STUDIES IN INTELLIGENCE [Vol. 18 No. 3, Fall 1974]
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V~JL. 18 No. 3 FAIL 1974
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
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CONTENTS
Page
How We Identified the Technical Problems of Early Soviet Submarines ... 1
HENRY S. LOWENHA'UPT
When the questions provided the answer. (SECRET)
Declassification in an Open Society .............. GAIL F. DONNAL:LEY 11
The problem o f making classified in f OrmatiOr6 public. (UNCLASSIFIED )
Prefaee t0 a Theory Of Intelligence ............. LAWRENCE T. MITELI~IAN 19
Why a Center for the Study o f IntelligenceP (CONFIDENTIAL )
Intelligence in Recent Public Literature .............................. 23
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SECRET
When the questions provided
the answer
HOW WE IDENTIFIED THE TECHNICAL PROBLE]VIS OF
EARLY RUSSIAN NUCLEAR SUBMARINES
Henry S. Lowenhaupt
We dance around in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
But suppose Secret has to ask questions to solve his own problems?
The occasion was the first visit of the Soviet Electric Power Delegation to
the United States in October 1959, with its nuclear overtones, followed imme-
diately by the prestigious Soviet Nuclear Delegation in November. These complex
visits occurred on the heels of the initial visits of their U.S. counterpart dele-
gations to the USSR, which in turn had followed Vice President 1\fixon's trip
to Russia in July when he engaged in the famous "kitchen debate" vvith Nikita
Khrushchev.
The Soviet Electric Power team was scheduled to tour three nuclear power
plants and the Westinghouse turbine manufacturing facility in addition to a
dozen other plants related to electric power. The Nuclear Delegation intended
to visit three nuclear power plants and 17 other facilities, including ones such
as Oak Ridge and Los Alamos where no Russians, and few other foreigners,
had ever been allowed.
CIA's Contact Division of the Office of Operations (now the Domestic
Collection Division of the Directorate of Operations) had several sources in
proper positions to report on these projected visits, but by and large there was
no time to identify and brief the large number of reporting sources really needed
for comprehensive reporting on such complex activities. Similarly, the State
Department had translators who were accustomed to working with various in-
ternational delegations, but these persons did not have the technical language
competence necessary for these highly technical fields. Chairman John McCone
of the AEC, the man primarily responsible for the setting up of this exchange
of nuclear delegates, wanted to keep close control of the situation, yet give the
Russians the feeling of being in a relaxed, friendly atmosphere throughout their
trip. He most definitely wanted to find out any and all additional information
on Soviet nuclear activities, but he also insisted that the Russian delegates not
be badgered.
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SECRET Soviet Nuclear Problems
The plan to elicit information, as it finally evolved, was kept simple. Dr.
Charles H. Reichardt, Chief of AEC's then Division of Intelligence, was to
instruct the managers and scientific personnel at U.S. nuclear facilities about
tl~e limits of cooperation with the Russians and obtain their aid in gathering infor-
mation from the Russians. CIA's Contact Division was given the task of identifying
cooperative sources in those facilities run by private industry. In addition, the
Contact Division was to interview all the selected plant and laboratory contacts
within both AEC and private industrial facilities, and to publish reports obtained
from these and any other sources. CIA was to detach several technical interpretors
to the State Department for use with the Russian delegations. For instance, Mr.
Charles V. Reeves, who had been for a number of years the expert in OSI's Nu-
clear Energy Division (NED) on electric power usage at Russian nuclear facili-
ties,* became the technical translator for the Electric Power Delegation. Addi-
tionally the technical translators were to provide assessments of the members of
each delegation from the point of view of covert operations.
CIA analysts were to put together written status briefs on each major
subject to be covered in the Delegation visits, along with short lists of those
subjects where additional information was needed. These were to be served
to appropriate AEC plant and laboratory personnel through Dr. Reichardt, and
through the Contact Division to reporting persons in those privately owned
industrial facilities being visited by the Russians. Mr. Jackson R. Horton,** the
Contact Division's case officer for scientific matters, was to follow the activities
of the Russian Nuclear Delegation, while Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Warner of Con-
tact Division's Eastern European/USSR Branch was assigned the Russian Electric
Power Delegation as her field of activity. Mr. John A. Lundin of NED, for
instance, wrote up the brief on Russian power reactors and went with a
Contact Division man to brief the management of one U.S. power reactor fa-
cility. Mr. Robert Weaver, also of NED, travelled with Dr. Reichardt to both
the Livermore and Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratories and then on to
Oak Ridge to brief on controlled thermonuclear research in the USSR.
The key decision, however, was the one to circulate to a large number of
people general requirements that were passive in nature, ones designed to de-
termine what questions the Russians asked, what they were interested in, and
whom they sought out for technical conversations.
7'he Background
To put these Delegation visits in their proper perspective, the Cold War
vas easing a bit in 1959. The USSR had started to publish scientific articles on
nuclear matters in 1955-the first since 1940-and Scientific Conferences on
the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy had been held in Geneva in 1956 and 1958.
h:xcept for the highly touted "First in the World" research-sized, graphite-mod-
*See Studies, XI/3: "The Decryption of a Picture."
* * Now F,hief of the Domestic Collection Division, DDO.
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Soviet Nuclear Problems SECRET
erated,* pressure-tubed power reactor at Obninsk south of Moscow, which had
been placed on view in 1954, Americans got their first view of Russian nuclear
laboratories in 1958 following the Second Geneva Conference.
This view had been something of a shocker, for the Russians, putting their
best foot forward as was indeed to be expected, turned out to have research
efforts to produce energy from thermonuclear reactions at several of their lab-
oratories every bit as good as we had at Oak Ridge and Princeton University.
Several research reactors were also shown, and these, while pedestrian, seemed
to be quite adequate.
A movie clip had been shown of a power reactor "somewhere in Siberia"
that had just started up. The Russians indicated that this reactor produced
100 MW electrical, and that its electric power generating efficiency was 20 to
25 percent. Intelligence analysis of the released photographs** had revealed
that the reactor must have been agraphite-moderated, pressure-tube plutonium
reactor, modified to operate at elevated temperature to produce steam. Details,
however, indicated that both fuel element and turbogenerator construction
limited the electric generating cycle to a miserable 14 percent. (This was by
no means the first time the Russians had used the fact that the present and
the immediately expected future in Russian use the same verb form. )
The Russians in 1958 also indicated they were building two nuclear power
stations-one type at Beloyarsk in the Urals with graphite-moderated, pressure-
tube reactors, the other at Novo Voronezh in the Volga region with water-
moderated, pressure-vessel reactors. Their papers included quite detailed con-
struction plans. In addition they discussed their first experiments with fast
breeder reactors, which had little moderation, used plutonium for fuel and
liquid sodium (instead of water) for cooling. They presented a firAe paper on
the Lenin icebreaker with its three pressure-vessel power reactors-and not
one word about the nuclear submarines that for technical reasons, mainly physical
size, should be using reactors quite similar to those being installed on the Lenin.
There had been, incidentally, clandestine reporting to the effect that nuclear
submarines were being built in the far north at the shipyard in Severodvinsk
on the White Sea not far from Archangelsk. Estimates had suggested the first
units might well be launched in 1958, but there had been no sightings well into
the fall of 1959. Clearly, the important intelligence goal was the status of the
Soviet nuclear submarine program. And the way led through acquiring a de-
tailed understanding of the Soviet nuclear power program: the technology
had to be much the same, whether the power reactor made electricity for
Voronezh, or turned the propellors of a nuclear submarine out of Murmansk.
Admiral Riekover Takes the Lead
The game had opened wide in early July of 1959 when Frol Kozlov, First
Deputy Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministries and Premier Nikita
*The moderator is placed between the uranium tubes or rods in a reactor to moderate
or slow down the neutrons so that they may have the correct speed (energy) for maximum
reaction when they collide with the next rod.
**See Studies, XV/1: "Somewhere in Siberia."
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SECRET Soviet Nuclear Problems
1Chrushchev's representative, had visited the Westinghouse-designed water-
,noderated, pressure-vessel-type power reactor at Shippingport, Pennsylvania.
Iere, Vice Admiral Hyman G. Rickover of American Nuclear Navy fame showed
liozlov-to everyone's horror-the details of the Shippingport reactor. Kozlov
must have reported that there was something to be learned from the Americans,
.end indeed that they were willing to open up a bit, for in late July Vice Presi-
dent Richard Nixon, along with Admiral Rickover, visited first the icebreaker
~.e~nin in the Admiralty Shipyard in Leningrad and later the nuclear power plant
zmder construction at Beloyarsk in the Urals.
Admiral Rickover, incidentally, tried his best to learn as much about the
Lenin reactor system as he possibly could. Being quite dissatisfied with the
expected 20-minute tour prepared for Vice President Nixon and himself, he
had before leaving Moscow requested and received permission from Professor
U. Yemelyanov, Chairman of the Chief Administration for the Utilization of
ritomic Energy for the USSR, for a special tour. After Vice President Nixon
left, Admiral Rickover asked for his special tour, and was told that Mr. Mikolayev,
Ycmelyanov's representative, was not there and that everyone had gone home.
According to Raymond L. Garthoff, the translator who accompanied him, Admiral
Iickover took this news like a vice admiral in the Russian navy denied permission
to inspect one of his boats. He reminded the Captain, P. A. Ponomarev, the
Chief Engineer and two of the ship's officers that the Americans had shown
ilie Kozlov party everything on the Savannah and at Shippingport, and that
ic:, Vice Admiral Rickover, had not embarrassed them by forcing them to ask
questions. He repeated his request to Mr. B. S. Klopotov, Director of the Ship-
yard. He reminded Mr. Klopotov that on the morrow he was going to be talking
with Khrushchev: Did Mr. Klopotov want him, Vice Admiral Rickover, to tell
Khrushchev that Mr. Klopotov would not let him tour the Lenin after receiving
permission from Professor V. Yemelyanov? Besides, the idea that the man with
the key to the reactor compartment had gone home with it was pure nonsense.
No one would dare leave something like a reactor compartment without a key
3inmediately at hand. He continued to fire broadsides for effect intermittently
for some two hours until permission was received from higher authority. Then
lie rudely poked his nose into every conceivable corner of the ship for three
Hours-and memorized everything in minute detail.
l?;arly Soviet Problems
1'he Admiral concluded that the three pressurized 90-MW (thermal) light
water cooled and moderated reactors were each physically too large for sub-
marines. However, by increasing the U-235 content of the uranium in the uranium
oxide, zirconium-clad fuel elements from five percent to, say, ten percent and
hanging the piping so as to shorten the overall height, the reactors could be
made to fit submarine hulls yet operate satisfactorily under stop-and-go conditions.
lie also learned that the Russians intended to use boron as a "burnable poison,"*
'When a reactor is first started up, it has excess U-235 giving off more neutrons and
more reactivity in the center of the core than at the edges, causing uneven and undesired
overheating. The first solution was to space control rods so as to restrain the overheating in
the middle. This is sometimes reinforced by adding a "burnable poison" such as boron to the
uranium, concentrated in the center to absorb and burn off the excess neutrons. Uver a period
of a year or more of run-in, the boron and the excess U-235 are both consumed, and the
problem of overheating in the middle is dissipated.
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Sovief Nuclear Problems t KK
thus permitting the reactor to be loaded to attain high endurance. However, he
felt the Russians, once the system became operational, were going to encounter
three problem areas:
First, the high pressure used in the primary loop (about 3000 psi) would
enhance chloride stress corrosion of the stainless steel piping, and eventually
lead to leaks.
Secondly, the plant layout was formulated without proper consideration
of maintenance. The three reactors are all located in the same compartment, so
that one cannot be isolated for repairs while the others continue operation, and
indeed radioactive contamination of one would make the others inaccessible as
well. The heat exchangers would require considerable time for repair of a leak
because of the way they were built, and also because their location was such
as to be affected by radioactivity from adjacent equipment. Much of the piping
was located close to bilges and bulkheads, crisscrossed in many places, and
generally was difficult to get at. Repairs at sea would be wellnigh. impossible
for any except the simplest malfunction. The doors through the 14-inch steel
shielding to the reactor compartment were tapered, but not stepped, which
could permit some radiation to escape.
Finally, the Russians were depending too much on automatic equipment
which might scram (stop) the reactor just at the crucially wrong time.
Following the Nixon visit, agreements were made and implemented to have
a U.S. Power Delegation visit the USSR in early September, succeeded in turn
by a U.S. Nuclear Delegation in October. CIA's briefing of the members of
these U.S. Delegations were exhaustive. The one to the U.S. Electric Power
Delegation, for instance, ran 30 pages of detailed discussion of the status of our
knowledge and of important gaps in that knowledge. These delegations brought
back a thorough understanding of Russian laboratory work in the research reactor
and thermonuclear energy fields. They learned that Russian research at Obninsk
on breeder reactors was still in its early stages. They thoroughly toured Russian
high energy physics establishments. Detail on turbine manufacture bearing on
the turbines used in nuclear power plants were obtained. They visited the two
large nuclear power plants then under construction, but not the one "somewhere
in Siberia:' The mid-stage of construction of the big nuclear power plants pre-
vented adetailed assessment of much of the nuclear power equipment, although
of course a lot was learned. The Nuclear Delegation was taken for athree-hour
cruise on the Lenin (which had been commissioned since Rickover's visit ),
but the vital equipment was buttoned up in the now radioactive reactor com-
partment and could not be viewed. One really new fact learned was that there
had been no land-based prototype for the Lenin (and presumably the submarine )
reactors.
This, then, was the state of our knowledge when the Russian delegations
arrived in New York.
The Electric Power Delegation
The Russian Electric Power Delegation numbered twelve bright and force-
ful personalities. Their leader, Konstantin Lavrenenko, was the First Deputy
Minister of Electric Power Station Construction. George Ermakov was his Chief
Engineer. Sergei Berezin was the Chief Engineer of the Kharkov Turbine Plant
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SECRET Soviet Nuclear Problems
(Raymond Garthoff had noted that the turbogenerators on the Lenin had been
made by the Kharkov Turbine Factory); Dimitri Kotelevsky was Chief Engineer
of the USSR Planning Commission (Gosplan ). And so on.
The main emphasis of this delegation was, of course, normal electric power
production, though often these interests had possible nuclear power plant over-
tones. Afew short quotes from a dozen or more much longer Contact Division
reports will illustrate:
f)O-B-3,144,103: `....the overall technical interest of the group was
in power production. Specific interests showed up in terms of techniques
ased in welding stainless steel; the dispatch center of the company; our
long distance coal pipeline (the only one of its kind) ; and the new 250,000-
KW generating unit at Avon Lake, a supercritical plant. The construction
engineers N. V. Shchukin and G. V. Ermakov stated that they are still having
trouble in trying to weld stainless steel piping. This ....surprises me after
the technological capability they have shown in other fields...."
00-8-3,144,522: `. Berezin of the Kharkov Turbine Works,
presented me with many detailed questions regarding our turbines. He could
not understand the efficiencies of our output ...."
OO-B .3,144,896: "...Shchukin told us that 300 percent of the welds
they have made in austenitic steel have cracked. In the discussion they wanted
to know all details of the welding techniques used on the austenitic main
steam leads of this unit. Only general answers were given ...."
t)O-B-3,143,972: `...They first asked for information on how turbines
were built to withstand the high moisture content in the steam from nuclear
reactors. 1 tried to help them without disclosing too much know-how .. .
(stating) the present preferred plan is to employ reheat between the high-
pressure and low-pressure turbines. I told them that this reheating can be
accomplished by separating moisture and employing live steam reheating
i)O-B-3,141,735: ". .They inquired as to what arrangements there
were in the U.S. for handling radioactive waste materials. We told them
that these products were buried but that efforts were being made to find
uses ...for such wastes...."
Because he was constantly with them, Charlie Reeves, the MIT-trained
electrical engineer from CIA's NED attached to the delegation as technical
translator, was in perhaps the best position to assess their questions in the nuclear
area. Charlie got along quite well with Ermakov, in fact almost too well. Charlie
later told me that he had been hard put on several occasions to keep from revealing
that he had, in the course of his everyday work, read several times over every
paper that Ermakov had ever published.
Ermakov left Charlie with the definite impression that the Soviet atomic
reactor program was struggling with a number of specific difficulties, including:
a. Poor gasket seals which fail to stand up under the severe operating
conditions.
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ov~et uc ear ro ems
b. Inadequate technology for bonding dissimilar metals, such as the
stainless steel lining to the body of the reactor and the securing of steam
generator tubes to the tube sheets.
c. Lack of uniformity of the neutron flux in the vertical arnd horizontal
axes (of a reactor).
Charlie added that Ermakov was keenly interested in the design of heat
transfer equipment and demineralizing filters for the primary reactor water
circuit. He wanted to know what was being done to bring the cost of atomic
power down to a competitive level. He showed interest in the temperature and
pressure values in existing and projected reactors. Finally, he wanted to know
how we use the "spent" uranium from power reactor operations.
The Soviet Nuclear Delegation
The visit of the Electric Power Delegation was followed by the arrival of the
nine-man USSR Nuclear Delegation, composed of even more outstanding indi-
viduals that those who had represented the USSR in the electric power field.
It was headed by Academician Vasili Yemelyanov, graduate of Goettingen in
metallurgy and Chief of the Main Administration for the Utilizaticm of Atomic
Energy attached to the Council of Ministers (Yemelyanov is believed also to
have represented his superior, Yefim Slavskiy, the Minister of Medium Machine
Building and thus the man in charge of all military-related nuclear activities
in the USSR. The Russians have never publicly admitted the role of either
Slavskiy or the Ministry of Medium Machine Building). Academician Anatoliy P.
Alexsandrov, chief of reactor physics at the Institute of Atomic Energy in
Moscow, and Academician Aleksandr I. Leipunskiy, head of the Nuclear Research
Institute at Obninsk, were primarily concerned with power and propulsion
reactors. Academician Vladimir Veksler, the man of cosmic ray fame, was mostly
interested in high energy physics. Academician Igor Golovin and Yevgeni
Piskarev were experts on controlled thermonuclear research. Andrey Bochvar
was their expert on uranium and plutonium metallurgy.
As mentioned previously, the Russian delegation visited some 20 facilities
in as many days. The Contact Division of the Office of Operation eventually pub-
lished at least 25 reports on these visits, each from one to six legal pages long. Then
there were oral personal reminiscences.
Actually, the reports concerning uranium mining and ore concentration,
research reactors, high energy physics, the machines producing high energy
particles, and controlled thermonuclear energy research can be summarized rather
quickly. In all five fields the Russians were doing about as well as the Americans,
although they clearly lagged in advanced research along fast reactor and pulsed
reactor lines. Often the ways of achieving similar ends were different, and these
differences were of enormous interest to those technically involved on each side.
Thus discussions following the initial briefings at each facility tended to devolve
on minute details, or on discussions of which way to proceed was the better one.
The more serious Russian problems, causing many questions, seemed to
have resulted from a lack of engineering skill on the part of Russian scientists,
and a serious lack of communication between Russian scientists and engineers.
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SECRET Sovief Nuclear Problems
Thus the Russians found out the answer to several pieces of pure silliness on their
part. For instance, they had ordered all the steel for their newest accelerator, as
a good Communist should, from a particular plant-and indeed a particular rolling
mill. As any engineer who has been concerned with steel for ships knows, the
earth's magnetic field imprints a permanent magnetic field into the steel during
the rolling operation. The way to randomize the orientation of these residual
fields in one of the large accelerators is to order steel from several plants and
carefully mix the steel from these different plants before pieces are selected for
machining. To make it work properly, the Russians had the choice of tearing
down their accelerator and replacing the steel.
The Search for a Key
The reporting on nuclear reactors was the difficult part to assess. Generally
the Americans had not been able to place useful questions at the right time, or
the Russians had answered with so little detail that the answers were not useful.
What was available were long reports on what the Russians said and did, page
after page of summary reporting. From the intelligence analysis viewpoint, we
were overwhelmed with words and paper. It was easy to summarize that tech-
nically the Russians had learned more than the U.S. It was easy to conclude
that they would attempt to implement over the years this new knowledge in
their nuclear power program. Much of it seemed relevant to the never-mentioned
Russian nuclear submarine program. How to point this up was the analysis
problem.
Then one day Jack Lundin in desperation listed for several reports those
subjects the Russians were particularly interested in and asked questions about.
I happened to be looking over his shoulder as he put some five lists on the desk
side by side for comparison. The results were striking. Many points of interest
showed only once. But some themes ran. through all five lists, the more re-
markable because a couple of the lists were made from reporting on the Russian
Electric Power Delegation and the others from reporting on the Russian Nuclear
Delegation. Surely those questions asked again and again by more than one person
were important questions. Jack had found the key.
When the various Contact Division reports were broken out by those subjects
that appeared on two or more lists-really acut-and-paste job-Jack's first
impressions were clothed out. The Russians really must have been having a
horrible time with welding-and the welding of critical items like steam gen-
erators, at that. They were finding their pressure vessels, steam generators and
heat exchangers were corroding, and they clearly did not know why. These
subjects all applied to nuclear power plants, such as the one at Novo Voronezh,
but surely the last thing one wanted on a nuclear submarine was a steam generator
to spring a leak, or the weld on a reactor vessel to fail when full of radioactive
steam at 16 atmospheres pressure.
In February 1960 Jack was able to write confidently in both the Scientific
Intelligence Digest and the Current Intelligence Weekly that the Russians were
having trouble with "the design of protective containment vessels and of fuel
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Sovief Nuclear Problems E R
elements for their power reactors." They were most concerned with "finding
methods for achieving a uniform production of heat within a reactor, and methods
for coping with radioactivity and moisture in steam. to minimize adverse effects
on pipes and turbine blades:' They wanted information to help them with "cor-
rosion problems, engineering problems connected with pumps,, lari;e valves,
and pipes, and the metallurgy of stainless steel." Indeed, stress corrosion of
stainless steel was so important that "the Soviet scientists indicated, foi? example,
that the steam generator tubes in the icebreaker Lenin were expected to last
only a few years, and so were made easy to replace." Jack was sure these problem
areas would also affect the operation of the nascent Soviet submarine fleet.
Thus when sightings of Russian submarines started in late 1959-early 1960,
and reports of remarks by Russian seamen on these submarines began to flow, the
reports of failures at sea and of radioactivity, often in the body of the submarines,
were believed. While the American submarine fleet was roaming the seven seas,
and indeed sailing completely across the Arctic submerged and under ice, the
Soviet submarine fleet stayed within reach of home port. By 1963 there were
five confirmed reports of nuclear submarines being towed into Murmansk. And
Jack Lundin was confident that he had correctly uncovered the sources of these
problems by studying the questions the Russian delegation members had asked.
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The problem o f making
classified information public
DECLASSIFICATION IN AN OPEN SOCIETY*
Gail F. Donnalley
People are creatures of habit and have an innate resistance to change. The
dilemma created for intelligence agencies in June 1972 by the implernentation
of Executive Order 11652-the Executive Order dealing with classification and
declassification of national security information-bears out this theory. The
concept that "the interests of the United States and its citizens are best served
by making information regarding the affairs of Government readily available
to the public," is reflected in that Executive Order and in the Freedom of
Information Act. The Order acknowledges that information bearing directly on
the effectiveness of our national defense and the conduct of our foreign relations
"must be subject to some constraints for the security of our nation and the safety
of our people and our allies." It identifies the information to be protected, pre-
scribes classification, downgrading, declassification and safeguarding procedures
to be followed, and establishes a monitoring system to ensure its effectiveness.
The Contradiction of Security and Openness
The application of Executive Order 11652 and the Freedom of Information
Act to the Central Intelligence Agency postulates a real contradiction in definitions
and philosophies. The CIA reflects the society of which it is a part; and to
that extent, it is the most open intelligence agency in the world. But there
remains the inherent conflict between an open society, which wants all official
information made available to members of that society, and the aims of an in-
telligence organization engaged in the collection and production of intelligence
derived from sources which cannot be identified. For this reason, our applica-
tion of the Executive Order takes place in a dichotomy and involves a consider-
able amount of trauma as a result of our previous history.
The Director is charged by the National Security Act of 1947 with the
protection of intelligence sources and methods. This legal requirement is con-
sciously and unconsciously instilled in each employee of the Central Intelligence
Agency every day of his employment. For those of us who have been with the
Agency for some time, protection of sources and methods has thus become in-
stinctive. We have been trained to err on the side of caution, because a mistake
the other way could have dire effects. Perhaps the most recognizable effect
that could immediately result is the loss of a source; someone will no longer
provide us with information. This loss could go even further. The individual,
rather than just deciding he would no longer provide us with information,
could be incarcerated or even lose his life.
"`From a speech to the National Classification Management Society in San Diego, Calif.,
in July 1974.
MORI/HRP
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The loss of the primary source is not the most important consideration;
having lost a source of intelligence through an error in judgment in terms of
t~rotecting that source, we then run the risk that we no longer will be able to
attract additional sources. In a sense, in the intelligence world, we lose our
credibility; and, having lost our credibility, we lose our capability to attract.
So it is quite fair to say that the application of Executive Order 11652 gives
us psychological problems. We have to re-think; we now have to make better
decisions as to what is important in source protection and what isn't. All this
is salutary and I think necessary and perhaps overdue. The general philosophy
which we are now trying to instill in our employees is that we can better
protect those things which need protection if we limit our protective measures
to those things which truly require protection and do not apply the same
measures Willy-nilly across the board. Other national intelligence services do not
operate in the same atmosphere as we do and hence have difficulty understanding
this Government's approach to the protection of classified matters. We can already
sense an erosion of confidence on the part of some of our friends.
As to what is going on, a little history might be useful to set the stage
for you. As you can appreciate, the traditional view has seen our intelligence
services cloaked in extreme secrecy taken to the limits of not revealing names
of employees or informants for ever and ever; indeed, if you lived in a pure
world which was dominated only by the influences affecting intelligence, the
ideal situation would be this: a complete and final removal of intelligence-
related matters in terms of informants, agents, and employees from any aspect
of public knowledge. But we don't live in that kind of a world. We do, however,
concern ourselves with protecting the sources after they have stopped being
sources. We are concerned that it may be necessary to protect information relative
to a source for a period of time in excess of the 30 years specified in the Execu-
tive Order. The question might well be, "Why more than 30 years?" The answer
is that frequently the activities of the first generation informant could carry
over to a second generation; and, if we don't protect that first generation,
we may not be able to attract the services of a second generation.
Early Classification Procedures
Of course, classification and security protection had not really been a
major problem to the government until World War II, and I would say that
even in the second World War, though we did need to protect war plans,
operational plans and so forth, we still had not developed a very coherent phi-
losophy of classification. The system then was modeled after the English system.
The most important judgment exercised seemed to be what color ink to use
in the stamp pad. Certainly in the predecessor organization to CIA, the Office
of Strategic Services, this was true. We have found, for example, in reviewing OSS
documents for declassification, that in many cases the stamp put on the document
when it was received in the OSS mail room classified the document Confidential
when it previously had been unclassified. That is to say, the act of .receipt
itself had a classification built right into it.
'T'his type of generic overclassification is one of the reasons for the genesis
of the Executive Order on classification and a valid reason for attempting to
improve access to documents. I think that this overclassification, this classifi-
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cation without thought, probably has contributed in its own way to the deplor-
able habit of certain individuals who decide on political grounds that a particular
piece of classified information no longer merits classification, because it:s r~Iease
can produce a given effect that they wish-so it appears in the press or is
leaked some other way. It is true that occasionally such leaks have been for
personal gain, or simply because somebody wants to capitalize on his own
personal experiences and become the first to declassify or publish something
previously classified.
In the past 50 years there has been an increasing amount of quite accurate
intelligence tradecraft and methodology revealed in fictional and non-fictional
works, usually by authors who had had experience in either wartime or peace-
time intelligence work. This trend was started after World War I with Somerset
Maugham's Ashenden, based on Maugham's personal experience as an intelli-
gence officer. It describes the frustrations and failures encountered in such work;
if something can go wrong, whether from human weakness or stroke of fate,
it usually does. In a much different tone, Ian Flemings James Bond tends to
glamorize intelligence work in the post-World War II era, though his exploits
do contain a leaven of tradecraft in realistic detail. John LeCarre's Th.e Spy
Who Came in From th.e Cold is a fine example of the grubby life of an intelli-
gence agent, played like a puppet by those who hired him. In the non-fiction
field, I should mention Allen Dulles' The Craft of Intelligence which purveys
a fine flavor for intelligence as a profession. There are also good books on cryp-
tography and code-breaking. Obviously, these deal extensively with the past, inas-
much as it is in our national interest to keep current techniques and methodologies
closely controlled.
What We Are Trying to Protect
I have covered this background material, which I'm sure is familiar to
most of you, in order to lead up to the question of what we in the CIA are
trying to protect. It includes: (a) the names of same of our employees-those
working overseas (even if disclosed to host governments) and those iri line for
such assignments in the future; (b) the names of all our agents-fox? obvious
reasons. Incidentally, much confusion seems to exist in the public mind over
the term "agent of the CIA." All too frequently, the media use "CI.A agent"
to mean anyone working for the CIA-directly and full-time or only on an
ad hoc basis, openly labelled as CIA or identified otherwise. This is improper
and needs clarification. The confusion probably arises out of the practice of
our FBI colleagues who perform their investigative and security functions under
the professional title of agents.
CIA uses the term "agent" in its dictionary sense of "a person empowered
to act for another:' Thus all our so-called agent operations engage individuals,
usually foreign nationals, in the conduct of intelligence work as guided and di-
rected by CIA officers. The agent is the doer, the CIA officer is the :represen-
tative of the U.S. Government, and the Agency is charged with insuring that the
agent does what is required in the manner chosen within the time allowed.
Thus, it is improper to refer to E. Howard Hunt as a CIA agent; Hunt was a
CIA officer charged with the direction of agents, as in his role leading up to
the Bay of Pigs.
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Kesuming the list of the types of information we are trying to protect,
next is (c) the current methods we are using to obtain intelligence-maybe
you've read about them in James Bond, but perhaps they a.ren't in anything you
could have read; (d) all information dealing with cryptography and cryptanalysis;
( ~>) the details of the processing and analysis of intelligence information-the
Soviets would like this; and (f) the finished intelligence publications-because
they reveal what has been provided to the decision makers in our government.
'9'his list is by no means complete, but it does include those of most significance.
}3rxndy's List of `Real Secrets'
Perhaps you have not had the opportunity to read some of the recent
testimony given before the Senate Subcommittee on Government Operations.
1"v~IcGeorge Bundy, National Security Advisor to President Kennedy, testified
an May 22, 1974 to the Subcommittee, which was inquiring into classification
practices in the government. Bundy identified what he called "real secrets"
and divided these into six classes: (1) defense information, such as the details
of military contingency planning and the design of nuclear weapons systems;
(2) current diplomatic negotiations; (3) covert activity abroad (incidentally,
he suggests that, since some of such activity is out of tune with national senti-
ment, it should not exist, and other types of such activity should be governed
by the Congress through its share of the war power) ; (4) the covert collection
of intelligence-including secret agents, interception of electronic transmissions,
or any other where revelations could enable the enemy to take countermeasures;
(5) material whose capacity for international embarrassment outweighs its values
for enlightenment of the public-he cites confidential assessments of foreign
leaders coming to meet the President; and (6) legitimate secrets relating to the
process by which a President makes a decision.
Statutory Authority for Protection
As I mentioned, when the CIA was established under the National Security
Act of 1947, the Director was given statutory authority to protect intelligence
methods and sources. This Act, and the successive Executive Orders on classi-
fication, have been the foundation for our policies in protecting national security
information, whether originated by us or received from other government com-
ponents of foreign sources. Additional authority to protect certain information,
I~articularly that relating to names and numbers of employees, was included
i:n the CIA Act of 1949. These acts have in no way been superseded by the
1~'reedom of Information Act of 1966. You should be aware, however, that there
is a very strong possibility that this Act will be amended significantly in the
gear future, * and both versions passed by the House (in March) and the
5cnate (in May) contain sections which appear in potential conflict with the
Agency's statutory authorities mentioned a moment ago. The most important
change lies in the provision for in camera review by a court in cases where the
reasonableness of the classification of a document or material is challenged.
],caving aside the question of how to protect sensitive intelligence information
while it is in the possession of a court, the basic problem is whether a court
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could overrule the Director's decision, taken under his statutory responsibility,
that certain information requires protection because it involves intelligence
sources and methods.
T'he Declassification Machinery
Let me now return to 1 June 1972, when Executive Order 11652 became
effective. The Central Intelligence Agency integrated the implementation of clas-
sification practices into its Records Management Program. Other age?ncies se-
lected different options; some included it in public relations programs, others
in security programs. To date, our experience is that it operates quite effectively
in the Records Management Program, but could operate equally effectively in
any of the other programs.
The Chief, Information Systems Analysis Staff, is charged with the respon-
sibility for ensuring compliance with Executive Order 11652 and the Freedom
of Information Act within the Agency. In August 1973, a Classification Programs
Branch was established within this Staff with a basic mission of carrying out
the program, emphasizing coordination rather than centralized declassification
activity. The major task in terms of manpower requirements is the primary re-
sponsibility of the originating components or their successor organizations.
As you realize, the Order required an update of our procedures in several
areas. It called for: (a) a sharp restriction in the number of authorized clas-
sifiers; (b) the refining of the criteria for materials to be classified, and ac-
countability of classifiers for their actions; (c) the identification of classifiers
on any materials classified; (d) the implementation of the General Declassi-
fication Schedule (GDS ), which permitted much too brief periods of protec-
tion for most intelligence materials; (e) the exemption of material, if neces-
sary, from the provisions of the GDS (but there is a question as tc- whether
all the Agency's activities can be considered as falling under one or more
of the four exemptions) ; (f) the development of procedures to implement the
provisions for mandatory review of classified material, leaving the Agency
with the question of what manpower would be needed; (g) the automatic
review of classified material 30 years old, with declassification of all such ma-
terial except that continued under classification by decision of the Director;
(h) the systematic review of classified material with the view of downgrading
or declassifying it as soon as possible (and again there was the problem of
manpower) ; (i) the potential problem posed by the apparent authority of the
Interagency Classification Review Committee to overrule the Director in appeals
from the denials of mandatory review requests; (j) access to classified documents
by approved historical researchers (non-government) ; and (k) the :require-
ment to provide quarterly lists of authorized classifiers to the ICRC.
Perhaps I should reemphasize here how these requirements conflicted with
the training and practices acquired over the years by our professional intelli-
gence case officers and analysts. In the intelligence field there are two aspects
of information, the information itself, and the means by which it is obtained.
It is obvious that if the leaders of a less than friendly foreign country know we
have learned of their defense mechanisms, they will modify or completely change
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them. If they know we have been able to intercept and read their communica-
tions, they will no longer use those channels to transmit information helpful
to us, or they may attempt to mislead us with misinformation.
13ut, more important, disclosure of the fact that we have certain pieces of
information could seriously endanger the agent or agents who made them avail-
able to us, resulting in the termination of any more information from that channel,
whether because of the removal of the agent or because the agent fears the
consequences of his passing further intelligence material to us.
The intelligence case officer realizes that a particular piece of information
may not require protection, but he is concerned with the likelihood that an
accumulation of separate bits of intelligence will lead back to the source. Hence,
his training conditions him to think of a continuing need to protect information
not only from disclosure to the public, but even from his colleagues who do not
need to know.
You can perhaps appreciate, then, the traumatic effect of the disclosure pro-
visions of the Executive Order on such professional intelligence officers. Not only
were they asked to review intelligence documents for possible disclosure in
response to mandatory requests; but, on the basic question of what level of
classification, if any, a document needed, they were required, when in doubt,
to use the less restrictive treatment
~Ve have now lived with the Order for more than two years, however, without
things going to pot. This is in part because of the helpful and cooperative attitude
taken by the ICRC on several procedural matters. It is due much more to most
Agency people having learned to follow the spirit of the new system, though
sometimes reluctantly; having learned the refined basis for classification; and
now thinking before routinely stamping a classification on a document.
Experience to Date
In monitoring our progress in complying with the Order, we find we have
accamplished several things, such as: (a) greatly reducing the number of classi-
fiers (and this is still an on-going process) ; (b) significantly reducing the current
amount of classified materials being produced, particularly as classifiers in-
creasingly realize that little administrative or support material needs protection;
(c) beginning the review of 30-year-old material (as you know, we are the suc-
cessors to the OSS and CIG); and (d) keeping abreast of the requests for
mandatory review.
I will expand a bit on this matter of handling mandatory review requests,
for there are points here which will likely be of interest to you. We were initially
apprehensive that we would be swamped by requests from the news media and
private individuals, especially historical researchers. Yet two years after the
Executive Order went into effect, we have received only 240 requests.
Among the first of these was the request from one of the major news services
for records related to the Guatemalan Revolution of 1954, in which the Agency
is alleged to have played a significant role. It was quite a task to identify and
retrieve the relevant documents; and, after a careful review, it was determined
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that most of them could not be declassified because sources of information were
identified. However, it was possible to sanitize many of these papers and thus
meet the larger part of the requester's needs.
We have had an oft-repeated request from awell-known historian and acade-
mician, mainly for documents relating to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Tliis request
was made initially under the FOIA, but since classified documents. were in-
volved, it has been processed under the provisions of the Executive Order. It
was pointed out to the Professor that he appeared to be eligible four approval
as a historical researcher, but he declined to take this route, preferring to use
only declassified source materials. It has been possible to declassify same of the
documents he wants, but others can be released only in sanitized versions, if at
all, and historians understandably don't like sanitized documents.
Occasionally, we have had requests for declassification from former em-
ployees (including those of the OSS) . We have declassified a considerable
number of documents dealing with OSS operations in Vietnam (then French
Indochina) for a former OSS officer who served there in the latter part of 1945
and who knew Ho Chi Minh. And we have been able to declassify documents
on OSS operations in Yugoslavia for a former OSS man who served there and is
writing a book.
There are still several challenges for the Agency to meet in implementing
various facets of the classification policies mandated by the Executive Order,
and some of these may well be the same as you are facing. For example, you
probably see occasional documents which are obviously overclassified or are
exempted for no apparent reason. It's clear that someone hasn't gotten the word-
or has unthinkingly used former procedures-or signed what his secretary pre-
pared without reviewing it for the appropriateness of the classification. There
is a continuing need for both indoctrination of newly authorized classifiers and
re-indoctrination periodically of the "old hands." We are still working to develop
effective means to accomplish this.
A different problem we face is in getting together the necessary resources
to get current on the review of classified material which is 30 years old or older.
With rare exceptions, all OSS documents still on file are classified, and the
review of these has been a challenge in terms of making qualified personnel
available to do the job. In fact, as a practical matter, we re-hired three retirees
to work on the OSS records previously held by the Department of State and
turned over to the National Archives some time back, but this is only a part
of the problem. From 1977 on, when we pass the 30th anniversary of the estab-
lishment of the Agency, we will have increasing numbers of documents eligible
for review and we will have to gear up to handle that workload.
We have taken steps to reduce the average time of responding to mandatory
review requests. Your problems in this area may be somewhat different from
ours, for we must first search out the documents and then find busy operations
people to review them in terms of current classification criteria. Because of our
many internal reorganizations over the years, it is often not too clear which
component should make the review, and perhaps two or three different offices
should look at it. All this takes time; but, needless to say, we are doing our best
to be responsive to the anticipated new requirements, both for requests and
appeals of denials.
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In closing, I would say that if our problems, as I have tried to point out,
have been psychological and have been brought about by the requirement to
re-think old habitual practices, I think it's been healthy for us and it's certainly
an interesting challenge to an intelligence agency steeped in the tradition of
silence to comply with the current demands of our society for more freedom of
information.
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CONFIDENTIAL
The Office of Training on 22 July 1974 established the Center for the Study
of Intelligence, a framework within which discussion groups and researchers can
pursue investigation of the theory and practice of the profession of intelligence.
Fellows in Intelligence, appointed by the Director of Training for terms of vari-
ous lengths depending on the scope o f speei f is research projects, will deal with
a broad range o f issues having to do with the ways in which intelligence is
gathered, processed, and used. Discussion groups sponsored by the Center, in-
volving both Agency and nonrAgency participation, will meet to discuss questions
of long-range importance to the Agency, both substantive and procedural. The
research product and reports on the work of the discussion groups will be given
appropriate distribution to inform and to stimulate further thought about the
problems.
The aim, as with Studies in Intelligence, is to develop a professional literature
o f our discipline which will contribute to the growth o f a systematic body o f
knowledge about intelligence. The accompanying article, examinin,; the ra-
tionale underlying the establishment o f the Center, echoes an article by Sherman
Kent in the initial September 1955 issue of this publication entitled "The Need
for an Intelligence Literature."
It is an obvious but essential point that the question of why we collect and
produce intelligence precedes the question of how. In a world of increasingly
constrained resources, the clear answer to the question of why must be that the
intelligence is in the most serious national interests. Those interests, .~s defined
and made explicit by the political leadership of this country, are the only justi-
fication for the collection and further processiong of information. We no longer
live in an age tolerant of the "nice-to-know"-need-to-know has assumed an addi-
tional meaning for us. But the effort to develop standards to guide intelligence
with reference to both the why and how is conceptual as well as practical. Theory,
however assimilated and unexamined its assumptions may be, precedes prac-
tice. Atheory, as I shall use the term rather broadly, is awell-coordinated
conceptual system which requires a rigorous statement of premises, assump-
tions, and relationships to give order to a body of observed data or empirical
situations. Clearly a theory has other characteristics as well, but apt this early
stage I would much prefer to emphasize the process, not the product:; to stress
the effort to make general statements about relations rather than the statements
themselves.
Why a "theory of intelligence?" Or rather, several or even many theories of
intelligence? Why the effort to be explicit about assumptions, variables, and
relationships when ambiguity, particularly in a bureaucratic context, ma.y be more
acceptable and less conflict-producing? There is, after all, awell-researched and
persuasive literature arguing the many values of ambiguity and ignorance. There
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is recent evidence from the world of international diplomacy that ambiguity,
even in the most intricate of negotiations with seemingly unambiguous outcomes,
has proved useful. Not to erect too many straw men, one must distinguish be-
tween conscious or intentional ambiguity and lack of clarity in one's own mind.
The decision to be vague for a purpose differs fundamentally from vagueness
that proceeds from uncertainty about purpose. Again, why precedes how, and
theory-whether identified as such or not-precedes practice. One justification,
then, for theorizing about intelligence is to encourage clarity of thought about
assumptions and explicitness -about purposes. The effort is far from frivolous.
Consider, for example, the following passage from The Real CIA by Lyman
Kirkpatrick:
"The role of the intelligence services in the future is, and should be,
that of keeping the policy makers fully informed of anything happening (or
about to happen) in the world that might affect the United States politically,
economically, or militarily, either directly or indirectly... .What our in-
telligence services must learn is what weapon any power on earth is planning
to build.... Until there are guarantees of a safe disarmament, the only
margin of safety in national defense is 100 percent accuracy in our knowledge
of other countries' weaponry." (p. 282f )
't'his passage, from a book which has been described as constituting "a
resounding defense of CIA's role in our society," could probably command the
assent of many at work in intelligence today. Examine for just a moment some of
the crucial assumptions which underlie this view of the proper role and scope of
intelligence activity. One need only ask what kinds of events abroad in the world
do not affect the United States politically, economically, or militarily, either
directly or indirectly, to know that this is an impossibly broad charge. The
response will come: "we all know what he means." Perhaps. It may be that he
means just what he has written-what then? The object is not to belittle a point
of view, it is to highlight the assumptions implicit in that view. Is 100 percent
accuracy in our knowledge of other countries' weaponry really necessary, or
desirable, or attainable? Is, in fact, such accuracy "the only margin of safety"
in national defense?
It is not necessary to belabor the issue, but to emphasize once again, the
effort to theorize encourages explicitness about assumptions and relationships.
There is a further point to be made. Without some theoretical apparatus, it is
immensely difficult to establish standards of relevance or levels of priority. What
among a flood of impressions and data is pertinent to an inquiry, and investiga-
tion? Why? What collection systems are preferred to what others and why?
I-low have the increasing sophistication and reliability of technical collection
affected the need for non-technical collection? Much is made of the distinction
between capabilities and intentions. Is there a threshold of capability below
which intentions do not matter? To address such questions successfully requires
that one have at least some theoretical context at hand. Lacking it, one is con-
signed to almost random observation and decision. Observation and experience
are far more productive when guided by intelligent hypothesis.
To argue the need for theorizing and eventually some theories about intelli-
gence is not to urge the need for dogma or binding doctrine. It is to urge, and
very strongly, the need for a dialogue on doctrine, for the venting of comple-
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mentary or even competing theoretical constructs. There has been too little of
that, and we are the poorer for it. The literature on intelligence is, for the most
part, anecdotal or case-oriented and little given to theorizing about the nature
of the processes involved in intelligence work. What we lack, even given the
serious and sustained work of the editors and many contributors to Studies in
Intelligence, is a cumulative, critical literature, a literature from which people
may learn and against which they can react. It was just a very few years before the
founding of OSS that John Maynard Keynes wrote his epochal GenE:ral Theory
of Employment, Interest, and Money. In the years since, economic theory
has burgeoned, spawning in the process a welter of derivative and counter
theories and, also in the process, sharpening, honing, growing in policy useful-
ness. By contrast, since the publication of Sherman Kent's Strategic Intelligence for
American World Policy there has been almost nothing of comparable intellectual
merit or persuasiveness written about intelligence. Admittedly, intelligence of-
ficers have had much to do since OSS days, while the generally overt character
of data for economists has permitted many to work in that field. But is there
no one among the many gifted people who have worked at and thought about
intelligence over the last three decades who is inclined to advance some general
propositions about the processes and purposes of intelligence? With a flippancy
I think he might enjoy, I could have called this paper, "Is Sherman Kent Enough?"
The theoretical explorations I suggest could take many forms, depending
upon the disciplinary interests of the researcher. Two brief examples, from
economic theory and decision analysis, hopefully, will give some sense of how
one might proceed and what the policy relevant results might be.
In the economic example, consider the intelligence community (or, more
modestly, the CIA) as a firm engaged in producing a product. By defini-
tion, production is held to be the transformation of one comrnodity into
another. There is no requirement that the commodities be tangible. Orchestras
as well as factories produce. The question arises, then, "What does CIA produce?"
Surely not paper, or reports, or even advice. It can be argued that what CIA
and other intelligence organizations produce is certainty. That is, it is the task
of intelligence to reduce the uncertainty attending situations and options of
interest to policy makers. Assume that the product is produced by some combina-
tion of two factors, capital and labor, one or the other of which may be fixed.
Capital includes the cost of technical collection systems as well as the equipment
needed to interpret and process data. Labor includes not only tlhe labor of
human collection but also the labor required to process information gathered
by technical means. Assume further that capital is fixed-given anticipated
budgetary constraints, this may not be too pessimistic an assumption. What
would happen then if labor were increased in production? According to eco-
nomic theory, the relative contribution of labor in the production process
declines as more labor is used. This is no more than a statement of the "Law
of Diminishing Returns." What relevance does this analysis have for the man-
agement and allocation of resources for intelligence gathering and production?
At best, given this grossly oversimplified statement, the analysis points to the
possibility that greater infusions of labor into the process will not necessarily
results in proportionate increases in production. There may be some more optimal
mix of the two factors. Too, diminishing returns and the corollary, increasing
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marginal costs, suggest that we will be paying ever more for a product constantly
decreasir-,g in cost effectiveness. One policy prescription which might emerge
is that collection and production must become vastly more selective. Returning
to Mr. Kirkpatrick's assertion that "the only margin of safety is 100 percent
accuracy in our knowledge of other countries' weaponry," it can be argued that
liven the above, the cost of even approaching 100 percent accuracy may become
prohibitive. At what level less than 100 percent do we establish the "margin of
safety" and why? These are issues and questions the theorist about intelligence
could profitably address from one disciplinary perpective.
'The above illustration is drawn from a field, economics, which falls within
what has recently been labeled the "analytic paradigm" of decision theory.
According to this paradigm a decision maker knows his goals, the constraints he
is subject to, the resources at his disposal, and has some ranking of available
options which will yield maximum positive results. Given this formal design,
the problems of aggregating individual choices and preferences become enor-
mously complex. The analyst of foreign affairs who is necessarily concerned with
explaining and predicting the behavior of foreign states when working, con-
sciously or not, within the rules established by the analytic paradigm is impelled
toward a view of affairs which is frequently misleadingly rational and coherent.
Increasingly in the literature of the social sciences there are alternatives to
the analytic paradigm being discussed, a new set of conceptual lenses which,
proceeding from different assumptions, yield fruitful new insights into problems
of decision making. This developing new paradigm stresses procedures, not out-
comes. It asserts that the decision maker, in the words of a recent paper on the
subject, "strains to avoid direct outcome calculations and thus to eliminate the
impact of uncertainty" and "is sensitive only to a limited range of highly pertinent
information." Interpreting the behavior of foreign states through this model,
i~articularly during times of crises, could produce starkly different results from
the analytic paradigm and different missions for intelligence in the process.
1t would be pointless to ask which of these two ways of inquiring into
decision making is correct. Rather we should ask how might they complement each
s~ther in intelligence work to convey a richer understanding of foreign state
behavior so that intelligence may better serve the needs of policy.
'.Chew two examples are merely that. The would-be theorist about intelli-
~,rence is by no means limited to the world of the economist or decision analyst.
It is far more likely that other disciplines, more abundantly represented in the
Agency's ranks, will contribute to this effort. There will he, in the parlance of
the political scientist, islands of theory awaiting some grand concept to connect
them. But without the islands, it is unlikely that the concept will have the power
to explain and predict that may one day be possible. What is essential is that
the experience in the workings of intelligence gained in the last three decades
not be permitted to persist only as an undifferentiated mass of data and impres-
sions. If we are to learn, if we are to grow professionally from one generation to
the next, then we must begin now to look for the patterns and general lessons
of our profession.
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INTELLIGENCE IN RECENT PUBLIC LITERATi7RE
OPERATION SPLINTER FACTOR, by Stewart Steven. (J. B. Lippiineott Co.,
Philadelphia, New York, 1974 )
Operation Splinter Factor by Stewart Steven, a naturalized Englishman,
formerly Daily Express and now Daily Herald international affairs correspondent,
is distinguished by the fact-and this is quite possibly the only fact connected
with the book-that it contains not one single redeeming element of truth.
Steven has added another monument to Cold War revisionism, but in so
doing, he serves directly the current interests of the Soviets, the Bloc;, and their
security services. In effect, he relieves them of the moral consequences of having
systematically killed off the top Communist leadership on trumped-up charges
after the expulsion of Tito from the Bloc. He shifts the moral stigma for these
criminal acts from Stalin, the KGB, and the various Bloc security services to
Allen Dulles and the CIA. Steven is able to accomplish this bit of legerdemain
by simply inventing a series of flat lies.
There never was an operation conducted by Mr. Dulles or by CIA that
bore the name "Operation Splinter Factor." We have checked this out. Steven
asserts that Dulles personally wrote the operational name on the dossier and
that he boasted about it to the end of his days. This is simply not so. Nowhere
in the book does Steven show the slightest awareness of CIA operational
methodology or case practice. He obviously does not know, for example, that
CIA does not and never has used a binomial project nomenclature.* But even
setting aside the question of the operation's name, research from the time we
received the first word of the Steven enterprise in 1972 has unearthed nobody
who has any memory of an operation along the lines put forward by Steven,
conducted by Dulles or by the Agency.
Joseph Swiatlo, an officer of the Polish Security Service (UB ), defected
in Berlin in December 1953 because he felt he was in imminent peril of his
life from what he saw developing in the Polish service following the death of
Stalin. It had become clear to him that he was going to be made the scapegoat
for criminal activities by his own boss in the UB against innocent individuals.
Swiatlo had never known nor seen an American intelligence officer, nor as far
as we know any other Western intelligence service representative? including
MI-6, before he volunteered his own presence in Berlin. The key structural
elements of Steven's presentation are:
? the assertion that Swiatlo was worked in-place in Warsaw from 1948 to
1953;
? that he had walked in first to MI-6 in Warsaw; and
? that the walk-in operation had been taken over from the British by
Allen Dulles (who at that time was in New York City in private life,
not working for the government). Steven would have it believed that
MI-6 checked out Swiatlo's offer with Dulles, and then turned him over
for handling.
*Interestingly enough, NATO operations, which in many cases are openly publicized,
employ just such a system.
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All of these assertions as given by Steven are unequivocal ...and erroneous.
Swiatlo was not worked in-place. He appeared for the first time in Berlin when
he himself made contact with U.S. military authorities in Berlin in late 1953.
As far as we know from the Swiatlo record, he never contacted MI-6 in 1948
nor at any other time, anywhere. Dulles was not queried by MI-6 in any
manner, shape, or form about a proposal from Swiatlo at any time. Such a
thing would have been anomalous, indeed, because it would have occurred during
the administration of another DCI, Admiral Hillenkoetter. No one with any
perception of what goes on among Western services would fail to recognize
that what Steven says regarding Swiatlo is totally incongruous with the day-to-day
operational facts of life.
The case of Noel and Harry Field and the Field family is another important
element in Steven's fictional sequence. Allen Dulles was in touch with one of
the Field brothers during his World War II Swiss activity in Switzerland.
This fact is in the public domain and is well-known. Steven converts it into a
post-war relationship manipulated by Allen Dulles and CIA to deepen and
develop mistrust among the Soviet and satellite services who, it is documented
fact, regarded the Fields of that time as intelligence service collaborators. There
is no evidence whatsoever that Dulles or CIA at any time utilized the Fields
as a deception channel or deceptively induced them to disappear behind the
Iron Curtain in 1949. The Fields were totally immersed ideologically and per-
sonally with the Soviets and the Bloc. Whatever happened in their cases occurred
in response to stimuli originating within the Communist services themselves, and
their story is still not known to us in detail. The State Department sent a
sequence of notes to Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, and the Soviet Union
inquiring about the missing Fields. The matter became an open cause c~lebre.
Not a detail was forthcoming officially until long after the death of Stalin.
Actually, it was Swiatlo after his defection in December 1953 who gave us the
first significant details about them.
To sustain his whole invented construct, Steven adds what is probably the
ultimate lie-ultimate in its utter remoteness from reality and in its credible
simplicity to an unwary reader. He asserts the existence of astill-unidentified,
CIA-controlled State Department Double Agent ("Mr. X") who worked to
the Soviets and to the Bloc as a deception channel. He asserts this "source" was
used by Dulles to complete setting the hook of deception in the outthrust soft
jaws of the KGB and its Bloc fry. The fact is obvious that no such source or
deception channel existed, and therefore it could not have been used by Dulles,
CIA, or anybody else for any purpose.
The narrative, unfortunately, is credible to the non-expert.* It is reasonably
well-written and self-sustaining, and the story hangs together, but this is because
the matter of evidence or proof is never allowed to interrupt the flow. A guile-
less reader, uninitiated in the ways of disinformatsia, could read it and accept
it, if only as a basis for discussion. There is, however, no single worthwhile
feature in the entire book.
~~.. V. Knobelspiesse
*For an example, see the review by Harold F. Alderfer, The Annals of the American
Academy (1974 ), pp. 219-221. Against this exercise in gullibility one would set most of the
reviews that have appeared in English, except for those of open Communist Party affiliation.
For a typical skeptic's evisceration of Steven's book, see Neal Ascherson, "Somebody
Blundered," New Statesman (16 August 1974 ), pp. 228-227.
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KGB: THE SECRET WORK OF SOVIET SECRET AGENTS. By John Barron.
( Reader's Digest Press-E. P. Dutton & Co., New York, 1974. )
This is a compendium of information on the State Security service of the
Soviet Union, exceeding any of its predecessors by the range, depth and ac-
curacy of its treatment of the subject. No one who pretends to expertise on
Soviet security and intelligence matters will be able to do his work without ref-
erence to this book. This book for the present moment is the authoritative word
on the subject. Specific accounts of particular experiences, events, and operations
such as The Secret World by Peter Deryabin and Inside a Soviet Embassy by
Alexander Kaznacheyev are still important but of a different genre from any
of the attempts to describe the service as a whole. It is in this last category
that Barron is clearly without a peer. KGB not only commands its subject matter,
it also recounts a series of Soviet clandestine operations in afast-paced, exciting
style that would attract most readers with the magnetic force of a spy thriller.
As appendices, KGB contains the translation of a Soviet training manual
on the recruitment of Americans and two historical notes, one on the KGB
and the other-clearly inferior qualitatively-on the Soviet military intelligence
service, the GRU. There is also athirty-five-page list of Soviet citizens engaged
in clandestine operations abroad. Mr. Barron is a skilled journalist who appears
to believe that, when dedicating a book to the what, when and why of the
KGB, one should not overlook the who. Barron names some 1559 Soviet opera-
tives abroad in his compilation. About one-third of the names are "guilt-edged";
they are drawn from the published PNG actions taken by governments against
KGB personnel under official cover all over the world since 1946. 'Chese solid
data are easily derivable from the New York Times and London Tiynes indices
by anybody. What is new is that someone like Barron has amassed and published
the results. The remaining two-thirds were gleaned from a spread of resources
that would exhaust a bird dog. In a book that attempts to blend this popular
appeal and the monograph, any error in a list of this kind is too many. A
very small number of them would appear to require further checking.
KGB details and updates the organization of the Soviet service with far
greater precision than any other book on the subject. It covers the; First and
Second Chief Directorates, which are respectively responsible for the bulk of
the foreign and domestic operations, on what approaches a brancl---by-branch
basis. This, in particular the information on the Second Chief Directorate, is
something new and important for scholars and intelligence specialists and
interested laymen as well. There are classified studies that go farther, more
accurately and more currently, but none in the overt literature. Barron's exposi-
tion should answer the needs of almost anyone who is not directly concerned with
counterintelligence analysis of the KGB and should be carefully read by those
who are. The author's insight and understanding of the relations among the
major subdivisions and of the overall role of the KGB within the Soviet
political system put his book a giant step ahead of earlier accounts.
Without question more space could have been devoted to the internal
operations of the KGB; nevertheless, Barron explains well the link between
the foreign and domestic functions of the service and its synergetic effects. The
complaint that Barron should have given more or most of his atteni:ions to the
KGB's operations inside the USSR is voiced in an acidulous review of the book
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which appeared in The Economist, 29 June 1974, p. 129, but in fact the funda-
mental purpose of the KGB to serve as the "Sword and Shield of the Party
leadership" against all enemies, foreign and domestic, real and imagined, gets
a separate, concise chapter to itself.
13arron's information on the organization of the KGB, as well as on other
topics, is based on lengthy interviews with former Soviet and East European
citizens who served or suffered from the KGB and also some of its Western
victims and dupes. Aid from unnamed Western security services is acknowledged
and assistance from the FBI and DIA specifically mentioned. CIA, Barron writes,
helped him make connections with some of his defector sources who were not
otherwise approachable. In addition, Barron and his assistant, Katharine Clark,
assembled what must he the largest collection of information on the KGB in
the open literature. Judging by the range of the bibliographic notes-which
merit notations and study-Baryon's files of clippings and articles may well
exceed holdings of some intelligence services. More to the point-he uses his
sources well. Getting the information is one thing; getting it straight and getting
it down on paper in well-organized and well-written prose is something else
again. Barron has done both. In a book as large as this, there must certainly
be errors that disturb some experts. The academies will never pardon him for
not footnoting every sentence, however impressive the bibliography. There are
indubitably matters of emphasis and interpretation that some will dispute-the
dismissal of the significance of the GRU, for example-but given the complexity
of the subject and the difficulty of finding good information about it, Barron
not only has put together an impressive collection of facts, but shows an impressive
command of his subject as well.
Among the stories in the book, one has special significance for U.S. Gov-
ernment officials. Never to my knowledge have the consequences of run-of-the-
:mill security violations and the failure to observe standard procedures and
precautions been more appallingly depicted than in the account of the Johnson-
Mintkenbaugh case. Anyone who feels irked at niggling security regulations
should know that one scrap of paper carelessly tossed into a waste basket pro-
vided the KGB with access to one of the most sensitive repositories of classified
documents in the U.S. military establishment. "Treasures of the Vault," as this
chapter is called, also proves that at least one other author can write an Eric
Ambler spy story. In contrast to Ambler's novels, however, this story just happens
to be true, pornographic movies and all. Even with today's cult of the absurd in
literature, no work of fiction could end the way the saga of Sergeant Johnson
does. If you doubt that assertion, read it and see for yourself.
The most extraordinary revelation in the book is, somewhat surprisingly,
not about a KGB agent, but rather the precise opposite, a Soviet citizen who
served the CIA. Vladimir Sakharov was a young KGB co-optee and Soviet
*See pp. 199-229. An abridged version of the chapter appeared in the January 1974
Ite?der's Digest under the title "The Sergeant Who Opened the Door." It is available from the
magazine in reprint form and makes about the best security indoctrination pamphlet one can
find. The training manual on recruiting Americans (Appendix A) is also effective in this
regard. Those in the govermnent or its contracting firms who wish to sensitize employees to
the problems of security at a time when such matters are often viewed with skepticism or
boredom should find these materials useful supplements to standard fare.
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diplomat who defected in Kuwait in the summer of 1971 after working in place
far a period of time (unspecified) for the CIA. As the book's forewot?d explains,
Sakharov got in touch with Barron after some of the chapters of the' book had
been published in Reader's Digest as separate articles. By that time Sakharov
was already living in the West. The chapter on Sakharov combines 1:wo themes
in counterpoint: the personal story of a young Muscovite, raised in top circles
of Soviet society, who came to detest those circles and the regime they ruled
and-intertwined with that story-the covert history of Soviet intrigue in the
Near East in the late 1960's and early 1970's. I know of no reason to question
the veracity of Sakharov's relation of his own life, though much of his story
cannot be confirmed by independent sources. About what he says concerning
Soviet machinations in the Near East, there is confirmation from one of the
best conceivable sources, the Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram. Al Ahram on
15 March 1974 hailed Baryon's book as an accurate source on a story that even
in today's circumstances must be embarrassing to the Egyptians. Reading it, one
realizes that an understanding of the history of the Near East during the past
ten years must include a full appreciation of the role of Soviet penetrations in
Nasser's Egypt.
Al Ahram's comments are typical of the almost uniform praise that KGB
has received from reviewers the world around. It is to Baryon's credit that his
book is so persuasive and so carefully documented that strident attacks on
it are hard, to mount. The aforementioned review in the Economist and another
in the Manchester Guardian are practically the only adverse comments available
in major media.
KGB, by definition, fits everybody's category of Class AAnti-Soviet Litera-
ture. There was a time, and not long ago, when a book in that category that
began to become popular (KGB has been on most of the best seller lists) had
to be shot down, or at least sneered at by somebody. But here we are in a
world dedicated to detente, and from Australia to San Francisco the long way
'round everybody jumps on the band wagon and says this is a bully book, very
important for our times. Of course it is, but that has never inhibited reviewers
with a "point of view" before. At the risk of sounding like a reviewer myself,
I suggest that this phenomenon may have significance as a sign of the times.
Detente these days does not mean the recognition of Soviet virtue; it means
the recognition of Soviet power. Although American political scientists, historians,
and others appear to ignore it, by anybody's logic the Committee on State
Security is an inescapable aspect of that power.* Therefore, to understand Soviet
*Robert M. Slusser notes in the Slavic Review, December 1973, pp. 825-826: "Despite its
fundamental and universally recognized importance, the secret police continues to be the
neglected stepchild of Soviet studies.... As far as the scholarly community iri this country
is concerned, the study of the secret police still seems to be regarded as somehow discreditable,
marginal, or unfeasible. Granted that there are formidable obstacles to studying the
history and operations of the secret police; granted too that the politics of U.S.-Soviet scholarly
exchange militate strongly against a choice of a dissertation topic in this area, since the Soviet
authorities would be certain to reject any application for actual research on a topic bearing
even indirectly on the Soviet policy; the fact remains that a major institution in the Soviet
political system is receiving grossly inadequate attention from the U.S. academic community:'
Slusser has a balanced review of the Barron book's strengths and weaknesses in the Russian
Review (October 1974 ), pp. 437-438.
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power, one must understand the KGB. Soviet officialdom in its dealings with
the outside world cannot avoid an unctuous hypocrisy in averring the benignity
of its intentions coupled with what the Secretary of State once identified as a
tendency to try to pick up all the loose change. Detente and trade increase the
exposure of more people to more Soviet officials, and those who have encountered
this irritating manifestation of the dialectic-whatever their views on other
subjects-can scarcely help but rejoice to see such an utterly frank book as KGB.
It highlights the contrast between the minuscule staffs of foreign embassies in
Moscow and the horde of Soviet officials, sometimes ten times as numerous,
that man Soviet embassies in the non-Communist world. It describes all those
goings-on that diplomats and journalists in Moscow know about, but seldom
mention out loud. It even snatches the wreath from the balding head of Mikhail
Sholokhov, the one Russian Nobel laureate (out of four) Moscow considers loyal.
To all those on the front lines of detente, these stories must come as a welcome
astringent.
It may be that KGB, coupled with that unanswerable chronicle of Soviet
history, The GULAG Archipelago, may make a notable contribution to interna-
tional relations. Under the influence of these books, the West may begin to
deal with the Soviet Union in openness and realism. That does not necessarily
imply hostility, but it does mean freedom from the game of pretending that the
KGB and the camps and all the rest don't matter. Effective dealing with the
Soviet Union begins with the recognition that indeed they do.
Wayne Cambridge
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THE ARAB MIND. By Raphael Patai. (Charles Scribners and Sons, New York,
1973. )
The major objectives of social science research involving the topics of
"national character" or "personality and culture" are: (1) the prediction of the
type of character that a given society is likely to produce, based upon the sum
total of its culture and social structure and (2) the demonstration of how
character or personality, in turn, impacts upon the very culture and social
structure which has shaped it.
Raphael Patai's recent book, The Arab Mind, is a significant scholarly con-
tribution to the field of national character research in general and, more specifi-
cally, to the understanding of Arab culture and national character. Further,
the book implicitly suggests the relevance of national character research to
intelligence analysis. It seems, therefore, both appropriate and useful to assess
Patai's book in the following contexts: (1) its contribution to the literature
on the Arabs, (2) its status in terms of the evolutionary development o:f national
character research as a field, and (3) both its relevance and that ol~ national
character research in general to intelligence analysis.
Patai's book is clearly the product of a profound knowledge of Arabb civiliza-
tion. The book is well organized and, for a scholarly study, especially interestingly
and elegantly written. The author does a masterful job of integrating his knowl-
edge of the many facets of the culture, such as the language, the arts and litera-
ture, and child-rearing practices, and then delineating the ways that these
cultural variables influence personality development. In this respect, it is appro-
priate to compare Patai's book with Sania Hamady's The Temperaanent and
Character of the Arabs, published in 1960, since the objective of both authors
was the same-the delineation of Arab national character. While Ha~nady and
Patai reach many of the same conclusions about the Arabs, Patai's analysis
and explanation of the "why" of their behavior places his study on a considerably
higher analytical plane than that of Hamady. The specialist on the Arabs may
not discover anything startlingly new about Arab character or world view in
Patai's book, but he will probably acquire a better appreciation of the cultural
and psychological wellsprings of Arab behavior. It is in this latter respect that
The Arab Mind is an important contribution to the scholarly literature on the
Arabs.
Where does Patai's book stand in the evolution of national character research
to date? To make such an assessment, it is necessary to review briefly the develop-
ment of this genre of research.
The intellectual roots of national character research can be traced to cultural
anthropology as early as the 1920's. During World War II, those methods em-
ployed earlier in the academic community in this field of research were brought
to bear upon a variety of problems connected with the war effort.
It was precisely the inaccessibility of the target country and the availability
of only fragmentary information about it that made national character research
relevant to intelligence analysis during the war. The cultural anthropologists had
long been developing models of former and disappearing cultures from fragmen-
tary materials. The anthropologists, joined by the psychiatrists, combined the use
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of psychoanalytic theory, interaction theory, child development theory, and learn-
ing theory with standard anthropological research methods to construct models
of the contemporary cultures of wartime enemy countries, Japan and Germany.
Indeed, Ruth Benedict's classic study The Chrysanthemum and the Sword is an
example of this multidisciplinary approach to national character research which
evolved in the World War II period.
Since the appearance of Ruth Benedict's book in 1946, national character
studies have fallen into two broad categories despite some differences in terms of
approach, focus, and explicitness of conceptual framework. Until the late 1954's,
national character studies tended to be focused on the modal personality (i.e., the
statistically most significant personality construct in the group studied, and not
necessarily that of the majority) of a group or a nation. The research findings
derived from the application of psychological, sociological, and psychoanalytical
theories were combined with other materials, such as autobiographical literature
and folklore, to produce a general description of the modal personality. The studies
of this period tended to be more descriptive than analytical, and the modal person-
ality construct tended to be related to the total cultwre, or at least, its salient fea-
tures.
In the late 1950's, a new line of research emerged alongside the earlier type
of national character study. The later studies tended to be narrower in focus than
their predecessors, in that they concentrated on the relationship of personality
traits to subsets of a given society or a given category of roles of that society,
rather than on the identification of relationships between personality and the
social structure as a whole. In addition, a number of comparative studies appeared
such as Francis L. K. Hsu's Americans and Chinese and Almond and Verba's Civic
Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations. A greater effort was
also made to use more precise measurement techniques. Large samples of given
populations, the projective psychological test, and public opinion polling tech-
niques were increasingly employed. Richard Solomon's Mao's Revolution and the
Chinese Political Culture is a good example of a recent attempt to integrate the
use of a number of these techniques.
Viewed against these two general categories of national character research,
The Arab Mind belongs more to the earlier than the later tradition of research in
this field. Patai's approach is very similar to that employed, for example, in the
Benedict and Hamady studies already cited, and by Dinko Tomasic in Personality
and Culture in Eastern European Politics. In these studies the authors used infor-
mation derived from formal and informal interviews, personal observations, and
a knowledge of the history, arts, and religion of the society. These types of data
were all integrated by means of concepts in linguistics, psychoanalytical theory,
and child-learning theory to produce the national character construct. While Patai
used three surveys carried out by others, there is no evidence that he employed
polling techniques, large population samples, or psychological projective tests in
his research. He cannot be criticized for not having used the psychological pro-
jection tests because, despite the fact that such tests have been used in a number
of national character research works, their validity in such research remains con-
troversial.
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In one respect, however, Patai's work is an improvement over that. of Bene-
dict, Tomasic, and Hamady in that he has made the theoretical undcrpi.nnings of
his research more explicit than they have. In his chapter, "The Group Aspects of
the Mind," his discussion of the relationship of the concepts of national character
and modal personality and their utility in the study of highly homogeneous socie-
ties as compared to heterogeneous industrialized societies clearly demonstrates his
concern with the theoretical framework of his research-a concern which has not
received adequate emphasis in this field. Moreover, his adherence to this frame-
work throughout his book is, indeed, impressive.
What, if any, utility does the field of national character research. have for
intelligence? It appears that the intelligence officer often implicitly incorporates
into intelligence assessments certain national character considerations in an un-
systematic and, perhaps, unconscious way. * The question is whether or not the
collection, organization, and systematic analysis of the types of data that are used
in national character studies within a more structured analytical framework would
make a significant contribution to a number of fields of intelligence activity.
Despite the relatively primitive level of methodological and conceptual rigor
that obtain in the national character research field, it has utility now and consider-
able potential for intelligence analysis in the future. National character analyses
can provide a useful, albeit broad, gauge against which the behavior of elites, gov-
ernments, and electorates can be assessed in particular situations. Once a national
character construct, such as that of the Arabs, has been developed, the next and
most difficult task is to attempt to establish linkages between it and a propensity
for action. An important intermediate step in this process for intelligences purposes
is to focus upon the extent and ways in which elites or other subgroups of a given
society vary from the modal personality or national character. In Chapter XII of
The Arab Mind, Patai has made an interesting beginning in this direcition in his
discussion of the cultural dichotomy of the elites and the masses. He si;ops, how-
ever, short of any attempt to establish the linkages referred to above.
The foregoing discussion is not intended to suggest that national character
analyses per se will enable the analyst to predict the specific acts or decisions of a
government, or any other group. But the well-researched national character di-
mension combined with other relevant variables appears to hold considerable
potential for improving the assessment of the propensity of a government, elite,
or electorate to act in certain directions.
Much work, of course, remains to be done to improve the scientific basis of
national character research. It is important for intelligence purposes, for example,
to attempt to improve the techniques for the measurement of the variance of sub-
- groups of the population from the national character construct. Continued ex-
perimentation is needed with measurement techniques, such as the Thematic
Aperception Test (TAT) , in-depth interviews, questionnaires, and other means
that hold promise for enhancing the empirical verification of national character
research results in general. Computer technology offers considerable promise for
easing the analytical burdens involved in the coding and manipulation of data
acquired from very large population samples by means of the techniques men-
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tinned above. Integration of national character research into various aspects of
intelligence activity in a productive way requires a systematic and sustained data
collection program and an integrated multidisciplinary staff to analyze the data.
In summation, the work of Patai and others in the national character research
field merits serious examination for the contribution it can make to intelligence
analysis and possibly other areas of intelligence activity.
Lloyd F. ,Jordan
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FRAN BCSRJAN TIL SLUTET: EN SPIONS MEMOARER. By Stig Wenner-
strom. (Bonniers, Stockholm, 1972. )
Stig Wennerstrom notes in his memoirs (From Beginning to End) that as a
boy he aspired to be a dentist. However, he relates, his fingers were too short and
his hands too clumsy; family tradition prevailed and like his father, an uncle, and
a grandfather, he became a military officer. In mid-career his fingers became
among the stickiest in the annals of espionage; his hands smoothly passed many
a roll of film in supposedly innocuous handshakes.
When arrested in Stockholm in June 1963, Wennerstrom, then 57, had been
an agent of the GRU for almost fifteen years. Successive assignments in Moscow
and Washington as Swedish air attache, and in Stockholm as a staff officer at
Defense Headquarters and as disarmament consultant to the Swedish Foreign
Ministry gave him broad access to sensitive information. Energetically and imag-
inatively, he used that access to conduct military, scientific, and technical espio-
nage against the United States, and to betray to the Soviets details of the Swedish
air and other defense systems which had just been upgraded at high cost.
Charged with "gross espionage," Colonel Wennerstrom was se:nteneed in
June 1964 to life imprisonment and a heavy fine. During his pre-trial interroga-
tions he became voluble and cooperative intermittently before ceasing to talk
(too soon to permit a separation of all fact from fancy or to get all the facts) . As
the story unfolded, supplemented by investigations on both sides of the Atlantic,
the quantity and quality of the intelligence he had acquired for the Soviets, es-
pecially on advanced weapons systems and military research and development,
became evident. Equally apparent was the professional skill of the GRU in assess-
ing, recruiting, manipulating, and handling Wennerstrom.
Wennerstrom was a somewhat stiff, gentlemanly individual, a devoted family
man without apparent vices, correct in behavior, conscious of rank and status, who
had studied Russian in Riga in 1933 as a young officer and had served in 1940-41
as air attache in Moscow. The accreditation lasted long enough thereafter to place
him in official and social contact with the Soviet representation in Stockholm, so
that the Soviets had had a good look at him by the time he arrived in Moscow in
1949 for his second posting there. What they had found was a man deficient in
loyalties, whose pride and vanity had been wounded when he was informed in
1948 that his performance as a pilot and in command had not been sufficiently
promising to warrant future promotion to higher command. Moreover, he liked
and excelled in languages, clearly savored the taste he had had of international
and diplomatic life, considered Sweden and the Swedish defense and intelligence
establishment to be small potatoes, and had had sufficient brushes with the intelli-
gence business to develop an overweening fascination with it. He arrived in Mos-
cow having already accepted from the Soviet attache in Stockholm a contact plan
and 5,000 crowns for having placed a pencilled dot on a map to denote the location
of a Swedish military airfield. The full recruitment which followed shortly after
his arrival on post was neither surprising nor difficult. Wennerstrom initially
rationalized his ready agreement to cooperate with the Soviets as a clever move
to penetrate Soviet intelligence; the only trouble was that he never told anyone
on the Swedish side about it.
MORI/HRP
from pg.
33-35
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Through flattering use of rank (his recruiter was a general and his primary
handler throughout the years was always "the General"; Wennerstrom himself
was "promoted" to major general in the GRU ), decorations, judicious praise (title
of "top agent", codename EAGLE ), authority to draw funds on his own judgment
as wanted and needed without receipt, the conveyance to him of the belief that
he was playing a key role in restoring a balance of power on the world scene, the
GI3U kept Wennerstrom hard at work for them with his loyalty developed and
focused on the GRU. His admiration for the organization and "the General" at the
"Center" who guided him knew no bounds and survived his arrest. Through sound
tradecraft, use of natural cover, and Wennerstrom's own sage, successful resistance
to a brief GRU effort to convert him from a singleton "agent in place" to a recruiter
and principal agent, he worked undetected for the Soviets and was esteemed by
his Swedish superiors for his reporting activities on their behalf. As the representa-
tive of a friendly neutral and armed with the additional title of chief of "The Pur-
chasing Commission of the Swedish Air Force in the United States", Wennerstrom
found American military-industrial security to resemble a sieve. Eager, if unwit-
ting, American help abounded in supplying him with information.
Wennerstrom's mistake, he claims, lay in returning to Stockholm in 1957
after five years in Washington. He wished to provide some Swedish education for
his two daughters and prepare for his retirement years. He refused the offer of
the post of air attache in London in favor of a staff position at Defense Head-
quarters in Stockholm. Back in Sweden, an uncharacteristic outburst by Wenner-
strom against a colleague concerning arrangements for the visit of a Soviet delega-
tion resurrected along-dormant suspicion in the mind of Otto Danielsson, a vet-
eran counter-intelligence officer in the Swedish Security Police (SAPO ). Dan-
ielsson recalled a report Wennerstrom had prepared about 1948 on Soviet intelli-
gence. It had struck him at the time as being a bit too well informed. In 1959
Danielsson began to look anew at Wennerstrom. Intuition, perception and, es-
pecially, patience and persistence for four years in the face of much doubt, albeit
a fair degree of cooperation, by key Swedish officials finally struck real paydirt
when Wennerstrom's maid was approached and was found to have solidly-based
suspicions. The arrest followed quickly, just as Wennerstrom, disturbed by an
apparent change in attitude toward him by a Swedish general and by the loss of
two rolls of exposed film he had hidden (they had been taken by the maid to
SAPO ), had started thinking of a rapid getaway. If returning to Sweden had been
a mistake, the tendency, through arrogance, carelessness, or class prejudice to view
the household help as little more than part of the furniture had certainly been a
costly error.
The Wennerstrom case is instructive, warranting study by operations officers
and counter-intelligence specialists alike. The memoirs are disappointing, however.
Published in Swedish and German (Mein Verrat: Erinnerungen eines Spions. F. A.
Herbig, Munich, 1973), they add very little to the accounts, based largely on the
police interrogations of Wennerstrom in 1963 and 1964, by the Swedish journalist
Hans K. Ronblom (The Spy Without a Country. New York, Coward-McCann,
New York, 1965) and by Thomas Whiteside (An Agent in Place. Viking Press,
New York, 1966) . Of these two, the Whiteside book, originally serialized in The
New Yorker, is the best. Wennerstrom's memoirs are especially repetitive of the
detailed, lengthy excerpts from the Swedish police interrogations published in
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1964 as a document of the Internal Security Subcommittee of the Judiciary Com-
mittee of the United States Senate.* The recruitment story and the tradecraft
practices are all there. The memoirs include a few anecdotes of little cansequence
as entertainment or instruction. In them Wennerstrom remains the uncritical ad-
mirer of the GRU and "the General" whose identification by "the Americans" as
Pyotr Pavlovich Melkishev he contests vigorously on the basis of description of the
:man. (Wennerstrom claims to have known his case officer throughout a:ll the years
only as Pyotr Pavlovich, in keeping with normal GRU security practice as it had
been explained to him. )
The main claim to distinction of the memoirs was a publisher's ploy. Ina pre-
publication scheme to insure wide sale of the book, Wennerstrom and his Swedish
publisher decided to attach the manuscript as a supporting document to Wenner-
strom's legal brief filed in 1972 requesting commutation of sentence, knowing that
this would result in its automatic classification. The publisher then planned to
sue for declassification arguing abridgement of press freedom and gaining con-
siderable favorable publicity for the work. The Swedish government, however,
quickly declassified the entire brief. As public property, it was cited freely by the
newspapers. Sales of the book were not impressive; the scheme gone awry took
the headlines.
Wennerstriim's prison regimen had been progressively relaxed frorn the early
years of his incarceration, and in 1972 his sentence was reduced to 29 years. In
September 1974 he applied for further commutation of sentence. The Swedish
government reduced it to the ten years already served, thus freeing; him. The
chances that Wennerstrom will shed more light on the case than he already has
done appear slight. Those with professional interest in the case and its lessons
must hope that an account written by Otto Danielsson, long since retired from
SAPO, now will be cleared by the Swedish authorities for publication.
Frederick IS:. Schilling
*The Wennerstroem Case: How it touched the United States and NATO; excerpts from
the testimony o f Stig Eric Constans Wennerstraem, a noted Soviet agent. Government
Printing Office, Washington, D.C.
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