WILL AMERICAN-MADE COMPUTERS HELP SOVIETS PUT DOWN DISSENT?

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 02385869
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: February 21, 2025
• Document Release Date: February 27, 2025
• Publication Date: February 12, 1972

WU. EViNTZ.
Approved for Release: 2025/01/15 CO2385869
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By PAUL SCOTT
The proposed sale of large, modern
American computers to the Soviet
Union has raised an explosive moral
issue in addition to a security one for the
Nixon Administration.
The moral question, now being sharply
debated at the highest levels of the gov-
ernment, involves whether the U.S.
should provide the Kremlin computers
that can be used to tighten government
control over the lives of Soviet citiz.-ens
and to help suppress the growing polit-
ical dissent in that country.
In an article being Carefully studied
at the White House, the distinguished
P nest on Soviet affairs, Victor Zorza,
described the growth of the massive com-
puterized information system in Russia
and the way Soviet planners intend to use
it as.a weapon of thought control. Zorza
weote:
"...The main purpose of such system
would be to prevent any disloyal ideas'
from even taking shape in the heads
of Soviet citizens.... The full records
of his psychological characteristics and
actions could be used to devise an ap-
proach that would quickly persuade him
...that his best interests require him to
conform to the political guidance of his
spiritual adviser at the KGB [the Soviet
secret police.]" �
The Zorza report, along with other
J information gathered by the Central
Intelligence Agency, clearly shows
how the power of a computerized in-
formation system, coupled with mood
creating or altering biochemical dis-
. Orreries, provide a new tool for sup-
pressing dissent in Russia. �
One of the CIA's documents is a 200-
page account of Soviet perversion of
psychiatry and computers into weapons
of political repression. The account
was smuggled out of Russia by friends
of some of the KGB victims.
It stresses how the new technology,
symbolized by computer power, is be-
coming the operative arm of the Soviet
government's program of locking polit-
ical dissenters in mental institutions..
A conclave of the Bishops of the Rus-
sian Orthodox Church outside of Russia,
in Frankfurt, Germany, issued a little-
noticed but moving -Declaration to
Christians of the Free World' last year
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Computors It* Soviets
Put Down Dissorit?
about the new method of destroying
dissent in Russia. In their opening para-
graph, the Bishops Warned: �
"Terrible news has reached us from
Russia. Religious people, and those
citizens vindicating their right to think
otherwise than in �terms of party direc-
tions, have been whisked away to so-
called 'Special Psychiatric Hospitals.'
Subjected to drugs, they are numbed
and can no longer defend their faith."
The Declaration of Frankfurt never
caused much of a stir in U.S. official
circles until recently when a Soviet
defector revealed that the Russians were
using Western-made computers to
gather information on all dissenters
as part of their new driVe. to destroy
all internal political dissent.
Soviet computer specialist Alexander
Lerner, dinner host recently to Rep.
James EL Scheuer (D.-N.Y.), who was
expelled for the meeting, confirMed
the use of computers by the government
there to smash dissent.
Rather than be a party to the Krem-
lin's effort to control the minds of Rus-
sian citizens, Lerner risked being sett
to a mental institution himself by sign-
ing an open letter with eight colleagues
appealing for support to leave the coun-
try.
Lerner in his talk with Americans fur-
nished details of the 'Special Psychiatric
Hospitals,' collaborating with the KGB
and their use of computers, in Moscow,
Leningrad, Kaluga, Minsk and other
cities.
With the Russians seeking to pur-
chase upward of 15,000 � computers in
the U.S. and Western Europe over the
next five years, Soviet defectors have
warned that many of these will be put
to work controlling and suppressing dis-,
sent.within. the Soviet Union.
The American-made computers, they
report, also are being sought for use
in the Soviet's space and weapons pro-
grams which could greatly endanger
this country's security and lead in several.
strategic fields.. .
The importance that the Soviets give
to computers and their operations is in-
dicated by the swift reaction of the KGB
to Lerner's meeting with Rep. Scheuer.
They broke up the meeting by arresting
Scheuer on the spot. In their questioning
Approved for Release: 2025/01/15 CO2385869
of Scheuer, KGB officials appeared a
lot more interested in what information,
' if any, Lerner might have passed on
about what Soviet computers are being,
. used for than anything else.
The incident and the raising of the
moral issue have ghen Defense De-
partment officials, who have been op-
posing the sale of American compu-
ters to the Soviets on security
grounds, new hope that the State and
Commerce departments might with-
draw their support for sales to the
Russians.
Instead of supporting computer sales
Lo Russia, the Defense Department
officials argue that the State Department
should be going all-out to support
an international move to condemn the
Russians' perversion of computers and
psychiatry into tools of political repres-
sion.
The Canadian Psychiatric Association,
on the initiative of Dr. Norman B. Flirt,
of Vancouver, has called on all medicai
and psychiatric societies�including the
World Health Organization of. the
United Nations�to denounce the So-
viet's new form of tyranny.
The move has been getting good sup-
port frOm most Western governments
except the United States. Dr. Henry
Kissinger, the President's chief foreign
policy-maker, reportedly has blocked
support on the grounds "such action
might jeopardize relations with the So-
viet Union." The President must now
decide whether this policy will be ap-
plied to computer sales.