francis Fukuyama and William Odom, each of whom had his own interpretation of what constituted the American interest. What, in fact, is the American interest? During 1983, for example, the US sold arms to 82 states. At the time, Soviet arms exports were some 30 per cent of the global market. General Vladimir Lubov, former Warsaw Pact chief of staff, says that by 1995, Russian arms exports had dropped to only a few per cent of the market because of American competition. Do American arms exports, which combine vast profits and political influence, constitute the supreme American interest? Does this interest require waging an all-out struggle against those endangering it, such as the USSR? And exactly what national interest does intelligence serve when it comes to arms sales? In fact, the moment at which policy becomes subservient to a specific interest which is subject to various interpretations, is the moment when a professional intelligence agency comes into its own. But none of the agencies, West or East, CIA or KGB, BND or Stasi, the Mossad or the DGSE, delivered the goods when the USSR collapsed and the national interest was divorced from the military threat.

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Intelligence does not exist in a vacuum. It dwells deep within a cultural environment. When everyone else—the media, academia and Hollywood— continues to hammer out the refrain of the Red threat, it is difficult, very difficult, for intelligence to stand up and declare that the emperor has no clothes. POLITICIANS, INTELLIGENCE, MEDIA AND ELECTED OFFICIALS The bottom line, in every country in every organization—including intelligence— is human interaction. The seats around the table where decisions are taken are manned by people, each with his or her own interests, ideology, needs and commitments. And, at the end of the day, it comes down to a one-on-one situation, more accurately, one against one. In intelligence, it’s the analyst, meant to represent the professional truth, free of outside pressures, ranged against the politician, having to answer to his voters, and motivated by a need to survive his term in office and be re-elected. In reality, the table seats many players; people from intelligence, the military, politics and business, representing the totality of the national interest. Behind the analyst is an intelligence organization with a wealth of practical experience and thousands of personnel gathering, processing, analyzing and evaluating information. It aspires to objective analysis free of political or other bias; while the politician wants intelligence that takes his world-view and political agenda into account. Another player in the assessment game is the media. The information passes from the analyst to the politician, and from there, one way or another, finds its way to the media, which is also free to interpret events as it sees fit. New York Times columnist William Safire provides a revealing case study of this complex three-way relationship. In mid-1995, during one of those interminable rounds in the Balkan arena, Safire argued in his column that the CIA was responsible for America’s lack of the requisite firmness vis-à-vis the Serbs. His reason: the agency’s preoccupation with the politics of the crisis prevented it from providing the president with the information he needed to make the right decisions. In Safire’s view, relevant—but not political— intelligence should consist of data necessary for objective decision-making. To strengthen his claim, Safire quoted the late William Casey’s explanation of the agency’s philosophy to him in a private conversation: “We don’t gather information on topics we don’t want to know about.” In other words, intelligence deals only with well-defined targets, and in Safire’s opinion, Bosnia should have been in that category. Safire is a veteran and respected journalist with access to politicians and government officials. In 1983, he wrote about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. At the time, despite reservations, the CIA, under pressure from Casey and the White House, intensified its support of the Afghani guerrillas. For a better understanding of the situation, Safire called Casey and asked him why Afghanistan was so important to the US. Casey, who was well aware of the

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media’s power, drove over to Safire’s house. Having neglected to bring background material, he asked his host for an atlas and proceeded to draw arrows illustrating the Soviet thrust toward Iran and the warm waters of the Indian Ocean, and the overall Soviet threat to the American way of life. Safire was convinced. In media terms, Casey was a “source” for Safire. In intelligence terms, Safire was an “agent” (of influence) for Casey. In 1995, while writing on the need for a strong hand against the Serbs, Safire claimed that the CIA was not portraying the real situation because it wanted to influence decision-makers to take an isolationist stance. Safire was convinced that if CIA director John Deutch presented the “real facts” on what was happening in Serbia, President Bill Clinton would take steps that would show the world who was boss. Deutch, who had taken up his position a short while before, in May that year, responded with an unprecedented letter to the editor, becoming perhaps the only head of an intelligence organization anywhere in the world to use that most overt of avenues. He assured Safire that, as head of the Agency, he was responsible for the gathering, evaluation and distribution of information to the president and other policy-makers in the government, and that his brief included reports on Serbian actions in Bosnia. Deutch added: “We provide a variety of vehicles designed to keep policy-makers informed, particularly on sensitive topics.” In the end, Clinton did decide on a more active US role in the Balkans—not when Safire advocated it, in the middle of the war, with the Serbs accusing the Americans of taking sides, but after the two antagonists signed a treaty under American auspices in Dayton, Ohio. Oleg Kalugin, a senior KGB officer who served several tours of duty in the US, formed his opinion of American media treatment of the USSR back in 1966, when he began a term as press attaché in the Soviet Embassy in Washington. This was the year of the 23rd Party Congress in Moscow, where conservatives and liberal-reformers were fighting a battle over the nature of the Soviet regime. Commenting on a background talk he had with US commentator Walter Lippmann, known for his excellent connections with American intelligence and administration sources, Kalugin remarked that he was surprised to hear Lippmann admitting: “I must confess I am at a loss to understand your government’s policy.” From this Kalugin deduced that the US government knew virtually nothing about the Soviet Union. It is difficult to avoid manipulative use of the abundant information and operational power held by intelligence directors. To maintain at least the semblance of supervision over intelligence work, the US Congress established the oversight committees, whose chairmen and deputies are empowered to look into all aspects of intelligence work including covert operations. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is authorized to approve or reject the president’s nominees for the post of CIA director, to set its own criteria for questioning any employee of the intelligence community on any topic handled by the Agency, and to scrutinize intelligence assessments.

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The investigative commission chaired by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, which was established in January 1975, and another chaired by Senator Frank Church in 1975 and 1976, dealt with the performance of American intelligence. Their recommendations, which were adopted, curtailed the CIA’s power to engage in unsupervised clandestine operations. However, when a determined intelligence director like William Casey decided to bypass Congress, he did it with the ease and speed of a sports car overtaking a steamroller. The two commissions established during the Cold War confined their investigations to irregular activities carried out by the Agency. Throughout the entire Cold War period, the CIA and Congress, both before and after the formation of the House and Senate intelligence committees, played a game of cat-and-mouse, with CIA director William Casey as the trickiest cat of all. “Director Casey believed,” says a former senior CIA officer, “that the agency should have hands-on involvement in anything that happened anywhere around the world. He didn’t like to share his ideas with congressional committees. Frankly, he didn’t share them with his own senior staff either.” Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, Casey’s first deputy, recalls that his boss had private channels of communication with members of the Senate’s Intelligence Committee. Capitol Hill mythology has it that when Casey’s explanations did not match the facts brought before the Intelligence Committee, Inman would “bend over in his chair and energetically pull up his socks.” John McMahon, who succeeded Inman, said that he was shocked to learn how little the Intelligence Committee trusted Casey. “They didn’t believe him and therefore they couldn’t have an honest dialogue with him,” he was quoted as saying. In September 1991, Robert Gates, who had served both Casey the man and his policies, appeared before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for a hearing on his nomination as CIA director. Gates, who was aware of the Committee’s distrust of his former patron, in particular following the Iran-Contra affair, testified that Casey had often presented his personal views to the Committee, rather than the official estimate papers prepared by CIA analysts. Congress has developed methods of dealing with intelligence directors who refuse to cooperate with the Committee, but the question is to what extent Committee members are willing to devote their time, attention, energy and intellect to these matters. Former CIA officer Carl Ford noted that, while Congress received regular briefings from the Agency, most members find it hard to make critical judgments of what they receive. At the hearing discussing Gates’s nomination, most of the Committee’s questions intended to test the would-be CIA director’s ability to handle national and global issues were focused on Iran-Contra, a nasty but relatively minor affair. Not one word was said about the way the Soviet collapse had caught policy-makers with their pants down. The Committee soberly accepted Gates’s statement that “intelligence had carried out good work regarding the dramatic developments in the USSR and East Europe.”

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“This is the third victory of the United States and its allies in a world war in this century,” said James Woolsey on 10 January 1995, in his testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. “Two victories in hot wars,” he continued, as the Committee listened politely, “and one in the Cold War.” None of the Committee members responded with applause for the third US victory, and even Woolsey himself sounded tired. In fact, he had not come to Capitol Hill to report victories but to summarize his tour of duty before his dismissal as CIA director. None of the committee members questioned the Agency’s failure to predict the Soviet Union’s collapse. DÉTENTE The 1980s were characterized by US attempts to renew Washington’s strategic superiority and to reduce Soviet influence worldwide. During this period President Reagan restored the American people’s faith in their ability to face the USSR and overcome it. This was a radical departure from the policy that motivated Reagan’s predecessors in the 1970s, who had been operating in the shadow of Vietnam. Recognizing the expanding power of the Soviet Union, they were prepared to engage in dialogue on the basis of equality. The Vietnam War was perceived in the US not only as a military defeat and a national disgrace, but also as turning point that enabled the USSR to expand its global influence at America’s expense. Nixon and Kissinger embarked on their policy of détente as a means of preventing the Soviets from capitalizing on Vietnam. The risk of nuclear confrontation in the wake of the Soviets’ accelerated nuclear buildup was another reason to swallow national pride and opt for compromise. Nixon and Kissinger did not invent the idea of détente or the superpower summit meetings used to achieve it. After all, it is one thing to battle for world domination and another to run the risk of nuclear devastation. This point was understood by both sides at the most basic and most sensible level, well before the advent of Nixon and Kissinger. The 1955 summit in neutral Switzerland between President Eisenhower and Secretary General Khrushchev engendered the “Geneva spirit,” a forerunner of détente, which dissipated a year later, when the USSR invaded Hungary, and Britain, France and Israel attacked Nasser’s Egypt. The question of how intelligence assessed détente and its chances is crucial for an understanding of its role in the Cold War and its contribution to the process of coexistence. The politicians in Moscow and Washington were prepared to try to reduce the danger of confrontation. But the KGB and the CIA each continued to play on national and government fears by raising the specter of the other side’s evil intentions. The Soviet leaders, who nursed the memory of 20 million victims of the Second World War, were determined to stick to their slogan—peaceful, but competitive, coexistence. Successive American presidents, who understood the dangers of an unrestricted nuclear arms race, were prepared to consider translating the slogan into practical politics.

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However, not everyone shared this view. There was an influential, ideological hard-core group in US intelligence that did not trust the “Reds” and were opposed to any rapprochement with the Soviets. During the 1970s Major General George K.Keegan, chief of US Air Force Intelligence, represented the hardliners, accusing the CIA of ignoring hard evidence of projected Soviet expansionism. “The guys in Langley believed that the ‘bad man in the Kremlin’ had given up his ambition to spread Marxist-Leninism throughout the world,” he declared, and wondered how “liberals like President Kennedy and McGeorge Bundy” chose, for reasons that he “sincerely” did not understand, to believe that the balance of power and the communist readiness for joint arms supervision could curb communist aggression. Keegan was convinced that the Soviets were aiming for a nuclear war. Keegan’s criticism of the CIA came after he read a top secret background paper prepared by its analysis and assessment department in 1970. The paper, which was intended as an aid to State Department negotiators in the arms talks, hardly mentioned Soviet anti-nuclear civilian defense systems and claimed they did not constitute a vital part of negotiations. William Colby, CIA director at the time, was convinced that the construction of shelters and the amassing of largescale emergency stores did not necessarily indicate either intent or preparation for war. Such action, he felt, could spring from deeply rooted Soviet fears of invasion. Keegan was convinced that wherever the US was not on an equal footing, the imbalance gave the Soviets an advantage. Keegan noted that an analysis of 39 large cities in the USSR had shown that each apartment building constructed since 1955 had a nuclear shelter, a network of linking tunnels, vast emergency stores of medical supplies and food, as well as alternative sources of electric power. From questioning Soviet defectors, he had learned that every large industrial plant in those cities possessed huge shelters where production could be continued in wartime. Every large town in the USSR contained linked underground central command posts. There were 75 of them. The largest, intended for the Politburo, was underneath the Kremlin compound in Moscow. Keegan complained that even after 20 years of studying the Soviet defense infrastructure and examining photographs and documents, the CIA continued to present Congressional committees with assessments that differed from his. He believed strongly in the Soviet Union’s determination to destroy the West, and he considered that everyone who helped the détente effort was strengthening the Kremlin’s allies. While the détente process to ward off confrontation was moving forward, highaltitude American U-2 spy planes, a joint project of the US Air Force and the CIA’s operational directorate, continued to photograph targets in the USSR. The Kremlin was aware of this activity, which it considered a violation of Soviet sovereignty, and was infuriated by its inability to shoot down the planes. Preparations proceeded, meanwhile, for the 1960 Eisenhower-Khrushchev summit, although it should have been clear (to everyone except US Air Force

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intelligence) that under these circumstances the breakdown of talks was only a matter of time. Sure enough, the Soviets soon developed an operational answer to the spy planes. Gary Powers’s U-2 was shot down over Soviet territory on May Day 1960, and the incident put paid to the summit. According to American Sovietologist Alvin Rubinstein, there was no operational justification for the U-2 reconnaissance flights over Soviet territory at the time. “We had a decided advantage, and those flights were completely unnecessary,” he claims. This incident set the future confrontation with dialogue parameters. In October 1962, during Kennedy’s presidency, about two years after Powers’s plane was shot down, the Cuban missile crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear confrontation. Yet a year later the first arms limitation agreement was signed. It included a partial ban on nuclear tests, and a “red telephone,” enabling emergency communication between the two leaders, was ceremoniously installed in Moscow and Washington. Other developments adversely affected détente. During 1964–65 the US expanded its activity in South Vietnam against the communist insurgents, and the USSR increased its aid to North Vietnam. The Johnson-Kosygin summit held in summer 1967 at Glassboro, New Jersey, ended in sharp disagreement over the Vietnam War and the way to settle the Middle East conflict following the Six Day War. The Americans also became increasingly worried by the rapid growth of Soviet strategic power. Some intelligence estimates between 1969 and 1972 suggested that the Soviets had achieved nuclear parity. In fact, by the end of the 1960s, the USSR had developed intercontinental missiles that were close in range and destructive power to the American arsenal. Washington’s answer was increased investment in armaments, which precipitated a similar Soviet response. It was Europe, particularly Western Europe, which took the first steps toward neutralizing the nuclear arms race. Some were as afraid of the US as they were of the USSR. As they watched the two powers confronting each another on Third World territory, the Europeans dearly wanted to limit the danger of nuclear conflict in their own backyard. France’s Charles de Gaulle, the chief proponent of détente during 1967, led the way, followed by other European NATO countries. The East—West thaw was temporarily frozen after the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. But it received a shot in the arm when the Warsaw Pact proposed to convene a “conference for cooperation and security in Europe” in 1969. Later that year, following his election as Chancellor of West Germany, Willy Brandt made public his Ostpolitik, designed to encourage the wider détente process. A year later the West German leader signed a non-aggression pact in Moscow with the USSR, and later with several Eastern European countries, including East Germany. Now, just as it seemed as though détente was finding its feet, the US expanded the war in Vietnam. Détente had to wait again, this time until the early 1970s, when the Nixon-Kissinger duo sought ways to

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end the Vietnam War, and engaged in parallel attempts to expand arms limitation agreements. The US had reached this watershed from a position of international and domestic weakness. The administration, in particular the intelligence community, was still licking its Vietnam wounds. The US defeat was interpreted as a victory for communism. The American extreme right considered the withdrawal from Vietnam as an act of near-treason and the approach to détente with the Soviets as a dangerous sign of weakness. “Intelligence warned Kissinger we had no way of proving that the Russians would stand by the SALT agreement,” says Professor Richard Pipes, who staunchly supported the hardliners. Kissinger solved the problem of the awkward intelligence assessment by applying pressure to have it modified. And modified it was—because Nixon had decided that domestic considerations dictated an agreement with the Soviets. The USSR had scented blood with the US withdrawal from Vietnam, and did not think that détente meant curtailment of its efforts to expand its global presence and influence. The Americans thought otherwise and insisted on “linkage” between the strategic arms limitation sought by the USSR and the noninterference in the Third World they wanted. Khrushchev, like Kennedy and Nixon, saw in détente a means rather than an end. However, for internal consumption both sides presented détente as a strategic objective and termed it “a construction of peace.” Smiles flashed at photo-ops in Washington and Moscow, but off camera the two sides continued to sharpen their swords. Mutual distrust abounded, and each side was just waiting for an opportunity to gain an advantage over its rival, anywhere and by any means—short of direct conflict. This state of affairs continued into the tenure of Democratic President Jimmy Carter, who entered the White House full of goodwill and ready to give his opposite number, Leonid Brezhnev, the benefit of every doubt. Carter believed that both sides had a common interest in preserving world peace. But the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan proved to him that coexistence still had a long way to go. It also created the antiSoviet atmosphere in the US that led to the election of Ronald Reagan, who saw the USSR as the hugely threatening “evil empire.” REAGAN’S ADMINISTRATION GETS ORGANIZED On the morning after Ronald Reagan was elected president of the United States, the red telephone rang on Major General Nikolai Leonov’s desk at the KGB’s Information Directorate in Yasenovo, a Moscow suburb. “Nikolai, what do you think?” It was his boss, KGB chairman Yuri Andropov, on the line. They got along “quite well,” at least according to Leonov. “First I told him that there was one thing about Reagan’s election I had no problem with,” Leonov recalls, “and that was to figure out how the new American President would react in any given situation.” He knew Reagan’s repertoire by heart and could quote from his speeches: “Soviet communism is not only an economic competitor but also a

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predatory totalitarian state whose appetite for expansion knows no bounds. It is determined to force its tyrannical system on every state…to oppress humanity… “But Leonov was not upset by Reagan’s harsh outbursts. “We knew him from the time he’d been governor of California. He was a ‘full sized Yankee’ and we didn’t expect anything else from him.” According to Leonov it was harder to read Carter than men like Reagan and Casey, who held clear-cut, straightforward opinions. “Carter was considered a liberal, but he took policy actions that even conservatives wouldn’t have taken. We couldn’t always spot the logic of his decisions, and as far as I could see, quite a few Americans couldn’t either. It was far easier with Reagan. First, we believed what he said. Second, he was predictable.” Leonov recalls that even back in the days when Reagan chaired the Screen Actors Guild, he had described his struggle with labor unions in Hollywood as “my fight against Moscow’s attempt to take over the American film industry.” Fifteen years earlier, the KGB had undergone a similar test after Richard Nixon’s election. “Nixon was easy for us,” KGB General Oleg Kalugin wrote in his book. “We knew that he was unpredictable and we knew that he was anticommunist. We thought it would work in our favor because a man like that can take real steps to improve relations.” Leonov, however, did not think that Reagan was likely to work toward improving relations, perhaps because this had not occurred to Reagan himself at the beginning of his term. He told Andropov that in light of their experience with Carter, Reagan’s policies could be easily predicted. Afghanistan would serve as the focus of anti-Soviet policy, and the US would exploit it in the Muslim and Arab world. Reagan did not disappoint. On entering the White House he announced that all Soviet leaders, starting with Lenin, were sworn enemies of democracy and free enterprise. At his first press conference he was asked what he thought of détente and whether the Soviets could be trusted. “The answer to that question,” he said, “can be found in the writings of their leaders. They claim that the end, in this case the victory of communism, justifies the means,” and ended with “The United States will invest as much as is necessary in the arms effort until we are in first place.” While working on his foreign and defense policy agenda a few weeks before entering the White House on 20 January 1982, Reagan was briefed by CIA Director Stansfield Turner. The meeting was embarrassing to both sides. During his election campaign Reagan had claimed that the Soviets possessed superior nuclear capability. Turner now explained to him that the question was not the numbers of bombs and missiles but the operational capacity to use them, and that according to CIA estimates, the USSR had no advantage over the United States. CIA data indicated that “even after a Soviet first strike, the US would have enough strategic nuclear weapons to destroy all Soviet cities with populations over 100,000.” Reagan did not react, and the meeting ended with the tacit

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understanding that Turner’s days as a passenger in an official CIA armored limousine were over. Until the early 1980s, US policy vis-à-vis the USSR was inspired by Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, both academics with a hardline view of the USSR. Robert McFarlane, who worked with Kissinger at the National Security Council, was appointed deputy to Dick Allen, Reagan’s first national security adviser. “Our working theory during Kissinger’s tenure,” McFarlane says, “was that the USSR and Marxism were both based on flawed ideology and false assumptions about human nature and the connection between the state and the individual.” Alexander Haig, Reagan’s Secretary of State, was another of Kissinger’s protégés, but somewhat tougher and far less polished. Reagan’s defense secretary was Caspar Weinberger, whose Soviet stance was similar to Kissinger’s, except that unlike Kissinger and Haig he had no sense of humor whatsoever. The man whose task it would be to provide intelligence assessments to these policymakers presented himself before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in the Hart Senate Office Building on Tuesday, 13 January 1981, at 10 a.m. exactly. William Casey entered Room 318 as the president’s nominee for the post of CIA director. He seated himself heavily in front of the battery of senators and mumbled a greeting that no one understood. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan put one question which he and his fellow committee members considered central: “How do you feel about telling this committee things we need to know?” Casey’s response was unhesitating: “I intend to comply fully with the spirit and letter of the Intelligence Oversight Act.” Without bothering to investigate his political philosophy or policy priorities, the committee members agreed that he was the man for the job. Casey became the Agency’s 13th director. The central problem facing American intelligence ever since the end of the Second World War was to maintain the right balance between Soviet threat and American countermeasures, a matter of peace or war. William Casey was perhaps the last person in Washington who was able to give an objective assessment on this issue. He wanted the job not to talk to the “Reds,” but rather to get them before they got him. CASEY AND THE CIA As a young man during the Second World War, William Casey was an intelligence officer in the OSS. Forty years later, in 1981, he returned to intelligence work, this time to wage life and death battles against communism. During the 1960s, he had been close to conservative anti-communist associations such as the Knights of Malta and the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick. There was no doubt that he would bring the same religious zeal to his post at the CIA. “Old Bill rides again” was heard in the Langley corridors, especially from those who were familiar with his views and his penchant for cutting through red tape. He

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brought an activist approach to intelligence that suited many in the Agency. CIA agents felt a sense of mission and went round with their heads high during Casey’s leadership, recalls Vincent Cannistraro. When Casey entered his new office, he was briefed by his deputy, Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, about the troops at his disposal. The main collecting agency, the National Security Agency (NSA), employed about 40,000 people. Its headquarters was at Fort Meade, and employees were dispersed throughout the world. Their main task was to break codes and to link up to communication networks in target countries, mostly the USSR and the rest of the communist world. Many NSA employees were Russian speakers. Their task was to spot if and when the USSR planned an aggressive military move. Casey was also briefed on the submarines which monitored underwater Soviet communication networks, and Indigo, the spy satellite system, incorporating photographic and communications monitoring of the USSR. The US intelligence community, in particular the NSA, provided huge quantities of information, thanks to marked success in breaking Soviet communication ciphers and advanced technologies. However, the crucial weakness was a built-in problem: the Soviet system was riddled with disinformation, only some of which was detected. Only after the collapse of the USSR was the full extent of problem revealed. However, when Inman briefed Casey he was describing impressive intelligence penetration that appeared to provide the Agency with vast quantities of up-to-date information about the Soviet Union. While Casey valued the contribution of technological intelligence operations, he aimed to shape events through covert action. He also required intelligence assessments to support policy. His first problem was with the CIA itself. Despite its tough image, the Agency he was appointed to direct was a bureaucracy. Like all government employees, CIA staff sought to keep their jobs and salaries, and to be promoted. Casey himself was a successful businessman. He knew how to cut corners in government and he knew what he wanted ideologically, politically and operationally. He lumbered amiably, almost absentmindedly, into his Langley office, but he took control of the CIA like a shark in a goldfish pond. Anticommunist fever at the level of enthusiasm to which Reagan and his supporters were committed called for a more warlike spirit in those who ran the war. This was particularly true in the sensitive area of covert actions, where a tradition of at least superficial supervision and control had evolved over the years. Each president, from Truman to Ford, dealt in one way or another with the problem. Carter, who was particularly sensitive, established two committees to supervise and coordinate covert actions with foreign or defense policy implications: the Policy Review Committee and the Special Coordination Committee. Their members were the secretaries of state and defense, and the Treasury, the attorney general, the CIA director, the joint chiefs of staff, and the president’s national security adviser.

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On entering the twilight world of espionage, Casey convinced Reagan that red tape and supervision hindered intelligence operations. The supervisory committees for covert actions, including the two committees established by Carter at the National Security Council, were disbanded and replaced by a new body, the National Security Planning Group (NSPG). The group was staffed by the CIA director, the secretaries of state and defense, Vice President George Bush, and three of the president’s personal advisers: the White House chief of staff, his deputy and another aide. One of the NSPG’s first actions was to change the criteria and thus widen the range of covert actions, which resulted in a sharp increase in the budget. Surprisingly, it was Haig, the new secretary of state, who opposed turning covert action into a central tool of Reagan’s foreign policy. It was not because he saw himself as a diplomat supporting détente or because he preferred to run a balanced foreign policy, but because he supported open, vigorous action against the communist bloc. When suggestions were made during administration debates for cloak-and-dagger operations to get rid of Fidel Castro, Haig recommended direct military action, if such were necessary, to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Even if Reagan’s administration had wanted to run a little local battle here or there, the White House could not allow itself to expose Congress and the public to scenes of dead GIs in body bags being shipped home from foreign lands, unless it was putting on a show like Grenada. Reagan, like Casey, favored covert action ranging across the entire globe. Casey traveled extensively around the world to convince intelligence services and politicians to cooperate with the US in its war against the common enemy. The fact that, in addition to being director of the CIA, he was also head of the American intelligence community, a cabinet member and a personal friend of the president opened all doors for him. Wherever he went, in the Agency’s plane, he gave the impression that the might of the US was behind him. The composition of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence also favored Casey. By not carrying out its supervisory role seriously, it, in fact, contributed to the creation of the blind spot. Hardliner Barry Goldwater was elected chairman in 1980 at the age of 71. In 1975 and 1976, he had been a member of the Church commission that limited the CIA’s freedom of action. Goldwater, however, had led the minority opinion that rejected the commission’s findings. Casey could not have hoped for a better Oversight Committee chairman. And now that friend and foe had been identified, all that remained was to mark the targets. CASEY VERSUS THE USSR William Casey led the CIA in its most aggressive anti-Soviet stance since the 1960s. Casey’s war was played out over the entire globe from Cambodia to Nicaragua and points in between. If you wanted to navigate the corridors of

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power in Washington safely you had to mumble the slogan “roll them back,” preferably to Siberia. This was the war cry that colored US policy in the early Reagan years with Caspar Weinberger in the Pentagon and Al Haig at the Department of State. The topic of the Soviet Union came up practically every morning, reminisces Reagan’s National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane about his visits to the Oval Office “and naturally Bill Casey was there too. He was close to the president and I think that Bill initiated a major part of what the president wanted.” James Baker was running the White House team at the time, and he felt that Casey had “a rare ability to play to Reagan’s ‘dark side’.” McFarlane describes Casey as “one of those who stubbornly insisted on raising the price the Soviets had to pay for what they termed the liberation wars in Third World countries, and, as a superb operational man, he ensured in his own way that this would happen.” Part of the new White House team’s inheritance was, of course, its predecessor’s working papers on Soviet policy, However, interpretation is what sets policy and now the interpreters were Reagan, Casey, Haig and Weinberger. McFarlane was a member of the National Security Council in the Ford and Nixon administrations and worked at the State Department until returning to the NSC as deputy. He cannot remember that there was ever a comprehensive Soviet policy. The only policy paper I read on this topic when I became NSA was Memorandum Master Security Division, Number 242. Carter’s administration had a similar paper (PRM 1) which was called Presidential Review Memorandum No. 1, but as far as I could see it was no different from papers issued during the Nixon and Ford administrations. They didn’t believe that the USSR could be blocked or even pushed back. Papers and intelligence estimates don’t shape policy. Reagan’s team, which included our Ambassador in Moscow, Jack Matlock, wanted to defeat the Soviets, not only to block them. To McFarlane’s satisfaction Casey had entered the loop and the mission to “defeat the Soviets” was not upset by contradictory intelligence assessments. Casey, as McFarlane recalls, had his own way of getting the job done, even if his predecessor, Admiral Turner, had looked at his job “a little differently.” Two weeks before Reagan entered the White House, Turner sent the new president’s staff a review of the Agency. It was returned to him with a number of unsigned comments that bore the fingerprints of Casey and his team. The main comment was that the Agency should become actively involved in anti-Soviet operations and covert actions, not only intelligence gathering. Casey wanted a different CIA, one that would carry the battle to the enemy and fight a total war worldwide.

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Casey’s view of the Soviet threat and his anti-communist zeal were not born on the day he joined the CIA. It dated back to his service in the OSS, whose first director, General William J.Donovan, could sense the Soviet threat lurking beneath the joint victory and the cooperative gesture which characterized USSoviet relations at the time. He did not wait for the official announcement of the outbreak of the Cold War to begin fighting the KGB. To understand Casey the man and his methods, it may be helpful to mention Carl Eifler, who also served in the OSS. Casey fought the Nazis in Europe by infiltrating agents and plotting deadly stratagems at his desk. Eifler was the Unit 101 commander on the Asian front, and killed Japanese fighters with his bare hands. Casey was a knife-in-the-dark, a Machiavellian plotter who relied on brains; Eifler was a gun-toting sheriff who could hit a cigarette from 25 yards and was rumored to wrestle bears in his free time. Eifler had been a Chicago cop, a hunter of Mexicans on the US border, a customs officer. Casey, as a businessman, had made a fortune by exploiting a fine grasp of the financial markets and tax laws. Casey was physically clumsy, while Eifler was a tall, muscular type who blew up bridges and sabotaged supply lines. Now, after 40 years of admiring envy, Casey had all the Eiflers in the world at his disposal, and he expected real action from them. He believed that everything began with a working paper, and he started to disseminate anti-Soviet slogans in his characteristic mumble, waiting for papers from the CIA’s Intelligence Directorate to support his ideas and policies. Although as the boss his views received attention, Casey quickly discovered that he could not enforce his opinions without running the risk of stirring up internal opposition, as well as media interest. He soon realized that people in the agency were independent-minded, not easy to control. David D. Whipple, former head of several CIA stations in Africa, Asia and Europe, was quoted as saying that Casey was faced with bitter internal wrangles and therefore decided to do things his own way. He put his own people in key positions, and continued to confront anyone who didn’t accept his views.” Among the newcomers were John Bross, who became his close aide, and Herbert E.Meyer, the 66-year-old editor of Fortune magazine, who had written a book about the implications of technological progress. Casey liked his ideas and appointed him special adviser for analysis. Meyer, a down-to-earth type, was convinced that government analysts had no contact with real life and were incapable of understanding it. “The rewards of professional life in the outside world are greater,” he said, “so if government only gets second or third rate people, who in turn employ third or fourth rate people, you end up with a system that can’t cope with the realities of a rapidly changing world.” In 1983 Casey appointed Meyer deputy chairman of the NIC, the body that prepares the national estimate. Brigadier General Tzvi Stauber, then head of Israeli military intelligence’s Soviet department, recalls: “Meyer realized back then that the USSR was undergoing a process of change and I agreed with him. We just didn’t think it

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would happen so fast. He also used to complain that his CIA colleagues just didn’t understand those developments.” Casey had a good grasp of office politics, in particular the unwritten law that employees, whether CIA or IBM, do not indulge in harsh arguments with the boss. He utilized this to “improve” the assessment process in line with his views, while doing nothing to hide his opinion of the analysts: a bunch of fuzzy-headed liberals who did not know how the real world worked. Casey, however, was clever enough not to dismiss his opponents’ papers. Rather he used various gambits to prevent assessments he did not like from influencing policy-makers in what he considered the wrong direction. He even showed them sometimes to the president, mumbling that he did not agree with them. Reagan may not have understood the mumble, but he certainly grasped the tone. When the agency had to brief Intelligence Committee meetings on the Hill, he would tell his subordinates: “You talk to the committee in the morning and I’ll talk to them in the afternoon.” For the US the ideological and strategic enemy was the USSR. The CIA and Casey had to face an additional foe of mythic proportions—the KGB. And they fought it on all fronts, worldwide. Some initial details of the KGB budget were made public only in 1991 by Gorbachev’s government. The First Directorate received $7.4 billion, in comparison to the approximately $3 billion allotted to the CIA. According to Western estimates, until the August 1991 coup, the KGB employed from 400,000 to 700,000 people. Vadim Bakatin, appointed KGB chairman after the August coup, claimed that it had only 488,000 employees, 220,000 of whom served in the border police. Oleg Gordievsky estimates that about 65,000 intelligence officers served in KGB headquarters in Moscow, while General Oleg Kalugin says that the KGB employed far larger numbers than all Western intelligence services combined. In 1990, fearing growing internal unrest resulting from Gorbachev’s reforms, several additional army units were transferred to the KGB, including the 103rd parachute division. The KGB had its own commando units, such as “Alfa,” which was involved in putting down an outburst of Lithuanian nationalism in January 1991 and the “Thunder Forces,” 65 of whose agents stormed the Afghan presidential palace in December 1979 and executed Hafizullah Amin. Casey knew everything about the KGB that a CIA director should know, but he and his team lacked the skill to read between the lines. His assessment of KGB strength and efficiency did not give proper weight to the fact that incompetence and alcoholism were rife in the ranks. Four months after Vadim Bakatin was appointed KGB chairman, the USSR collapsed. On leaving the position, he had this to say about the organization he had directed: “I never met such a collection of liars, hypocrites, crooks and double-dealers in one organization.” Well before the Soviet collapse, the CIA knew that KGB officers were the first to smuggle money and valuables to the West. While this did not mean that they were all corrupt, it should have indicated to the CIA that the KGB

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was not the efficient, determined and battle-ready organization it was deemed to be. When Casey became the director of the CIA, Leonov scrutinized him from Moscow with the eye of a veteran hunter stalking a new beast in the jungle. We looked at his actions and attitudes both inside the CIA and outside, and we weren’t surprised. After all, we knew whom we were dealing with. He was representative of the system, in fact, of the Reagan administration. We knew the US and we knew Casey. He may have been a special type, but he was also part of the system and he worked within its framework. William Casey, however, was more special than Leonov thought. According to those who knew him, he was “a tough SOB” who fought with no holds barred. He had links to the top political echelons and he knew how intelligence assessments are made. He had operational sagacity and, no less important, he knew how to exploit his privileged position. Ironically, Casey’s exploitation of his special status contributed to the curtailing of CIA independence. And this in turn worked to blur the vital separation between an intelligence agency, which must maintain its objectivity, and policy-makers, including Casey, who have their own agendas. Casey was totally committed to bringing down the USSR and communism, and to restoring the US to its unrivaled position as leader of the world. From Casey’s point of view, the sole function of intelligence was to serve that objective. THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX; OR THE DRAGON, THE STEALTH BOMBER AND THE F-22 While Casey waged his battle against the USSR within the Agency, a far greater war was being fought within the Reagan administration over the size and disbursement of the defense budget. Here Casey’s input as CIA director and the person responsible for the national estimate was crucial. During the mid-1980s, the Pentagon’s annual procurement budget was around $550 billion. In addition, it spent about $750 billion annually on operations and salaries. Underlying the arguments about which particular weapon was better and why a certain plane, missile or submarine was needed was the ultimate strategic objective of bringing down the USSR. On the practical level, the critical question was whose arsenals were crammed fuller. The Reagan camp held that this battle, waged since the Second World War, was being lost by the US, day by day, hour by hour. The argument served as one of the major planks of Reagan’s election campaign, masterminded by Casey. After his election Reagan took stock and asserted: The number of Soviet ballistic and intercontinental missiles is a third greater than ours. Over the last 15 years the Soviets built 60 submarines,

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while with the exception of last year we did not even build one. The USSR constructed 200 new bombers, and we haven’t even constructed one. Our B-52 bombers are older than their pilots. The Soviets have 600 mid-range missile silos and we don’t even have one. The USSR now has more tanks, planes and ships. In 1977 they began to deploy SS-20 missiles at the rate of one a week. Reagan claimed that, on entering the White House, he had found the US army in a stage of advanced degeneration. He maintained that the US ability to respond efficiently to a Soviet attack was in doubt, adding that strategic weapons had not been developed for ten years, while the USSR had built a war machine that threatened to overcome the US at every level. As president, Reagan had to honor his campaign pledges, and he did so quickly and with great gusto. He ordered the construction of 100 B-l bombers, which had been held up by Carter; he gave the green light for the production of 100 MX missiles; he pushed forward the development of the Cruise and Pershing missiles and the building of the B-2 Stealth bomber, designed to be able to sneak undetected past enemy radar deep into Soviet territory. In parallel, the US Navy ordered 100 new Trident submarines and the missiles to be fired from them. Judging from the military procurement efforts of the Reagan administration, America seemed to be preparing for an all-out war. US Intelligence, CIA and especially DIA, backed up the procurement effort with intelligence papers that emphasized the other side’s military strength and build-up. In 1979, there were reports that the Soviets had begun deploying SS-20 mobile missiles, with triple warheads and a range of 5,000 kilometers, at a rate of two per week. Critics of the CIA accused the Agency of inflating the figures and consequently exaggerating the threat. This in turn, they said, caused the US to overreact and invest in unnecessary military hardware, in what was a tremendous waste of public funds. However, the dissenting voices were drowned out in the roar of production lines, churning out new, lethal weapons. The failure to assess the Soviet threat correctly was rooted in that black hole into which intelligence had been drawn in the Reagan-Casey period and later during George Bush’s tenure. The policy-maker’s message to the CIA rank and file was clear: support the anti-Soviet policy or become irrelevant. This led the CIA to count weapons, ammunition and equipment and ignore the real issues— translation of stockpiles into military might and assessment of enemy intent. Franklyn D.Holzman, one of the agency’s harshest critics argued that the “exaggerated estimates of Soviet military expenditures by US intelligence agencies led to a significant increase in excessive US military spending over the decade 1979–88.” He estimated that as a result of over-assessment, the US spent $500 to $800 billion more than necessary during the 1980s. As late as 1988, when it became clear that the USSR was in a desperate situation, the Pentagon still spent over $80 billion on hardware for which there was no need.

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The intelligence papers served the build-up of the US military machine in various ways. One paper of this kind was called “The Soviet Challenge to American Interests.” Issued on 4 August 1982, it included diagrams detailing the number of days spent by Soviet ships outside home ports as well as maps of military sites, the Ramenskoye test center for strategic Backfire bombers, and nuclear submarines carrying Typhoon ICBMs in the Severodvinski shipyards. Every year the CIA and the National Intelligence Council published assessments on the Red Army, and the Pentagon published a more intimidating version called Soviet Military Power. The technique should have been simple: intelligence gathering hard data about military procurement, quantities, intentions and attempts to assess the potential enemy’s threat. The Pentagon translated these data into a level of threat and used it to formulate what US military readiness should be in terms of equipment, training, and so on. An examination shows that both sides, the US and the USSR, deliberately exaggerated the other’s military capability and malicious intent, partly to justify the massive investment in R&D, production and acquisition of weapons. This led to a vicious circle. The accelerated procurement was monitored by the other side’s intelligence and presented as proof of the enemy’s growing threat, and this in turn caused increased production on the other side. Red Army General Dudnik claims that the Soviet military-industrial complex’s influence on the Red Army was absolute. “It wasn’t the army that assessed how many tanks it needed but the military-industrial complex. They knew that an army needs tanks, planes and submarines, and they even tried to make good weapons—but production was uncontrolled because there was no real military and economic concept, nor an objective intelligence assessment. The industry decided, and that was that. There wasn’t a single Red Army commander who wasn’t confronted by the arrogance of the military-industrial complex.” At the end of 1991, Gorbachev conceded that the Soviet economy was the most military-dominated in the world. The Soviet defense industry employed about 14.4 million soldiers and civilians in hundreds of plants and dozens of closed towns and protected areas. Every year they produced about 1,700 tanks, 5, 700 armored personnel carriers and 1,750 field guns. According to Soviet data, they produced 2.3 times as many tanks as the US, 8.7 times as many APCs, 11.5 times as many field guns, three times as many nuclear submarines, 1.5 times as many destroyers, 15 times as many ICBMs and six times as many medium-range missiles. The official budget, according to Gorbachev, was 96.5 billion rubles, about one-third of the annual Soviet budget. However, the International Strategic Institute in London, which examined the data in 1989, claims that the amounts spent that year were between 200 and 220 billion rubles, or half the budget. According to several sources, one-quarter of the GNP was channeled to military industry. About 80 per cent of the country’s scientific potential was dedicated to the development and production of military hardware, and the military industrial complex accounted for about 80 per cent of the USSR’s total industrial output.

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The two-superpower behemoth, fueled by bureaucracy and mutual fear, spawned many monsters as they lumbered toward the great economic crisis in the East and the great intelligence failure in the West. One of the Eastern monsters was the Dragon. At the end of the 1970s, the Soviet military industry decided to produce a tankdestroyer. The rationale behind the decision seemed logical enough. There are tanks, so there must be a need for a weapon to destroy them. As usual, the weapon was named even before planning began. It was called the “Dragon.” From an engineering viewpoint, the idea was fine. “It even looked good to me,” Dudnik says, “because it was to be armed with rockets, not guns, which would give it advantages in mobility.” The approvals committee, chaired by Tank General Ivan Kiseliov, examined the plan and, after concluding that it would not work in battle conditions, rejected it. Nudelman, the Dragon’s designer, was unfazed and calmly informed Kiseliov: “We’ll get it approved and we’ll build it.” Says Dudnik, who was involved in the debate: “I feared that would happen. And a few months later, what do I see? They disbanded the committee and appointed a new one chaired by a commander of the test area where new weapons were tried out.” Production of the Dragon was approved. “The project was so secret that only few knew about it. I watched what was going on and I know that they only carried out a test with two Dragons, and only once. After a while they took the weapon off the army list. And what do I see a year later?” fumes Dudnik. “Nudelman and the test area commander got the Order of Lenin.” The spacious apartment in Moscow at 15 Chekoveskaya Street, the last building constructed by the Kremlin for the Soviet elite, is KGB Major General Nikolai Leonov’s home. At the front door he offers his guests Japanese slippers. “We never discussed openly how many nuclear weapons we really needed. Nor was there any careful research on that topic,” says Leonov, who headed the KGB’s information directorate during the 1980s. “Some of us thought we could have made do with 100, say, but we produced 1,000. Maybe we could have made do with only 500, but how could we know what the limit was when the Americans went on developing weapons and were always ahead of us?” Leonov firmly rejects the suggestion that extensive arms production was the result of military-industrial complex pressure. “The main motive was not to fall behind in the race, but already during Andropov’s time we could see we were losing it.” After a pause for thought he continues, “Maybe it should have been clear already in Brezhnev’s day, except that we were afraid to talk about it even among ourselves then.” Georgy Arbatov, who briefly served as an adviser to Gorbachev, asserts that the military-industrial complex did push for the increase of weapons, including nuclear, production, while Roald Sagdeev, former director of the Soviet Space Research Institute, believes that everything—scientists, technicians, and budgets —was subservient to the ruling ideology, and the military industrial complex was its faithful servant. Later, at the close of the Gorbachev era, when priorities

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had been re-ordered, he wrote in his book that “The military-industrial machine has already demonstrated that it will outlive the system that created it.” While the Soviet Dragon was a product of the state steel industry, the American Stealth bomber (B-2) was the brain-child of private aeronautics. The idea was to build an aircraft that left no radar signature and could carry a nuclear pay load to any target in the USSR. The skepticism that such ambition should have aroused faded well before the end of the evaluation process—because the project had already been approved and the production line was working. Carter had been hesitant in the face of criticism of the project and the huge investment involved. These doubts were swept aside when Reagan became President and Caspar Weinberger’s Pentagon declared that it planned to order 132 Stealth bombers at $2.2 billion each. Fourteen years later, in 1995, it was finally clear that the Stealth’s sophisticated radar and guidance systems had not fulfilled planners’ expectations and the aircraft was not totally invisible to enemy radar. What’s more the new geo-political situation had rendered the machine irrelevant. The Stealth’s most sensational operational success was that it had managed to sneak by the supposedly objective intelligence assessment meant to justify its production. At the end of the 1980s, when the demise of the USSR should have been apparent, Stealth development was still going strong. Whatever intelligence assessments had to say about the collapsing USSR and the consequently diminishing threat was clearly of no interest to Stealth decisionmakers. Toward the end of 1995, the Washington Post reported that over the years the number of B-2s ordered by the Pentagon had dropped from 132 to 20. Moreover, it added, research had shown that aircraft presently in use could be upgraded to achieve what the B-2 was designed to do and the Stealth bomber could be sidelined. However, the manufacturers of the B-2, Northrop-Grumman, who had so far supplied 13 aircraft, embarked on a massive media and lobbying campaign on behalf of their costly product. The debate surrounding the B-2 continued long after the collapse of the USSR and the elimination of the threat to the Free World, and passed from a Republican to a Democratic administration. Despite a new Pentagon study that indicated that there was very little need for more B-2s and that it was preferable to invest in less expensive armaments, the military-industrial lobby prevailed once again. When the lobby went into action, intelligence fell silent and with it all the strategic and operational reservations against the continued production of the Stealth bomber. Thirteen black-painted B-2s are currently based in Missouri and the US Air Force was due to receive eight more of the $2.2-billion bombers by the end of 2000. The rationale for the development of the B-2—to counter the presumed existential threat to the US—was no longer mentioned. Indeed, intelligence had been practically irrelevant to the debate, since over the years it had dodged defining the Soviet military threat and had accepted the axiom, laid down by the

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politicians, that the USSR posed a strategic, political, military, social and economic threat to the US. Chief among those politicians, President Reagan was inclined to approve almost every request to increase US military strength. He had been very impressed by an ABC Television film designed to make the Soviet threat clear to every American, and found no small resemblance between the film and a briefing he received from Defense Secretary Weinberger and commander of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John W.Vessey. “We were involved in a dangerous conflict, and I am convinced that the dollars spent on defense from 1981 onward served both the American taxpayer and the world,” says James Baker, who in those days headed the White House team. Post-election discussions on the topic shaped the Reagan doctrine, “Peace Through Strength,” which was supported by the administration and intelligence, and aroused no public opposition. “I don’t recall any opposition to the budgets needed to implement the doctrine. Congress usually supported them too, although some members were unsure. In those days it wasn’t politically correct to oppose policies whose purpose was to block the USSR.” As an afterthought Baker adds, “By the way, some of those dollars enabled us to do what we did during the Gulf War to Saddam Hussein.” In April 1991, Lockheed unveiled the F-22, the most advanced fighter plane in the world. This was the year in which the Soviet Union collapsed and Moscow joined the Allies in the Gulf War against Iraq. But these events did not jolt the US decision-makers into reconsidering the project. David Callahan, a co-author of the book Dangerous Capabilities, wonders how the enormous cost of a weapons system designed for the Cold War era could be justified after the collapse of the USSR. The F-22 is a relatively large twin-engined fighter, 19 meters long with a 13.5meter wingspan. Designed in the stealth mode (insignificant radar profile and radar-absorbing paint), the plane is packed with sensors to identify targets at great distances. The initial investment in the prototype stage was $14 billion. The aircraft will be operational in 2004 and by 2012 some 26 squadrons will be equipped with the F-22 at a cost of $100 billion. A superpower has to build its military might through long-range planning. Enemy military capabilities are not measured over the span of a few years. However, in the case of the F-22, the project was planned to meet a threat that subsequently ceased to exist. The F-22 was conceived in the early 1980s, but the program came up for approval again and again throughout that decade and into the next. Allocation requests for the F-22 were resubmitted in 1992, after the demise of the USSR. Lieutenant General James Clapper, head of Military Intelligence, reported to the Senate that Russia had slashed its military production orders by about 80 per cent, and its military capability had decreased by about 30 per cent in comparison to the previous year. Congress heard, but it is doubtful whether it understood. The F-22 allocation was approved in 1992 too.

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The F-22 was designed during the Reaganite weapons frenzy of the early 1980s, after the defense budget had been markedly increased. The sophisticated new system was still being boosted during the Bush presidency, even after it was apparent that the Russian bear was in serious decline. The administration justified the continued development and eventual purchase of the F-22 by arguing that the US had to preserve its superiority over any potential rival, whether it was the USSR, which had not yet completely collapsed, or some Third World state. To justify expenditure of such magnitude, the administration usually resorted to quasi-intelligence phraseology, a regular ploy for obtaining weapons allocations during the Cold War years. In 1982, Under Secretary of the Air Force Brigadier-General Alton Kill claimed that the Soviets were on the verge of achieving superiority in airborne weapons. “Official sources” warned that the Soviets could develop more advanced technology than the American F-15 and F-16 fighters. According to Kill, the Soviets were not only retaining their quantitative superiority, but were “closing the technological gap” and they would have better planes than the US by the year 1990. In 1982, soon after Reagan became president and Casey director of the CIA, Casey ordered a national estimate paper about the Soviet threat. It soon became a virtual bible for the administration. The paper claimed that the USSR considered the US a “basic” enemy because of ideological and geo-political differences, and this view guided Soviet foreign policy. The Soviet leadership, said the paper, believed that the dialectic of history and the emerging reality would lead to the victory of socialism, but it was working to speed up the process. The paper detailed Soviet weapons systems and the deployment of troops in and outside the USSR. It all looked decidedly threatening. During the early 1980s, years of Casey in Langley and the Californians in the White House, the hardline attitude toward the USSR turned this damning national estimate into an actual threat which required huge weapons budgets, including allocations for the costly project Star Wars. STAR WARS The arms race, conventional and nuclear, had ended in a tie, so the competition and the wasteful spending moved to space. The USSR had begun the space race, but it was soon obvious it could not compete in this arena with the US. It was only a matter of time before someone brought up the idea of exploiting space to achieve strategic superiority. The notion of using space for military purposes was not unknown to the American defense community. In the early 1970s, an idea did the rounds of launching a satellite carrying an atomic weapon, a kind of satellite bomb to be dropped if the USSR opened or threatened nuclear hostilities. This particular idea was shot down, but the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), or Star Wars, was only waiting for a decision to take off.

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Robert McFarlane had replaced William Clark as Reagan’s National Security Adviser. It was rumored in Washington that Clark had never really understood the job, and had a weird knack of turning every incident into a crisis. McFarlane, his assistant, was the perfect replacement: as a Marine colonel he was disciplined, sensitive to affairs of state, and knew the rules of the game. “Things started heating up in the late 1970s,” says McFarlane. “By 1980 the USSR already possessed 6,400 highly accurate launchers aimed at strategic targets world-wide, while we only had 2,000—a three-to-one imbalance.” To this day, McFarlane does not understand why the USSR ever entered an arms race it could never win. CIA and Harvard Sovietologists explained to him that Russian military history had convinced Soviet generals that the basis of self-defense was what they called “overwhelming strength.” “This concept is the product of centuries of fear of outside attack. Whether they meant to use [these weapons] is a complicated question, but we felt the race could get out of control.” McFarlane claims that he took it upon himself to look for ways to limit or, at least, control the arms race. In 1995, nearly a decade after the Iran-Contra affair which cost him his job, McFarlane (or “Bud” to his friends) sits in his Washington office, attired in a carefully tailored brown suit, and cordially answers questions. His faded blue eyes draw attention: they have a remote, sometimes wandering gaze, perhaps even a little melancholy. His background includes Vietnam: he too, like Oliver North, Daniel Graham, Richard Secord and George Keegan, has known the field soldier’s quiet protest at the betrayal of the politicians. “Our strategy,” he says, was to make the Soviets realize that the arms race was against their interests and that they couldn’t win it. I believed that we should first get out of the equality game. Tank for tank, plane for plane, soldier for soldier, with such ground rules we’d lost the war even before it began. The Soviet People’s Congress did not tie their government’s hands, they didn’t have to face free market competition. They were able to develop and produce without thinking of the cost. One phone call from the Kremlin, and half a million soldiers rolled up their sleeves to start digging. I asked myself where we had the edge over them and could hit them hard. This line of thought led him to basic economics. Any businessman knows that if you want to compete, you go for whatever you do best where you have an edge over your competitors. I decided that in this case our best bet was hi-tech. It was both simple and potentially fatal: if we made the Soviets spend two or three dollars for every dollar we spent, we’d drive them out of business. That’s how Star Wars was born. McFarlane adds: “The man who helped promote the idea, at least ideologically, was the CIA’s Harry Rowan. He kept on claiming that the USSR was weak and couldn’t handle both the arms race and the improvement of its economy.” Rowan was director of the National Intelligence Council that was subservient to William

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Casey as coordinator of the American intelligence community. His assessment helped McFarlane to boost Star Wars. In August 1982, a few weeks after becoming secretary of state, George Shultz hosted a seminar for about 20 senior academics and high-ranking members of the administration. McFarlane, who also participated, noted “the impression was that the US faced a highly dangerous enemy. There was a consensus that Marxism might be an empty doctrine, but it was very strong and couldn’t be ignored. The general feeling was that the Kremlin had sufficient resources to go on forever.” As the seminar was coming to this grim conclusion, Harry Rowan, Casey’s man, went to the podium. Speaking into the microphone, he looked straight at George Shultz, and, to quote McFarlane, said firmly: “Gentlemen, it is not necessary that communism continue forever.” The initial response was “not polite.” There was a ripple of laughter, and Caspar Weinberger laughed louder than anyone else. He said to Rowan: “I am surprised that anyone here would say such a thing. I know we will not see the end of communism in our lifetime.” Rowan waited for quiet to be restored and went on: “If we take a good look at the USSR, we can see the signs of pressure. The combination of basic flaws that underlie their economic policy plus the continuing deterioration of their entire industry will lead to the complete collapse of their economy in ten years.” Most of the audience did not agree. However, McFarlane says that Rowan made a “great impression on him,” because “Harry was a senior intelligence veteran who had the reputation of a nobullshit guy.” The desire to defeat communism was common to all. However, most experts did not believe that this was realistic—not in their time. Up until then the Soviets had returned blow for blow or, more accurately, for every weapon developed and produced in the West, the East had produced two. The opponents circled one another like Sumo wrestlers searching for the other’s weak points, and after competing on sea, air and land for 50 years the superpowers remained locked together in the same ring. The notion of moving the conflict into a new arena under new rules fascinated McFarlane. Fast-moving American technological advances gave it superiority in space. The possibility of exploiting the new situation in the military field was too seductive to be ignored, just as it had been battle for nuclear superiority in the late 1940s. In both periods, the considerations were financial. “The idea was simple,” says McFarlane, if they have to put two dollars into the race for every dollar of ours, they would be bankrupted. I ordered my deputy, Admiral Richard Poindexter, to discuss with the joint staffs and find out where we could invest in hi-tech. All options were open then. It wasn’t a question of defense or offense. If the experts had said that investing in computers would do the job for us, we’d have invested in computers.

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The Soviets were lagging behind the US technologically and the search for a way to widen and exploit the gap was on. McFarlane’s search found scientist George Watkins, the naval chief of staff. When Congress blocked continued development of MX ballistic missiles, Watkins raised the idea of defeating the Soviets by upgrading the defense system. “As I said, the Soviets had 6,000 warheads and we had 2,000, but Congress didn’t approve our plan to increase production of our missile, aimed at closing the gap,” McFarlane explains. “Watkins said that if you have a good defense system you don’t have to worry about 6,000 missiles. You can hit them all.” McFarlane heard him out and put the idea on the back-burner. The main problem was understanding the Soviet way of doing things. He gathered from CIA analyses that “in the 1980s the Soviets reached a state of what was called ‘unstable balance’—they could have attacked us, destroyed our ICBMs and still survived a second strike. This was why we decided to go for Star Wars in 1983.” President Reagan was obsessed with the idea of defeating communism. Beginning in January 1982, after the seminar at which Weinberger jeered at Rowan, after countless morning meetings during which Oval Office regular “guests” wondered how they could beat the Soviets, Reagan requested research papers aimed at identifying US global interests and any dangers that threatened them. Threats to Latin America, the Middle East and other areas were cited, but they were lumped together under one title: the Soviet strategic threat. Reagan asserted that is was necessary to press the Soviets in every arena and never to relax the pressure. McFarlane, coordinator of the intergovernmental effort to set up a program that would give the US a decisive strategic edge, pushed his idea of exploiting the huge technological gap. He called in Lawrence Eagleburger, then undersecretary of state for Soviet and European affairs, Dick Pipes, a Harvard professor on the White House team, and several others whose professional ability and judgment he respected. “We came up with a totally new concept,” McFarlane explains. To his surprise, initial reactions were lukewarm. People preferred to stick to familiar ground. Even Eagleburger commented that although one could always hope, he himself believed that the USSR and communism would last forever. But McFarlane and the people he gathered around him, Harry Rowan, Fritz Emarth, one of the CIA’s senior Soviet experts, Harvard’s Sam Huntington and Sam Feit, among others, did not give up. They went ahead with research, which took them ten months. There were arguments. Some people did not believe that the idea was practical. There were dozens of meetings. Opponents claimed that the idea would cost vast sums and would also endanger the delicate balance achieved through détente. Finally a sort of agreement was fleshed out which was passed at the ministerial level, but not yet by the White House. McFarlane recalls that this initial document stated that it was politically important to emphasize the dark side of Marxism; to extend Voice of America and Radio Free Europe broadcasts beamed to the USSR and its satellites; to take

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a more aggressive stand toward the USSR and urge European allies to do the same. “The Europeans had already given up the battle and were in favor of détente. They accepted the idea that it was impossible to defeat communism and therefore looked for ways to live with it.” In late 1981, Reagan convened a cabinet-level meeting of the National Security Council. The CIA director and the secretaries of defense and state were also present. The atmosphere was warlike and everyone was in favor of unrelenting pressure. Only one of the State Department juniors expressed slight misgivings. Says McFarlane, “Reagan looked at each person who spoke as if he were responding to an order from a invisible director. Then he paused before saying in a steady voice, ‘Let’s go get them.’ It was like a scene from a movie.” Recalling Admiral Watkins’s idea, McFarlane then paid him a visit. Watkins repeated: “Bud, it’s true they have an edge in the number of missiles, but we have a mighty advantage in computers.” He added that super-computer technology would enable the building of a defensive weapons system that could monitor and destroy not only 6,000 but even 10,000 missiles. “If we put an antimissile system into space that circles the globe, we’ll put paid to the Soviet advantage,” Watkins said. “How long do you estimate it will take to set up such a system?” McFarlane asked. “Ten to fifteen years,” was the answer. McFarlane was enthusiastic. All he had to do now was raise a few billion dollars to get the program started. “We realized that the money would have to be redirected from military, education or health budgets.” He was convinced that Reagan would work hard to pass the program through Congress, but I wasn’t sure he would succeed. One of our problems was how to dress it up. We had a general strategy of deterrence and it seemed right to present our idea on that base. However, there were strategists who claimed that if we went with the program, the moment the Soviets realized what we were doing, they might opt for a first strike before we completed the construction of the shield. McFarlane spent a few months talking to strategists and scientists to deepen his understanding of the concept, and then he went in search of approval from the politicians. “During this time we also shaped the way to present it to the American people. The basic approach was to convince them that Star Wars would stop bombs falling on the US. It was a great idea.” While McFarlane gradually leaked the idea to the right people, Reagan convened the joint chiefs of staff and casually asked them if they had any thoughts about a weapon that could shoot down nuclear missiles immediately after launch. Reagan notes in his book that they exchanged glances and asked if they could go outside to consult. When they came back they said it was worth looking into. Reagan adds: “I told them, ‘Do just that’.” A month later McFarlane presented the president with a draft program to set defense platforms in space. Reagan ordered him to keep it secret. It was not that

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he feared it could be picked up by the USSR; he did not want it leaked to the allies, Britain, France and Germany. Even more, he wanted it kept from Congress, the Pentagon and consequent public debate. His chief concern was that the enormous cost would force the plan to be aborted before it was complete and ready for presentation. On 23 March 1983, Reagan made the first public announcement of the Strategic Defense Initiative. His words were still being broadcast around the globe when an angry telephone call from Richard Perle reached McFarlane, who was about to call Admiral Watkins to exchange congratulations on their victory. If Perle, then Weinberger’s assistant, was angry, his boss was furious: he had learned about the new defense initiative from the media while on an official visit to Portugal for a NATO conference. “Have you all gone crazy?” Perle fumed. The defense secretary could not rebuke the president, but the secretary’s assistant could scold the president’s national security adviser, and Perle did just that. McFarlane painstakingly apologized and explained that he had not informed Weinberger because the president had forbidden him to. “It’s an outrage,” Perle shouted down the line from Portugal. “We should have updated our allies.” McFarlane had hardly put the receiver down when Shultz’s assistant for military affairs was on the line, yelling that it was a terrible idea and should not be carried out. Shultz himself had learned of the plan only two months earlier. He knew that the president was about to make an announcement, but he had not seen the speech in advance. “The truth is,” says McFarlane, “I think they were all offended. The president announces our new defense policy, while the secretaries of state and defense aren’t even in the loop.” One person who was not surprised by Reagan’s speech was retired Lieutenant General Daniel Graham, the same Colonel Graham who had served as General Westmoreland’s outspoken chief of military intelligence in Vietnam, and the same general, who, on leaving his position as chief of military intelligence in the Pentagon in 1981, declared in an interview with the Village Voice that he did not fear nuclear war. Graham, head of a hardline private defense institute when Reagan made his Star Wars speech, remembers being amused. “We were ready with this program back in March 1982,” he smiles, “but it was only a year later that the president made it public.” The colorful Graham, who became Star Wars’ most effective lobbyist, relished battles of all sorts. Asked during a Senate hearing how many stars he possessed, he answered “Six—three on each side.” During his military service he converted to Catholicism after a parachuting accident. His intelligence career began in 1950 when he joined military intelligence. After a few courses in Russian and initial intelligence training, he became a vociferous opponent of what he called “the East Coast liberal establishment mentality that governs the CIA.” In 1976, when Carter entered the White House, Graham left the Pentagon. He continued his activities in the American Security Council (ASC) and surfaced in 1980 as one of Reagan’s election campaign advisers. In September 1981 he set up High Frontier Inc., an “institute to further the defense interests of the US.”

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During January 1982, as McFarlane and Watkins secretly worked toward turning space into another theater of war—Reagan and his aides were busy planning to enlist congressional and public support for the program. Two months later, Graham convened a team of scientists, engineers and former military and intelligence officers to issue a 200-page pamphlet describing the space weapon in glowing terms. In his own words, it was a “space gun” capable of shooting down any Soviet nuclear intruder and the cost was a modest $40 billion. To lobby effectively for the program he rented an entire floor in a Washington office building and recruited a staff of dozens. At the height of its activity, High Frontier had an annual budget of $30 million. Graham explained later that most of the money came from private individuals. “Some gave $500 a month, some gave $100,000.” High Frontier employed about 100 lobbyists (volunteers, according to Graham) who helped to spread the idea, in the US as well as in Europe, through a branch set in Rotterdam. Another of Star Wars’ staunch supporters was the hawkish Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb. “We need SDI to survive and keep the peace,” Teller explained, “the Soviets themselves are planning to use space for that.” He had used exactly the same argument to justify the development of the hydrogen bomb. While the administration, supported by Graham’s powerful lobby, was successfully convincing Congress and the public of the need to use space for military purposes, a problem arose from an unexpected direction. Was SDI in breach of the 1972 SALT agreement on ballistic missiles, which banned missile deployment in space? The ASC’s struggle against disarmament agreements began as early as 1972, when the SALT agreements were prepared for signature. Later, acting on behalf of the ASC, Admiral Thomas Moorer, former head of the joint chiefs of staff, enlisted 2,000 retired generals and admirals who opposed SALT 2. The ASC created for this purpose a lobby, which was called Peace through Strength (the slogan later adopted by Reagan), with an initial budget of $5 million. Among its supporters were members of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, right wing politicians and members of the defense and intelligence establishments. The lobby’s panacea was the need to “preserve America’s military technological edge over the USSR.” One of its operations involved a petition signed by 250 Congressmen, later adopted by Reagan and the Republican Party in their 1980 election platform. In a single day, the ASC sent 250,000 computerized antiSALT messages to influential organizations and individuals. At one point the Senate Armed Services Committee published a statement which said “the SALT 2 agreement is incompatible with US defense interests.” It followed an endless parade of witnesses, many of them active ASC supporters. An opposing view was expressed by Edward G.Lansdale, an Air Force general, who quoted a CIA assessment which found no clause in the SALT agreement that could be injurious to US defense interests. Lansdale stood up against the ASC, which he called a “school for black propaganda and

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disinformation.” James Schlesinger, former director of the CIA, commented at the time that Star Wars was “half Buck Rogers and half P.T. Barnum. The president spoke of defending our country and our people, but this is a political ploy and there’s no chance it can be made into reality.” On that day in March 1983 when Reagan announced Star Wars, Graham was ready to enter the race for defense budget allocations. Star Wars had many opponents, but nothing could stop Graham and the organizations behind him. They formed another body to promote the idea, the Coalition for Strategic Defense (CSD), as a counterweight to SDI opponents. CSD comprised about 100 organizations, from Christian Education to Young Americans for Freedom, and about 60 Congressmen, most of them Republicans. CSD produced a 30-second television advertising campaign in which, against the background of a large sun shining over their house, a little girl asks her father, “What is Star Wars?” She then tells viewers that “her daddy said we can’t protect ourselves from nuclear attack, and that’s why the president wants to build us a shield to protect our house from missiles from space.” As she speaks, a shield is being created over the house; missiles explode against it, the sun smiles and the shield becomes a bright rainbow. The opposition to the Star Wars program was surprisingly tame. Among the reasons for this were the rhetorical skills of the president (“the great communicator”) and the effective work of the pro-SDI lobby. Even more important was the tactic employed to deflect the opposition. The program was slated to be implemented only gradually with continuous reassessment. Simultaneously, the attitude of the USSR was to be constantly monitored. In addition, the space program itself had taken a turn. Plans to put a nuclear device in space had been set aside. The new approach called for the control of space through early warning intelligence systems. While the president represented US defense interests and his national security adviser represented collective defense thinking, Daniel Graham and his organizations represented the military-industrial complex and the “superpatriots.” It is hard to weigh the precise influence of those who worked to advance the program. It is also unclear whether the president and his advisers, and Graham and the military-industry lobby were working together. But, looking back, one thing is clear: Star Wars, as a science-industry project, was the result of ongoing research and a natural development of new technologies that sought funding. It was not merely a result of a palpable Soviet military threat. War has always been one of the driving forces behind technological progress. Were it not for the paranoia of generals, the industrialist’s greed, or the politician’s demagoguery, mankind might never have made progress in space. But where was American intelligence in the decision to produce new weapons systems with global implications? McFarlane cannot recall seeing a single CIA assessment on the implications of introducing a defense system into space and the Soviet response to it. The contribution of the CIA and of William Casey personally to this major strategic decision was to cite more data on Soviet military might and

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to highlight Soviet efforts to introduce more advanced weapons systems, like the radar station in Krasnoyarke, Siberia. This information was leaked to politicians and the media, accompanied by CIA assessments that “it could indicate Soviet preparation to set up the infrastructure of a Star Wars system of their own.” The Soviet leadership saw in the announcement of Star Wars a signal that the Americans were preparing for a new arms race, as well as a sign of American aggression. “The USSR will find a suitable response,” the ailing Andropov announced on Radio Moscow, and he ordered the military-industrial complex to look for one. Andropov was well aware that Soviet military-industry was incapable of coming up with a technological answer to the American challenge. So, on the advice of his aides, he fell back on an asymmetric response: Let the US take to the skies. We will increase our nuclear stockpile. Georgi Arbatov, adviser on US affairs to five general secretaries, also served Andropov in this capacity. In Moscow he is known as a “fox,” which is meant as a compliment. He remembers the days following Reagan’s announcement of Star Wars as a time of “much hustling in the Central Committee and the Politburo.” Soviet opinion on how to respond boiled down to three basic views. One was that Star Wars was impractical and bound to fail, so there was nothing to be afraid of. The second was, “Let the Americans waste their time and money on it. When and if it becomes a real threat we’ll find a suitable response.” The third line of thought, favored by the military industry, always quick to translate any development into additional budgets, was “We should meet them with all our might.” Three large Soviet military-industrial plants immediately submitted plans for a response to the new American threat. “You know,” says Arbatov, “that’s what bureaucracies are like. Soviet or American, they’re all the same. They’ll do anything to push their own interests; in this case to provide work for their plants.” Arbatov is a clumsy man, fleshy and noisy. He is ensconced in a huge executive chair in an office as big as a medium-sized banquet hall. His office, like most others in Moscow after the collapse, reflects the contradiction between poor maintenance and brand new equipment, between the elegant secretary and the dirty toilets. “Our experts started to work out a response to Star Wars,” says Arbatov, And then the political pressure began. The experts said existing weapons were inefficient with a slim chance of doing the job. The investment needed to improve the systems was beyond the USSR’s means, they asserted. However, there was great pressure to create new jobs. Minister Sergei Afanasiev, nicknamed “Big Hammer,” supported a “suitable response,” which obviously meant increased resources for the militaryindustrial complex. But he was replaced shortly afterward by Oleg Baklanov (“Big Oleg”). Meanwhile, another Afanasiev, Viktor, who was the editor of Pravda, was waging a war against the military-industrial enterprises, and I myself went to Andropov. But he said “What do you

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want me to do with all these workers and the plants?” Actually, we knew that the bottom line of the American program was to make us spend more than we could afford, and also, of course, to provide work for American big business. However, we couldn’t just let it go, so we developed the “asymmetric response.” The psychological response to the new challenge resembled the way the Soviets always responded in the economic, conventional arms and nuclear races: with suspicion, anger and pride, veering from fear of the American technological advantage that dented their self-confidence, to anger that they were once again being pushed into a corner by an arrogant, powerful enemy. Anyone familiar with the Slav character knew that they would not give in, even if their citizens had to eat grass. Until the early 1980s they had always caught up in the arms race. The ruthless totalitarian regime enabled the Kremlin to focus all its resources, even when doing so meant neglecting the country’s infrastructure and the production of consumer goods, both of which further weakened the system. From this point of view, American political—not intelligence—policy proved itself. The ideological confrontation between the East and West was transformed into a war between infrastructures—and Western technology won. Star Wars, coming as it did during the twilight years of Andropov and Chernenko, was perceived by the Soviets as a real threat. “We assumed that the Star Wars program was meant to improve US first-strike capability,” says General Leonov, “in the event that the US decided to confront us.” And at one morning meeting in the Oval Office, President Reagan informed McFarlane and the rest of the team that if the Soviets wanted war, the US would be ready for them. A short time after he was elected secretary general, Gorbachev enlisted intelligence assessments to help avert the new arms race the White House was trying to impose on the USSR. “We estimated,” says Aleksandr Bessmertnykh, then Soviet deputy foreign minister, “that there was no need to do anything, that Star Wars simply wouldn’t work.” Roald Z. Sagdeev, then director of the Soviet Space Research institute, claims: “The Americans oversold SDI, we Russians overbought it.” Soviet Intelligence later concluded that Star Wars was more pyrotechnics than real threat, which helped Gorbachev decide to withdraw the condition he himself had set, namely, that Star Wars must be halted if the dialogue with the West, including strategic arms limitation talks, was to continue. This led to the great breakthrough in the negotiations in the second half of the 1980s on arms limitation. Neither Bessmertnykh nor Gorbachev accurately gauged the ability of the hardliners, including Casey, to ignore both KGB and CIA assessments. The battle against communism that the US had waged since the Second World War continued as if nothing had changed in the USSR or in East-West relations. And when intelligence does not examine and reexamine itself and its ruling concepts

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every day, all the time, it and the politicians it serves, are often surprised when the concepts collapse like a house of cards.

4 The Great Surprise

I WAS SURPRISED On December 1991, the secretary general of the Soviet Communist Party, Mikhail Gorbachev announced the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which he had headed since 1985. This came four months after an abortive coup attempt against him. During the 1980s the Soviet Union was forced to deal with a succession of maladies that had become increasingly acute: the war in Afghanistan; chronic economic crises; national unrest within the USSR; the breakaway of the Soviet satellites; the devastating technological gap and worst of all—the erosion of the authority of the central government. Yet, when the USSR collapsed and ceased to exist all the experts dealing with the Soviet Union—the intelligence community, academics, journalists and politicians—were all caught unprepared. “We were surprised,” they all said, and came up with an array of excuses for failing to foresee the demise of the communist superpower. “I was surprised,” says Jim Nichol, an analyst of Soviet affairs at the US Congressional Research Service’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Division. He believes that Gorbachev’s character and actions dictated the fate of the USSR. However, about the collapse itself, he says that no one thought that it was about to happen. Why was everyone so far off the mark? “Well,” according to Nichol, “the collective wisdom of those days was that Gorbachev would be deposed and replaced by one of the conservatives, and life would just keep going.” “I was surprised,” says Robert King, a former CIA officer. “We were all caught unprepared.” The main reasons, he feels, stem from the fact that “people tend to expect that changes, even while they’re happening, won’t take drastic turns. Intelligence focused on who said what to whom and less on developments taking place under the surface.” In December 1989, Paul Goble, a State Department staffer and an expert on the USSR, accompanied Congressmen Tom Lantos and Richard Gephardt on a visit to Eastern Europe. At the height of the dramatic changes that were taking

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place there they traveled through Berlin, Warsaw, Prague and Budapest, and talked with government officials and ordinary people. “Even then no-one expected quick reunification and the collapse of the USSR two years later.” “I was surprised,” says Dimitri Simes a graduate of Moscow University who came to the United States in 1973. As an academic from “over there” who was eager to share his expertise, he first found a niche at the Carnegie Foundation, and in the mid 1990s was director of the Nixon Foundation. “I was particularly surprised because I never thought it would happen in my lifetime,” comments Simes. Tad Szulc was also surprised. As a reporter and writer, he covered Eastern Europe during his career at the New York Times. “Western intelligence wasn’t very good at understanding the developments there,” he says. “It didn’t understand Soviet culture. Generally speaking, we did a lousy job, and I think it was a catastrophic blunder.” “Yes, I was surprised,” concedes James Baker, secretary of state during most of President George Bush’s tenure. “But only by the speed of the collapse. Everything happened so fast.” Baker is convinced that the collapse could not have been anticipated. “I think the CIA was surprised, Gorbachev was surprised— everyone was surprised.” The specific reason, according to Baker, was that “the perestroika and glasnost policies got out of hand.” Thirty years of work in Washington and at the State Department apparently do not provide immunity against surprise either. “I was more surprised,” says Lawrence Eagleburger, “by Soviet behavior in the years preceding the collapse than by the collapse itself. In fact, I would say that I was surprised when Moscow got out of East Germany. I’d always thought it didn’t matter what the USSR or Gorbachev did, they would never let East Germany off the Soviet leash.” Peter Rodman is a veteran Washingtonian. He is an academic, but having served in the National Security Council he also acquired practical political experience. “We all worked on the basis of the same information,” he says, explaining his own surprise and failure. We knew that the economy was ruined, we knew about other Soviet difficulties, but we didn’t read Gorbachev correctly. We didn’t know they’d have a leader who had no idea what he was doing. You can’t imagine a leader totally screwing up. It’s unreasonable to assume that a Soviet leader would let things get that bad without trying to stop them, and I admit I was one of those who believed that he would turn things around. Robert McFarlane, who had worked all his life for the downfall of the USSR, was out of office by time it collapsed. He was no less surprised than anyone else: “I thought Gorbachev would never let East Europe out of the Soviet sphere of influence, especially not East Germany.”

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Charlie Hill, who was Secretary of State George Shultz’s personal aide, says he never saw or heard anyone predict that the USSR was going to fall apart. “And I didn’t predict it either. Definitely not.” “I was surprised,” says Vince Cannistraro, a veteran senior CIA officer. “I did not predict the collapse. I did not understand that the dynamic that had developed there was bringing about the end of the USSR.” Was it the analysts’ responsibility to predict the collapse? The officer, who fought communism for more than 30 years, has no doubts: “The answer is yes. This was their responsibility.” The man who should have been least surprised of all is Robert Blackwell. He claims that the timing of the collapse surprised him, but not the process, which he had detected. From the 1980s to the 1990s he was supposed to have his finger on the Soviet pulse. During the early 1980s he headed the internal affairs desk in SOVA, the Soviet department of the US Intelligence Directorate. In 1984 he was appointed deputy department head and a year later, in April 1985, head of the division. In 1987 he moved to the NIC and was appointed chief analyst for the USSR, a task that made him responsible for the national estimate, and he remained in this position until April 1992. Blackwell realized that the USSR was changing, but he says: “I do not recall anyone saying that the USSR was falling apart.” The person who was most surprised was the Director of the CIA, Robert Gates. “The USSR collapsed faster than I predicted, and I was one of the biggest pessimists around.” Gates comments that it was clear to him by the end of 1989 or the beginning of 1990 that the USSR might disintegrate, “but I couldn’t have said exactly when. There were no indications that it was imminent, even in 1991. Western pressure and Gorbachev’s own decisions accelerated the outcome, which would have happened anyway, but would have taken much longer.” Gates believes that “if Andropov hadn’t been cut down by illness, the USSR would still exist. The situation would have continued to deteriorate for obvious reasons, but the USSR would have continued to exist.” SURPRISE IN EUROPE TOO European intelligence services were also surprised. How could they not be? They all relied on big brother, the CIA. Fulvio Martini, who headed the Italian intelligence service during the 1980s, does not remember if he knew, foresaw or warned about the collapse. “We focused on the Mediterranean area,” he says, “not on the USSR, which was handled by the CIA.” Pierre Marion, former head of French intelligence, says: “By the end of the 1980s I was no longer serving in intelligence. I did not foretell the collapse, and as far as I know neither did the DGSE. In any case, we got most of our information on the USSR from American intelligence.”

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Richard Norton Taylor, a writer on defense issues for the British newspaper, the Guardian, is convinced that “the British government and its intelligence bodies were completely taken by surprise when the USSR fell apart.” Michael Evans, his colleague at The Times, adds: “We were all surprised by the attempted coup and later by the collapse itself. Our intel ligence services were surprised, even though we had a highly important intelligence asset at the time (Gordievsky) who helped us before and after his defection to understand what was happening in the USSR.” Gordievsky recalls that during this period an aura of crisis prevailed. During the fall of 1990 there was a feeling that the USSR was at a crossroads. It was not clear where Gorbachev was going and how it would end. Gordievsky’s personal assessment had been that the hardliners would prevail and he had not thought that the Soviet Union would fall apart. West Germany, which shared a border with Soviet troops stationed in East Germany, had the largest intelligence service in Europe. Nonetheless, it fared no better in predicting the collapse of the USSR. German politicians, as well as the public at large, were not particularly interested in what intelligence had to say about the USSR or anything else. This, of course, did not free the intelligence service of responsibility for its failure to predict the collapse. “From 1989 I warned that the USSR was undergoing a process of change and there was no way back,” says Hans-Georg Wieck, BND president during the second half of the 1980s. “However, I did not predict the collapse itself and received no hint of it from the friendly Western intelligence services we cooperated with.” Ironically, there were those in the USSR who sounded the alert. For instance, in early 1991, KGB Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov warned Gorbachev that if he did not put a stop to the rampant anarchy, it would mean the end of the USSR. Gorbachev himself, like a cuckolded husband, was the last to know that the empire was slipping away from him. Aleksandr Bessmertnykh, the last Soviet foreign minister, is even willing “to bet that Gorbachev didn’t know that the USSR was about to collapse. I don’t think there was any Soviet Intelligence document which mentioned this future collapse.” He adds, “I, like most of the Politburo, understood that the USSR was changing, but it never occurred to us that it could cease to exist.” Professor Nodari Simonia, deputy head of the prestigious IMEMO institute, admits that no Soviet academic thought that the USSR was on the way to total collapse. Alexei Kiva, of Moscow’s Third World Institute, still looks around furtively before he speaks. Even after he is reassured, he frames his words carefully: “The USSR did not have to fall apart. There were flaws in the system, and they should and could have been corrected. Despite the flaws, people believed in the system. Anyway, we didn’t think that the USSR would fall apart.” Leonid Abalkin, the director of Moscow’s Institute for Economy and a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, today analyzes the events while gracefully fielding the question whether he himself had anticipated the collapse.

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“I thought and I still believe that the collapse was not inevitable, there were ways to repair the flaws that caused it.” In Israel, too, which had a special interest in the USSR because of the large Jewish community there and because of Moscow’s close ties with the Arab world, nobody understood that the crisis would lead to collapse. “I was surprised,” says Professor Galia Golan. “I didn’t think it would happen. I never thought the USSR, that mighty power, would ever stop existing. I believed that the Communist Party would lose its grip and another party would take its place, but collapse? We’re talking about a historical surprise.” As a professor of Sovietology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a former CIA officer, Golan dealt with Soviet affairs for more than 30 years. How did it happen that such a veteran Sovietologist was caught by surprise? “Well,” Golan explains, “it all begins and ends with Gorbachev. If someone else had been elected instead, the USSR would still exist.” Yossi Genosar, a former intelligence officer, dealt with Soviet issues in the Israeli General Security Services. “When the USSR collapsed,” he says, “it was as if the sky had fallen in. I had not anticipated it.” In May 1990, during preparations for a meeting with American Intelligence analysts, a briefing was held in the research division of Israel military intelligence. “We knew,” says one of the officers who participated, “that the reforms weren’t working, that Gorbachev had no answers to the economic crisis, but we never imagined that within less than 18 months the USSR would vanish as if it had never existed. When it happened we were all amazed. After 70 years of studying the USSR and communism, the West found out that we had no idea what was really going on there.” The big questions are, therefore: Why didn’t they understand? Was it possible to know? Were there sufficient signs to conclude that the Soviet Union was marching rapidly to its demise as a superpower and a united country?

5 The Writing on the Wall

THE SIGNS OF CRISIS DURING GORBACHEV’S TENURE The rapid disintegration of the Soviet Empire also surprised the incumbents in the Kremlin as well as the government and party machine, including the academics who served them. To the question, why were they surprised, there is no good answer. The signs of an ever-intensifying crisis were there for anyone to see. Unlike the usual ruling response ever since the 1917 October revolution, this time there was no attempt to hide the crisis or its extent. Perhaps because it was so deep and widespread, it was not possible to do so. The rapid expansion of the media also played a role, as the security services were no longer able to control information available to the public. Yuri Andropov, who served as KGB chairman until he succeeded Brezhnev as Communist Party secretary general, was considered a shrewd, dynamic and intelligent personality with his feet firmly on the ground, unlike his two predecessors. Andropov knew very well that the KGB was part of the regime and therefore part of the disease, and as such incapable of providing an objective assessment. When he reached the top of the Soviet hierarchy, he ordered a panel of experts to examine various aspects of Soviet life. He wanted to verify his feeling that something was rotten in his empire and invite proposals to remedy the situation. This initiative resulted in the Novosibirsk Report prepared by a team led by sociologist Tatyana Zaslavskaya. The report harshly criticized centralization, that is, the regimes core ideology, arguing that instead of creating harmony, it contributed to chaos and conflicts of interest. The report went on to recommend radical changes in the structure and economy of the USSR. However, Andropov died before it was known whether he intended to adopt it or to exile its authors. Mikhail Gorbachev found the Novosibirsk Report on his desk when he took office in March 1985. Shortly afterward he announced a new policy: perestroika (restructuring). No mention was made of revolution or even far-reaching reforms. The immediate target was to accelerate (uskorenie, in Russian) economic

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development, more or less in traditional centralized parameters and still under the heading of “building socialism.” Gorbachev soon found out that what the economy needed was not accel eration, but a real revolution. It is impossible to accelerate a nonfunctioning system. He needed a more fundamental and comprehensive economic reform. So he adopted the Novosibirsk Report and co-opted its author onto a team to carry it out. In the naive yet presumptuous way of every new broom, Gorbachev believed he could run the show far more efficiently than his predecessors. He exploited the unquestioned authority of the position of secretary general to replace ministers and staff like an NBA coach in a panic. However, his apparatchiki, with their livelihoods threatened, torpedoed his reforms. By 1986 it was already clear to Gorbachev that implementing his general reform policy would be difficult under prevailing Soviet conditions, perhaps even hopeless. He repeated his predecessors’ mistakes and decided to go for “spot” improvements. Vodka, for instance. He forbade the sale of alcohol during most hours of the day and reduced the number of places where it could be bought. The secretary general was roundly cursed by the drinkers who had been deprived of their bottles. The echoes reached the Kremlin, but Gorbachev did not give in. The “vodka war” diminished state revenues drastically. Instead of factories producing vodka under official supervision, home-brew production proliferated, creating a health hazard that cost the state 16 billion rubles (then $16 billion) in revenue. From vodka Gorbachev moved to television. The difference in quality between Western and Soviet television sets enraged him, and he attempted to impose quality control on the entire industry. As a first step he gave inspectors the authority to send flawed products back to the plant. This was a move toward a market economy. In a regime where production itself was sacred and complaints about slight flaws were considered bourgeois decadence, the ruling drew huge protests from workers’ committees, managers and regional party functionaries. Langley and other Western intelligence services following the USSR did not think that the measures introduced by Gorbachev called for special attention. No intelligence service went on alert or noticed anything unusual when Gorbachev began to implement his reforms, even at the cost of damaging the very fabric of the communist regime. In the meantime, the Soviet mood and, more importantly, the Soviet citizen’s economic well being were rapidly deteriorating. Events unfamiliar in communist regimes, and certainly previously taboo in the media, were being splashed on the front pages: anti-Afghanistan war demonstrations; protests by families of the casualties of the war; wild-cat strikes, the most widely reported being the coalminers’ strike in Siberia. In Azerbaijan, armed demonstrators clashed with Communist Party officials. Gorbachev, vacillating between a peace delegation and sending in the Red Army against the Azeris, faced unexpected opposition. Furious parents protested,

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insisting that their sons be kept out of the fighting. Gorbachev was forced to halt the airlifts of troops to Azerbaijan. The atmosphere in Moscow during 1987 was one of extreme urgency, similar to the severe crises of 1921, 1932 and 1941. Then, however, the USSR was ruled by a cruel and determined despot, and resolving the crises was only a matter of time and the extent of suffering and brutality inflicted on the populace. Now, it appeared that the battleship USSR had lost its way and its captain was unsure how to steer it to safe waters. The exposure of economic failures, the publication of unrealistic rehabilitation plans, the myriad revelations of corruption and inefficiency, exacerbated the dark mood and provided fertile ground for intense criticism of the regime. In the summer of 1989 a shortage of tobacco led to unrest throughout the USSR. Severe drought hit the wheat harvest and reduced the projected crop by one-fifth. On 4 February 1990, some 100,000 Muscovites marched in protest against the Communist Party. This was the biggest demonstration in 60 years neither organized nor approved by the KGB. The secretary general attempted to forestall the growing criticism of the party and its functionaries. On 7 February, the Party Central Committee acceded to Gorbachev’s demand that they give up their “special privileges beyond what is decided by the people.” However, even this gesture did nothing to stem the unrest. Within the USSR the situation had grown so bad that in the summer of 1990 for the first time “since the 1917 revolution,” according to Izvestia, there was a shortage of flour. Other basic commodities also ran out, causing panic in the Kremlin and on the streets. However, apart from sporadic demonstrations, the situation was accepted with relative equanimity. The continuing crisis forced Gorbachev to come up with yet another emergency plan. It called for massive budget cuts in government ministries, the army and the KGB, the sale of government properties and the transfer of government farms to private farmers, as well as the lifting of price controls. But the radical economic measures failed and the economic crisis deepened. In desperation Gorbachev turned to the West. He needed massive injections of credit and advanced technology. And he was prepared to pay for them. INTERNAL WEAKNESS AND FOREIGN POLICY Gorbachev knew that it was the missing loaf of bread that had brought the demonstrators to Red Square. He urgently needed foreign credit and he was prepared to pay a high price in foreign policy in order to get it: cutbacks in strategic weapons, pull-back from Afghanistan, relaxing the hold on the Soviet satellites and the reunification of Germany. He understood what Western intelligence could not grasp. The Kremlin had lost its ability to maintain the strategic balance and, what was worse, it was not in a position to bargain. It was begging for Western charity.

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In spring 1987, the editor of Time magazine asked Gorbachev how internal developments in the USSR had influenced his foreign policy. Gorbachev retorted impatiently: “You know our domestic plan of perestroika. Draw your own conclusions about what kind of a foreign policy these plans require.” Gorbachev’s statements and deeds testify that he was different from his predecessors, a new breed of Soviet leader, open and creative, determined to make changes at home and place relations with the West on a new footing. Still, the crucial question was whether he, or any other leader, was capable of repairing the system that had brought the USSR to the brink of collapse. A few months after Gorbachev’s comment to Time, his foreign minister, Edward Shevardnadze, responded in a similar vein when asked about Soviet foreign policy: “If foreign policy is an extension of domestic policy…then diplomacy’s goal is to form an external environment that is favorable for internal development.” The Soviet leadership of the mid-1980s realized that the continued existence of the USSR in the increasingly open global village meant that the Soviets had to join the family of nations and play according to Western rules. Not everyone in the West grasped this, and those who did understand did not necessarily rush to help the USSR change its spots. Gorbachev’s gestures persuaded Western European leaders to be “magnanimous.” A meeting of European leaders in Rome decided to grant the USSR $2.4 billion in food and medical supplies. But these were bargain prices considering that in return the Soviets were dismantling their strategic assets in Eastern Europe. For the USSR the emergency aid was too little, too late, and did not arrest its decline. And while the aid did not improve the economic situation in the Soviet Union, it whittled away at its power to bargain with the West. The USSR was on its knees. Most Western leaders were not aware of this, and those who were wanted the USSR to remain that way. On 7 December 1988, Gorbachev announced that the USSR would reduce its army by 500,000 men (some 10 per cent of the force) within two years. It would also cut back weapons, including artillery and about 10,000 tanks. President Bush responded by lifting the embargo on agricultural aid to the USSR, giving Gorbachev a much-needed $1 billion loan and recommending that the World Bank grant him special aid. A few months later, in May, the Soviet parliament passed a law allowing Soviet citizens freedom of movement and the right to emigrate, hoping that this would convince the Americans to lift the last of the economic barriers they had imposed. Taking full advantage of Gorbachev’s problems, Secretary of State James Baker proposed another disarmament agreement in which the USSR would give up its advantage in conventional weapons. The Soviet foreign minister, who signed the agreement, asked Baker if the obstacles to granting the massive economic aid requested by the USSR were now removed. Baker responded that “the question was still being discussed,” thus leaving Gorbachev to face both the

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internal domestic crisis and Boris Yeltsin, President of the Russian Republic, who was waiting in the wings to depose him. Ironically, it was the Germans, the most vulnerable, who took the most conciliatory position toward the USSR and were most willing to help Gorbachev financially. This policy had a long history. As early as 1973, Willy Brandt, then West German chancellor, gave a speech in the Bundestag calling for negotiations with the USSR and suggesting confidence-building measures as a basis for security and disarmament in Europe. In 1975, Chancellor Helmut Schmidt said that West Germany, as a central state in Europe, should play a leading role in promoting détente. However, in 1986, Chancellor Kohl, who initially toed the line with the Reagan and Bush Administrations, described Gorbachev as a modern communist and public relations wizard, and compared him to the Nazi propaganda chief Josef Goebbels. Kohl later apologized for this remark and radically changed his attitude. By 1988, he was aware, perhaps earlier than other Western leaders, that a new era was dawning. He published a letter he received from the East German leader Erich Honnecker, which described arms limitation in Europe as a common interest for “our states” and all of Europe. In early 1989, the Chinese and the Soviets signed an agreement putting into effect Gorbachev’s commitment to withdraw Soviet troops from Mongolia. Thirty years of hostility and border clashes, which forced the Soviets to post 1 million men on the Chinese frontier, came to an end. At the same time the Soviets moved from confrontation to cooperation with the US in the Third World, helping to settle conflicts in which both were involved. Moscow worked to end its Vietnamese ally’s control over Cambodia and interceded with Cuba to end its involvement in Angola. The Soviet need for foreign currency and vital imports was too great for the Kremlin to cease selling arms to states which paid hard currency, such as Nicaragua, but it gradually cut the supply lines to states that bought on credit, and increased the pressure on others, Syria for instance, to repay their debts. In April 1990, Gorbachev went to Japan to ask for economic assistance. He was ready to accede to any condition as long as he got the money. At the end of May, he met with Kohl and agreed to further cooperation between the two Germanys, which meant the creation of a new center of power in Europe and the opening of the road to German unification. It was a move in stark contrast to the Soviet Union’s historic perception of its strategic interests. The accord cost the Germans $7.5 billion, a bargain in historical terms, for a priceless strategic asset. The money was partly to compensate for Moscow’s agreement to give way but also covered the actual cost of withdrawing the Soviet military units, some 300,000 men, from East Germany. On 12 September, the charter for Germany’s re-unification was signed. Four years later, and three years after the collapse of the USSR, the last of the Red Army troops withdrew from German soil. On 6 July 1990, after meeting with NATO leaders, Bush formally announced that the Cold War was over. Signaling the turning over of a new historical leaf,

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he invited Gorbachev to Brussels, where NATO was discussing a new policy for its members. At the end of the same year, the USSR joined the international coalition, lead by the US, which banded together to drive the Iraqis from Kuwait. Gorbachev abandoned a client, Saddam Hussein, and collaborated with an enemy, George Bush. There had been nothing like it since the “Great Patriotic War” against the Nazis. THE LIBERATION OF EASTERN EUROPE While Gorbachev was struggling, unsuccessfully, to implement the reforms necessary to halt the economic and social disintegration of the USSR, the ebbing strength of the Soviet giant did not go unnoticed by the nations of Eastern Europe. They consequently began to shake off the failing embrace of their Soviet master and their own communist regimes. The USSR, which had controlled these countries with an iron fist for 45 years, stood idly by as its satellites detached themselves. The “Brezhnev doctrine” was buried without a death certificate being issued. There had been previous attempts to shake free from the Soviet and communist embrace: in 1953 in East Germany, in 1956 in Hungary, and in 1968 in Czechoslovakia. These uprisings had been brutally suppressed. The first indication of erosion in the Soviet resolve to keep its satellites on a tight rein came in the 1970s when the Kremlin allowed the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu to conduct a somewhat independent foreign policy, as long as it did not conflict with Soviet interests. At the start of the 1980s, the monolithic Polish Communist Party began to crack. Moscow allowed the Solidarity movement and the Catholic Church to operate as political parties on condition that the communists retained their supremacy and their special ties to the Kremlin. These were the parameters set by Moscow. However, once the façade began to crack, it was only a matter of time before the whole edifice came tumbling down. Gorbachev’s failures and most importantly, his weakness, gave the opposition movements in Eastern Europe a new lease of life. At last, their hour had come. Their activists well knew that the local communist leaderships had no chance in free elections. Nor did they have the strength or the resolve to confront the masses without the support of big brother—the USSR. Once the spark was lit, in the middle of the 1980s, it did not take long for the explosion in 1989, which lead directly to the fall, one after the other, of the communist leaders of Eastern Europe and of the Soviet republics themselves. Poland was the harbinger. It had been the first to come under the communist yoke following its liberation by the Red Army. But the Poles were first of all nationalists and believing Catholics and only lastly communists. In 1956 the Polish leader Wladyslaw Gomulka tried to lessen the influence of Moscow, but it was only in 1980, when the Solidarity movement was established, that Moscow’s hegemony was seriously challenged. Solidarity started as a trade union

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movement, but quickly garnered wide support and became a political movement, after surviving an abortive attempt to suppress it in 1981. In the twilight years of the aged, ailing Leonid Brezhnev, bogged down in the Afghan impasse, the Kremlin decided against military suppression in Poland. This opened the way to a series of strikes in 1988, which compelled the Polish President General Wojciech Jaruzelski to start talking to Solidarity. This led to elections in June 1989, the first free elections in Eastern Europe since 1946. Solidarity’s success at the ballot box forced Jaruzelski to include it in the ruling coalition. Within months, with Solidarity leading the government, the communist era in Poland was over. The Hungarian rebellion, led by Imre Nagy, broke out in 1956—the year that Gomulka began his semi-independent path in Poland. The masses took to the streets to express their hatred for Moscow and communism. Soviet tanks were sent in to put down the uprising and Janos Kadar, head of the Communist Party, was installed as leader. Kadar managed to open Hungarian society a little without raising the ire of the Kremlin, and introduced some liberalization (“goulash communism”) into the regime. He was quite popular, but economic failure led to his downfall in 1988. In 1989, the Communist Party split, changed its name to the Hungarian Socialist Party and adopted a liberal platform. In 1990, multi-party elections were introduced, heralding the end of the era of Hungarian Communist Party rule. The Hungarian decision to open its border with East Germany, and allow the free passage of East Germans to the West, hastened the liberation of East Germany from communist domination. The Iron Curtain was lifted, the Berlin Wall lost its purpose, and its demolition by enraptured crowds awaited the right symbolic moment. East Germany was ruled by orthodox communists whose ties to Moscow were closer than those to their own people. Apart from one abortive workers’ strike in 1953, which was put down ruthlessly with the help of Soviet tanks, the Germans deferred to their secretary general and his counterpart in the Kremlin. After the violent suppression of the strike, however, many East Germans voted with their feet. Hundreds of thousands slipped across the border on dark, moonless nights and joined their brothers in prosperous West Germany. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev recognized that the continual stream of defections to the West from his own country and from the satellites had a significant impact on the morale of the whole communist system. And in 1961, he ordered the erection of the Berlin Wall. Controls were tightened. The East German security services were bolstered and East Germany was second only to the USSR in the draconian discipline imposed on its citizens. The first cracks began to appear in 1989. The new spirit that was sweeping through Europe compelled the East German regime to ease restrictions and allow free movement to other states in the Eastern bloc. Once again East Germans voted with their feet. In the first few days after the easing of travel restrictions, 120,000 citizens left for Hungary and from there to Austria. The regime then began

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allowing limited exits via the Berlin Wall and before long it came tumbling down. The heads of the Stasi security service realized that the end was near. Instead of fighting a lost battle, they began feathering their nests in preparation for the new tomorrow. At first it appeared that the winds of change were bypassing the totalitarian Bulgarian communist regime. But the gusts reached Sofia in 1989 and despite desperate efforts by the communists to hold onto power they were compelled to make way for the new forces. In Czechoslovakia, the “Prague Spring” uprising of 1968 was fondly remembered, but the bloodshed and repression that followed was not forgotten. A small group of activists, among them Vaclav Havel, kept the spirit of resistance alive. In 1989, hundreds of thousands demonstrated daily in the streets of Prague demanding free elections. This led to the resignation of the communist regime on 24 November 1989, and a new era dawned in Czechoslovakia as well. Romania was the only country in which the overthrow of the communist regime involved bloodshed. Romanian leader Nicolae Ceausescu had pursued a relatively more independent foreign policy than other Soviet satellites. Romania pulled out of the Warsaw Pact and demanded that the Soviets remove their troops from its territory. However, Ceausescu’s 28 years of despotic rule were as repressive as any other in the Eastern bloc. After students were killed in uprisings in 1989, Ceausescu tried to flee. He was caught and executed. There had been some sort of opposition to the Communist Party in almost every East European country. In most cases, it was dormant apart from a few active dissidents, who were hounded by the regimes, and usually wound up spending long years in prison. Moscow intervened when it believed that the opposition constituted a threat to the regime—as it did in East Germany in 1953, in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968. In each case, the communist regime, actively aided and abetted by the Red Army, brutally suppressed the civil uprising before it became a mass movement. But this did not erase hostility to the communist regimes and their repressive systems. Hatred of communism and of the Kremlin, whose bayonets helped keep the oppressive regimes in power, simmered under the surface throughout Eastern Europe. By the 1980s, the national and international climates were such that the Kremlin and its satellite regimes were unable to use brute force to suppress mass dissent. Still, all the politicians and pundits, including the Western intelligence services, continued to regard the USSR as an unscrupulous, brutal power, ready to impose its hegemony over its neighbors at any price. The reality though was very different. Indeed, there is no doubt that the institution of Gorbachev’s liberal policies was instrumental in the timing and rate of the collapse of the East European communist regimes. In May 1989, in a speech in Bucharest, Gorbachev stunned the Romanians by encouraging them to follow the democratic path being implemented in the USSR. Four months later, on 25 December 1989, Nicolae Ceausescu, the last Stalinist

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ruler in Europe, was executed. A confused and uncertain Romania set out on the road to democracy. On 26 February 1990, Gorbachev agreed to the demand of Czechoslovakia’s new non-communist President, Vaclav Havel, to speed up withdrawal of Soviet military units and to put an end to the joint anti-Western activities of the KGB and its Czech counterpart. A few days later, Chancellor Kohl visited Moscow. He and Gorbachev agreed that “only the German people had the right to decide if they wanted to live in one state” to which Gorbachev added that Germany “would have to take our local defense problems into account.” The ruler of the Soviet Union thus, in effect, agreed to the reunification of Germany and to the unilateral withdrawal of Soviet troops in Europe. THE NATIONALITY PROBLEM IN THE USSR The difficulties which beset growing sectors of the Soviet population at the beginning of Gorbachev’s reign did not spark mass protests against the central government or the local governments in the republics. However, it became increasingly obvious that the Kremlin had no answers to the severe problems plaguing the country. In addition, when the member states of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics began to perceive weakness and lack of resolve in the Kremlin, some flexed their muscles and embarked on a course of confrontation with the central government. This was the situation when Boris Yeltsin, the President of Russia, announced that he would run against Gorbachev for the leadership of the USSR. Never before had anyone ventured to stand for election against the secretary general, the candidate of the Communist Party. At the same time, Yeltsin pushed for a lesser role for the central government and for broadening the powers of the republics. He was already running the Russian republic as if the USSR did not exist. The diminishing authority of the Kremlin fueled the separatist leanings of the various nations in the republics that made up the USSR. The Baltic states, encouraged by the West, had never really come to terms with their inclusion in the Soviet Union. While the Soviet master remained aggressive, threatening and ready to back up its dominion with force, opposition remained low-key. But as the 1980s progressed, the independence movements in the Baltic States, led by Lithuania, gained momentum. The first indication of a nationalist awakening came in 1984, with an attempted coup in Mongolia. Some experts predicted that the nations of the Central Asian republics would prove to be the central government’s biggest challenge. But, in retrospect, although they climbed onto the separatist bandwagon to further their own national interests, they played no more than a minor role in propelling it forward.

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In 1986, hundreds of students, shouting slogans against the Kremlin, demonstrated in Alma Ata, the capital of Kazakhstan. In May 1988, 100,000 demonstrators in Armenia railed against Moscow, protesting its role in the disputed Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan and in December they protested against Moscow’s impotence in dealing with a severe earthquake that devastated the area. In 1989, massive protest strikes broke out again in Nagorno-Karabakh and open conflict erupted between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Separatist flames, ignited in the Baltic states and Georgia, spread to the Ukraine. The protests were directed against local Communist Party regimes, but Moscow could not ignore the implications for the integrity of the union. Indeed, within months, it was facing open demands for independence in the Ukraine, Lithuania and Georgia. In March 1990, thumbing its nose at Moscow, the Lithuanian parliament unilaterally declared the country independent. Gorbachev, who had initially sought to put relations between Moscow and the Baltics on a new footing, had backtracked under pressure from Kremlin hardliners and fear of the domino effect. But a domino effect was exactly what his do-nothing policy caused. On 18 December 1990, the republics, one after another, announced their independence. Gorbachev hastily cobbled together a new charter of unity, but Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Georgia and Moldavia were not interested. They continued preparations for breaking ties with the USSR and reclaiming their preSecond World War independence. Even the president of Uzbekistan, who was not enthusiastic about leaving the USSR, expressed dissatisfaction with Gorbachev’s proposed charter, as did most of the other republics. The arguments between the Kremlin and the republics were not over whether the world would be a better place without socialism, but over taxes, natural resources and control of the police. Lithuania, which had announced its independence, chose not to send representatives to the people’s congress convened to discuss the future of the USSR. Armenia and Azerbaijan refused to sign the new charter because of the longstanding Nagorno-Karbakh dispute. Only Byelorussia and the five Muslim republics in the East, all economically dependent on Russia and the Ukraine, opted at that point to maintain their ties with the central government. The Ukraine was willing in principle to sign the charter but did not seem to be in a hurry to do so. It soon became clear that Russia was on its own and that the real struggle was between Gorbachev and Yeltsin. The question was not whether Moscow would continue to rule the republics, but who would rule Moscow. In fact, most of the republics’ leaders were waiting for Yeltsin, who led the Russian republic, the largest and richest, and who constantly managed to undermine the institutions of central government and the Kremlin’s authority. Gorbachev was preoccupied with personal and national survival, when a radical group in the Kremlin, headed by KGB chairman Kryuchkov, made its first moves to get the Soviet Union back on course. In early February 1991, the KGB chairman sent a top-secret memo to the secretary general claiming that the

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acute situation prevailing in the USSR threatened perestroika and the process of democratization. Kryuchkov added that US policy seemed to be aimed at causing the collapse of the USSR. He ended by recommending that Gorbachev take firm steps to restore order and discipline. On 15 March, the Soviet people were asked in a referendum: “Do you support the preservation of the union as a reconstructed federation of sovereign republics?” The results were not clear-cut, and as might be expected, each side claimed that the answer supported its position. Yeltsin did not give in. He called on his supporters to take to the streets and demand Gorbachev’s removal. Gorbachev responded with an order forbidding street demonstrations, but Moscow was Russian territory and 100,000 Yeltsin supporters took to the streets, where they were faced by 50,000 soldiers deployed to keep the peace. No one stopped the demonstration, which marched to the Kremlin, and everyone, including the CIA and the KGB, waited anxiously to see what would happen next. In 1992, after the dissolution of the USSR, an international conference dealing with the nations of the former Soviet Union was held in the Latvian capital of Riga. The most intriguing presence was that of some KGB veterans who had served in the directorate that dealt with nationalities and minorities. According to them, the KGB had never regarded the various nationalities as a political problem and believed, even in the 1980s, that it was possible to ensure their continued linkage to Moscow. Washington did not attach much importance to the national issue in the USSR either. Paul Goble was the only person in the US administration in the summer of 1988 who dealt full-time with the topic. He points out that since the KGB did not appear to be taking the various national groups too seriously, neither did Washington. Two academics, though, did take the issue very seriously. Indeed, the French and American Sovietologists, Helen D’Encausse and Murray Feshbach, thought the main danger to the Soviet Union’s future as a single united entity was the demographic problem posed by the separate nationalities making up the giant country. In her 1978 book, The Decline of Empire, D’Encausse predicted that the end of communism would be caused by a volcanic eruption of the Soviet national minorities. She contended that the rate of natural increase in the Asian republics threatened to upset the demographic-cultural balance in the USSR and to endanger the stability of the regime. US Senator Daniel Moynihan, who maintained a complex long-term relationship with US intelligence, believed that the Soviet nationalities would ultimately prevent the USSR from continuing under a single, central regime. According to Feshbach, a demographer and ecological expert, the perilous state of sanitation in the country posed a great danger to the future of the USSR. As a result of ecological neglect, bordering on the criminal, the USSR would suffer from the spread of infectious diseases, a high infant mortality rate and the destructive influences on the populace, the

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rivers and the earth. The economists, for their part, believed that it was the economic system that would “break” the USSR. They all were right. Moreover, the low level of sanitation also affected military capability. There was a constant increase in the number of 18-year-olds rejected for army service on medical grounds. Because of the breakdown in the educational system many recruits from the periphery could not speak Russian. This prevented them from being integrated in command and technological positions. This, in turn, contributed to low morale among recruits from the republics and undermined their identification with the activities of the Red Army. THE MILITARY THREAT AND THE RED ARMY’S PERFORMANCE The crucial question for Western intelligence was: What was the likelihood of the Soviets utilizing their military might? And, even more critical, what would drive them to use nuclear weapons? No one was prepared to state unequivocally that the Soviets would not unleash the dogs of war, or that they did not mean what they said when they talked about the ultimate victory of communism. On the other hand, no one was prepared to go out on a limb and assert that the Soviets meant what they said when they talked of peace. In April 1987, about 100 senior Red Army officers gathered in the Kremlin to discuss ways of countering a future enemy. The main topic on the agenda was the role of Soviet nuclear arms, and the main presentation could not have been more startling. The highly illuminating insight into Soviet nuclear doctrine in the Gorbachev era came from no less a personage than Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, chief of the general staff, who suggested that nuclear weapons be regarded as a deterrent rather than an offensive option. The other participants sat up. This new definition was not on the agenda, but Lieutenant General Dudnik, who was among those present, is convinced that Ogarkov’s suggestion had been approved at the highest level. Dudnik clearly remembers how the chief of staff presented the new nuclear doctrine for the first time in what was, to all intents and purposes, a public discussion: “Here are the enemy’s forces drawing closer to us,” Ogarkov breathed dramatically, waving his hand. “And now we raise our atomic fist,” he went on, suiting action to words while staring around the room. There was complete silence. It was the first time that this forum had ever heard an unambiguous statement about the Red Army’s nuclear policy. Ogarkov continued: “This fist will be raised as long as the enemy continues to draw closer.” The audience was holding its breath. “The enemy is steadily progressing!” Ogarkov rumbled, “and we announce a rise in our level of alertness.” His fist was still upraised and his voice grew louder: “The enemy carries out a threatening move on our border, and we announce our readiness to use limited nuclear force. At this point we face a situation of limited use and

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limited destruction-range of nuclear weapons… From here on the level of nuclear response will go up.” His voice returned to normal: “From this moment on everything becomes as simple as a game of cards.” The faces of many of the generals at the meeting expressed utter amazement. No one dared ask for an explanation, and Ogarkov continued in businesslike fashion: “The rules of the game must be made clear. The enemy must also know exactly what we are going to do.” As he came to the end of his speech, his tone became more dramatic and he pounded the table with his fist: “This is the way to prevent the next nuclear war.” Dudnik is convinced that “all those present at the meeting understood that Ogarkov was explaining new Kremlin guidelines, namely that the USSR was relinquishing the offensive nuclear option.” In September 1988, about four months before George Bush’s new administration took over, Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Georgi Kornienko declared: “We have abandoned the Brezhnev doctrine and the concept of limited sovereignty… No state and no party has the right to force its ideas on another state, even if the ideas are better.” According to Western intelligence estimates, Soviet annual military production in the second half of the 1980s was over 2,500 tanks, about 1,300 airplanes and 15,000 anti-aircraft missiles. Thus, the Pentagon’s 1989 publication, Soviet Military Power, could still depict the Soviet military potential as most threatening. It certainly did seem extremely warlike on the maps and diagrams showing Soviet expansion throughout the world and potential Red Army deployment threatening most of the free world, including Times Square. Red Army General Vladimir Lubov moves from derision to anger when confronted by this publication with its graphic illustrations and its assessment of Soviet political and military intentions. “Didn’t we produce a similar publication about the United States?” he asks. “Didn’t we draw arrows showing the Sixth Fleet’s deployment and American bases around the world, in particular bordering our country and our allies?” As for the frightening quantities of weapons displayed in the Pentagon publication, Lubov explains that the Red Army was rightly accused in Moscow of deliberately circulating exaggerated data to demonstrate ostensible parity with the West. “It was sheer propaganda,” he states, “and I really don’t understand why the West opted to believe the fiction that we were equal or stronger.” Leslie Gelb, a National Security Council staffer in the 1970s and previously a senior journalist with the New York Times, admits that “we knew that what the Soviets had didn’t match our strength. They needed three tanks for every one of ours, because their military equipment constantly broke down.” The reason? “They didn’t have a proper maintenance system, so instead of making repairs they produced more.” The result? “Soviet military industry produced more weapons than needed, to ensure that in case of military confrontation they could replace weapons that broke down.” What about the US Army, according to Gelb? “Damaged American tanks are repaired on the spot.” And aircraft? “The Soviets had double the number we had, but when you compare their quality and

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operational capabilities, you realize straight away that their planes were inferior,” asserts Gelb, in the 1990s, when he was chairman of the Council for Foreign Relations. The true condition of the Red Army was made public only after the USSR collapsed. On 20 November 1994, Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grechov described it as “catastrophic.” Only 40 per cent of Russian forces were equipped with modern weapons. By the year 2000 only 10 per cent of the soldiers would be adequately outfitted. The situation in other republics was no better. This was not new; it predated the collapse. What about the men themselves? In 1980, 28 per cent of new Soviet military recruits came from seven republics: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Khirgizia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. By the 1990s, the number had increased to 37 per cent, which was also the per centage of those who did not speak Russian. Health was also a growing problem; an increasing number of 18year-olds were rejected for army service on medical grounds, in particular liver and kidney diseases, ulcers and nervous disorders; and among those who were recruited an alarming level of infectious diseases was discovered, including typhus, hepatitis, diphtheria and even smallpox. Soviet intelligence was no different from its American counterpart in its assessment of the enemy. Every year the Soviets produced a document reviewing the American military threat. “We published accurate data, of course,” says Gorbachev’s Foreign Minister Bessmertnykh, “but the data were presented in a way which served our propaganda goals, impressed our public, and helped us get larger allocations for defense purposes.” After reflecting a little, he adds ruefully, “There were people on both sides who refused to accept reality.” After the collapse, Soviet four-star General Mahmud Gareeve told Fritz Emarth, who chaired the NIC at the end of the 1970s, that the Soviet army had not contributed to the arms race. It was the Soviet military industry that produced weaponry the army had not ordered and did not need. Gareeve added that when the army asked for production to be halted, the response was: “What do you want us to do with all the plants we built? Where will we employ all those hundreds of thousands of workers?” Defense Minister Dimitry Ustinov used to hint that he would not allow the Red Army to be blamed for causing unemployment. In December 1988, in a dramatic announcement to the UN General Assembly, Gorbachev declared that he was putting to rest fears about Soviet interference in the affairs of other countries. He promised to slash the Red Army’s order of battle by six divisions and 5,000 tanks in Eastern Europe and to reduce the Soviet defense budget by 14.2 per cent. In fact, Gorbachev was not doing anyone any favors. Anyone who accepted his announcement at face value as a Soviet contribution to improving ties with the West was being somewhat naive. It was already patently obvious that the USSR could not keep up the extent and rate of military production and could not afford to maintain the infrastructure of the Red Army and the military industries. A

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drastic reduction in defense spending was first and foremost essential for the Soviet Union itself, and perhaps its only chance for economic salvation. The CIA was not impressed by Gorbachev’s announcement. According to the US intelligence community’s data, the deployment of Red Army and Warsaw Pact forces in Eastern Europe was still intimidating: 180 army divisions (the US had 19), 1,398 ICBMs (the US had 1,040), 50,000 tanks (to 5,000), 350 submarines (to 121) and an operational civilian defense system (the US possessed nothing similar). The Soviet defense ministry spokesman said later that the cuts were unilateral, but expressed the hope that the US and West European countries would take similar steps. Although his statement was ostensibly directed to the West, it was meant for Gorbachev, who for the first time faced public Red Army opposition. Soviet Chief of Staff General Sergei Akhromeyev opposed the unilateral cuts and demanded they be made conditional on similar cuts within NATO forces stationed in Europe. The last time cuts had been made in the Red Army was at the end of the Korean War, during Khrushchev’s tenure. Then, too, the military establishment has strongly opposed the unilateral reduction of forces, so much so that it joined the growing camp of Khrushchev’s opponents, a move that later led to his removal from office. Gorbachev was familiar with Soviet history and well aware of the danger. But he had already passed the point of no return. He understood that his most pressing problem was the economy, and he was determined to reduce military expenditure and improve relations with the West. Still, American intelligence remained suspicious. It did not regard Gorbachev as someone who meant what he said. Neither was it prepared to acknowledge that the USSR was changing direction, that it had given up the goal of strategic parity and was trying to fit into the community of nations. The specter of Soviet nuclear power still mesmerized US intelligence. No one, including the CIA, dared to say that the military threat posed by the USSR had been defused. As for Soviet intentions, the USSR had already rejected, back in Brezhnev’s early years, the American doctrine known as MAD—Mutually Assured Destruction—in the event of nuclear confrontation. A sort of frenzy set in after the first SALT agreement was signed in 1972. The debate was waged between Defense Minister Ustinov and Chief of Staff Ogarkov, with the latter clinging to the theory that victory could be achieved even in the nuclear age. In 1982, with Andropov’s election, Ogarkov changed his view: “To start a nuclear war,” he wrote in an article in Izvestia, “would be suicidal.” Another newspaper, Krasnaya Zvesda (Red Star), published a critique, claiming that Ogarkov had “shaken off the concept according to which a limited first strike is possible.” For the US, however, the USSR was and remained a nuclear enemy until its actual collapse. Secretary of State James Baker exemplified the attitude of policy makers in the late 1980s. “You can’t say that 50,000 nuclear warheads don’t represent a threat,” he says. “It was always there. At the same time, I felt we exaggerated a little.” Baker today admits that “the USSR was not poised to

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launch a nuclear attack. But,” he adds, “we did not base our strategy on what we thought their intentions were. We based our plans on Soviet capabilities.” The internal crises had no effect on the makers of Soviet policy in Washington. In May 1989, Baker visited Moscow. Gorbachev surprised him by bringing up a proposal for mutual reduction of the nuclear stockpile in Europe by the end of that year. It was rejected as an attempt to upstage Baker on his first visit to the Soviet capital. Baker’s aides conceded that they had been surprised by Gorbachev’s urge for arms control, as they had intended to stress regional problems and international terror. At his meeting with Baker, Gorbachev reported that he planned to “bring home 40,000 tanks, 47,000 artillery pieces and 42,000 armored vehicles, 1 million soldiers out of a total of 1.3 million stationed in East Europe, as well as 1,500 fighter planes and 1,700 helicopters.” Baker’s comment on Gorbachev’s reduction plan to reporters who accompanied him on his flight was: “It’s a step in the right direction, but a very small one.” In the light of past experience, Baker’s caution was not totally devoid of political and defense logic. It stemmed partly from a degree of confusion over the quantity of Soviet nuclear warheads deployed in Europe. According to Western estimates, the Soviets had about 30,000 nuclear warheads while the Americans had only half that number. Moreover, the Pentagon’s 1989 summary Soviet Military Power claimed that the Soviets were refurbishing their short-range nuclear weapons and SS-25 ICBMs. They had replaced the obsolete Frog missiles with SS-21s and doubled the number, giving the Warsaw Pact an advantage of 16 to 1 over NATO in short-range nuclear missiles. The conclusion, endorsed by Bush and Defense Secretary Richard Cheney, was that a small number of determined Soviet leaders could reverse the process currently underway in the USSR. Therefore, the US had to maintain its military strength while it waited for the Soviets to honor their commitments—a small price to pay for Western security. The “small price,” as far as the US was concerned, was that percentage of the federal budget allocated for defense against the Soviet threat, and it was paid to the American military— industrial complex. No one, not even a senior member of the American intelligence community, had the slightest chance of convincing the military-industrial lobby that the enemy threat had diminished considerably and there was no longer any need to spend exorbitant sums on defense. No one even tried. Right until the actual collapse of the USSR, American intelligence continued to treat the potential Soviet threat as if it were real, and turned a blind eye to the clear signs of change in Soviet policy. The poor state of the Soviet economy, (including appalling backwardness in electronics, computers and communications), and its effect on the state of the army was totally ignored. According to former senior CIA analyst Melvin Goodman, it had been clear from the mid-1970s that the USSR was no longer the same “evil empire.” The invasion of Afghanistan was an exception to the generally cautious Soviet foreign policy. The turning point, says Goodman, was perhaps 1977. “It was then

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that Brezhnev made his famous speech at Tula, which indicated that the USSR had to make marked cuts in Soviet military expenditures because of economic difficulties. While the USSR continued to spend large amounts on the army, there were clear signs that it had reached its limits.” Goodman does not think that the Soviet collapse was the outcome of Star Wars, which was launched later. “Already in 1984 the Soviet army dismissed officers who were unwilling to accept that economic hardships and technological gaps were forcing the government to make massive cuts in military expenditure, an important indication of growing weaknesses.” Until the early 1980s, the defense establishment had always been one of the regime’s favorites. This took the form of massive investment in weapons’ development, liberal salaries and perks for officers, even when the economy was tight. There was a sharp difference between the standards of production in the military sector and the shoddy goods produced for civilians. This gap was feasible as long as the USSR was cut off from Western news sources. Citizens force-fed by the official Soviet media did not know how Westerners lived. Then the USSR began to open up to the outside world and expectations began to rise. The citizens of Moscow were no longer prepared to suffer a lowering of their standard of living in order to accommodate the production of a new fighter plane to challenge the West’s latest model. The desire to improve their lot became a dominant force among Soviet citizens. Gorbachev understood this and attempted, unsuccessfully, to reduce the armed forces share of the national pie in favor of the civilian economy. THE SOVIET UNION: A THIRD WORLD ECONOMY? By the 1980s, Soviet leaders became sharply aware of the precarious state of the union’s economy. Two of them, Yuri Andropov and Mikhail Gorbachev, were ready to adopt radical reforms. Andropov died before realizing that the economy could not be rectified within a system that defies rational economic conduct; Gorbachev battled bravely against insurmountable odds for five years. He tried to shake up the system, even daring to slay some sacred economic cows. But it was too much to ask, and his failure to produce the promised change sparked political demise and accelerated the collapse of the USSR. On a superficial level, Western intelligence read the Soviet economic picture very clearly. Much of the data was in the public domain thanks to the USSR’s increasing openness. Other information was obtained by modern espionage methods—satellite photographs and communications. The CIA tended to paint the Soviet economy in slightly too rosy a hue, but overall the data were accurate. The problem was in the interpretation of the strategic meaning of the deep economic crisis and the concomitant failure to assess its impact on the stability and survivability of the regime. The image of the Soviet superpower, powerful and threatening, remained intact despite the obvious signs of the Kremlin’s inability to cope with the steadily worsening economy and the steadily widening

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technological gap vis-à-vis the West. Critically, failure to develop advanced computer technology, vital to economic welfare as well as to the maintenance of military power, further crippled the Soviet system. The post-Second World War growth of the Soviet economy, achieved under the shadow of Stalin’s reign of terror and through the wholesale, often forced, mobilization of Soviet citizens, had been quite impressive. In a relatively short time, standards of living, education and health throughout the USSR and the communist bloc improved dramatically. For the first few years after Stalin’s death, the Soviet economy continued to make strides, with impressive annual growth of between 5.5 and 6 per cent. When Khrushchev visited the US in 1959, he boasted that by the 1970s, at the very latest by the 1980s, the USSR would catch up with America’s economic power and overtake it. This was the era in which the USSR expanded its worldwide ties and influence. Many Third World countries, which became independent in the 1960s, were impressed by the success of the USSR. Soviet propaganda gilded the lily and many of the emerging countries, embroiled in conflict with their former colonial masters, turned to the USSR for help. From the mid-1970s, the picture deteriorated rapidly. Between 1976 and 1980 the annual economic growth rate decreased to 2.7 per cent, and the downward trend continued. Abel G.Aganbegyan, a senior Soviet economist, used official statistics, most of which were available to the West, to show how Soviet production had declined between 1971 and 1980. This trend continued during most of the 11th Five-Year Plan, which ended in 1985 in economic disaster. Unemployment figures had been rising from the mid-1970s and Aganbegyan predicted that the trend would continue between 1986 and 1990. At the same time, the rate of capital investment dropped—up in 1984 by only 2 per cent. To make matters worse, the USSR suffered a series of natural disasters, which hit its agriculture-based economy. From 1979, there were seven consecutive bad harvests. Drought forced the Soviets to import 3.5 million tons of wheat in 1971, 15.6 million in 1978, and 55 million in 1984. Outdated methods, obsolete machinery and outright sabotage caused shortages in other basic crops such as cotton. In 1985, the government was forced to allocate 54.7 billion rubles in subsidies to Soviet agriculture. These vast sums and the drain of hard cash for imports had a devastating effect. The deterioration of the economy had widespread repercussions and affected the infrastructure and the army. Steel and other metal production was badly hit in 1979. In 1982, oil production rose by only 4 million tons, compared to 26 million in 1978. The USSR, the world’s biggest oil producer, was forced to cut its oil production—one of its most important sources of foreign currency. From the end of the 1970s, Soviet financial and other resources began to drain at a speed that made economic collapse a matter of time. Those familiar with Soviet industry described the USSR disparagingly as a “Congo with missiles.” Others referred to it as a military superpower with the characteristics of a Third World country. Nor did the economy perform any better

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on the local level in the republics. Moreover, many of the republics believed that the central government, which meant the Russian republic, was exploiting them economically and was the cause of many of the ills that beset them. In common with previous Soviet leaders, Leonid Brezhnev did not welcome criticism. Outspoken political comment still meant a one-way ticket to Siberia. Criticism of the economy was not appreciated either, as it cast doubt on the omniscience of the leadership. Still, back in the 1970s, several Soviet economists sounded warnings of economic deterioration and its severe repercussions. It took great courage to speak out, even if they were careful to do so in ways that could not be interpreted as anti-patriotic or as part of CIA-initiated propaganda against the socialist state. Those who dared to express criticism—Abel Aganbegyan, Tatyana Zaslavskaya and Stanislav Shatalin—were ostracized and forced to give up the privileges reserved for the nomenklatura. “Our political leadership,” said Leonid I.Abalkin, director of the Soviet Institute of Economics, affiliated to the Soviet Academy of Science, “did not want to listen. They had their own agendas and preferred to consult economists who told them what they wanted to hear.” Abalkin is convinced that the main problem that blocked the development of the Soviet economy was its technological backwardness, especially in the field of computerization. In 1981, IBM came out with the first personal computer (the PC) and ever since two American giants have dominated the computer business— Intel in hardware and Microsoft in software. The USSR lagged far behind. In 1987, in the whole of the Soviet Union there were only 200,000 PCs, most of them obsolete. In the same year, in the US more than 25 million users had their own PCs. Most modern technology involves the processing and dissemination of information. These were fields that the communist USSR kept within the purview of internal security. Computers, telephones, photocopiers and printers were regarded as potential tools for subversion and needed to be supervised. The ensuing tight control of information hampered technological development. In 1985, for example, only 23 per cent of urban families and 7 per cent of their rural cousins owned a telephone. Telephone directories were a scarce commodity. The Soviets were also way behind in a wide range of “new technologies” such as miniaturization, video, biotechnology, communications, computerized design, artificial intelligence and robotics. Moscow realized the implications of the technological gap and took steps to deal with it—by industrial espionage. Theft of technology became one of the KGB’s major missions. At the beginning of the 1980s, the CIA and the Pentagon conducted joint research to chart Soviet attempts to purchase or steal Western technology. The examination revealed that Soviet intelligence was mostly interested in fiber optics, weapon-control systems and radar systems for ballistic missiles, i.e. military technology. High-tech for civilian use was only a secondary priority in the Soviet intelligence agenda. And technology which merely raised standards of living was of no concern whatsoever. The research concluded that

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given the rapid development of Western technology, the gap would only widen and even “borrowed” technology would not help the Soviets to narrow it. The USSR was way behind the West in most areas of technology apart from certain military applications in which the Soviets invested most of their efforts. The question was whether these isolated islands were sufficient to maintain the USSR’s superpower status and allow it to compete with the US worldwide? Even more important, in view of the technological gap, did the USSR still pose a military threat to the US? Clearly, military power and military industries do not operate in a vacuum. There is a reciprocal relationship between civilian and military industry. Advanced military technology influences the civilian sphere and vice versa. Technological achievements are greater when rooted in an advanced society and a healthy economy. But not everyone recognized the symbiosis. Many politicians and US intelligence experts believed that when it came to the USSR they could make a distinction between military power that competed successfully with the US, and a civilian economic and technological gap that left the USSR far behind industrialized nations in the West. The technological gap widened even further in the 1980s, and it became clear to Gorbachev that he would not be able speed up economic recovery and certainly not to compete with the West. Worse, he realized that the fatal combination of a centrally planned economy and an unbridgeable technological gap blocked any chance of resuscitating the Soviet economy. The attempts to deal with specific problems failed. Nor was Gorbachev able to turn the economic mess around in one fell swoop. During his last two years in office, he was reduced to standing by impotently and watching the economy’s accelerated decline, as control slipped away from him. And although most of the economic facts were known, the West was largely oblivious to the process, certainly to its momentum and intensity. THE COLLAPSE Relations with the West kept improving in the wake of Soviet readiness to accept US positions on disarmament, conflict resolution in the Third World and nonintervention in East Europe. However, on the domestic front the situation continued to deteriorate. May Day in the Soviet Union was traditionally a holiday that celebrated, above all, the state of the union and its achievements. But the festivities on 1 May 1990 were gloomier than they had ever been and raised many questions. The event had always been a movable feast for intelligence services around the world. Hundreds of Kremlinologists in the West analyzed the ungainly old men who stood on the balcony overlooking Lenin’s tomb, wrapped in their heavy coats and fur hats, despite the Moscow spring. From their proximity to the secretary general, the Western world would deduce their seniority and speculate on the power struggles being waged in the Kremlin. The seating of the many

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guests, East Europeans and friendly leftists from other countries, was always seen as an indication of Soviet policy toward the Eastern bloc and other places. Now Gorbachev stood essentially alone. The small number of military men on the balcony perhaps symbolized the new era more than anything else. Lenin’s embalmed body lay in the mausoleum beneath the balcony. Behind it, along the Kremlin wall, were buried legendary leaders of the revolutionary generation. The three Ks, Keldysh, Kurchatov and Korolev, the fathers of the Soviet nuclear, ballistic missile and space industry programs, were also buried there. Everyone who had stood on that balcony since the end of the Second World War owed a debt to those heroes of the revolution. They knew that what had made the USSR a world power had more to do with the might of the nuclear bomb than the power of communist ideology. On every May Day since the victory of the revolution, every Komsomol girl and boy, everyone in an official position, had recited: “To march shoulder by shoulder with the entire Soviet people, building Socialism, strengthening the victory of the Communist Party of the USSR, led by its Central Committee, the Politburo and of course the secretary general.” Former General Dudnik remembers ending his recital in 1977 with the words: “And I personally shall march with dear Comrade Leonid Ilych Brezhnev.” In 1990, this kind of language was no longer heard on the streets of Moscow. Gorbachev reviewed the Red Army parade and wondered, with everyone else, what tomorrow would bring. No one in Moscow realized then that this would be the last Soviet May Day parade. Ahead of him Gorbachev could see the Lubliyanka KGB headquarters. A statue of the founder of Soviet intelligence, Feliks Dzerzhinsky, stood in front of the building. Next to KGB headquarters, on the edge of Red Square, was the GUM department store, where the top hierarchy of the Kremlin, the Communist Party, the KGB and the military, as well as foreigners, bought the luxuries that only they were privileged to purchase. On the other side was the Kremlin’s hospital, controlled by the KGB’s Fourth Directorate, serving the nomenklatura. The directorate could close off forests and lakes, bear hunting and fishing areas for select comrades who were slightly more equal than others. From his position on the balcony, Gorbachev might have sensed how all this was falling apart, like the cogency of the communist vision. Behind him, on the Kremlin rise, was the house built by an Italian architect for the Romanovs. Napoleon had stayed there for some months while General Kutuzov and the Russian winter lurked in wait for him on the outskirts of Moscow. For the first time since the founding of the Communist Party, thousands marched behind the official parade carrying placards decrying the KGB and calling on Gorbachev to resign. Some called out “shame” as Gorbachev and the other occupants of the balcony above the mausoleum looked on, immobilized with disbelief. However, not one Western intelligence service pricked up it ears or saw in this display a portent of the dismemberment of the USSR. The concept of the Soviet threat overshadowed everything else. A century earlier, when Turkey was the

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“sick man of Europe,” the powers of the day simply bided their time and waited for a chance to snatch its territories. But, ironically, the USSR, which was the sick man of the world, continued to be viewed as an ominous threat. As things got worse, the level of hostility between Gorbachev and the conservative forces in the country escalated. On 13 July 1990, KGB Chairman Kryuchkov came out publicly and harshly against German reunification. He attacked what he termed the introduction of capitalist economic policies and cited the abrupt appearance of Soviet millionaires as a symptom of the impending destruction of the socialist economy that had promised bread to all. Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, acting on Gorbachev’s behalf, countered by blaming the security establishment— meaning the army and the KGB—for the economic devastation. Boris Yeltsin, who had been lying in wait for the secretary general ever since Gorbachev fired him in 1987, announced his resignation from the Communist Party and the formation of a new, independent Russian party for the Russians. In late September 1990, Gorbachev declared a state of emergency to impose cuts in government spending and accelerate the privatization of national assets. Budgetary pressures at the beginning of 1991 had a devastating effect on the Soviet military-industrial complex and defense forces. The guardians of the Kremlin began to understand that the price of reform would be paid for mainly by them. This was the point at which the time bomb started to tick. Gorbachev’s opponents raised their heads and began to criticize the regime’s blunders openly. The specter of a putsch loomed. In a speech he made in parliament on 17 June, KGB Chairman Kryuchkov, a member of the politburo, dropped a bombshell, accusing the West and, by implication, Gorbachev, of plotting to destroy the USSR. He charged that Gorbachev’s contacts with the West were designed to destabilize the USSR, and claimed he possessed proof of the conspiracy. He even spoke of an American mole in the Kremlin. On the same day, Shevardnadze complained to Dick Clark, a former Democratic senator from Iowa who was visiting Moscow, that President Bush’s policy, which linked aid to reforms, helped the hardliners. He accused Secretary of State Baker of conducting a “provocative” policy and warned that Kryuchkov and Interior Minister Boris Pugo might try to use troops to neutralize parliament. The conservative elements seemed just to be waiting for the right pretext and timing to halt the slide and restore the communist regime to its former glory. They were not prepared to come to terms with the inevitable demise of the Soviet Union. The pretext was Gorbachev’s apparent readiness to downgrade the USSR into a much looser framework, in which most of the power and authority would be transferred to the republics. The timing was Gorbachev’s absence from Moscow. The secretary general ignored putsch warnings and left as planned for a vacation at his dacha on the island of Foros. On 21 August, the conspirators moved against Gorbachev, while he was vacationing with his family on Foros. For three days the secretary general and

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his wife Raisa were held prisoner there. The Kremlin was ruled by a National Emergency Committee, which included Deputy President Gennady Yaniev, KGB Chairman Kryuchkov and Defense Ministry Dimitri Yazov. However due to a firm stand by Russia’s Yeltsin, who led the resistance to the conspirators, Gorbachev was set free after three days. The conspirators, the last of the guardians of the communist regime in the USSR, were incredibly inept. Rumors of an impending plot had been an open secret in Moscow for some time. The planning was amateurish, the execution even more so. The conspirators controlled part of the army and the security forces, but did not position them at strategic junctions. The whole operation was typical of the poor performance of the crumbling Soviet regime in other spheres as well. After the failure of the coup against Gorbachev, Yeltsin put on a great show of finally releasing Russia from the yoke of the Communist Party. In doing so, he finally set the scene for the dismemberment of the USSR. New York Times reporter Bill Keller wrote that the USSR, which was born in the 1917 revolution, had been declared dead as a result of a defect at birth called communism. Gorbachev came back from Foros, but it was clear who the real boss in Moscow was; Yeltsin began a series of purges in the Russian Communist Party, while Gorbachev lost control over Soviet institutions. There was no need to wait for the abortive coup attempt to realize that virtually all systems in the USSR were about to collapse. It was also not necessary to mount special intelligence operations to obtain the information required to understand what was happening in Moscow. The writing was on the wall. Many observers, intelligence professionals, academics and journalists believe that, but for Gorbachev, the USSR would continue to exist. If he had deployed 100 tanks in the streets of Moscow and ordered them to fire on his opponents— resulting in 1,000 dead, 5,000 wounded and 10,000 sent to Siberia—the USSR would not have collapsed. They blame the man, not historical determinism or the poor performance of the communist regime, for the end of the Soviet Empire. True, Mikhail Gorbachev was the dominant force, who, by his acts and omissions, more than anyone else, shaped the historical process. He was loathed by hardline communists, who opposed his reforms and, justifiably, suspected that they would lead to the end of communism. He disappointed the reformists and liberals, because they believed that he was moving too slowly and sporadically. As his tenure waned, he appeared to lack decisiveness. In 1990–91 his popularity rapidly declined. His policies stunned and confused the West and angered Chinese and Cuban leaders, who feared a possible domino effect. He sacrificed his colleagues in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria by encouraging liberalization and preventing them from suppressing the opposition movements that sprung up. He allowed the Solidarity movement to join the government coalition in Poland, which lead to its taking over the government. He permitted the destruction of the

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Berlin Wall, thereby contributing to the reunification of Germany. He encouraged the Hungarian Communist Party to run in free elections, which led to its elimination. While East Europe was in turmoil, student protests erupted in the capital of communist China. As the protests started to spread, the Chinese leadership decided to nip them in the bud. A few tanks in Tienanmen Square in Beijing and forceful action by the security forces restored order. This reflected a marked difference in style, which clearly affected the outcome. The USSR and the East Europeans refrained from using force to protect communism, and the regimes there fell like ninepins between 1988 and 1990. In contrast, the communist regime in Beijing remained as strong as ever. The difference was in the determination to act. What the Chinese did in Tienanmen Square and what Gorbachev’s predecessors did in Eastern Europe in 1953, 1956 and 1968, Gorbachev was not prepared to do in the 1980s, and the result is history. Gorbachev was the first Soviet leader to withdraw from land that had been under Soviet control and to encourage his allies to do likewise. He decided to pull out of Afghanistan and to allow Germany to reunite; he urged Cuba’s Fidel Castro to withdraw from Angola and told Vietnam to end its involvement in Cambodia. However, Gorbachev aside, it became apparent in the second half of the 1980s that communist ideology and the authoritarian regimes it spawned were rapidly losing ground. Gorbachev’s weakness was not a result of his psychological makeup. He was a brave man. The weakness he displayed reflected the Soviet reality, which could not be hidden or swept aside. It also stemmed from an almost universal recognition that communism was bankrupt, because it was not able to meet the needs of modern society. On 12 November 1991, Robert Gates returned to Langley, this time as the Agency’s director. Bush kept his promise and rewarded a faithful civil servant. This time the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence approved the nomination. They did not dare to dismiss a nominee of the president who had defeated Saddam Hussein, wiped out the shame of Vietnam, and proved that the US was the sole global superpower. Gates followed the process of Soviet collapse from the White House, as deputy head of the National Security Council. He watched the Ukraine announce its independence, following the Baltic States, which had already done so once before in early September. Gorbachev took this body blow quietly, although the Ukraine was a vast territory and was also the Soviet Union’s breadbasket. Indeed, the Ukrainian departure from the union was to prove fatal to the already shaky economy and to military-political cooperation. The White House quickly recognized Ukrainian independence on condition that its citizens approve it in a referendum—a predictable outcome. Gorbachev, still in the Kremlin, complained about what he called “interference in Soviet internal affairs.” But Russian President Yeltsin forced the outcome, when without

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waiting for a referendum or for an American imprimatur, he recognized an independent Ukraine. On 8 December 1991, Yeltsin, Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk and Chairman of the Byelorussian Parliament Stanislav Shushkevich, announced their republics’ withdrawal from the USSR, which was tantamount to its dissolution. They decided that their future cooperation would be in the framework of a Commonwealth of Independent States. They added: “The USSR, as a geopolitical entity recognized by international law, has ceased to exist.” In a last-ditch attempt to prevent the dismemberment of the USSR, Gorbachev tried to enlist the support of the Asian republics and warned of civil war. But Yeltsin outmaneuvered him. The Russian president methodically took control of the USSR’s chief institutes and installations—the KGB, the Foreign Ministry, the Parliament, and even Gorbachev’s personal office. Pathetically, the secretary general played for time. He announced that he would resign only after a conference of republic leaders, slated for Alma Ata in Kazakhstan, on 21 December. When he was asked if the position of secretary general would also be discarded, Gorbachev sighed and mumbled something that sounded like an acceptance of reality: “We are beginning a new life, whatever that may be.” On 25 December, four days after the Alma Ata conference, Gorbachev resigned as secretary general of the Communist Party of the USSR. The red flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time.

6 Why the West Failed to See the Writing on the Wall

FEAR, BRUTALITY, TRAUMA Although Soviet weakness reached critical mass during the 1980s, Western intelligence refused to concede, until the very moment of collapse, that the USSR had ceased to represent a military threat. Inferior Soviet-made armaments, the limited ability, poor phsyical state and lack of motivation of individual soldiers, as well as the poor performance of the Red Army in Afghanistan—failed to convince the West that the Soviet giant had feet of clay. Why Western intelligence refused to consider these and other signs of Red Army weakness is not an academic question. Part of the answer lies in the brutality of the Stalinist regime which terrified Soviet citizens for decades and left a traumatic residue that permeated Western intelligence concepts of the USSR. Fifty years after Stalin’s death, Mikhail L.Berger, an economic editor with Izvestia, glances in real fear at the mute telephone on his desk which was once connected directly to the Kremlin. Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Izvestia has become a free newspaper. Berger arrives at his office every day, and tries not to look at the old-fashioned dusty dial telephone that peeps out from a stack of papers and journals. The same disciplined suppression, a kind of alienated march in a thick fog, prevents Berger from wondering whether there is anyone on the line. “To whom is the telephone connected?” he was asked in March 1995. He hesitates briefly before answering: “This phone used to be used for internal commnunication with government and party bureaucracies, including top officials in the Kremlin. Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, no one has contacted me and I don’t even know whether it still works or not.” Besides the fear of someone at the other end of the line, there was also a simple deduction. The “Kremlevka,” as the phone was known, was connected to the internal telephone system of the nomenklatura. Anyone who was well connected could, through a secret phone book, reach the heart of the regime without bureaucratic mediation. Anyone whose Kremlevka suddenly fell silent, or was taken away, was conscious of the chill breath of the Siberian wind.

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This primeval fear stemmed from the memory of the years of Bolshevik terror and the relentless brutality which characterized the Soviet regime’s post-Second World War treatment of its East European neighbors. The determined thrust westward brought the Bolshevik threat closer, and made it palpable all over the world. In 1944 Stalin crushed Hungary, in 1947 the Red Army took over Poland and Romania. Next in line was Czechoslovakia, in 1948, and in 1949 the Soviets blocked access to West Berlin. The West, led by the US, looked on anxiously as Stalin carried out his warped interpretation of the Yalta agreements, signed by the anti-Nazi coalition towards the end of the Second World War. Of course, the Soviet dictator saw things differently. He felt he was acting legitimately within the provisions of the treaty to increase the Soviet sphere of influence. In 1949, the USSR joined the nuclear club and the deeply rooted fear of Soviet brutality increased dramatically. It fed Hollywood movies and CIA assessments of the USSR during 50 years of Cold War. “The Reagan administration said that the Soviets had overtaken us and we all believed it,” says Leslie Gelb, explaining the mood of the early 1980s and the first Reagan administration’s eagerness to arm. Another reason for American anxiety was the trauma of Pearl Harbor that contributed to America’s willingness to spend vast sums on intelligence, to improve early warning systems and build up sufficient military power to deter or repel attack from any quarter. The depth of the trauma and the armament frenzy were so great that even during the 1970s, when the balance of power was well in America’s favor, some Western strategists continued to assert that the US had no adequate military answer to growing Soviet power. While the Americans fed their phobias, the Soviets also cultivated an atavistic fear of the invader: historic or potential, Tatar, German, French or American. One winter morning in 1981, Comrade-Educator Anna Ivanova, a model member of the Communist Party, gave a civics lesson to the 27 13-year-olds in Alexander Ziplakov’s class at Moscow’s School No. 28. Like many of her lessons, this one also dealt with the cruel enemy who wanted to destroy the Soviet people. The enemy was the “Germans and the Americans, in that order,” says Ziplakov; “the Germans were always first.” Ziplakov was born in 1968, the year the Czech rebellion was put down. In 1995, he was still living in the same Moscow neighborhood, which borders on the “White House,” from where Yeltsin crushed the anti-Gorbachev coup. All he knew as a child about the Czech uprising was that “there was a Western plot and our East German brothers helped the Soviet forces put down those who threatened our motherland.” “They hate us and they want to destroy Moscow, Russia and the entire USSR,” Comrade Ivanova told her class in 1981. “We believed every word,” Ziplakov says 15 years later. Another teacher, Aleksandr Nikolayich, who was very intelligent and much more popular than Comrade Ivanova, told the class that one day they might actually encounter the German and American enemy.

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That was before Gorbachev. “During 1988 we felt dramatic changes in the air,” Ziplakov says. “Our media was enthusiastically publicizing Gorbachev’s trip to the West, which it referred to as a great achievement. The media didn’t describe the West as devils any more and they stopped telling us that America wanted to destroy us.” “And I tell you,” says General Vladimir Lubov, “on the word of a Red Army general, that the USSR never considered attacking the West.” Lubov is a Soviet version of Alexander Haig. He is direct and blunt, and gives the impression of never having used diplomatic language. In fact, almost no Soviet politician, general or diplomat spoke “Western”—another reason for their lack of understanding of the West, and the West’s failure to understand them. Of course, there were career diplomats like Dobrynin and Zamyatin who did adopt Western diplomatic language and manners. That made things easier for them with the press and their Western counterparts. However, they were a minority. Most Soviet leaders, with their emotional Slav characters, came across in the West as aggressive. Today this emotionalism often takes the form of a deep, pervasive melancholy or a dejected restlessness, like Lubov’s. “In the back of our minds, any movement near our border meant a potential Western threat,” says Lubov, explaining the Soviet fear of Americans. “In the USSR, when you said ‘West’ you meant ‘war.’ Every one of us lost a family member defending the country. And where does the enemy come from?” he asks rhetorically. “Always from the West.” Lubov was the last commander of Warsaw Pact forces before they were disbanded. He describes the disbanding in emotional terms: “I felt as if they were cutting into my own flesh.” From his point of view, threats had always come to Russia from the West. “After all, what happened to us as a nation? The Versailles Treaty after World War I forbade the Germans to rearm. But the West armed them and they attacked us. And what happened after World War II? Exactly the same thing. The West created NATO. Isn’t it obvious that we had to protect ourselves?” The notion that the West may also have been afraid of the Soviets is dismissed by Lubov as nonsense. You have to be out of your mind to think we could have competed with American military might or threatend the US. We were driven by the need to protect ourselves. If you had been hit, wouldn’t you be on your guard to prevent a second blow? But to launch an attack? Were we the first to establish a military pact in Europe? Did we drop an atom bomb on Japan? That bomb may have killed Japanese, but it was aimed at us and meant to show us who was boss. Stalin’s conversations with Mao Tse-tung and Zhou Enlai during the years 1949 to 1952 were first published in 1996. According to Dr. Odd Arne Westad of the Woodrow Wilson Institute, they show Stalin as a cautious and experienced

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leader who advised his Chinese colleagues to avoid armed conflict with the Americans, whether over Taiwan or anywhere else. “Stalin was no saint,” says Lubov, “but most of what was published about him in the West was propaganda. The West was afraid of Hitler, but who armed him? We had to defend ourselves against endless wars forced on us by the West.” The difficulty of understanding the rules of the rival’s game began with the Cold War. The Americans were armed with “democracy,” which has many facets and a thousand ways of getting around them. The Soviets were armed with an ideology and a “culture,” two commodities widely used by dictatorships that tend to emphasise and magnify external threats. For years, at least up to the Second World War, the Americans had an inferiority complex vis-à-vis European culture, of which the USSR was seemingly part. The Soviet cultural façade, which included a remnant of French affectation from the courts of the tsars and German cultural pedantry dating back to the early days of the communist revolution, floated like a thin cloud over Moscow. Missile technology and the Bolshoi Ballet coexisted with the wholesale slaughter of political opponents and the repression of neighboring countries. It was a jarring combination that conjured up memories of the Nazi horror, and the Soviet regime began to be perceived in the West as a new incarnation of the Third Reich. The moment the fear of the Soviets and the need for defensive measures penetrated the Western mind, it went straight through to the decision-makers and the wider public. The defense establishment inflated the danger and pushed for an increase in military power. The military industry lurked behind every step of the way, opposing any attempt at a more sober estimate of the Soviet threat. In this battle of trauma against trauma, intelligence should have had the professional authority, intellectual integrity, and civil courage to defuse the situation and provide an assessment free of the ghosts of the past. That didn’t happen. On the contrary, when traumatic events surfaced, Western and Eastern intelligence agencies often served as catalysts for full-fledged paranoid episodes. During the 1969 Sino-Soviet conflict, CIA director William Colby told President Nixon that the Soviets were considering a nuclear attack on communist China. Elliot Richardson, then undersecretary of state, made the estimate public, and added that the US should be prepared. Both China and the USSR were armed to the teeth. But although the conflict was bitter, it was not existential. Today most Sovietologists hold that the USSR was not considering a military, much less a nuclear, option. While large Soviet forces were posted along the border with China, their deployment was largely defensive. True, the USSR spent almost $100 billion to protect its border with China, whose military strength was far inferior. But what brought the Soviets to overestimate the Chinese threat was that historic, paranoid fear of the invader, which Western intelligence failed to grasp. Although the notion that the USSR was

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planning a preemptive nuclear strike was way off the mark, it served the intelligence agencies’ habitual scaremongering. The Soviets, for their part, were no less terrified. In November 1981, key KGB stations in the West were ordered to focus their information gathering efforts on Operation RYAN (a Russian acronym for “sudden nuclear attack on the USSR”) and look out for signs of a planned US nuclear strike. The main effort was naturally in Washington, where the KGB and GRU stations were ordered to pass relevant information on to Lubyanka (KGB Headquarters) on a daily basis. “At dusk every day,” says Yuri B.Shevets, who served as a case officer in the KGB’s Washington station, mentioned in his book that every day at dusk they “checked various government offices to see if any of their windows were lit up. We counted the cars parked near buildings whose work might have some connection to preparations for a missile attack. We went through the newspapers and searched for indications of a secret call-up or any other item that had any bearing.” On the strength of these reports, which often focused on more serious targets, the Lubyanka produced a daily bulletin which was sent to the Kremlin every morning. It was one of the largest operations in the history of Soviet intelligence inside the US, involving thousands of agents and intelligence officers. According to CIA Sovietologist Harry Rositzke, in 1981 the Soviets employed at least 400 intelligence officers, each of whom ran about 25 agents—a total of 10,000 agents. Many of them were engaged in Operation RYAN. “This operation,” Shevts says, “took up most of our time and energy.” Admitting that most KGB officers knew quite well that it was ridiculous, he adds: “However, as loyal and obedient civil servants, we sent back every scrap of potentially relevant information, thus feeding the fears—real and imaginary—back at headquarters.” Two years later, on 2 November 1983, the nuclear paranoia escalated from inter-agency panic to inter-army alert. As NATO planned manuevers codenamed “Able Archer” to check on members’ nuclear defense procedures, American intelligence intercepted Soviet high alert transmissions, indicating a real fear in Moscow that the US might be preparing a preemptive strike. A few days later, on 11 November, the manuever was cancelled for fear of escalation stemming from an intelligence misunderstanding. It was only in September 1985 that the Americans realized the extent of Soviet fear in the early 1980s. Oleg Gordievsky, the head of the KGB station in London defected to the West. Together with his British handlers, he produced a 52-page document that described the Soviet dread of a possible American nuclear strike. Gordievsky added his personal assessment that the Soviets’ fear had been genuine and deep-rooted to the point where it could have pushed them into making the first strike. The Americans got the message and gradually moderated their rhetoric. As the 1980s drew to a close, the second Reagan administration’s trust in Gorbachev grew and the fear of the “Soviet bear” relaxed somewhat. But throughout the Cold War, the image of the Soviet Union as a threatening and

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expansionist power played on a primeval fear, which served national and financial interests. The more frightening and demonic the enemy, the easier it was to mobilize the nation and obtain increased budgets for defense needs. It was a vicious circle that perpetuated routine thinking. It was difficult to break free. INFORMATION GATHERING FAILURE, ASSESSMENT FAILURE—OR BOTH? The dispute over the extent of the Soviet military threat took place in the shadow of a debate on the information-gathering capability of the CIA and other US intelligence agencies. Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s national security advisor, was not happy with the CIA reports that crossed his desk. He complained to CIA Director, Admiral Stansfield Turner, that the Agency had no HUMINT (human intelligence sources) in the USSR - in plain language: no real spies. “The truth is,” writes Bob Woodward, author and Washington Post journalist, “that there were several sources, but only one was really good and could be relied on.” A senior CIA officer who worked on the Soviet desk for many years prefers not to talk about numbers of sources, but concedes that intelligence operations in the USSR presented a genuine difficulty. “Supervision was very tight. Strangely enough, many volunteered to give us information, but we feared provocateurs and also found it hard to run agents on a regular basis within the USSR. We had to rely to a great extent on defectors, emigrants, and bona fide travelers—but these were chance, one-time sources.” There was no lack of data on the Soviet Union. During the 1970s, and in particular from the early 1980s, intelligence underwent a dramatic revolution in information gathering. Spy satellites capable of listening in and watching on the level of a neighborhood Peeping Tom became intelligence tools in daily use. It seemed as if everything was now out in the open and that the only remaining mystery was the other side’s intentions. Admiral Turner was a great believer in technology, including satellites, listening devices and other interception tools which made intelligence work both clean and focused. President Carter, a Democrat and a liberal, battled the Republicans over the progress of détente and “clean intelligence” right up to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The “clean intelligence” Turner was able to provide him suited his moral values, as well as his character. Turner himself was not driven by ideology. He had no background in intelligence and lacked the spark which could make gray intelligence work a stimulating intellectual game. His successor, William Casey, was made of very different stuff. Dubbed “Mr. Intelligence,” he had a wealth of operational experience and a good grasp of the business of intelligence processing. He also understood long before the others that technological intelligence only, as good as it might be, would not be enough, and that it would have to be supplemented by live sources. His replacement, Judge William Webster, operated more like a company director than an

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intelligence officer. Robert Gates, the next CIA chief, had the sharp hunting instincts of a top-class intelligence officer, coupled with a relentless crusade against evil, in his case, the Soviet Union. While Turner deliberately declined to make the effort needed to mobilize human sources, Casey and his successors simply failed to recruit Soviet citizens with access to vital, classified strategic information. CIA operations veterans cannot recall any impressive recruitment of Soviet spies. But there were, nevertheless, many other live sources. For example, defectors from the Soviet bloc—especially from East Germany, but also from the Soviet Union—were in abundance. They were after the flesh-pots, the good life in the West, and crossed over in great numbers, ready to be debriefed. There were military men among them, and the intel ligence they provided proved extremely useful. However there was a fly in the ointment. CIA and other Western intel ligence handling of Soviet defectors were heavily laced with suspicion. If the defector supplied the goods, that is, passed on information about the USSR’s evil intentions, he became the government’s blue-eyed boy. If not, he was immediately suspected of being a provocateur. One of Western intelligence’s all-time favorite Soviet agents was KGB Major Anatoly Golitsyn, who defected to the West at the beginning of the 1960s and for years fed the CIA with “explanations” of KGB disinformation methods, operations and intentions. Among the evaluations he “sold” his handlers was an explanation of the the Sino-Soviet confrontation as nothing but a KGB plot, designed to throw the West off guard. Many in the West bought his argument, which turned out to be absolute nonsense. The main damage Golytsin’s deception caused was the way it discredited other Soviet volunteers and defectors, who sought to work for Western intelligence. Even the genuine among them were suspected as double agents. After the demise of the USSR, Stanislav Zobok of the Woodrow Wilson Institute, found no real proof of Golitsyn’s claims that the KGB planned and executed a strategic disinformation “master plan,” designed to deceive the West. What Zobok did find was proof that the KGB carried out sporadic disinformation campaigns and selected operations designed to disguise Soviet weaknesses. On one thing, though, everyone agrees: American intelligence had a mine of information on the Soviet Union—on its economy, military industries, deployment of forces, war matériel, foreign policy, in short, on all the issues which inteligence deals with. From this information, it would have been possible to draw a very good picture of Soviet foreign policy trends, and, more importantly, of Soviet military capabilities. What was missing was what is known in intelligence jargon as data on “enemy intentions.” However, that was not why the intelligence services failed: it was not because of insufficient information, it was rather because they did not understand the full significance of the processes in the Soviet Union, which Langley and other intelligence headquarters in the West were monitoring so closely. The real

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problem in intelligence is not with the scraps of information, but the way they are put together, that is never easy. “It’s hard, very hard to know what the other side intends to do,” Richard Pipes, a Soviet history professor, says with a sigh of bitter experience. “The Soviet leadership was a tightly closed secret society. In any case, political information is the most complicated and difficult part to get.” Many intelligence people, as well as academics who deal with theoretical aspects of intelligence assessment, highlight the difficulties involved, as well as the built-in human and system weaknesses. Pipes had access to intelligence material and dealt with assessment as a member of the National Security Council during the Reagan administration, and before that in the 1970s, as head of “Team B,” which was tasked with challenging CIA estimates of the Soviet Union’s strategic capabilities. He is convinced that in the 1980s the CIA, and through it the policymakers, knew everything about the USSR that an intelligence agency and a government should have known. “Intelligence papers provided a clear description of the USSR’s internal crisis,” he says, “and they did not differ greatly from what the Kremlin got from the KGB.” General Brent Scowcroft, head of the National Security Council under President George Bush, dwells on the CIA’s lack of high-grade sources inside the Kremlin. That meant that while intelligence assessments of Soviet infrastructure and war equipment were derived from technological means and based on relatively “hard” evidence, estimates on matters not given to photogaphy or quantification—such as foreign affairs, social developments and domestic politics—and, of course, information on intentions —were based largely on impressions and preconceptions. From that point of view, Scowcroft is absolutely right when he says his estimates were just as valid as those of the intelligence experts. Afghanistan is a good example of the gap that often exists between the relative ease in gathering intelligence and the difficulty in translating it into accurate intelligence assessments. AFGHANISTAN 2: THE THIN LINE BETWEEN DATA ASSESSMENT AND INTELLIGENCE OPERATIONS In 1983, four years after the invasion of Afghanistan, Goodman’s department produced an assessment that described the Red Army’s poor performance and the growing pressures on Moscow, which were making the war an unbearable burden. It concluded that the Red Army had failed. Goodman passed the paper on to Gates, but it was returned to him with the comment “Poor.” “I don’t claim all the credit,” Goodman says 11 years later. “I remember that at the time the NSC came to the same conclusion based on estimated Soviet losses.” The CIA made an excellent diagnosis, but failed to draw the obvious conclusion: that the Soviets would eventually be forced to withdraw. The Soviet embroilment in Afghanistan had enabled the United States to build an active anti-

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Soviet front, and any assessment pointing to the anticipated failure of the Red Army there was seen as counterproductive. As in Vietnam, where American military intelligence first exaggerated the number of enemy casualties upwards to justify requests for more reinforcements, and later downwards, to ensure continued support for a winning struggle, so in Afghanistan Casey exaggerated the dimensions of the Soviet invasion and the threat it posed to establish a more active anti-Soviet front. Vincent Cannistraro was the NSC’s man in charge of the mujahidin desk. He was involved in the preparation of a paper recommending that Stinger antiaircraft missiles be supplied to the Afghan rebels, a recommendation approved by President Reagan against the advice of the CIA professionals. Cannistraro notes that US Afghanistan policy was designed outside the CIA, although, of course, with the active cooperation of Director Casey. “Reagan was convinced that the Soviets had to be headed off in Afghanistan. He wasn’t interested in details. He made the decision and we in the NSC saw that it was implemented by the operational directorate.” Those in the NSC who coordinated US policy in Afghanistan were Cannistraro, Peter Rodman and Robert McFarlane (succeeded by Admiral Poindexter), with the State Department’s Morton Abramowitz and the Pentagon’s Richard Armitage. “It was this bunch that ran the Afghan policy, not Goodman or any other CIA analyst,” says Cannistraro. “The agency’s professionals were virtually excluded,” although he remembers that people like John McMahon, Casey’s deputy, thought “that something should be done, short of direct involvement.” Cannistraro, an operations officer by training and mind-set, (“I chased terrorists in the field and not from behind a desk”), dismisses the suggestion that CIA analysts made any serious contribution to the understanding of what was going on in Afghanistan. “Generally,” he says, “analysts were able to provide only part of the picture. Most of them were liberals who looked at the world through American eyes and tended to think that everyone else behaved like us. They’re captive to the ‘mirror image syndrome;’ they judge the other side by Washington criteria.” It was not the analysts’ assessments that served as a basis for American decisions. What determined the level and scope of involvement in Afghanistan were successful moves by Reagan and Casey to mobilize support for it in the administration and Congress, and from friendly governments and agencies abroad. Cannistraro remembers “that there was pressure from Congress, including Democrats like Charlie Wilson and even a confirmed liberal like Barney Frank from Massachussetts, who pressed for a strong anti-Soviet stand in Afghanistan.” The failure of the Soviet invasion force to put down the American-backed mujahidin, the Afghan resistance movement, the weakness of government forces in Kabul, and international pressure were the main reasons for Gorbachev’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan. From an operational point of view,

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American intelligence chalked up an impressive victory. A relatively small resistance movement managed to pin down larger and better-armed Soviet forces, inflict casualties, stir up unrest at home and eventually force the Soviets to retreat. The CIA, driven by its director, managed to put together a wide coalition in support of the Afghan resistance struggle. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other Islamic states provided the mujahidin with financial aid, arms, ammunition and military training. A senior CIA operations officer, who was one of the directors of the Afghanistan operation says: We wanted to prove that it was possible to force the Soviets to withdraw from a country in which they had established a political and military presence. We managed to do it without direct involvement and without American soldiers dying. We got even with them for what they did to us in Vietnam. The defeat in Afghanistan was a catalyst that accelerated the collapse of the Soviet Union. But the CIA’s operational achievement was in inverse proportion to its assessment performance. The Agency failed to pinpoint the timing of the Soviet invasion; it did not believe the Red Army would withdraw from Afghanistan of its own accord; it failed to assess the balance of power in Afghanistan after the war, and it did not foresee the rise of anti-Western fundamentalist forces there. THE “CONCEPTION” The belief, or rather the “conception,” that there was a genuine Soviet threat to the West persisted until the very last days before the collapse of the Soviet Empire. Nothing dulled its impact: not the obvious Soviet weaknesses, not even Mikhail Gorbachev’s plaintive cries, when he tried to have the Soviet Union incorporated in the international community on terms acceptable to the West. The stigma attached to the Soviet Union was so deep-rooted that it almost seemed as if the intelligence effort was superfluous. Robert Gates, head of the CIA when the Soviet Union ceased to exist, does not like the word “conception.” He prefers to use other terms: “The American perception of the USSR during most of the Cold War period was that it represented a threat,” says Gates. Soviet policy in East Europe, South-east Asia and its later penetration into the Third World, Egypt and other Middle East states, reinforced that impression. The Soviet-initiated crises in Europe, including Germany, as well as in Latin America, first in Cuba, contributed to the image of the USSR as a menacing power, trying to export its ideology by force. The then Soviet leader gives a different account. Gorbachev, who bent over backwards to prove his peaceful intentions were genuine, found it difficult to

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understand the reserve with which the Americans greeted the new Soviet policy, and offered a psychological explanation: “They apparently needed the Soviet Union as an enemy. Otherwise it is hard to explain the flood of movies, programs and articles filled with so much hatred for the Soviet Union.” The shapers of American public opinion supported Washington’s approach. Academics, media, writers and artists, even Hollywood, were enlisted and portrayed Soviet power in terms of a real threat to the American way of life. Liberals who held other opinions, intelligence officers who felt there had been some exaggeration, were all considered professional party poopers. Their opinions were barely listened to, and were certainly not accepted. Official Washington tended to blame the Soviets for all the world’s ills—the arms race, international terror, tribal wars in the Third World. Those allegations were the basis on which its policies in the 1980s were shaped, when it was obvious Moscow had changed, and that even if it had wanted to continue its aggressive policies, it did not have the means to do so. In 1956 John J.McCloy headed a Cold War think tank at the Council for Foreign Relations. His summary report stated: We must guard against the tendency to relate each political and economic problem to the fiendishness and cunning of the Soviets. It is our duty to discuss them according to their lights. It is often said, and justly, that even if the USSR were to disappear from the map, or if it were to undergo a change in its relations with other world powers, we would still have to face problems which we interpret today as a result of the Soviet threat. Even those who did not accept the notion that the Kremlin planned to conquer the world acquiesced in the use of concepts such as “the evil empire.” They may have found the language distasteful, but still supported the conventional wisdom that the USSR had aggressive intentions rooted in the character and ideology of the regime, and that the supreme task of the US and the West, ever since the Second World War, had been to prepare accordingly. In the second half of the 1980s, with Gorbachev at the helm, the Soviet Union and communism, the power and the ideology, were still seen as acting in tandem to change the status quo and to undermine Western interests. This world picture remained solidly entrenched in American thought and consciousness even as the Red power marched with giant strides towards its demise. None raised any questions about the “conception,” and nobody examined—not even intelligence —whether, following the fundamental changes in the Soviet Union, it was still justified to regard it as a fearsome foe. In the action-packed year of 1989, Soviet historian Yuri Afanasiev described Marxism-Leninism as a dead weight on the national consciousness. Following massive strikes in Nagorno-Karabakh and conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, sparks were ignited in the Baltic States and Georgia and spread to the Ukraine. The protest was directed against local Communist Party leaders, but

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Moscow could not ignore its implications for the Union. Wide protests demanding independence began in the Ukraine and Lithuania. In Georgia, the Red Army clashed with demonstrators in the streets of Tbilisi. But none of this persuaded the American administration to re-examine the validity of the “conception.” In retrospect, portraying the USSR in such terms at the end of 1989 seems to indicate a lack of comprehension or an attempt to sow disinformation in the service of the American defense industry. But, in fact, it was a direct result of the “conception” from which the administration and its institutions were unable to free themselves. The “conception” led Washington to treat the Soviet Union—until its collapse —as a power of equal status. In October 1991, two months before Gorbachev officially announced the disbanding of the Soviet Union, Moscow was invited to serve as co-sponsor of the Madrid Middle East Peace conference. About two years before the Soviet Union disappeared, in the fall of 1989, Bush, overruling Scowcroft and Gates, suggested a summit meeting at Malta in December of that year. At a remarkably relaxed press conference there, he spoke as if the two powers were on equal footing, politically and militarily. The two superpowers, he said, were poised on the edge of a new era, and each of them could contribute to healing the split in Europe and ending the military confrontation. The White House found it hard to accept that the end of the USSR had come, even as clouds of dust and smoke were gathering over the ruins. Not until 13 December, 12 days before the flag in Gorbachev’s office was furled, did Bush turn to Scowcroft and ask: “This really is the end, isn’t it?” “Yeah,” said Scowcroft; “Gorbachev is kind of a pathetic figure at this point.” Scowcroft, who was Bush’s national security advisor when the Soviet collapse knocked on his own door, dismisses the “conception” theory out of hand. No, he’s not angry. His voice is soft, but the steely undertones are unmistakable. Scowcroft explains that “Soviet strategic military capability was real and it posed a threat to the US and the free world right up to the moment it collapsed.” Richard Kerr, deputy CIA director towards the end of the 1980s, argues that it was mainly politicians who clung on to the “conception.” “In many cases,” says Kerr, “when the policy-maker decides on a strategy, he simply ignores any intelligence estimate that contradicts it.” Kerr’s boss, Robert Gates, says simply: “Sometimes they adopt the intelligence community’s assessments, sometimes they don’t.” The “conception” though was not solely the prerogative of politicians. Even the best professionals often erred in that way. William Casey and Robert Gates who headed the CIA in the 1980s, put a conceptual imprint on the national estimate. They believed the Soviet Union sought to impose its ideology on the rest of the world, and that that policy was part of its very essence. This estimate was put across to the decision-makers in a wide range of position papers and in personal memos, especially when the official intelligence estimate did not correspond with their view.

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The reason for the “conception” is simple and human. The Americans took a look at the Russian bear and thought: “You look frightening, you have a proven criminal history, you are not polite and you carry a big stick —so you must mean to hit me.” It sounds logical, but the logic smacks of the street gang. Looked at in perspective, it becomes clear that the fear was exaggerated, at least with regard to the USSR from the mid-1980s. It would be too simplistic to claim that the CIA, like the other Western intelligence agencies, believed the Soviets wanted to and might be able to dominate the world. Still, most intelligence agencies shared their political mentors’ belief that if the Soviet elite had discovered weaknesses in American might, they would have been delighted to hold the next May Day parade in Fifth Avenue rather than Red Square. NATIONAL EVALUATION: NEITHER NATIONAL NOR EVALUATION The abortive coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in the summer of 1991 highlighted some of the basic problems in intelligence work: the difficulty of assessing future developments; the tendency to overlook the obvious; the failure of intelligence personnel to “mediate” their assessments to the politicians; and the politicians’ summary disregard for intelligence evaluations. On the night of 18 August 1991, National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft was staying in a guest cabin at President Bush’s vacation home in Kennebunkport, Maine. He was a little anxious as he and the president planned to play golf at dawn, and the weatherman had warned of an approaching storm. Unable to fall asleep, he opened a book and left CNN flickering in the background. Suddenly, there was a news flash that had him bounding out of bed and diving for the telephone. It was 11 p.m. in Maine and 6 a.m. in Moscow, and CNN was broadcasting the terse but dramatic announcement by the “Committee for the State of Emergency” that, due to the state of his health, the powers of Secretary General Mikhail S.Gorbachev had been transferred to his deputy, Gennadi Yanaiev, in accordance with section 127.7 of the Soviet Constitution. Scowcroft called the president. “George,” he said, “Something’s happening in Moscow. We can kiss our game goodbye.” Bush was no better informed that his national security adviser. The CIA’s daily briefing had not prepared him for this turn of events and neither had the National Intelligence Estimate, put out by the National Intelligence Council, the intelligence community’s joint assessment body. Bush asked Scowcroft if he had heard anything from CIA headquarters in Langley. He said he had not. Nor did he bother to call the Agency afterwards, assuming that if they had anything to say, they would have called him. Known as the “army intellectual” and “Kissinger’s man,” Scowcroft, a former Air Force general, aide to President Nixon, NSC staffer in Gerald Ford’s administration and lecturer in Russian history at West Point felt he could do without CIA assessments—especially since its director Judge William Webster

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was no expert on Soviet affairs. He and Bush never saw eye to eye on what was going on in Moscow, and the president was about to replace him with Robert M.Gates, Scowcroft’s deputy and the administration’s top Sovietologist. “The media beat the intelligence community to it,” Scowcroft says bluntly. “And that’s how I got to be the first to tell the President. We got our first report from Langley only the next day.” He judged that report to be “okay,” and was not surprised that military intelligence had not identified unusual military movements in and around Moscow, since most of the reports were coming in from US embassy staff. “The embassy staff was our prime source,” says Scowcroft, “except, of course, for the media.” Even when the initial tumult had died down, things were far from clear. “Coups do not always succeed,” Scowcroft observes. “And at that stage we did not know who we ought to deal with. We had no success in making contact with Gorbachev.” On that Sunday, Secretary of State James Baker was at his summer cabin in Wyoming. “August is a hot month on Capitol Hill. The high humidity makes the city almost unbearable, and in any case there’s not a lot to do there,” he says almost apologetically. Baker, too, had not heard about the coup attempt from the CIA, but from the duty officer at the State Department, who also picked it up from the media. “I called the President and went straight back to Washington,” Baker recalls. In other words, the president, the national security adviser and the secretary of state—the three men charged with determining America’s response to crisis situations—did not know exactly what had happened in Moscow, who had taken action against whom, why and, most importantly, how the attempted coup might affect the United States. Richard Kerr, then deputy director of the CIA, admits the Agency gave no inkling of the timing of the coup, but claims it estimated at “quite an early stage” that the attempt would not succeed. “The intelligence provided by the Agency enabled the President to respond in a balanced way, and with a certain amount of confidence that he was on the right course,” he says. What the CIA did not know at the time was that the briefcase containing the operating codes for the Soviet Union’s strategic nuclear forces was following a far more problematic route. From the afternoon of 18 August until the morning of 22 August, it was in the hands of the plotters, described later as “a miserable bunch of drunks, cut off from reality.” Decision-makers in London, Paris, Bonn—in fact in all Western capitals— were no better off. They too were not kept up to date in real time by their intelligence services. But these services had a good excuse: it was America that led the struggle against the USSR on all fronts, including intelligence. We, the Western services could say, did not have the means to monitor what was happening there; we had to rely on the information, analyses and evaluations provided by the CIA.

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In July 1991, about a month before the coup, the CIA did receive an early warning that a move against Gorbachev was imminent, aimed at putting the Soviet Union back on its “historical track.” The information came from outgoing Italian intelligence chief, Admiral Fulvio Martini, who had been tipped off during a visit to Moscow five months before. On leaving his post, Martini, following standard diplomatic courtesy, took leave of his colleagues. As a matter of routine, he sent a farewell cable to KGB head, Vladimir Kryuchkov, despite the fact that their contacts up till then had been strictly limited to exchanges of information on international terror. To his surprise, Kryuchkov responded by inviting him to Moscow as the guest of the KGB. After clearing the visit with the necessary political and intelligence echelons (the Soviet Union was still formally an enemy country), Martini set out for the Soviet capital. He and his wife Daisy were put up in a KGB guest house, where they met Kryuchkov and his deputy. To break the ice, Kryuchkov asked Martini if he knew which building was the highest in Moscow. Perhaps the Kremlin? Martini ventured, or one of Stalin’s G-7 buildings? But his host cut him off and smilingly informed him that it was the Lubyanka, KGB Headquarters—“From the first floor, you can see Siberia,” he joked. Martini was taken aback by the KGB chiefs unexpected black humor, but he was absolutely astounded when Kryuchkov moved on to the next topic. In somber and measured tones, the KGB chief told the Italian that he and a group of friends had decided to put a stop to the deterioration of the USSR. Martini asked if Gorbachev was in the picture, and Kryuchkov said that the secretary general would “be asked to restore order and authority,” and if he refused, “we will do it without him.” When Martini wondered aloud who would lead the group, Kryuchkov responded dryly that collective leadership was a Soviet tradition. Back in their suite, the Martinis shut themselves in the bathroom, turned on all the faucets (“precautions are second nature to an intelligence officer, even after he’s retired”) and reconstructed what had been said. On his return to Rome, Martini immediately asked for a meeting with Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, who instructed him to pass the information on to the CIA and other Western agencies. Five years later, Martini surmised that Kryuchkov’s purpose in using him had been to let Washington know that the planned coup was meant to stop the disintegration of the Soviet regime and was in no way directed against the West. In mid-October 1991, it became clear that Gorbachev would not be able to withstand the pressure from the republics for independence. The hoops that held the Soviet barrel together were beginning to come apart as it bounced downhill, while the world watched, barely able to grasp or believe that this was the end of the Red Empire. James Baker, for example, concedes that it was only in October that he began to realize that the USSR had come to the end of the road, as other republics followed the Baltic States in preferring independence to union.

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Baker’s conclusion, however, was not derived from intimate knowledge of intelligence assessments. Rather it was the result of having heard 18 months before a pledge by Gorbachev and Eduard Shevardnadze not to use force to maintain Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe. “Initially we were skeptical,” says Baker, “but we saw it for ourselves when Poland, East Germany, Hungary and Czechoslovakia started to back away from communism without interference from Moscow. I did not need intelligence briefs to realize what was happening there.” Not that Baker, Bush and Scowcroft were starved of intelligence. Thousands of quasi-relevant documents flowed from Langley to Washington. Robert Gates, who became director of the CIA shortly before the Soviet collapse, says that one of these papers had in fact presented a scenario in which Kremlin hardliners would try to topple Gorbachev. The US Intelligence Directorate’s Soviet division, SOVA, headed by George Kolt, assumed that Gorbachev would not manage to implement his reforms and that pressure would mount on him to take drastic measures or resign. But there is no sign that any of the politicians shaped policies on the basis of this or any other intelligence assessment. In April 1991, SOVA circulated a nine-page “special assessment” stating that economic crisis, national aspirations and erosion in the status of the Communist Party were combining to weaken the Soviet system. Gorbachev’s attempt to press on with his reforms while satisfying the demands of the hardliners was creating a chaotic and explosive situation. The most likely outcome, the paper said, was “an organized attempt on the part of hard-line conservatives to take steps, by force if necessary, to restore the old order. There are signs that elements from the KGB, the army, the Interior Ministry, are preparing for such measures.” The White House did not take the paper seriously because of the general terms in which it was couched, and because of what it failed to include—hard information on timing or concrete plans. It was common knowledge that hardline communists were not happy with Gorbachev, and an evaluation based on this fact alone could easily be regarded as a case of what professionals call “covering one’s ass.” Moreover, Western intelligence and policy-makers assumed Gorbachev knew what he was up against, an assumption born out by information that came to light after the Soviet collapse. In February 1991, Kryuchkov handed Gorbachev a highly classified three-page memorandum, warning that the critical situation in the Soviet Union posed a threat to perestroika and the process of democratization and recovery. “There is a real danger to Soviet unity, to the social and political fabric of the state, and to its economic system,” the paper warned, naming the United States and some of the leaders of the republics as forces working for the dissolution of the Soviet Union. But, at the time, American intelligence did not have access to this document. Nor did any other Western service. And, unlike Kryuchkov, they did not see the circumstances it outlined as heralding the demise of the Soviet Empire. Another piece of evidence missed or overlooked by the West was the fact that a few days before the coup, Alexander Yakovlev, a close adviser to Gorbachev

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and a politburo member, resigned from the Communist Party, claiming that reactionary circles were planning a rebellion. He explained his move as a protest against Gorbachev, who, instead of tackling the situation, had retreated to the presidential dacha at Foros. Growing speculation about a possible coup circulated among senior officials in both Moscow and Washington in the form of corridor chat and lunch-time gossip. It sprang from the intuitive sense, which was to prove correct, that the hardliners would somehow try to stop Gorbachev’s rush to reform—especially when those reforms stood to curtail their power and privileges. Still, intelligence officers in the West, like many in Moscow, wondered whether a coup was really in the works, or whether it was just a case of “palace intrigue,” as Fulvio Martini had given them to understand. At the end of July, less than three weeks before the coup attempt, George Bush went to Moscow. The mood at meetings with Gorbachev was “business as usual” and the two signed a series of agreements. If the president—not to mention the secret service, which was responsible for his safety—had received a serious, unambiguous alert from intelligence that a coup was on the cards, an excuse would have been found at least to delay the meeting. Nor would the CIA have allowed a subsequent Congressional mission to land in Moscow. “We were en route when we heard something about a plot—from the media, of course,” says John Hardt, a member of the mission. “We called Washington for instructions, and they told us we could continue.” None of this prevented Gates from proudly waving the SOVA paper written in April that mentioned the possibility of a coup, and citing it as proof of American intelligence prowess. But the fact that the summit went ahead despite the “warning” clearly shows what Bush and the CIA really thought of it. As chief national intelligence officer for Soviet affairs at the National Intelligence Council from 1987 to 1992, Robert Blackwell recalls that “one of SOVA’s scenarios dealt with a possible coup. It was based on the assumption that wide circles in the Soviet Union were unhappy with Gorbachev and the direction he was taking. Hence the assessment that they might try to do something. Actually, it was a strategic warning. It was not based on specific, concrete information, and did not point at a possible date. To be honest, we were surprised that so many within Gorbachev’s close circle were among the plotters.” On 29 July, a few days before Gorbachev left for the vacation that became detention and only a few hours before his meeting with President Bush, he met with Boris Yeltsin, the leader of the Russian republic, and Kazakhstan’s Nursultan Nazarbayev in the Soviet parliament. These two republics were prominent among those pressing for more powers, at the expense of the Soviet central government. Gorbachev, typically, promised to look into their demands and to answer them when he returned from his vacation. During the conversation, as if incidentally, he remarked that he was planning to get rid of some hardline communists, among them Valentin Pavlov, and perhaps also Kryuchkov and Boris Pugo. Yeltsin and Nazarbayev were taken aback. The meaning of such a

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move would be further erosion of the central institutions, the most threatened being the KGB and its head, Kryuchkov. Yeltsin was not displeased at what he heard, but concerned at the KGB’s possible reaction, and looked around nervously in case they were being bugged. Gorbachev noticed this and smiled, but it was Kryuchkov who had the last laugh. A listening device had been installed by his order at the table around which the three were seated. The coup that failed was carried out about three weeks later. The CIA’s failure to uncover the operational details of the planned coup was a professional lapse, partly redeemed by the Agency’s assessment that a coup was not beyond the bounds of possibility. But the underlying flaw was that the CIA had no human sources in or close to the Kremlin. Contrary to insinuations that its agents had been exposed as a result of Aldrich Ames’s betrayal, the truth is that the Agency simply never managed to recruit people with access to prime sources in Moscow. In the summer of 1991, as the plot against Gorbachev took shape, what concerned Washington most was the fear that his fall could herald a return to the days of totalitarian rule. One of the implications was that familiar, inflated bugbear: an enhanced strategic threat to the United States and the West as a whole. Weak as they may have been, American intelligence assessments did address Gorbachev’s chances of survival and the stability of his government. However, the administration chose to ignore the warning signs, partly because Bush’s policy of support for the Soviet leader spawned a degree of willing self-delusion about the extent of Gorbachev’s vulnerability. And although the intelligence services did provide a general warning of the possibility of a coup, they said nothing about the impending collapse of the USSR. This raises a key question: Is it the task of the services to warn of such dramatic upheavals and if so, are they structured to do so? What the politicians actually do with political-strategic warnings given them by intelligence is, of course, another question. THE CIA’S FAILURE The collapse of the Soviet Union, which took the entire American administration, including its intelligence arms, by surprise, was a surprise of strategic dimensions. Had the United States been caught unprepared by a sudden attack, the question of surprise would have been a subject for inquiry by at least two Congressional committees, and it is reasonable to assume that heads would have rolled. But being surprised by “good news” (and the collapse of the Soviet Union was certainly that for the US), evidently did not warrant commissions of inquiry. Nevertheless, it is important to establish whether the intelligence failure stemmed from a lack of information or a failure in assessment, or both, as George Shultz believed.

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When appointed secretary of state, Shultz found American information on the Kremlin “thin,” and the CIA’s assessments generally wrong. His criticism echoed that of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security advisor in the previous administration. Bob Woodward, who investigated the CIA’s performance under William Casey, argues that “good political intelligence, for example about what was happening in the Kremlin, did not exist.” A senior CIA officer who spent most of his service in the operational division admitted to the authors in 1995 that the CIA never had well placed sources, spies in the Kremlin itself, or agents with access to inner Kremlin circles. Its best live source was a Soviet general, Dimitri Poliakov, who volunteered in 1961 in Rangoon, was promoted to general in 1974 and spied for the US until 1988, when he was executed in the wake of super-mole Aldrich Ames’s treachery. James Woolsey, later CIA director, said Poliakov “helped the West win the Cold War and it is due to him that it did not turn into a hot war.” But in truth, even Poliakov was not really close to Kremlin decision-makers. Still, Brent Scowcroft, former US national security advisor, insists that tactical intelligence gathering was not bad and that the CIA did provide some good information, especially via satellites. “The CIA’s assessments of the USSR were more or less accurate as far as Soviet capabilities were concerned. What the CIA didn’t have was information about Soviet intentions.” With the benefit of hindsight, it appears that the problem was that American intelligence lacked the tools to absorb the full strategic significance of the changes it saw taking place in the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Professonial American intelligence officers concede that the CIA’s lack of highly placed human sources made it difficult to gain deep insight into Soviet political processes. On the other hand, technological sources provided very good coverage and exact details of Soviet military machinery: its arms and ammunition, its infrastructure, including the precise locations of military camps, missile batteries, naval and air bases, as well as weapon factories in the militaryindustrial complex. Granted, the recruitment of live sources, especially highly placed ones, is a difficult and complex process. But it is one of the most important goals of any intelligence service. As for the Americans, the aim was sources with access to Kremlin policy-makers. A senior CIA operations officer described it as follows: if it is hard to get Gorbachev himself, then you go for his personal aide, the one with whom he shares his thoughts, thoughts which the most sophisticated satellites cannot pick up. No one would complain if the CIA recruited the aide’s secretary, or anyone who has access to that area and can report first hand on who said what to whom, when and why. A lack of sources means a lack of intelligence on what the Kremlin thinks or intends to do. Without such sources, the taxpaper’s money is wasted and the job is not done properly. The CIA made virtually no investment in long-term recruitment operations. True to the predominant “instant culture,” it wanted quick results. The KGB, on the other hand, put great effort into long-term operations, and was ready to leave

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its agents dormant for long periods, as a future investment. A research officer, who was a consumer of intelligence material, throws light on the dilemma from a different perspective: “In general, the sources we had were quite good. We knew the Soviet leadership very well. We knew all about Gorbachev’s health, and we identified Soviet interests in regional and international matters, like arms control. The problem was, and this was true throughout, that not enough attention was paid to the basics of Soviet life. What happens on the streets, what things look like, what ordinary people feel, the nationalities, education, sanitation, the state of the sewage, the infrastructure. We erred in that we didn’t make a serious effort to infiltrate and cover everyday life, on which the edifice of the state is built.” The CIA’s failure to recruit spies in the Soviet Union in the critical years leading up to the collapse was compounded by a security failure, one of the worst in the organization’s history: the case of Aldrich Ames. For nine years, as senior CIA counterintelligence officer, Ames, a Soviet mole, sifted through the CIA’s human resources—which in any case were not abundant or of high quality. One after another, American agents were betrayed by Ames, including the very General Poliakov Wolsey said helped America win the Cold War. Soviet intelligence officers, like Lieutenant General Nikolay Leonov, were highly critical of the KGB’s handling of the Ames affair. They believe that most of the betrayed spies should have been turned into double agents for disinformation purposes, and not executed. During the 1980s, the KGB had several double agents working against the CIA, whose mission was, among other things, to give a glowing picture of the USSR. “We had a definite interest in portraying ourselves as a strong military power,” says the former Warsaw Pact Chief, General Lubov. “And we found ways of doing so, vis-à-vis the US too.” Mel Goodman believes “the Soviets used some of the betrayed agents to pass disinformation.” But Richard Kerr, deputy director of the CIA during the years Ames worked in counterintelligence, claims that the damage done by Ames was limited to betraying agents who were mostly sources for operational information and had no access to political circles. This is also the view of a very senior intelligence officer who worked in counterintelligence at the time, and knew Ames well: “Most of the sources Ames betrayed belonged to the KGB and the GRU. They were all small functionaries. None had access to senior political sources from which we could have learned what was happening among the Soviet leadership.” He adds: “We never had a top source worthy of the name in the USSR, nor anyone who could pass on information about Soviet intentions, although we had a few who pretended they could.” But Richard Pipes, who places high priority on HUMINT, is convinced that “the loss of human sources within the USSR caused by Ames’s betrayal damaged the overall assessment capability of the American intelligence community.” Furthermore, “information from human sources was crucial for an understanding of what was happening there. You can take photographs from the air, you can listen in to your opponent’s conversations, but that won’t give you

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what people who are out there in the field can give you: insightful interpretation.” Two years after Ames was unmasked, CIA operational officer Vincent Cannistraro, former deputy director of the anti-terror division, tries to understand what really happened to the Agency and to the US as a result of that embarrassing episode. “For nine years Ames passed the Soviets every scrap of information about what was happening in the CIA, including the names of our agents,” he recalls ruefully. But he cannot say for sure whether this affected US national estimate ability. Still, he argues: All those years we had virtually no top human sources in the USSR, and the KGB knew it. They controlled the secondary sources Ames betrayed and could have passed on whatever they wanted, including disinformation to portray the USSR as mightier than it really was. Yes, I’m convinced that this mishap contributed to our difficulties in understanding what was happening and to the surprise that followed. It is hard to find a more ironic or even a more despicable page in the history of intelligence than the Ames case. He operated under four DCIs, including William Casey and Robert Gates, who were convinced that the USSR was strong and had to be fought to a standstill. If Cannistraro and others, who say the Russians did turn some of the agents before killing them are right, then it could be that the stream of disinformation which Ames’s treachery allowed reinforced the CIA’s conception that, despite its internal problems, the Soviet Union remained a major power and a serious threat. Ames’s treachery undoubtedly affected US intelligence coverage of the Soviet Union, but American intelligence still had a wealth of information from overt and classified sources, especially technological. The problem was not a lack of information. The problem was in processing and interpreting it. In other words, it was a problem of assessment. Assessments were produced with great frequency, and on almost every conceivable subject. The problem was that they focused on specifics, like Gorbachev’s health, the state of the reforms, the wheat crops and so on. They did not come to grips with the two really important questions: did the weakening Soviet Union still constitute a threat? And, would it continue to exist? No one gave any thought to the second question; no one even raised the possibility of collapse. And as to the first question, intelligence answered, incorrectly, in the affirmative. Despite its condition, the Soviet Union, it averred, continued to pose a threat to American interests. On these two critical issues, intelligence got it wrong. It believed the threat was still present, and that the Soviet Union would continue to maintain its superpower status.

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OVERESTIMATION OF SOVIET ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE The CIA made great investment in monitoring Soviet economic performance. Clearly, the economy is one of the central factors in determining a country’s resilience and strategic power. A country with a shaky economic base cannot maintain military power over time. So how did American intelligence evaluate Soviet economic performance? Every year the CIA published an updated assessment of the state of the Soviet economy. A classified version went to the top political echelons, and a second watered-down draft, with information from sensitive sources deleted, was given more general distribution, including to Congressional committees that dealt with foreign affairs and security. From the 1970s onwards, the CIA consistently reported a continuing slowdown of the Soviet economy, but, nevertheless, tended to present it as stronger than it actually was. The exaggeration had its critics, but even the most severe among them did not realize just how shaky the Soviet economy was. And they too did not make the obvious connection between the brittle economy and Soviet military power, not to speak of the Soviet Union’s overall strategic strength. In 1983, Robert Gates admitted at a meeting of the Senate Economic Committee that “for about five years the CIA had erred in estimating the strength of the Soviet economy.” “But,” complains Mel Goodman, “instead of coming straight out with it, to say we made a mistake and amend the Agency’s estimate, he chose to say it in a roundabout way.” Goodman, who followed the hearings, feels the Committee failed to grasp the significance of the facts brought before it. In 1984, as chairman of the NIC coordinating the national estimate, Gates testified behind closed doors at the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He conceded that during Chernenko’s term the USSR lagged behind American technology and was declining further, but added that Soviet production levels had risen slightly, a fact that was of marginal importance, given the picture as a whole. A later CIA publication estimated growth between 1979 and 1982 at only 1.4 per cent, and in 1983–84 at 2 per cent. But Gates’s testimony and intelligence papers distributed that year glossed over the parlous state of the Soviet economy and the catastrophic state of the civil infrastructure, as well as their impact on other spheres of national life and on the resilience of the regime. In September 1985, after Gorbachev had been in office for six months, SOVA issued a paper on his economic reform program, describing it as the most aggressive and dynamic since Khrushchev’s. It cited Gorbachev’s determination to revitalize the economy, the steps he had already taken and those he intended, and assessed the difficulties he could expect. The main obstacle, according to SOVA, was the built-in contradiction between large-scale economic modernization and the vast cost of retaining over-extended Soviet military

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might. Nevertheless, the bottom line, according to this paper, was that the Soviet economy was indeed facing difficulties, but that it would overcome them. The CIA rated 1986 as a good year for the Soviet economy, even though it became clear that the modernization program had failed. The Agency estimated that during the coming years there would be an annual economic growth of 2–3 per cent, which was, of course, wrong. Later on it became clear that the error stemmed from a lack of understanding of the mechanism and dynamics of Soviet economy and society. In the mid-1980s, especially after Gorbachev assumed power, the Soviet Union was no longer hermetically sealed as it had been in the past. The Novosibirsk Report, prepared by a team led by sociologist Tatyana Zaslavskaya, was leaked to the West. But there it was not seen with the same degree of concern as it was by the man who ordered it: the new Secretary General Yuri Andropov. The report harshly criticized centralization, that is, the regime core ideology, arguing that instead of creating harmony, it contributed to chaos and conflicts of interest. But none in the West saw the report as a harbinger of communist economic crisis. In the mid-1980s American intelligence was still in the throes of a major argument over the power, policies and intentions of the Soviet Union. In November 1985, with the Zaslavskaya report in front of him, Fritz Emarth distributed an NIC paper on the difficulties facing the Soviet Union. “Since the end of the 1970s,” the NIC paper said, “the Soviet Union’s domestic ills have grown more severe: economic slow-down, lack of motivation among workers, bureaucracy, crime and alcoholism.” Despite all of this, in other parts of the estimate the Soviet Union was characterised as a “very stable country”. The SOVA department in the CIA was a little more decisive than the NIC. In papers it distributed from mid-1980s, it said that the collapse of the Soviet economy was a possibility, albeit somewhat farfetched, but again it had not tied it to Soviet strategic strength. Towards the end of 1989, the Pentagon published its annual review entitled Soviet Military Power 1989. It contended that Gorbachev’s economic reforms were totally subordinated to strategic considerations. The survey’s coordinators concluded that overall trends in the USSR were positive (from the viewpoint of Western interests), but also that there was still a danger of a return to the old ways, particularly if the reforms aggravated the already severe economic crisis. None knew what Gorbachev’s successors would do, the publication maintained. In 1989 the Agency claimed that the USSR’s GNP was 51 per cent of America’s $4.2 trillion. Michael J.Boskin, then chairman of the White House Economic Advisory Committee, argued that the USSR’s annual GNP was onethird of what CIA economists estimated it to be; Boskin and other US economic experts argued that Soviet economic activity was 35 per cent of the American. “The CIA was in the dark,” wrote bluntly Rosnan Griffin, a veteran government observer. “They didn’t understand the depth of the Soviet rot in the economic, social and political spheres. Nor the changes that were occurring in Eastern Europe.”

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At a conference held by the American Enterprise Institute in April 1990, the CIA drew criticism from an unexpected quarter. Guest speaker Vladimir Tikhonov, a member of the Soviet people’s congress, said the Soviet standard of living was markedly lower than assessed by “our CIA friends.” Victor Belkin, another Soviet expert who participated in the Enterprise conference, claimed that the Americans were inflating Soviet economic power well beyond the real figures. Most experts at the conference agreed. It was possible to understand this in the past, when the Soviet Union was a closed state and it was impossible to get acurate data on its economy. But there was no justification for it in the 1980s, when the necessary statistics for judging Soviet economic performance were available. As a rule, non-governmental assessments of the Soviet economy were far closer to the mark than those of the intelligence experts. Why was this so? Intelligence experts who had experience dealing with the Soviet economy focused mainly on “hard” quantifiable data. They tended to ignore reports about other economic factors like corruption, production flaws and falsified data. Among factory managers it was quite common, almost the norm, to inflate production figures to keep up with the quotas of the annual plan set for them by central management. Regional party secretaries, who directed economic activities in their areas, reported to Moscow only the achievements: Marxism in practice meant that anyone who admitted a failure had to pay for it. This encouraged a system of official dishonesty based on a covert understanding between management and government and also between management and workers, who joked: “The management pretends to pay us, and we pretend to work.” During the 1980s, the effort to conceal painful facts from the Soviet population and the outside world gradually tapered off. Shortly after he was elected secretary general, Gorbachev announced that 70 per cent of the television sets produced annually by the Akran firm in Kishiniev failed quality control tests. In a speech to the workers at a Vladivostok plant, he complained that they produced television sets that stopped working “13 to 15 minutes after being switched on for the first time.” “Our professional blunder,” says Mel Goodman, “was the failure to draw the right conclusion, namely, that the Soviet system had reached a turning point with no way back. We all failed—the CIA, the other intelligence agencies, academics, the media, politicians.” To illustrate his argument, Goodman recalls that John Kenneth Galbraith, who visited Moscow in the mid-1980s, praised the Russians for their economic progress. It is odd that a sharp-eyed economist like Galbraith did not see through the bluff. At the time, it was an open secret that about 20 per cent of the Soviet urban population still lived in communal apartments, one family to a room, with tenants sharing kitchen and bathroom. This does not indicate economic strength, and certainly not social progress.

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In spring 1991, the CIA began to include in its daily intelligence briefing (NID) a special section on the situation in the USSR, known as a “sitreport.” The central problem that occupied the CIA was the downward trend of the Soviet economy. Another May 1991 assessment claimed, like most of the papers at the time, that the Soviet economy was continuing to decline mainly because of the disintegration of the state’s institutions. Gorbachev’s reforms had damaged the existing system without introducing functioning substitutes. The scenario predicted by this paper was that Gorbachev would continue to push his economic programs. To keep the USSR together, he might resort to administrative measures as well as to the stronger steps he had been reluctant to take in the past. Another scenario in this paper raised the possibility of a new power-sharing arrangement between Moscow and the republics, which could contribute to economic rehabilitation. “The CIA should have pointed out to policy-makers,” says John Hardt, that in a centralized economy like the USSR’s, the state of the economy is closely linked to the strength of the regime and the party. If one collapses, the others will too. It was the duty of the CIA director to alert US policymakers to the inter-relationship and the impact the failing Soviet economy would have on the stability of the communist regime. Says Hardt, who was director of the Congressional research division: “You don’t have to be a professional intelligence officer or a qualified economist to understand that the USSR was a sick giant.” To be fair though, the CIA should get the credit it deserves. The organization’s experts knew the Soviet economy was in crisis. The argument was over whether the Soviet Union would be able to recover and at what price. The agency’s basic error was in its failure to follow through, given the data at its disposal. Specifically, the agency erred when it determined that, in spite of its economic difficulties, the Soviet Union would continue its military build-up and its aggressive foreign policy. Both predictions proved false. THE ABORTIVE COUP AGAINST GORBACHEV The dissatisfaction with Gorbachev’s policies was an open secret in Moscow. Rumors were rife in the city of a move to oust him. But he ignored the rumors and continued with “business as usual.” The CIA actually issued a paper about the possibility of a plot, but did not put things as sharply into focus as it should have done. On 20 July, Moscow Mayor Gavril Popov met with Jack Matlock, US ambassador to Moscow. Popov told him that a plot was afoot to get rid of Gorbachev. Matlock wanted to know who was involved. Popov wrote the conspirators’ names on a piece of paper: Pavlov, Kryuchkov, Yazov and

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Lukianov. The ambassador read the list and then Popov asked for the note back and tore it up. Matlock reported the conversation to Lawrence Eagleburger, who was standing in for Baker in Washington (Baker was at a meeting of foreign ministers in Berlin). The report was passed on to the White House and to Baker in Berlin with a recommendation to inform Gorbachev. Baker told Soviet Foreign Minister Alexander Bessmertnykh, who was also present at the Berlin meeting, but Bessmertnykh could not transmit the message to Gorbachev, as secret communications were under KGB supervision. Baker offered the American embassy channel and Matlock requested an urgent meeting with Gorbachev. When he told Gorbachev about the conspiracy against him, Gorbachev waved a dismissive hand. “Everything is under control,” he told Matlock, and thanked the president of the United States for his concern. Meanwhile President Bush, who had forgotten what he had learned in the CIA about safe communication, telephoned Gorbachev and told him that Popov was the source of the information. Thus the mayor of Moscow communicated with the secretary general, who was only a few minutes’ ride away, via Washington. Gorbachev ignored the warning and left as planned for his dacha on the island of Foros, where he was apprehended and held by the conspirators. It is clear that American intelligence was not taken totally by surprise. Information on the disatisfaction with Gorbachev’s policies voiced by some of his opponents at the top was abundant, and not just from Popov. Four months before the failed coup, in April 1991, the CIA warned in an assessment paper called “The Soviet Cauldron” that government institutes, like the Soviet economy, were in a state of chaos and that the atmosphere in Moscow was explosive. One possible scenario mentioned was that reactionaries might seize control of the Kremlin to “restore law and order.” On 17 August, as usual, the CIA’s presidential daily briefing (PDB) was placed on Bush’s desk. Again it mentioned the growing opposition of extremists to the proposed union charter. There was also a warning from Yakovlev, one of Gorbachev’s aides, that “an influential Stalinist group was organizing against him.” The CIA assessed that “these groups could resort to force in an attempt to restore the old order.” The most significant part of the paper was its last paragraph, which said that the conspirators might try to convince Gorbachev to cooperate with them in an effort to bring back the old order, but that he would come out against them in support of democracy. Two days later the coup attempt took place. Richard Kerr, then deputy director of the CIA, remembers that the Agency estimated that the heads of the defense establishment, the army, or the KGB would be involved in any coup attempt. An inkling of the attitude of the decisionmakers to these papers can be gleaned from that of National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft. Scowcroft, who was one of the CIA’s customers, does not recall that intelligence was focused or provided information that called for practical action.

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The CIA analysts correctly assessed the nature and probability of the plot against Gorbachev. The problem was with the operative conclusions. If they really believed their assessment was sound, they should have focused intelligence efforts to uncover details of the planned coup. This might have yielded pin-point information and enabled the US to help Gorbachev more effectively than by simply passing on unconfirmed data. In any event, Langley made do with no more than another paper. No action was taken that might have prevented the subsequent surprise and embarrassment. It seems that even President Bush, once the head of the CIA, did not take the intelligence papers that crossed his desk too seriously. On 30 July, three weeks before the coup attempt (and after the CIA warned about the possibility of a coup), he travelled to Moscow where he praised Gorbachev for his contribution to a safer world. If the president had taken the CIA and Richard Kerr’s assessments more seriously, he would not have gone to Moscow at a time when his intelligence agencies believed a coup was likely. Dmitri Simes points out that these “intelligence assessments were critical because the administration wanted Gorbachev to stay in power and the reforms to go on. Having vital information about the planned coup and making use of it was a gamble involving vital American interests.” It would not have been difficult for the CIA to produce assessments and profiles of the actors involved, including of course Yeltsin, but the White House wanted to hear that its man Gorbachev would go on producing the goods. The same is true of the miltiary threat. The agency’s critics, and there were many of them, argued that the assessments produced by the CIA on Soviet military power, tended to be deliberately exaggerated, because that was what the White House wanted to hear. In July 1990, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (Democrat, New York), a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, wondered out loud if the CIA was not overstating the size and strength of the Soviet economy, and as a result inflating its military threat. He was not alone in this thinking. EXAGGERATION OF MILITARY POWER—THE SOVIET THREAT Throughout the Cold War period, the West exaggerated Soviet power, and, as a result, the military threat it posed. Politicians, intelligence agencies, media people and journalists helped amplify the threat with a collective ritualistic mantra. There were several reasons for this: it helped the defense establishment get bigger budgets, the military-industrial complex to make more money and the army to enhance its image; it gave politicians a mythological enemy and helped intelligence chiefs, who tend to be better remembered when they warn about threats than when they predict peace. At the end of October 1989, Robert Gates, then deputy director of the National Security Council, passed on to James Baker the draft of a speech on the Soviet

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Union he was planning to deliver. He was scheduled to appear before a conference sponsored by the International Relations Association of Georgetown University. He was to make one of his speeches warning Americans of the Russian bear that threatened to pounce on them. From the advance copy of the speech, Baker learned that Gates was going to say Gorbachev had no chance of implementing his reforms, and imply that Soviet hardliners could be expected to return to power. Fearing negative fallout from the speech, Baker exercised his authority and prevented Gates from making it. The undelivered speech described Soviet defense policy as follows: The USSR continues to provide Cuba with $6 billion dollars a year, gives $4 billion to Afghanistan, $2–3 billion to Vietnam and $1 billion to Nicaragua. Moscow has doubled its aid to Cambodia and continues to sell weapons to Libya. Soviet military expenditures have risen by 3 per cent annually since Gorbachev was elected. The modernization of Soviet strategic forces is going ahead at full steam, including deployment of two new types of weapon, the SS-18 and a new generation of ICBMs. Progress, the speech claimed, is also being made in the development of Delta 4 and Typhoon ballistic-carrying submarines, Cruise air-to-sea missiles and sophisticated ballistic missiles. “Where will we stand at the end of 1989?” Gates asked and answered: “The USSR will still be a mighty military power.” Baker forbade Gates from going public, not because he thought he was wrong, but because of the arms limitation talks going on at the time. He feared Gates’s statement might cause an outcry from opponents of the talks and so hurt the negotiations. But Gates’s warnings were in line with the Pentagon’s publication of that year, titled Soviet Military Power. The paper described Gorbachev’s arms control initiative as designed to weaken NATO countries, increase tension in USEurope relations, put obstacles in the path of Western allies’ defense plans and at the same time to enable the Soviets to continue to develop their military might. The publication was distributed in the same format every year, and, according to its authors, developments in the Soviet Union, such as its insurmountable economic difficulties or new foreign policy directions, did not justify any divergence from the existing estimates of Soviet military might and the threat it posed to American interests around the world. The following are some of the events that occured that year: • Lithuania and the Ukraine challenged Soviet authority, demanding independence. • Gorbachev announced his plan to shift to a market economy. • Moscow newspapers reported events in Poland, including the establishment of an opposition party to run against the communists there, with almost no interference from the censor.

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• During his first visit to Bonn, Gorbachev announced the end of the Cold War. He said that the Berlin Wall was not a permanent structure, and welcomed any proposal to reduce conventional forces in Europe. • During his visit to Finland on 25 October, Gorbachev said that the USSR had no political or moral right to interfere in the internal problems of East European states and cited Finland as an example of stability in troubled Europe. • During his visit to the Vatican on 1 December, Gorbachev established formal links with the Holy See and promised freedom of worship in the USSR. • The Russian police chose not to intervene in a coal-miners’ strike which broke out in Siberia, in defiance of the expressed orders of the authorities. Yet neither Gates nor the writers of the Pentagon document had a single word to say about the domestic difficulties in the Soviet Union, the accelerated process of disintegration, and what seemed to be a major departure from the traditional hardline Soviet foreign policy. The Soviet Union, according to them, remained a power striving to build up its military might and threaten America and the West. And indeed, the amount and nature of arms and ammunition in Soviet hands, taken out of the context of what was really going on there, were really threatening. Tom Gervsi is an independent researcher, not associated with the academic or intelligence-Sovietologist establishment. In his book, The Myth of Soviet Military Supremacy, published in 1986, he claimed that the US had maintained military superiority throughout the Cold War and that the US could have reduced its military and defense expenditure without endangering its national security. Encouraged by politicians and influenced by the military-industrial complex (itself supported by a strong right wing coalition), American intelligence, according to Gervsi, had inflated the Soviet threat. He accused the American media and academia of not grappling with the data provided by intelligence and other adminstration agencies, thus compounding the deceit that contributed to the inflation of the Soviet threat. Three years after Gervsi’s book was published, Angelo Codevilla, a research fellow with the Hoover Institute, published While Others Build. From 1975 to 1985 Codevilla was a staffer in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and he was also one of the most enthusiastic devotees of Star Wars. His book, which dealt with the Soviet military establishment, was published at a time when the USSR’s economy was in shreds. Increased military threat calls for a suitable response. Codevilla, in 1989, urged US policy-makers to strengthen America’s conventional and nonconventional forces. He had good reasons and a battery of good questions: “Do we really want the USSR to be the only country in the world to possess laser attack ability?” “How will we cope with the growing Soviet missile capability?” “How can we leave our children, our citizens, our friends to face the USSR’s improved military capability?”

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In the 1980s, a bitter argument was waged within the CIA between a group who believed what the Soviets were saying publicly was corroborated by action, and another that viewed Gorbachev’s words and deeds as a ploy to deceive the West or, at least, to gain time. The people with clear ideas and strong opinions proved stronger than those who stuck to the facts, and they continued to set the agenda. Most of the others followed suit. The brave swimmers against the current were simply ignored. “We already spotted signs of change in Soviet foreign policy in 1987 and we had identified similar change in their domestic policy even before that,” says Robert Blackwell, who was then a national intelligence officer for Soviet affairs. After pausing for thought, he adds: “In fact, from 1987 onwards we kept saying that while the USSR hadn’t turned friendly, it wasn’t the same enemy we had gotten used to. Soviet behavior indicated a change and we had real evidence of it.” The Pentagon, it seems, wasn’t listening. Doug MacEachin, a senior analyst, later director of SOVA and chief of the CIA’s Intelligence Directorate, was one of the authors of a detailed June 1988 paper on developments in the Soviet Union. He says that although the assessment took about nine months to prepare, no one in the administration responded to their claim that the USSR was seriously considering making big military cuts. “The administration was fooling itself,” he comments. “White House policy was to consolidate American power, and it needed a ‘Soviet threat’ for this purpose.” On 7 December, MacEachin complained to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that in the “prevailing political climate” he was unable to get across a comprehensive picture of what was happening in the Soviet Union. The Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan did not correspond with the image of the Soviet Union as an expansionist power, which never leaves any place on which a Soviet soldier has set foot. The Kremlin’s early 1988 decision to pull out of Afghanistan split American intelligence ideologically. The hardliners did not believe that the USSR meant what it said about withdrawal; the rival camp argued that it was a “definite possibility” and could be inferred from new Soviet foreign and domestic policies. Gorbachev had begun signalling his intention to withdraw as early as February 1987; seven months later, in September, Shevardnadze passed the same message to Secretary of State Shultz. The CIA was skeptical, partly because of its own operational involvement in Afghanistan. When the US embassy in Moscow reported that Soviet withdrawal seemed to be on the cards, the Agency accused the embassy of having gone soft. It was only when Gorbachev formally announced his decision to withdraw on 8 February 1988, that the CIA changed its tune. The announcement of the withdrawal was a loud affirmation of the unspoken Soviet surrender to the United States. Still, the CIA’s aid to the mujahidin continued apace, claiming American resources and Afghan casualties. At the end of 1988 Gorbachev announced in New York that he planned to withdraw a large percentage of Soviet troops from East Germany, a move which

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clearly indicated that the USSR was no longer capable of protecting its assets and vital interests. Still American intelligence hesitated. “At first we were inclined to interpret Gorbachev’s announcement as stemming from lack of choice and his understanding that the Soviet economy could be reconstructed only by making huge cuts in the enormous defense burden,” says Black well. “Only later we understood that the crisis was much deeper, and we had many long discussions about its ramifications.” In November 1988 Gates and MacEachin testified before a task force of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, chaired by Senator William Bradley. Gates assessed that the USSR would not cut its military expenditure in the foreseeable future. MacEachin argued that they would. He was right of course. But American policy continued to be based on Gates’s assessment. The 1989 edition of the Pentagon’s “Soviet Military Power” claimed that even if Soviet forces withdrew from Eastern Europe, the Warsaw Pact would still have a 2:1 superiority over NATO forces in Europe in several categories, including the number of ground troops, tanks and artillery units. Despite the talk about budget cuts, the publication continued, the USSR still spent 15 to 17 per cent of its GNP on defense budgets, compared to the US expenditure of only 6 per cent. Despite Gorbachev’s promise to reduce the Soviet military budget, it had grown since 1985 by 3 per cent a year in real terms, as had the overall size of the Soviet army. The publication was issued about nine months after Gorbachev’s dramatic announcement at the UN General Assembly in December 1988 that “at last we are putting to rest all the talk about the Warsaw Pact’s military threat to Europe.” Other commitments he made on that occasion included the reduction of Red Army forces by 10 per cent, the tank force in Europe by 25 per cent, and the withdrawal of six divisions deployed in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. A glimpse beneath the surface prior to the Soviet collapse shows that CIA professionals well knew that the Soviets were finding it difficult to continue the arms race. Fritz Emarth, who chaired the NIC at the end of that decade, recalls that by the 1980s the US had come to the conclusion that Soviet military expenditure was decreasing as a result of economic pressures. The US could have safely established that the rapid Soviet military growth of the 1960s and 1970s had been halted, and that the USSR found it difficult to continue investing in its military procurement programs and the expansion of its military strength. Emarth argues that it was only after the Soviet collapse that the US realized it had misunderstood the entire issue. From the early 1950s, the Americans had believed that the Soviet military was the main force pushing for increases in defense spending and renovation, while the Soviet military industry had to respond to the demands of this greedy and powerful client. Emarth says it is now clear that the reverse was true. The military industries pushed for the production and manufacture of weapons for which there was no need and which the Red Army had not ordered.

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“It was a ridiculous system,” he concludes, “and we didn’t understand it properly until the USSR collapsed.” Meanwhile, ongoing Soviet armament was displayed by Western intelligence as proof that the Kremlin continued to strive for military superiority over the West, which of course justified increased US military procurement. MacEachin also believes the CIA failed to assess Soviet military power accurately. He too argues that intelligence foresaw a constant growth in Soviet military power that served as a rationale for the US administration’s requests for bigger defense budgets. In fact, the Soviets never lived up to the predictions. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, who did not like MacEachin’s assessments, liked a conversation he had with him even less. MacEachin told Weinberger bluntly that the days of speedy Soviet military growth were gone. “They really didn’t get it at first,” says Emarth, “although I think they gradually came to terms with this assessment.” Nevertheless, the hardliners in the adminstration and in intelligence continued to maintain that economic difficulties never prevented the Soviet Union from building up its army and adopting aggressive policies outside its borders, like Afghanistan, Eastern Europe and Third World countries. WHAT ABOUT THE BASICS? The prime task of intelligence agencies, the CIA included, is to collect and assess information about potential threats—mainly military, but also political and economic—and to identify opportunities to promote their country’s foreign policy. The political leaders have to contend with these problems too. Preoccupied with cardinal issues of war and peace, they tend to ignore such “trivial” matters as trying to understand why Russian youth want to wear jeans the way their contemporaries in the West do, the influence of the housing shortage on morale in the army, the negative economic impact of the system of production quotas and so on. Analysts do not have time to deal with these issues, and they are never asked about them either. “I admired America,” admits KGB General Oleg Kalugin after the Soviet collapse. Surely the CIA should have identified that “admiration” (before Kalugin published his memoirs), and drawn conclusions from it. Kalugin and many other Soviets may not have fought so determinedly against a country they “admired.” In 1987, Tatyana Dolbilova was studying international relations in Moscow. Awarded a Lenin scholarship (“I never believed in him or his theories”), she was considered a future shining light of the regime. In 1988, she went to Yale on a student exchange program. Now back in Moscow, she recalls: “When I landed at Kennedy Airport, I felt as if I’d come home. I felt free and happy and I knew this was where I wanted to live.” An American professor of Russian studies asked the Soviet students what they thought of Gorbachev’s reforms and the prospect of change in the USSR. They chorused that they were in favor—and right away.

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It seems that the American intelligence failed to grasp that the longing for things Western, for everything that was labeled “Made in the USA,” testified to a lack of coherence within Soviet society, and hinted at a fundamental alienation from the regime and what it represented. After the Soviet collapse, as intelligence officers made breast-beating attempts to understand where they went wrong, issues came to the fore, from which, had they been examined before, a better understanding of what was happening in the Soviet Union might have emerged. It became patently obvious that one of the problems was the agency’s failure to deal with the Soviet Union in an integrated way. On the contrary, it had dealt separately with military power, the economic situation, infrastructure problems, social questions, and, most importantly, the degree of the leadership’s resolve to maintain power. It was an approach that made understanding the changes taking place in the Soviet Union in the 1980s extremely difficult. In 1995 a senior operations officer, who spoke for many in the organization declared: We ask ourselves what really happened and why we didn’t understand that the Soviet Union was disintegrating. The problem was—and this is true all along —that not enough attention was paid to understanding the basics, what did bother the man in the street, the state of domestic services and the infrastructure. No serious effort was made to understand everyday life. The absence of such knowledge, or more correctly the failure to recognize its importance, prevented the analysts, who understood the processes, from going one step further and inferring that the Soviet Union was collapsing. They focused on current events, which was what the policy-makers wanted to know about. They were able to describe the economic problems, the unrest among the various nationalities, the weakness of the army fighting in Afghanistan, and the technology gap. But they never put it all together. Serge Schmemann, a New York Times correspondent who served for many years in East Europe and Moscow, also assumed that the USSR would continue to exist and remain a superpower: “Looking back, I’d say we were focused on Brezhnev and the frequent changes in leadership after he died. We dealt with what was known as Kremlinology and we didn’t give enough thought to fundamental issues.” Paul Goble used to work for Radio Free Europe, which broadcast anti-Soviet propaganda during the Cold War and served American intelligence. It was only after the collapse that he started to ask himself what went wrong. We spent millions on gathering information about Soviet missile deployment and what was happening in the Kremlin, but hardly any money to understand what was going on outside the Kremlin, unless it had something to do with military issues. If you look at the breakdown of

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intelligence expenditure, you’ll see that for the “interview” project (of immigrants, refugees and defectors from the the Soviet bloc), which had great potential for inside information on basic questions, we spent very little, no more than $10 million annually. GORBACHEV’S FUTURE AND THAT OF THE SOVIET UNION In May 1989, the NIC produced a paper estimating Gorbachev’s chances of survival. They gave him at least three or four years. The CIA’s Soviet research department, SOVA, was more cautious. Its analysts estimated his chances of political survival no more than 50/50. And nobody tied this to the survival of the Soviet Union. At the end of 1989, the NIC issued another national intelligence estimate, written by Blackwell’s team. It concluded that despite the anticipated deterioration of the economy in 1990–91, Gorbachev would survive. SOVA introduced reservations. But just as SOVA came to the firm conclusion that Gorbachev would not survive, the White House adopted the NIC position and increased its support for the Soviet leader. Although there were estimates that Gorbachev’s years as ruler of the Soviet Union were numbered, there was not a single voice that said the end of the Soviet Union itself was near. The prevailing notion in intelligence was that the departure or removal of Gorbachev would probably bring the hardline communists back to power. It is important to realize that intelligence is supposed to explain strategic developments, and point out what is based on solid fact and what is inferred from analysis or feelings. Far more difficult, it is also supposed to estimate trends and turning points. “There are cases,” Robert Blackwell says, “where there’s a difference between what we know and what we think and believe. This is mainly expressed when we give an oral briefing and personal judgment, but less so when we provide a formal written assessment.” Talking about those days, Blackwell says: In my role as a national intelligence officer, I certainly felt we were also expected to provide our opinion based on what we were thinking, not only on the data we had. We tried to distinguish between what we thought might happen and what was possible and permissible to infer from the data currently in our possession. Blackwell recalls long, interesting discussions in the corridors of Langley, in which analysts dared to predict that the end of the Soviet Union was close. Despite these “long discussions,” the events—or to be more accurate, their real meaning—were not given their proper weight in that year’s Agency assessment papers. The obvious conclusion—the need to redefine the Soviet military threat—

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was not drawn. Nor was there any hint that the Soviet Empire was no longer an empire and was in fact about to collapse. Toward the end of April 1991, as the crisis in the Soviet Union deepened, SOVA distributed a situation assessment paper. It argued that the economic crisis, the anti-communist agitation and the republics’ aspirations for independence would all lead toward the dismemberment of the Soviet Empire and its system of government. The paper also claimed that continuation of the reforms while attempting to please the hardliners was creating chaos and a potential explosive situation. Under such conditions, the paper continued, it was likely that traditionalist elements within the KGB, the army and the interior ministry would attempt to restore the old order, perhaps even by force. By the end of the decade, perhaps even earlier, the USSR might disband into separate, more loosely linked independent states. It might lose some of its military might as a result, while retaining its overall power. SOVA also estimated that developments over the coming year would encompass one of the following possibilities: continued chaos, an attempt to restore dictatorship, or the beginnings of a truly pluralistic society in the USSR. A month later, in May, SOVA estimated that within a year a gradual transfer of power could be expected from the central authorities to the republics, unless this process were blocked by a coup. SOVA’s papers, which floated among dozens of others portraying different scenarios, came close to predicting what really happened. But even SOVA did not anticipate that the USSR would disappear. Moreover, its papers were swallowed up in the welter of material distributed to the administration every morning. In mid-1991, less than six months before the collapse, Western intelligence still found it difficult to say the Soviet Union, as a political entity and as a power that could threaten the Western world, had come to the end of the road and was about to bow out from the stage of history. Although everything was out in the open, the collapse took the world by surprise. And the most surprised, just like cuckolded husbands, were those who were closest: politicians and intelligence officers who dealt with Soviet affairs day in and day out. WAS THERE AN INTELLIGENCE FAILURE? Because it was so traumatic, the nuclear threat was obviously a central intelligence target. So what could highlight the intelligence failure better than the fact that the CIA did not know where the “Cimidan,” the Soviet nuclear briefcase, was during two key moments of crisis? When the plotters took it from Gorbachev, during the abortive coup against him, and when Gorbachev transferred control of the “nuclear button” to Yeltsin. In the most dramatic and significant act of his last days as leader of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev handed over the briefcase containing the nuclear codes to the president of the Russian Republic. Yeltsin refused to meet Gorbachev himself and sent Defense Minister

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Yevgeny Shaposhnikov instead. “I don’t want anyone in the world to worry,” Yeltsin said, “the nuclear activation codes will not get lost.” The codes may have been in safe hands, but there most certainly was reason for concern. The former USSR had about 20,000 nuclear installations, and the way they were supervised and controlled became highly problematic. Opinions inside the administration and the CIA over the intelligence coverage of the Soviet Union are divided. Given the fact that the CIA as an organization and its people as individuals did not fight to get their assessments over to the decision-makers amounts, on the face of it, to a crude shirking of responsibility. Some intelligence theoreticians, however, argue that that is not the Agency’s job, while the idealists among them argue that it is its duty. But those who actually do the work maintain that intelligence has been formulated in a non-binding way because in the final analysis it does not deal with precise materials, and, moreover, it must leave the politicians room for maneuver. Should the analysts have given clearer answers and should they have foreseen the collapse? Vince Cannistraro, an intelligence operative who fought communism for more than 30 years, has no doubt: “The answer is yes. It was their responsibility and they failed.” Not everyone agrees. In an eccentric but very American way, Richard Kerr, deputy director of the CIA, defended his organization in a letter to the editor of the New York Times. He claimed that the Agency had warned policy-makers that East Germany might be forced to bring down the Berlin Wall, and that in general its assessments on Eastern Europe were “very good.” He also contended that long before Gorbachev assumed office the Agency estimated that the coming decade would see political turmoil in Eastern Europe, and when Gorbachev came to power, that his policies would precipitate a crisis among the satellites, in particular Hungary and Czechoslovakia. As for the collapse of the USSR, Kerr pointed out that the Agency’s view had been that Gorbachev’s reforms would not work. And he ended his letter by noting that no one could foretell the future with total accuracy. No organization was perfect, he said, but the Agency’s record could stand up to scrutiny. Kerr’s boss, Robert Gates, defended the agency with the same passionate conviction with which he argued in the 1980s that there was no change in Soviet policy. “Anyone who says that we didn’t know what was happening in the USSR doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” he says. During the 1970s and 1980s the CIA accurately assessed the Soviet economy’s increasing difficulties. In the early 1980s, we began to highlight the deteriorating economic situation, and in fact even before, since Nixon’s time, the entire administration worked on the assumption that the Soviet economy was crumbling. Toward the mid-1980s, after Gorbachev was elected, we began to publish assessments that indicated the steadily worsening state of the economy and the increasing social and ethnic tensions.

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When Gates is asked to respond to the claim that intelligence failed to warn that the USSR was about to collapse, he shows signs of impatience. “No one could have predicted an exact date for the collapse, but the CIA did assess that the processes we identified in the USSR were irreversible.” Nor does Gates have time for critics like Senator Daniel Moynihan, who spoke of “failure” in the wake of which “personal and organizational conclusions should be drawn.” “There was no intelligence failure,” Gates states categorically. “No one ever took a look at the Agency’s assessments on the issue. The accusations are all unfounded.” Here Gates enlists his memory: “Back in May 1987 we reported that Gorbachev had set up a number of ambitious goals but that neither he nor his associates had any idea of how to achieve them.” But in the same breath, he virtually admits failure: “It is difficult for people, especially politicians, to grasp that there are things you simply don’t know about until after they happen.” Indeed, should intelligence be expected to foresee major historical turning points, like the collapse of the Soviet Union? There is something unrealistic in the way the intelligence analyst has to operate. He sits at his desk in his city office, far from the crowd and the enemy. Confronting him is a pile of contradictory evidence. He has to separate the wheat from the chaff or, to use Wohlstetter’s terminology, the signal from the noise. He looks at the code names and wonders which of the sources reported the facts and which invented stories to please or amuse their handlers. He wonders whether the satellite photograph he is looking at really fits in with the rest of the information. At the same time, he receives processed assessments and has to differentiate between the sound and the tendentious. At the end of the day, he is expected to present his own objective analysis, sometimes putting his basic beliefs aside, and hope that his boss and his boss’s boss will like it. That is the whole story. And it is not negligible. Melvin Goodman, an outspoken CIA campaigner, has said that “except for a few of us, the Agency as a whole did not understand the USSR as it could and should have.” Goodman failed to get his message across and Robert Gates did not make it any easier for him. “Gates claimed I didn’t ascribe sufficient significance to Soviet ideology, but that was bullshit,” says Goodman. “Gates’s concept was out of sync with reality. The USSR was running out of resources, it could not continue to pursue its superpower policies, and we could see that its resolve was weakening. It was obvious the Soviets could not handle their basic problems: economy, infrastructure, nationalities, Eastern Europe, particularly Poland, and to top it all, Afghanistan.” The most candid and it would seem the most balanced response came from Richard Kerr. “Intelligence coverage of the Soviet military was really impressive. We had very good, sound information about the quantity, quality and performance of Soviet missiles, aircraft, submarines and also, to a great extent, their ground forces.” But, Kerr notes, the CIA had problems with other issues, especially those which are difficult to estimate quantitatively.

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Take the Soviet economy. There were all sorts of figures which we had trouble understanding. Their economy was so different from ours. We tried to measure and analyze it according to models we were familiar with, but they weren’t good enough. We know we overstated their economic strength during the 1970s. We may have had a better picture of certain aspects than others— we had Sovietologists who did a good job on some of the republics—but I’m not sure we had a deep understanding of the Soviet social structure. So where does the truth lie? Did they or did they not know what was really happening in the Soviet Union? Did they or did they not warn of the imminent collapse? Robert Blackwell says simply: “No, we didn’t issue any paper which forecast the collapse.” If Blackwell says so, it is not an assessment but a fact: the body responsible for the US national estimate did not anticipate the collapse of the USSR, not even in 1991, in the last months of its existence. “We realized that the USSR was changing,” says Blackwell, “but I do not recall anyone saying that the USSR was falling apart.” Ironically, only the CIA had the tools to give the White House a realistic picture of the Soviet Union in real time. But American intelligence had been brainwashed by a flood of movies, programs and articles depicting the Soviet Union as a perpetual threat, which made it difficult for it to pick up the signs of change. The overarching conception, the fear of nuclear war, the pressure of powerful and wealthy interest groups all played a part. But they could only exert influence because intelligence did not do its job properly. Because of a lack of courage and integrity, and especially because of built-in flaws which undermined efforts to come up with a clear-cut political-strategic assessment, the CIA and its European satellites failed to determine unambiguously that the Soviet Union was no longer a power of the first order, that it no longer posed a threat to the West, and that its days were numbered. OTHER WESTERN INTELLIGENCE SERVICES At the end of the 1980s, while the Soviet Union and communism were making their last steps in history, the Europeans also assumed that the creature was still alive and kicking, and liable to bite. There is no lack of excuses on why the Western intelligence services failed to understand the changes taking place in the Soviet Union in the 1980s. British intelligence chiefs claimed they focused on potential threats from the East, and not on political and economic developments. The head of the Italian service argued that Italy, a Mediterranean nation, focused on its strategic environment, not on the Soviet Union. Israeli intelligence focused mainly on the Middle East. The most original excuse came from French intelligence: it was all because of President Mitterand. More to the point: when it came to the Soviet Union, all Western intel ligence services, British, German, French, Italian, Swedish, Japanese and Israeli relied

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implicitly on the United States, and followed the American lead through fire and water—with their eyes closed. MI6, which always fell in line with Langley and Margaret Thatcher’s Whitehall, estimated, as did the White House, that sooner or later conservative forces in the Red Army and the KGB would rise up against Gorbachev, and rekindle the icy wind of the Cold War. How were things seen from Germany? Hans-Georg Wieck, BND president during the second half of the stormy 1980s, minimizes German intelligence responsibility in assessing developments within the USSR. “We worked with the CIA and got from them processed information about the USSR,” he says. But although Chancellor Kohl tended to ignore intelligence, Lutz Stavenhagen, his intelligence coordinator, points an accusing finger at BND headquarters at Pullach: “The BND did report on the critical conditions in the USSR,” he says, “but they did not alert us to the coup being planned against Gorbachev, nor did their assessments place any special emphasis on events in our own backyard, in East Europe.” The situation was no better in France. “Read the books written by our previous intelligence chiefs, Pierre Marion and Claud Silberzahn,” says Maurice Botbol, a French intelligence analyst. “They are amazing, not because of what they contain, but mainly because of what they leave out. They hardly touch on the USSR.” Pierre Marion, who was DGSE director, shrugs resignedly: “How could I be expected to know what was happening in the USSR? When I became director, I found that our intelligence had no presence in Moscow, not even one agent.” In Israel, as in the rest of the Western world, none in the intelligence agencies, the foreign ministry or in academia said or heard a single word anticipating the collapse of the Soviet Union. “The anti-Gorbachev coup and later the Soviet collapse surprised us too,” says a senior Israeli Intelligence officer. But it has to be said that we did not cover the USSR in depth. We were more interested in Soviet aid and political links to Arab states and Soviet policy vis-à-vis Israel. We asked ourselves under what circumstances the USSR might send troops to aid the Arabs during an armed conflict, and were less interested in internal Soviet developments. In any case, we received and agreed with the information and assessments of our CIA colleagues. It was their main area of occupation. In June 1988, experts on the USSR and East Europe from the Israel foreign ministry’s Center for Research and Planning and from the US State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) held a joint conference in Jerusalem. The participants discussed developments in the USSR, but no one suggested that they might be signaling a new path that would lead to the end of communism and the collapse of the Soviet State. A year later, in 1989, Reuven Merhav, director-general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, convened an impressive group of experts on the Eastern bloc. He was

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convinced that developments there heralded a change he could not as yet define. The participants described what was happening in great detail; but they could not say where it was leading. The meeting took place after a wave of dismissals by Gorbachev of opponents of reform, a few years after he dismissed Andrei Gromyko, the famous “nyet” man of Soviet policy. Viktor Chebrikov, chairman of the KGB, was replaced by Vladimir Kryuchkov, his deputy. Gorbachev announced publicly his intention to make far-reaching cuts in military expenditures on manpower and equipment. There were growing indications that Moscow would indeed withdraw from Afghanistan. Unrest had spread throughout the Armenian republic, and the Baltic states were pressing for independence. Still, at this meeting too, none of the participating intelligence agencies, foreign ministries or academics made the slightest allusion to a possible Soviet collapse.

7 Politics and Intelligence

THE FLOW OF PAPERS THE NATIONAL INTELIGENCE ESTIMATE (NIE) During the Cold War information gathering methods became increasingly more sophisticated. Vast amounts of data flowed to the various intelligence headquarters. There it was sifted, classified and assessed, and afterwards distributed in the form of scores of papers to scores and sometimes hundreds of “consumers.” Much of it dealt in one way or another with the Soviet Union and with communism, which, as the main enemy, naturally became the central target of intelligence gathering and the main object of assessment. The purpose of intelligence operations is to serve foreign and defense policy. The criterion is not their potential as a blockbuster screenplay, but their contribution to the assessment papers that help policy-makers to make the right decisions in the name of what is called the “national interest.” According to the rules, and perhaps also plain common sense, a politician/decision-maker should formulate his country’s policy after assimilating all the relevant intelligence data. Intelligence services offer assessments, supposedly a distillation of all available intelligence wisdom, meant to give additional input to the decision-maker. But the politician/decision-maker does not work alone, and intelligence services are not all cut from the same cloth. Most countries possess a number of agencies which vie for the attention of senior politicians. Each promotes its own “merchandise” to the best of its ability in order to influence policy in the spirit of its interpretation of the national interest. The latter may differ from one service to another in a specific country, and quite often is even disputed within the same intelligence agency. All services, of course, or so at least they claim, rely on professionally amassed data and objective assessments untainted by subjective considerations. To solve the problem of multiple assessments and interpretations, most countries assign prime responsibility for what is termed the “national estimate” to one specially selected intelligence organization. In the United States, that body

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is the National Intelligence Council (NIC), an inter-agency umbrella body not formally part of the CIA but directly subordinate to its director in his capacity as coordinator of the entire American intelligence community. The national estimate is traditionally regarded with respect, but in practice it is only one of an almost endless stream of general (although serious and classified “secret” and “sensitive”) papers fed to decision-makers by the intelligence community. In the CIA alone thousands of people are employed in the Intelligence Directorate, the body responsible for research and evaluation. Assessment papers are produced with great enthusiasm, but no intelligence professional is overly proud of them. The multi-faceted complexity of global problems makes it difficult to forecast developments, among other reasons because information can usually be interpreted in more than one way. Even when analysts dare to make a definitive statement they will often spread a safety-net wide enough to cover the possibility of failure. This is one good reason for the casual attitude of decision-makers to intelligence assessments. At best they view political strategic assessments as a useful means for future cover-up. In any case, politicians have scant respect for a reasoned intelligence assessment, in particular when the latter differs from their own concepts, agenda, or chosen course of action. It might appear that politicians do not have freedom of action when presented with intelligence estimates based on factual information and solid assessment, sometimes even with a recommendation attached. Ignoring such a paper could seem like ignoring the facts of life. But decision-makers regularly do so— especially when the estimates fail to correspond to their worldview. The way they usually get round the estimate is by evoking the magic words, “national interest,” which the politician is of course free to interpret as he sees fit. Intelligence officers are familiar with this game and have learned to live with it. Robert Blackwell, who for decades manned CIA and NIC assembly lines, is aware that the NIC national estimate paper has no priority over the papers put out by other intelligence agencies. They all reach the politician, who decides what to accept and what not… Almost all decision-makers believe that they are experts in political matters, especially those they’re involved in themselves. To compete with what the politician knows, especially with what he wants, your paper has to include some very meaningful observations. Robert Gates, former director of the CIA, says that the national estimate process reflects the consensus of the collective understanding of the intelligence community. However, decision-makers sometimes refer to different evaluations from other sources. Sometimes they adopt the community’s estimate, sometimes not. Intelligence is just one of the sources considered by politicians.

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The body with ultimate responsibility for the US national estimates, the National Intelligence Council (NIC), is staffed by National Intelligence Officers (NIO) representing the CIA, the State Department, and the Pentagon. Each NIO has a defined area of responsibility. Depending on the topic, representatives of other government branches also participate in the assessment process: on occasion, members of the FBI, the Departments of the Treasury, Energy and others are involved. In other words, papers created by the NIC reflect the consensus of the American intelligence community regarding questions of national importance which demand attention from the administration, in many cases from the president himself, and prepare the groundwork for policy-security options. The number of national estimate papers produced varies according to the requirements of the president and the director of the CIA. During 1961 about 20 papers were produced and by the end of that decade the figure had reached around 50 annually. Later it gradually decreased, and during Jimmy Carter’s administration the average was only ten each year, mostly because Carter’s CIA director, Admiral Stansfield Turner, did not consider them particularly useful. William Casey, who directed the CIA at the height of the latent Soviet internal crisis, believed that paperwork was an important tool in promoting what intelligence (in this case, Casey himself) considered suitable policies for the US. He increased the number of intelligence papers, which he distributed to everyone he deemed important enough and capable of promoting his policies. In the second half of the 1980s Robert Black well directed the process of shaping the national estimate on the USSR. “It generally began when the NIO, in this case myself, decided that a specific topic was of national importance. I convened a team of relevant government and intelligence representatives and presented the NIC suggestion. Then we formulated the terms of reference, which normally included a description of the topic and a brief outline of the paper we wished to present.” Blackwell saw his role as team leader and coordinator of opinions and attitudes, not as the author of a paper. Overall responsibility in any case belonged to the director of Central Intelligence. The next stage was the appointment of a team member to write the draft. Sometimes this task was carried out by my staff, sometimes by someone from another agency, if the subject was one he was familiar with. We usually asked the CIA representative to write the draft, because the Agency has the largest number of skilled analysts. The first draft was circulated among the members of the NIC, and when it got back to Blackwell, he incorporated the comments it had gathered along the way. The paper was then circulated to the agencies that participated in its preparation, and came back for final touches. “At the end of the process we came out with virtually a new paper, often quite different from the first draft. It reflected the

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intelligence community’s consensus and often included comments expressing a different point of view, sometimes even dissent.” At this stage the paper was presented to the National Foreign Intelligence Board (NFIB), the forum of intelligence agency directors, chaired by the CIA director. The NFIB usually approved the paper, but sometimes suggested changes or additions to be incorporated into the final version. Ultimately, the authority to decide to distribute the paper or to freeze it was in the hands of the DCI or his deputy. One of the most important NIEs produced during the Cold War was NIE-11, “Soviet Capabilities for Strategic Nuclear Conflict Through the 1980s.” Updated annually, it helped to shape the foreign and defense policy of the United States, as well as that of the free world. In practice, the formulation of US security and foreign policy owed more to pressures, fears and interests than to balanced intelligence assessments. Despite the ringing title, the weighty subject and the work invested in it, NIE-11, like most intelligence papers, said nothing specific. In fact, NIE papers could not say anything above and beyond the political consensus, because they were the result of compromise: compromise between intelligence agencies as well with interested parties—especially politicians—who influence the paper’s writers. Moreover, a presidential national security advisor could add his own comments to the national estimate; Reagan’s first advisor, Richard V.Allen, and Carter’s, Zbigniew Brzezinski, often did. “I would not say the national estimate represents the main tool serving policymakers,” says Richard Kerr, who headed the CIA’s Intelligence Directorate and later served as the CIA’s deputy director. “Actually,” he says, thinking aloud, “the national estimate is issued after other papers have already been circulated and discussed. Everyone wants his opinion to be taken into account.” Kerr agrees that “the national estimate may help to modify policy, but I doubt if it could shape it. Politicians don’t read estimates and then develop policy. They usually form their opinions and concepts before receiving evaluation papers. But intelligence papers tend to give a topic a kind of national impetus.” THE PRESIDENTIAL PAPER The most encompassing “national” product to come off the intelligence assembly line is the national estimate, but the most prestigious is the presidential daily brief (PDB). At 6 a.m. every day, the CIA prints the most expensive daily edition in the world. (Reagan’s advisors directed the Agency to provide not more than six to eight pages in order not to overload him. Gerald Ford actually preferred a long and thorough briefing, while Jimmy Carter received between ten and fifteen pages, which often included a section entitled “Trends,” a personal contribution by his CIA director, Admiral Turner.) In contrast to other briefings, the PDB cites sources and sometimes the methods by which the information was obtained. If necessary, the morning

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meeting with the president is joined by a senior analyst or one of the CIA’s division heads, who is there to answer any questions. Reagan was president when the first cracks in the Soviet system appeared. In the beginning, he came to his morning intelligence briefings lacking an understanding of the mechanism and dynamics of intelligence work. His only experience had been serving on the Rockefeller Commission, which examined deviations in the CIA’s work, during his tenure as governor of California. Reagan relied on William Casey, who was a personal friend, to do his job without bothering him with details. Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, Casey’s deputy, was surprised by the close links between Casey and Reagan. “They often called each other to discuss various topics, including some that had nothing to do with intelligence matters.” The central themes in Reagan’s PDBs were organized under brief headings describing the event in a few lines, and did not amount to more than 100 or 150 words. The PDB was intended as a précis of the information and knowledge of the strongest, most sophisticated intelligence community in the world, but the written material was almost a news flash: headlines accompanied by photographs or maps and a few lines elaborating on the topic. The format indicated a degree of insight on the part of the intelligence bureaucracy: someone who has just woken up should not be subjected to informational overloading heavier than the morning television news program. The CIA invested much thought, time and effort in the technique of packaging information for the president, and over the years it had learned to serve its early-morning PDB in light and digestible form. This was not only the case in America. Many intelligence services around the world included graphics and even video clips in their products to add a dimension of reality. During President Carter’s tenure the CIA began to provide video briefings, which became a lively rival to CNN during Reagan’s administration. The intelligence products are produced by many men. The American intelligence community alone comprises 12 agencies. The main bodies are the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which serves the Pentagon, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), which serves the State Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the intelligence network of the three military branches (navy, army and air force), and the largest, the National Security Agency (NSA), which enjoys the biggest slice of the budget cake and employs the greatest number. All vie for the president’s attention, but the question is whether the president can hear through the collective din. The answer is no, judging by the handling of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Over the past few years, the intelligence community has begun to realize that the days of its exclusive position close to the president’s ear are over. The heads of intelligence recognize that they are in a very competitive business, competing not only with other knowledgeable men and organizations, but with more efficient media reaching more people and more issues in real time.

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OTHER PAPERS The PDB is not the only intelligence paper to reach the president and other policy-makers. Research on Washington’s “paper war” carried out in 1989 by the naval intelligence history department concluded that two informal papers, Executive Briefs and Sense of the Community Memoranda, were more effective than the NIC national estimate papers because they dealt with a wider range of problems and reached their customers more quickly. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) alone produces dozens of papers. Once a week it issues an information and assessment bulletin that covers military and security developments and frequently clashes with CIA papers. There are also specific crisis-related papers that try to compete for White House attention. One of these, the Defense Intelligence Supplement, has been added to the CIA’s PDB; presented in tabloid form, its headlines are short and targeted. Other papers include the Defense Intelligence Estimate (DIE), the Defense Intelligence Digest (DID), and the Pentagon’s Daily Intelligence Summary (DINSUM). These papers and others are sent to the secretary of defense, the chief of staff, and a selected list of Pentagon officials. The State Department’s INR issues its own daily information bulletin, ten pages with an expanded weekend edition, which is circulated in-house and to a select group of senior officials in other government branches. This is only the crest of the river of papers flooding Washington. There are also dozens of ad hoc and regular intelligence publications on various topics: terror, regional conflicts, military and economic, political and personal gossip about key enemy leaders (the latter at least as vital as military information). This flood of intelligence papers has a purpose. Part of the tacit role of intelligence, perhaps its most secret mission is to carry out the unwritten understanding between the intelligence community and the politician/ decisionmaker. Should a political act prove successful, the politician takes the credit. In the event of complications or failure, the intelligence agency takes the fall, and its boss sometimes pays with his job. The politicians take all this for granted, and many operatives agree with them. They believe intelligence is there to serve as their bodyguards: to take the bullet should anyone decide to shoot at them. There is nothing personal or nasty about this—rather it is an expression of the wisdom of the system, which protects its leaders and enables them to go about their business in the impossible conditions of democracy that devours its elected representatives. In such a situation, the intelligence officer and the entire service must accept the blame in order to take the pressure off the politician. It is not only their tacit understanding, but their contribution to the national interest. The CIA took a public thrashing after the failed 1961 Cuban Bay of Pigs invasion. In France, after the Greenpeace debacle, DGSE director Admiral Pierre Lacoste was demoted.

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THE ATTITUDE TOWARD INTELLIGENCE AND ITS PRODUCTS Charles H.Fairbanks, a former research fellow at Johns Hopkins University who served from 1982 to 1984 as deputy assistant for human rights to the secretary of state, claims: “I always read the CIA’s National Intelligence Daily (NID) thoroughly, as well as the Pentagon’s DINSUM. Many of them were extremely biased, overly general, and left the impression that they had been written for idiots. Fairbanks says “the question is what we really knew about the farreaching changes taking place in the USSR at that time.” Despite his dedicated reading of intelligence papers, he recalls: “I didn’t notice [the Soviet crisis] until April of 1989.” Policy-makers have developed their own attitudes to intelligence and its products. Secretary of State George Shultz commented that while the NIC papers were sometimes interesting, they reflected a consensus. He felt that a frank conversation with intelligence officers was more productive than reading a paper worked over by the CIA, and claimed that friends on Capitol Hill had reached the same conclusion. Charlie Hill, who was George Shultz’s aide, testifies that “the Secretary stopped reading intelligence reports. He felt that they simply did not give him anything.” Robert Gates, who was CIA director during the demise of the USSR, is not amused by Shultz’s remarks on intelligence. “The secretary is very harsh,” he says, “and I think that the source of his criticism stems from a kind of obsession with the CIA.” Gates makes Lawrence Eagleburger sigh. “I understand why Shultz is so critical, even though I don’t agree with him. Maybe it’s because I never expected much from intelligence in general or the CIA in particular. Anyway, intelligence is much less relevant when it comes to analysis and assessment of politicalstrategic issues.” Eagleburger feels that there were various members of the administration who needed intelligence, but I certainly could have gotten along without it. If you want a straight answer, intelligence never influenced my judgment. It didn’t matter what they said. Our ideas were clear and no information or assessments could have made us change them, unless of course they had indicated the other side’s intention to start a nuclear war. Even if the CIA had told us at an early stage that the USSR was on the way out, it would not have had much effect on our policy. Everyone wants to be in the intelligence loop, especially on the restricted distribution list (BIGOT), which deals with sensitive issues. But even those who are, do not forego other sources. Leslie Gelb served on the National Security Council in Washington during the second half of the 1970s, and had access to intelligence papers. But, he says, “when I was short on time and had to choose

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among the intelligence updates that streamed to my desk every morning or the morning newspaper, I generally chose the New York Times.” “World view” might have been William Casey’s middle name; when he became director of the CIA in 1981, he knew exactly how he wanted the US intelligence community to function. One of his first moves was to increase the flow of paper to all government branches. The number of NIEs placed on President Reagan’s desk quadrupled. Some time later, realizing that not all the papers his agency produced were in accord with his world view, Casey began to bombard Reagan with memoranda on Agency letterhead chronicling his “personal reflections,” without bothering to share them with the organization he headed. CIA officers believed that this was a devious way to obtain the attention of the new president, who perhaps could not tell the difference between personal memoranda from the chief of intelligence, a man he trusted, and professional estimate papers which had undergone the usual bureaucratic processes. Casey understood that he was not the only player in Washington and that if he wanted to have any influence he had to respond quickly, and, wherever possible, before the media. Washington is a very political city, and people have no time or patience for nuances. You are expected to come up with something dramatic, short and preferably not too complex. And most importantly: the analysis must have a domestic political angle. In such circumstances, it is difficult to relate to politically significant problems from a purely objective, analytical point of view. In Washington, if you do not play the game, and if your views are not heard, you become irrelevant. The plethora of papers Casey sent to virtually everyone in the administration were intended to address this problem. THE KREMLIN DID NOT BELIEVE IN INTELLIGENCE EITHER The flow of paper in Moscow was no better. The range of topics covered by Soviet intelligence was perhaps narrower, the quality of the graphics and printing relatively poor, but each paper, at least until Yuri Andropov took over the KGB in 1967, comprised dozens of pages. More sophisticated than his predecessors, Andropov understood something about marketing, recalls KGB Lieutenant General Nikolai S.Leonov, who headed the information, analysis and research directorate in the KGB’s First Chief Directorate, the Soviet equivalent of the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence (DI). “Andropov ordered that a paper distributed to Politburo members should not exceed three pages,” Leonov recalls. Soviet national estimate papers were produced by the Central Committee’s “international department.” This led to a constant tug of war between the department secretary and the head of the KGB. When Soviet intelligence was headed by strong characters like Andropov, they undercut the authority of the department secretary, and the assessments and opinions of the KGB and its chief got through to the Kremlin in much larger doses. Actually, there were four

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organizations, the international department, the KGB, military intelligence and the foreign ministry, which distributed position and estimate papers to the secretary general, other Politburo members and select members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. The reason the Central Committee, itself an important consumer of intelligence, also produced assessments stemmed from its determination to supervise the flow of information, which is perhaps more possible in totalitarian states than in democracies. Another no less important reason was the need to strike a balance between objective intelligence and ideology, which, the politburo believed, could only be done by the Central Committee. The result was precisely the same as that in Washington. Competition between the various producers of intelligence enabled the politician/decision-maker to choose papers that suited him and ignore those that contradicted elements of his Weltanschauung, even if they came from the head of the KGB himself. The principal, but by no means only, body coordinating the Soviet national estimate was the KGB information directorate headed by Leonov, which classified and processed intelligence gathered by KGB stations (or “residencies”) throughout the world. The directorate contained six divisions: United States and Canada, Western Europe, South America, Far East, Middle East and Africa. At the beginning of each year the directorate selected between 50 and 60 topics to be focused on, and these were passed to the KGB chairman for approval. The result was a flood of information and assessment papers produced by the directorate. Leonov joined the information directorate in the 1960s, as a young intelligence officer and expert on Central America, who in the late 1950s had made initial contact with young Cubans associated with Fidel Castro. In 1971 he was promoted to deputy, and in 1973 to director. In February 1991 he was transferred to the Second Chief Directorate (internal security), a position which gave him a close view of domestic developments on the eve of the Soviet collapse. Leonov argues that the work carried out by his directorate was “professional, objective and honest” and that relations between the directorate and the Kremlin were on a professional basis. “We were independent. No one interfered in our analytical work,” he says with a tinge of pride, totally ignoring the fact that perhaps no one needed to intervene. For who was willing, say under Brezhnev, to question the official line? Oleg Gordievsky, who was head of the KGB station in London in 1986, agrees that Leonov’s claim that the Kremlin had no influence over intelligence papers is probably correct, but feels that he is not telling the whole story. The KGB had a certain influence on the Kremlin’s decision-making process. First, several of its chairmen were Politburo members. They voiced their personal views there, but with the backing of the organization they headed. If they were hardliners, as Kryuchkov and Leonov were, they tended to distort intelligence data to serve their own interpretation.

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Gordievsky claims that “when General Leonov knew that the Kremlin had a strong view on a specific topic, he did not dare to present a contradictory assessment.” He recalls, for instance, that KGB experts forecast that Robert Mugabe would become president of Zimbabwe, but “because they knew that the Kremlin supported Joshua Nkomo, they fell into line.” The four main bodies presenting intelligence to the Central Committee were nominally on an equal footing, but in practice their status depended on the prestige of their chiefs. When Gorbachev set limits to KGB powers, Foreign Minister Shevardnadze enjoyed much greater influence than KGB Chairman Kryuchkov. “When we found ourselves facing a critical issue, like the crisis in Poland, we tried to achieve a joint estimate,” says Leonov. “But such situations were rare.” Another center of power was the pyatyorka (Russian: “group of five”), a forum of the foreign and defense ministers, the KGB chairman, the chief of staff, and the minister of the military-industrial complex, which dealt with strategic questions such as arms control and the future of Europe. Each of the five prepared the evaluations it needed to both support and push its own position. “As deputy foreign minister,” says Alexander Bessmertnykh, “I was a permanent member of that forum, and it was the only place where blood was spilled in real arguments.” Under Gorbachev other forums were established, such as the Soviet National Security Council and the Defense Council, which dealt with national, foreign and defense topics. The intelligence information and assessments distributed to the Central Committee and the Politburo arrived from several channels. The KGB produced and distributed mostly politically related information. The GRU, military intelligence, focused mainly on military issues, but did not refrain from politicalstrategic estimates. Ambassadors, especially those who served in important postings, provided an additional pipeline of information and evaluation: for example, Anatoly F.Dobrynin, Soviet ambassador to Washington, who bombarded the International Department and other bodies with endless papers, and Leonid Zamyatin, who was ambassador to London in the mid-1980s. Both were considered experts on the West, perhaps because they were among the few senior Soviet officials who spoke fluent English. “The ambassadors used to send us lengthy reports,” Leonov relates; “I remember cables of 30 or more pages. They wanted to impress our leadership.” The main source of paper distribution was the KGB. “Of about 200 incoming cables every day, we would circulate perhaps 30, after Chairman Andropov had approved them,” Leonov recalls. “We never added comment or interpretation.” In Moscow, as in the West, the most problematic parts of intelligence work are the evaluation process and the attitude of the politician/decisionmaker to the end product. The extent to which intelligence material influenced its recipients— especially the all-powerful secretary general—was unclear. “We had no agency or other organization with overall responsibility for the national estimate, as they have in the West,” says Leonov. “There were a number of bodies with equal

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rights and responsibility. In certain cases, decisions taken by the Kremlin were not based on the evaluations they received, but were more a result of instinct. For example, the implied nuclear threat to Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and the decision to invade Afghanistan.” In fact, the final word was that of the politician’s assistant who received all the incoming information and assessments. It was he who decided what to bring to the attention of his superior and when to bring it. He also decided what to pass on in its original form and what to use as a basis for his own synthesis and evaluation. When Leonid Brezhnev was secretary general, the KGB received preferential treatment and its authority increased. Andropov, its chairman, was a Politburo member and so too (with the exception of Vitali V.Fedorchuk), were his successors, Viktor M.Chebrikov and Vladimir Kryuchkov. Andropov’s power was also expressed via the intelligence he distributed, but in the final analysis Soviet policy was subject to ideological considerations. Former KGB officer Stanislav Levchenko thinks that “the KGB made efforts to provide the Kremlin with an objective and reliable picture,” while Arkady Shevchenko, who defected to the West, disagrees disdainfully. An American intelligence estimate, “The Soviet Assessment of the US,” claimed that under the Soviet system assessment was carried out by the elite ruling group. According to the paper, Soviet policy was shaped by about 24 Politburo members and the secretariat of the Central Committee. They based their decisions on their opinions and ideology, and the amount of intelligence information they received was irrelevant. The paper concludes that Soviet assessment of the United States was generally subjective, and to a large extent followed the ideological party line. Policy matters in general were not judged objectively, but were subject to the political and personal interests of the decision-makers. This was certainly so in Brezhnev’s day, when Politburo members tended to adopt assessments which supported the policy he favored. The paper cites the lack of meaningful contacts between top Soviet officials and their peers in the West as one of the reasons for the inability of KGB analysts to grasp what was really driving the US. Leonov comments: The CIA had far more extensive intelligence coverage, perhaps four or five times as much as we did, particularly in the technological area, which produced massive amounts of information. But their assessment ability was no better than ours. In fact, I think ours was better. Look at the huge mistakes the Americans made—Iran, for example. Our assessment of the situation there was accurate, and I don’t understand how the Americans could have misread it. They had people all over Iran. And what about Cuba? Castro and Cuba became socialists and pro-Soviet as a result of the American mishap in the Bay of Pigs.

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Leonov, like most KGB officers, combined professional ability with ideology, and he still believes that these two attributes are compatible. In February 1991, he was appointed by KGB chairman Kryuchkov to head the Second Chief Directorate’s analytical division. That same February Kryuchkov sent his secret memo to Gorbachev warning that his policies could cause the collapse of the USSR. In July, days before the last summit meeting between Bush and Gorbachev, with the struggle between Gorbachev and the hardliners at its height, Kryuchkov disseminated damaging information—or rather disinformation— accusing the CIA of having contacts with Soviet drug barons and of inciting the republics to demand independence. He claimed that Western intelligence encouraged forces working for the disintegration of the USSR. In better days, material of this sort would have provided the Kremlin with ammunition for a propaganda war against Washington, but in July 1991 Gorbachev was not overly impressed. Kryuchkov, Leonov and, for that matter, the entire Soviet intelligence system did not understand that the Cold War was virtually over and that the US-Soviet conflict now existed only in intelligence papers. POLITICIZATION OF INTELLIGENCE One of the Cold War’s most significant struggles, perhaps the most secret, possibly the most fascinating, was waged within the United States itself, under the nose of the American public, during the 1980s. The battle was between Langley and the White House, but its echoes reverberated around the globe. The “war” was twofold: inhouse CIA wrangles among those responsible for assessing the data gathered by the American intelligence community, and their fight with the various politicians and policy-makers. This was a mind game which developed into a struggle for power and prestige, revolving around one topic. Could statements of the Soviet leadership be taken at face value? Could they carry out what they declared? Did they still intend to dominate the world in the name of communism and Marxism-Leninism? After all, their own domestic situation was precarious, to say the least. Was the USSR capable of launching a nuclear attack so that, like Samson pulling the Philistine temple down on himself, it would take its foes with it? Those battles were fought out as might be expected: in the name of the “national interest.” Definition of the national interest is the result of a legitimate struggle between different bodies, opinions, ideologies and interest groups. Liberals and conservatives, defense industries and environmentalists, defined the national interest from a very different perspective. Ultimately it is the administration that determines the national interest. Intelligence is part of it, and does not operate in a vacuum. It is charged with assessing enemy threats objectively, but its people have opinions and ideologies and they also know very well what their president and the head of the agency that pays their salaries want.

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Until the mid-1980s, the end of the Brezhnev-Andropov-Chernenko era, Western politicians and intelligence were united in agreement that Soviet imperialism must be blocked. Their differences were over the nuances. Gorbachev’s election in 1985 opened the way for two schools of thought. The first maintained that the Kremlin was preoccupied with insurmountable domestic problems, that Gorbachev was more liberal and humane than his predecessors and was really bent on coexistence with the West. The second school held that nothing had changed, that the difficulties were transitory, and that Gorbachev only wanted a lull to get the USSR back on track to confront the US from a position of strength. The USSR, in this view, continued to pose a threat and had to be treated accordingly. Both schools based their totally contradictory views on the same intelligence data. CIA Director, Judge Webster, found himself talking to the walls at the Senate Armed Services Committee where he testified, on 1 March 1990, that he did not believe the USSR was likely to pose a military threat again. Webster also opined that Gorbachev’s successors would continue the policy of disarmament and that the Soviets would not try to turn the wheel back in East Europe. But to stand up and say so at that particular time was worse than foolish. It showed a distinct lack of consideration for the winds that were blowing in the White House. On the very same day, 1 March 1990, Defense Secretary Richard Cheney testified at the House Foreign Relations Committee. The hearings dealt with President Bush’s allocation request for $306 billion for the 1991 defense budget. Cheney, relying on his military intelligence (DIA) assessment, did not hesitate to state that a turn around in the USSR was possible, and with it a renewal of the Soviet military threat to the US. Both Cheney and Webster read the most classified intelligence papers; the CIA and DIA were fed from almost the same sources. The fact that they reached firm and opposed conclusions is first a question of outlook. The moral advantage is apparently Webster’s, who represented a professional intelligence less biased toward the USSR than military intelligence, which has an interest in larger defense budgets to produce more sophisticated military toys. The 1980s saw the most dramatic battle over the CIA’s and the entire Western intelligence community’s assessments of the meaning of the dramatic developments in the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc. It was not an esoteric exercise. The assessments were translated into policy vis-à-vis the Soviet Union all over the free world. Even more importantly: the assessments laid the ideological basis that enabled the military-industrial complex to push through development and production programs worth hundreds of billions of dollars every year. The struggle within the American intelligence community was over the right to make objective assessments, free of outside political pressure. There were intelligence officers who were ready to provide what decision-makers wanted to hear. They believed that there was nothing new under the Soviet sun. But there

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was a minority of analysts of intellectual integrity who did their job as objectively as they could. They insisted that the only way intelligence could do its job was to disengage from outside influences, whether politicians, parties or the military-industrial lobby. “A professional,” say those who call themselves professionals, should consider the data and only the data. His only guides should be his own backbone and his professional ability. The information placed on his desk calls for the objectivity of a surgeon to whom the patient is a stranger. This is the only way to decide what to cut and what to retain. In every intelligence agency there are a few people like that. And there were some in the CIA. During the early 1980s this minority had to confront William Casey, who was no cool-headed surgeon. He was an example of the power-seeking politician whose main concern is what he wants, rather than what he objectively faces. Cracks were beginning to appear in the Soviet façade and the CIA was having to absorb the new developments and readjust its approach. But Casey refused to accept that fundamental changes were in the making. To strengthen his control over the organization he directed, he promoted hardline and anti-Soviet experts like Robert Gates, whom he earmarked as his successor. “Gates is a bad example of an intelligence officer, although he is very capable and efficient,” says Robert King, a former CIA and NSC officer. “When I served with the NSC, I do not recall intelligence making any special efforts to satisfy the politicians. But during the Reagan administration, with Casey and Gates at the CIA, the Agency definitely became politicized.” Intelligence officers who did not agree with Casey were pushed aside to wait for the storm to subside. Melvin Goodman was one of them. When he began to work for the CIA in 1966, he became aware of the ideological clashes over the Vietnam War which colored professional judgments. This was not necessarily true within the Agency, which took pains to retain its professional independence. “The CIA Vietnam estimates were generally accurate,” Goodman recalls. “However, military intelligence distorted the Vietcong figures because there were those in the military who didn’t want the true data to reach President Johnson.” Goodman was close to Sam Adams, the CIA officer who fought for his right to present accurate and objective data on Vietcong abilities. Adams was confronting Daniel Graham, who was fighting for the American way of life. Goodman believes that Sam had the right figures, but they were kept away from the president because generals and politicians understood that there was a political price which they couldn’t or didn’t want to pay. Accepting Sam’s figures meant choosing between doubling our forces, a politically difficult option, or

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withdrawing from Vietnam altogether, which the hardliners were opposed to. We realized quite early on that we couldn’t win the Vietnam War, but Sam, who provided the facts from which he drew this conclusion, was rejected. Goodman himself was rejected 20 years later by Robert Gates, who did not like his assessments on the Soviet Union. “Gates was terrible for the Agency,” says Goodman. “He was motivated by ego and he was always tuned to what the men at the top wanted. At the professional level, we had good people who were open to the winds of change. The crucial point for intelligence is how someone behaves when he knows there’s a different view at the top.” Goodman himself wonders how one keeps from being politicized when he’s up there: “It’s not easy. I don’t know how you can avoid it.” Not everyone in the Agency agrees with this analysis. Robert Blackwell, a senior CIA officer, feels that Goodman is wrong when he charges that the Agency’s higher echelons were politicized. From 1982 to 1987 Blackwell was an NIO dealing with the USSR, and he is sure that “papers I dealt with weren’t influenced ‘politically.’” He sounds businesslike, but a faint tone of impatience creeps into his voice. “From my angle, politicization means that you’re told to write in a way that supports a specific policy. If an analyst independently writes an assessment which just happens to please his superior, this is obviously bad, but I wouldn’t call it politicization.” According to Blackwell, Objectivity is always in the eye of the beholder, or the reader… Some papers didn’t please those who received them. Sometimes the customers didn’t agree with the information provided, or the analysis, or both. Generally they [politicians] tend to accept intelligence assessments that support their policy and match what they think, and are inclined to reject those which say something else. That’s the reality we live in. However, it was neither Casey nor Gates who started the CIA’s internal war. There had always been two basic attitudes toward the USSR within the American intelligence community: the “knuckledraggers,” or hawks, who held that the USSR’s goals differed basically from those of Western democracies and would always strive for world domination. The other group, known as communist sympathizers (com-symps for short) or doves, believed that in the post-Stalin period the USSR was playing by acceptable international rules. Until Gorbachev came to power, there were differences of opinion within the American administration, but the gaps were not great. The USSR was regarded as a superpower, a rival, a threat and later on an evil empire. The long-term and most vital American interest was to prevent a development that could lead to nuclear confrontation. It was both possible and necessary to deal with all the other threats posed by the Soviets through a framework of coexistence, as long as it did not threaten vital American interests.

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Gorbachev’s election in 1985 and the signals he sent out, not to mention the intensification of the internal crisis, should have called for a reassessment on the part of the US administration and intelligence. However, the huge ship moved very slowly. It was George Shultz, Reagan’s second secretary of state, who realized that another look at the situation was necessary. “He believed that Gorbachev was something new, a completely different kind of leader, and that he really meant to make changes in the USSR,” recalls Charlie Hill, his aide and bureau chief. Gates, the administration’s main authority on the USSR, opposed him. He continued to claim that Gorbachev was a communist and remained a zealot communist, and that his overtures to the West and proposed economic reforms had one purpose, to gain time to rebuild and strengthen the USSR, so it could compete more successfully with the West. Reagan’s first administration adopted Gates’s hardline approach, actually Casey’s, who was not only Gates’s boss but also a cabinet member. “It’s very bad when an intelligence chief is also a member of the cabinet,” Hill observes, “because to my mind the DCI should provide an objective intelligence assessment, which is difficult to do if he sits in the cabinet.” The politicization of intelligence in general and the CIA in particular was not invented in the 1980s. Nor was it the unique product of the American system of government. It is part and parcel of intelligence work in all regimes. The Americans were aware of the problem. During the 1970s the CIA established an internal commission, chaired by Edward Proctor, to examine the influence of ideology and politics on intelligence work. Proctor, who was at the time deputy director for operations, came to the conclusion that “intelligence assessments are carried out objectively.” Robert Gates, who was involved in running the Agency at the most senior level during the 1980s, also rejects, as could be expected, any suggestion of politicization. However, Gates, who was aware of criticism both of the CIA and of himself personally, gathered the Agency’s senior officers a short while after he was appointed director, and told them: “As DCI I intend to do everything I can to guarantee that analytic objectivity remains the most important of the core values of the Central Intelligence Agency.” Most CIA professionals agreed with Gates. The party pooper was Alexander Haig, enough of a Washington veteran to say: “Intelligence must not be politicized. But,” he adds with a thin smile: “Casey most certainly did it.” Haig’s smile widens. “He did it after many years of Democratic politicization. In fact,” Haig sums up the situation as he sees it, “both Republicans and Democrats ran the intelligence business according to their own ideology when they were in office.” “Politicians possessed well-defined concepts about the nuclear threat and how to cope with it. We in the Agency could not educate them on these topics,” says Robert Blackwell. Pointing out that estimate papers are the result of compromise, Carl Ford adds, choosing his words with the care of someone who has spent his life producing balanced and responsible papers: “Most are noncontroversial. However, when the estimate doesn’t match the policy-maker’s opinions, or, worse, implies that the policy should be discarded, policy-makers

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go bananas and accuse intelligence of being politicized.” For most of his professional life Ford has been a loyal CIA man and he does not believe that a government official, no matter how senior and expert, should express dissent about a decision-maker’s response. “It’s true that the decision regarding what policy to take is their prerogative and responsibility, but our mandate as intelligence officers is to provide the information and an analysis of the situation as we understand it. If they don’t want to hear it, that’s too bad.” So as is nearly always the case in critical situations, in the great debate on the significance of the unfolding events in the Soviet Union in the 1980s, intelligence left the theater exclusively to politicians who looked at things from their traditional political points of view. INTELLIGENCE AND POLITICS Many politicians show scant interest in the intelligence papers on their desks. Not a few of them have nothing but contempt for intelligence. They seldom give it specific tasks, or ask to hear its evaluations. So what do the politicians take an interest in? “Presidents and senior government officials don’t usually ask intelligence the big questions,” says Robert King, who was the NSC’s Soviet and East Europe expert before he turned up in Congressman Tom Lantos’s office on Capitol Hill. “A president going to meet a Soviet leader is not interested in hearing about the general situation there. He wants to be briefed on the current state of US-Soviet relations—information which could serve his meeting.” States spend a fortune on intelligence. The United States alone allocated nearly $30 billion annually in the years leading up to the Soviet collapse. It is only natural to expect that politicians making major political and security decisions will seek a return on their investment in terms of guidelines for policymaking. But it does not always work that way, partly because intelligence often fails to assess correctly the results of political-strategic turning points in real time. Sometimes it gets things wrong or understands too late. The media breathes down its neck and often responds more quickly. Sometimes key developments stem from unanticipated departures by the rival leader, which even his intelligence agency knows nothing about. Secretary General Gorbachev did not inform the KGB about his overtures to the West. President Reagan never asked the CIA how the Soviets would react to Star Wars. Egypt’s President Sadat took Egyptian and Israeli intelligence services by surprise when he announced he was going to Israel to talk peace. Israeli intelligence had no prior inkling of the “Oslo Accords” which paved the way for mutual recognition betwen Israel and the PLO. Moreover, political leaders meet each other, and may feel this gives them a better understanding of the other side than intelligence ever can. Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev talks to President Bush. Shevardnadze negotiates with Baker, Eagleburger speaks to Yakovlev and US Ambassador Matlock in

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Moscow talks to the colleagues of Gorbachev and Shevardnadze and Yakovlev. This is what enables Baker to say nonchanantly: “Why do I need intelligence to tell me what’s happening in the USSR? After all, I had personal contacts with Gorbachev and Shevardnadze.” As for intellgence assessments? “Intelligence did not fore-see the Soviet collapse, and I never set much store in its predictions,” he says scathingly. “I believed in what I saw for myself. I wanted data from intelligence, not estimates.” There is a more than a hint of contempt in the way Baker speaks about the intelligence community, with harsh implications regarding the CIA. “When you talk with people from intelligence about evaluation, you realize immediately that they’re guessing, just like everyone else.” Baker, the third generation of a family of lawyers who built Republican careers, knows the Washington power game inside and out. He knows that intelligence is the servant of public servants such as himself, and he is not a type to let William Casey or Robert Gates run US foreign policy. Baker’s remarks almost infuriate a veteran CIA operational officer, a hawk in the Casey mould. “It’s misplaced arrogance for Jim [Baker] to say he doesn’t need intelligence because he talks directly to Gorbachev,” he says; “obviously, Gorbachev told him what he wanted Baker to hear, rather than facts on which US policy could safely be based.” In terms of policy-making, he sees this kind of relationship as distorted, like “an intelligence operator who falls in love with his agent.” Baker’s quarrel with intelligence is not merely a politician’s error or a personal grudge against Casey (who in the early 1980s implicated Baker in a leak and demanded he undergo a polygraph test), but is based on his perception of the situation. “We fund intelligence to find out what is happening over there, but that doesn’t have to mean they really know. My opinion of the CIA was not high for a number of reasons, but mainly because they made huge blunders. Over the years,” Baker adds, “I learned what to trust and what not. I found the technological information good, but I did not trust their political assessments— not only regarding the USSR. In Iran too, for instance, it was a fiasco.” George Shultz’s opinion as expressed in his memoirs was no higher: “Our information regarding the Kremlin was thin and in my experience the CIA’s evaluations were generally wrong.” Charlie Hill, who was George Shultz’s aide, testifies that “the secretary stopped reading intelligence reports” and that he had scant respect for intelligence assessments, however national, secret, or sensitive. “I had been misled, lied to, cut out,” he says; “I had no confidence in the intelligence community.” Shultz shared his misgivings with Frank C.Carlucci, who was appointed national security advisor after Admiral John Poindexter, noting that “the CIA…had been unable to perceive that change was coming to the USSR.” Charlie Hill adds that Shultz did not trust the CIA. He believed that the agency “tailored intelligence assessments to policy, and this was especially true of the

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period when the agency was run by Casey and Gates.” As a result, Shultz never initiated a request for an intelligence estimate. Lawrence S.Eagleburger served in Washington for 30 years, filling key governmental foreign policy positions from ambassador to the top post, secretary of state. He agrees with Baker’s claim that his personal acquaintance and frequent contacts with Gorbachev and Shevardnadze gave him a better grasp of the Soviet leaders and their policies than the intelligence services could. “But Jim should be careful about making such claims. Chamberlain probably also felt that way when he came back from his meeting with Hitler in Munich. Chamberlain was wrong and Baker was right, but I wouldn’t build theories on that, and in particular not US foreign policy.” Alexander Haig, secretary of state at the start of the 1980s, summed up his opinion of the value and objectivity of intelligence evaluations in a statement that needs no explanation: “There is Democratic intelligence, and there is Republican intelligence.” Indeed, the real conflict is not between Haig, Shultz, Baker or Eagleburger and the CIA. It has nothing to do with judgments of CIA abilities or the proper way to utilize intelligence. It has everything to do with the question of whether policy toward the USSR was based on sound intelligence or on ideology and intuition. Even when current political developments in the USSR were estimated accurately, American intelligence did not manage to convince the president and his policy-makers to pay due attention, in other words, to translate their assessments into policy. Why not? This is the question that Dimitri Simes asks himself again and again. Simes is a distinguished Sovietologist in Washington and has served various administrations in this capacity. He believes the Bush administration ignored some intelligence assessments, because of its ideological agenda. Not only the CIA, but anyone who failed to toe the White House line was swept aside. In a background paper preparing Bush for a meeting with Yeltsin, the CIA described the latter’s political agenda and estimated that Gorbachev’s prospects of surviving the transition to a democratic government were weak. Yeltsin was depicted as a powerful figure, one who was capable of sinking the ship, but also as unpredictable. But Bush did not want to know. Doug MacEachin and his team, who predicted that Yeltsin would replace Gorbachev, were nicknamed “Yeltsin-lovers.” Bush did not want to hear either from as seasoned a statesman as Richard Nixon, who returned from a visit to Moscow four months before the abortive coup against Gorbachev. Simes, who briefed Bush on the Nixon visit, recalls: “Nixon had the courage and the insight to realize that the Gorbachev era was nearing its end and Yeltsin would succeed him, but the administration was impervious to outside opinions.” Simes believes that most of the information possessed by the American government about the USSR at that time was drawn from Gorbachev’s inner circle. “Even though the Bush adminstration talked with a lot of people, this was

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a conservative administration with strong opinions. People with different opinions weren’t welcomed.” “The intelligence I got from the CIA made little difference,” says Lawrence Eagleburger, secretary of state at the end of George Bush’s term of office. “It didn’t matter what they put in front of us. Our policy was already set. Unless, of course, they had alerted us about preparations to start a nuclear war.” The picture he draws of Cold War politician-intelligence relations is relevant to the main question. “Even if the CIA had assessed at an early stage that the USSR was heading for collapse, it would not have made much difference to our policy.” Eagleburger seems to ponder. Then he leans back in his chair and gives a small smile: “A politician has to shape his policy according to his own judgment and not according to [intelligence] assumptions of what could happen in the future. “But,” he adds, “if the CIA had alerted us that the USSR was about to collapse, we might have decided to increase the pressure on the Soviets to make it happen faster.” More often than not, contemptuous treatment of intelligence is the norm. But things can be very different when the agency is headed by someone whose opinions are respected and who has a close personal relationship with the president. “When a man like Casey receives from his staff a paper that opposes his views, he will most likely transmit it to the president with the comment that he disagrees with it,” says Carl Ford. “In such an event it would be reasonable to assume that the director’s opinion is the one that will prevail.” Directors do not always approve estimates or other intelligence papers brought before them by their subordinates and they are not surprised when their superior, the political leader, occasionally ignores their assessments. This happens despite the fact that the intelligence agencies have the information and the paperwork is being done in a professional way by experienced, knowledgeable analysts. Ford calculates that fewer than 15 intelligence publications in a decade provide assessments that actually affect or change the leaders’ views. The decision-makers do not provide guidelines for the nation’s intelligence requirements, and, Ford thinks that “only about 10 per cent of estimate papers are produced in response to a specific request. Ninety per cent of estimate papers are created on the initiative of NIOs themselves.” Richard Kerr, who served in key positions in the CIA during the 1980s and the early 1990s, disagrees. He believes that “intelligence had and has an influence on politicians and on their policies… We provided information about Soviet military capabilities and Reagan, in his first administration, used our assessment when he decided to increase the defense budget.” However, he concedes that in Reagan’s second term, “it wasn’t always like that. Politicians have their own agenda, they decide on a certain policy and they don’t want intelligence to intervene.” Richard Helms, CIA director between 1966 and 1973, is convinced that the lack of good relations between the policy-makers and the DCI affects intelligence work. Kerr, though, puts it differently: he feels that what dictated the

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nature of relations between the president and intelligence was “first of all the closeness of the relations between the president and his intelligence chief. The ideal is when they work closely together and it’s acceptable to the secretaries of state and defense.” But Kerr adds: “It’s true there was personal and close contact between Casey and Reagan, but generally speaking the intelligence community had greater input under Bush.” Robert Gates did not view himself as the sole or even the most important player in the administration as far as intelligence was concerned. “Every member of the government received the information he needed as well as assessments from various sources,” he says; “and intelligence was only one of the sources.” On this point Melvin Goodman, Gates’s rival, agrees with him: “The assessments provided by the CIA were not more important than those from other sources.” Politicians turn to intelligence when a crisis breaks out. The CIA is capable of providing good and fast answers, relevant facts and assessments about unfolding events, which are helpful to policy-makers. However, in terms of estimates on strategic issues, decision-makers have ways of their own to form their conclusions. Fritz Emarth was a senior intelligence officer in the Reagan and Bush administrations. He recalls that they were “quite interested in our intelligence estimates, and occasionally also accepted at least some of them. But I am aware that there were other cases.” Carl Ford: In our government system there is a separation between intelligence and the decision-makers. There are of course ample contacts and joint discussions but no coordination. The intelligence agencies have no part in the decision-making process. There is a built-in antagonism between the intelligence bodies responsible for the national estimate and the policydesigners and decision-makers. They don’t always read our papers, especially if there’s no direct link to their specific interest. They may ask an aide what the paper contains, although they often don’t even bother to do that. When a paper happens to relate to a topic on their agenda and supports their position, they like it (and they like us) and they use it against rivals with other views. I believe that when Shultz, the CIA’s toughest critic, received a paper which matched his opinions he would say, “They did a good job”. Like secretaries of state Haig, Shultz and Baker in the 1980s, Otto von Bismarck and Henry Kissinger before them did not have a high opinion of intelligence officers. Bismarck noted in his memoirs that he never believed intelligence people—most of the time they were busy making up stories to prove their own worth. The rest of their time, according to Bismarck, was spent inventing stories to promote their own ideas. Kissinger does not throw statements into the air, as

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vicious as they may be, without adequate logical underpinning. During the Vietnam War, he claimed, the intelligence analysts always went along behind politicians: “Intelligence had the information, we knew how to analyze it and what it meant.” Kissinger views intelligence blunders, such as Israel’s in 1973, as the failure of politicians; in this case, they did not understand Egypt’s motives and could not grasp that President Sadat was willing to lose a war for the chance of advancing a political initiative. But what a damning defense for intelligence agencies this is: that politicans know enemy intentions better than they do! WHAT DID THEY THINK IN EUROPE? European politicians are even more brutal in their criticism of intelligence than their counterparts in the US. With studied viciousness, Charles de Gaulle compared the SDECE to a “puppet theater.” His successor, Georges Pompidou, succinctly expressed his attitude to intelligence in a comment to SDECE head General Paul Grossin: bankers, Pompidou said, were better equipped to understand what was happening in the world than the intelligence services. President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing followed the tradition. He accused his head of intelligence, Alexander de Marences, of globetrotting and hatching plots with foreign intelligence services and local politicians. The most venomous of all was François Mitterand, who treated his head of intelligence, his own appointee, Pierre Marion with contempt. “A president like Mitterand did not need intelligence,” says Marion bitterly. “To prove it, he very rarely met with me.” Mitterand, whose mistrust and dislike of French intelligence was also based on his conviction that it was utilized against his Socialist party, established his own private intelligence service. It operated under the cover of an anti-terrorist gendarmerie funded to the tune of 450 million francs (c. $100 million) without any parliamentary or other supervision. Its “special operations” included tailing Greenpeace’s ship, payments to anti-communist trade unions, and other clandestine activities the head of intelligence only learned about through chance meetings in the corridors of the Elysée Palace. These included a major bugging operation under Christian Proto, head of the special counterterror unit, in which over 200 people, Mitterand’s rivals and some of his allies, in politics, law and business, as well as the actress Caroll Bouquet, were bugged at one time or another between 1982 and 1988. Here Mitterand avidly read the transcripts, in stark contrast to his total lack of interest in the political and strategic intelligence estimates produced by his official intelligence services. German Chancellor Helmut Kohl called the intelligence staff “dilettantes” and his predecessor, Helmut Schmidt, once remarked that he preferred reading newspapers to intelligence papers. They both did their best to avoid meeting their intelligence chiefs. Once a week the head of the German BND displayed its assessments at a forum held in the chancellor’s office and chaired by the chancellor’s coordinator of intelligence. HansGeorg Wieck, BND president in

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the late 1980s, recalls that nobody was particularly interested in the proceedings. The forum consisted of about ten parliamentary secretaries representing the ministries of foreign affairs, interior and defense, the international department in the Chancellor’s Office, the presidents of the BND, the BFV (security service) and military intelligence. When Hans-Georg Wieck presented intelligence estimates to this forum, there were occasional casual questions from those present, but he was convinced that the coordinator in the 1980s, Waldemar Schreckenberger, “was not particularly interested. He took no notes, and no one else was allowed to either.” The situation reached a point where Wieck would fly back to his headquarters at Pullach after the meeting, note down the main points of his oral report and the comments it had engendered, and send a memo to the Chancellor’s Office, “just to make sure they couldn’t say later on that I hadn’t told them. After all, the ultimate responsibility was mine.” Heribert Hellenbroich, Wieck’s predecessor, had had the same experience. He is not sure the Chancellor ever read or made any use of his reports. “I never met with Chancellor Kohl in my capacity as president of the BND,” he says bitterly, and talks openly about the schism between politicians and intelligence officers. Looking back, he notes ironically that the East Germans were more interested in what he thought and did than his own goverment was. Following Germany’s reunification, Hellenbroich’s file was found in the Stasi archives, which was headed by Markus Wolf. Hellenbroich’s own chancellor refused to listen to him, but his counterpart on the other side of the border did just that, with a thoroughness that included monitoring telephone conversations in his office, his home, and his car. Hellenbroich laconically sums up the different approach and level of professionalism of West and East thus: “We never managed to eavesdrop on Wolf,” he declares. In Britain, the situation was no better. “There are no regular contacts between the Prime Minister and the heads of intelligence,” says Michael Evans, who covers British intelligence for The Times of London. Evans cannot recall “even one case where the iron lady [Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher] changed her view due to a contrary intelligence assessment.” The British political elite have an unfortunate history of ignoring intelligence even when it is right. The fact that British intelligence correctly estimated the nature of the German threat on the eve of the Second World War did not stop Neville Chamberlain from trying to appease Hitler. The Franks Committee, set up in the wake of the failure of British intelligence to forecast the 1982 Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands, found that most ministers either did not read or simply ignored intelligence findings. And those who did read the material tended to complain that the information they got was neither accurate nor reliable. In Russia and the Soviet satellite states politicians tended to take no notice of intelligence assessments unless they corroborated the official line that served

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their purposes. And for its part, intelligence rarely submitted estimates that contradicted the official line. In Israel, too, many politicians have had scant respect for the intelligence services. Israel’s mythological defense minister Moshe Dayan asked to see only the “hard” evidence. Assessments, he said, he preferred to make himself. Although Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was a compulsive consumer of intelligence, he warned the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee to be wary of intelligence assessments. Over the past 20 years, he said, most of them had been wrong. His successor, Shimon Peres once told Les Aspin, President Clinton’s first Defense Secretary, about his exasperation with the intelligence services: “There was not a single thing in the peace process that intelligence foresaw. None. Intelligence predicted that Arafat would never make a deal and that King Hussein would not move before Syria’s President Asad.” The Arab states, Peres added, were as important for Israeli intelligence as the Soviet Union for the CIA, and still it got things hopelessly wrong. Aspin visited Israel at the head of a congressional delegation looking into the workings of American intelligence. On his return he was quoted as saying that he had come away with the impression that there was a lot of anger in Israel at the intelligence community, because of its failure to understand the processes that made the peace initiatives possible. The attitudes of politicians to their intelligence agencies in all democracies are much the same: in public they are full of praise, behind the scenes, especially when the intelligence estimates do not match their conceptions or interests, they ignore them or make withering comments. Still, intelligence estimates, even when politicians opt to ignore them, are too important to be dismissed out of hand. Although many politicians criticize intelligence, most admit they could not do without it. The question is what exactly are these “intelligence estimates” that cannot be done away with, but can so easily be ignored. THE STRUGGLE INSIDE THE ADMINISTRATION OVER SOVIET INTENTIONS On 15 December 1986, while preparing an appearance before the Senate following the Iran-Contra scandal, Casey suffered a stroke. Reagan nominated Gates to replace him in January 1987. However, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence did not approve the nomination. William Webster, then director of the FBI, was appointed instead, and headed the Agency for the following four years. Webster was untainted by political controversy, and lacked his predecessor’s killer instinct. Gates, still No. 2 at the CIA, and the expert on Soviet affairs, continued to lead the battle for a hard line vis-à-vis the USSR. He insisted that Gorbachev had changed nothing and the USSR still represented a threat to American interests. He also held that Gorbachev was still a loyal communist and

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that his reforms were intended to rehabilitate Soviet power so that it could confront the US from a position of strength. In December 1987, a year after Casey’s death, about 60 distinguished members of the closed club of “ideological intelligence” met under the aegis of the National Strategy Information Center (NSIC). They included senior government officials past and present; intelligence officers, field staff and analysts; academics and media people; businessmen and representatives of the Department of Defense, members of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), the NSC and the Congress Intelligence committees. The reason for this impressive gathering was to examine the role and functioning of intelligence during “this difficult period.” Although the deliberations were professional, the conclusions were political. Against what seemed like a wild outbreak on the part of President Reagan and his passion for signing hasty disarmament agreements, the meeting commented in its summary that “despite social and economic problems, the USSR will be in several regards stronger strategically in the 1990s.” It also predicted that the USSR would be able to project military power vis-à-vis the West in most of the areas of friction. Soviet diplomatic and political power would increase and also be heightened by covert actions and special means. At the end of 1987, as this American intelligence elite discussed the threatening might of the Soviet Empire, additional cracks appeared in the facade of the communist regime which had seemed for so many years impenetrable. In January of that year, the rector of Moscow University depicted the USSR as a power “sliding into the abyss,” although he expressed hope that the trend could be halted. This speech was published in Pravda and raised Sovietologists’ eyebrows and shortly afterwards Moscow began to ease restrictions on free speech. On 2 February 1987, the Soviet authorities began releasing dozens of political prisoners and allowing them to return to their homes. Among those released was Dr. Andrei Sakharov, the nuclear scientist who had become a worldwide symbol of Soviet dissidence. The wave of prisoner releases aroused resentment among members of the establishment and hardline party activists who understood that the process of belt-loosening would harm their status. However, Gorbachev was not deterred. In a speech he made at the end of February at a union rally, he defended his policy: “Democracy is not opposed to discipline…democracy is not opposed to responsibility…democracy is not opposed to order.” He also sharply criticized Party bureaucrats, whom he claimed were responsible for the stagnant economy. A few days later it was decided to spread the word, and Gorbachev’s speech was broadcast on television. Then, in the first public clash of its kind in Soviet history, an open battle between civil and military authorities took place in the Kremlin. Mathias Rust, a 19-year-old German, flew from Helsinki to Moscow, apparently penetrating Soviet air defenses with the greatest of ease. Gorbachev took advantage of the incident to sack Defense Minister Sergei L.Sokolov, one of his harshest

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opponents. The move was designed and perceived as an announcement of civilian primacy over the military. It was Gorbachev’s first confrontation with the military establishment, and he won it outright. Soon afterwards Gorbachev began to curb the KGB’s powers and to allow open criticism of the organization. Demands were soon voiced for the KGB to operate within the framework of the law. The distinguished members of the “exclusive American Intelligence club” which had gathered that year under the aegis of the NSIC, did not deal with the implications of events in the USSR. They did not discuss the American intelligence failure to identify the growing signs of Soviet crisis or the Red Army’s poor performance. What preoccupied them was a perceived weakness in the American intelligence community which “could harm Western readiness in the 1990s,” according to Professor Roy Godson, one of the conference organizers. The fact that the enemy for whom they had to be ready was crumbling in front of their eyes was not part of the agenda. “Mostly,” says Godson, “the political and military assessments of our intelligence seemed too academic and removed from policy-maker needs.” While the NSIC was holding its conference, a Reagan-Gorbachev summit was taking place in Washington. At the end of the meeting the two leaders signed an agreement to destroy all short- and medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe, and declared their intention to enlarge the scope of the agreement to include intercontinental missiles. Harmony prevailed during the summit, which marked the first visit of a Soviet leader to Washington in 14 years. Personal links between the two were strengthened. “My name is Ron,” said Reagan. “And mine is Mikhail,” answered Gorbachev. Reagan received his guest warmly and together they drove in triumph through the streets of Washington. During his visit, Gorbachev invited American public opinion shapers to a meeting at which he talked about the new era in the USSR and its relations with the West. “Impressive,” commented Brent Scowcroft, who was invited to the meeting although he did not join the administration until a year later. “The meeting seemed designed to give the impression that we have nothing to fear. Gorbachev knows how to appeal Western-style to his audience.” At the cocktail party given by the Soviet Embassy in honor of the President, Gorbachev said, “The United States and the USSR must rethink their relationship.” Turning directly to Henry Kissinger, who was sitting in the audience, Gorbachev asked: “Isn’t that right, Dr. Kissinger?” Having been the midwife of détente, Kissinger knew that the baby had begun to walk, and now there was a real danger that Reagan would opt for premature destruction of the missile stockpiles. In response to Gorbachev, he smiled nicely and nodded noncommitally. “What did you think of what Gorbachev said?” reporters asked Kissinger after the party. “Interesting,” he responded tersely. When they pressed the magician of

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diplomacy to be more specific, he replied that Gorbachev’s answers were better than the questions he was asked. As early as 1989, Gates, with Bush’s blessing, had formed a top secret Contingency Planning Group within the framework of the NSC. Condoleezza Rice was named as forum coordinator. Other members were the NIC’s Fritz Emarth, the CIA’s Robert Blackwell, the State Department’s Dennis Ross, the Pentagon’s Eric Edelman and occasionally Paul Wolfowitz, Defense Secretary Cheney’s aide. The group convened to examine the implications for the US of drastic change in the USSR. For example, if the regime were to be toppled by violence, what would happen to the nuclear stockpiles, and how should Washington react if it received information about a planned coup. On what did the forum base its assessments? “Well,” Rice is quoted as saying, “I didn’t need the CIA to know how bad the situation was there. I could read about it in the New York Times” President Bush, who also read the New York Times, obviously saw intelligence material too. So did James Baker, who was running US foreign policy at the time of the collapse. But they ignored intelligence material that conflicted with their views. George Kennan, the father of the containment policy, testifed to the House Foreign Relations Committee that President Bush had “not responded sufficiently” to the USSR’s courageous steps. Robert Gates, still waiting at the NSC to be appointed director of the CIA, responded to Kennan in a Dallas speech. He claimed that the US “was still facing a long and competitive struggle with the USSR.” Asked if there were a need to aid the USSR in its moment of crisis, he answered crisply: “No.” Indirect backing for the assesment that there was no change in the Soviet Union came from a Pentagon report in 1989, warning against delusion: Assurances regarding radical change in East-West relations must be examined with great caution… The USSR continues to strive to expand its influence and power at Western cost through diplomatic and financial means, and provides military aid to states and movements hostile to Western interests… The new thinking does not prevent Gorbachev from increasing military aid to Nicaragua from $280 million in 1985 to $500 million in 1988. Military assistance continues to represent a central component of Soviet relations with many developing countries, in order to keep the hard currency flowing as well as a lever for political influence. On 12 June 1991, Boris Yeltsin was elected Russia’s first president. The central problem for both Gorbachev and the American administration was how the US would relate to the new situation: the independence of the Russian republic and to Yeltsin himself. It seemed that Yeltsin, thanks to his popularity in Russia and in other republics which demanded independ ence from Moscow, was racing toward a point of no return, which basically meant breaking with Gorbachev, in other words, with the central authority of the USSR. In June 1991, SOVA issued

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another paper in which Grey Hodnett, who coordinated SOVA’s assessment of Soviet domestic affairs, argued that opposition to Gorbachev was united around Yeltsin. When Yeltsin visited the US in June 1991, shortly after he was elected. Washington was uncertain how to behave toward him politically. Robert Gates had always considered Gorbachev a latent communist and never believed in his commitment to reform. In the NSC, Gates recommended that the president accord Yeltsin, Gorbachev’s arch-rival, a status of a head of state. Bush’s dilemma was that a state reception for Yeltsin in Washington would be perceived as a slap in the face for Gorbachev, who was struggling in Moscow to preserve the unity of the USSR. Diplomacy could take care of any awkwardness, but Gorbachev was the man who had delivered the goods (the stripping away of Soviet military and strategic assets), while Yeltsin’s position on strategic affairs was still an unknown. What was known was that he displayed a fondness for the bottle. The solution was to have the cake and eat it too. That is, to keep faith with Gorbachev while not alienating Yeltsin, as they had done in 1989 when Yeltsin forced himself on the administration by visiting Washington. It was decided to arrange an official meeting for him with Brent Scowcroft, the president’s national security advisor, and that Bush would drop by Scowcroft’s office “accidentally” and join the meeting for a few moments. Washington was late in recognizing the changes in the internal balance of power in Moscow, and, in the summer of 1991, its main concern was how to stop Moscow forcibly preventing the gradual breaking away of some of the Republics, especially the Baltic Republics, from Moscow’s grip. An Agency spot commentary analyzing the events estimated that Gorbachev was behind an attempt to suppress the revolt in the Baltic. Some intelligence indicated that Gorbachev had begun an unplanned police action to put down the breakaway opposition. Bush’s dilemma was whether to turn a blind eye and allow Gorbachev to impose continued Soviet unity, or tacitly encourage the independent separatist movements and accelerate Soviet instability, which could precipitate Gorbachev’s downfall. George Colt recalls that the intelligence papers in those days described Gorbachev’s inherent weakness, his unpopular policies and the risks they entailed, “were completely rejected by the administration’s foreign-policy makers.” Matters reached such a pass that CIA Director Webster felt it necessary to defend his analysts publicly. Less than five months after Yeltsin’s election as president of the Russian republic in June, Gorbachev was forced to leave his office in the Kremlin, which became Russian government headquarters. However, until his final formal ouster, the Bush administration continued to treat the Soviet leader as if nothing had changed.

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REAGAN’S CHANGE OF HEART In Reagan’s first administration, which came to power on a strongly anticommunist ticket, CIA chief William Casey viewed intelligence in general and the CIA in particular as one of the main standard-bearers of the anti-communist war. His successor in 1987, former FBI Director Judge William Webster, adopted a low profile, mostly to avoid the hail of criticism following the IranContra fiasco. And without Casey and Gates, the Agency’s anti-Soviet flame burned dimmer. Already at the beginning of his second term in 1985, Reagan felt that Vietnam syndrome had been finally laid to rest, and the might of the US had been sufficiently rehabilitated to permit open discussions with Gorbachev aimed at easing relations between the two superpowers. Ideological intelligence personnel, like other “cold warriors,” found it hard to swallow, but they had to keep in step with the White House’s new tune. Reagan, unlike the Cold War professionals, and in contrast to his anti-communist image, realized that the USSR was changing. Although he was ready for far-reaching negotiations with Gorbachev, he had to slow down because of his vulnerability after the Iran-Contra affair and the conservative opposition within the administration and from his traditional right wing supporters. “There were professionals in the Pentagon who talked about nuclear war as if it could be won. I thought they were crazy. Even worse, I learned that there were also Soviet generals who held similar ideas,” Reagan wrote in his memoirs. Still, he lost no time in authorizing Secretary of State Shultz to start a dialogue with the Soviets to ease international tension and try to reach arms control and limitation agreements. Shultz, who backed Reagan’s approach, set about his mission with vigor. He did not think he needed intelligence support and in fact he was determined to move forward even if it meant ignoring CIA assessments. He thought the Agency attached too little weight to the changes taking place in the USSR, and, in any case, he suspected that the intelligence dispensed by Casey and Gates was tailored to their political agenda. While the latter concluded that a strong economy meant a stronger Soviet secretary general, that in turn meant a greater threat to the US, Shultz and Reagan calculated that a stronger Gorbachev would make a better partner for talks on world peace. Shultz and Reagan received added support from an unexpected source: Nancy Reagan. The first lady believed it was possible to achieve an understanding with Moscow. Nancy, who took it upon herself to immortalize her husband as the man who made the world a safer place, felt this could be achieved through an understanding with Gorbachev. According to Reagan’s biographer, Edmund Morris, Reagan was what he was because of his wife. Nancy Reagan herself was not popular. Some people described her as a shrewd lady who told the president what to do. She was adept at using intermediaries to pull strings, and Michael Deaver, the White House deputy chief of staff, took the president’s Nancy-inspired message wherever the

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first lady wanted it to be heard. She understood the futility of the extreme right’s anti-Soviet zeal and resolved to defend her husband from it. When Gorbachev assumed office Nancy Reagan took to him immediately (less so to Raisa) and told anyone who was willing to listen that Gorbachev was a different type of Soviet leader. She loathed Casey and opposed (like Baker) direct military intervention in Nicaragua. She viewed the US-Soviet conflict from her personal vantage point, that of a woman whose chief concern was her husband’s glory. However, it was not only Nancy Reagan’s adroitness and Gorbachev’s openness that brought about Reagan’s change of heart. It was also God’s mercy. While recovering in hospital from the attempt on his life by John W.Hinckley Jr. in March 1981, Reagan was assailed by the notion that his life had been spared for a divine purpose. From here it was a short step to the conclusion that God intended him to carry out a mission of peace. He sent Brezhnev a personal letter in his own handwriting, offering bread and circuses: to lift the wheat embargo imposed by Carter after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and to hold a summit meeting aiming at thawing US-Soviet relations. Alexander Haig, then secretary of state, objected. Experts on the USSR suggested amendments. Nancy Reagan, who supported and encouraged her husband’s world peace initiative, enlisted Deaver to help preserve the original initiative. Brezhnev, however, was not clearminded enough to understand the signal and his advisors were convinced that Reagan was not clearminded enough to make a genuine move. The Reagan initiative had to wait until the changing of the guard in Moscow. At their first summit, in Geneva during November 1985, Reagan posed for pictures with the new Soviet leader. He later wrote that he had wanted the meeting to convince Gorbachev that the US really wanted peace. Despite Reagan’s widespread image as a political dummy whose advisors spoon-fed him the dishes they cooked themselves, most of those who were close to him agree that he himself made the decision to reach out to Gorbachev. The next summit was held in Reykjavik, where it seemed that Reagan really intended to bypass the familiar path of confrontation for the route of peaceful compromise. “Many of us had the jitters after the Reykjavik summit, because of Reagan’s uncoordinated comments on the question of nuclear arms limitation,” says Lawrence Eagleburger. “When Reagan talked about a total ban on nuclear weapons, we began to get really worried.” True, Reagan was the president, but the “unsupervised” way he handled nuclear disarmament talks obliged him to seek intelligence support to help explain his stance. He could of course have read the New York Times instead, and he did. However, it was a little difficult to make a strategic turnaround with worldwide implications when the Pentagon, the intelligence community and the White House team, including Vice President George Bush, had not yet grasped that a new USSR was in the making.

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Even when Gorbachev, eager to do business with the West, sacked orthodox communism’s tough old watchdog, Andrei Gromyko, American intelligence failed to provide an assessment that could help Reagan carry out his plan. Mel Goodman, who had been moved from the Third World Desk to a more senior position in SOVA, recalls: I viewed Gorbachev’s sacking Gromyko as an extraordinary act of courage for a new leader who had not yet built his power base. So I immediately sent a memo to Director Casey, in which I analyzed Gorbachev’s move and described Shevardnadze, Gromyko’s replacement, as moderate, apt to compromise, and pro-reform. The appointment of such a man, said Goodman, only proved Gorbachev’s determination to continue along his new path. “Casey reacted swiftly, which was flattering,” Goodman says, “but he also wrote that such thinking on my part was very naive.” Goodman is convinced that Casey feared such a paper would serve Secretary Shultz, who was seeking ways to improve relations with the USSR. So the paper that might have reached the White House and the secretary of state was returned to Goodman with Casey’s comment—“naive” - and his signature indicating that he had spared the time to read it. Judge Webster, as CIA chief from 1987, was a willing partner and provided the necessary intelligence cover. But the Agency was still influenced by the Casey tradition and the White House was bombarded with the usual intelligence papers, representing a consensus among the various intelligence bodies in the National Intelligence Council, which made it difficult for Reagan to make the dramatic breakthrough he wanted. Fortunately for the US and perhaps for the rest of the world too, Reagan was ripe for dialogue with Gorbachev. Perhaps it was the influence of Hinckley’s bullet or Nancy Reagan’s crystal ball; perhaps he was suddenly struck by the terrible sense of responsibility that crouches at the door of the leader of the free world (“between us and destruction there is only the touch of a button”). Whatever it was, Reagan was ready for compromise, and he was helped by the chemistry that was created between him and Gorbachev in Geneva, the chemistry that makes two people bridge their opposing national interests for the sake of a greater common benefit. The contacts between them, which produced major agreements and contributed to world peace, continued until George Bush entered the White House. GEORGE BUSH IN MOSCOW AND IN THE WHITE HOUSE George Bush, a former CIA chief and ambassador to the UN and to China, was no stranger to Soviet affairs. When Konstantin U.Chernenko died in March 1985

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after having served as Soviet secretary general for only about a year, Reagan asked his vice president, George Bush, to represent him at the funeral. Before the trip, Bush was briefed by intelligence officer Robert Blackwell, who told him the CIA had been saying for some time that Mikhail Gorbachev would be named as Chernenko’s successor. Blackwell thought that Gorbachev would move fast to improve Soviet relations with the West. He did not elaborate on the nature of future Soviet policy, but focused on Gorbachev, whom he described as a new breed of Soviet leader, more sensitive than his predecessors, and as genuinely wanting change in the USSR. Bush was not overly impressed but allowed tersely that the new situation did look “somewhat different.” After the funeral, he had his first meeting with Gorbachev, who told him that the USSR did not want confrontation with the US. Reporters who were present asked Bush if a Soviet leader like Gorbachev was good for the West. “Our challenge is not to ‘help’ him, but to secure US interests as we understand them,” Bush responded. Bush and Blackwell had met in similar circumstances about a year earlier at the February 1984 funeral of Yuri Andropov, when Bush had been introduced to Andropov’s heir, Chernenko. Blackwell told Bush of the CIA assessment that Chernenko had been appointed only for the interim. Bush had also represented Reagan in November 1982, when Brezhnev died and Andropov took over. During the Frankfurt stopover en route to Moscow he was briefed by Blackwell, who described Andropov as a tough communist who was expected to work hard to lift the USSR out of the stagnation of Brezhnev’s last years. Andropov was also perceived in the West as a man of the world who was wise to Western ways, at least judging by his manners, and someone with whom it was possible to do business. The KGB laughed about the American intelligence view of Andropov all the way to the Lubyanka. Oleg Kalugin, then head of KGB counter-intelligence, recalls: “I couldn’t stop laughing. The West was impressed by Andropov’s ‘Western’ hobbies—his liking for jazz and whiskey. The fact was Andropov never touched alcohol because he had kidney problems. He was just as tough a hardliner as Brezhnev.” Kalugin knew what Andropov was like. During the 1956 Hungarian uprising, Andropov had served as Soviet ambassador in Budapest, and had advocated the use of force to crush the uprising. “He was one of the group that helped Brezhnev depose Khrushchev. Andropov was the type of Soviet who saw imperialist and CIA plots everywhere all the time.” Bush’s conclusions about the new Soviet leadership, shaped at Brezhnev’s funeral and after his first meeting with Andropov, were: “The new Soviet leader should be treated with extreme caution.” He did not change his approach when Gorbachev assumed power. The question of why Bush as president did not respect his intelligence agency’s assessments or accept that the changes in the USSR would allow cuts in

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his defense budget is not only a matter of “White House tradition.” In Bush’s case, part of the answer may also lie in his character and early environment. The first stage in the formation of young Bush’s persona was Yale and its elitist WASP attitude. He belonged to “Skull and Bones,” which had a strong set of “America-first” ideals. “Constructive chaos” and “secret operations” were taken for granted among the members and “keeping order” was considered a key value. Post-Second World War adminstrations were served by distinguished members including George Marshall, a general and secretary of state; William Buckley, the founder of the National Review, and his brother James who served Reagan’s administration as defense undersecretary; James Lilley, who was ambassador to China; David Boren, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence; and many others. Young Bush’s mentor was Henry Stimson, Franklyn Roosevelt’s defense secretary and also a “Skull and Bones” member, who observed that a leader does not have to argue with a rival, but should remain firm, draw a line, and be ready to fight if the rival crosses it. Bush was also influenced by the Council on Foreign Relations, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. The Council has about 2,500 members, mostly in New York, Boston and Washington, although its 38 branches are scattered throughout the US. In 1950, Council member James Warburg told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Council’s aim was to encourage the creation of a single world government, which was inevitable, whether anyone wanted it or not. The Council is neither Republican nor Democrat, but has roots in both parties. Foundations linked to it donated money to both Bush and Clinton. Council members were involved in establishing the UN, itself a part of the vision for a new world order. The site of the UN complex in New York was donated by the Council’s John S.Rockefeller Jr., and 50 of its members served in the first US mission to the UN. Seventy-five members of the Council and its affiliates served in senior positions in the Reagan administration. During Bush’s term the number rose to 350, one of whom was Richard Cheney. The list of members who served in previous adminstrations included Kissinger, Brzezinski, Scowcroft, Walt Rostow, Robert McFarlane, Frank Carlucci, Colin Powell; Presidents Kennedy, Nixon, Ford, Carter and Bush and presidential candidates such as Barry Gold water and Michael Dukakis. The Council and its affiliates were behind the establishment of the Rome Club, whose first meeting was held at Osterbeek in the Netherlands in 1968, and which dealt with world problems according to the Council’s central tenet: the promulgation of one single world government, with the United States at the forefront. The Council is not a real-life version of the “Elders of Zion,” sinister wealthy men plotting to rule the world. Even if most of its members are sinfully wealthy, they are guided by a real desire to bring the American way of life to the world— not necessarily Coca-Cola, baseball and apple pie, but the values of freedom and

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democracy through which everyone can be sinfully wealthy. They are honorable men able to give free rein to their Christian aspirations for a better world. At the same time, they can allow themselves to be harsh, if not cruel, in the oldfashioned evangelical way when events heat up. In fairness, one should admit that alternative regimes, such as the Soviet, Saudi or Brazilian, are not so attractive as to warrant a peremptory rejection of the Council’s Weltanschauung. This elitist club of Americans who staff US administrations—friendly or snobbish, conservative or liberal —play a major role in the forging of American democracy. But truth to be told, the final years of the Cold War gave Bush and company such unmitigated political pleasure that it was hard for them to let go. They were not going to allow facts or intelligence assessments to spoil their enjoyment of the final victory over communism. As in sports, after a long hard tussle, the winning team sometimes toys with the opposition, so the Bush Administration conducted its policy towards the Soviet Union. The view gained sway that the Cold War was good for the United States, that the gains outweighed the losses. It was clear who the enemy was, who was on whose side and what the overriding interests were. Moreover, American intelligence also wanted to see the Soviet Union down and out. Not only because it threatened US interests, but primarily to prove the superiority of the American way of life. This idea dominated the thinking of the policemen of the new world order—from Truman to Bush. It also had trememendous economic spin-offs and was used by the US to promote its political influence and economic philosophy all over the world. There are a thousand and one ways of getting such ideas through to the intelligence community, and then getting them back in the form of assessment papers justifying policies already adopted. In the conflict between the conservatives, the aristocracy of wealth and power whose code is “America first,” and the upper middle class, which honed its more liberal political outlook on the best campuses in the land, the former prevailed. They prevented the US from taking early political and economic steps to meet the changes in the Soviet Union, and even now, after the collapse of the Soviet and communist threat, from changing its national priorities.

8 The Relevance of Strategic Intelligence

INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATES The principal tasks of the CIA, America’s main intelligence arm, are to collect and assess information about potential threats—mainly strategic, military and terror—and to identify opportunities in support of US economy and its foreign policy. The Agency’s history is one of relentless effort to improve its collecting and assessment capabilities, and while information gathering means and methods have made giant strides, intelligence assessment always has been and remains a problematic discipline. None of the many methods tried over the years succeeded in eradicating assessment errors, and their sometimes devastating consequences. Failures of this kind often stem from a tendency to develop and adhere to overarching theories. The introduction of a pluralistic approach, namely providing the President with assessment papers from different and often rival intelligence agencies did not bring better results. Nor did the joint assessment presented by representatives of all intelligence agencies (the NIC). In some cases, the joint approach has made things worse: NIC products reflected the lowest common denominator, because they had to take into account the entire range of opinions within the various government agencies and their sometimes conflicting interests. An attempt to minimize potential errors by confronting intelligence assessments with those of a so-called “Team B,” an external (non-intelligence) body established to serve as devil’s advocate, also proved problematic. It allowed politicians to invoke “Team B” findings whenever these conformed with their own thinking, and to use them to promote their own agendas, free of professional input. Time and again the ball was returned to the analysts, who bore the responsibility for sifting information from disinformation and for providing policy-makers with assessments devoid of political or personal bias. Time and again it proved virtually impossible to guarantee objective, error-free intelligence assessments. And even when the intelligence did provide solid assessment, politicians tended to use it only when it matched their political views or agendas.

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Reaching indisputable solid intelligence assessment on strategic issues is a very difficult task. In Professor Sherman Kent’s definition, you assess when you do not really know. In other words, a degree of error is virtually inevitable. There is a clear dividing line between what is known about a specific topic, and where you have to start speculating. “The problem with long-range assessments,” says Brigadier General Yoel Ben Porat, a former Israeli intelligence officer, “is that they view the future through the prism of the present. You can never ascertain the as yet unknown elements that will determine the future.” He cites four basic situations confronting intelligence assessment: “I estimated it would happen, but it didn’t”; “I estimated it wouldn’t happen, but it did”; “I estimated it would happen and it did”; “Something happened which I hadn’t taken into account.” Most assessment errors, in his view, belong to the fourth category. The most common and relatively non-problematic intelligence assessments are of a technical and tactical nature. They deal with questions like how many missiles the enemy possesses, their quality, range, and so on. In short, they examine a specific aspect of the enemy’s military capability. The problems start at the strategic-political level, where intelligence deals with questions like: will the members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) reunite under the communist banner? Is Syria heading toward peace? Will present Chinese leadership depart from communism? It is difficult enough to assess the other side’s economic strength and military capabilities, but it is far harder to assess its intentions or future strategic turning points. Not everybody agrees. According to one school of thought, a straight line can be drawn from “hard” information to an accurate estimate: the “truth” is contained in the information. Once you have all relevant information and know how to put it into the right slots, the resulting picture will accurately predict the future. Based on this premise, theoreticians such as George S.Pettee claim that efficient government organization with a good system of information gathering and analysis cannot be taken by surprise. Many intelligence professionals dispute this view. Indeed, intelligence failure to foresee the collapse of the Soviet Union seems to refute it. Roberta Wohlstetter, one of the doyennes of American intelligence, argues that when an intelligence organization is taken by surprise, it is not necessarily a result of information shortage. Crucial errors may stem from a misreading of data already in the organization’s possession. Wohlstetter built a model that focuses on the need to distinguish between what she terms “signals” and “noises.” Signal being the real accurate and relevant information and noise being misleading and not relevant information. “Sometimes,” she says, “we interpret signal as noise and vice versa.” Likewise, according to Wohlstetter, one piece of information might be interpretable in several ways, each of which could be considered correct. The premise that more and more accurate information will lead to a more accurate assessment is not necessarily the case. On the contrary, an increase in the amount

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and variety of information may merely increase the number of feasible interpretations, and some may prove to be wrong. Could it be that that is what led to Western intelligence’s colossal failure in interpreting what was happening in the Soviet Union? Was there an overabundance of information? Noises? And perhaps it was because the intelligence services failed to heed Karl Popper’s dictum that science only advances through refutation of existing assumptions and hypotheses. Would questioning the widespread assumption current from 1917, and especially after the Second World War, that the Soviet Union was a mighty, sinister, rival power which the West would have to confront forever, have enabled a more perceptive assessment of the emerging trends that led to the Soviet Union’s collapse? However, the “refutation” approach recommended by the department of methods and forecasts, directed by Richard Heuer, did not greatly improve the assessment process. Heuer urged analysts to make a point of looking for data that contradicted their initial assessments, and to avoid adopting the first reasonable conclusion that corresponded with existing data. In practice, the procedure made little difference. The bottom line is that we must make allowances for the fact that unlike pure science, the political events and historic turning points intelligence deals with are unique and unrepeatable. And since they cannot be subsumed under a “law,” future developments cannot be derived from the totality of past events. Intelligence assessment deals with life itself, in all its complexity, which makes accurate prediction extremely difficult. Another point that could be argued in intelligence’s defense is that the analyst is only one player in a complex system (military, political, etc.) and cannot detach his cultural background and milieu from the topic he is researching. A CIA analyst assessing events in the Soviet Union will always tend to look at it from an American perspective. In other words, the intelligence assessment will always be at least partly subjective. In addition, most analysts find it difficult, sometimes impossible, to penetrate the mindsets of enemy politicians he is supposed to be “assessing,” an obstacle which tends to make intelligence forecasting virtually impossible. US President Harry S.Truman noted in his memoirs that even those closest to him never knew how he reached his decisions. The historian Arthur Schlezinger confided that only after he joined President Kennedy’s inner circle did he realize just how complicated the reality of government is. Indeed, the young CIA analyst faced with the task of reading, say, Brezhnev’s mind, could be compared to an actor trying to portray Albert Einstein and understand the law of relativity at the same time. Richard K.Betts is right when he says: “There is no surprise in surprise, and governments should expect to be surprised, because their capacity to interpret another government’s policies is always limited. The most common intelligence errors originate from the assumption that the adversary will do tomorrow what he did yesterday—and indeed 90 per cent of the time that will be the case.” The challenge has always been how to assess accurately the remaining 10 per cent.

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Another problem occurs when an intelligence analyst, not always willingly, is caught up in in-house politics. William Casey as CIA chief in the first strongly anti-communist Reagan administration is a good example of this. Anyone capable of presenting an objective assessment during his tenure in that inferno of contradictory party, ideological and personal interests, would be better off running for president than trying to function as an intelligence analyst. Yet another obstacle is the tendency of intelligence officers to conform to the views and wishes of the political echelons. A new regime, especially an ideological one, often creates an atmosphere that “sucks intelligence in.” In such cases, at least part of the intelligence community defers to the politicians. Ephraim Kam, deputy head of the Tel Aviv-based Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, notes: “There is a tendency to fall into line, and not only in Israel. Intelligence Chiefs work in close proximity to the decision-makers…and there is mutual cross-pollination. Intelligence is part of the system and that affects the objectivity of its assessments.” Ideological government with “strong views” does not want assessments that undermine those ideas, and few are the intelligence officials prepared to make them. Most tend to make assessments that fit in with politicians’ worldview, and avoid those that contradict it. An Israeli strategist, retired General Abraham (Abrasha) Tamir, states flatly: “No arm of the establishment can afford to make assessments that contradict the views of the political body to which it is subordinate.” At least, not repeatedly. Forming a political assessment in order to make a decision is a difficult process because of the complexity and the almost inevitable built-in internal contradictions. The late Professor (General) Yehoshafat Harkabi, who served as chief of Israeli military intelligence, advised the intelligence agencies to recognize that shaping policy is not a process of rational consideration alone. “The intelligence assessment process does not differ greatly. Both often involve a mixture of emotions, tendencies, prejudices and wishful thinking.” Harkabi also felt that the main task of intelligence is not to predict the future, which is virtually impossible, but to understand current events. “Intelligence analyzes a given situation and infers future developments, and this makes intelligence a matter of estimate and speculation, ‘guesstimate’ rather than scientific projection.” If assessing the present situation is complicated, it follows that predicting the future is far more so. General Shlomo Gazit, who also served as chief of Israeli military intelligence, is convinced that “intelligence cannot predict the future unless it possesses information about a decision which has already been taken.” According to these views, American intelligence should be pardoned for its failure to foresee the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, it cannot be forgiven for not understanding the significance of the terminal weakness displayed by the Soviet Union and the changes that occurred in the 1980s in the nature of the regime and the thrust of its foreign and defense policy.

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Historians Michael Barnard and David Kahan, who studied the history of intelligence surprises, found that during the 1930s no state had a comprehensive understanding of its enemies’ intentions. The Japanese government, for example, erred in its estimation of its Western rivals, just as the Americans wrongly assessed Japanese intentions. In the 1940s the KGB was surprised by the German invasion of Russia. In the 1950s the SDECE failed to assess the power of Algerian nationalism and in the 1980s British intelligence was surprised when Argentina carried out its threat to invade the Falkland Islands. Israeli intelligence woke up on Yom Kippur in 1973 to find the Egyptians crossing the Suez Canal. Western intelligence was surprised when Khomeini deposed the Shah, when a young army officer forced Emperor Haile Selassie to flee from Addis Ababa, and when Saddam Hussein marched into Kuwait. These are only a few examples of embarrassing intelligence failures that turned into surprises—most of them through human error. The prospects for the future are not encouraging, despite the great leap in recent years in intelligence gathering techniques and assessment methodology. It seems that intelligence agencies and politicians will continue to be surprised in the future too, whether through analysts failing to identify strategic turning points, or because politicians themselves reject intelligence assessments because they are unable or unwilling to break away from deeply ingrained theories and concepts. In most of the cases in which there is an intelligence assessment failure, the same characteristics repeat themselves: opaque data, irregularities in the analysis and assessment process, cultural bias, organizational flaws and politicization, namely political involvement in the intelligence work. And it was a combination of these elements that caused the greatest intelligence failure of the twentieth century—the misreading of the unfolding events in the USSR which led to its collapse. Repeated failures led some of the large intelligence agencies to invoke the supernatural. In a desperate attempt to improve their understanding and assessments, both the CIA and the KGB utilized “soothsayers,” magicians of the sort once employed by kings and emperors. In Russia this was rooted in the ancient Slavic tradition of dialogue with ghosts and spirits, but in the US it was tough to get budgets for witches. The CIA therefore preferred to use the term “parapsychologists.” Stargate, the code name of the operation set up to employ mind readers and fortune tellers, cost the American taxpayer $20 million. This program was directed by David Goslin, of the American Institute for Parapsychological Research. Senate Appropriations Committee members at the time, Senators Daniel Inouye and Robert Byrd, were briefed about the project, and supported it. In 1986 the White House searched for a way to punish Libyan leader Muammer Qaddafi for his involvement in terror attacks against American targets. The CIA was asked to locate him and propose a suitable punishment. Casey’s CIA enlisted one of its “mind readers” and tasked him to find out where Colonel Qaddafi was, but eventually had to rely on intelligence gathered by traditional

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means by its own officers. Still, some serious people defended the use of parapsychologists. “Sometimes they were right on target,” wrote Jessica Utts of the University of California, who participated in research initiated by the CIA to determine the usefulness of parapsychology in the intelligence work. A number of parapsychologists were actually employed by the CIA, particularly on operational matters. In fact, in light of the intelligence failure to foresee the collapse of the Soviet Union, it might have been a good idea to employ parapsychologists in the Intelligence Directorate to help achieve an accurate assessment on the USSR. In any event, the Agency severed its regular connection with the fortune tellers in 1977, although it continued to have occasional contacts with them. Finally, an Israeli story. Shlomo Gazit, head of the Israeli army’s intelligence research division in the Six Day War, recalls that in 1967 a Czech astrologist foresaw the war and its outcome. The same astrologist also predicted the 1973 Yom Kippur War, which took Israeli intelligence by surprise. These anecdotes, however, tell us less about the powers of the astrologists, and more about intelligence agencies’ frustration at having failed time and again in their assessments. AFTER THE COLLAPSE: DEVALUATION OF THE STATUS OF STRATEGIC POLITICAL INTELLIGENCE? The failure of American intelligence to foresee the disintegration of the Soviet Union was an historical milestone. The question that arises is would history have been different had professional intelligence, (not corrupt, malicious, weak or stupid, nor locked into a concept), alerted politicians and policy-makers to the terminal situation of Soviet reality? In other words, would the US—Reagan, Bush, Casey, Gates, Shultz, Weinberger, General Graham (and General Motors) —have continued to invest huge resources against the communist bloc, if back in the early 1980s the intelligence agencies had provided a solid estimate that the Soviet Empire was hurtling toward collapse? Would they have invested heavily in Third World conflicts and in the costly Star Wars project? Like most of those who were asked this question, the retired CIA officer, Vincent Cannistraro, hesitates before responding. Then he says: “It doesn’t matter what the analysts would have said.” After more thought, he sums up: “But the fact is that no one in the Agency—analyst or operational officer, people at the managerial level or the director himself provided any such estimate.” Scowcroft, national security adviser to President George Bush, explains that “Soviet strategic capability was real and it continued to pose a threat to the US and the free world right up to the moment it collapsed. Even if intelligence had come, let’s say in the mid-1980s, and told us that the USSR was weakening and no longer represented a strategic threat, I would still have recommended a strong military posture.” His colleague Lawrence Eagleburger, secretary of state at the end of Bush’s term of office, states flatly: “The intelligence I got from the CIA

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made little difference. It didn’t matter what they put in front of us. Our policy was already set.” In the US, the Soviet Union, Israel and many other countries, there have been early warnings of military attacks that went straight from desk to archive or shredder. Pictures of American shipwrecks in Pearl Harbor, the Red Army retreating in the face of Nazi Panzers and the abandoned Bar Lev line on the banks of the Suez Canal all bear eloquent testimony to ignored alerts or misinterpretation of military movements. These are not the only cases, even though it defies comprehension how decision-makers have the gall to ignore concrete warnings of imminent military attack. Political developments and turning points are even more difficult to understand, and much more to predict. This raises the question of the relevance of political-strategic intelligence. It is not only that intelligence often fails to forecast strategic change. What is more disturbing is that even when it makes a correct assessment, it often fails to get through to the decision-makers. In most countries, the intelligence organization has not secured the status of “national estimator,” although, by definition, that is what it is supposed to be. At best, the intelligence agency is only one among several estimators, vying for the attention of the decision-makers, who almost invariably tend to adopt the analysis and assessment that most closely mirrors their world view and supports their political plans. The failure of Western intelligence to grasp the inevitable disintegration of the USSR, further eroded the status and relevance of the intelligence agencies. This also could be the explanation for the public relations campaign launched by the CIA, aimed at improving its image as a professional, unbiased and vital tool serving the president. INTELLIGENCE FAILURE? THE CIA HAS NEVER HEARD OF IT The devaluation of the status of intelligence was clearly apparent in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and was, to a large extent, a result of the poor performance of the preceding decade. But because the collapse was such an enormous strategic victory for the West, the CIA’s failure to foresee it was lost in the victory celebrations. Only later did questions begin to be asked in Congress, the media and academia about the agency’s assessment capabilities. At no stage, though, did the CIA bow to its critics. Immediately after the collapse, its spokesmen launched a PR effort designed to defend the performance of the Intelligence Directorate, the organization’s principal assessment arm, which produced estimates for the president and other top administration officials. The heads of the Agency told anyone who was ready to listen that the intelligence service had done its job properly and brought to the attention of the American leadership a fairly accurate picture of the state of the Soviet Union and where it was heading.

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The Agency also released classified documents to make its case. Normally, intelligence agencies keep their secrets to themselves, except for occasional selfserving leaks. They never leak whole documents and they follow strict procedures to ensure that secrets remain under wraps for years. Yet shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the concomitant intelligence failure, the CIA began releasing dozens of documents, some highly classified, containing assessments produced by the Intelligence Directorate and presented to the president and top administration people. In 1994, it released 20 assessment documents on the Soviet Union in the last decade of its existence to the John F.Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. The product of these documents, written for professors Ernest May and Philip Zelikow, was a case study called “CIA and the Fall of the Soviet Empire: The Politics of Getting it Right.” In November 1999, the CIA released another 24 documents giving the misleading impression that the Agency had warned of the impending collapse. These documents were presented during a special seminar on “US Intelligence and the Cold War,” held at Texas A&M’s George Bush School of Government and Public Service. Examination of those documents and the way they were released raises several questions. For one, the Agency never put all the relevant documents in the public domain, only those which gave the impression that it knew what was going on, and was prepared for the developments that occurred in the Soviet Union and alerted the administration to the likely outcome. The documents highlighted whatever served the PR campaign behind their release. However, no one who knows anything about intelligence work at the time denies that the Agency did point to key aspects of the Red Empire’s weakness. CIA produced papers indicating, correctly, that the Soviet economy was shaky; that the performance of the Red Army in Afghanistan was, to say the least, problematic; that the reforms initiated by the party secretary Mikhail Gorbachev failed; that there was ongoing unrest in the satellite countries in eastern Europe and seething discontent in the central republics of the Soviet Union. Indeed, the Agency knew just about everything, and the analysts are entitled to much credit. But that is hardly the point at issue. The question is why the directors of the CIA did not have the courage to draw the obvious conclusions, given the data they had at their disposal. Why did they not, for example, conclude that the Soviet Union, which was in a terminal condition, no longer posed a strategic threat to the United States? They knew the Red Army and the armies of the Warsaw Pact were weaker than ever and that Gorbachev had started limiting Soviet involvement abroad. He withdrew from Afghanistan, cut off aid to the government of Angola, and stood aside in the face of Germany’s unification. And another question: Why was there no assessment paper saying that Gorbachev had in fact accepted the West’s terms on world order, strategic weapons, involvement in the Third World, Human Rights and so on? Even Bob Gates, CIA director at the time of the collapse (and before that deputy head of the Agency and head of the Intelligence Directorate), admits in his

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memoirs that the Agency underestimated the changes taking place in the Soviet Union, especially the collapse of the system of government and the process of disengagement from areas of influence. Secretary of State George Shultz says he found it difficult to initiate a new policy towards the declining Soviet Union because of the Agency’s repeated insistence in the mid and late 1980s that Moscow retained its imperial aspirations and was still threatening American interests. The Agency’s attempt to defend its record as provider of the national intelligence estimate is understandable, but dangerous. It prevented the CIA from carrying out a thorough examination of its intelligence failures in the Soviet context, and may have undermined its ability to provide a realistic assessment of other threats, like, for example, the “new terrorism.” INTELLIGENCE IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION The end of the Cold War, the disappearance of the Soviet Union from the world stage and the ensuing change in the balance of world power, by definition, altered international relations and the demands on the secret services. Intelligence finds itself having to adapt to the complex problems of the twentyfirst century: first and foremost, with growing international terror, the widening gap and disparity between Third World countries and Western societies, a disparity patently obvious to all in today’s global village, and in the growing cultural gap between the Western way of life and that envisaged by Islamic fundamentalism. In an increasingly open world, in which information, ideas, people, goods, services and science move rapidly from one place to another, almost without restriction, intelligence that wants to stay relevant must redefine its goals and working methods. A new transnational economics is replacing the old national economies. When you buy a product today in any given country, you do not know where its components were manufactured, which by the parent company, and which by sister companies spread across the globe. The transfer of information and capital by the mere touch of a button makes for a world very different from that of yesteryear. This is a situation in which the people of the Third World, even those in the most distant countries, are exposed to the wealth of the West through the push of a button and to incitement by radicals in their midst and in remote countries. This new reality has a direct bearing on the nature of the threats (and the opportunities), and the means of confronting them. Intelligence agencies, collecting and assessing data, were set up to serve the regime, and to ensure that its leaders have the necessary information to secure the physical survival and well-being of the people they govern. In traditional societies at the dawn of civilization, the analysis of data relevant to material and spiritual survival, and its transfer to the king or chieftain, was the function of magicians, priests, sages and prophets. The modern state, which needs more than

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artifice or sleight of hand to protect its well-being, has created a wide range of institutions to meet the future, from weather forecasts and mechanisms for predicting economic and demographic trends to systems guarding against surprise attack and dramatic political turning points. In intelligence annals, the first qualitative upgrade in intelligence gathering came during the American Civil War (1861–65). Military commanders suddenly realized that newspapers contained useful information. Vital facts about the enemy were being sold for a few pennies; important information could be garnered from gossip columns, obituaries, and so forth. The collection and analysis of material in the public domain became a central arm of intelligence. Another milestone in this respect was the First World War. It was the first total war, and for the first time an all-out intelligence effort was made. In addition to the collection of military data, economic, social and technological information, intelligence services looked for information on national mood and morale, items that have since become an integral part of an intelligence assessment. A major breakthrough took place after the Second World War with the development of new collection technologies, electronic interception, aerial photography and statistical processing. From an art and a stratagem, intelligence became almost a science, with data produced by satellites capable of photographing and eavesdropping virtually anywhere on earth and powerful computers able to break ciphers and rapidly process an abundance of information. On the face of it, the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the reduction of the danger of nuclear confrontation reduce the importance of intelligence. In fact, the world has moved on from total military threats, which required total military answers, to having to deal with less acute threats. The reduced strategic threat partly transformed the CIA’s mission. It has turned more and more to global border-crossing missions, such as preventing the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological materials and combating international terror organizations and radical states. In addition, intelligence was gradually being harnessed to fight international crime, which had become ever more sophisticated: drug dealing, forgery, money laundering, computer crime and ecological vandalism. Since the early 1990s, the CIA has dealt not only with the traditional conventional threats that impact directly on America’s national security, but also with fundamental issues affecting the international community as a whole. The CIA has added to the list of focal points for intelligence questions like the extent to which phenomena like hunger, drought, the wandering of tribes and the lack of pasture-land contribute to the emergence of armed conflict in the Third World, for example, in Somalia, Rwanda and Zaire. The CIA’s Operations Directorate collects information on accelerated afforestation in China, and the Intelligence Directorate analyzes its implications. They monitor the spread of AIDS in East Africa, and what accelerated economic development in Mexico means for farmers who lag behind and still work their traditional sources of livelihood, and how all of this might affect the United States. In intelligence parlance these subjects are known as “soft targets,” but the post-Cold War CIA

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examines their “hard” implications. In the economic field, President Clinton who was free during his presidency of strategic threats, directed the CIA to pay special attention to three areas which were almost untouched before: supporting intelligence for trade negotiations with foreign states; monitoring states which use illegal means to promote export to the US, and identifying economic problems which could turn into political issues. The Cold War slogan—“get the Reds”— has been superseded by “follow the money.” Well before the Soviet Union’s collapse, some west European democracies had concluded that the Soviet threat had diminished. France, Italy, Spain, West Germany, the Benelux states and even Britain, despite the Thatcherite hardline conservative approach, understood long before the US that the USSR was more a paper tiger than a big cat poised to pounce. The operative conclusion was a shift in defense and intelligence priorities, which meant, among other things, a significant cut in their budgets. The trend in several European countries has been to restructure their intelligence communities. In the US there were also voices calling for the disbanding of intelligence agencies or at least cutting their budgets and curtailing their operations. Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan proclaimed repeatedly and loudly that for the last 25 years of the Cold War, the CIA failed in its main mission—understanding the USSR. The intelligence service inflated the strength of the Soviet economy and its military capabilities, and by doing so led to the waste of huge amounts of public money. To prove that he meant business, the veteran senator from New York proposed a bill to abolish the CIA, transferring its military responsibilities to the army and its political wing to the State Department. Moynihan’s proposal linked him with a number of former intelligence officers, including General William Odom, who favors transferring the CIA’s military information gathering tasks to the DIA. Odom, who headed the NSA from 1985 to 1988, claims not to be aware of even one case in which a politician/decision-maker modified an opinion or a policy as a result of reading a CIA or NIC assessment. Still, despite the global changes that ensued from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the concomitant redefinition of the nature of intelligence work, most intelligence professionals agree that the world following the disintegration of the Soviet Union is by no means a safer place. And despite the criticism from the head of the CIA unhappy with the performance of his personnel, from the secretaries of state complaining that intelligence interferes with their work, from Congressmen arguing that intelligence is politicized, unnecessary and inefficient, and from politicians who fund it but are not prepared to listen to what it has to say, no one is yet ready to give up national intelligence as a tool of government.

Epilogue: From Strategic Blind Spot to Operational Blunder

THE NEW TERROR On 11 September 2001, the most lethal terror atrocities in American history occurred. Yet the American intelligence agencies, the CIA and the FBI, and those of the other Western countries, were taken totally by surprise. They never expected a terrorist attack on that scale. They had no advance information on the preparations, the perpetrators, the modus operandi, the targets or the timing. The destruction of the World Trade Center buildings and one of the wings of the Pentagon has many far-reaching implications. Some are already with us, the impact of others will only be felt in time. The attacks hurt America’s standing in the world, the sense of security in America and in other Western countries, the prestige of the American intelligence agencies, the American economy, civil aviation, communal relations between established citizens and new immigrants, and the civil liberties which Americans tend to take for granted. The attacks, and the “anthrax envelopes” which followed in their wake, seriously undermined the personal and national self-confidence of the American people. The successful terrorist attacks in the heart of the US exposed its vulnerability and cast doubts on just how detached from reality the administration’s security policy was. President George W.Bush and his advisors described the attacks as no less than a “declaration of war on America.” NATO spokesmen went further and called them a declaration of war on the entire free world. If that is the case, then the intelligence apparatus’s failure is immense: the positive intelligence agency, the CIA, did not detect the signs of “war” in time; the preventive intelligence agency, the FBI, failed to prevent the attacks, and the White House did not prepare the American people for the impending disaster. The terrorist attack of 11 September which will go down as one of the great collective American traumas (along with Pearl Harbor and the assassination of President John F.Kennedy), took the United States by surprise on both tactical and strategic levels. Neither the administration nor the American people were ready for that kind of terror; not for its scope and certainly not for simultaneous strikes against targets symbolizing the military and economic power of the world’s strongest nation. In the first few hours, after the dimensions of the devastation

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and the modus operandi of the attacks became apparent—turning civilian aircraft into powerful missiles—embarrassment and confusion reigned supreme, from the president down to the most junior administration officials. Those responsible for America’s national security did not seem to grasp what had happened and clearly had no idea what to do. *** In 1991, just ten years earlier, the United States and its allies had celebrated a victory over the Soviet Union and communism. Many believed that the world was entering a new and safer era. An American diplomat, Francis Fukuyama, argued in an article entitled “The End of History?” and a subsequent book that the victory of free markets and Western liberalism was a decisive turning point in world history. Not only was the Soviet Union no longer relevant; all other forces, besides Western liberalism, had no real importance, because they could no longer influence the general development of mankind. From now on, there would be peace on earth under American hegemony. No wonder that this line of thinking made considerable waves at the time. In actual fact, America was forced to start the new millennium facing a new threat, of a different nature, but no less challenging than that posed by the Soviet Empire. Since 11 September 2001, the US has been locked in a similar all-out ideological struggle with the militant offspring of Islamic fundamentalism, which enjoys a great deal of popular support in the Muslim countries of the Third World. The US has no choice but to wage this war, not only because of the terror attacks on its soil and against its interests abroad, but also because the militant fundamentalists seek to undermine America’s position in the entire Islamic world and threaten the American way of life. It is the intelligence agencies that should have prepared the Administration and the American people for the new potent threat. The CIA was well aware of the phenomenon and its analysts produced an impressive intelligence paper, with a no less impressive title, “The World in the Year 2025,” which dealt with threats stemming from the poor living conditions in Third World countries. But the Agency did not do enough to convince the political echelon to draw the necessary conclusions and initiate steps to reduce the economic hardship, misery and frustrations they described. It was a classic case of the inherent structural failure in relations between political leaders and intelligence agencies: The intelligence agencies gather information, analyze and evaluate it; the political echelon sometimes reads the intelligence assessments brought to their attention, but usually acts only when the contents indicate that there is an immediate threat or if it serves a political agenda. You do not have to be an intelligence officer to see the direction the world is going in. Many people in the Third World, facing chronic economic hardship, develop feelings of frustration and hostility towards the rich Western countries and thus create fertile ground for the growth of militant forces. True, Osama bin Laden and his supporters have an agenda which is not necessarily driven by socio-economic distress, but it seems that in such an environment it is easy for

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him to attract volunteers, to get state sponsorship and to plan and organize operations against American targets. *** Over the past decade, in which the US was free of external strategic threat and more or less imposed its will on the world, American intelligence did not regard militant Islamic fundamentalism as an acute threat requiring root and branch treatment. At the start of George W.Bush’s tenure, his defense secretary Donald Rumsfield reviewed in Congress the principles guiding the administration’s security policy in light of the threats it identified. He spoke about one potentially great enemy, China, about lesser enemies such as Iran, Iraq and North Korea, and about terrorist organizations that had pinpointed the United States as a target. The administration’s response to those threats focused on an anti-missile defense system in space, and on the development of the multi-purpose fighter, the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). While the administration was concentrating on advancing these ambitious and very costly high-tech projects, trying to convince opponents at home and skeptics abroad, 19 people armed with knives succeeded in inflicting damage on the United States comparable to that of an earthquake, or even a small-scale war. Why were America’s intelligence agencies and those in the rest of the world caught so unprepared for the events of 11 September? Does the fact that only fragmented and vague information was at hand indicate an intelligence failure of mammoth proportions, or perhaps something akin to one of those natural disasters which occur without early warning and cannot be prevented? *** Intelligence agencies are mainly charged with the gathering of information, sounding alerts of imminent threats, counterintelligence and preventing terrorist attacks. In most cases they have to act when the picture of what is happening is built on an incomplete mosaic. As for the events of 11 September, American intelligence had enough pieces of the puzzle to deduce that Osama bin Laden and the terrorist groups working with him were planning something big against the United States, although they had no precise data. The reason for their failure to alert the president was not a lack of information. The reason was similar to the intelligence pattern of the 1980s, which failed to alert the administration on the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union: In both cases, the analysts knew just about everything, but the knowledge of militant Islam and the degree of Osama bin Laden’s determination to “create hell” for America, did not get through to the decision-making echelons of the intelligence community and from there to the White House. Every intelligence analyst with an Arabic and Islamic background knows that the use of violence against the enemies of Allah is grounded in the religious precept of “Jihad,” or Holy War; a notion which, although it has since received a wide range of interpretations, has its origins in the dawn of Muslim history. In the modern era, belief in the power of Jihad to achieve political goals for the faithful was renewed by Hassan al-Bana, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood

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Movement in Egypt in 1928. That movement is the model and inspiration for most of the Islamic fundamentalist organizations today. All of them have two major ideological precepts: destruction of the secular regimes in Muslim countries, and Holy War against the West, which supports those regimes and whose culture threatens that of fundamentalist Islam. Not only was the background to the growth of the fundamentalist movements and their aims known, there was an abundance of important data on the organizations and their leaders. The computerized data banks of the intelligence agencies contained a great deal of information on bin Laden and al-Qaida (the base), including the names of its central activists, the location of bases and even a terrorist manual. From the stream of data leaked since 11 September by American government sources, including intelligence agents, it is clear that bin Laden’s intention to carry out “quality” attacks against America that would resonate was well known. The terrorist acts that his people carried out in the past left no room for doubt. Moreover, he openly declared his intentions. The FBI, which is responsible, inter alia, for preventing terror on the home front, had piecemeal information on suspicious activities by foreigners of Muslim descent living in the United States. The information which the American intelligence agencies had in their possession enabled the administration on 12 September, just one day after the attacks, to point an accusatory finger at those responsible: Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida, and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan from whose territory they operated. It was able to do so because the CIA and the FBI already had information from which they could tell that bin Laden was planning huge lethal terrorist attacks. Had they cooperated properly and carefully checked and analyzed the computerized data banks, which had accumulated information on the relevant people in time, they might have been able to uncover the planned attacks and possibly even to prevent them. The easily accessible data enabled the president, just days after the attacks, to order the freezing of the assets of 27 people, terrorist organizations and charitable institutions suspected of antiAmerican activities, and, in parallel, to instruct the secretary of defense to prepare the army for a military response and the secretary of state to form an international coalition against the terrorist organizations and Afghanistan, the country that hosted them. As in the last decade of the existence of the Soviet Union, when there were clear signs that America’s main rival was nearing the end of the road, and the administration failed to read the signs, so it was in the last decade of twentieth century with regard to terror. The intelligence services had abundant evidence that the coming years would be years of terror, lots of it, and that it would threaten the United States and the West, which were not adequately prepared to confront it. Even though the threat was identified, the CIA did not invest the required resources to get more specific information, and the FBI, in charge of prevention at home, was negligent in examining the activities of suspected terrorists who entered the US, some of them illegally.

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American intelligence agencies could have based their evaluation of the threat the United States was facing on planned terrorist attacks which were not carried out, attacks that failed and attacks that succeeded, causing many casualties and significant material damage, as well as on clear-cut statements by the leaders of the terrorist organizations themselves. In 1992, for example, bin Laden’s men tried to blow up a hotel in Yemen in which American soldiers posted in Somalia were staying. In 1993, the first attack on the World Trade Center took place; a bomb in the parking basement, which caused little damage, killed “only” six people and injured 214. Investigation of the bombing revealed that the terrorists also considered attacking the George Washington Bridge and the Lincoln Tunnel. In 1996, 19 American soldiers were killed in Khobar in Saudi Arabia, in an attack on a building that served as a barracks. In 1998, simultaneous bombings were carried out against two American embassies in Africa, in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, leaving 224 dead, among them 12 Americans. In October 2000, the American destroyer, USS Cole, was attacked while anchored in the port of Aden in Yemen in which 17 sailors were killed and 34 wounded. Again bin Laden’s men were responsible. The CIA accumulated a great deal of information on bin Laden, his alQaida organization, its central activists and the bases in which they trained. According to “Jane’s Defence Weekly,” in March 2001, Russia’s UN ambassador handed the Security Council a detailed account of the bin Laden-al-Qaida terrorist infrastructure in Afghanistan. In its data banks, the CIA compiled profiles of the leading terrorists in the “terrorist international,” especially those responsible for attacks on American targets. The most prominent of them—Osama bin Laden himself; Mohammed Ataf, his deputy and “operational brain;” Aiman al-Zuhair, bin Laden’s right-hand man, who headed the Egyptian Jihad at the time President Sadat was assassinated. The CIA also had information on the operational “doctrine” of the new terror organizations. A detailed handbook it intercepted contained advice and instructions on how to select targets, mask terrorist intentions, assimilate into the society against which the would-be terrorists intend to strike, how to use false documents, transfer funds, conceal weapons and so on. Bin Laden also aimed to create a capacity for non-conventional terror. His agents tried in various parts of the world to purchase substances from which biological and chemical weapons can be made. The American intelligence discovered documents including a manual instructing al-Qaida operatives how to assemble and use explosives containing chemical agents. Some al-Qaida activists were trained in the use of chemical and biological weapons. In 1994, the CIA learned of experiments with poisonous materials on animals, especially rabbits, in the Jama’at al-Jihad camp in Afghanistan, run by the Islamic Jihad, one of the terror organizations that make up al-Qaida. In August 1995, an Islamic activist, Ahmad Alusli, was arrested on the Croatia-Slovakia border, carrying a computer disc with detailed instructions on the manufacture of chemical and bacterial poisons. In December 1997, bin Laden convened the heads of the radical Moslem

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organizations in one of his camps in Afghanistan and outlined his vision of nonconventional warfare against the West. At the end of 1997, bin Laden’s deputy, Mohammed Ataf, sent an activist called Ahmad Salameh Mabrukh to purchase know-how and toxic substances, biological and chemical, in Azerbijan. Mabrukh was captured in August 1998 and handed over to Egypt, where he claimed that bin Laden already had biological and chemical weapons and that he intended to use them against American and Israeli targets. In 1998, Mamdoukh Salem, another activist in the bin Laden organization, was apprehended in Germany, where he told his interrogators (some of them Americans) that he had been sent to purchase biological and chemical materials, and if possible, enriched uranium as well. In late 1999, ten lead-lined crates intercepted on the UzbekistanKazakhstan border were found to contain various substances, including strontium 90, that could be used to manufacture nuclear weapons. The crates were addressed to an end-user in Pakistan, but American intelligence was convinced that the real destination was Afghanistan. There was also an abundance of overt information in publications accessible to anyone, let alone an intelligence service. On bin Laden’s approach to nonconventional warfare, one had only to listen to the man himself. In interviews and sermons, he declared that obtaining non-conventional weapons which would serve the Jihad was a religious duty. He urged Moslems to get hold of them, and by implication, to use them against the infidels, particularly the Americans. Bin Laden never tried to disguise his hatred for the US or his determination to strike at it in every possible way. Muslim journalists who met him or his close aides reported in the months preceding the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that he said openly and repeatedly that he would go on attacking American targets. Abdel Bari Attwan, the editor of al-Kuds al-Arabi in London, concluded that bin Laden was planning “a very big attack against American targets.” Another Arab journalist, Bakri Atarni, heard similar wording from bin Laden’s aides, during a visit to Afghanistan. In one of the rare interviews he gave to the Western media, to ABC’s John Miller, bin Laden compared the struggle against the Americans to the one conducted against the Soviets in Afghanistan a decade earlier, and spoke of the need for an all-out war. In a videotape produced in the first half of 2001, he called on the faithful to “infiltrate America and Israel and strike where it hurts most.” In February 2001, bin Laden reissued a Fatwa, first decreed in 1998, in which Muslims are called on to kill American civilians and military personnel wherever they find them. In the beginning of August, a source close to bin Laden declared that al-Qaida intended to create “hell” for the Americans. *** The CIA waged an active campaign against terror organizations which pinpointed the US as their main target, especially bin Laden and al-Qaida, but without the requisite priority, determination or daring. The Agency activated its own independent operational tools, its ties with other intelligence agencies and even tried diplomacy. But failed in everything it tried.

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The first serious attempt to get bin Laden was by diplomacy. In 1996, after protracted negotiations between the CIA and the Sudanese government, Sudan agreed to extradite him. It was shortly after the authorities in Khartoum had handed over the international terrorist “Carlos” to the French, and they seemed anxious to turn over a new leaf in relations with the West. The FBI, however, did not want him extradited to America because it did not have enough hard evidence to convict him in a court of law. The Sudanese then offered to extradite him to Saudi Arabia, whose leaders had a blood score to settle with bin Laden, and were livid over a Fatwa he had published against them. But when it came to the crunch, Riyadh, whose government had expelled bin Laden five years earlier and revoked his Saudi citizenship because of his subversive activities, refused to take him back. In fact, in 1996 no country agreed to host bin Laden, except Afghanistan, where he set up the base from which he has been operating ever since. A second attempt to capture or eliminate bin Laden was made in 1998, after the attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. President Clinton signed an executive order permitting the CIA to employ “special operations,” a euphemism for permission to kill. For diplomatic and operational reasons, the Americans chose to hit bin Laden and his terrorist infrastructure in Afghanistan with Cruise missiles, and ruled out raids by helicopter or the use of commando units. The Cruise missile operation left 30 dead, but bin Laden was not among them. A third planned attempt on bin Laden’s life was made in coordination with America’s allies in central Asia. In 1999, the CIA secretly trained a commando unit in the Pakistani intelligence agency, ISI, for a secret incursion into Afghanistan to locate and kill bin Laden. Relations between the CIA and the ISI, however, had many ups and downs. Pakistani intelligence had helped the Taliban win the civil war and seize power in Afghanistan, and it was more deeply involved in what went on there than any other intelligence service. It maintained ties with the Taliban and exploited the Afghans for its own purposes, including the war against India in Kashmir. The planned operation against bin Laden came to naught when Pervez Musharraf seized power in Pakistan and revoked his predecessor’s approval of the operation in exchange for a generous aid package. Ironically, Musharraf went on to play a key role in helping the US in its war against Afghanistan after 11 September. A few months after the cancellation of the planned ISI operation, American intelligence officers joined up with leaders of the Northern Alliance in northern Afghanistan, and tried to work out yet another plan to capture or eliminate bin Laden. But this avenue was doomed to failure from the outset, since the operational capacity of the ethnic groups making up the alliance was extremely limited. Nor could the Americans claim any impressive successes in their efforts to monitor the funds that finance international terror. As early as 1995 President Clinton signed an executive order empowering US legal authorities to locate and

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impound laundered monies serving organized crime and terrorist organizations. Those efforts were stepped up after the attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998. Richard A.Clark, the then coordinator for security, infrastructure, protection and counterterrorism at the NSC, set up a team to trace terrorist finances, but very little happened. Bills designed to prevent the transfer of funds and enable the freezing of suspected assets encountered domestic opposition from the bankers’ lobby in Congress, and from countries, institutions and individuals abroad opposed to transparency in the banking system. Only on 12 September 2001 did America’s legal authorities start acting with the necessary resolve, and their action soon bore some fruit. Despite its efforts to undermine bin Laden and al-Qaida’s operational capacity and to target him personally, efforts that were made in every conceivable sphere —intelligence, finance, military and diplomacy—the United States recorded one of its greatest intelligence and operational failures. This despite the fact that even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, American intelligence agencies continued to command huge financial resources, $30 billion a year, and to employ a huge number of agents, 12,000 in the FBI, 18,000 in the CIA and about 80,000 in the NSA. *** What were the underlying reasons for this failure? First and foremost, it seems that American intelligence did not properly understand and did not internalize the potency of a militant fundamentalist threat driven by fanatics ready to sacrifice their lives to achieve their goals. The CIA failed to comprehend the true motives of the Arab Brigade, close to 10,000 people, who joined the mujahidin in the fight against the Red Army in Afghanistan. Their main motive was not the struggle against communism and the Soviet occupier, as the Americans believed. The volunteers were driven by a burning desire to fight the infidels, the culture of the other, which was threatening theirs. As soon as the Soviet occupation was over, those volunteers became the driving force in the Islamic world against the US, especially America’s presence and influence in the Arab World. The CIA, which had nurtured and used them against the Soviet Union, failed to temper their ideological fervor after the Soviet occupation was over. And on the home front, the FBI did not ascribe sufficient importance to the connection between some of the religious and charitable institutions operating in the United States and the terrorist organizations using them as a cover and as a front for raising funds and recruiting potential activists. Another reason that prevented the intelligence agencies from recognizing just how real and immediate was the threat, was that they totally underestimated it. They believed that periodic attacks on an American institution here or there in Third World countries hurt, but do not really threaten the United States. The CIA failed to hit bin Laden or foil his plans outside the US because it did not give the fight on terrorism the priority it deserved. At the same time the FBI seemed to fall asleep on its watch, neglecting the home front. The infrastructure for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was set up under their noses,

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at a time when it and its sister agency the CIA were totally focused on finding ways to confront potential threats stemming from non-conventional terror and rogue states developing non-conventional weapons. They were caught completely unprepared for 11 September. It was a failure of imagination, no less than a failure of intelligence. It is also doubtful whether American intelligence fully understood the implications of the other face of globalization. The free movement of people, funds, ideas and goods helps reinforce the European-American hegemony, but it also allows the free and rapid passage of revolutionary ideas and activists, utilizing American advanced technology and Western liberalism in their struggle against the West. In retrospect, most of America’s intelligence resources during the last decade of the twentieth century were invested in the wrong place. Most of the budget was allocated to strategic intelligence, and only a relatively small portion to gathering specific operational intelligence on terror. The American intelligence agencies spent too much of their resources on technological intelligence gathering methods (SIGINT, COMINT and VISINT), and too little on developing human intelligence (HUMINT). The CIA had no agents in Afghanistan. Sophisticated technologies enable intelligence services to listen in to the vast communications networks made available by the new information age —internet, fax, wireless communication—but do not give adequate answers to questions that need human interpretative skills. The lack of “live” sources close to bin Laden’s ear, or at least in his inner circle, was the weakest link in the CIA’s efforts to gather information on the terrorist plans. Instead of making the necessary effort to recruit agents, a difficult job indeed, the American intelligence agencies chose the much easier, even though much more expensive route. The sophisticated technologies they developed, very impressive in their own right, were not complemented by the additional input of human intelligence, crucial in the monitoring of terror organizations. Moreover, a not insignificant part of the communications data the agencies accumulated was not properly understood and evaluated because of a shortage of intelligent officers familiar with local languages and equipped with the necessary background knowledge to understand America’s new and very bitter adversaries. Only through human expertise, complementing technological tools, can such complex data be properly interpreted and understood. For their part, the terrorist organizations learned to exploit the advantages of globalization and communication technology. According to the deputy head of the FBI, the terrorists “used the web very well.” He noted that the agency’s analysts had located hundreds of e-mail messages exchanged between terrorists inside the US and abroad, from both personal computers and those in public places. The intercepted messages were not coded or disguised in any sophisticated way and could be understood without any special effort. According to Brian Gellerman, formerly in charge of electronic security in the Pentagon and in NATO, the terrorists did not use coded messages because they did not want to

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draw the attention of NSA’s ECHLON monitoring system. The perpetrators of the attacks preferred to communicate through open, routine messages, which they believed was the best cover of all. They understood that a bugging system, as sophisticated as it might be, would get lost attempting to pick up routine messages in an almost infinite ocean of communication. *** Why did Washington start organizing to defeat terror only after the attacks, although most of the information which served as the basis for its decision to do so was in the data banks long before then? A key factor was that although the American intelligence agencies identified the strategic threat, they were unable to provide the specific operational information needed to prevent the attacks. On the strategic level, the CIA assumed there was a danger of conventional terror against American interests and targets outside the United States, and a potential threat, some time in the future, of an unconventional attack on its soil. True, it assessed that Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaida organization were the main terrorist group threatening the United States, but this strategic insight did not translate into operational terms. Indeed, Vice President Richard Cheney discovered that US intelligence had information about a major terror attack planned by bin Laden, but stressed that it had not been specific enough. And Secretary of State Colin Powell, confirmed that there were “a lot of signs” pointing to bin Laden’s intention to carry out attacks in the United States, but that the agency’s efforts to obtain concrete information failed. In July 2001, the CIA issued general warnings of bin Laden’s intention to carry out attacks against American targets. The intelligence it had was not specific enough to pinpoint the method, the target, the perpetrators or the timing. In the run up to America’s Independence Day on 4 July, reports accumulated on preparations for a terrorist strike against American targets by bin Laden’s men, but again the information was not specific. Later that month, the heads of the industrialized nations gathered in Genoa. The local security forces took stringent security precautions after Italian intelligence got hold of a videotape in which bin Laden explicitly threatened to kill President Bush and other Western leaders gathered at the summit. Nothing happened. Perhaps it was all a false alarm; perhaps the terrorists were deterred by the stringent security measures taken by the Italian police. The organizations behind the “new terror” operate in a decentralized manner, in compartmentalized cells, in a number of countries with no fixed base, often through activists from different terror groups who get together on an ad hoc basis for a specific terror attack or series of attacks, after which they disband. The “new terrorism” is an amorphous and undefined entity, and therefore very difficult to penetrate and destroy. Al-Qaida, for example, has virtually no hierarchy. It is a network without a single center of power; it is everywhere—and nowhere. It has no concrete assets to lose; it is not a party to international agreements; the concept of deterrence is meaningless in its case; and it is not granted that the removal or killing of its head will deter or stop other members of the group.

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This is terror of a different kind, and it has opened a new and frightening dark age; it is terror that has broken previous accepted limits and changed the rules of the game. When old style terror aimed to achieve limited goals like conveying a message, freeing captives, getting ransom money or shocking public opinion, the confrontation was waged on the basic assumption that the terrorists are rational human beings who set goals that can be achieved through negotiation. The “new terrorism” is different in the goals it sets and in the means it employs to attain them. It leaves nothing open for rational negotiation. It aims at achieving the “grand” goal —driving Western powers and influence out of Muslim countries and installing Islamic theocracies. *** Many people share the blame for the American intelligence failure which made the attacks of 11 September possible. Although the CIA produced a strategic warning on intentions to strike at American targets and had in its possession ample information on the al-Qaida group planning the strikes, its leaders and its main bases in Afghanistan, it failed to glean any focused intelligence on the planned attacks—the place, the time, the method and the names of the perpetrators—and it failed in its efforts to target al-Qaida and its leaders. For its part, the FBI failed to translate the warning, albeit general, into a plan of action to trace and detain suspected terrorists who entered the US. The president too, who was well aware of the terrorist threat, failed to instruct the CIA and the FBI to prepare for total war. Despite the danger, the administration continued to follow its normal peacetime routine. There were four factors embedded in the American way of life that militated against effective and determined action which might have prevented the attacks. First, the open, democratic lifestyle. It seems that the heads of the FBI feared that aggressive preventive action against terrorist suspects could have repercussions and get the Bureau into hot water for ostensibly violating civil liberties. Secondly, bureaucratic peacetime routine. Both the CIA and the FBI were content to make do with routine intelligence gathering and preventive activities, because they failed to recognize the imminence and enormity of the threat. Thirdly, the inherent optimism and self-confidence of the American people. More than most the Americans are a people who believe “it will never happen to them.” And, in general, individuals and governments tend not to take all-out preventive action until they get hit. Fourthly, what seems a political obstacle. It takes a presidential decision to place the struggle against terror above all other considerations and give it top priority. A decision to that effect was only made after 11 September. Until then the American system made noises against terror, but there was no serious mobilization for action. The preventive measures now being taken by the Americans and the rest of the free world could and should have been adopted before the attacks. They were not adopted partly because of political and diplomatic restrictions which only politicians can remove. Finally, it is unfair to blame the American intelligence agencies alone. It was not only at CIA headquarters that seasoned agents failed to make the necessary

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preparations for preemptive plans. Militant Islamic fundamentalism was a target for intelligence agencies all over the world, in the West, the East, and in moderate Muslim and Arab countries as well as the Pakistani intelligence, which had a significant presence in Afghanistan. Yet not one of those organizations produced advance knowledge of the method, the targets or the timing of the attacks that changed the world. *** Blame aside, the terrorist attacks changed at a stroke attitudes to similar threats, at least in the near future. Now the president has clearly placed the struggle against terror of all kinds, and protection of the home front, at the head of the administration’s list of priorities. The American administration and the intelligence agencies will have to adapt to the new reality. From the president down to the men in the field it is obvious that the US is facing a new and very threatening kind of terror. The question is whether they realize that this entails finding new responses that meet the threat, different from the political boycotts, economic sanctions and retaliatory raids of the past. In his 1993 The Clash of Civilizations, Samuel Huntingdon claimed that future military confrontations would be between civilizations, not states. The Israeli military historian, Martin van Crefeld, argued in 1991, the year of the Soviet Union’s collapse, that the era of major wars was over. Future wars, he asserted in his book The Transformation of War, would be between states and organizations, and would be no less, and perhaps even more, dangerous. The British historian, Brigadier Richard Simkin, defined terror in his Race to the Future as “revolutionary war,” which would present governments with new and very difficult challenges. Indeed, Simkin doubts whether regular armies will be able to deal with the new threat and argues that states and their armies must reorganize, re-equip and train to use identical or similar methods to those employed by the terrorists. The aim, he says, should be to give the enemy a taste of his own medicine on its home turf. Simkin predicts that irregular operations will be the order of the day in armed conflicts of the future. The organizational deployment he proposes demands that the security and intelligence services shed the dogmas and worldviews that guided policy-makers in the West until 11 September. Indeed, after 11 September, virtually everything changed. President Bush’s statement that nothing would be the same was perhaps exaggerated, but clearly the system of international relations will not be what it was. Since 11 September, Congressional intelligence committees have been discussing statutes to give the intelligence agencies sweeping powers in the fight against terror. According to James Woolsey, one of the heads of the CIA in the 1990s, “Washington underwent a dramatic change.” From now on virtually everything will be permissible in the struggle against terror, including targeting political leaders. More than the intelligence agencies seeking more powers, the legislators are volunteering to grant them. Their generosity stems partly from an instinct for political survival, if there is another attack, they will be able to say they did all they could to prevent it.

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Indeed, as is the wont of governments everywhere, the American administration oscillates from one extreme to another, from do-nothing irresponsibility, which enabled the attacks to occur, to unrelenting centrist control. The danger now is granting such sweeping powers to the intelligence agencies, and to the newly formed Department of Homeland Security, that the sacrosanct civil liberties like individual rights, banking confidentiality and non-invasive monitoring of immigrant activities, could be compromised. The changes also have socio-economic implications, increasing the budgets for security and intelligence work will necessarily come at the expense of social services the state should provide its citizens. One of Bush’s first actions after the attacks was to sign an executive order granting far-reaching powers to the CIA, including permission to employ special measures against terror, especially against bin Laden and al-Qaida. In fact, the CIA was granted the widest powers since its founding. Congress was also generous towards the FBI. In lightning legislation, it passed new regulations granting the FBI considerable freedom of action against individuals suspected of illegal activity. The ball is now in the intelligence services’ court. If the fight against terror fails, they will not be able to hide behind the assertion that their hands were tied. Immediately after the attacks, intelligence operations against terrorists in the US and abroad were widened and, as a result, terrorist suspects were caught. Intelligence is flexing its muscles. The most obvious sign of its new agenda is the new intelligence “paper” CIA head George Tenet (or his representative) brings with him every morning when he briefs the president. A highly classified “threat matrix” contains every single intelligence information on a terrorist threat, including those with low probability, from any available source— COMINT (communication intelligence), HUMINT (agents), and friendly foreign services. It includes reports, some raw, on threats to kidnap, bomb, poison and so on. At the end of the day most prove groundless, like the warning the FBI put out in early November 2001 of a plan to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. One of the trickier dilemmas is deciding when to go public. Concealing information about a potential threat could prove fatal and cause needless casualties; disseminating unfounded warnings could cause unnecessary panic and if repeated lead to “the boy who cried wolf syndrome. Towards the end of the Cold War, the CIA failed, despite an abundance of data, to comprehend that the Soviet Union was very close to collapse. This was one of the reasons why the intelligence agency had little impact on American foreign and security policy at the time. Then, only 15 to 30 minutes were allocated to the daily intelligence briefing. These days, however, they tend to go on for longer, depending on the situation and because of the need to explain to the new president issues his father was familiar with. The briefing is still attended by the National Security Council adviser while the vice president stays away in a secured location and receives the briefing on video.

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To some extent, the terror attacks of 11 September have changed the relations between the top executive and the intelligence establishment. In the past, presidents could ignore intelligence estimates, and actually did so, whenever it did not fit their political agenda. In the new era, after 11 September, the president must pay greater attention to what the intelligence has to say, and in most cases act according to the estimates and operational information provided by the agency. In principle, people change, as do agendas, but the essence of intelligence work does not. When the Soviet Union was collapsing, Bush senior did not get clear-cut intelligence estimates forcing him to make a decision. What he received were general evaluations enabling him to duck a decision on whether to stop regarding the Soviet Union as a strategic threat and start preparing for the day after the collapse. Today, too, after the terror attacks, George W.Bush has not been getting a full conclusive intelligence picture on terror groups or their operational plans. He has to make decisions on the strength of partial evidence and incomplete data, and to follow his intuition, while taking diplomatic constraints abroad and domestic political needs into account. One of the decisions already taken has been to target bin Laden and the Taliban leaders who ‘declared war on America.” This decision constitutes a significant diversion from American policy since the days of President Gerald Ford. Ford and his successors in the White House repeatedly reaffirmed orders prohibiting the CIA from resorting to assassination of political leaders to effect political change. In any event, the Agency does not have a very proud or encouraging record when it comes to political operations. Apart from one proven success, the restoration of the exiled Shah of Iran to the throne in the 1950s, the agency failed time and again. It failed, inter alia, in its attempts to depose Egypt’s President Gamal Abdul Nasser and Cuban leader Fidel Castro, to assassinate former Hezbollah leader, Sheikh Fadlallah, or to bring about regime change in Nicaragua and Iraq. Its clumsy operations invariably ended in failure or scandal, or both. *** After the initial shock and recovery, questions emerged. Americans asked not only: Why did it happen to us? but also: Who is to blame? Articles by columnists asking “Why do they hate us?” began to appear. Towards the end of the first month of the military operation in Afghanistan, when it became clear that it was not going to be a quick fix, there were calls in Congress and in the media for the establishment of a legally binding commission of inquiry mandated to investigate the intelligence failure. A Congressional committee was created and hearings began in spring 2002. Commissions of this kind tend to focus on professional and administrative aspects of the intelligence work and try to answer questions raised in this chapter. For example, why was there not closer monitoring of religious and charitable institutions which served as a cover for fundraising and volunteer recruitment? Why was the human element of intelligence work neglected and why were there insufficient networking experts to coordinate the

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information flow? And what were the reasons for the poor coordination between the various intelligence branches? The danger is that the process of review will focus mainly on technical aspects of intelligence work and inter-organizational relations, and gloss over the more fundamental problems facing intelligence in the new era. For example, did intelligence fail to comprehend the aims, the potential capabilities and determination of the new terror? And is it developing the necessary tools to confront it? Apart from commissions of inquiry, political soul searching and allocating blame, the new threats force all the pillars of Western civilization, governments, media and academia to rethink their basic assumptions. The world must mobilize for a concentrated and uncompromising effort to deny “the new terrorists,” suffused with divine ideology, yet incapable of responsibility or mercy, access to weapons of mass destruction. If the West and its allies in the Third World do not want to see nuclear clouds mushrooming in the not so distant future, or to deal with a chemical or biological attack of apocalyptic proportions, it will have to stick to what seems to be an American new doctrine of preemptive strikes against terrorist organizations and states that give them shelter. The West will also have to shake up its intelligence services or perhaps even dismantle them and build new ones specifically oriented for the fight against terror. In parallel, the Western world must think seriously about reducing the huge gap in standards of living between Manhattan and Kabul. That is the size of the abyss before which we stand today. If the West fails to deal with the social aspects of the problem, and concentrates only on improving its security, it might stop bin Laden, if he is still alive, and the next terrorist attack—but not the one after it. INTELLIGENCE AFTER 11 SEPTEMBER The attacks of 11 September reversed at a stroke the growing trend—stemming from the collapse of the Soviet Union—minimizing the importance of intelligence and threatening to erode its budgets and undermine its powers. The unprecedented terror blow called for a general review of intelligence: its way of thinking, its methodology, priorities and definition of its targets. In the years that followed the conclusion of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, most strategic analysts and intelligence experts argued that the international system was becoming uni-polar with one dominant great power, the United States. A minority of those believed in the emergence of a multi-polar world with several centers of power balancing each other, the United States, Russia, China and Europe. The common assumption was that the world had become a safer place in that there was no threat of a nuclear or a major conventional war. States, through their security establishments, continued to develop strategies, compile arsenals and task their intelligence services to counter potential threats from a rival country or coalition of countries. The threat of terrorism was not conceived to be existential or to pose an immediate danger. September 11

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changed the approach towards terror organizations and states that support them. It is now apparent that the more serious and acute threats lie in the Third World. Here, in this poor southern half of the globe, there is growing frustration, anger and despair, creating a situation in which religious fundamentalism, particularly in Islamic communities, flourishes and provides fertile ground for the growth of terrorist organizations that present a serious challenge to the existing world order. At the outset of the third millennium, international terror has proved to be the biggest threat to the United States and the other industrial countries. Preventing terror, therefore, has become the main target of positive and preventive intelligence. Gathering intelligence on terror in all its forms, particularly on super (non-conventional) terror, and launching preventive operations against its perpetrators and against countries that support them or give them shelter will take precedence over other threats to American interests and its national security. Intelligence gathering in the Third World, especially in those countries which serve as hotbeds for terrorism or which harbor terror organizations, is getting top priority. In the new scheme of things, intelligence warfare will become more common. Coordination between the various American intelligence agencies will improve, and cooperation with friendly intelligence agencies having common interests will deepen. It is reasonable to assume that human intelligence (HUMINT) will be strengthened and that more emphasis will be placed on the study of Third World cultures (languages and religions), human misery, poverty, repression and degradation, all of which serve as a grand nursery for terrorism. One of the biggest and most frightening threats is the potential introduction of non-conventional terror, an initial sample of which was the spread of anthrax in the US in the wake of the terror attack of 11 September. It is still not known who was behind the anthrax attacks. Confronting that kind of threat requires a combined offensive-preventive strategy, which means waging an all-out and total war against the terrorist organizations, the infrastructures that support them and the governments that aid them and grant them shelter. It is a war that must be waged with all relevant diplomatic, economic and military means. Intelligence agencies will play a key role in this war, but to be successful it will have to be aggressive, daring and creative. The new terrorism, whose main proponents today are the remnant of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida organization, seeks to subvert the world order by all means, including the use of non-conventional weapons. The battle against terror will elevate the status of security and intelligence agencies. They will get increased budgets, at the expense of services the state should be providing to its citizens, and more powers, some of which will undermine civil liberties. One can only hope that in the struggle against terror, the United States and its allies will find the golden mean between necessary restrictions on civilian life, aimed at curbing the terrorist threats, and safeguarding basic civilian liberties gained by liberal democracies in recent decades.

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Whether the American and other Western intelligence agencies are reorganizing to meet the new challenges, or whether they are still wedded to outmoded concepts, remains to be seen.

Appendix A GLOSSARY

Abwehr—German military intelligence Aman—Israel military intelligence ASC—American Security Council AVO—Hungarian security service, predecessor of AVH BFV—West German security service BIGOT List—a selected group of people in the US Administration with access to highly sensitive information BND—West German foreign intelligence agency BOSS—Bureau of State Security, apartheid era South African security service CECIS—Comitato Esecutiro per i Servizi di Informazione e di Sicuerezza CIA—The US Central Intelligence Agency Classification—division of sensitive information, usually in three levels: confidential, secret, top secret COMINT—Communications intelligence Counterintelligence—the body charged with neutralizing foreign intelligence operations Covert action—clandestine activity CPSU—Communist Party of the Soviet Union DA—Directorate of Administration DCI—Director of Central Intelligence (oversees and coordinates the US intelligence community) DDCI—Deputy Director of Central Intelligence DDI—Deputy Director of Intelligence DDO—Deputy Director for Operations Deuxième Bureau—French military intelligence (G-2) DGSE—Direction general de la securité extérieure (heir of SDECE) DGSP—Rumanian foreign Intelligence service DGSS—Direction Generate des Services Speciaux DI—Directorate of Intelligence DIA—US Defense Intelligence Agency (Pentagon) DID—Defense intelligence digest DIE—Romanian security service DINSUM—Daily intelligence summary DIS—Defense Intelligence Staff DS—Bulgarian security service DST—Direction de la surveillance du territoire (France)

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ELINT—Electronic intelligence FBI—Federal Bureau of Investigation (US) FCD—First Chief (foreign intelligence) Directorate (KGB) GCHQ—Government communications headquarters (UK) GRU—Soviet military intelligence agency HPSCI—House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence HUMINT—Human intelligence HVA—East German foreign intelligence agency IDF—Israel Defense Forces INR—Bureau of Intelligence and Research (US State Department) Intelligence community—all US intelligence agencies IOB—Intelligence Oversight Board IRD—Information Research Department (UK) ISI—Pakistani Intelligence Agency JCS—Joint Chiefs of Staff JIC—Joint Intelligence Committee (UK) JSF—Joint Strike Fighter KGB—Soviet Committee for State Security KR Line—counterintelligence department in KGB residencies MI5—British security service MI6—British intelligence service (SIS) MAD—Mutually Assured Destruction Mossad—Israel secret intelligence service NATO—North Atlantic Treaty Organization NFIB—National Foreign Intelligence Board (composed of heads of all Intelligence agencies, US) NIC—National Intelligence Council (US) NID—National Intelligence Daily (US) NIE—National Intelligence Estimate (US) NIO—National Intelligence Officer (US) NRO—National Reconnaissance Office NSA—National Security Agency (US) NSC—National Security Council (US) NSDD—National Security Decision Directive NSIC—National Strategy Information Center NSPG—National Security Planning Group OSS—Office of Strategic Services PDB—Presidential Daily Brief PFIAB—President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board PLO—Palestinian Liberation Organization PR Line—political intelligence department in KGB residencies RIS—Russian Intelligence Service (SVR) RG—Renseignements généraux (France) SALT—Strategic Arms Limitation Talks SB—Polish security service (previously UB) SDECE—Service de Documentation Extérieur de Contre-espionage (French intelligence) SDI—Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars)

APPENDIX A: GLOSSARY 303

Section de Chiffre—cipher bureau (France) Service Action—operational branch of DGSE Shabak—Israel general security service SI—secret intelligence SID—Italian abbreviation for Defense Information Service SIGINT—signal intelligence SIM—Italian abbreviation for Italian intelligence service SIS—Secret Intelligence Service (UK) SISDE—Servizio Informazione e Sicurezza Democratica (Internal Security Service) SISME—Servizio Informazione Sicurezza Militaire (Army Intelligence) SM—French military security SNIE—special national intelligence estimate SO—secret operations SOVA—Soviet Affairs Department SR—Service de Renseignement SSCI—Senate Select Committee on Intelligence SSD—East German security service (Stasi) ST—surveillance du territoire (France) S & T—scientific and technical/technological intelligence StB—Czech security service Sûreté—French Special Branch UDBA—Yugoslav security service VISINT—Visual intelligence X Line—scientific and technological intelligence department in KGB residencies

Appendix B LIST OF INTERVIEWEES*

Abalkin, Leonid, Economist and member of (former) Soviet Academy of Sciences. Adams, James, Journalist and writer for the Sunday Times (London). Arbatov, Georgi Arkadyevich, Political scientist and historian. Former director USSR (now Russian) USA and Canada Institute. Member of the USSR Congress of People’s Deputies and of CPSU Central Committee. Attali, Jacques, President Mitterand’s personal assistant. Baker, James A., III, Secretary of State during the Bush administration. Bessmertnykh, Aleksandr Mikhailovich, USSR minister of foreign affairs in 1991, formerly Soviet ambassador to the US. Berger, Mikhail I., Economic editor with Izvestia. Blackwell, Robert, Senior CIA analyst, Soviet Affairs.** Botbol, Maurice, Director, Indigo (Intelligence) Publications. Cannistraro, Vincent, Ex-senior CIA officer and NSC staffer. Chernyayev, Anatoliy Sergey evich, Member of Gorbachev’s Foundation. Former CPSU senior official, foreign affairs assistant to President Gorbachev (1986–91). Crozier, Brian, British writer and anti-Soviet activist, “free agent” according to his own definition. Dolbilova, Tatyana, Russian translator. Dudnik, Lieutenant General, Soviet military historian. Duffy, Brian, Journalist, US News and World Report. Eagleburger, Lawrence, Secretary of State during the Bush administration. Eitan, Rafael, Advisor on terrorism to Israeli Premier Menachem Begin. Emarth, Fritz, Senior CIA officer, former NIC director.** Evans, Michael, Defense Correspondent for The Times of London. Fairbanks, Charles H., Jr., Research professor, Johns Hopkins University (SAIS), previously assistant secretary of state for human rights issues. Feshbach, Murray, Expert on Soviet demography, Georgetown University. Fellner, Hermann, Former member of intelligence committee, West German parliament. Ford, Carl W., Jr., President, Ford and Associates, previously senior CIA and NIC analyst.

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Gafney, Frank J., Jr., Director, Center for Security Policy (US). Gates, Robert M., Director of CIA, deputy director of NSC during the Bush administration.** Gelb, Leslie, Director, Council for Foreign Relations, previously NSC staffer, reporter with the New York Times. Genosar, Yossi, ex-senior Israeli security officer. Gersh, Alain, Journalist, Le Monde Diplomatique. Goble, Paul, Director, Jamestown Foundation, previously State Department senior analyst for Soviet affairs. Golan, Galia, Professor of Soviet and East European studies, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Goodman, Melvin A., Former senior CIA analyst for Soviet affairs, now teaching at the National War College. Gordievsky, Oleg, KGB station chief, London, defected in the mid-1980s. Haig, Alexander M., Secretary of State in the Reagan administration. Hardt, John, Congressional Research Service, expert on the Soviet economy. Hazak, Reuven, Deputy Director, Shabak, Israel security service. Hellenbroich, Heribert, Former president of West German Security (BFV) and Intelligence (BND) services. Hill, Charlie, Assistant to Secretary of State George Shultz during the Reagan administration. Jilin, Aleksandr I., Commentator on military affairs, Moscow News. Former pilot in the Soviet Air Force. Kampelman, Max, Chief arms negotiator during the Reagan administration. Kebede, Kassa, Former high-ranking Ethiopian official. Kerr, Richard, CIA deputy director during the late 1980s. Kimchi, Dave, former Director General, Israel Foreign Ministry. King, Robert R., Assistant to Congressman Tom Lantos. Kiva, Aleksei, Head of Moscow’s Third World Institute. Leonov, Nikolai Sergeyevich, Lieutenant General, head of Directorate of Intelligence and Information (analysis and assessment), KGB First Chief Directorate, during the 1980s. Levada, Yuri, Director, Russian Center for Public Opinion and Market Research. Levin, Arieh, Israel ambassador to the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. Lubov, Vladimir, Lieutenant General, former chief of staff, Warsaw Pact. Marion, Pierre, Head of French Secret Service (DGSE) in the first Mitterand administration. Martini, Fulvio, Admiral, former head of Italian Intelligence. Mathes, Richard, Reverend, Vatican Cultural Attaché in Jerusalem. McCurdy, Dave, Former Congressman, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. McFarlane, Robert C., National Security Advisor to President Reagan. Merhav, Reuven, former Director-General, Israel Foreign Ministry.

306 APPENDIX B: LIST OF INTERVIEWEES

Natov, Voludia, Poland’s ambassador to Moscow in the late 1980s. Perle, Richard, Fellow, American Enterprise, former assistant secretary of defense during the Reagan administration. Pipes, Richard, Professor of Russian History, Harvard University, on NSC staff during the Reagan administration, head of Team B.** Prokofiev, Dimitri, Russian journalist. Rodman, Peter W., Senior Analyst at the Nixon Center, previously CSIS, staffer at the National Security Council during the Reagan administration. Rosenberg, Godel, Former aide to German defense minister Franz Joseph Strauss. Schmemann, Serge, New York Times correspondent in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe during the 1980s. Scowcroft, Brent, National Security Advisor to President Bush. Simes, Dimitri, Director, the Nixon Center. Simonia, Nodari A., Deputy Director, Institute of World Economy and International Relations, member of former Soviet Academy of Sciences. Shultz, George P., Secretary of State in the Reagan administration.** Stauber, Zvi, Brigadier General, IDF Military Intelligence. Sviridov, Felix A., Businessman, formerly Soviet government official. Szulc, Tad, Writer, former New York Times correspondent. Taylor, Richard Norton, Defense correspondent for The Guardian. Tiecher, Howard, former NSC staffer. Wieck, Hans-Georg, President BND, German Secret Service, 1985–91. Yakovlev, Alexander Nikolayevich, Director of Ostankino Television Company, Former CPSU official. Diplomat, and ambassador to Canada, director of the Institute for World Economy and International Relations, secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, politburo member and advisor to Gorbachev, founder member democratic reforms. Yasmann, Victor J., Expert on Soviet affairs, senior analyst Jamestown Foundation, previously with Radio Free Europe. Zamyatin, Leonid M., Vice President, Consortium Europe America. Former head of TASS (official) News Agency, member of CPSU Central Committee. Ziplakov, Alexander, Russian language student. *(All interviews were conducted between January and September 1995) **(Interviews conducted by telephone)

Select Bibliography

BOOKS Adams, James, New Spies. (London: Pimlico, 1994). ——, Sellout: Aldrich Ames and the Corruption of the CIA. (New York: Viking, 1995). Andrew, Christopher, KGB: The Inside Story. (New York, HarperCollins, 1990). ——, More Instructions from the Center. (London: Frank Cass, 1992). ——, For The President’s Eyes Only. (New York, Harper Collins, 1995). Andrew, Christopher and Oleg Gordievsky, Comrade Kryuchkov’s Instructions: Top Secret Files on KGB Foreign Operations. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993). Arbatov, Georgi, The System. (New York: Times Books, 1993). Attali, Jacques, Verbatim: Chronique des années 1981–1986, Vol. 1 (Paris: Fayard, 1993). Baker, James A., III, The Politics of Diplomacy. (New York: Putnam, 1995). Bechloss, Michael R. and Strobe Talbott, At The Highest Levels: The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1993). Bialer, Seweryn, (ed.), Politics, Society and Nationality inside Gorbachev’s Russia. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1989). Bialer, Seweryn and Michael Mandelbaum, (eds), Gorbachev’s Russia and American Foreign Policy. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1988). —— Global Rivals: The Forty-Two Year Contest for Supremacy. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988). Blacker, Coit D., Hostage to Revolution: Gorbachev and Soviet Security Policy, 1985– 1991. (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1993). Boldin, Valery, Ten Years that Shook the World: The Gorbachev era as Witnessed by his Chief of Staff. (New York: Basic Books, 1994). Bradsher, Henry S., Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1985). Broad, William J., Teller’s War: The Top-Secret Story Behind the Star Wars Deception. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992). Brzezinski, Zbigniew, The Grand Failure: The Birth and Death of Communism in the Twentieth Century. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1989). Burrows, William E., Deep Black. (New York: Random House, 1986). Burrows, William E. and Robert Windreem, Critical Mass. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994). Carrere d’Encausse, Hélène, Decline of an Empire: The Soviet Socialist Republics in Revolt. (New York: Newsweek Books, 1979). Chernyayev, Anatoly, Six Years With Gorbachev. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-anstalt, 1993). Crozier, Brian, Free Agent: The Unseen War 1941–1991. (London: HarperCollins, 1993).

308 WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION

Dalin, Alexander, and Gail W.Lapidus, (eds), The Soviet System: From Crisis to Collapse, rev. edn. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995). Epstein, Edward Jay, The Invisible War Between the KGB and the CIA. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989). Farson, Stuart A., David Stafford and Wesley K.Wark, (eds), Security and Intelligence in a Changing World. (London: Frank Cass, 1990). Feshbach, Murray, and Alfred Friendly Jr., Ecoside in the USSR: Health and Nature Under Siege. (New York: Basic Books, 1992). Garthoff, Raymond L., The Great Transition: American-Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War. (Washington: Brookings Institute, 1994). ——, Detente and Confrontation. (Washington: Brookings Institute, 1994). Godson, Roy (ed.), Intelligence Requirements for the 1990s. (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1990). Goldman, Marshall L, Gorbachev’s Challenge: Economic Reform in the Age of High Technology. (New York: W.W.Norton and Co., 1987). Golitsyn, Anatoliy, New Lies For Old. (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1984). Gorbachev, Mikhail, Perestroika. (New York: Harper and Row, 1989). ——, The Collapse of Communism. (New York: Times Books, 1991). Gwertzman, Bernard, and Michael T.Kaufman, (eds), The Decline and Fall of the Soviet Empire. (New York: Times Books, 1992). Haig, Alexander M. Jr., Inner Circles: How America Changed the World. (New York: Warner Books Inc., 1992). Hollo way, David, The Military Balance 1984–1991. (London: Brassey’s for the IISS, 1994). ——, Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy 1939–1956. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994). Johnson, Loch K., American Secret Power: The CIA in a Democratic Society. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). Kalugin, Oleg, The First Directorate: My 32 years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994). Kennedy, Paul, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. (New York: Random House, 1986). ——, Preparing for the 21st Century. (New York: Random House, 1992). Kessler, Ronald, Inside the CIA. New York, Simon and Schuster, 1992. ——, Inside the White House. (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1995). Kissinger, Henry, Diplomacy. (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1994). Knight, Amy W., The KGB: Police and Politics of the Soviet Union. (London: Allen & Unwin, 1988). Laqueur, Walter, The Uses and Limits of Intelligence. (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1993). McFarlane, Robert C, Special Trust. (New York: Cadell and Davies, 1994). Malia, Martin, The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia 1917–1991. (New York: The Free Press, 1994). Marion, Pierre, La Mission impossible: a la tête des services secrets. (Paris: CalmannLevy, 1991). Matlock, Jack F., Jr., Autopsy of an Empire. (New York: Random House, 1995). Mayers, David, The Ambassadors and America’s Soviet Policy. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 309

Meyer, Herbert E. (ed.), Scouting the Future: The Public Speeches of William J. Casey. (Washington: Regnery Gateway, 1989). Pacepa, Ion Minai, Red Horizon: Chronicles of a Communist Spy Chief. (New York: Regnery Gateway, 1987). Paine, Lauran, Silicone Spies. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986). Persico, Joseph E., Casey: The Lives and Secrets of William J.Casey from OSS to CIA. (New York: Penguin Books, 1991). Porch, Douglas, The French Secret Services. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995). Prokofiev, Dimitri, Voice from Moscow. (Tel-Aviv: HaKibutz HaMeuhad, 1994). Reagan, Ronald, An American Life. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990). Remnick, David, Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire. (New York: Vintage, 1994). Richelson, Jeffrey T., The US Intelligence Community. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1985). ——, American Espionage and the Soviet Target. (New York: Morrow and Co., 1987). Rodman, Peter W., More Precious than Peace: The Cold War and the Struggle for the Third World. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1994). Rubinstein, Alvin Z., Red Star on the Nile. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977). Sagdeev, Roald Z., The Making of a Soviet Scientist: Nuclear Fusion and Space from Stalin to Star Wars. (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1994). Schieffer, Bob and Gary Paul Gates, The Acting President. (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1989). Schmidt-Enboom, Erich, Der BND: Die unheimliche Macht im Staate. (Dusseldorf: Econ, 1995). Schweizer, Peter, Victory: the Reagan Administration’s Secret Strategy that Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union. (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1994). Shultz, George P., Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993). Shvets, Yuri B., Washington Station: My Life as a KGB Spy in America. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994). Silberzahn, Claude with Jean Guishel, Au coeur du secret: 1500 jours aux commandes de la DGSE 1989–1993. (Paris: Fayard, 1995). Sudoplatov, Pavel. Special Task: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness—a Soviet Spy. (London: Little, Brown, 1994). Thatcher, Margaret, The Downing Street Years. (New York: HarperCollins, 1993). West, Nigel, MI6. (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1983). Woodward, Bob, Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981–1987. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987). Wright, Peter, Spy Catcher. (New York: Viking, 1987).

ARTICLES Boren, David L., “Rethinking US Intelligence”, American Enterprise (January– February 1992). ——, “The Intelligence Community: How Crucial?” Foreign Affairs (September– October 1992). Callahan, David, “F-22: An Exercise in Overkill”, Technology Review (August– September 1992).

310 WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION

Chan, Anne Hessing, “Team B: The Trillion”, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, (April 1993). Cockburn, Andrew, “CIA Identity Crisis”, Defence Journal, Spring 1992. Eberstadt, Nicholas, “Where did the CIA Go Wrong?”, National Review (10 June 1991). Gates, Robert M., “The CIA and American Foreign Policy”, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 66, (1987). Gordon, Michael R., “Are Military Contractors Part of the Problem or Part of the Solution?”, National Journal (11 July 1981). Hagstrom, Jerry and Robert Guskind, “Lobbying the Pentagon”, National Journal (31 May 1986). Holzman, Franklyn D., “How the CIA Distorted the Truth About the Soviet Military Spending”, Challenge (March–April 1990). ——, “The CIA’s Military Spending Estimates: Deceit and Costs”, Challenge (May-June 1992). ——, “Politics, Military Spending, and the National Welfare”, Comparative Economic Studies, Vol. 36, No. 3 (1994). Jarvais, Robert, “What’s Wrong with the Intelligence Process?”, International Journal of Intelligence (Spring 1966). Kitrinos, Robert S., “International Department of the CPSU”, Problems of Communism, 33 (September–October 1984). Kotz, Nick, “The Chesapeake Bay Goose Hunt, the Beautiful Secretary, and Other Ways the Defense Lobby Got the B1”, Washington Monthly (February 1988). Meyer, Herbert E., “Real World Intelligence”, Orbis, Vol. 29, No. 2 (1985). Norrgard, Lee and Joe Rosenbloom III, “The Cold Warriors”, Common Cause, Vol. 11 (July–August 1985). Pipes, Richard, “Can the Soviet Union Reform?” Foreign Affairs (Fall 1984). ——, “Team B: The Reality Behind The Myth”, Commentary (October 1986). ——, “Misinterpreting the Cold War”, Foreign Affairs (January–February 1995).

LECTURES Gates, Robert M., “Recent Developments in the USSR: Prospects and Implications for the US”, Prepared to be delivered at the Seventh National Collegiate Security Conference, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, 26 October 1989. ——, “Guarding Against Politicization”, Speech made to senior CIA officers, CIA Headquarters, Langley, 16 March 1992. ——, “CIA and the Collapse of the Soviet Union: Hit or Miss?”, Speech before the Foreign Policy Association, New York, 20 May 1992. ——, “Statement of Change in the CIA and the Intelligence Community”, Speech made to senior CIA officers, CIA Headquarters, Langley, 1 April 1992.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 311

DOCUMENTS WHITE HOUSE—NATIONAL SECURITY DECISION DIRECTIVE NSC 68—“US Objectives and Programs for National Security”, (Secret) 14 April 1950. NSDD 51—“US Policy Toward the Horn of Africa”, (Secret) 17 September 1982. NSDD 54—“US Policy Toward Eastern Europe”, (Secret) 2 September 1982. NSDD 75—“US Relations with the USSR”, (Secret—Sensitive) 17 January 1983. NSDD 115—“Strategic Defense Initiative: Congressional and Allied Consultation”, (Secret) 2 December 1983. NSDD 124—“Central America: Promoting Democracy, Economic Improvement and Peace”, (Top Secret) 7 February 1984. NSDD 183—“Meeting with Soviet Leader in Geneva”, (Secret) 8 August 1985. NSDD 194—“Meeting with Soviet Leader in Geneva: Themes and Perspectives”, (Secret) 25 October 1985. NSDD 225—“Central America: US Policy on the Search for a Negotiating Solution”, (Secret) 20 May 1986. NSDD 245—“Reagan-Gorbachev Preparatory Meeting”, (Secret) 7 October 1986. NSDD 287—“Organization for the Summit with General Secretary Gorbachev”, (Secret) 10 November 1987. NSDD 288—“My Objectives at the Summit”, (Secret) 10 November 1987. NSDD 305—“Objectives at the Moscow Summit”, (Secret) 26 April 1988.

CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY—DIRECTORATE OF INTELLIGENCE DI-SOVA—“Soviet Defense Spending: Recent Trends and Future Prospects”, An Intelligence Assessment. (Secret) July 1983. DI-SOVA—“Gorbachev’s Economic Agenda: Promises, Potentials and Pitfalls”, (Secret) September 1983. DI-SOVA—“Gorbachev’s Modernization Program: Implications for Defense”, (Secret) March 1986. DI-SOVA (memorandum)—“Soviet Force Projections” (comments to NIE 11–3– 8), (Top Secret) April 1986. DI-SOVA—“Defense’s Claim on Soviet Resources”, (Secret) February 1987. DI-SOVA—“Gorbachev: Steering the USSR into the 1990s”, (Secret) 1987. DI-SOVA—“Soviet National Security Policy: Responses to the Changing Military and Economic Environment”, (Secret) June 1988. DI-SOVA—“USSR: Sharply Higher Budget Deficits Threaten Perestroika”, (Secret) June 1988. DI-SOVA—“The Soviet Economy in a Global Perspective”, (Secret) March 1989. DI-SOVA—“Rising Political Instability Under Gorbachev: Understanding the Problem and Prospects for Solution”, (Secret) April 1989. DI-SOVA—“The Soviet Cauldron”, (Secret) April 1991.

312 WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION

DI-SOVA—“Gorbachev’s Domestic Gambles and Instability in the USSR”, (Secret) September 1989. DI-SOVA—“Soviet Economic Future: The Outlook for 1991”, (Secret) May 1991. DI-SOVA—“Gorbachev’s Future”, (Secret) May 1991. DI-SOVA—“Yeltsin’s Political Objectives”, (Secret) June 1991.

NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE COUNCIL NIE 11/5–75—“The Soviet Assessment of the US”, (Secret) 9 October 1975. SNIE 11/2–81—“Soviet Support for International Terrorism and Revolutionary Violence”, (Top Secret) 27 May 1981. NIC 82–10005—“The US-Soviet Competition for Influence in the Third World: How the LDCs Play It”, (Secret) April 1982. SNIE 11/80/90–82—“Soviet Policies and Activities in Latin America and the Caribbeans”, (Secret) 25 June 1982. NIE 11/4–82—“The Soviet Challenge to US Security Interests”, (Secret) 10 August 1982. SNIE 11/30–83—“Soviet Policy in the Middle East and South Asia Under Andropov”, (Secret) 8 February 1983. NIC M 83–10006—“Dimensions of Civil Unrest in the Soviet Union”, (Top Secret) April 1983. NIE 11/18–85—“Domestic Stresses on the Soviet System”, (Secret) November 1985.

JOINT CIA-DIA PAPERS DDB-1900–122–86—“The Soviet Economy Under a New Leader”, July 1986. DDB-1900–140–87—“Gorbachev’s Modernization Program: A Status Report”, August 1987. DDB-1900–187–88—“Gorbachev’s Economic Program: Problems Emerge”, June 1988.

US CONGRESS Senate Select Committee on Intelligence “Meeting the Espionage Challenge—A Review of Counterintelligence.” Nomination of Robert M.Gates as director of Central Intelligence, Hearings, 3, 4, 18, October 1991. Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism “The Role of Moscow and its Subordinates.” Washington. GPO, 1982. House Select Committee on Intelligence “Soviet Active Measures”, Hearings, 97th Congress, Second Session, 1982. “Soviet Covert Action”, Washington: GPO, 1980.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 313

“An Evaluation of the CIA’s Analysis of Soviet Economic Performance, 1970–1990”, (prepared by a review committee). Washington: GPO, 1990. Committee on Foreign Affairs Soviet Diplomacy and Negotiating (Gorbachev, Reagan, Bush meeting at the Summits), Washington: GPO, 1991. Congress on Foreign Policy 1989–1991. Washington: GPO, 1990–92. Department of State “Patterns of Global Terrorism 1984”, Washington: GPO, 1984.

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE “Soviet Military Balance, 1989”, Washington: GPO, 1989.

Index

Abalkin, Leonid, 172, 192 Able Archer exercise, 5, 202 Abramowitz, Morton, 206 Acheson, Dean, 2, 112 Adams, Sam, 23–9, 252 Aden, 59 Afanasiev, Yuri, 209 Afghanistan, 81–87; CIA assessment, 206–16; links to terrorism, 286; Northern Alliance, 290; Soviet invasion of, 41–9, 189; Soviet withdrawal from, 84, 86–1, 227– 8; US aid to, 59, 206, 207 Africa, 76, 98–4, 101–9 Aganbegyan, Abel G., 191, 192 Agca, Ali, 67–1 AIDS, 76 Akhromeyev, General Sergei, 187 al-Qaida, 286, 287, 288, 299 Allen, George, 23 American Enterprise Institute, 221 American Security Council (ASC), 136, 163 Ames, Aldrich, 216, 218–8 Ames, Robert C, 70 Andropov, Yuri, 37, 52, 166, 173, 190, 248, 269; and Afghanistan, ix, 43, 84–9; and intelligence papers, 245–7; and Operation RYAN, 4–5; and Soviet expansionist policy, 80; and Soviet policy towards the US, 92 Angleton, James, 112, 136 Angola, 99–6, 109

anthrax attacks, 299 anti-missile protest movements, 54 Arbatov, Georgi, 84, 85, 155, 166 Armenia, 182, 183, 209 Armitage, Richard, 206 arms control, 2–3, 6, 10, 21–3, 142–50, 143–1, 164, 176–5, 188–7, 267–80 arms race, 14–15, 21–3, 28, 29–2, 32, 143, 151–60, 158, 158–7, 167, 228–9 assassination, 63–7, 297 Ataf, Mohammed, 287, 288 Attack (film), 93 Attali, Jacques, 120, 123–30 Azerbaijan, 175, 182, 183, 209 Bakatin, Vadim, 151 Baker, James, 106, 112, 113, 115, 116, 176; on Casey, 149; and the coup attempt against Gorbachev, 211–1, 223; and the deterioration of Soviet Union, 118; on intelligence assessments, 255–7; reaction to collapse of Soviet Union, 170, 213; and the Soviet threat, 156, 188–7 Balkans, the, 138–6 Baltic republics, the, 109, 182, 209 Barnard, Michael, 276 Baruch, Bernard, 3, 10 Bay of Pigs, 97, 244 Begin, Menachem, 79 Beirut, American embassy bombing, 70 Belkin, Victor, 221

314

WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION 315

Bellorgey, Jean-Michel, 123 Ben Porat, Brigadier-General Yoel, 274 Berger, Mikhail L., 198 Beria, Lavrenti, 10, 13 Berlin blockade, the, 13 Berlin Wall, 179–8 Bessmertnykh, Alexander, 167, 171, 187, 223, 247 Betts, Richard K., 275 bin Laden, Osama, 299; agenda, 285; attempts to target, 289–3; intelligence assessments of, 285–287; and non-conventional weapons, 288; threats against USA, 288–2 biological warfare, 30–3, 288, 299 Bismarck, Otto von, 259 Bissell, Richard, 112 Bittman, Ladislav, 71 Blackwell, Robert, 171, 215, 264; and Bush, 269; on CIA failure, 235–6; on Gorbachev, 228, 269; on intelligence assessments, 252–4; on the national intelligence estimate, 240, 240–2; on politicians, 254; on the role of intelligence, 232; on Soviet foreign policy, 227 BND (West German intelligence service), viii–ix, 129, 130–7, 236–7 Bologna station bombing, 63 bombing, conventional, 8 Boskin, Michael J., 220–1 Bosnia, 138–6 Botbol, Maurice, 237 brainwashing, 30 Brandt, Willy, 143, 177 Brezhnev doctrine, the, 45, 76, 109, 178, 185 Brezhnev, Leonid, 45–9, 85, 192, 267; and the invasion of Afghanistan, 43, 84; and the KGB, 248; and Pope John Paul II, 133; Third World policy, 76; ultimatum to Washington, 34–7; and the Yom Kippur War, 78

Brookings Institute, 9 Bross, John, 150 Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 41, 42, 59, 67, 68–2, 145, 203, 216, 241 Buckley, William F., 70 Bulgaria, 67–1, 180 Bundy, McGeorge, 3, 27 Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), 242, 243 Burr, William, 31 Bush, George, 41, 95, 112, 113–20, 148, 270; and the CIA assessment of Yeltsin, 257; and the coup attempt against Gorbachev, 211, 223, 224; and Gorbachev, 113, 215, 269; and intelligence assessments, 259, 264, 296–10; Soviet policy, 114–1, 269–3; suspicions of the CIA, 117 Bush, George W., 283, 295–9, 297 Byelorussia, 183 Byrnes, James F., 13 Cannistraro, Vincent M., 82–7, 171, 206– 16; on the Ames affair, 218; on intelligence assessments, 277 Carlucci, Frank C, 256 Carrol, William, 136 Carter, Jimmy, 113, 144–2; and ‘clean intelligence’, 203–13; and covert operations, 147; and Iran, 70, 88; presidential daily brief, 242; and Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, 42, 44, 83; and the Soviet nuclear threat, 4; and the Soviet Union, 41, 144; and the stealth bomber program, 155 Carver, George, 24, 25 Casaroli, Cardinal Agoustino, 134 Casey, William, x, 6, 43, 44, 52, 70, 76, 105, 112, 251, 266; accuses Soviet Union of backing terrorism, 71;

316 INDEX

and Afghanistan, 82, 86, 206; appointed CIA Director, 146, 146–5; and the assaination attempt on Pope John Paul II, 134; background, 146, 150; and Congressional oversight committees, 139–7; and covert operations, 147–5, 149; and Cuba, 98; and El Salvador, 93; Haig’s criticism of, 254; influence on policy, 150; and intelligence assessments, 94–9; and intelligence papers, 240; internal opposition to, 150; and Iran, 70; and the Iran—Contra affair, 88–3; and Italy, 132; and the KGB, 151–9; lack of objectivity, 275; Marion’s opinion of, 122; and Meyer, 150; and Nicaragua, 87–2; organizes visit of Afghan rebels, 83; and Reagan, 149, 150, 242, 245; and Saddam Hussein, 73; and Safire, 138; and Soviet involvement in Afghanistan, 82; and Soviet Third World policy, 80–5; on the Soviet threat, 148–9, 210; and the Soviet threat estimate, 157–6; status, 151; tactics, 245; and technological intelligence, 204; and terrorism, 58–6, 66, 68, 69, 72; and Zaire, 99 Castro, Fidel, 98, 103 Castro, Raul, 96 casualties, x, 3, 6, 8, 83–8, 101 Ceausescu, Nicolae, 178, 180, 181 Che Guevarra, 96 chemical warfare, 30–3, 288 Cheney, Richard, 250–2, 292 Chernenko, Konstantin, 52, 85 Chile, 73–7 China, 15, 177, 196, 201–11 Churchill, Winston, 49

CIA, the, ix, 108–14; and Afghanistan, 59; Afghanistan assessment, 206–16; aid to Afghan rebels, 83, 228; aid to terrorists, 62–6; anti-Soviet propaganda, 62; assessment of Yeltsin, 257; and the Bay of Pigs, 244; and bin Laden, 287, 289–3; budget, xi, 151; Casey and, 148–9, 268; and the collapse of the Soviet Union, 228–9; and the coup attempt against Gorbachev, 211–5, 222–4, 233; covert operations, 59, 147–5; and Cuba, 98; and the Cuban Missile Crisis, 19–1; data analysis failure, 205, 206–16, 218, 221, 224, 233–4; distrust of the French government, 119; documentation, 279; and El Salvador, 94; estimate of Soviet economic growth, 220; and Ethiopia, 102, 104; and European anti-missile protests, 54; exaggeration of Soviet military threat, 224, 224–9; failure against terrorism, 290–4, 293–7; failure of, 216–8, 230–1, 233–6, 278– 2, 282; failure to predict first Soviet test, 14; failures, 297; fear of data, 112–19; and Grenada, 90; influence, 125, 126, 131, 131–9, 135, 212; information gathering emphasis, 42–5; information sources, 203–14, 216–6, 218; intelligence briefings, 296; intelligence evaluations, x, 217, 279–3; intelligence gathering failure, 203–13; intelligence sources, 291–5; internal conflict, 251–5; investigative commissions depictions of, 59;

WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION 317

involvement in Chile, 73–7; and Iran, 43–6; Keegan’s criticism of, 141–9; and the Korean War, 15; Latin American contacts, 90; Leonov’s opinion of, 249; personnel, 240, 290; and the presidential daily brief, 241–3; Red Army assessments, 153; relationship with Congress, 139–7; role, 272, 281–4; and Soviet backed terrorism, 75; and Soviet economic performance, 219–32; and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, 41–4, 43; and Soviet involvement in Afghanistan, 82–7; on Soviet Military strength, 152–1; Soviet nuclear capability estimate, 145; and the Star Wars Project, 165; success of, 234; Team B, 41; and terrorism, 59–6, 284–8, 286, 291, 292, 295; and the Vatican, 133, 135; Vietnam estimates, 252; and the Vietnam War, 22–9; warning of terrorist attack, 293 Clapper, General James, 157 Clark, Richard A., 290 Clark, William, 158 Clash of Civilizations, The (Huntingdon), 295 Clifford, Clark, 14 Clifford Report, the, 111, 112 Clinton, Bill, 138–6, 282, 289, 290 Coalition for Strategic Defense (CSD), 164–3 Codevilla, Angelo, 226–7 Cohen, Sam, 9 Colby, William, 35, 142, 201 Cold War, the, x–xi, 2–7, 11, 12; cultural backgrounds and, 201; end of, 178, 226 Colt, George, 265 Colville, Jock, 16 computers, 191, 192

Contingency Planning Group, 264 Council on Foreign Relations, 270–3 Crocker, Chester A., 100 Crozier, Brian, 67, 127–5 Cruise missiles, 5, 53–6 Cuba, 95–98, 100, 104, 109 Cuban Missile Crisis, 17–22, 95, 107, 142 Czechoslovakia, 133, 180, 181; 1968 uprising, 178; Soviet invasion of, 76, 143 data falsification, 23–6, 26, 252 Davidson, Major-General, 25 Dayan, Moshe, 261–3 de Gaulle, Charles, 119, 143, 260 de Marences, Alexander, 123 Decline of Empire, The (D’Encausse), 184 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), 61, 242, 243 D’Encausse, Helen, 184 détente, 112, 140–51, 161 Deutsch, John, 90, 138–6 DGSE (French foreign intelligence service), 122 Discoa, General Luis Alonzo, 90 Dobrynin, Anatoly F., 34, 248 Dolbilova, Tatyana, 230 Dolgopolov, Yevgeni, 74 “domino” theory, 22, 28, 112 Donovan, William, 129, 149–7 doomsday calculations, 6–7 Dornovtzev, Andrei, 36 Dragon, Soviet tank-destroyer, 154 DST (French internal security service), 122 Duberstin, Waldo, 24 Dudnick, General, 3, 33, 33–6, 153; and the Dragon project, 154; on nuclear strategy, 57–1, 185; on the Red Army, 47–2 Dulles, Allen W., 3, 112 Eagleburger, Lawrence, 98, 106, 161; attitude to intelligence, 244–6; on Baker, 256; and the coup attempt against Gorbachev, 223;

318 INDEX

on policy, 257–9, 278; reaction to collapse of Soviet Union, 170; on Reagan, 267 East Germany, 129, 130, 179–8; 1953 uprising, 178; intelligence assessment of NATO plans, 54; Soviet withdrawal from, 178, 228; see also Germany East Timor, 98–3 Egypt, 34–7, 75, 77, 79 Eifler, Carl, 150 Einstein, Albert, 10 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 15, 16, 112, 141; Third World policy, 107 Eitan, Rafi, 72 El Salvador, 93–9 Emarth, Fritz, 43, 44, 161, 220, 229, 259, 264 Enola Gay, 8, 9 Estonia, 182 Ethiopia, 101–8, 104–10 Evans, Michael, 128–5, 171, 261 Fairbanks, Charles, 69–3, 244 Falin, Valentin, 34 FBI, 242, 290; and al-Qaida, 288; and terrorism, 286, 291, 293–7, 296 Fedorchuk, Vitali V., 5 Fedorov, Vladimir, 71 Feit, Sam, 161 Feshbach, Murray, 184 Ford, Carl W., Jr., 140, 254, 258, 259 Ford, Gerald, 4, 131, 242, 297 Forrestal, James V., 112 France, 54, 125, 244, 260, 282; attitude to the Soviet Union, 120; Communist infiltrators, 119; cooperation with the CIA, 119; intelligence estimates and decision making, 120, 121–8; intelligence failure, 236, 237; intelligence services, 119–31; nuclear weapons, 33;

reaction to collapse of Soviet Union, 171; terrorism analysis, 63 Franks Committee, the, 261 Fukuyama, Francis, 284 Galbraith, John Kenneth, 221–2 Gareeve, General Mahmud, 187 Garthoff, Raymond L., 105 Gates, Robert, 42, 86–1, 94–9, 112, 196–6, 204, 252, 264; on CIA estimates of Soviet economic performance, 219; on the CIA’s failure, 280; and the coup attempt against Gorbachev, 215; criticism of Shultz, 244; defense of the CIA, 234; forms Contingency Planning Group, 264; Goodman’s criticism of, 63, 235, 252; on Gorbachev, 117, 253, 262; on intelligence assessments, 258–70; on the national intelligence estimate, 240; on objectivity of the CIA, 254; reaction to collapse of Soviet Union, 171; Select Committee appearance, 140; and Soviet involvement in terrorism, 65; on Soviet military expenditure, 228; on the Soviet threat, 208, 210, 225–6; and Yeltsin’s visit to the USA, 265 Gazit, General Shlomo, 275, 277 Gehlen Organization, the, 129–6 Gehlen, Reinhard, 129 Gelb, Leslie, 44, 186, 245 Gellerman, Brian, 292 Genosar, Yossi, 172 Georgia, 182, 209 Germany, 121, 177–6, 181, 236–7, 260–2; see also East Germany; West Germany Gersh, Alain, 120, 125 Gervsi, Tom, 226 Gierek, Edward, 133

WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION 319

Giscard d’Estaing, Valery, 120, 260 Gladio, 132 Glassman, John, 94 globalization, 291, 292 Goble, Paul, 168–7, 183, 231 Godson, Roy, 264 Golan, Galia, 64–8, 73, 172 Gold water, Barry, 148 Golitsyn, Anatoly M., 204 Goodman, Melvin A., 24, 85, 94, 95, 218, 221; Afghanistan assessment, 206; on the Brezhnev doctrine, 76; on Casey, 94–9; on the CIA, 235; on CIA estimates of Soviet economic performance, 219; on Gates, 63, 117, 235, 252; on Gromyko’s sacking, 268; on intelligence assessments, x, 259; on the Soviet collapse, 189; on Soviet strategic priorities, 77; and Soviet Third World policy, 79; on the Soviet Union, 189; terrorism analysis, 62, 63; on US response to Soviet Third World policy, 107–13; on the Vietnam estimates, 252; on the Yom Kippur War, 79 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 4, 52, 107, 117, 167, 192, 237–8, 253, 255; and Afghanistan, 86; announces end of the Cold War, 226; and arms control, 6, 188–7; assessment of chances of survival, 231; and Bush, 113, 215, 269; and the collapse of the Soviet Union, 171; concessions, 109; coup attempt against, 30, 195–5, 210– 25, 222–4, 233; on democracy, 263; and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, 168, 182; and Eastern Europe, 181; and the economic crisis, 176; economic reforms, 219–30, 226; foreign policy, 176–6;

and German reunification, 177–6, 181; and the Gulf War, 178; and the KGB, 264; and Kissinger, 264–6; meeting with Pope John Paul II, 134; meetings with Reagan, 264; and Mitterand, 33, 124; need for foreign credit, 176; and the Novosibirsk Report, 173, 175; opposition to, 183, 187, 194, 194–5, 265; reduces Red Army strength, 176, 187– 6; reform policies, 173–2, 181, 190, 196; resignation, 197, 265; sacks Gromyko, 268; sacks Sokolov, 263–5; on the Soviet economy, 153; stands alone, 193–3; and terrorism, 73; on the USA, 208; withdrawal from Afghanistan, 228; withdrawal from East Germany, 228 Gordievsky, Oleg, 5, 202–12; and European anti-missile protests, 54; KGB personnel estimate, 151; and Operation RYAN, 4–5; reaction to collapse of Soviet Union, 171; on Soviet backed terrorism, 71; on Soviet intelligence assessments, 247 Gordon, Lincoln, 61 Gottwald, General, 55 Grachov, Pavel, 12 Graham, Daniel, 22, 26, 31, 41, 56–57, 163–2, 164–3 Great Britain, 261, 282; cooperation with US intelligence services, 125; the Hurn commission, 126–3; intelligence budget, 127; intelligence evaluations, 125; intelligence failure, ix, 236; intelligence personnel, 127; intelligence services, 125–5; need for atomic weapons, 32–5;

320 INDEX

reaction to collapse of Soviet Union, 171; Soviet penetration of, 126; terrorism analysis, 63; US bombers arrive in, 13 Grechko, Marshal Andrei, 45 Grechov, Pavel, 186 Greenpeace, 124, 244, 260 Grenada, 89–7 Gribkov, General Anatoly, 20 Gromov, General Boris V., 84 Gromyko, Andrei, 10, 17, 43; and Brezhnev, 45–9; sacked, 268; visit to the Vatican, 134 Gualtieri, Libero, 132 Guk, Arkadi V., 74 Gulf War, the, 30, 156, 178 Gurwen, Christopher Keith, 126 Haig, Alexander, 28–1, 31, 131, 146, 267; assassination attempt on, 60; and the Brezhnev ultimatum, 34, 35; on Casey, 254; and Cuba, 98; and El Salvador, 93; on intelligence assessments, 256–8; and the Middle East, 79; as NATO commander, 52–5; opposition to covert operations, 148; and terrorism, 59–3 Haile Selassie, 102 Hardt, John, 222 Harkabi, Yehoshafat, 275 Hassan al-Bana, 286 Hawkins, Colonel, 22, 25, 26 Hellenbroich, Heribert, 54, 130, 131, 261 Helms, Richard C, 22, 23, 23–6, 25, 26, 74, 112,269 Helsinki Conference, the, 45–9 Heuer, Richard, 275 High Frontier Inc., 163–2 Hill, Charlie, 170–8, 244, 253, 256 Hilsman, Robert, 20 Hiroshima, 8, 9 Holloway, David, 12, 13 Holzman, Franklyn D., 152–1

Honduras, 90 human rights, 46 Hungary, 178, 179, 269 Huntingdon, Samuel, 295 Huntington, Sam, 161 Hurn, Roger, 126–3 Hussein, Saddam, ix, 70, 73, 88 India, 7, 75, 76 Information Research Department (IRD), 128 Inman, Bobby Ray, 139–7, 146 Institute for Biological Research, Leningrad, 31 intelligence agencies, 137–5; challenge facing, 298–12; changing role, 281–5, 283–299; failure, ix, 2, 275; failure against terrorism, 294; and Gorbachev’s reforms, 175; and the nuclear threat, xii; prestige, 118–5; reaction to collapse of Soviet Union, 168; role, ix, 2, 20, 138, 229, 232, 280–5, 285; and terrorist threat, 285–289, 297–11; and threat assessment, 52; see also individual agencies intelligence analysis, 234–5, 275–7 intelligence assessments, ix–x, 238, 272–9; on bin Laden, 285–287; and the deterioration of Soviet Union, 117–4; difficulties involved, 210; effect on policy, 94–9, 241, 248, 248– 60, 254–70, 260–3, 272, 277–90; Grenada, 89–4; of Iran, 70; Islamic fundamentalism, 286; moral considerations, 98–4; relevance, 277–90; Soviet influence in the Third World, 79; of Soviet involvement in Afghanistan, 42–5, 82, 87; Soviet military power, 100–6, 109–16;

WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION 321

Soviet Third World policy, 105–11; on terrorism, 65–9; value, 3–3, 20, 255–70; Vietnam War, 22–9; and the Yom Kippur War, 78; see also individual agencies and countries intelligence budgets, viii, xi, 127, 151, 255, 290, 291, 299 intelligence operations, 238 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), 16 International Strategic Institute, 154 Inzerelli, General Paolo, 132 IRA, 73 Iran, 43–6, 70, 76, 88–3 Iran-Contra affair, 88–3, 140, 266 Iraq, 70, 73, 75, 88 Islamic fundamentalism, 284, 286, 290–4 Israel, 34–7, 37, 75, 79, 88, 101, 261–3, 275, 277; intelligence assessments, 274; intelligence failure, 236, 237–8; nuclear weapons program, 7; Palestinian terror attacks on, 66; reaction to collapse of Soviet Union, 172; Soviet support for, 77; and terrorism, 70; and the Yom Kippur War, 78–2 Italy, 131–9, 131, 171, 236, 282 Ivanova, Anna, 200–9 Jackson, Henry, 67 Japan, 7, 177 Jerusalem, international conference on terrorism, 66–67 Jilin, Alexander I., 35–40 John Paul II, Pope, 133; assassination attempt, 67–1, 68–2, 69– 3, 134; visit to Poland, 133–1 Johnson, Lyndon B., 22 Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), 125 Kahan, David, 276 KAL007 incident, the, 5, 37

Kalugin, Oleg, 63, 76; admiration of America, 230; on Andropov, 269; KGB personnel estimate, 151; on Nixon, 145; on US media, 139 Kam, Ephraim, 275 Kazakhstan, 182, 215 Kebede, Kassa, 104–10 Keegan, General George, 33, 40, 41, 141–9 Keller, Bill, 195 Kennan, George, 264 Kennedy, John F., 17–18, 19–1, 20–2 Kent, Sherman, 272–5 Kerr, Richard, 63, 79, 94, 210, 218; on Afghanistan, 82; on CIA failure, 235; and the coup attempt against Gorbachev, 212, 223–4; defense of the CIA, 234; and Grenada, 90; on the influence of intelligence, 258; on the national intelligence estimate, 241; and Soviet involvement in terrorism, 65 KGB, 96, 151, 264; and Ames, 218; budget, xi, 151; Casey’s assessment, 151–9; and the Cuban Missile Crisis, 19; information sources, 217–7; and intelligence papers, 245–60; and the invasion of Afghanistan, 43; Mexico station, 97; and the nationality problem, 183; and Operation RYAN, 4–5, 202; surveillance of Kennedy, 17–18; and terrorism, 63, 71; and the Third World, 76, 92, 108 Khrushchev, Nikita, 77, 107, 141, 188, 190; and the Cuban Missile Crisis, 17, 18, 20; and détente, 144; nuclear weapons program, 18; Third World policy, 75–9 Kill, Brigadier-General Alton, 157

322 INDEX

King, Robert, 168, 252, 255 Kiseliov, General Ivan, 154 Kissinger, Henry, 6, 35, 67, 131, 143–1, 145; advice to Bush, 113–20; and the Brezhnev ultimatum, 34, 35; and détente, 141; on intelligence officers, 259; meets Gorbachev, 264–6; on the Vietnam War, 22; visits Moscow, 114; and the Yom Kippur War, 78, 78–2 Kiva, Aleksei, 76, 85–86, 171 Knights of the Order of Malta, 134–2 Kohl, Helmut, 130, 177, 236–7; and German unification, 121, 181; and intelligence assessments, 260 Komer, Robert, 25 Korean War, 11–15, 188 Kornienko, Georgy, 185 Kover, Richard, 26 Krasnoyarsk, 13 Krivokizha, Vassily I., 5 Kryuchkov, Vladimir, 5, 71, 74–8, 249; and the coup attempt against Gorbachev, 213; criticism of Gorbachev, 194; and Gorbachev’s reforms, 171; and Martini, 212–2; opposition to Gorbachev, 183, 194; and perestroika, 214 Lacoste, Admiral Pierre, 244 Lansdale, Edward G., 164 Latvia, 182 le Carre, John, 32 Le May, Curtis, 8 Leachty, Philip, 98 Lebanon, 70 Leonov, Major-General Nikolai, 29–2, 246–8; on ambassadors reports, 248; on the Ames affair, 218; on Andropov, 92; on Angola, 100; on Carter, 144–2; on Casey, 151;

on the CIA, 249; and Cuba, 95–98; on Grenada, 91; and the invasion of Afghanistan, 43; meets Che Guevarra, 96; and the military-industrial complex, 155; on Reagan, 144–2; on Soviet expansion, 79–4; on Soviet involvement in Latin America, 92; on Soviet loss of influence in Egypt, 79; on Soviet Middle East policy, 77–1; on Soviet nuclear strength, 154; on Soviet Third World policy, 91–6, 105, 108; on the Star Wars Project, 167; on terrorism, 63, 71; view of the USA, 97–2 Levchenko, Stanislav, 248 Lippmann, Walter, 139 Lithuania, 182, 182–1, 209, 226 Lockheed F-22 stealth fighter, 156–5 Lubov, General Vladimir, 11–12, 16, 21, 32, 186, 200, 201, 218; on attacking the West, 50–3; on defensive policy, 39–2; on Soviet arms exports, 137; and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, 44; on the threat of the West, 51 Lundhahl, Arthur, 19–1 MacArthur, General Douglas, 15 McCloy, John J., 208 McCone, John A., 19 McCristian, Major-General Joseph, 22 MacEachin, Doug, 227, 228, 229 McFarlane, Robert T., 21–3, 206; on Casey, 81, 149; reaction to collapse of Soviet Union, 170; on Reagan’s Soviet policy, 145–3; and Soviet military strength, 158; on Soviet policy, 149; on the Soviet threat, 51;

WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION 323

and the Star Wars Project, 159–72, 165; on strategy, 158–7 McMahon, John N., 17–19, 54, 88, 140 McNamara, Robert S., 22, 22, 27 Malinovsky, Marshal Rodion Y., 17, 18– 19, 20 Manley, John, 14 Mao Tse-tung, 201 Marion, Pierre, 120–9, 171, 260 Markov, Georgy, 63 Marshall Plan, the, 118 Martini, Admiral Fulvio, 131–9, 171; and the coup attempt against Gorbachev, 212–2 Mathes, Monsignor Richard, 68, 134 Matlock, Jack, 223 May, Ernest, 279 Mengistu Haile Mariam, 102–8 Merhav, Reuven, 237 Meyer, Herbert E., 62, 150 MI6, ix, 91, 125, 125–3, 236 Middle East, 33–7, 77–3, 107, 143 Mikoyan, Anastas, 96–1 Mitterand, François, 120, 121–8, 123, 124, 260; and German unification, 121; and Gorbachev, 33, 124 Mobutu Sese Seko, 99 Moldavia, 182 Molotov, Vyacheslav, 7, 8 Mongolia, 182 Morris, Edmund, 266 Moscow, nuclear destructive requirement, 6 Moss, Robert, 67 Mossad, and Palestinian nationalism, ix Moynihan, Daniel, 184, 224, 234, 282 Muslim Brotherhood Movement, 286 Myth of Soviet Military Supremacy, The (Gervsi), 226 Nasser, Gamal abd el, 77 National Foreign Intelligence Board, 241 National Intelligence Council (NIC), 105, 272;

and the national intelligence estimate, 238–52; terrorism analysis, 60–4; and the Third World, 80 national interest, 250 National Interest (journal), 136–4 national liberation movements, 64–8, 73 National Security Agency (NSA), 147, 242 National Security Council, 27, 87, 206; and Afghanistan, 82; assessment of Soviet reforms, 116; assessment of Soviet strategic capabilities, 41 National Security Planning Group (NSPG), 148 National Strategy Information Center (NSIC) conference, 263, 264 NATO, 13–14, 53, 118; deploys medium range missiles, 32; former Soviet satellites to be invited to join, 12; threat of, 54, 54–9; and US missile deployment, 52, 53–6 New York, nuclear destructive requirement, 6 Nicaragua, 87–2, 110 Nichol, Jim, 168 Nitze, Paul H., 41, 112 Nixon, Richard M., 4, 78, 112, 145, 257; and the Brezhnev ultimatum, 34–7; and détente, 112, 141 Nizhny Novgorod, nuclear alert at, 33–6 Northrop-Grumman B-2 Stealth bomber, 155–4 Novikov, Nikolai V., 12–13 Novosibirsk Report, the, 173, 175, 220 nuclear shelters, 33 nuclear strategy, 57–1 nuclear war, 56–58 nuclear weapons, 21–3, 33; al—Qaida attempt to obtain, 288; cost, 9–10; and the Second World War, 7–11; threat of, xii–7; see also Soviet Union, United States of America

324 INDEX

Odom, William, 283 Ogarkov, Marshal Nikolai V., 47, 85, 185, 188 Olianovski, Rostislav, 73 Olympic Games, Moscow, 42 Operation Jungle, 126 Operation RYAN, 4–5, 202 Oppenheimer, Robert, 2, 3, 9, 10, 14 Opus Dei (The Lord’s Work), 135 Ordine Nuovo (New Order) terrorist group, 131–9 origins of the superpower conflict, 2–3 Paceca, Ion, 72 Paizanza, Francesco, 67, 68 Pakistan, 7, 76, 289–3 Panama, 110 parapsychology, 276–9 Pasechnik, Vladimir, 31 Peres, Shimon, 262 perestroika, 173, 214 Perle, Richard, 34, 78, 162–1 Pershing II missiles, 5, 53–6 Pettee, George S., 274 Pipes, Richard, 41, 44, 143, 161, 205; on the Ames affair, 218–8; and Soviet backed terrorism, 67 PLO, the, 66, 71, 72, 79 Poland, 134, 178, 179, 226; Pope John Paul II’s visit, 133–1; the Vatican and, 69 Poliakov, Dimitri, 217 Policy Review Committee, 147 Pompidou, Georges, 119, 260 Ponomarev, Boris, 76 Popov, Gavril, 223 Potsdam Conference (1945), 7–8 Powell, Colin, 292 Powers, Gary, 142 Primakov, Yevgeni, 73 Proctor Commission, the, 254 Proctor, Edward, 254 Project Zombie, 30 proxy wars, x, xii psychotechnics, 30 Qaddafi, Muammer, 276–9

Rabin, Yitzhak, 262 Race to the Future (Simkin), 295 Rainbow Warrior, 124 Reagan, Nancy, 266–9 Reagan, Ronald, 4, 5–6, 87, 112, 113, 140, 255; and Afghanistan, 43, 83, 206; anti-communist stance, 5; and arms control, 6, 267–80; arms procurement program, 152; assassination attempt on, 28–1; and Casey, 149, 150, 242, 245; and covert operation, 148; deploys missiles, 53–6; and El Salvador, 94; election campaign, 151; election promises, 152; and Gorbachev, 264; and Grenada, 90–5, 92; and intelligence assessments, 242, 259; and Iran, 70; and the Iran-Contra affair, 89; and the KAL007 incident, 37; political doctrine, 156; presidential daily brief, 241; on presidential nuclear responsibility, 3; and Saddam Hussein, 70; and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, 43; on Soviet leaders, 145; on Soviet Military strength, 152; Soviet policy, 144–3, 266–80; and the Soviet threat, 160–9; on the Soviet Union, 145; and the Star Wars Project, 31, 161, 162; and the stealth bomber program, 155; Turner’s briefing, 145; and US missile deployment, 52 Red Army, 44, 47, 49, 50, 185–4; CIA assessment of, 153; condition of, 186–5; operational ability, 47–6; recruits, 184, 186; strength reductions, 176, 187–6, 228 Rice, Condoleezza, 115, 264 Richardson, Elliott, 201

WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION 325

Riga conference, 183 Rockefeller commission, 139 Rockefeller, Nelson, 139 Rodman, Peter, 95, 99, 106, 170, 206 ‘rolling them back’, 79–3, 79–5, 148–6 Roman Catholic Church, 132–42, 178 Romania, 178, 180, 181 Rositzke, Harry, 202 Rostow, Walt W., 24, 26 Rotblat, Joseph, 14–15 Rotmistriev, Marshal, 57 Rowan, Harry, 159–8, 161 Rubinstein, Alvin, 72–6, 79, 85, 95, 100; on Ethiopia, 103; and Soviet involvement in Afghanistan, 86; on Soviet policy, 88; on Soviet Third World policy, 106–12; on U-2 reconnaissance flights, 142 Rumsfeld, Donald H., 41, 285 Rusk, Dean, 22, 27 Russell, Bertrand, 10 Russian Orthodox Church, 133 Russian Republic, the, 181, 183, 215, 264– 7 Rust, Mathias, 263 Safire, William, 138–6 Sagdeev, Roald, 155, 167 Salem, Mamdoukh, 288 SALT Syndrome, The (Film), 135–3 Santovito, Giuseppe, 67 Saudi Arabia, 44, 81, 289 Savimbi, Jonas, 99 Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr., 89 Schlesinger, James, 164 Schlezinger, Arthur, 275 Schmemann, Serge, 231 Schmidt, Helmut, 177, 260 Schwann, Egert, 130–7 Scowcroft, Brent, 44, 112, 113, 114–1, 116; on CIA failure, 205; on CIA intelligence assessments, 217; and the coup attempt against Gorbachev, 211, 224;

on the Reagan—Gorbachev summit, 264; on the Soviet threat, 210, 277–90 Second World War, 2, 7–11, 111 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, 139–7, 146, 148, 197, 219, 227 September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, 283– 7, 285, 291; effects of, 294, 295–10, 298 Serbia, 138–6 Service de Documentation Exterieur et Contre-espionage (SDECE), 119, 120, 120–7, 122–9 Sharon, Ariel, 79 Shatalin, Stanislav, 192 Shevardnadze, Eduard, 86, 110, 176–5; defense of Gorbachev, 194; on foreign policy, 176; on US policy, 194–4 Shevchenko, Arkady, 248 Shevts, Yuri B., 202 Shultz, George, 60, 86, 109; on CIA failure, 216, 280; criticism of intelligence papers, 244; initiates dialogue with Soviet Union, 266; on intelligence assessments, 256; opinion of Gorbachev, 253; and the Star Wars Project, 163 Siad Bare, Mouhamad, 103 Sidlatzky, Victor, 30 Simes, Dimitri, 100, 103, 170, 224, 257 Simkin, Richard, 295 Simonia, Nodari A., 99–5, 171 Sino—Soviet conflict, 201–11 Sisco, Joseph, 35 small wars, x, xii Smirnoff, Igor, 30 Smith, Walter Bedell, 112 Soch, Manfred, 130 Sokolov, Sergei L., 85, 263–5 Sokolovsky, V.D., 57–1 Solidarity movement, 178, 179 Somalia, 102, 102–8 South Africa, 7 South Yemen, 92, 108 SOVA, 117, 215, 265;

326 INDEX

assessment of Gorbachev’s chances of survival, 231; and the collapse of the Soviet Union, 232–3; on Gorbachev’s economic reforms, 219–30; special assessment statement, 213–3 Soviet Military Strategy (Sokolovsky), 57– 1 Soviet Union, 109, 198–8, 201; abandons Somalia, 102–8; and Africa, 101–9; aid to Israel, 77; American threat, 36, 36–9, 187; anti-nuclear civilian defense systems, 142; anti-terrorist cooperation with the West, 74–8; arms exports, 137; arms production, 153–2; and the arms race, 29–2, 167; and assassination, 63–7; biological weapons, 31; bizarre schemes, 29–2; collapse of, 171–80, 192–6, 228–9, 232–3; coup attempt against Gorbachev, 30, 195–5, 210–25, 222–4, 233; covert operations, 58–2; and Cuba, 95–98, 109; defense budget, 154, 228–9; defense problems, 21; defensive policy, 39–2; defensive strategy, 52; demonstrations, 176, 183; and détente, 141; disinformation, 147; dissolution of, 168, 181–92; Dragon project, 154; economic crisis, 173–2, 176, 191; economic performance, 190–9, 219– 32, 220; economy, 109, 153, 190–192; and Ethiopia, 101–7, 104–10; European aid to, 176; expansionist policy, 79–4; explodes first atomic bomb, 14; fear of America, 11–13, 19, 21;

fear of invasion, 200–9, 202; fear of the West, 202–12 food shortages, 176; foreign policy, 176–6; gross national product, 220; and the Gulf War, 178; and human rights, 46; hydrogen bomb program, 16; intelligence assessments, 258, 261; intelligence budget, xi, 151; intelligence papers, 245–60; intelligence personnel, 202; internal weakness, 176–4; invasion of Afghanistan, 41–9, 189; involvement in Angola, 99–6, 109–15; and Iran, 70; and the Iran—Iraq war, 88; and the KAL007 incident, 37; lack of self belief, 105; leaders Slav character, 200; links to terrorism, 71–6; loss of control in Eastern Europe, 178– 9; loss of influence in Egypt, 79; May Day celebrations, 192–3; Middle East policy, 77–3; military doctrine, 55; military-industrial complex, 153–2, 155, 185–6, 229; military potential, 185–4; military threat, 46; mind control experiments, 30; National Emergency Committee, 195; and national liberation movements, 64– 8, 74; nationality problem, 104, 181–92; and NATO threat, 54, 54–9; nuclear alerts, 33–6; nuclear responsibility, 3, 5; nuclear shelters, 33; nuclear strategy, 33, 57–1; nuclear weapons, 7, 36, 145, 154–3, 184–3, 189; nuclear weapons budget, 9–10, 13; nuclear weapons program, 9–10, 13; paranoia, 5; perception of Britain, 49; and Poland, 179;

WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION 327

policy, 16; policy towards the US, 92; political prisoners, 263; the pyatyorka (group of five), 247; reaction to the American hydrogen bomb test, 16; referendum, 183; reforms, 116; relations with Church, 133, 134; religious persecution in, 69; response to NATO missile deployment, 32; reaction to collapse, 168–80, 213; republics withdrawal from, 197; response to collapse, 168–80, 173; response to the Star Wars Project, 165– 5; separatist movements, 181–90, 209; and the Sino-Soviet conflict, 201–11; space program, 16; support for Egypt, 77; tactical flights, 35–40; technological gap, 190, 192–1; and terrorism, 59–6, 63–75; Third World policy, 75–9, 79–5, 85– 86, 91–6, 100, 105–16, 177; Third World strategy, 75–9, 78; threat of, 50, 135–4, 160–9, 184–3, 198, 203, 207–19, 224–9, 250–2, 253, 263, 277–90; US aid to, 176–5; and the Vatican, 69; and the Vietnam War, 22, 64, 144; war map, 37–38; Western intelligences view of, 2; Western views of, 10, 189, 250; withdrawal from Afghanistan, 84, 86– 1, 227–8; withdrawal of troops from East Germany, 178, 228; and the Yom Kippur War, 78 space programs, 16, 158 Special Coordination Committee, 147 spiral of fear, the, 3 Stalin, Josef, 11, 200; and the Berlin blockade, 13; conversations with Mao Tse-tung, 201; and the Korean War, 15;

and nuclear weapons, 8; nuclear weapons program, 10; persecution of the Church, 133; at the Potsdam Conference, 7–8; takes over of Eastern Europe, 11, 12 Star Wars Project, 31, 129, 158–75 Starushenko, Gleb, 74 Stasi, the, 66, 130, 135, 180, 261 Stauber, Brigadier-General Tzvi, 150 Stavenhagen, Lutz, 237 Sterling, Claire, 62, 68 Stewart, Gordon, 26 Stimson, Henry L., 8 Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI); see Star Wars Project Strauss, Franz Josef, 116–3 Sudan, 102, 289 Suslov, Mikhail, 74, 76 Syria, 75, 79 Szulc, Tad, 68, 170 Tamir, Avraham, 275 Taylor, Richard Norton, 171 technological gap, 160–9, 192–1 Teller, Edward, 14, 31, 164 Tenet, George, 296 Terror Network, The (Sterling), 62 terrorism and terrorists, 73; Casey’s analysis, 58–6; CIA and, 59–6, 284–8, 286, 291, 292, 295; decentralization, 293; exploitation of communications technology, 292; exploitation of globalization, 292; goals, 293; in Italy, 131–9; logistical base, 65–9; Soviet involvement, 59–6, 63–75, 128; Soviet proxies links to, 72; state supporters of, 70; threat of, 285–289, 292–7, 297–11, 298–12; World Trade Center attacks, 283–7, 287 Tet offensive, the, 26

328 INDEX

Thatcher, Margaret, 5, 91, 125, 126, 127, 128–5 Third World, 92, 105–16, 144, 177, 285; as confrontation zone, 75–9, 78, 79, 79– 5; pattern of superpower involvement, 81– 6; and terrorism, 298–12 Tibbets, Colonel Paul, 8, 9 Tienanmen Square massacre, 196 Tikhonov, Vladimir, 221 Transformation of War, The (van Crefeld), 295 Trinity project, 8 Truman doctrine, the, 112 Truman, Harry S., 3, 12–13, 15, 111, 275; approves dropping atomic bombs, 7–8; and the hydrogen bomb, 14; at the Potsdam Conference, 7–8 Tucker, Robert, 136 Turkey, 63, 76 Turner, Admiral Stansfield, 15, 42, 59, 145, 149; and ‘clean intelligence’, 203–13; and the national intelligence estimate, 240 Twetten, Thomas, 83 U-2 surveillance planes, 19, 142 Ukraine, 182, 183, 197, 209, 226 United Nations, 15 United States of America: aid to Afghan rebels, 44–7, 82–7, 206, 207, 228; aid to Soviet Union, 176–5; anthrax attacks, 299; anti-communist industry, 29; arms exports, 137; arms procurement program, 152; arms production, 153–2; assessment of Soviet first strike capability, 6; attempts at arms control, 2–3; attempts to target bin Laden, 289–3; bin Laden’s threats against, 288–2; and the Brezhnev ultimatum, 34–7; Cold War policy, 112;

and the collapse of the Soviet Union, 209–19; cooperation with British intelligence services, 125; and the coup attempt against Gorbachev, 211–5; and Cuba, 95, 98; cultural backgrounds, 201; decides to maintain nuclear superiority, 14–15; defense budget, 16, 250; defense procurement budget, 151, 153, 157; and détente, 140–51; develops the hydrogen bomb, 14, 16; and Ethiopia, 104; exploits the technological gap, 160–9; failure to anticipate September 10, 285– 9; fear of Soviet aggression, 79; foreign policy, 241; idealogical outlook, 95; intelligence assessments, 272–9; intelligence budget, viii, xi, 127, 151, 255, 290, 291; intelligence community, 242–4; intelligence influence, 112; intelligence papers, 238–55, 258; intelligence personnel, 127; internal conflict, 249–5, 262–7; involvement in Angola, 99, 100–6; involvement in East Timor, 98–3; and the IRA, 73; and Iran, 88–3; and the Iran-Iraq war, 88; and Italian intelligence, 131; and the KAL007 incident, 37; and the Korean War, 15–16; leadership motivation, 56; media treatment of the Soviet Union, 139; Middle East policy, 79; military industrial complex, 165, 189, 225; the National Intelligence Estimate, 238– 52; national interest, 136–4; and Nicaragua, 87–2;

WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION 329

nuclear response system, 3–4; nuclear weapons, 10, 16; nuclear weapons budget, 9; opposition to SALT agreements, 164; opposition to Star Wars Project, 165; oversight committees, 139–7; parapsychology programs, 276–9; perceptions of the Soviet Union, 111– 18; post-Soviet collapse threat analysis, 285; presidential daily brief, 241–4; presidential nuclear responsibility, 3–4; reaction to September 11 attacks, 294, 295–10, 297–11; response to the World Trade Center attacks, 283–7; second strike capability, 6; security policy, 241; and Soviet defenses, 40; Soviet intelligence assessment of, 248– 60; and Soviet involvement in Afghanistan, 82–7; and the Soviet nationality problem, 183–2; Soviet policy, 140–51, 144–3, 148–6; and Soviet Third World policy, 105– 13, 109–16; Soviet threat estimate, 157–6; Soviet threat to, 135–4, 188–7, 200, 208–19; and Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, 86–1; stealth bomber program, 155–4; and the stealth fighter program, 156–5; strategic objectives, 111–24; strategic planning, 21–3; strategy, 158–7; terrorist attacks, 287; terrorist threat, 292–6, 293–7, 299; Third World policy, 42, 98–3, 106, 107– 13; Third World strategy, 79; treatment of Gorbachev, 265; use of nuclear threat, 13, 15–16; and the Vietnam War, 22–28, 141, 143– 1;

war against terrorism, 284; and the Yom Kippur War, 78–2 USA Today, 53 Ustinov, Dimitri, 84, 187, 188 Uzbekistan, 182 van Crefeld, Martin, 295 Vance, Cyrus, 42 Vandenberg, General Hoyt, 14 Vatican, the, 69, 132–42 Vietnam War, 22–28, 64, 102, 107, 108, 141, 143–1, 252 Vinciguerra, Vincenzo, 131–9 Volkov, Vladimir, 30 Wall Street Journal, 94 Walsh, Timothy, 104 Warsaw Pact, 52, 54, 54–9, 228 Washington Post, 94, 155 Watkins, George, 160, 161–70 Webster, William, 117, 204, 262, 266, 268; on the Soviet threat, 250, 251 Weinberger, Caspar, 28, 112, 146, 162–1, 229 West Germany, viii–ix, 282; aid to Soviet Union, 177; intelligence evaluations, 130; intelligence services, 129–7; reaction to collapse of Soviet Union, 171; see also Germany Westmoreland, General William C, 22, 25, 25–8 While Others Build (Codevilla), 226–7 Whipple, David D., 60, 150 White House, nuclear threat to, 3 White, Laurence, 26 Wieck, Hans-Georg, 54, 129, 171, 236, 260–2 Wilson, Frank, 15 Wohlstetter, Roberta, 274 Wolsey, James, 295 Woodward, Bob, 203, 216 Woolsey, James, 140, 217, 295 World Trade Center: 1993 attack, 287; September 11 attack on, 283–7

330 INDEX

World Wide Web, terrorist use of, 292 Yakovlev, Alexander, 214, 223 Yeltsin, Boris, 4, 181, 183, 194, 195, 197, 215, 233; CIA assessment of, 257; elected president of the Russian Republic, 264–7; visits the USA, 265 Yemen, 75 Yom Kippur War, 33–6, 78–2 Zagladin, Vadim, 69 Zaire, 99 Zamyatin, Leonid M., 16, 34, 248; and the Cuban Missile Crisis, 17–19, 20 Zaslavskaya, Tatyana, 173, 192, 220 Zelikow, Philip, 279 Zhirinovsky, Vladimir, 12 Ziplakov, Alexander, 200–9 Zobok, Stanislav, 204