A HANDBOOK OF WARNING INTELLIGENCE VOLUME 11 INCLUDES PARTS V-V1, CHAPTERS 19-29

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• Publication Date: November 1, 1972
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S 0795/DI 2A SECRET
A DANDROOK OF WARNING INTS'LLIGL'NC'L'
VOL(i! II
INCLLIDA'S PARTS V- VI, CNAPTER~S'' 19-29
NOVEMBER 1972
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A HANDBOOK OF WARNING INTELLIGENCE
VOLUME I I
INCLUDES PARTS V - VI
CHAPTERS 19 - 29
BY: CYNTHIA M. GRABO
PRINTED BY THE DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
NOVEMBER 1972
EXEMPT FROM GENERAL DECLASSIFICATION
SCHEDULE OF EXECUTIVE ORDER 11652
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THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN PRINTED IN RELATIVELY FEW COPIES
AND THE DEMAND IS EXPECTED TO EXCEED SUPPLY. ALL RECIP-
IENTS ARE REQUESTED TO CIRCULATE THIS HANDBOOK AND TO
RETAIN THEIR COPIES FOR FUTURE USE. IF YOU HAVE NO NEED
FOR IT, HOWEVER, PLEASE DO NOT DESTROY, BUT RETURN EITHER
TO THE NATIONAL INDICATIONS CENTER OR TO THE DEFENSE
INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, DI-2A.
III
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Recipients of this volume should also have received the earlier portions
of this work, Chapters 1 through 18, which were published in a single volume in
July 1972. An earlier printing of these first chapters also was issued to a few
recipients, largely in the Defense Department, in draft form. Although the in-
dividual chapters and sections may be read singly or out of order, it is suggested
that most readers would find it more useful to read them in sequence.
As was noted in the introduction to the first volume, this handbook is
concerned with strategic warning as an analytical problem, rather than with such
questions as improvement of collection, data processing, and crisis management
which have received so much emphasis in recent years. This work is intended
primarily for the use of intelligence personnel and in intelligence training courses,
although it is hoped that others at the policy and command levels may also find it
of value.
It should be emphasized again that this is not an official project and does
not necessarily represent the views of any agency. The work has been prepared
entirely on my own time and all opinions, except as otherwise noted, are my own.
The text has not been officially reviewed prior to publication, although several
chapters have been submitted to knowledgeable members of the intelligence com-
munity for comments. Once again, I express my thanks to all the individuals who
have offered their comments and encouragement. In particular, I am indebted to
the secretaries in the National Indications Center who have typed this manuscript,
and to the members of the Defense Intelligence Agency (especially in DI-2A) who
have arranged for its printing and distribution.
Comments would be appreciated and should be forwarded to the writer at:
National Indications Center, 1E821, Pentagon, Washington, D. C.
Cynthia M. Grabo
National Indications Center
October 1972
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A HANDBOOK OF WARNING INTELLIGENCE
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CONTENTS OF THIS VOLUME
PART V: SPECIFIC PROBLEMS OF POLITICAL, CIVIL AND ECONOMIC
ANALYSIS
Chapter 19: Importance of Political Factors for Warning
Chapter 20: Basic Political Warning -- A Problem of Perception
Chapter 21: Some Specific Factors in Political Warning
Chapter 22: Economic Indicators
Chapter 23: Civil Defense
Chapter 24: Security, Counter- Intelligence and Agent
Preparations
PART VI: SOME MAJOR ANALYTICAL PROBLEMS
Chapter 25: Warning from the Totality of Evidence
Chapter 26: The Impact on Warning of Circumstances Leading
to War
Chapter 27: Reconstructing the Enemy's Decision-Making
Process
Chapter 28: Assessing the Timing of Attack
Chapter 29: Deception: Can We Cope With It?
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TABLE OF CONTENTS (cont'd)
TO BE PUBLISHED LATER
PART VII: PROBLEMS OF PARTICULAR TYPES OF WARFARE
Chapter 30: Analysis with Hostilities Already in Progress
Chapter 31: Problems Peculiar to Guerrilla Warfare and
"Wars of Liberation"
Chapter 32: Hypothetical Problems of the Coming of
World War III
PART VIII: REACHING AND REPORTING THE WARNING JUDGMENT
Chapter 33: Vital Importance of the Judgment
Chapter 34: What Does the Policy Maker Need, and Want,
to Know?
Chapter 35: How to Write Indications or Warning Items
Chapter 36: Assessing Probabilities
Chapter 37: Some Major Factors Influencing Judgments and
Reporting
Chapter 38: Most Frequent Errors in the Judgment and Report-
ing Process
Chapter 39: Some Tactics of the Opposition
PART IX: CONCLUSIONS
Chapter 40: Some Do's and Don'ts for Analysts and Supervisors
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CONTENTS OF VOLUME I
(PUBLISHED SEPARATELY IN JULY 1972)
PART I: WHY WARNING INTELLIGENCE AND WHAT IS IT?
SOME FUNDAMENTALS
Chapter
1:
General Nature of the Problem
Chapter
2:
Definitions of Terms and Their Usage
Chapter
3:
What Warning Is, and Is Not
Chapter
4:
Warning and Collection
Chapter
5:
Intentions Versus Capabilities
PART II:
ORGANIZATION AND TOOLS OF THE TRADE
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
6:
7:
8:
9:
Problems of Organization and Management
Indicator Lists
The Compiling of Indications
Can Computers Help?
PART III:
INTRODUCTION TO THE ANALYTICAL METHOD
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
10:
11:
12:
Some Fundamentals of Indications Analysis
Some Specifics of the Analytical Method
What Makes a Good Warning Analyst?
PART IV:
SPECIFIC PROBLEMS OF MILITARY ANALYSIS
Chapter 13:
Importance of Military Indications
Chapter 14:
Order of Battle Analysis in Crisis Situations
Chapter
15:
Analysis of Mobilization
Chapter
16:
Logistics is the Queen of Battles
Chapter
17:
Other Factors in Combat Preparations
Chapter
18:
Coping with Extraordinary Military Developments
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PART V: SPECIFIC PROBLEMS OF POLITICAL, CIVIL AND
ECONOMIC ANALYSIS
CHAPTER 19: IMPORTANCE OF POLITICAL FACTORS
FOR WARNING
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Apri 1 1972
CHAPTER 19: IMPORTANCE OF POLITICAL FACTORS FOR WARNING
It is easy to demonstrate the importance and relevance of military develop-
ments for warning. Anyone can recognize that the numerous military preparedness
steps identified on indicator lists bear a direct relationship to a capability, and
hence at least a possible intention, to commit military forces. Many military
developments, including some of the most important, are physically measurable
or quantifiable -- assuming, of course, that the collection capability exists. There
are so many tanks deployed in this area, which represents such-and-such a percent-
age increase over the past two weeks, etc. Such information, factually speaking,
is unambiguous; its interpretation is not dependent on subjective judgment.
Ambiguity of Political Indicators
N a # -(- r- k'-Q -
In contrast, the relevance of political developments or political indicators
to warning is often not so readily apparent, is not factually demonstrable, and
interpretation of specific developments is likely to be highly subjective. The
potential for concealment of intention in the political field, not to mention for
deception, is much higher than for military preparations. At least in theory, it
is possible for a closed society to conceal completely its decisions, to fail to take
measures to prepare its own populace psychologically for war, and to handle its
diplomacy and manipulate its propaganda so that there is virtually no discernible
outward change in the political atmosphere which might alert the adversary. In
practice, of course, this virtually never occurs. But, even when there are numer-
ous political anomalies and significant changes in diplomacy and propaganda, the
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interpretation of their significance may be difficult and elusive. Short of old-
fashioned ultimatums and declarations of war, or the collection pipeline into the
adversary's decision-making councils, nearly all political indications are subject
to some degree of ambiguity and uncertainty. It follows, of course, that inter-
pretations of political indications are likely to be much more variable and contro-
versial than of military developments.
One manifestation of this is that there are usually fewer political and civil
developments on indicator lists and that they tend to be much vaguer and imprecise
'in wording. An illustration or two will suffice to make this point. Indicator lists
usually carry such political items as: "Protracted high-level leadership meetings,"
and "Marked intensification of internal police controls." Such developments are,
of course, potentially significant indications that decisions on war are under con-
sideration or have been taken, but they may also be attributable entirely to domestic
developments, such as civil unrest. Even political indicators tied directly to foreign
affairs, such as "A general hardening of foreign policy" or "Significant increases in
propaganda broadcasts to or about a critical area," are not in themselves necessarily
manifestations of any decision or intention to resort to conflict. Such developments
are significant even as possible indications only in relation to what is sometimes
called "the overall situation." Although not all political indicators are so unspeci-
fic, it has not been possible to define potential political indicators with anything
like the precision which is possible for military developments; there is no political
TO&E. Nor is it possible to forecast in advance whether an adversary will choose
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to publicize his objectives and intentions, seek to conceal them almost totally,
or -- as is most probable -- take some intermediate course. Thus the number of
political indications versus military is almost impossible to anticipate for any
hypothetical future situation. We can forecast with some degree of confidence
that some specific military preparations will be undertaken, but we cannot fore-
cast or at least cannot agree what manifestations of the political decision may be
evident, or how such manifestations should be interpreted.
This ambiguity and non-specificity of political indicators also often means
that our sense of "political warning" is likely to be much more subjective, and
hence more difficult to define or explain to others,, than is the military evidence.
Sometimes, there is little more than an uneasy sense or intuitive "feeling" that the
enemy is up to something, which of course is not provable or even necessarily com-
municable to others who are not thinking on the same wave length. The analyst
or military commander who attempts to put this sense of unease into words may feel
almost helpless to explain his "feelings," if not downright apprehensive that he is
making a fool of himself. Yet, often these "feelings" have been generally accurate,
if not specific, barometers of impending developments. Thus, General Lucius Clay,
a few weeks before the start of the Berlin blockade, dispatched a cable to Army
Intelligence in Washington, which said in part: "Within the last few weeks, I have
felt a subtle change in Soviet attitude which I cannot define but which now gives me
a feeling that it [war] may come with dramatic suddenness. I cannot support this
change in my own thinking with any data or outward evidence in relationships other
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than to describe it as a feeling of a new tenseness in every Soviet individual with
whom we have official relations." 1 Or, as General Clay later recalled his feel-
ings at the time: "Somehow I felt instinctively that a definite change in the atti-
tude of the Russians in Berlin had occurred and that something was about to happen..
I pointed out that I had no confirming intelligence of a positive nature."2
Much the same sense of unease that something was about to happen has
haunted perceptive intelligence analysts on other occasions -- such as the spring
of 1950 prior to the North Korean attack in South Korea, and in the early months
of 1962, even before the marked upsurge of Soviet shipments to Cuba was begun.
Even when political warning is less vague and subjective -- that is, when
the political atmosphere is clearly deteriorating and tensions are rising over a spe-
cific situation which may lead to war -- the political indicators still may be impre-
cise and not measurable or quantifiable evidence of a specific course of enemy action.
There are, of course, exceptions to this, in which the adversary may make no attempt
to conceal his plans, or in which direct warnings are issued to the intended victim,
both privately and publicly. Often, however, political indications can give us
-only generalized warning, such as a recognition that the dangers of war are increas-
ing substantially, or that the enemy is clearly committed to some course of action
which entails a grave risk of hostilities.
','Walter Millis, ed., The Forrestal Diaries (New York, The Viking Press, 1951),
p. 387.
2 i,ucius D. Clay, Decision in Germany (New York, Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1950),
p. 354.
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Critical Role of Political Factors for Warning
In large part because of these uncertainties, there exists a fundamental
mistrust and misunderstanding of the importance of political factors for warning.
Particularly among military officers, although by no means confined to them,
there has been a tendency to downplay the significance of "political warning."
Because political indications are less precise, less measurable and less predictable
than military indications, it is an easy step to conclude that they somehow matter
less, and that we can give them only secondary or incidental attention in our assess-
ment of the enemy's intentions. Warning papers and estimates, in some cases,
have seemed to place undue emphasis on the detection of military preparations,
with only passing reference to the political problem. The importance of the politi-
cal assessment has rarely been so well defined as in the following perceptive com-
ments written several years ago by one of the few real warning experts in the US
intelligence community:
We query whether the critical role of the political factors in warning
may not warrant somewhat more emphasis or highlighting.
We appreciate that, in the warning process, the political factor --
or "posture" --constitutes one of the most esoteric and elusive fields. The
very term "political posture" remains essentially ambiguous. Nevertheless,
elusive, ambiguous or no, its critical role in warning must be duly weighed.
We discern the implication that the political factor somehow constitutes a
separable category, distinct from that of physical preparations; that when
joined with the latter at some point well along in the game, it may, mathe-
matically, add to or subtract from the sum of our physical holdings. Actu-
ally, the political context is determinative of whether at any and every
given point in the progress of the enemy's preparations, you indeed hold any
sum at alI in the "preparations" category. The political context to us is not
merely another increment to the warning conveyed by a particular pattern or
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patterns of observed physical "preparations." It is rather the essential,
a priori, context which establishes that a particular physical activity may
have any possible relevance to a real, live warning issue; it gives or
denies to the physical "preparations" their presumed evidential value as
indications. In any discussion of a hypothetical future warning problem,
there is, of necessity, present an exquisitely subtle subjective assumption.
Any discourse on what indications or evidence one expects to receive, how
one will handle these, etc., assumes the very point at issue--that one is
dealing with activities recognized as "preparations." Now, logically,
there cannot be "preparations" for something that in fact the enemy has no
conscious design of doing; there cannot be a valid "indication" of that
which does not exist in reality (much less a whole compendium of such
"indications" sampled from a cross-section of the attack-bound enemy
national entity). Unless and until, and then only to the degree that, the
intelligence community's intellectual assumptions and convictions as to the
enemy's political posture can rationally accommodate at least the possibility
that the enemy just might really be preparing to attack, there is not likely
to be acceptance--even contingent and tentative--of any enemy activity
whatever--specific or in pattern--as reflecting or indicating "preparations"
to attack. So long as the prevailing political assessment of the enemy's
foreign policy objectives, motivational factors, etc., confidently holds
that the course of action for which alleged "preparations" are being made
is inconceivable, or impossible (or even unlikely), there has not even been
a,beginning of the cumulative process [of indications intelligence]. Thus
the political factor invariably stands athwart the warning exercise from the
very outset, and represents a constant, vital ingredient in the warning proc-
I ess from beginning to end.
Our remarks above derive primarily from our cumulative experience in
the warning process. The some conclusion, however, follows from the intrin-
sic logic of the problem itself. The very end to which warning generally
addresses itself--enemy intent to attack--is fundamentally a political issue,
involving a political decision of the highest order, made by the political
leadership of the enemy state (we are excluding here, of course, the "Failsafe"
issue of some military nut just arbitrarily pushing a button). The working
rationale underlying the exercise discussed throughout this estimate is simply
the presumed existence of:
(a) an enemy decision to attack;
(b) a plan of measures/preparations to be taken to insure
success of the attack;
(c) implementation of the plan.
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The intelligence processes involve basically our attempt to detect, identify,
and place in order fragmentary manifestations of the process actually under
way in (c), with a view toward reconstructing and authenticating the essen-
tial outlines of (b), from which we hope to derive and prove (a) which equals
classic warning. We cannot hope to reason effectively from (c) to (a) with-
out a correct, albeit hypothetical, appreciation from the outset of (a). Here
again, then, we find that in theory as well as in practice the crucial, final
link is entirely political . Whether viewed from Moscow or Washington, the
political context is the capstone: for the enemy--the beginning of that fate-
ful course; for US intelligence--the end !
Political Perception Fundamental to Warning
The perception of the enemy's fundamental goals and priorities is the sine qua
non of warning. It constitutes the most significant difference between those who
"have warning" and those who do not. No amount of military evidence will serve
to convince those who do not have this political perception of the adversary's objec-
tives and national priorities, or those who cannot perceive that military action may
be the rational outcome of the adversary's course of action to date. The validity of
this point can be demonstrated in instance after instance; it is the problem of "those
who cannot see," and more "facts" will have little effect on their ability to see.
Just as some could not see that Hitler was bent on conquest in Europe, others later
could not see that China would or even might intervene in Korea, or that the USSR
would or even might invade Czechoslovakia. All were fundamentally problems in
political perception, rather than the evaluation of military evidence. An indica-
tions study on the Czechoslovak crisis (written after the event) described the analytic
problem as it existed in mid-July (just prior to the start of Soviet mobilization and
major troop deployments) as follows:
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It is important to note that, while current intelligence reporting at
this time clearly and explicitly recognized the gravity of the crisis and the
nature of Soviet tactics, there was also a fundamental difference of opinion
among analysts. The point at issue was the means which the Soviet Union
could and would use to accomplish its objectives and whether it would, if
faced by continuing Czechoslovak intransigence, ultimately resort to overt
intervention in Czechoslovak affairs.
On the one hand, there was a group of analysts who questioned whe-
ther there was anything that the Soviet Union really could do, including
employment of military force, to reverse the trends in Czechoslovakia. This
group was also inclined to the view that the USSR, if unable to secure Czech
compliance by political means, would not jeopardize its international image,
its relations with western Communist Parties and its progress toward coexistence
with the United States by direct military action. It believed that the USSR
had changed or matured politically since the days of the Hungarian interven-
tion and was unlikely to take such action again. For these reasons, direct
Soviet action against Czechoslovakia was viewed as somewhat "irrational"
and therefore unlikely. This group was thus predisposed, in varying degrees,
to regard subsequent major Soviet military moves as more pressure on Czecho-
slovakia rather than as bona fide preparations for military action.
On the other hand was a group of analysts who inclined to the belief
quite early in the summer that the USSR was deadly serious in its determina-
tion to maintain control of Czechoslovakia and would ultimately use any
means, including military force, to insure this. They believed that the USSR,
not just for political but also for strategic reasons, could not tolerate the loss
of Czechoslovakia and that Soviet security interests were the paramount con-
sideration. The USSR therefore would decide, if in fact it had not already
decided, that military action against Czechoslovakia was the lesser of the
evils which confronted it. These analysts thus did not regard such a course
of action as irrational, and they were predisposed earlier rather than later to
regard the Soviet military moves as preparations for direct intervention.
Such judgments or estimates by individuals are crucial to the warning
process, and each person makes his own regardless of whether there is an agreed
national estimate. Each analyst is influenced, perhaps unconsciously, by his
preconceived views or his opinion of what is rational or logical behavior on the
part of the enemy. His judgment on this will help to determine, sometimes
more than he may realize, not only how he interprets a given piece of informa-
tion but what he selects to report at alI .
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The foregoing discussion should help to explain why some critics object to
the terms "military warning" and "political warning" as if they were separate
processes. There are indications which are essentially military, and those which
are primarily political, but there is only one kind of warning. It is the percep-
tion of the significance of all these developments in toto. Warning, like beauty,
lies in the eye of the beholder.
It is highly erroneous to presume, as many do, that political analysts (or
even political agencies, such as the Department of State) make political analyses,
and that military analysts (and military agencies, such as the Department of Defense)
make military analyses. The intelligence offices of the Department of State do a
great deal of essentially military analysis and must constantly take military factors
into account in making political assessments. Still more pertinent, perhaps, is
the fact that military analysts are constantly making essentially political judgments
about the likely military courses of actions of our potential enemies. They may not
recognize that this is so; it.may be entirely unconscious, but assessments of political
factors underlie virtually all military estimates and other analyses of enemy courses
of action.
It may be extremely important for warning that gratuitous political judgments
of intent do not creep into military assessments of the enemy's capabilities, or at
least that the political judgment be clearly separated from the statement of the mili-
tary capability. This point was well illustrated in judgments made prior to the out-
break of the Korean War in June 1950. By March, Army Intelligence was correctly
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reporting that the steady buildup of North Korean forces gave them the capability
to attack South Korea at any time -- but then undercut this significant military
judgment (a warning in itself) with the judgment that it was not believed that
North Korea would do it, at least for the time being. The some positive military
but negative political judgments were being made by General MacArthur's intelli-
gence in the Far East. Thus, the gratuitous political judgment (the basis and argu-
mentation for which was never really set forth) tended in effect to dilute or even
negate a highly important military estimate.
Warning has failed more often for lack of political perception than it has
for lack of military evidence. When I have pointed this out to military officers,
their reaction often is that you really cannot trust these political people, and if
more heed had been paid to the military people, all would have gone well . In
some cases this may be true (it is at least partly true for Czechoslovakia in 1968),
but-in other cases it has been the military themselves who have permitted their own
political misperceptions to override the military evidence. And there are cases in
which political officers have been well ahead of the military analysts in perception
of the likely course of military action. In warning, where we have so often been
wrong, there is blame to go around. The point is that the political judgment, no
matter who makes it, will likely be even more important than the military analysis
for the assessment of the enemy's intentions.
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PART V: SPECIFIC PROBLEMS OF POLITICAL, CIVIL AND
ECONOMIC ANALYS I S
CHAPTER 20: BASIC POLITICAL WARNING A PROBLEM OF PERCEPTION
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CHAPTER 20: BASIC POLITICAL WARNING--A PROBLEM OF PERCEPTION
Presumably, few persons would take exception to the general thesis set forth.
in the preceding chapter -- that the perception of enemy intentions is essentially a
political judgment of what.he will likely do in given circumstances, and that this
understanding of national priorities and objectives is fundamental to any warning
judgment. In this chapter, this problem will be examined in more detail, with
some specific illustrations of how it may affect our appreciation of the enemy's
course of action.
Perceptions of the Likelihood of Conflict
In normal circumstances, the likelihood or unlikelihood of conflict between
two or more nations is fairly well understood, not only in government circles but by
the educated public, and these judgments are usually quite accurate. They are
derived from our recognition that the basic conditions for war between two or more
nations either do not exist at all, or are present in varying degrees of probability
ranging from a very small chance that war would occur to the situation in which
virtually all political signs of ultimate hostilities are positive.
We may cite two examples of these extremes. War between the United
States and Canada, given the present international situation and particularly the
political systems of the two nations and their long tradition of friendship, appears
virtually inconceivable. For war to occur between them, there would have to be
drastic and fundamental political changes, which would be clearly recognizable.
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At the other extreme, the formation of the state of Israel, in the midst of Arab
countries which are bitterly opposed to it and indeed deny its right to exist at all,
has created a situation in which the fundamental conditions for war are present
at all times -- and which have led to three wars in 20 years. Until or unless the
political atmosphere is drastically changed, the probabilities are that war between
Israel and the Arab states will I erupt at some time again. There need be no funda-
mental worsening of the atmosphere for this to occur. Politically speaking, war
is always a probability, and it is largely military restraints, particularly the superi-
ority of Israeli military forces, that thus far have served to prevent its recurrence
since the 1967 conflict.
Between these two extremes, there are all sorts of gradations of our assess-
ments of the probabilities of conflict between nations, or of our perceptions of
whether a given nation is or is not inclined to resort to hostilities, or of how aggres-
sive or cautious it may be in pursuit of its aims. Our understandings of these ques-
tions are basic not only to our intelligence assessments (particularly our national
intelligence estimates) but also to our national political and military policies. Our
views concerning whether the USSR would or would not launch a surprise military
attack on the US if it felt it could get away with it, or whether China would back
another attack by North Korea if it felt the risks were tolerable, are absolutely
fundamental . They determine in large part not only how we assess particular moves
by these nations, but more importantly what risks we think that we can run and how
much of the national budget is allocated to defense against the contingency of attack
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by our potential enemies.
A brief examination of our changing attitudes toward the Soviet Union and
China since World War II will amply illustrate how fundamental these attitudes are
both to our national policies and to intelligence assessments of their likely courses
of action.
Our military alliance with the USSR in World War II, together with the US
desire to end the war as soon as possible and bring the boys home, was conducive to
an atmosphere, or euphoria, in which suggestions that the USSR might have some
aggressive post-war ambitions were initially most unpopular, and often completely
rejected. The writer recalls how difficult it was to gain a hearing in Army Intelli-
gence in 1944-45 for the idea that the USSR had subversive designs in Latin America.
It took a series of unpleasant shocks -- the repression of Eastern Europe by Soviet
forces, the Soviet invasion of Iran in 1946 and threat against Turkey in the same
year, Communist guerrilla warfare in Greece, and the Communist subversive threat
to Western Europe -- to bring about a major change in national attitudes, policies,
and intelligence assessments of Soviet intentions. There followed, in 1948, the
Communist coup in Czechoslovakia and the Berlin blockade, and in 1950 the Soviet-
backed North Korean attack on South Korea. This series of cold war crises with
the Soviets ultimately brought about an atmosphere in which many in this country,
including some in the intelligence field, became convinced that the USSR was seeking
world domination by force, and that it was deterred from further military ventures
only by US strength and willingness to respond to the threat. Yet, in little more than
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a decade (following the Soviet retreat in the Cuban missile crisis and the ensuing
relaxation of US-Soviet tensions), attitudes had swung so for back the other way
that many had come to view a detente with the US as the highest priority in Soviet
policy. To these people, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia came as a rude
surprise -- not for lack of warning, of which there was ample, but for lack of
perception of Soviet objectives and priorities.
The China problem over the same period has presented a not dissimilar
picture. A view, widely held in the 1950's because of the intervention in Korea
and the threat of intervention in Southeast Asia, was that the Chinese Communists
were highly aggressive and intent on conquest of much of Asia. Today, almost
the opposite view has become accepted -- that they are highly preoccupied with
building up their country and would enter into foreign military ventures only if
they saw their own security to be directly threatened. Needless to say, these
changing attitudes have tended materially to affect our assessments of possible indi-
cations of their military intentions.
Such attitudes are crucial to our views as to the nature, and amount, of
"political warning" which we may receive. If the opinion prevails that the
national leadership of any country is essentially aggressive and bent on expansion
or conquest, then it follows that there need be no basic political changes in the
attitudes or behavior of that country before it attacks. In this case, the casus belli
already exists; it is not brought about by some change in circumstance which we will
be able to perceive.
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This problem of how much "political warning" we would receive of Soviet
attack in Europe has been a bone of contention in NATO planning and estimates,
with national positions often closely keyed to the proximity of the potential enemy.
Thus, those nations of Western Europe most immediately in danger of being over-
whelmed by a Soviet ground force attack have often placed less faith in "political
warning time" than have those, such as ourselves, who are not in such immediate
danger. Most US analysts today would agree that the outbreak of war in Europe
is now almost inconceivable without a fundamental and discernible change in the
political situation, which would generate a period of political tension in which
the growing possibility of war would be evident. Nonetheless, there remain some
who do not accept this even today, just as -- at the peak of the cold war in the
late 1940's and 1950's -- many analysts would have questioned that any specific
"political warning" of Soviet military intentions would have been received. There
have been many military papers, some of quite recent vintage, which have main-
tained that the USSR not only could attack in Europe with little or no warning, but
probably would do so. Such judgments are both military and political; they assume
both that there would be no significant military buildup or other discernible prepar-
edness measures prior to the attack, and also that there would be no major change in
the political atmosphere which would raise the likelihood of conflict. Obviously,
our assumptions and attitudes on this question are absolutely vital to our views on
warning of attack in Europe, and the opposing views have proved virtually irrecon-
cilable.
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JLL.I\L I
Long-Term Factors: Priorities and Traditional Behavior
How any nation may react in a particular situation will usually be predicated,
at least in part, on its traditional national objectives and past performance. It is
thus essential to understand what the national objectives or priorities of the potential
enemy have been in the past. This, of course, assumes a rationality and consistency
of national behavior which have not always been the case, but the premise nonethe-
less is usually valid. It is from such concepts of likely national behavior in certain
circumstances that we derive our judgments of what a nation wi I I fight for and what
it will not. We know from experience that the Soviet Union has fought (or at least
used its military forces) to preserve its hegemony over its empire in Eastern Europe,
and we therefore tend to deem it likely that it would, if necessary, do so again.
On the other hand, experience thus far has taught us that the USSR is not likely to
run the risks of fighting to gain new territory.
It is virtually impossible for any country (or leader) to conceal for long what
its basic philosophies and national objectives are. Deception and concealment
cannot extend this far. All leaders need some popular support for their programs,
particularly programs which may ultimately lead to war. History shows that most
leaders, even those bent on a course of aggression, rarely have made much effort
to conceal their intentions, and some leaders (e.g. Hitler in Mein Kampf) have
provided us with virtual blueprints of what they planned to accomplish. If we do
not, in such cases, correctly perceive the enemy's general course of action, it is
often because we did not wish to believe what we were being told -- just as many
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refused to accept the clear warnings from Hitler's own writings.
Unfortunately, however, political warning is not this simple. While it is
essential to understand the potential enemy's fundamental objectives and priorities,
this is not likely to provide us with specific warning of what he will do in some
particular situation. It usually cannot tell us how great a risk he is prepared to
run to achieve his objectives, how far he may seek them by political means before
he will resort to military action or whether he will, in fact, ever finally take the
military course. In short, even when our understanding of the adversary's philoso-
phy and objectives is pretty good, we must still have some more specific understand-
ing of his objectives and decisions in the specific situation in order to predict his
likely course of action.
Strategic Importance of the Particular Issue
Except in instances of long-planned deliberate aggression, the possibility
of conflict usually arises over some particular issue or development, and the poten-
tial aggressor may have had very little control of it (see discussion in Chapter 26).
Or, if the situation is largely of his own making, development of the situation and
the reactions of others may be different from what he had expected. There are
potentially, and often actually, a vast number of complicating factors which may
influence his political decisions. It will not be enough just to have a general esti-
mate of how he should react in such circumstances, or how he has reacted in the
past. It is important to understand how he views the situation now and to interpret
how he will behave in this particular instance. We are confronted now with a
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condition and not a theory. We thus move from the long-term estimative approach
to the problem to the specific and more short-term indications approach.
How much weight are we going to give, in these circumstances, to our
traditional concepts of this nation's objectives and likely courses of action, and
how much to the specific indications of what he is going to do this time? In a fair
number of cases, there is not apt to be a great deal of conflict here -- the tradi-
tional or seemingly logical course of action will in fact prove to be the right one.
In this case, the current political indications will be generally consistent with how
we expect this particular nation to perform. This will be particularly true if both
past behavior and current indications call for an essentially negative assessment --
i.e., that the nation in question will not resort to military action in these circum-
stances.
The difficulties in warning are likely to arise when some of these factors
are out of consonance with one another, and particularly when standing estimates
or judgments would dictate that the adversary will not take military action in this
situation, but the current indications, both military and political, suggest that he
will. Which is right, and what validity should be given our current indications
as against the going estimate?
Any answer without numerous caveats is likely to be an oversimplification
and subject to rebuttal with examples which will tend to negate the general conclu-
sion. History nonetheless suggests that the greater weight in these cases should be
given to the current indications. In other words, it is usually more important to
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understand the strategic importance of the particular issue to the nation than it is
to place undue weight on traditional behavior and priorities. This is, after all,
the fundamental cause of warning failures -- that the behavior of the aggressor
appeared inconsistent with what he would normally have expected him to do, or
with our estimate of what he would do. Thus, we were "surprised." He did not
do what we thought he would do, or should do.
In some instances, the enemy's course of action truly does appear irrational.
It is a misjudgment of the situation, in either the long or short term, or both, and
in the end it is counterproductive to him. Two conspicuous examples which come
to mind are Pearl Harbor -- which was a short-term triumph but long-term misjudg-
ment on the part of Japan -- and the Cuban missile crisis, which was a gross mis-
calculation in the short term. In both, the indications of what the enemy was
doing were more important to an assessment of his intentions than any going esti-
mates, which in fact proved to be wrong. It was observed, in one of the numerous
post-mortems on the Cuba crisis, that we had totally misjudged Khrushchev's sense
of priorities (just as he had misjudged ours) and that there must have been an over-
riding requirement in his mind to achieve some degree of strategic parity with the
US which would have led him to take such a risk.
In lesser degree, this may be said of many crises. The perception of what
the enemy is thinking and how important the current issue is to him is fundamental
to our ability to understand what he will do. It was a lack of such perception that
lay behind much of our misjudgment of North Vietnamese intentions and persistence
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in the Vietnam war. As has subsequently become obvious, both US intelligence
and perhaps to a greater degree policy levels (there were individual exceptions,
of course) vastly underestimated the determination and ability of the North Viet-
namese leadership to sustain the war effort. No doubt this attitude contributed
materially to the reluctance to believe in 1965-66 that Hanoi was mobilizing its
armed forces for the conduct of a prolonged war in the South (see discussion in
Chapter 15).
We should note here also that it may require no particular collection effort
or sophisticated analytic talent to perceive how nations feel about particular issues.
Even our security-conscious adversaries whom we characteristically suspect of all
kinds of chicanery are not necessarily engaged in devious efforts to conceal how
they feel on great problems and issues vital to their national security or objectives.
It will often be quite obvious how they feel about something and how important it
is to them -- if we will only take the time to examine what they are saying and try
to see it from their viewpoint. In some cases-- such as China's intervention in the
Korean war and North Vietnam's general program for the conduct of the war in South
Vietnam -- they have virtually told us what they intended to do. In others -- such
as the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia -- they have made no secret whatever of
the criticality of the issue and of its overriding importance to them, and have strongly
indicated that force would be used if needed.
Czechoslovakia as a Problem in Political Warning
The Czechoslovak problem is worth some elaboration here since it provides
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an unusually clear and interesting example of the nature of political warning, the
problems involved, and the lack of understanding of what political warning is.
It is hoped that the reader will not tire in the coming chapters of the use of the
invasion of Czechoslovakia as an example, but we have had few cases which have
served to demonstrate so many valid principles of warning. It is indeed a classic,
textbook case.
Some weeks after the invasion, this writer was asked to review a draft
paper written in one of the military intelligence agencies (which shall go unnamed)
concerning the invasion. Among other things, this paper stated that, as that
agency had previously maintained would be the case in event of Soviet military
aggression, "there was no political warning of the invasion" (sic!). No political
warning! We had had political warning all summer long, in repeated and progres-
sive manifestations, for at least five months before the invasion, of the Soviet Union's
deep concern with the potential consequences of the liberalization trend. As the
"Prague Spring" continued to flourish, the USSR's anxiety over the situation and
political and military pressures on the Dubcek regime became ever more evident.
At no time did the USSR attempt either publicly or privately to disguise its concern
that political developments in Czechoslovakia posed an ultimate if not immediate
threat to the political and military hegemony of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe.
So evident was the USSR's preoccupation with this problem that there was some tend-
ency to believe that it had exaggerated the threat and was "overreacting." The
Soviet leadership clearly was obsessed with the problem of Czechoslovakia.
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There were, moreover, specific warnings of the Soviet Union's intention
to invade if political measures failed to achieve the desired goal . Both the French
and Italian Communist Parties were so alarmed in mid-July (five weeks before the
invasion) that their leaders hurried to Moscow to plead with the Soviets not to
invade. Both returned empty-handed and with no assurances from Moscow that
military force would not be used. Concurrent with this, the five invading powers
convened in Warsaw and issued a virtual ultimatum to Czechoslovakia. Two weeks
later, agreements reached at Cierna and Bratislava called on the Dubcek regime to
take certain measures to redress the situation, with an implicit threat that failure to
comply could lead to military action by the massive forces which now surrounded
Czechoslovakia.
What can be meant then by "no political warning"? Presumably, only that
the USSR never issued a direct public threat to use military force, and that there
was no last-minute ultimatum or dramatic shift in propaganda which would have
signalled that invasion finally was imminent. But rarely has basic political warning
of intention been more evident. The USSR never attempted to conceal its intention
to bring the Czechoslovak situation under control and in fact tried virtually every
other device at its command before it finally resorted to military force. To maintain
that political warning was lacking in this circumstance is to misunderstand political
warning. While sometimes it may be explicit and specific, it often will be general-
ized. It usually will not provide us definite evidence that final decisions have been
reached and particularly that military action is imminent, since most nations will seek
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to withhold such information in the interests of achieving tactical surprise (see
Chapter 28).
The NATO powers, which were largely surprised by the invasion of Czecho-
slovakia, in retrospect came to recognize that there had in fact been ample warning.
A post-mortem read: "We -- and the Czechs -- had several months of quite visible
political warning, plus a number of weeks of strategic warning, as Warsaw Pact
forces got into position to threaten the Czech leaders with a military invasion."
Some Factors Influencing Political Perception
We have addressed in other chapters the human factor of perceiving and
believing evidence which is in conflict with one's preconceptions, and we will be
returning to this subject again in later chapters. Objective perception of the
enemy's attitudes and the ability to look at things from his point of view are crucial
to warning, and above all to political analysis, since this will necessarily be more
subjective than the compiling and analysis of military data.
The "climate of opinion" also strongly influences political perception, as
noted earlier in this chapter with regard to our changing national attitudes toward
the USSR and China since World War II. It is not only very difficult for an indi-
vidual to maintain an indepefdent viewpoint against a widespread contrary view
about another nation, it may prove almost impossible to gain acceptance for such a
view, even when there may be considerable evidence to support it. Time is needed
to change national attitudes.
A somewhat related factor may be the influence of our own national policies
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and military plans on our judgments of what the adversary may do. Once a
national decision has been made on a certain course of action -- such as whether
a particular country is or is not vital to our defense and hence whether we will
or will not defend it -- there will almost inevitably be some impact on our assess-
ment of that nation's actions. It is not so obvious as simply saying what the policy
level would like to hear (or not saying what it would like not to hear); there tends
also to be a more subtle influence on our thinking and analyses. Various historical
examples could probably be cited, Vietnam for one. Our concepts of North Viet-
nam as an aggressive nation bent on conquering the South almost certainly were
influenced, or at least reinforced, by the US decisions in 1965 to commit forces
to defend the South; it then became acceptable to talk of North Vietnam as an
aggressor and hence to think in such terms.
Judgments concerning North Korean intentions in the period prior to the
attack of June 1950 also were materially influenced by US policies in that area.
For at least three years before that attack, it had been officially recognized that
there was grave danger that North Korea would seek to take over the South if US
forces were withdrawn. Nonetheless, it was decided to withdraw US forces,
partly on the grounds that South Korea was not essential to the US military position
in the Far East, and to hand the Korean problem to the United Nations. Once
having decided to write off South Korea as a US military responsibility, the US
made no military plans for the defense of South Korea against an attack from the
North, and seemingly it became US policy not to defend South Korea. The effect
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of this on intelligence assessments, and thus indirectly on warning, was two-fold:
as a low priority area for US policy, Korea became a low priority collection
target; and intelligence analysts, believing that the US would take no military
action if North Korea attacked, tended to downplay both the importance and by
implication the likelihood of the attack in their assessments. Even those who
expected the attack and predicted that it was coming (not necessarily in June, of
course), saw the possibility as a relatively unimportant development in comparison
with other potential Communist military threats in Europe and the Far East, and
hence gave it little attention in their assessments. They saw no urgency in warn-
ing the policy maker about Korea, since nothing was going to be done about it
anyway. It was only one of many areas where the so-called Communist Bloc
(meaning the Soviet Union and its obedient satellites) might strike, and apparently
one of the least important.
A related factor influencing assessments on Korea in that period was the
concept that only the Soviet Union was a real military threat against which US
military forces should be prepared to act. The concept of limited "wars of libera-
tion" or indirect aggression through third parties was vaguely perceived, if at all .
North Korea, like Communist Europe, was seen only as a pawn of Moscow; war,
if it came, would be on Soviet instigation and part of a much larger conflict.
Intelligence assessments, as well as military planning, reflected this view of the
Communist threat and scarcely hinted at the possibility of a Communist attack
which would be confined to the Korean peninsula. General Ridgway has'well
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described the then prevailing concept as follows:
"By 1949, we were completely committed to the theory that the
next war involving the United States would be a global war, in which Korea would
be of relatively minor importance and, in any event indefensible. All our planning,
all our official statements, all our military decisions derived essentially from this
belief." 1
Finally, we may note the effects on judgments of the likelihood of attack
of the unwillingness to believe it or to accept it -- the tendency to push the prob-
lem aside as too unpleasant to think about, in the hope that it may just go away.
We have noted this human tendency earlier, and we will be coming back to it in a
later chapter, as one of the major factors affecting the warning judgment. This
tendency, which all of us have in some degree, may be accentuated by a sense of
hopelessness and inability to do anything about it, or by a desire not to rock the
boat or stir the waters lest the potential aggressor be even more provoked. This
last consideration possibly was a major factor in Stalin's apparent failure to have
anticipated the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, and his seeming
dismissal of the numerous warnings of the coming attack. There is no doubt that
the USSR had ample long-term strategic warning of the German offensive, and some
observers have felt that Stalin was blind to this, suffering from a megalomania almost
as great as Hitler's. But an alternate thesis holds that he did foresee the attack but,
Ma weft B. Ridgway, The Korean War (Garden City, N. Y., Doubleday & Co.,
Inc., 1967), p. 11.
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believing that nothing further could be done to prevent it, he sought to delay it
as long as possible by trying to appease Hitler and thus publicly refusing to concede
that there was danger of attack. Whether true or not -- we shall probably never
know what Stalin really thought -- the effect of his policies was to decrease the
preparedness of the Soviet "public and particularly the armed forces for the attack
when it finally came.
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PART V: SPECIFIC PROBLEMS OF POLITICAL, CIVIL AND
ECONOMIC ANALYS I S
CHAPTER 21: SOME SPECIFIC FACTORS IN POLITICAL
WARNING
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July IY/L
CHAPTER 21: SOME SPECIFIC FACTORS IN POLITICAL WARNING
In this chapter, we shall examine some of the types of political developments
which may provide us warning and attempt some assessment of their value as indica-
tions. It is very difficult to be specific on these subjects, that is to predict what
kinds of political developments are most likely to be of value in any warning situa-
tion which may arise in the future, or even whether they are likely to occur at all.
Therefore, this discussion perforce is rather generalized and probably inadequate,
but will include some specific illustrations from the past.
Diplomacy and Foreign Policy
Since war is a carrying out of political relations by other means and nations
will usually resort to war only when they have failed to secure their objectives by
political means, the conduct of foreign policy and diplomacy obviously are highly
important indications of national objectives. It is difficult to conceive of hostilities
breaking out between nations today without some prior crisis or at least deterioration
in their diplomatic relations. Indeed, historically, the most obvious early warning
of approaching hostilities has usually been in the field of foreign political relations.
The outbreak of both world wars in Europe was preceded by marked deterioration in
the international political climate, which made the threat of war apparent to all, if
not "inevitable." Even Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was preceded by a
crisis in US-Japanese political relations, which had greatly raised US fears of war,
although specific Japanese intentions were not foreseen. Those who are confident
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that the coming of future wars also will be foreshadowed by international political
crises and developments in the conduct of foreign policy unquestionably have the
lessons of history on their side.
Nonetheless, there is a substantial body of opinion which questions the
likelihood that wars of the future will necessarily be preceded by such obvious
changes in the political atmosphere. Moreover, it is our uncertainty that political
indications of this nature will provide us warning that largely accounts for the
existence of indications intelligence at all . If we could be confident of this type
of political warning, not to mention old-fashioned ultimatums and declarations of
war, then obviously there would be little need for much indications analysis. We
could confine ourselves to assessments of the enemy's capabilities.
The circumstances surrounding the outbreak of some conflicts since World
War II certainly justify this concern. The North Korean attack on South Korea,
the most conspicuous example, was not preceded by any political crisis or diplo-
matic warning in the near term, although the political atmosphere had long been
highly strained, and of course the two sections of the country had no diplomatic
relations. The diplomatic warnings of Chinese intervention in Korea -- although
they were issued -- fell short of what might have been expected if the Chinese
objective was truly to deter the advance of US/UN forces toward the Yalu. The
Middle East conflicts of 1956 and 1967 were both preceded by international politi-
cal crises, but specific political indications that Israel had decided to attack were
largely lacking.
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There are perhaps three major reasons that we have I ess confidence that
we will receive specific political warning through developments in foreign policy
and diplomacy than has been true in the past:
\ Modern weapons, even non-nuclear weapons, have given a greater
advantage to the attacker, thus increasing the value of political surprise. The
Israeli attack of 1967 is a prime example. Probably in part because of this,
is no longer considered desirable to break political relations or to declare war
prior to attacking, and few nations today would probably do so.
It is the doctrine of our major potential enemies in the Communist
world to attack without diplomatic warning, and they almost certainly would do
so, however much generalized political warning there might be beforehand of their
intentions. In the short term, this is one of the easiest and most common means of
deception (see Chapter 29).
The pressures brought by other states, through the United Nations or
otherwise, to forestall conflicts are such that nations today increasingly feel com-
pelled to act without diplomatic warnings so that the international peacemaking
machinery will not be brought to bear before they achieve their objectives.
Altogether, it is probable that specific warning of impending attack through
diplomatic channels is largely a thing of the past. This does not necessarily mean,
however, that more generalized indications of intention will not continue to be
evident through the conduct of foreign policy and diplomacy. Indeed, as the dan-
gers and costs of war increase, there is considerable reason to believe that there will
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be ample evidence that international political relations are seriously deteriorating
before wars break out. In other words, we should still expect generalized strategic
warning, if not short-term warning of imminent attack, from such developments.
This may, however, require increased sophistication of analysis to recognize that
war is imminent.
Propaganda Analysis
The term "propaganda" here is used in its broadest sense, to cover all infor-
mation put forth by any means under national control or direction, which is designed
to influence the intended audience. Propaganda can be either true or false, or
somewhere in between, and it can be intended for domestic or foreign consumption
or both. It can be disseminated through private channels (i.e., to the party faith-
ful or cadre in briefings, directives, or "resolutions") or through the mass media
to the domestic population or the world at large.
The potential value, and difficulties, of propaganda analysis for assessment
of intentions (that is, for warning) are well recognized. Propaganda analysis
became recognized as an art, if not a science, during World War II, when specific
efforts were made to analyze Nazi pronouncements for indications of possible forth-
coming German military moves, as well as for other purposes. This apparently was
any a partial success, in that propaganda proved not to be a very specific guide
as to what the German Army might do next, or when, although it did provide some
useful insight into how the Germans viewed the war in general -- and thus was of
value in judging whether a new offensive effort might be brewing.
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Propaganda analysis in the US government today is diffused throughout the
community, and in fact most intelligence personnel probably feel themselves
qualified to some degree to interpret what our adversaries are saying, which may
be one of our problems. For there are in the intelligence system some offices and
personnel with specific qualifications and experience in this field, whose views
have not always been given as much attention as they deserve. Certain overseas
diplomatic posts -- most notably Moscow for the USSR and Hong Kong for China --
have concentrated on this type of analysis and have generally excellent records in
interpreting the significance of propaganda pronouncements of our two major adver-
saries.
On the home front, the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) has a
propaganda analysis staff which is devoted almost entirely to examining and reporting
trends and new developments in Communist propaganda and which concentrates on
"identifying new elements or departures from the norm, defining the toughness or
softness of public statements and propaganda themes, isolating indications of policy
shifts, sensitivities, or projected actions." In addition to continuing analyses of
trends in general, major propaganda statements (such as Chinese Foreign Ministry
statements, or authorized TASS statements) are analyzed by FBIS in depth, with
careful attention to the significance of particular phrases as well as the general
thrust. In addition, FBIS maintains what are known as War Themes files. From a
warning standpoint, this title may be slightly misleading, since these are not primarily
a compilation of phraseology or statements which have preceded acts of aggression
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or other crises but rather a collection of statements and data on attitudes toward
war. Nonetheless, there is a wealth of material at FBIS to support the warning
effort, both on a current basis and in depth.
The Value of Propaganda for Warning: A General Commentary
There are two prevalent misunderstandings about propaganda and its rela-
tionship to, and value for, warning.
First is the widespread tendency to mistrust or reject almost anything which
our adversaries say as "mere propaganda" and hence to regard it as meaningless if
not completely false. This tendency is particularly prevalent in the military serv-
ices -- a tendency which may derive both from their concentration on the military
hardware and from lack of experience with the subleties of political and propaganda
analysis. This tendency to disparage the usefulness of propaganda is most unfortunate,
for the record shows that propaganda trends, and specific pronouncements, are often
very valuable indications of enemy intentions.
A second tendency, almost the opposite of the above, is to expect too much
warning from propaganda, that is, to expect it to be highly specific or to provide
virtually unequivocal evidence that military action is impending, perhaps even spe-
cific warning of the time and place. People who expect this kind of warning from
propaganda are almost certain to be disappointed, and they may therefore conclude
that the propaganda provided "no warning" when in fact the enemy's propaganda
provided considerable indirect or less specific evidence of what he might do.
This writer is not an expert in propaganda analysis. The following general
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comments on the usefulness of propaganda are, however, derived from experience
in many crises. We are here discussing the propaganda put out by closed societies
through controlled media, where both its quantity and content are carefully regu-
lated and designed to achieve specific goals.
- Propaganda reflects concern: Propaganda is a very useful barometer
of how concerned the nation's leadership is about particular issues. Marked
upsurges in propaganda on a particular subject or area do generally reflect genuine
preoccupation with it, particularly if sustained over any period of time. Similarly,
a very low level of propaganda attention to an issue usually indicates very little
concern with it. There are occasional exceptions to this under unusual circum-
stances. One might be when a particularly secretive issue was involved, such as
delicate international negotiations. A second is when propaganda is "marking time"
pending a decision by the national leadership on what to say, or do, about it; these
lulls or drops in meaningful comment can signify that the issue is so important that
all comment is being withheld pending guidance from the top. Finally, deliberate
inattention to an area or an issue can be used for deception, generally in the rela-
tively short term (see Chapter 29).
- Most propaganda is "true": We are here using "truth" in a relative,
not absolute, sense. We mean that nations cannot continually distort their objec-
tives and policies, and particularly not to their own people. A major function of
propaganda in Communist states is to indoctrinate the populace, including the party
cadre, in what they are supposed to think and what they are supposed to do. To put
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out totally false statements or misleading guidance is self-defeating and will not
evoke the desired response. It may be observed that this is particularly true of
great national programs or objectives, when a greater than normal endeavor or
enthusiasm is being sought. It is important, when hostilities may be impending,
to instill the proper degree of hatred or fear of the enemy, to persuade the people
to work longer hours, to justify cutbacks in consumer goods, to encouraged enlist-
ments in the armed forces, and so forth. The leadership cannot afford to give a
wholly false picture of the situation to the populace.
To illustrate the point further, there was a major argument in 1965-66 over
the meaning and significance of a heavy barrage of North Vietnamese statements
aimed at their own populace which called for large-scale enlistments in the armed
forces, longer working hours, greater sacrifices, recruitment of more women so that
men by the thousands could be sent "to the front" (i.e., South Vietnam), and so
forth. There was a group in the US intelligence community which rejected all this
as "mere propaganda" for our benefit and which would not credit it as evidence that
North Vietnam was preparing to send large numbers of troops to South Vietnam. The
contrary argument -- which of course proved to be the correct one -- maintained
that just the reverse was true, that this intensive internal indoctrination was the true
barometer of Hanoi's intentions, and that the official propaganda line (that there
were no North Vietnamese troops in South Vietnam) was the false one put out for
our benefit. The refusal to believe this internal propaganda campaign possibly was
the single greatest obstacle to the recognition that Hanoi was mobilizing for a major
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military effort in South Vietnam.
- Official, authorized statements are unusually significant: The
Communist press operates under a set of prescribed rules which have proved very
consistent over a period of years. Routine, day-to-day events are handled under
established guidelines; more important developments call for articles by particular
commentators (sometimes pseudonyms for top officials); major issues evoke author-
ized or official statements from the highest level. These latter statements are
important not only for themselves, but because they set forth the "party line" for
the rest of the propaganda machinery and thus will be carefully adhered to by the
faithful. These statements always warrant the most careful study and analysis,
and when they may bear on war or peace they are of particular significance for
warning. This does not necessarily mean that they will be easy to interpret. Some
of these statements are masterpieces of Communist dialectic which presumably (we
are not certain of this) are understood by those initiated into what someone has
called "the art form," but whose true significance often eludes the rest of us.
Whether we can or cannot, in any given instance, comprehend the dialectic will
sometimes depend in part on the amount of study and attention given some of the
details. It became clear in retrospect that some of the fine points in one of these
Communist classics -- the 11 September 1962 TASS statement which unknown to us
really ushered in the Cuba crisis -- were not given sufficient attention in the com-
munity.
There are also certain time-honored phrases which have connoted varying
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)LL. U. I
degrees of concern in the past, and hence may be general guidelines to what may
happen again. History tells us that phrases such as the following have been asso-
ciated with preparations for military moves or even with a firm decision to intervene
with military forces:
"cannot stand idly by"
"will never allow [a given state] to be removed from the
Socialist social system"
"regards its security as directly threatened"
The above are illustrative, not a comprehensive list of such phrases. Of course, like
other propaganda, such phrases cannot be interpreted in isolation but must be assessed
in the light of all other evidence.
Propaganda warning is usually indirect, rather than specific: As a
general rule, phrases such as the foregoing are about as specific propaganda warn-
ing as we are likely to receive of military action. It will be observed that it would
be difficult to be much more precise without describing specific military preparations
(generally a no-no in Communist states) or directly threatening to intervene with
military force, which is also usually avoided. I cannot recall an instance since
World War 11 in which a Communist nation has publicly stated that it would intervene,
invade or attack with its regular forces, even when such action was imminent. The
closest any Communist country has come to such a direct statement was China's open
calls for "volunteers" for Korea in the fall of 1950. In most cases, Communist nations
like to maintain the pretense that their forces were either "invited in" or aren't
there at all. China has never acknowledged that anything other than "volunteer"
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units were sent to Korea; North Vietnam never acknowledged the presence of its
forces in South Vietnam until the 1972 offensive, when this was tacitly although
not explicitly admitted; and Soviet troops, of course, were "invited" to enter
both Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.
- The commitment to act is highly persuasive: In line with the above,
Communist nations are not often given to bluff or idle threats that they are going
to take aggressive actions when they do not intend to carry out. We must hasten
to add that there are exceptions to this, such as the direct Soviet threats in the
1956 Suez crisis to wipe out the United Kingdom with missiles, and a number of
similar statements made later by Khrushchev, including several quite threatening
ones concerning Berlin. Nonetheless, it is generally true that these states like
other nations do not wish to entail the stigma of failing to carry out their threats,
or promises, particularly when a public commitment is involved.
Therefore, developments in propaganda which convey a high degree of com-
mitment to do something or to achieve a particular end are particularly meaningful.
The public warnings of the Warsaw Pact states in July 1968 that Czechoslovakia
would never be permitted to pass to control of the imperialists were unusually sig-
nificant; without saying what means might be used to prevent this happening, these
statements implied that any and all means would be used as necessary. An even
better example of the importance of such commitments for warning preceded the
Chinese intervention in Korea. After a period of hesitancy and uncertainty, there
was an abrupt shift in the international Communist propaganda line during the first
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week of November 1950 to an all-out support of the North Korean cause, which
now became identified as the responsibility of the world-wide Communist move-
ment. So striking was the change in the propaganda line that the US warning
committee concluded that the major new development that week in the Korean
situation was the shift in Communist propaganda to open acceptance of responsi-
bility for the fate of North Korea, and that the unreserved nature of the propa-
ganda implied an intent to turn the tide in Korea through an unofficial war by the
Chinese Communists. This judgment preceded the massive Chinese offensive by
almost three weeks.
Political Warning Through Third Parties
No discussion of the type of developments which can give us political warn-
ing would be complete without some attention to the usefulness of intermediaries
or third parties. This applies both when they are deliberately used as a channel to
convey a message and when they serve as leaks, inadvertently or otherwise.
When deliberately used, it is often for the purpose of arranging discussions
or negotiations, but it may also be to convey a direct warning. The Indian Ambas-
sador in Peking was selected as the first channel to convey warning to the US that
Chinese forces would intervene in Korea if US/UN forces crossed the 38th Parallel.
Most people were inclined to dismiss this as bluff at the time.
Still more useful may be the unintended, or at least only semi-intended,
leak through third parties. It is axiomatic that the more people, and particularly
the more nations, brought in on a plan, the more difficult it is to keep it secret.
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ppw.e For Release vooe,m,?: c F? y an the irnroductlon of Soviet ml Into CUbo,
the USSR Is believed to hove Informed very Few Foreign Communist Iaadary prob-
ably only don heads of be Wmww Poor amended Under yield security admonitions.
This adventure wd solely o Soviet show. On the other bond, the preparations
fa the Invasion of Czeehoslovokio squired a high degree of cooperation and plan-
ning umang five notions, and numerous people were cognizant of the genord nature
of the plans if not the details. In addif on, the USSR el acted sane Four weeks
bekre It finally invaded to forewarn the non-rvling Communise Parties, pmbobly
UncughaR the world, of its general Intention -- i.e., to keep Czeahoslovok ,
within the fold by any meam required, inclodln9 force. The meant viol that we
loaned for more about the Soviet decision-making process and plops than during
the Cuban crisis (see directions of this in Cboptw 27).
De rho the rigid Iniarnai ardor y of Communst statesr their growing son-
nets with the Wdt end rho breakdown of the once monolithic system hoc served
on our knowledge of what goes on within them. At the some time, many
fhird world countries (such as the Arab stand and Indio) hove been courted by Mos-
ea-i T for top party and government personnel -- quite likely both in and outside the
Moscow area. Shelters also will be available for factory workers who are not
acfneduled for evacuation. The Moscow subway, long considered a likely bomb
shelter, probably would be so used even if a major evacuation of Moscow were
Aecomplished. In rural areas, there are almost certainly insufficient shelters to
9rotect both the local populace and the urban evacuees, and a crash program to
construct simple fallout shelters in rural areas is expected in event that a major
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Evacuation and dispersal: The most ambitious, complicated and
difficult aspect of the Soviet civil defense plan is the program to evacuate the
majority of urban inhabitants to small towns and farms. Plans apparently call for
the evacuation of about 70 percent of the residents of all cities over 100,000
population, with the remaining 30 percent to stay behind to man essential indus-
tries and services. Moreover, it is the Soviet expectation that these evacuations
would occur for the most part prior to the outbreak of hostilities -- an expectation
which obviously would entail a period of strategic warning. Elaborate plans have
been drawn up for the evacuations. These include: the selection of the modes and
routes of transport, with the railroads to provide the bulk of the transport; selec-
tion of the dispersal areas and embarkation and debarkation points; preparations
for the issuance of evacuation cards to those who are to depart the cities; instruc-
tion of individuals in what they are to take with them (a three-day supply of food,
plus a limited number of personal belongings); the study and planning for numerous
details which would be involved in the carrying out of such a massive resettlement
program; and the conduct of exercises by the civil defense staffs and selected units
to train them in the implementation of the program.
The Soviet civil defense chief has stated that urban evacuation could
reduce casualties from 80 or 90 percent of a given city's population to less than
10 percent. Even if this is a somewhat exaggerated assessment of what the USSR
actually expects (and does not, of course, take account of rural casualties or other
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factors), it appears clear that the Soviet leadership believes that the evacuation
program could greatly reduce casualties from an initial nuclear strike and further-
more might be decisive in insuring the survivability of the economy, the country,
and the socialist system.
The Soviets have not specified publicly just how much time they expect
to require to evacuate a major city, although they have specified that about six
hours of alert time would be needed before the first evacuees could depart. Some
independent US studies have been made of the feasibility of evacuating a number
of selected Soviet cities of more than 100,000. These have concluded that, under
favorable conditions (which include no loss of available rail transport), 70 percent
of the population of all of these particular cities could be evacuated in three to five
days. Just how this might function if all Soviet cities over 100,000 were being
evacuated simultaneously is, of course, another matter. Presumably, there might
be considerable difficulty in areas of the western USSR, particularly in the general
Moscow area, where there are large numbers of cities with more than 100,000
people. Nonetheless, these studies would indicate that the Soviet plans are not
altogether impracticable, even though there would no doubt be numerous problems
in actual implementation. From a warning standpoint, the most important point by
far is that the USSR does really plan such a massive evacuation effort and moreover
seemingly expects (or at least hopes) that it will have at least several days in which
to carry out the program before war starts.
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Civil Defense Programs in Eastern Europe
In other matters, the Eastern European members of the Warsaw Pact have
generally followed Soviet direction and precepts, and to some extent, this is also
true in matters of civil defense. Just as war plans are closely coordinated, we
would expect civil defense plans and preparations to be similar, and the actual
implementation of such programs to be more or less simultaneous. The Eastern
European countries have, in fact, given a fair amount of public attention to civil
defense programs and the training of civil defense personnel. Nonetheless, the
conclusion seems inescapable that these programs generally have lagged well
behind that of the USSR and have involved much less ambitious plans for the pro-
tection of the civilian populace. Apart from psychological and budgetary factors,
one major reason for this probably is the smaller size and greater population density
of these countries, which would seem to make massive evacuation programs a con-
siderably less practicable means of protecting the populace than in the USSR.
A Czechoslovak colonel who was engaged in various aspects of Czechoslovak defense
planning has described an extensive evacuation of the civilian population and econ-
omy as a practical impossibility and of very questionable effectiveness. This may
reflect actual Czechoslovak official attitudes, and possibly those of other Warsaw
Pact nations. Nonetheless, the civil defense plans of these countries apparently
call for some dispersal from the cities, as well as hardened shelters for key personnel
and other protective measures. Several Eastern European countries are known to
have conducted occasional civil defense exercises involving some evacuation measures.
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A Hungarian announcement of an exercise conducted in June 1969 stated that over
80,000 persons would take part, including both civilian units and military forma-
tions, and that it would involve "tasks connected with evacuation, the provision
of accommodation, and rescue, relief, and rudimentary restoration work."
How Would Civil Defense Actually Function?
The potential difference between theory-or doctrine and actual practice
is nowhere more evident than in the field of civil defense. Opinions as to what
the USSR would actually do in the civil defense field, if major hostilities threat-
ened, range all the way from those who believe that it would do almost nothing
which would be obvious to us and certainly would not undertake massive evacua-
tions of the cities, to those who maintain that a full implementation of civil defense
plans is to be expected, time permitting. Many of those who hold to the "do-
nothing" theory -- on the grounds primarily that it would provide us such clear-cut
warning that the USSR would not tip its hand -- also maintain that the evacuation
program would actually be impossible to implement and therefore really would not
be attempted on any scale.
Obviously, there is no answer to this question which is going to satisfy
everybody. It is the same problem as how much buildup there would be of Soviet
forces in Europe prior to attack, how much political warning we would have, and
so forth. How much would weight of attack be sacrificed to achieve surprise?
Would protection of the civilian populace be more important to the Soviet leadership
or would it be more important to them to avoid taking measures which we would
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almost certainly view as very ominous, perhaps would interpret as evidence that
the USSR was planning a preemptive nuclear strike?
The Soviet performance thus far has made it evident that massive live civil
defense preparations, including evacuation of cities, are regarded by the USSR
as extremely serious steps which therefore probably would not be undertaken unless
the leadership was convinced of a grove danger of hostilities. Our relative confi-
dence on this score derives from several considerations: such a program is tremen-
dously expensive and disruptive economically; it would be certain to have a most
serious and adverse psychological impact on the population, the consequences of
which might be unpredictable; the USSR could not be sure what the US/NATO
response would be to an "exercise" of such massive and realistic proportions; and,
so far as we know, the USSR has yet to undertake a massive evacuation of any city,
either for exercise purposes or as a genuine precautionary measure during a crisis.
It is of interest that, even during the Cuban missile crisis when Soviet air defense
forces were brought to a very high degree of alert and Khrushchev was genuinely
apprehensive that war could occur, there were no major civil defense preparations
taken in the USSR. Undoubtedly, the civil defense staffs were alerted and certain
other preparedness measures were probably taken relatively unobtrusively, but
there was no mass alerting of the population.
This means, of course, that we also have no basis on which to judge how
effectively the evacuation program might function, even if undertaken as an exercise
in a period of calm. It is possible that the USSR some day may test out the program
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V Lr V. I L~ .
in a few selected cities, probably ones to which we would have little access. It is
conceivable that it has already conducted a mass evacuation of some city, but we
believe it unlikely that some news of this would not have trickled out in time.
Such actions, however, probably could be effectively concealed in many cities
of the USSR for at least a short time, provided the radio was not used to alert the
populace. It is doubtful, however, that it could be done simultaneously in a num-
ber of cities without some knowledge of it reaching us. Obviously, it would be
impossible to conceal a mass evacuation of Moscow, or probably of Leningrad.
In the event of a decision to conduct a mass evacuation because of a threat-
ening international situation, it appears highly unlikely that it would not be announced
to the Soviet public through radio, television and press. Reassurances from the
leadership and repeated public instructions as to what to do would appear almost a
necessity to prevent chaos, no matter how much advance planning and rehearsals by
civil defense units there might have been. The maintenance of public morale could
be critical to the military and economic effort, and indeed a prime objective of the
civil defense program is to prevent a breakdown of public support so that the military
effort can be sustained. Thus it appears most unlikely that some public explanations
of the reasons for such drastic measures would not be forthcoming. It is probable, in
fact, that the entire propaganda machinery would be called into action to explain
or justify the civil defense effort.
In addition to uncertainty as to the mass psychological reaction, it appears
highly questionable that the Soviet transportation system would function anywhere
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nearly as effectively in practice as theoretical studies of the evacuation problem
would suggest. This is not necessarily because Soviet transport is inefficient
(actually the railroads function quite well), but rather because there would be
such heavy competing demands from the military for the transportation. There
would obviously be all sorts of other difficulties in the implementation of an evacu-
ation program, particularly the feeding of the populace in the countryside for any
length of time, which would pose enormous problems and would almost certainly
impair the smooth functioning of the operation. No doubt, however, the USSR
would not expect it to function exactly as planned, and presumably would regard
the program as a success if only half the evacuees ultimately were saved from
nuclear destruction.
All this, however, does not answer the question whether or not the USSR
would in fact attempt to carry out such a program. If there can be no demonstrably
Correct answer, there can be certain general judgments as to what would appear to
be the most likely course of action. As in other aspects of the warning problem,
there will undoubtedly be those who will not agree.
The most careful students of the Soviet civil defense program are generally
persuaded that the USSR would implement the program in the event of a grave threat
of hostilities with another nuclear power, i.e., the US or China. Moreover, it
would appear likely that the program would be implemented both in event the USSR
planned to strike first or feared that the enemy was preparing to strike. The argu-
ments in support of this view are as follows.
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The massive amount of effort which has been put into civil defense
planning and preparation would not have been undertaken unless it was intended
to implement the program in event of approaching hostilities. The subject must
have been extensively debated already and the conclusion must have been reached
that the program is both feasible and necessary to the Soviet war effort.
- The necessity for the program does not derive solely, or perhaps even
primarily, from concern with saving the lives of more people. It derives from a
conviction that the military effort will be dependent on the maintenance of a viable
civilian economy, and that the Soviet Union could not survive a nuclear conflict
in which masses of the urban populace were eradicated in the first hours or days of
the conflict. Although Soviet leaders have wavered from time to time on whether
any nation could survive a nuclear conflict and whether there could be any "victors,"
their planning indicates that they consider that their comprehensive civil defense
program will provide them a better chance for survival than would otherwise be the
case >
- The civil defense program is an integral part of the war plan. The
siitary establishment is deeply involved in it, and the militarized units of civil
defense have prescribed roles to perform under the war mobilization plan. Thus, to
omit the civil defense portion of the plan would require the reversal of many standing
military orders and the reassignment of many reservists to other functions. It would
further require the issuance of entirely new instructions to innumerable party and
a-overnment officials and plant managers who now have prescribed functions to perform
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in the civil defense program and who have rehearsed what they are to do. In
short, a decision not to implement the civil defense program could require a
revision, at the last moment, of the war plan. As one writer on the subject has
put it:
It appears that a decision to omit civil defense would be
administratively as complex as a decision to cancel partici-
pation of aircraft in an air defense effort and leave the job
entirely to missiles.... With so many people involved,
the planners of the strike have a problem: would the secur-
ity of the surprise be well served by an attempt to leave out
civil defense?
Most important is the probability that the party leaders would
not accept a military plan which excluded civil defense
participation. One totally unacceptable result of such a
plan might be the decimation or worse of the party while the
military leadership remained relatively unimpaired. Another
consideration of the Presidium ought to be the reaction of
the surviving members of the populace, as well as of the party,
if available civil defense facilities had not been put to use.
Civil Defense Programs in Asian Communist Nations
In comparison with the USSR, the Asian Communist countries have relatively
unsophisticated civil defense programs, although they have not neglected the problem.
North Vietnam, which has been engaged in war more or less continuously
since World War II, undertook a civil defense program only after the start of US bomb-
ing in 1965. Fears that Hanoi, and to a lesser extent other cities, might be bombed
led to fairly extensive efforts to evacuate non-essential personnel . These efforts
proved rather ineffective, however, since the populace showed a tendency to drift
back to the cities, particularly when it appeared that the danger to civilians was not
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very great. The resumption of US bombing in the spring of 1972 resulted in another
partial evacuation of Hanoi, which also appears to have been a rather half-hearted
effort. The North Vietnamese civil defense program also has included extensive
use of improvised bomb shelters, many of them concrete pipes. North Vietnam's
civil defense measures were of relatively little value to us as warning indicators,
since a stepped-up effort usually followed the initiation of US bombing, rather than
anticipating it.
In Communist China, civil defense efforts have been sporadic and usually
can be directly associated with some immediate developments which have raised
Peking's apprehensions that it might be subjected to attack. In the few weeks prior
to the major intervention of Chinese forces in Korea in the fall of 1950, there was
a rash of reports concerning preparations for evacuation of government offices or
other facilities from Chinese cities and some increase in air raid precautions. So
far as is known, however, few if any evacuations were actually carried out, and
Chinese fears apparently abated when the US did not respond to the Chinese offen-
sive in Korea by attacking Chinese territory. There is little indication that the
recurring crises in the Taiwan Strait area or the brief Sino-Indian conflict of 1962
were accompanied by any serious civil defense planning.
The conflict in Southeast Asia -- particularly the Tonkin Gulf incident in
August 1964, the initiation of US bombing of North Vietnam in early 1965, and
the introduction of Chinese engineer and antiaircraft units into North Vietnam
shortly later -- raised Chinese fears of a possible US attack and led to the first of
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Peking's so-called "war preparations" campaigns. This ominous sounding phrase
actually involved a variety of measures to persuade the populace to greater efforts
and to instill support for the regime's programs -- not all of them directly related
to increasing war preparedness. Among the real preparedness measures was a
considerable increase in civil defense activity, concentrated not unnaturally in
South China, although the program also extended to other areas of the country.
These preparations included: a considerable propaganda campaign to alert the
populace to the danger of war "at an early date, on a large scale, with nuclear
or other weapons"; the digging of air raid shelters, particularly trenches; numerous
reports of plans to evacuate personnel and government offices from cities, together
with a limited amount of actual evacuation; instruction in civil defense measures;
air raid drills; stocking of food supplies; and a step-up in militia training.
This effort abated after two or three years, but the "war preparations"
campaign was revived in 1969 following the clashes on the Sino-Soviet border.
This time the danger of war with the Soviet Union occasioned a step-up in civil
defense preparations, including renewed preparations to evacuate personnel from
the cities and construction of air raid shelters. The program appears to have involved
less intensive propaganda and participation of the populace than in 1965-66, but
there were indications of more effective and permanent shelter construction. This,
together with a program to decentralize industry into the interior, suggested that
China was embarked on a serious long-term effort to improve its defensive capacity.
The history of the Chinese effort would suggest that increased emphasis on
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civil defense is a good indication of Peking's concern for national security from a
defense standpoint. It is likely that civil defense preparations also would step up
markedly in the event that China was planning for aggressive military action.
Little is known about civil defense in North Korea. There has, however,
been an intensive effort for several years to put much military equipment into caves,
tunnels and underground facilities. It would be surprising if some similar effort
had not been devoted to shelters for civilians.
Conclusions
Our experience with civil defense indicators in several conflicts justifies
a conclusion that the intensity of such preparations is generally an excellent barom-
eter of whether a nation really believes it is in danger of attack. Large-scale and
economically disruptive civil defense measures are unlikely to be initiated unless
the threat is considered grave. Like other defensive preparations, a high level of
civil defense activity may indicate either a fear of enemy attack or an intent to
initiate the attack. The threat of nuclear war has greatly increased the importance
of prior civil defense measures, particularly the removal of key officials to secure
areas and at least a partial evacuation of civilians from urban areas. Nations which
have extensive civil defense programs regard them as an integral part of their war
plans, if not essential to survival, and it is therefore likely that these plans would
be put into effect prior to the outbreak of a major conflict, if time permits.
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PART V: SPECIFIC PROBLEMS OF POLITICAL, CIVIL AND
ECONOMIC ANALYS I S
CHAPTER 24: SECURITY, COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE AND
AGENT PREPARATIONS
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vcrot)er i y/ z
CHAPTER 24: SECURITY, COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE
AND AGENT PREPARATIONS
In this final chapter on indications in the civilian area, we shall deal briefly
with the value for warning of developments in the field of security and clandestine
operations. Although usually less exotic in actuality than in the world of fiction,
the cloak-and-dagger business nonetheless has the potential of providing us with con-
siderable insight into the enemy's preparations for hostilities.
Security Measures
There is no question of the importance of security measures in Communist
nations for purposes of concealment. It is the primary means by which we are denied
information about what is going on in much of their society all the time. The need
for security dominates virtually every aspect of life and conceals from us a vast
amount of basic social, economic and military activity. The two major methods by
which this continuous blackout of information is accomplished are the control of the
press and all other public media, and intensive physical security around most military
and economic installations and activities, which in practice often means that large
areas of the country are off-limits to travel by potentially unfriendly foreigners, both
official and unofficial .
As a general rule, virtually all military installations (barracks areas, com-
pounds, training areas, military headquarters, missile and antiaircraft sites, airfields,
naval installations, depots) in Communist nations are closed to the public, not only
to foreigners but to the local citizenry. Moreover, they are not just closed but
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intensively secured and guarded against unlawful entry. Equally drastic security
measures surround important economic enterprises which are engaged in the produc-
tion of military or military-related items. The rare occasions on which foreigners,
such as attaches, are permitted visits to military units or to such factories are
carefully controlled and usually are confined to selected show pieces.
In these nations, the "need to know" principle is really adhered to and
indeed carried to fantastic lengths by our standards. A rigid compartmentalization
of knowledge -- within the military establishment, and in such fields as weapons
production and research and development -- denies detai Is of the overal I effort to
all but a select few at the top. There is little doubt that these stringent measures
impair efficiency and inhibit the free exchange of productive ideas in some degree.
The intended -- and, to some extent, actual -- effect of these measures is
to deny us the basic data from which we can determine what is normal. If the system
worked with total effectiveness, we would have little or no specific data about the
strength and locations of military units, their weapons and capabilities, maneuvers
and other training activities, except what was released to the press or otherwise made
available officially. At the same time, however, most of these nations do not really
want us to be totally ignorant of their military capabilities nor to close off foreign
travel entirely, so in practice some limited access to their less important "secrets" is
condoned most of the time. In actuality, there is considerable variation in the extent
of territory which is normally closed to foreigners in the different Communist countries.
While vast areas of the Soviet Union are permanently closed and periods of so-called
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"detente" have had little effect on this policy, some Eastern European nations impose
relatively little restriction on foreign travel except in or immediately around impor-
tant military and industrial installations. The most denied area in the world to the
West has been North Korea.
The extent of permanent security restriction and past practice in crisis situa-
tions are two factors which could affect how much additional restriction might be
imposed to deny us information during a period of unusual military activity, including
preparations for hostilities. This is a subject on which we have had a great deal of
experience, and it is therefore fairly safe to make some generalizations.
It is Soviet practice always to deny travel by official foreigners, and often
by other foreigners as well, to an area in which unusual military activity is under
way, specifically troop deployments and maneuvers. It is most unusual for any
Westerner to observe any significant troop deployment, and Western military attaches
are virtually always denied access to areas of maneuvers or other military movements.
On occasion, the USSR has imposed very widespread travel bans. In June 1969, the
Trans-Siberian Railroad was closed to nearly all foreigners as well as to official travel-
ers. One traveler who did make the trip, perhaps because of some Soviet oversight,
reported very heavy eastward military movement, and we ascertained nearly three
years later that there had been a mobilization exercise along the Chinese border dur-
ing this period. Another very widespread travel ban had been imposed in the western
USSR in June 1968 for reasons which have never been established, but it has been
suspected that there might have been some type of mobilization test preparatory to
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the subsequent invasion of Czechoslovakia. During the periods of known troop
deployments for that invasion, the USSR repeatedly denied travel requests of Western
attaches, although there were a few occasions on which they were able to observe
a limited amount of troop movement. During the week of the Cuba crisis, the USSR
also prohibited most official travel, possibly to cover a general alerting of its forces,
since we do not believe that any units actually were redeployed.
The USSR also restricts travel by military observers in East Germany by
imposing both permanent and temporary restricted areas. A temporary restricted
area is nearly always declared for any important exercise activity, and sometimes
for other purposes. A sizable area along the Czechoslovak border was continually
closed by a series of "temporary" restrictions for more than three months prior to the
invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Our experience in this field warrants a judgment that the USSR almost cer-
tainly would impose further restrictions, and probably quite drastic ones, to cover
the redeployments or other preparations of its forces in the period prior to the initia-
tion of war. Although such restrictions do serve to alert us to an abnormal military
situation, the Soviets quite evidently consider that security is better served by the
restrictions than by permitting some of the activity to be observed.
The Eastern European Communist states generally have much less restrictive
travel policies than the USSR, and the chance of detecting any significant troop
deployments is much better, although areas of actual maneuvers are usually off-limits.
Various devices also are used to prevent travel of trained military observers at crucial
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times. Nonetheless, major and widespread travel bans in these countries would be
quite unusual and would probably not be imposed except in extraordinary circum-
stances. It is interesting to note that Poland did not even impose such restrictions
in July-August 1968 when major Soviet forces were deployed into the country for
the invasion of Czechoslovakia, although quite severe travel restrictions were in
effect in the USSR and East Germany, and to a lesser extent in Hungary, to screen
the deployments.
In the event of preparation for hostilities against the West, there is a good
prospect that still more drastic and unusual security measures would be imposed. One
such measure could well be tightened censorship on foreign correspondents, and mea-
sures to deny them access to their usual sources. A major and highly significant
security measure, begun by North Korea three months before the attack on South
Korea, was the evacuation of civilians from the 38th Parallel. Obviously, any
similar step along that or any other border could be a very important indication.
The limited access of Westerners, particularly US personnel, to the Asian
Communist nations to date precludes much generalization about what their security
policies might be if diplomatic relations were established and these areas opened up
to more Western travel in general . Their histories since World War 11, however,
justify a conclusion that they are all highly security conscious and would almost cer-
tainly impose severe restrictions to prohibit observation or other disclosure of any
military activity which they wished to conceal .
How much warning value are abnormal security measures? The chief value
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perhaps is to alert us to an unusual situation, probably involving some military acti-
vity, so that other collection resources can be brought into play. Security measures,
no matter how drastic, are not in themselves evidence, let alone proof, that military
deployments are under way. Some further collection is essential to establish what
is going on. The more extensive and drastic the measures are, however, the greater
reason we have to suspect that something covert and potentially hostile is under way,
unless there is some plausible alternative explanation. It is likely that the period
prior to the outbreak of hostilities would be marked by extraordinary security mea-
sures of a nature rarely observed in peacetime.
Counter-Intel I igence: Domestic Aspects
The role of counter-intelligence and security is to protect the state from its
enemies both foreign and domestic. In police or quasi-police states, the domestic
enemy is nearly as important as the foreign and sometimes more so, and a substantial
amount of the counter-intel I igence effort is devoted to watching and when necessary
restraining potential dissidents. (This is also true, one may note, of many states
which do not lie behind the Iron Curtain. For example, it is not unusual in many
countries for known troublemakers to be rounded up in advance of the visit of a for-
eign head of state.)
In the USSR, the power of the KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti -
Committee of State Security) has been reduced since the days of Stalin when it served
as an instrument of terror, but it remains a large, secretive and ubiquitous organiza-
tion with authority to pry into the lives of all citizens and the personnel to accomplish
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it. Occasional press items that some well-known dissident has been sentenced to
prison or a labor camp are a reminder that the power of the secret police still perme-
ates the Soviet state, barely concealed most of the time and sometimes blatantly
evident. Less clandestine but also a major force for the preservation of order are
the internal security forces, a branch of the armed forces. The pattern is repeated
in all Communist states, with some differences in organization and functions of the
various security forces.
These forces have major roles to play in the event of war, including the
roundup and incarceration of dissidents and others suspected of disloyalty, as well
as a variety of other security functions. It is highly likely that the authority and
personnel strength of these organizations would be increased in preparation for war
and that the leadership would rely heavily on them to insure their safety. I An
increase in KGB activity, both obvious and covert, is to be expected. It would
probably include tightened observation of and restrictions on foreign diplomats,
attaches and newsmen, but more importantly widespread measures to insure against
an outbreak of dissidence and sabotage once war had begun. A large-scale roundup
of potential troublemakers, perhaps very quietly and very shortly prior to the out-
break of major hostilities, would be likely.
1 Some understanding of the number of personnel which may be involved in a major
security operation in the USSR may be derived from a report that 20,000 military and
civilian personnel were involved in security arrangements in Leningrad alone for
President Nixon's visit there in May 1972 -- a report which the US Embassy in Moscow
found "easy to believe."
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Foreign Espionage and Counter-Intelligence
Even more meaningful than internal security and counter-intelligence mea-
sures are some of the changes which might occur in operations abroad prior to the
initiation of hostilities. We are speaking of the vast underworld of espionage,
subversion, and other clandestine and covert operations on which our potential
enemies spend enormous sums of money and employ thousands of trained operators.
For most US intelligence personnel -- those who work on overt collection or analy-
sis -- this part of the intelligence process is only dimly and very inadequately per-
ceived. It is "the other side of the house," and a side vastly more secretive and
compartmented than almost any other phase of the intelligence process. Nothing
is more laughable than the popular concept set forth by some writers of mystery
stories that most intelligence work consists in espionage and counter-espionage and
that we are alI "spies." For the fact is that most of us in the intelligence business
have nothing to do with spies, our own or those of other nations, and we are likely
to know precious little about the whole subject.
This writer is one of that generally uninformed majority. Such observations
as follow, therefore, are not based on any special insight into the operation of for-
eign espionage systems and should not be so interpreted. In fact, much of what
will be said is from unclassified sources.
A variety of historical factors contribute to the USSR's obsession for security,
distrust of foreigners and conviction that it is encircled by enemies which are seeking
to destroy it. They include the tradition of political repression inherited from
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imperial Russia, the hardships of the revolution and the difficulties of establishing
the Soviet state, the armed intervention by Western states which sought to over-
throw the Bolsheviks, the invasion by Nazi Germany, and the post-war suspicion
of the West engendered by the years of the cold war and the limited contacts of
the Soviet leaders with Westerners. Above all, of course, the suspicion of the
West derives from the secretive and conspiratorial nature of the Communist system
itself and its own dependence on force or the threat of force to remain in power.
The mere existence of democracies is a threat to it.
The result of these attitudes is that the USSR, and to a lesser but nonetheless
important degree other Communist states, devote an enormous amount of effort and
money to foreign espionage and subversion. Indeed, in many areas of the world --
particularly the underdeveloped nations -- such activities are probably the primary
function of Soviet embassies and other official representation. Moreover, the cen-
tralized control of all foreign activities and the ability to maintain secrecy permit
the KGB to place its officers anywhere within the official and unofficial establish-
ment abroad, and in almost unlimited numbers -- subject only to how many personnel
the host nation is wil I ing to accept. There is little question that the expansion of
Soviet missions abroad in recent years is in large degree attributable to an increase
in espionage and other covert activities. A celebrated case -- the defection of a
KGB officer in London in September 1971 -- provided dramatic evidence of the scope
of such Soviet activities. As the result of his reports, the British expelled 105 mem-
bers of the official Soviet establishment in London for espionage activities. They
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comprised nearly 20 percent of the total, and included nine of the Soviet Embassy's
eleven counselors and five of its twelve first secretaries. The agents were estab-
lished in every type of mission, including the trade delegation, the Moscow Narodny
Bank and Aeroflot. The British action was reported attributable in part to the fact
that the defector and some of his colleagues were engaged not in normally accepted
espionage activities but in preparations for sabotage in the United Kingdom in the
event of war. Numerous less dramatic examples of the all-pervasive nature of the
USSR's foreign espionage program could be cited, and many of course have become
common knowledge as the result of defections and arrests in recent years.
To those in the Western world, the extensive effort and resources which the
Communist nations put into espionage and counter-intelligence is something of a
mystery. We can understand the payoff in the recruitment of men who years later
reach the positions of a Philby or a Burgess. But we are at a loss to understand a
system which puts so much effort into the covert collection of relatively routine data,
the great portion of which is often freely available by open means. For the fact is
that a considerable part of the Communist espionage effort probably is superfluous
from our viewpoint and is concerned with checking through covert means the veracity
and completeness of information which is obtainable openly. This practice probably
is a consequence both of the secretive nature of the Communist state and of a distrust
of open sources as inherently subject to manipulation by the state or vested interests as they are in fact in dictatorial states. What is important for our purposes is to
observe that, because this is so, there is probably some inclination in these nations
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to give greater weight to information obtained clandestinely than to information
obtained. openly, even when the latter would seem to be of greater authenticity.
This is not to say that the report of the KGB operative will necessarily carry more
weight in Moscow than an authoritative article in the New York Times, but only that
there will be a predilection in favor of the covert report, other things being equal .
In any event, the Communist system beyond any question is engaged in a continual,
relentless, expensive and complex effort to ferret out our every secret, however
minor, which might affect their national security.
And what does this have to do with warning? Its relevance to warning
derives from the fact that the espionage and security services are a mirror which
reflect the objectives and requirements of the national leadership on major foreign
issues. The standing collection requirements for the espionage services, if we can
be fortunate enough to obtain them, will provide us a blueprint of what our enemies
most wish to know about us, which can often be very revealing. Moreover, a
crisis almost invariably will result in some emergency collection requirements which
can help us to perceive, at least in some degree, whether the enemy is primarily
concerned that we may be preparing some action against him or whether he is pre-
paring to initiate something. And, over the longer term, changes in the types of
information sought may provide quite clear insight into enemy planning.
This point may be better illustrated by citing some specific examples from
the fascinating accounts of the British penetration of the German espionage opera-
tions in the United Kingdom during World War II, which have recently been
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declassified and published. We will draw particularly on Sir John Masterman's
discussion of what could be inferred concerning German war plans from the types
of questions which were sent to their agents in Great Britain -- all of whom were
actual I y'operating under British control. He says:
The most interesting point with regard to the traffic up to
the beginning of 1942 is the evidence which it gives of
enemy intentions.... In retrospect it is perfectly clear,
even if it was not quite clear at the time, that enemy
intentions could be gauged from the traffic of our agents
with very fair accuracy. In R.A.F. matters, for example,
the majority of questions with regard to aerodromes was
concerned all through the Battle of Britain with the posi-
tion and defences of fighter aerodromes. Conversely, in
1941, when the British air offensive on the Continent
started, interest swung over to bomber aerodromes and the
landing grounds from which bombers operated. The extent
of the danger to this country of invasion from Germany is
naturally clearly mirrored in the messages.1
The queries to German agents on other topics also enabled the British to
reach a judgment by late 1941 that the Germans had, at least for the time being,
abandoned plans for any large-scale offensive operations against the United
Kingdom. By 1944, when the strategic picture had materially changed and it
was the Allies who were on the offensive, the nature of the Nazi questions again
provided insight into German military planning. Masterman concludes:
We should restate a conviction which established itself
more and more firmly in our minds -- viz., that a careful
and intelligent study of all the traffic could and would
J. C. Masterman, The Double-Cross System in the War of 1939 to 1945
(New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1972), p. 76.
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have given an accurate picture of all the more important
German interests and intentions throughout the war. In
retrospect it is clear that more use could have been made
of this product of double-cross agents' work.
Possibly the most dramatic evidence cited by Masterman of the potential
value of such agent queries for warning concerns a questionnaire given to a key
German agent operating in Britain who was detailed on a special mission to
establish an espionage network in the United States. On 19 August 1941, the
British read and transmitted to the FBI a three-page German questionnaire of
desired information on the United States, of which one-third was concerned with
Pearl Harbor. It was further noted that, whereas most of the questions about the
US were fairly general, those about Hawaii and Pearl Harbor were highly specific
and called for details and sketches of airfields, hangers, bomb depots, POL instal la-
tions, and so forth. The logical inference, as Masterman points out, was that, if
the US were to be at war, Pearl Harbor "would be the first point to be attacked, and
that plans for this attack had reached an advanced state by August 1941."2
Although the nature of warfare may have changed since Pearl Harbor, the
objectives of foreign espionage services have not changed greatly. All are con-
cerned with the preparedness measures and vulnerabilities of the enemy. Moreover,
there remains a high probability that there would be some modifications in the types
of information desired if the threat of war appeared to be rising, and in the urgency
1 Ibid, p. 177.
2 Ibid, pp. 79-80.
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of collecting and reporting this information. Changes in the structure and opera-
tions of the espionage services themselves also probably would be undertaken --
such as a much greater reliance on undercover agents in expectation of a break
in diplomatic relations, preparations for a change in means of reporting when diplo-
matic pouches and embassy radios cease to be available, and so forth. We should
also expect an increase in those types of subversive activities which would directly
further the war effort -- such as the infiltration or surfacing of saboteurs and of
experts in partisan warfare and the dissemination of false rumors. Obviously, no
one could predict in advance exactly what changes in the espionage services and
their means of operation would be undertaken, still less how much we might be able
to learn of it. It also cannot be predicted whether acts of sabotage or political
assassinations might actually be undertaken before hostilities began. There is no
doubt, however, that the Communist espionage services all have their war plans
and that some changes in operation would be undertaken before war broke out if
time permitted. Thus, these activities are a potentially highly valuable, and per-
haps unique, source of indications intelligence.
Problems of Compartmentalization
The tight security on espionage and counter-intelligence operations and the
compartmentalization of those portions of the intelligence process which are concerned
with these activities poses a potentially grave bureaucratic problem. The relative
freedom of exchange of information among those engaged in the production of positive
intelligence breaks down almost completely -- at least at the analytic level -- when
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counter-intelligence operations become involved. Even valuable positive intelli-
gence derived from these operations may be bottled up or delayed in dissemination,
often not for arbitrary reasons but on valid security grounds. And those aspects
which are operational -- such as surveillance of foreign agents and the nature of
their contacts -- are virtually never made available to the other side of the house
at the working level, and rarely even at the highest levels of intelligence and
within policy councils.
Thus the dangers that all relevant information may not be brought together
in a meaningful pattern, and that indications will be "lost," are particularly acute
in this field. Even greater than the separation of intelligence and policy and the
compartmentalization of operational plans is the secrecy which surrounds counter-
intelligence. This statement is not to criticize this policy -- which is clearly essen-
tial in many cases, and sometimes a matter of life and death -- but merely to note
the potential seriousness of this situation for warning. Thus it could be highly impor-
tant, before hostilities begin, that steps be taken to insure that valuable warning
information derived from counter-intelligence operations is integrated with other posi-
tive intelligence. Any procedures devised almost certainly would involve only a
limited number of people but hopefully would attempt to see that some analytic group`
however small, was coping with all (or at least nearly all) the pieces of the puzzle.
If it is any consolation to us, we might observe that our potential enemies
might have much the same types of problems, in that their counter-intelligence opera-
tions also are highly compartmented, and that there is a much more restricted exchange
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of information in general . The involvement of the Communist leadership in the
planning of major espionage, counter-intelligence and deception operations, how-
ever, does tend to insure that the highest authorities will be cognizant of major
developments as they occur. The chief of the KGB reports directly to the Polit-
buro, and the present chief is a candidate member of that supreme decision-making
body. The idea which sometimes prevails in Western democracies -- that the chief
of state and the foreign office should not become involved in or perhaps even be
cognizant of "dirty tricks" -- is not a problem which troubles the Communist world.
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PART VI: SOME MAJOR ANALYTICAL PROBLEMS
CHAPTER 25: WARNING FROM THE TOTALITY OF EVIDENCE
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/mIwul y I /I,&
CHAPTER 25: WARNING FROM THE TOTALITY OF EVIDENCE
In the two preceding sections (Chapters 13 through 24) we have examined
various types of military and civil preparations for hostilities, largely in isolation
from one another. Obviously, in real life these various developments will not
be occurring separately but in conjunction or simultaneously. Moreover, they
should relate to each other in some more or less logical fashion if in fact a nation
is preparing for hostilities. For example: there will not be urgent and massive
civil defense preparations without various military preparations to bring the armed
forces to higher readiness; there will not be political indications that the leadership
has directed the implementation of certain wartime legislation without other evi-
dence of mobilization. There will not be just military or just political indications,
but a variety of developments in both fields which at least to some extent will be
consistent or mutually supporting.
At the same time, however, there will likely be some inconsistencies in
our evidence or at least gaps in our knowledge which will make us uncertain as to
the significance of some of the developments, or of their relation to each other.
We will not be sure what weight we should accord to any particular indication, or
even to a large number of them collectively. No two situations will be just alike,
and we cannot rely solely on precedent or history (although they may assist us) in
coming to our judgments.
The Relative Weight of Political and Military Factors
At the risk of an oversimplification of this problem, we may note certain
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ILL.. I
generally valid precepts.
First, political indications alone -- in the absence of any significant
military preparations or without the capability to act -- are not credible and
we will virtually always be correct in dismissing them as so much bombast or
propaganda. For years, Communist China had a propensity for reserving some
of its most violent propaganda for situations half way across the globe in which
it had absolutely no capability to act -- e.g., Lebanon in 1958. In the years
following its decisive defeat by Israel in 1967, Egypt's repeated calls for the
recovery of its former territory carried little weight in the clear absence of a
capability to defeat the Israelis in the Sinai. Similarly, the anti-American
propaganda put out by North Korea over a period of years has been so intense
and vitriolic that it has been meaningless as an indication of an intention to
take military action within any foreseeable time period. We must always
remember, however, that the national attitudes reflected in such propaganda
are significant, and that such bitter hostility will make the military prepara-
tions (if or when they occur) potentially more meaningful and dangerous than
might otherwise be the case.
At the other extreme, military indications alone -- in the absence of any
signs of political crisis or a deterioration in the international situation -- also
will tend to lose credibility. In such circumstances, we will be inclined to
regard even quite extensive unusual military activity as an exercise or test of
some kind, rather than a bona fide preparation for early military action. For
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example, a partial mobilization, which in time of political crisis would cause
grave concern, would probably be dismissed as only an exercise in a period of
political calm. In the absence of any crisis, even a highly unusual and poten-
tially very ominous development may not cause much alarm; it will rather be
regarded as a mistake of some kind, or an error in reporting., as in fact it often
is. Whereas in a crisis such a development would likely be assessed as even
more ominous than the fact alone might warrant, it will probably require quite a
number of unusual military developments to disturb our complacency if we see no
positive political indications. Although this is in part a psychological phenome-
non, it is also historically valid. Very few wars have started without some deteri-
oration in the political situation, or some development which would increase the
possibilities that a nation might decide to launch military operations.
There is, however, some limit to the number of major military preparations
which may be undertaken in a period of political calm without arousing concern.
Obviously, this would be particularly true if one of our most powerful potential
enemies were to begin extensive and unusual military preparations, even though
the political atmosphere was relatively "friendly." The idea, advanced by some,
that the USSR could mobilize and redeploy its forces against NATO in a period of
calm and convince us that it was just "an exercise" begins to strain credibility.
There would be some point in that process, however complacent we might be at its
start, that the sheer buildup of capability would cause grave concern and almost
certainly some type of military preparations on our part. This does not necessarily
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K I L L _ I
mean that we would reach a positive judgment that Soviet attack was likely,
but we would come to appreciate that we could no longer say with confidence
that it was very unlikely.
In real life, we rarely see the situation in which political and military
indications are totally out of phase or contradictory. Each will be contributing,
in varying measure perhaps, to our assessment of the enemy's likely course of
action. It has been observed that, in normal times, we will usually give some-
what greater weight to political indications than to military developments -- this
reflects our general sense of the attitudes and intentions of our adversaries,
usually borne out by many years of experience. It is also essentially our national
estimate -- that they are not going to go to war without some reason, and that we
will have some indication that the situation has changed before they would take
such a decision. On the other hand, once the situation has changed and the
political atmosphere is deteriorating, we will probably give greater weight in the
crisis situation to the military indications as our best guideline to the enemy's
intentions. This in turn reflects two historically valid principles: political
indications can be ambiguous or even misleading, particularly if the adversary
is seeking to confuse or deceive us; and the extraordinary buildup of military
capability is likely to be the best single indication of the enemy's course of action,
a point made several times previously in this work.
Isolating the Critical Facts and Indications
Individuals lacking experience with real warning situations nearly always
have considerable misconception about the nature and quantities of information
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which are likely to be received, and the problem of interpreting it. Whereas
the inexperienced tend to believe that warning "failures" arise from totally
inadequate information ("we didn't have warning"), experienced analysts have
learned that the reverse may be the case -- there is almost too much information,
too many reports, too many military preparations, too much "warning." It must
be conceded that this is not always the case, and that there have certainly been
areas and circumstances in which our information was very inadequate. A review
of the evidence available prior to the outbreak of most recent conflicts, however,
will show that a great deal of information was usually available. What was
lacking was probably the evidence of the final decision to go and the evidence
of the final military preparations which would have given a clue to the timing of
the attack -- problems which we will discuss in coming chapters.
In any large volume of political and military reports or indications, some
obviously will be of far greater importance than others for the judgment of the
enemy's intentions. In the preceding chapters, a number of such critical facts
and indications have been discussed, particularly highly unusual military develop-
ments which can be expected to occur only in preparation for combat. As we also
have noted, many political and civil indications may be much more ambiguous, but
some will be much more meaningful than others for warning, and hence should be
accorded much more weight in the assessment of the enemy's intent. It will there-
fore be important that these particular meaningful preparations be singled out and
accorded the attention they deserve. The question should not be simply, is this a
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likely preparation for war? There will probably be a great many developments
in this category. The crucial question may be, how rare is it? How often has
it occurred at all in peacetime, including crises which did not lead to conflict?
How likely would it be to occur except in preparation for war? If the answers
show that even a few critical or nearly unique indications are showing up, the
odds of course are materially increased that the nation in question is preparing
for and will probably initiate hostilities. The more advanced and sophisticated
the military forces and the economy of a country are, the more such distinctive
preparations wil I be required for war. Preparations for nuclear war would involve
an unprecedented range of activities, some of which would probably never be seen
except in preparation for that contingency. It follows, therefore, that:
All Indicators Are Not Ambiguous
A great disservice has been done the community and the warning system
by some rather casual statements that "all indicators are ambiguous." Such com-
ments are not dissimilar in lack of perception to the claim that "We can judge the
enemy's capabilities but we cannot judge his intentions" (see Chapter 5).
Those who make such off-hand judgments are probably familiar neither with
the examples which can be drawn from history nor with the specificity of some
items on indicator lists. Or -- which may be equally 'l i kel y -- they are using
the word "ambiguous" in a highly ambiguous sense.
It is probably true that there is only one totally reliable, unequivocal indi-
cation of an intention to attack -- and that is instantaneous access to the enemy's
decision to do so and/or the order to implement it. Even where total preparation
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for war has been accomplished, where all military indications are "positive,"
and even when the political decision has already been made in principle to
attack, there is always the possibility that the leaders will change their minds
or that some last minute event will cause them to postpone or to call off the
operation entirely. In this sense, it may be said that all indications but the
one are subject to some measure of doubt or uncertainty and can never be viewed
as absolutely conclusive evidence of the enemy's intent.
But there are, as emphasized in the preceding discussion, a number of
military indications which are not in themselves ambiguous. That is, they are
the steps which are undertaken only in preparation for hostilities, which virtually
never occur in peacetime, which are not just "more of the same" but different
from what goes on from day to day. They do not occur for exercises, they do
not occur (or only to a very limited extent) in practice mobilizations or other
drills. They are the developments which truly distinguish war from peace and
which, in the Soviet Union, we have never seen, at least since World War II.
They are the manifestations of the implementation of the war plan, and they
include such developments as: full national mobilization; the institution of full
combat readiness in all military forces; the formation of wartime commands; the
release of nuclear weapons to the authority of the commander; and a number of
other similar although less dramatic measures.
There are further a number of lesser military developments which, although
not necessarily indicative of imminent hostilities, are positive indications that the
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combat readiness and capabilities of forces are being raised, or that they are
being deployed into positions for attack. To call these measures "ambiguous"
is highly misleading, for the military measures themselves are not. They are
not exercises but bona fide measures to raise the combat capabilities and readi-
ness of forces for a particular action. Even if that action is not finally imple-
mented, the preparedness measures themselves should not be dismissed as of
doubtful or ambiguous significance. Many of the measures taken by Soviet and
Warsaw Pact forces prior to the invasion of Czechoslovakia were in this category --
they materially and obviously raised the capabilities of these forces for such an
operation and bore no resemblance to normal "exercises." They brought these
forces to a very high degree of readiness to invade -- a fact which the intelli-
gence community recognized and stated. If the situation was "ambiguous," it
was only because firm evidence was lacking (or many chose not to accept as likely)
that the Soviet Union finally would go through with the invasion. But this did
not negate the validity and non-ambiguity of the military developments themselves.
Negative Indications and Problems of Concealment
In assessing the enemy's intentions, it is necessary not only to take note of
what he has done, but also of what he has not done. If we can determine for sure
that he has not taken certain essential preparations for conflict, or even has taken
some which might reduce his readiness for combat (such as releasing seasoned troops),
this will materially influence our conclusions. In some cases, knowing what has
not occurred can be the most important factor of all.
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Unfortunately, it is often very difficult to find out that something has
not happened. This is particularly true of the whole range of preparations, both
military and civil, which are not readily discernible or which involve relatively
little overt activity. There are other preparations, particularly those involving
major deployments or changes in the normal patterns of military activity, on which
we often can make a judgment with some degree of confidence that certain things
either have or have not occurred.
In compiling a list of what is often called "positive" and "negative" indi-
cations, therefore, great care should be taken to distinguish true negative indica-
tions (things that we expect to happen prior to hostilities but which have not) from
just plain lack of information. In some cases, a large portion of the seeming nega-
tive indications will turn out to be in the no information category. On some of
these, we may be able with sufficient collection to make a determination one way
or the other. On many others, however, our chances of finding out anything are
poor, and sometimes very poor. We must be careful not to mislead our consumers
into believing that we know more than we do, and it may be necessary to point
this out quite explicitly. The indications or current analyst should avoid phrases
such as "we have no evidence that" when the chances of getting the evidence are
poor, and he should not otherwise imply in any way that the information he is
presenting represents the sum total of what the enemy is up to. It may be helpful
just to compile a list of the things that logically could or might have happened which
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we cannot tell about one way or the other. The consumer of intelligence in his
turn must have a realistic understanding of indications intelligence and our collec-
tion capabilities lest he equate a lack of reporting with lack of occurrence.
Reporting from field collectors also should be geared to insure in a crisis
situation that those at headquarters know what the collector has covered or even
can cover, when he files his "negative" report or fails to send a report at all .
A true "negative indication" from the attache is not the absence of a cable, from
which we assume that alI is well, or even the report which reads: "Troop movements,
negative; mobilization, negative." We may need to know what parts of the country
he and his colleagues have covered, and whether any troop induction stations or
reserve depots have been reconnoitered to be sure what "negative" means.
Subject to these provisions, the careful compiling and reporting of true
negative indications can be a most important portion of the totality of evidence and
hence of the final judgment of the enemy's intentions.
Urgency
A distinguishing feature of most crises which result in hostilities and of the
preparedness measures which accompany them is urgency. There is an atmosphere
which surrounds the bona fide pre-war situation which differentiates it from exer-
cises, shows of force, or even political pressure tactics. Although it is somewhat
difficult to define this atmosphere, or to explain exactly what makes it seem "real,"
an important ingredient nearly always is urgency. This sense that there is a race
against time, that things are being done on an accelerated schedule, that the pressure
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is on is likely to be conveyed to us in a variety of ways. It usually will affect
both military and political activities and be evident in a number of anomalies
or indications that plans have been changed, trips cut short, exercises cancelled,
propaganda changed abruptly, and so forth. Only in rare instances -- and those
usually where our collection is poorest -- do we fail to obtain some evidence of
this urgency. Where the pace is leisurely and there appears to be no deadline for
completion of the activity, we will usually be correct in judging that it represents
a long-term or gradual buildup of capabilities rather than preparation for early
hostilities. The general absence of urgency or hurried preparation has been one
of the major differences, for example, between the Soviet military buildup along
the Chinese border over a period of years, and the precipitate movement of forces
prior to the invasion of Czechoslovakia.
One note of caution is in order, however. There are instances of long
pre-planned and deliberate attack -- the North Korean attack on South Korea
in June 1950 is a prime example -- in which evidence of urgency or even any
particular sign of crisis at all may be lacking. Where a nation has more or less
unlimited time to prepare and is practicing a deliberate political deception cam-
paign designed to lull the adversary, it may under favorable circumstances be
successful in concealing or suppressing any signs of urgency. (See further discus-
sion in the next chapter.) In the case of the North Korean attack, our very
limited collection, capabilities undoubtedly also contributed heavily to the surprise
we were not even alerted to the possibility of the attack when it occurred.
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It must also be said that urgency of activity alone, of course, is hot a
firm indication of intent to undertake offensive operations, since obviously
there may be circumstances calling for speedy military preparations and hurried
political decisions when there is no hostile intent. Even in this case, however,
the urgency of the activity will usually indicate that the nation is genuinely
concerned, that it regards the threat seriously, and/or that it is not bluffing.
Some Guidelines for Assessing the Meaning of the Evidence
Crises are marked by confusion, by too much raw information and too
little time to deal with it, by too many demands on the analyst and so forth.
It would be nice to have lots of time for the interested and knowledgeable
analysts to assemble and review their evidence, make their arguments, reexamine
the facts, and revise their judgments and conclusions, much in the laborious
fashion that national estimates are prepared. In warning, unfortunately, time
often does not permit this and it frequently does not even permit some of the less
time-consuming means of getting analysts together to discuss the material and
exchange views on what it all means.
In these circumstances, analysts and consumers alike may profit from some
relatively simple guidelines designed to assist in evaluating the evidence and the
intention of the enemy.
We begin by assuming that the enemy is behaving rationally and that he
is following some logical and relatively consistent pattern of action in achieving
his objectives. Although this may not always be the case (nations as well as
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individuals have sometimes acted irrationally and inconsistently), it is well to
start with the logical analysis of the enemy's behavior before assuming that he
may act irrationally. As a result, we also assume that war is not an end in
itself for him and that he will not resort to hostilities so long as there is some
reasonable chance of achieving his objectives by means short of war. We
therefore start with the five following questions designed to clarify our own
thinking about what the adversary is up to. The questions are:
1. Is the national leadership committed to the achievement
of the objective in question, whatever it may be? Is it a matter of national
priority, something the leadership appears determined to accomplish?
2. Is the objective potentially attainable, or the situation
potentially soluble, by military means, at least to some degree?
3. Does the military capability already exist, or is it being
built up to a point that military action is now feasible and victory likely to be
attainable? Or, more explicitly, does the scale of the military buildup meet
doctrinal criteria for offensive action?
4. Have all reasonable options, other than military, apparently
been exhausted or appear unlikely to have any success in achieving the objec-
tive? Or, more simply, have the political options run out?
5. Is the risk factor low, or at least tolerable?
If the answer to all the questions is a firm yes, logic would dictate that
the chances of military action are high. If the answer to any one of them is no,
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then it would appear less likely, or even unlikely, that the nation will resort to
military action now, although of course circumstances might change so that it
would decide to do so in the future. If two or three answers are no, the chances
of military action would logically appear to drop drastically to the point of highly
improbable if four or all answers are negative.
Applied to some recent indications problems, this technique yields some
interesting results. For the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, the answer to all
five questions is yes -- although some persons might maintain that Soviet political
options were not entirely exhausted by 20 August 1968, a series of political mea-
sures had failed to bring the situation under control, and there was little reason
to believe that more such pressures would succeed. For the Arab-Israeli conflict
of June 1967, the answers from Israel's standpoint also are yes to all five, although
slightly less clearly or categorically perhaps than for the USSR in 1968, i.e., the
risk factor was seemingly a little higher and the exhaustion of political solutions
perhaps a little less certain. For Egypt in 1971, the answers to questions one and
two are emphatically yes, to four also yes (from a realistic standpoint), but the
likelihood of military action drops drastically because Egypt lacked the capability
for successful military action and the risk factor was high. For India in the India-
Pakistan war of December 1971, the answer to all five questions again is yes.
In the Sino-Soviet border controversy (which reached its most critical point
in 1969), we can come to a firm yes only on question one -- the Soviet leadership
did appear committed to "doing something" about the China problem, particularly
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after the Damanskiy Island incident in March. To all other questions on this
thorny problem, however, the answer is either no or at least uncertain. It was
highly doubtful that a Soviet military attack would have "solved" or even less-
ened the China problem. The Soviet Union could not build up sufficient military
force actually to conquer the Chinese people in war -- except possibly by the
use of nuclear weapons. The employment of these, in turn, would make the risk
factor very high -- both militarily and politically. And finally, difficult as
the Chinese might be to negotiate with, the political options had run out. And
1
in due course talks -- not very fruitful but still talks -- were begun, and the
crisis atmosphere which had prevailed began to abate.
Because of the different nature of the Soviet actions in Cuba in 1962 (obvi-
ously, the Soviet Union never intended to go to war over Cuba), the foregoing
questions cannot all be literally applied to the Cuban missile crisis. Insofar as
they are applicable, however, the answers do not yield a positive yes which would
have made the Soviet action logically predictable or consistent with previous Soviet
behavior. In particular, the risk factor -- from our standpoint and in fact -- was
extremely high, and the Soviet action is explainable only as a gross miscalculation
of what the US reaction was likely to be.
Thus these questions, although useful as a logical starting basis for the
examination of the meaning of our evidence, are not a foolproof guide to an assess-
ment of the enemy's intentions. For there will also be the cases In which the
adversary's action will not necessarily be logical -- where he may resort to military
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action, even though the answer to one or even more of the five questions is no.
For a variety of reasons -- miscalculation of the opponent's strength or reaction,
overestimation of one's own strength, frustration, internal domestic pressures,
patriotic hysteria, revenge, a fit of pique, or just plain desperation -- a nation's
leadership may decide on imprudent or even disastrous courses of military action
which are clearly not in its national interest.
Nearly all conflicts are final acts of desperation when other means of
solution have failed. In many cases, the instigator of the military action none-
theless has followed a rational and consistent course of action, and -- after due
deliberation and after all other options have failed to yield results -- has decided
on military action as the only method which will achieve the desired result. Mili-
tary solutions are not inherently irrational acts, particularly if they are likely to
succeed. The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, for example, was a carefully
deliberated, meticulously planned, coldly rational, and entirely logical course
of action; although there were political (but not military) risks, they were for less
from the Soviet standpoint than permitting Czechoslovakia to pass from control of
the Communists.
Before we conclude that some other nation is acting "irrationally" in going
to war, we should carefully examine our own attitudes and make sure we are not
rejecting such action as illogical because we either do not fully appreciate how
strongly the other country feels about it, or because we are just opposed to war on
principle as an instrument of national policy.
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I believe that the systematic application of the method described above
will far more often than not yield positive and correct results. At a minimum,
it is a method of helping ourselves to think objectively about the evidence as a
whole and to avoid, insofar as possible, substituting our own views for those of
the other guy.
But there will remain those cases, like Cuba in 1962, which are not logical
and do not meet objective criteria for rational action. It is this imponderable,
of course, which so vastly complicates warning. We must allow for those cases
where the risk factor is high or where military action is not likely to solve the prob-
lem and may even be potentially suicidal. When there is good reason to suspect
that the leadership of the nation in question may be acting irrationally, the two
most important questions are slightly modified versions of one and three:
Is the national leadership so committed to the achievement of the
objective, or so obsessed with the problem, that it may even act illogically in an
effort to achieve its goals? and
Is the military capability being built up to the maximum possible for
this action, even though the chance of success is doubtful?
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PART VI: SOME MAJOR ANALYTICAL PROBLEMS
CHAPTER 26: THE IMPACT ON WARNING OF CIRCUMSTANCES
LEADING TO WAR
CORRECTION SHEET
to
A HANDBOOK OF WARNING INTELLIGENCE VOLUME II
(PARTS V-VI, CHAPTERS 19-29)
NOVEMBER 1972
In Chapter 26, two pages are interchanged:
The page numbered 26-9 should be 26-12
The page numbered 26-12 should be 26-9
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.ranuary iviz
CHAPTER 26: THE IMPACT ON WARNING OF CIRCUMSTANCES LEADING TO WAR
The varying circumstances under which wars may start, and the differing
motivations or objectives of the nations which begin them, inevitably will have
considerable effect on the indications of the coming of war and our assessment of
them. The causes of war and the reasons why nations resort to conflict are, of
course, enormously complex, and it would be absurd in a single chapter to attempt
even to outline the scope of this problem. Our purpose here is not to analyze the
causes of wars, but only to describe how warning is affected by some of the various
circumstances surrounding the outbreak of conflicts. In particular, we are concerned
with such things as deliberately planned aggression versus wars which come about
because of some change in circumstances, or by miscalculation or escalation.
The Deliberately Planned Aggression
Historically, many and possibly most wars have started from territorial ambi-
tion or a simple desire to gain power, conquer other peoples, or even to rule the
world. In these circumstances, the quest for power is the cause of conflict, and war
is not brought about by any circumstance other than the ambitions of rulers, such as
Genghis Khan, Napoleon, or Hitler. Although such stark militaristic expansionism
has not in the past quarter century been a cause of many conflicts, it was the basic
cause of World War II both in Europe and the Pacific. Thus, those who correctly
perceived the coming of World War II were those who recognized that both Hitler
and the Japanese militarists were bent on conquest and that war was an instrument
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............. .
of their national policies rather than something to be avoided. In the broadest
sense, the warning of the coming of the war was the recognition of this. Beyond
this, warning became a question of when and where conflict would break out,
rather than whether.
The militarist who is determined on conquest and has the requisite power to
initiate the conflict obviously has many advantages in the planning of his operations.
Most important is that he controls the coming of the war, which will be initiated by
and large at the time and place of his choosing. He need not be pushed into war
until he is ready or make his military preparations in haste. He can try military
blackmail to secure his ends and if successful obtain some of his objectives without
resort to war, if he chooses to operate this way. Or he can, at least theoretically,
avoid any kind of ultimatum or demand on his intended victim and attempt to launch
a surprise attack without any "political warning" or seeming deterioration in their
relationship.
These options open to the military aggressor also affect the type and number
of indications which may become apparent to the adversary or be concealed from
him. As is most evident, the political indications can conceivably range from vir-
tually nil (no hostile propaganda, no diplomatic moves or threats, wholly successful
concealment of the decision to attack, etc.) to the most obvious kinds of political
blackmail, ultimatums or overt declarations of intent to attack. In practice, there
have been very few instances in recent times of attempted total political conceal-
ment or absence of crisis, although, as noted in the preceding chapter, the North
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Korean attack on South Korea in June 1950 comes close to it. The point is that,
in closed societies and with the practice of maximum security, the potential aggres-
sor at least has a presumed capability of achieving political "surprise" of this type.
At the least, there is always the chance that he might try it.
The long-planned, -deliberate aggression also permits considerably greater
concealment of many military preparations, primarily because security and deception
measures can be most carefully planned and implemented. Many steps also can be
undertaken more gradually, so that there is less discernible disruption of normal mili-
tary and civilian activity. In contrast, sudden, unexpected crises requiring precipi-
tate and unplanned moves of military forces in response to the emergency nearly always
are apparent in some degree in nations where we have any significant collection capa-
bility. They often are accompanied by breakdowns in military security which would
be almost unheard of in normal circumstances.
On the other hand, the instigator of deliberate aggression normally will initi-
ate his military preparations much earlier and usually more extensively than in the
unexpected situation in which war comes about because of some external change in
the situation. Thus, although the preparations individually will be less obvious (or
not obvious at all), the collection services may have much more time in which to
detect them, and there will be more readiness measures to detect, than in the crises.
The analytic elements of the intelligence services in turn will have more time in which
to make their evaluations, recheck their sources, and so forth. In general, given the
serious problem of delay in the acquisition of confirmatory data from within most closed
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V ._VI% I
societies, time is likely to be on the side of the victim in the long-term buildup.
That is, by and large his chances of detecting the military preparations will be better
the longer he has to do so, even though the security measures to conceal them are
also better. At the same time, however, the preparations may seem to lack an
urgency which can be deceiving, and the intended victim of the aggression may be
more inclined to view the preparations of his enemy as a long-term buildup of capa-
bilities or contingency preparations rather than as indications of an intention to
attack. Obviously, each case will be different in some degree, and it would be
misleading to attempt any generalizations on this subject.
The War Brought on by Changes in Circumstances
Within recent years, the deliberately planned aggression has been much less
frequent than the war which comes about because of some external development
which alters, or threatens to alter, the balance of power, or because of some other
change which worsens a long smoldering situation. The variety of such developments
is considerable. They include sudden spontaneous disturbances or outbursts (such as
the Hungarian revolt in 1956), nationalist or chauvinistic actions which threaten the
interests of another power (such as the Egyptian seizure of the Suez Canal in 1956
and the Egyptian closure of the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping in 1967), an esca-
lation resulting from border incidents (such as the Sino-Indian conflict in 1962), to
name a few. Potential causes of conflict also include provocative actions or threats
of actions designed primarily to test out the opponent and see how much he will put
up with, such as the Chinese Communist shelling of the National ist-held offshore
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islands in 1958, or the series of Soviet threats to Berlin from 1958 to 1961. Other
examples could be cited.
The point is that situations of-this type, whatever precipitates them, are
obvious occurrences which demonstrably raise the international temperature and in
which the threat of possible conflict is nearly always immediately apparent. And
where hostilities do follow, it may not be by choice of the instigator but because
he feels compelled by circumstances to resort to force or the situation simply gets
out of control. Some nations, of course, will be less unwilling than others to
resort to force, but nonetheless the situation is not entirely of their choosing. The
conflict, if it comes, arises at least in part from circumstances or miscalculations
rather than machiavellian design.
The developments which precede such conflicts, or potential conflicts, are
likely to vary to some extent and sometimes considerably from those which precede
the deliberately planned aggression. This difference will not be primarily in the
actual preparations which precede the outbreak of the conflict; in fact, the military
steps may be virtually identical, and some of the same types of civil preparation
will likely be taking place as well. The differences arise rather from such factors
as: the motivations of each of the participants to the dispute; their willingness or
reluctance to resort to conflict; their readiness to negotiate or to seek a genuine
compromise solution; the actual status of negotiations if they are begun; the effec-
tiveness of the intelligence services in ascertaining the level of preparedness of
the antagonist; perceptions of the intentions of the other party regardless of the
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effectiveness of intelligence; assessments of whether time is or is not on their side;
respective estimates of relative military capabilities (not always accurate); military
doctrine on preemption and surprise; pressures from other nations to hold off opera-
tions or to Iimit their scope, and so forth. The foregoing are only some of the com-
plex factors which can influence whether the leadership of a nation will resort to
conflict -- which it may not wish, would not have chosen in other circumstances,
and might have avoided had it better understood the adversary or not misinterpreted
his preparations.
It is obvious that the forecasting of hostilities in such complex circumstances
can be a highly hazardous occupation and potentially fraught with difficulties which
do not arise in the case of the nation which is firmly committed to conquest and has
the clear military capability to achieve its ends by force. It is impossible to obtain
conclusive evidence of the intentions of a nation which has not yet made up its own
mind what to do. In these circumstances, the finest penetration of the highest coun-
cils of government will not provide definitive answers but only information that the
decision has not yet been made. Such access, however, and even intel I igence of
lesser quality, may provide us understanding of the options as the leadership sees
them and a perception of the circumstances which might in the future result in the
firm decision to go to war. It thus may permit us to make quite a good judgment of
the probabilities of conflict even though the decision has not yet been made. But
in the best of circumstances there will likely be a considerable element of uncertainty
as to whether the conflict will or will not be avoidable and, if not, when it may
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finally be precipitated.
Given all these uncertainties, it must be said that our record in perceiving
the coming of hostilities in these complex situations is perhaps better than might
be expected and would seem to compare favorably with our record in predicting
the deliberately planned aggression. Thus our recognition of the likelihood of
conflict between Israel and Egypt in May-June 1967 was considerably better than
our perception that North Korea would attack South Korea in 1950, and forecasts
of the Indian-Pakistani conflict in December 1971 were more forthright and accu-
rate than forecasts that India would move against the little enclave of Goa in
December 1961.
It would no doubt be highly misleading to attempt to generalize why this
is so. But a primary reason unquestionably is that a crisis generates a recognition
that a conflict may ensue and an understanding of why it may occur. Both sides
usually will take pains to make their concern evident, and many if not most mili-
tary preparations may be poorly concealed. Collection is stepped up, and devel-
opments which would pass virtually unnoticed in a period of calm are promptly
reported and disseminated; they may, in fact, be given more weight than is war-
ranted because of the charged atmosphere. The press and other public media are
filled with material on the crisis. The French have a word for it -- intoxication.
Thus the coming of the conflict, even when the intelligence services fail to pre-
dict it with certainty or expect it too soon,, cannot really be said to be a surprise.
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The One-Sided Versus the Two-Sided Buildup
Regardless of the reasons for conflict and the motivations of the attacking
nation, our interpretation of the military moves and issuance of warning will be con-
siderably complicated if both sides are preparing for war and reacting to the prepar-
edness measures of the other. Where the two powers are relatively equal in military
capabilities, and both are building up their forces, the interaction of their prepara-
tions may make it difficult to tell which nation, if either, is the potential aggressor
and which is only preparing to defend itself. Obviously, the chances for miscalcula-
tion and misjudgment are compounded, and an inadvertent border violation or minor
incident potentially may trigger an outbreak of major hostilities in which neither side
appears as the clear-cut aggressor. The problems of war by miscalculation rather
than design have increasingly concerned both the intelligence community and policy
makers in recent years. Some aspects of these problems from the standpoint of warning
will be considered in the remainder of this chapter.
First, it should be noted that the one-sided buildup of military force -- or
the instance in which one nation to the controversy has such overwhelming power
at its disposal that it would be ridiculous to assume that its adversary could possibly
initiate the conflict -- are by no means infrequent. In a number of conflicts since
World War II, one side has had a great preponderance of power and has been able
to employ force -- or to threaten to employ it -- with relative impunity. Indeed,
it is the clear preponderance of force which encourages the military solution rather
than extended and possibly fruitless negotiation, while, conversely, the threat of
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neither side was "inevitably" forced into the conflict, which might have been
avoided by a genuine desire to negotiate or compromise in the interests of avoid-
ing war.
A conspicuous example in which gross miscalculation threatened to lead
to war, but in which conflict was avoided, was the Cuban missile crisis. Khru-
shchev's shipment of strategic missiles to Cuba -- which must rate as one of the
most astonishing and dangerous misjudgments ever made, certainly by the usually
cautious Soviet leaders -- is a prime example of the type of miscalculation which
could precipitate a conflict between major powers. Since both nations, in this
instance, were above all anxious to avoid war, and the potential for escalation
to nuclear conflict was both real and terrifying, the danger was averted. For
analyst and policy maker alike, however, the missile crisis must serve as a constant
reminder that miscalculation of the effects of military actions is a greater danger
in the age of nuclear weapons than it ever has been before.
It will be apparent that such miscalculations present extraordinarily difficult
problems for warning analysis. The prediction of seemingly irrational behavior,
particularly in the absence of strong supporting evidence, is a virtual impossibility
for the intelligence system -- except as a contingency warning to the policy maker
of a possibility which might be developing, or a threat which might be in the making.
As is well known, a special national estimate on Cuba, issued on 19 September 1962,
reached the conclusion that the introduction of Soviet strategic missiles into Cuba
was unlikely -- a judgment which correctly has been called both logical and wrong.
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into account a variety of political and military factors. Obviously, some access
to the nature of policy decisions may be even more valuable in such instances than
in the simpler situation. Lacking this, there are perhaps some questions which
may help to clarify analysis, in addition to the five general guidelines in Chapter
25. To suggest a few:
-- Are the parties really seeking a political solution or willing to corn.-
promise, or is either or both determined to solve the problem on its terms once and
for all?
- Closely related, are great issues of national prestige involved, or
even national survival of one of the parties?
- Has one or the other made public commitments, or taken other steps,
which would be very difficult to reverse or revoke?
- Has either or both taken steps to justify military action, e.g. to its
own people, its allies or the world at large?
- Does one of the countries have sufficient military advantage that it
^~o., reasonably expect victory if it attacks?
- Are the military preparations placing a heavy drain on the national
resources of either or both sides, and hence unlikely to be sustained indefinitely
without some action to resolve the crisis?
Are the military preparations and deployments of either side essen-
tially of an offensive nature, and are the defensive preparations consistent with
an expectation of retaliation for a coming attack?
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On this latter point, the reader is referred to Chapter 17 for a discussion of
offensive versus defensive preparations. It must always be remembered that the most
intensive and complete defensive preparations may be taken by the nation which is
preparing to attack and expects early retaliatory action. The analyst must be care-
ful not to write off such preparations as indicative of nothing more than fear that the
other side may initiate the attack.
Problems of Miscalculation and Preemption
Much has been written on these subjects in recent years, and it may be well
to attempt to define what is usually meant by the terms.
"War by miscalculation" usually defines the situation in which a provocation
or relatively limited action by one party causes an unexpectedly strong response from
the other, and in which a series of escalatory steps follows, resulting finally in the
war which, in some instances, neither side presumably wanted. Although there are
few live instances in recent years, the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War of June 1967 is
probably one. In this case, war followed Egyptian miscalculation of the Israeli
reaction, particularly to the closure of the Gulf of Aqaba, this misguided action on
Cairo's part constituting the primary immediate cause of war. (It may be added that
there is good reason to believe that the USSR, or elements of the Soviet intelligence
services, also contributed to Cairo's miscalculation by misinforming Egypt concerning
Israeli intentions, this error in turn having been a serious miscalculation somewhere
in the Soviet apparatus.) On the other hand, there was no miscalculation by Israel
in its attack, which was a carefully considered and superbly executed action. But
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protracted war or escalation of the conflict will tend to encourage negotiated solu-
tions or the deferment of any solution. These elementary facts require no elaboration;
they are the foundation of "balance of power" politics. Thus, the USSR can employ
force against Hungary and Czechoslovakia with no fear of military retaliation, but
it cannot do so against West Berlin. It is in fact constrained even from major military
threats against Berlin, or the initiation of even minor military incidents on the auto-
bahns, because of the grave dangers of escalation. Ultimately, when political
threats, bluff, military maneuvers, and other measures short of direct military action
had failed to achieve results, the USSR simply put Berlin on the back burner.
The situation marked by a unilateral buildup of force is the least complicated
and should be the least difficult of warning problems, in that the military activity
usually cannot be written off as "defensive," a reaction to preparations by the other
side, or otherwise ambiguous. Normally, the only reasonable grounds for regarding
such buildups as inconclusive indications of hostile intent are that: the military buildup
is intended as pressure to force surrender or capitulation without having actually to
employ it; or it is a contingency preparation for possible action at a later date, meaning
the leadership has not yet firmly made up its mind and is "keeping its options open."
(See discussion of this in the next chapter on the decision-making process.)
But what guidelines are there to help us when the situation is not so clear cut,
when both sides are mobilizing and neither enjoys on overwhelming preponderance of
power? It would be nice to have some pat answers, but of course there are none.
Each situation will be unique and judgments of intentions will necessarily have to take
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The evidence which might have supported a contrary conclusion was circumstantial
and, while it clearly indicated that the Soviets were "up to something" extra-
ordinary in Cuba which could include the introduction of strategic missiles, such
a judgment was not then susceptible to proof. Thus, even those who believed such
action likely -- foremost of whom was the Director of Central Intelligence, John
McCone -- could do no more than to urge its consideration as a possibility or
probability. For, without proof, the President could not act -- he could perhaps
have issued even stronger warnings to Moscow, but he could not have imposed a
"quarantine" on Soviet ship movements to Cuba nor produced convincing evidence
for his action to present to the US public, the United Nations, or to Moscow.
The Cuban case is a good example of the limitations of warning intelligence and a
demonstration that there are times when only more collection can provide the answer
and that the first duty of intelligence in such circumstance is to be sure that its
collection systems are geared for a maximum effort (see discussion in Chapter 4).
Preemption or preemptive attack is defined in the JCS Dictionary as "An
attack initiated on the basis of incontrovertible evidence that an enemy attack is
imminent." It is to be distinguished from the longer term preventive war or pre-
ventive attack, which follows from a belief that war, although not imminent, is
inevitable or at least highly probable, and that delay will entail greater dangers or
risks than attacking now. It is difficult to find an example of true preemption. The
Israeli attack of June 1967 lies somewhere between preventive and preemptive
attack, since there was no clear indication that an Egyptian attack was imminent,
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let alone under way, initial Israeli claims to the contrary notwithstanding.
The appearance of nuclear weapons of course has vastly increased the dangers
of preemption -- and some believe also its likelihood, although this is arguable.
The problem clearly is closely tied to that of miscalculation, for he who goes so for
as to tempt preemption and he who in turn preempts may be guilty of the greatest
miscalculations of all .
"Defusing" the Crisis: Hot Lines and Other Devices
It is these acute problems -- miscalculations resulting from inadequate com-
munications, the danger of preemption based on false intelligence or misinterpretation,
and other possibilities for gross misunderstandings between nations -- which have led
to the establishment of "hot lines" and other devices to facilitate communications
between the heads of state or other high-ranking officials. No one could deny the
merits of such systems for rapid and secure communications or their potential value
for avoiding dangerous confrontations when both sides in fact are seeking to pre-
vent misunderstandings and to avoid war. At the same time, it is doubtful that hot
lines will serve to avert conflicts if one side is determined to continue on a collision
course, and there is nothing that can be said by such means that cannot be equally
well conveyed through more conventional channels, perhaps a little more slowly.
There is also a grave danger that such links would serve as top-level deception
channels in the event of a premeditated attack.
From the standpoint of the indications analyst, and indeed the intelligence
system as a whole, the use of high-level direct communications between heads of
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L.VI
state introduces still another method by which intelligence will likely be denied
both pertinent facts and knowledge of policy decisions and moves by its own side.
The gulf which today so often separates intelligence on the one hand and the
policy and operational levels on the other is particularly dangerous in time of
crisis (see discussion in Chapter 6). Without questioning the other advantages
for the policy maker, the denial to intelligence of information from high-level
private communications can only compound the ever-present dangers that intelli-
gence will be issuing judgments which are less complete or accurate than they
might be, or failing to report some information altogether because its importance
or relevance was not apparent.
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JG%.rcG i
PART VI: SOME MAJOR ANALYTICAL PROBLEMS
CHAPTER 27: RECONSTRUCTING THE ENEMY'S
DECISION-MAKING PROCESS
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February IY/'L
CHAPTER 27: RECONSTRUCTING THE ENEMY'S DECISION-MAKING PROCESS
If the final objective of warning analysis is the understanding of what the
adversary,is going to do, then the knowledge or recognition that he has decided
to do something is the ultimate achievement. The highest goal of every espionage
service is the penetration of the enemy's decision-making machinery -- the hidden
microphone in the conference room, or the agent with access to minutes of the
conference, etc. To have this type of access is to be sure, or nearly sure, of the
enemy's intentions, and will make superfluous a vast amount of information, however
valuable in itself, from lesser or secondary sources.
Since we are most unlikely to have such access to the highest councils of
our enemies -- or if it could be obtained, it would be a highly vulnerable and perish-
able asset -- we must try to do the next best thing. We seek sources and information
which will best permit us to deduce what may have been decided or to infer what the
adversary's objectives and plans may be. In practice, in a crisis or warning situation,
this will mean that we must examine virtually all the available evidence in an attempt
to perceive what the pieces both individually and collectively may tell us about the
enemy's decisions.
Obviously, this is both a highly sophisticated and very difficult analytic
problem. It is also one of the most controversial aspects of the warning problem,
on which there is apt to be the widest divergence of opinion in a live situation.
Moreover, very few guidelines appear to have been devised to assist the analyst or
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VLVItI_ I
the policy maker to follow some logical process in reconstructing the enemy's
decision-making process. In the pressures of a crisis situation, and lacking any
body of experience or agreed "rules" which might be of assistance, there has been
some tendency in the intelligence community to ignore this problem. What should
be of highest priority in the analytic process -- the attempt to decide what the
enemy has decided -- is often shunted aside in favor of mere factual reporting of
what is going on, which is obviously much easier and less controversial . Too
often, the reconstruction of the enemy's decisions and planning is attempted only
after the crisis has been resolved, and thus becomes one more piece of retrospective
or historical analysis, rather than something which might have helped us to foresee
what was going to happen. Some brilliant post mortems have been produced,
which have revealed that there is considerable talent for analyzing the decision-
making process by inferential means. Such studies almost invariably also dig up
pieces of information which were not considered at the time. But they nearly
always are produced too late to help analysis in the current crisis and hence to be
of any assistance to our own decision makers.
Clearly, it would be very useful to have some type of methodology which
would help us to deal on a current basis with this elusive, but highly critical and
sometimes decisive, factor in warning. It would be presumptuous to suggest that
the remainder of this chapter is going to provide the answers, or some kind of
simple and foolproof methodology. Its purpose rather is to assist the analyst to
ask the right questions and to point out some of the more obvious aspects of this
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problem which have often been overlooked. After a brief discussion of these points,
we will examine what we know about Soviet decision-making in two major crises.
Some Elementary Guidelines for Decision Analysis
a. Actions flow from decisions, not decisions from actions. On the surface,
this appears to be a truism, and almost an insult to the intelligence of the reader.
Yet experience shows that this elementary principle is often not understood in crisis
situations. In case after case, there has been a tendency to project into the future
enemy decisions which must in fact already have been taken. The impression is left
that the adversary is highly confused, hasn't decided anything yet, and is just doing
things with no plan behind them. Thus, even major deployments of military forces
may be downplayed or written off in such commonly used phrases as: "The deploy-
ment of these units significantly increases the enemy capability to attack, if he
should decide to do so:" The last phrase is not just gratuitous, it can be downright
misleading. It suggests that the forces are being moved without any plans in mind,
that the adversary does not know yet what he is going to do with them, that major
actions have been taken without any reason for them and that the enemy is going to
make decisions later. Whether the writer of such phrases consciously realizes it,
he is probably using this device to avoid thinking about the problem or coming to
any decisions himself. This phrase will help him to "be right" no matter what hap-
pens later. Whether it will help our own decision maker to "be right" is another
matter, since the effect of this soothing language will probably be to reassure him
that he has lots of time still and there is nothing to be alarmed about yet. He may
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even infer that when the enemy "makes his decision," the intelligence system will
know it and tell him.
All non-routine or unusual actions emanating from the national level result
from some kind of decisions. They don't just happen. This is true of both military
and political actions. In highly monolithic or centrally controlled states (which
includes Communist nations), this is even more true than in democracies; i.e. a US
governor may call out the National Guard or make some extravagant statement on
national policy without its reflecting any decision in Washington, but in the Soviet
Union things don't happen this way. Nor, even at the height of the Cultural Revo-
lution in China, would it have been accurate to assume that some independent
warlord would have been able to mobilize forces opposite the Taiwan Strait or take
some other such action without national authority.
When something unusual occurs, particularly something which increases the
adversary's capability to take military action or is otherwise potentially ominous,
the analyst should ask such questions as: What does this suggest of enemy plans?
What prompted him to do this? What kind of decision has been taken which would
account for this action? He should avoid suggesting that the enemy does not know
why he did it or that we are waiting for him to make his decision. It will often be
helpful at this point to try and look backward and see what may have gone before
which could account for the current development or which may indicate that there
is a connection between a number of developments. And this in turn may help us in
b. Isolating or estimating decision times. Major national decisions, and
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sometimes even minor ones, are likely to result in actions in various fields, all
of which flow from the same source or cause and are thus related to one another.
They are designed to achieve the same ends or to be complementary. Where
the decision is concerned with hostilities or preparations for possible hostilities,
it will nearly always be followed by a series of both military and political actions
which differ markedly from the norm. In some cases, it will require only a minor
amount of backtracking or retrospective analysis to perceive that the actions were
probably initiated at a recent publicized meeting of the national leadership,
Politburo, Warsaw Pact leaders, or whatever. This will be particularly true if
there is some sudden, unexpected development which precipitates a crisis, and
ensuing developments clearly follow from that event. No one should have much
trouble in these circumstances in perceiving that decisions of some sort are being
taken and when.
Where there is no sudden and obvious emergency, however, both the nature
and timing of major decisions are often concealed in closed societies, and some-
times in free societies as well . Thus, it may be some time before there will be
indications that any new decisions have been taken at all, let alone when they
were taken, or what they might have been. The analyst may often have to work
from very fragmentary data in his effort to reconstruct what has been happening up
to now and to attempt to determine when the adversary decided to initiate the
action. Why bother?
The reason to bother is that the recapitulation of the events or developments
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in time sequence from the date when the first anomalies became apparent will not
only help to fix the decision time but also the nature of the decision. The inter-
relationship of events as part of a plan may begin to become apparent; they may
cease to be isolated, unexplained anomalies when they can be traced back to a
common date. Thus we may begin to perceive a scenario in which, for example,
the following things began to happen at approximately the same time: reservists
were secretly called up; the propaganda line for domestic consumption began
stressing the need for greater vigilance against foreign spies; certain key officials
were quietly called home from abroad for consultations; a previously scheduled
military exercise failed to take place; the leaders of some allied countries went on
"vacations" to unannounced destinations; meat became unavailable to civilians in
some provinces; large-scale exercises were announced in a border area; a shortage
of boxcars began to develop for normal economic needs; a prominent military leader
disappeared from public view; the ambassadors of the nation became markedly more
friendly in many countries; the number of submarines on patrol began to rise; and
so forth. It must be stressed that, in real life, this information will likely be
reported in fragments over a period of weeks, never all at once, and some of the
developments at the time will seem to have been so insignificant as not to be worth
noting, let alone reporting in intelligence publications. Only as they are assem-
bled by the date they were first observed to have occurred (not date they were
reported) will the analyst begin to perceive their possible relationships and suspect
that some common prior decision may I ie behind all or many of them.
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Once again, the value of keeping chronologies of bits of seeming incidental
intelligence is evident. It is only by doing this that the probable times of secret
decisions are likely to be suspected at all, or that the analyst can begin to fit the
pieces together. Once it becomes apparent (as it probably will only after meticulous
research) that a shift in the propaganda line actually coincided with the first secret
mobilization of reservists and a variety of other preparations for possible conflict
will the possible scope and significance of the enemy's decisions begin to emerge.
c. Judging that crucial decisions are being made. One of the most important,
things to know about what the enemy is up to is whether he is making major new deci-
sions at all . That is, even if we have no evidence as yet as to the nature of the
decisions, we may gain considerable understanding of the intentions of the adversary
if we have some insight into what he is concerned about and whether some particular
subject is of overwhelming priority to him at the moment. This is often not so difficult
to ascertain as it might appear, although clearly it will be dependent either on what
the adversary chooses to publicize about his concerns, or on our ability to collect
some information on political developments and the activities and attitudes of the
leadership.
Contrary to what many may think, the preoccupation of the leadership with
particular problems and decisions may often be no secret at all . To pick a conspicuous
example, noted earlier in Chapter 20 and discussed in more detail in this chapter, it
was abundantly evident in the summer of 1968 that the Soviet leadership was obsessed
with the problem of what to do about Czechoslovakia, and that it had overriding
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importance to them. It was evident that the Soviet leadership was making decisions
of some kind about Czechoslovakia, even if analysts could not agree what those
decisions were. The perception of the crisis thus derived in part from our knowledge
that Czechoslovakia, from the Soviet standpoint, was what the whole summer was
about.
In contrast, we may note that the Sino-Soviet border crisis of the spring-
summer of 1969 was not accompanied by similar evidence or suggestions that the
Soviet leadership was engaged in decisions of such a crucial and immediate nature
concerning what to do about the China problem. This difference should probably
not be stressed too much, given the Soviet capability for concealment and deception
in this field. Nonetheless, our perception that the crisis in 1969 was not of the
some magnitude as that of 1968 derived in large measure from the sense that the
Soviet leaders were not taking the same kind of critical decisions. This perception
of the degree of criticality of the problem was the result of a variety of information,
some of it of a negative nature, that is, we were just not getting the some volume
and type of reporting reflecting critical positive decisions that was received in 1968.
If this analytic approach sounds highly subjective, it is; but it is of stuff like this
that warning judgments are made.
d. Contingency, intermediate and final decisions. All analysts should
beware the pitfall of oversimplification of the decision-making process, which is
one of the most common of errors. Crucial national decisions usually involve a
series of steps, which may range from preliminary decisions to take certain measures
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on a contingency basis, subsequent decisions to take further preparations and to
"up the ante" in case military action becomes necessary, up to near-final and
final decisions to proceed with the action. Or, alternatively, actions may be
initiated only for pressure purposes or in an attempt to dissuade by threat of force,
with no intention of following through.
It may be noted that a nation may make a final or near-final decision
as to an objective which it firmly intends to obtain, but will make a series of
decisions on the various means which may be tried to obtain that objective.
Often, these will involve both political and military pressure tactics, since
presumably all-out force is the means to be employed only if all other measures
have failed. In this case, a nation may seem to be indecisive (because a series
of measures is tried) when in fact it has the objective clearly in mind and always
intends to reach it.
In recent years, we have heard much about options, and to "keep his options
open" has become a popular phrase to describe various, prel iminary steps or contin-
gency preparations which the nation may take, presumably when it has not yet
decided which course of action it will finally adopt. Indeed the phrase strongly
implies "decision deferred," and the more options a nation has, the better off it
presumably is and the longer it can defer the crucial decisions.
It is well to avoid over-dependence on this idea, which can lead the analyst
into cliche-type reasoning where all preparations for military action, no matter how
ominous, are written off as inconclusive and indicative of no decisions on the part
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of the enemy. The important questions are: "What options are left?" and "Does
this action indicate that the adversary himself now believes that the options are
dwindling and that the chances for a political solution are running out?" It is
surprising how many people seem unable, or unwilling, to carry out this type of
analysis, and will fall back time and again on the argument that it was impossible
to come to any judgment of the enemy's intentions or decisions since he was "only
keeping his options open."
The reader may wish to refer back to the five questions suggested in Chapter
25 as basic guidelines to the interpretation of a nation's course of action. They are
also the crucial factors in the decision-making process. If the first question, or
premise, is judged to be positive -- that the national leadership is committed to the
achievement of the objective in question -- then this is the operative factor behind
the decision, or series of decisions. Only if some other factor effectively prevents
or precludes obtaining that objective, will the nation presumably be deterred from
a course of action which will fulfill its objective. Some of the means it may use
(which we describe as options) may indeed be contingency or preparatory steps ini-
tially, in case other more desirable options fail or do not prove viable, but they are
means to an end, not just steps taken to have "more options" and hence to postpone
coming to any decisions. Indeed, the number of options which the nation devises,
or tries out, to secure its objective may be something of a rough measure of how
serious it is about obtaining it. As applied to Czechoslovakia in 1968, the mere
fact that the USSR tried so many means of bringing the situation under control before
27-10
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it invaded was in itself indicative of the seriousness of its intent and raised the
probability that the military option ultimately would be exercised if all else failed.
e. Inter-play of political and military decisions. Another simplistic
approach'to the decision-making question, which also occurs surprisingly fre-
quently, is to assume that political and military decisions are taken by different
groups and are somehow not really related to one another. On the one hand are
political leaders making political decisions and on the other are military leaders
undertaking military exercises, carrying out mobilization, deploying troops, etc.,
almost on their own without relationship to the political situation. This is highly
erroneous, at least in countries where the national leadership exerts effective com-
mand and control over the military forces, and it is particularly erroneous in Com-
munist nations in which the political leadership maintains a monopoly on the
decision-making process and the military undertakes virtually nothing on its own.
The Party runs the Soviet Union, and the Politburo makes the decisions.
Thus, military and political decisions are inter-related and part of the same
process, and the military steps are undertaken and insofar as. possible timed to achieve
specific political objectives. They must not be considered in isolation or as unre-
lated to the political objective. To do so is not only to misunderstand the cause
of the military actions, but more importantly to fail to perceive the strategic objec-
tive and the interrelationship of the various means which may be used to obtain it.
Soviet Decision-Making in the Cuban Missile Crisis
Among the many unresolved mysteries of the Cuban missile crisis are why the
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USSR undertook the action at all, how and when the Soviet decisions to undertake
it were made, and what the outcome of this highly dangerous adventure was
expected to be. I have often asked analysts who profess to understand this crisis
what they think Moscow was going to do after it succeeded in establishing an opera-
tional missile force 90 miles from the continental US. The fact is that no one knows,
and we can only speculate. The Soviet plan may be compared to a drama in which
we missed the first act altogether, came in for the second act and forced the author
to bring down the curtain because we did not like the plot, and never did learn what
denouement was planned for the third act.
Nor are we likely ever to know. The most exhaustive research after the
event and numerous retrospective analyses have failed to shed much light on the
crucial questions of Soviet motivations, planning, decisions, and expectations.
The post mortems have taught us more about what happened that summer and fall
(although even here there are still many gaps), but virtually nothing more about
how it was decided and why. (It may be added parenthetically that Khrushchev's
so-called memoirs, whether or not he wrote them, are almost no help and very
misleading.)
It is often possible, after a crisis is over, to come to some fair understanding
of when certain decisions were taken, even though it was not apparent at the time.
In the case of the Cuban missile crisis, we cannot even establish this. There is no
evidence when or even that high-level discussions were held with the Cubans, since
there is no record of an exchange of VIP visits during the period when the crucial
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decisions must have been made. The only thing that appears reasonably clear is
that the Soviet decision would have been made some time between the autumn of
1961 (when the USSR's efforts to obtain a Berlin settlement had failed) and the
early spring of 1962. Based on the magnitude of the subsequent logistic effort
and the extensive planning that must have gone into coordinating the various
shipments of materiel and troops to Cuba, it has generally been considered that
the decision was probably made no later than April, or some three months before
the first ship movements were detected in July. During the entire period from
the fall of 1961 to July, we had almost no indication that the USSR was particularly
preoccupied with Cuba, or that any important decisions with regard to that island
were being made. The seeming focus of Soviet concern and the area of greatest
danger of confrontation continued to be Berlin. Thus Soviet security effectively
concealed that any highly dangerous and crucial decisions were being taken con-
cerning a confrontation with the US and also that anything unusual was under way
with regard to Cuba.l
It may also be observed that, even in retrospect, we do not know who
thought up the plan (although we presume it was Khrushchev himself, it could be
Tlt is true that there were a very few and seemingly unrelated clues from clandestine
sources which indicated this possibility, but it would have required almost clairvoyant
perception to have anticipated the Soviet move before the shipments to Cuba began --
and no one would have believed it. There were some other indications that summer
that something potentially big might be brewing in the minds of the Soviets, but its
nature and any connection with Cuba could hardly have been foreseen.
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that he adopted the ideas of someone else), which members of the Soviet leadership
favored or disapproved the idea, or what the attitude of the military was. It can
be argued, with almost equal plausibility, that Soviet military leaders would have
opposed so risky a venture which could have led to hostilities, or that they would
have favored a measure designed to alter the strategic balance of power prior to
undertaking certain other dangerous ventures, for example, in Berlin.
Intelligence, both at the time and in retrospect, also has shed very little
light on the Soviet decision-making process from the time that the US detected the
shipments to Cuba and began to become concerned about them up to the discovery
of the strategic missiles in mid-October. It is quite evident that the various US
warnings to the USSR of the dangers of introducing offensive weapons into Cuba
did not serve to deter Khrushchev and presumably also had no effect on the nature
or timing of the shipments to Cuba. We do not know, however, whether these
warnings prompted new debates in the Kremlin on the whole question and whether
they were partially responsible for some of the military readiness measures which
the USSR initiated about 11 September (the day it announced that its forces were
being brought to "highest combat readiness").
President Kennedy's speech of 22 October announcing the discovery of
the strategic missiles and the imposition of the US "quarantine" of course precipi-
tated a week of overt crisis in which it was quite evident that the USSR was taking
some very important decisions indeed. The first of these which became evident
to us was the order to halt the movement toward Cuba of ships carrying military
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equipment, a highly important indication that the USSR desired to avoid a direct
confrontation with US forces, at least at sea. In subsequent days, however,
work continued on the missile sites in Cuba. As everyone knows, the final and
crucial evidence of the Soviet decision to back. down was conveyed in the mes-
sages sent to President Kennedy by Khrushchev, first privately on 26 October
and again, when it was made publicly, on 28 October, in which the USSR agreed
to withdraw the missiles in return for US assurances that there would be no inva-
sion of Cuba. On the intervening day (27 October), there appeared to be real
indecision in the Kremlin, since on that day Moscow radio carried a statement
by Khrushchev which said that the USSR would remove its missiles from Cuba if
the US did the same from Turkey.
There are a number of indications that Khrushchev became convinced on
27 October that the US had decided to invade Cuba and that the attack was immi-
nent. This was the date when Soviet forces apparently were brought to their
highest readiness, and the crisis was further heightened by the shootdown of a
U-2 over Cuba (an act, incidentally, which almost certainly was not ordered by
Moscow). Khrushchev, speaking to the Supreme Soviet on 12 December 1962,
stated that, "In the morning of 27 October, we received information... which
directly stated that this attack [on Cuba] would be carried out within the next
two or three days." There appears little doubt that it was this threat of imminent
attack on Cuba, or actually on Soviet missile installations and forces in Cuba,
which led to the final and publicly announced Soviet decision to withdraw the
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V f.- V l\v ?
missiles. We also have little reason to doubt that the decision was Khrushchev's
own, although again we have no insight into what role the rest of the leadership
may have played in that decision. There were subsequent hints in the Soviet
press that elements of the military were dissatisfied with the decision, but in the
USSR the military is not represented in the highest decision-making body or
Politburo.
As a footnote to the inter-play of decisions by both sides, it is interesting
to note that Robert Kennedy's book on the missile crisis, published several years
later, revealed that President Kennedy had not reached a final decision on 27 Octo-
ber to proceed with an attack on Cuba. "We won't attack tomorrow, the President
said. We shall try again." i Nonetheless, the President was apparently ready to
order the attack if necessary. That evening, Robert Kennedy informed Ambassador
Dobrynin that the US must have a commitment by the next day that the missiles would
be removed, or otherwise the US would remove them.2 Further, there were leaks
to the press quoting US leaders as indicating that such action would be taken soon,
and these, together with the major US military steps, appear to have been convincing
to the USSR.
The Cuban missile crisis, which to many analysts is both the most fascinating
and most elusive problem we have ever had, is an example of an almost total failure
Robert F. Kennedy, Thirteen Days, a Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York,
W. W. Norton & Co., 1969), p. 101.
2 Ibid, pp. 108-109.
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to have perceived the nature of the adversary's strategic decisions, up to the
moment when conclusive evidence was finally obtained. Not only would it have
been impossible, on the basis of the information available at the time, to have
reconstructed the decision-making process; it is almost impossible to do so even
in retrospect. We must rely on hindsight even to perceive that decisions were
being taken, let alone what they were.
If the Cuba crisis represents the nadir of our collection and perception of
an adversary's decision-making process, the Czechoslovak crisis six years later
provides an altogether different problem, one in which we had ample evidence
that Soviet decisions were being taken on Czechoslovakia, but in which there
is still considerable controversy and misunderstanding concerning what decisions
were taken and when. Thus, the Czechoslovak instance provides an excellent
example of the process of reconstructing decision-making for warning purposes,
which would never have been possible in the Cuban crisis.
Soviet Decision-Making in the Czechoslovak Crisis
From the time that Novotny was replaced as head of the Czechoslovak Com-
munist Party in January up to the Soviet-Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia
on the night of 20-21 August 1968, there was abundant and continually mounting
evidence of Soviet concern with the problem of Czechoslovakia and what could be
done to reverse the course of liberalization undertaken by the Dubcek regime. The
controversy, and there was much controversy, over Soviet intentions never arose
from lack of evidence of Soviet preoccupation with Czechoslovakia. Since the
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Chronology of Major Developments Prior to the Invasion of Czechoslovakia
23 Mar: Trends in Czechoslovakia criticized at Dresden conference, attended by leaders of Czechoslovakia, the
USSR, East Germany, Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria.
9-10 Apr: Soviet Central Committee Plenum heard unpublished speech by Brezhnev, reportedly dealing particularly
with Czechoslovakia, after which Soviet leadership toured the country to explain situation to local
party meetings.
24-25 Apr: Marshal Yakubovskiy, CinC of Warsaw Pact, visited Prague and reportedly asked to have Soviet or
other Pact forces stationed in Czechoslovakia. Request refused.
4-8 May: Czechoslovak leaders in Moscow for unsatisfactory talks, followed by separate and unexpected visit of
leaders of East Germany, Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria.
6-12 May: Several Soviet divisions deployed to positions near Czech border in East Germany, Poland and USSR.
17-24 May: Soviet Defense Minister Grechko and other Soviet military leaders in Prague, with concurrent visit by
Premier Kosygin; followed by announcement that Warsaw Pact exercises would take place in Czecho-
slovakia and Poland in June .
1-23 Jun: Soviet troops which had deployed to borders moved into Czechoslovakia in undetermined strength, but
(approx) apparently substantially more than token forces publicly announced.
20-30 Jun: Warsaw Pact exercise "Sumava" conducted in Czechoslovakia, after which Prague and Moscow an-
nounced conclusion of exercises, but Moscow retracted its announcement.
1 -10 Jul: Soviet forces lingered in Czechoslovakia, amid mounting signs they might not leave.
10-15 Jul: Czechoslovak leaders refused to go to Warsaw for talks. The other five met there without them and
issued very tough letter calling on Prague to take steps to reverse trend toward liberalization. Prague
announced Soviet troop withdrawal begun.
17-19 Jul: CPSU Central Committee Plenum convened suddenly to endorse actions taken at Warsaw. Moscow
again demanded talks with Czech leadership. Marshal Grechko returned to Moscow from Algeria ahead
of schedule.
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20-23 Jul: USSR spreading word it might have to use force in Czechoslovakia. Letters dispatched to friendly Com-
munist Parties warning that USSR would use any necessary means, including force, to bring situation
under control . Ranking Polish Party member reportedly said decision made by USSR to break Czech
will by force if necessary.
23-30 Jul: USSR announced that large-scale Rear Services exercises would be held over the entire western USSR
lasting until 10 Aug and would involve callup of reservists, requisitioning of transport and demoth-
balling of equipment. Extension of these exercises into East Germany and Poland, and involvement of
forces of those countries, announced on 30 July.
24-31 Jul: USSR moved major forces to the border of Czechoslovakia, bringing total divisions to an estimated 15-
19, with major movements being observed in East Germany and Hungary. Ground force movements ac-
companied by major deployments of tactical air units. There were indications that some East German
and Polish units also deploying to border.
28-30 Jul: Western travelers sighted large movements of Soviet troops and supply columns into Poland at several
crossing points from the USSR, ranging from southern Poland to the Baltic coast. Large holding areas
for Soviet forces in central Poland found by Western attaches in early Aug.
15 Jul - Very slow withdrawal of Soviet forces from Czechoslovakia under way. Attache sighting on 29-31 July
3 Aug finally confirmed presence of division-size Soviet unit in Czechoslovakia.
29 Jul - Meeting of Soviet and Czech leaders at Cierna and of Warsaw Five leaders with Czechs at Bratislava
3 Aug resulted in ill-defined Czech commitment to take steps to strengthen Party control and to strengthen ties
with Warsaw Pact. Public polemics to cease. USSR also reported to have again demanded at Ciema
that Soviet troops be stationed in country.
3-16 Aug: Crisis appeared eased, but Soviet-Pact forces remained deployed and military preparations were con-
tinuing. Czechoslovakia was failing to take effective measures to carry out agreement and was again
warned by Soviet press of need to comply.
11 -16 Aug: USSR announced that combined communications exercise being conducted in USSR, Poland, and East
Germany, and that top military commanders meeting in East Germany and Poland.
16-20 Aug: Soviet press attacks on Czechoslovakia increased, but contained no explicit warning of imminent mili-
tary action. Press reports, 20 Aug, indicated Soviet leaders again meeting in Moscow.
20-21 Aug: Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces conducted massive invasion of Czechoslovakia.
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Soviets made no secret of their concern, and since most of the various meetings
with their allies (the so-called "Warsaw Five") were public knowledge, as was
much of the pressure which they brought against Czechoslovakia, analysis of their
decision-making becomes one of interpreting from the available evidence what the
decisions were, not whether decisions were being taken at all .
To simplify the subsequent discussion, the preceding two pages recapitulate
in capsule form a chronology of the major events leading up to the invasion of
Czechoslovakia, beginning with March. It is emphasized that this presents only
highlights and should not be considered anything approaching a complete indica-
tions roundup.
Working from the facts presented in the chronology (which has excluded any
information obtained only after the invasion), when were the major Soviet decisions
taken and when did the USSR "decide" to invade Czechoslovakia? The student of
this problem should be advised that there has never been agreement on this subject
among analysts. Post mortems revealed the widest variations in opinion, even
among those fairly knowledgeable on the facts, and those who did know many details
of the available evidence not surprisingly were still hazier on what might have hap-
pened, and when.
Most of the argument concerning Soviet decisions has centered around the
period of mid-July and the period 16-20 August, and in essence the question is:
Did the USSR "decide" to invade at the time of the Warsaw meeting with its allies,
or did it only initiate the contingency military preparations at that time, thus
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"keeping its options open" for military invasion if it should later decide to take that
course of action? Were the massive military preparations which became evident to
us in the last week of July taken "just in case" or even taken by the military more
or less on their own, or do they indicate a prior political decision that force would
be required to bring the situation under control? Anyone who has not participated
in debates on this subject might be amazed at the extent and even bitterness of contro-
versy on this point, not only at the time but long after the event. Some proponents
of the view that the USSR did not "decide" to invade until about 17 August have even
seemed to suggest that the presence of all those military forces in the field for "exer-
cises" was almost fortuitous, and that the leadership belatedly recognized Marshal
Grechko's foresight in deploying those troops and decided suddenly to make use of
them to invade. It has been suggested that the leaders were making the invasion
plans, or at least working out the details, as late as two or three days before it
occurred.
A less extreme, and much more prevalent, view concedes that this is ridicu-
lous and that the military operations obviously had been carefully planned well in
advance, but nonetheless holds that it was "impossible" to make a judgment of
Soviet intentions from the evidence at hand prior to the invasion and that the USSR
itself did not know what it was going to do until three or four days before. This
view was reflected in conclusions put forth in intelligence publications for three
weeks prior to the invasion -- that Soviet forces were in a high state of readiness
to invade "if it was deemed necessary" or if the USSR "decided to do so," thus
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conveying to the reader the sense that not only we but the Soviets themselves did
not yet know what might occur, and that the crucial decisions were yet to be taken.
Thus the intelligence judgment went as far as it could, and certainly was not wrong,
even though the Soviets did finally "decide" to invade.
This controversy over the timing and nature of Soviet decisions well illus-
trates many of the points set forth in the opening portion of this chapter. Most
comment, and thinking, on the Soviet decision-making process on Czechoslovakia
has been highly simplistic, sometimes even naive. For the most part, analysts
have failed to examine the known developments in sequence in an attempt to under-
stand what decisions should logically have been taken before something happened,
or to ask whether a series of observable actions are related to one another and may
be logically traced to a common prior decision. Analysis has been overly concerned
with what happened rather than with what caused it to happen. In the process -- and
this is a most serious error -- it has often failed to distinguish between the Soviet
objective and the means employed to achieve that objective, and thus has failed to
perceive that fundamental and important decisions were probably taken much earlier
than is usually believed.
Seldom in these discussions has it been suggested that major Soviet decisions
might have been made earlier than mid-July, or that it is pertinent to examine what
the USSR was trying to accomplish before that time. Many observers have maintained
that Soviet policy was vacillating or inconsistent and that the leadership seemingly
was unable to make up its mind what to do about Czechoslovakia, right up until the
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time (unspecified) when the Politburo finally voted to invade. There are a number
of reports, authenticity largely unknown and frequently contradictory, which purport
to set forth how the Politburo voted on the invasion and which members were for or
against the decision.
To which the perceptive analyst of the decision-making process must ask:
What vote are you talking about? The Politburo did not vote just once, or make
Just one decision, on Czechoslovakia. It is clear from the chronology of the evi-
dence that there must have been a series of decisions -- and, moreover, that these
decisions were not logically inconsistent with one another and did not reflect vacilla-
tion on the part of the Soviet leadership. By this we do not mean to say that there
was no controversy over what to do, or that the final outcome followed inevitably
from the first crucial decision, but only that the scenario does have a logical plot,
and that the timing and probable nature of the decisions can be reconstructed with
considerable accuracy from the events which ensued.
The Soviet objective was the restoration of orthodox Party control in Czecho-
slovakia which would insure that the country would remain a faithful Soviet political
ally and a full military participant in the Warsaw Pact. To the USSR, given Czecho-
slovakia's geographic location, such control was essential to the Soviet security
position in Eastern Europe, and the defection of Czechoslovakia could have had
incalculable consequences in adjoining countries as well . As the "Prague spring"
flourished and the liberalization program increasingly permitted a freer atmosphere
which the USSR perceived as a threat to the alliance, the Soviets were concerned
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with finding a means of restoring orthodox Party control. Politically, this might
have been accomplished in one of two ways: by persuasion or pressure on Dubcek
to see the light and himself undertake the necessary steps to reverse the trend
toward liberalization; or by the replacement of Dubcek and the "liberals" with an
orthodox conservative leadership. In fact, the USSR tried both these means, the
"persuasion" and pressure continuing virtually up to the invasion. Although little
is known of Soviet attempts to overthrow Dubcek by a coup within the Party, there
is reason to believe that the USSR hoped, at least initially, and perhaps even tried
to do this, but that the conservative element was entirely too weak to accomplish
it without more support than the USSR could bring to bear.
Another means which could be used to help secure the political objective
was military power. It is important to understand that force, either present or
readily available, is an essential ingredient of dictatorial control, that the Com-
munist regimes in Eastern Europe have remained in power only because of the proxi-
mity of Soviet forces, and that this is a major reason why Soviet troops are deployed
in Eastern Europe. The normal Soviet response to any serious threat of political
dissidence is to deploy more military force to the area. Thus, in Moscow's eyes,
the introduction of Soviet forces into Czechoslovakia was a means by which its
political objectives would be furthered. The objective was not to carry out a mas-
sive invasion of Czechoslovakia -- this was undertaken only when all other measures
had failed to achieve the desired result -- but rather to get Soviet forces- into the
country by one means or another, so that their presence would serve to keep the lid
27-24
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on the political situation. The evidence indicates that the USSR was attempting
from April onward to introduce Soviet forces into Czechoslovakia -- not because it
sought a "military solution" but because the troops were to be a means of obtaining
the desired political solution. In this sense, the USSR intended from April onward
to "invade" and in fact it conducted not one, but two, invasions of Czechoslovakia.
Let us now go back to what happened that spring and summer, insofar as we
have outlined it in the chronology on pp. 18-19, and try to reconstruct the Soviet
decision-making process. In all, we can isolate five different occasions -- in
fact almost the precise dates -- on which the Soviet leadership, either alone or in
concert with its allies, must have decided on some action concerning Czechoslo-
vakia. Further, we can from the events which followed come to logical and prob-
ably quite accurate judgments as to what the essence of the decisions must have been.
The chart on page 26 summarizes this information on the decisions, including a little
information on the period from 16 August onward which did not become available to
us until after the invasion.
If this reconstruction of events is essentially accurate, as I believe it to be,
it will be seen that the basic political decision -- to restore effective control in
Czechoslovakia and to keep it within the Warsaw Pact -- had probably been taken
in principle by early April . This does not, of course, necessarily mean that all
subsequent measures undertaken were then discussed, or that a final requirement for
full-scale invasion was then foreseen, although the military almost certainly would
have been directed to begin contingency planning for this possibility, once the
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DATE EVENT
9-10 Apr Soviet Central
Committee Plenum
4-8 May Meetings in Moscow
of Soviet and Czech
leaders, and of Sov-
iets with other four
countries
14-15 Jul Meeting of Warsaw
Five, following
Czech refusal to
talk with Soviets
29 Jul - Ciema and Bratis-
3 Aug lava conferences
16-17 Aug Meetings of Soviet
leaders (but not
Central Committee)
in Moscow
PROBABLE NATURE OF DECISIONS
Endorsed Politburo decision that control of
Czechoslovakia must be maintained and
that Soviet troops should be placed in
country.
Four Eastern European countries and USSR
agreed on further steps, including deploy-
ments of Soviet troops to Czech border,
and possibly to try to oust Dubcek by in-
ternal Party coup.
Agreement of the Five that political so-
lution unlikely, and that full-scale in-
vasion would probably be required to
force Czech compliance. All military
preparations for invasion to be carried
out, but another effort also to be made
at political solution.
Soviet leaders probably decided and
their allies agreed to give Czechoslo-
vakia one more chance to comply.
Final decision to invade probably de-
ferred.
Took final decision to proceed with in-
vasion on night of 20-21 Aug; considered
last-minute measures -- including agree-
ment to begin SALT with the US and in-
vitation to President Johnson to visit USSR.
RESULTING ACTIONS
Party membership informed. Yakubovskiy
dispatched to ask, unsuccessfully, that
Soviet troops be stationed in Czechoslo-
vakia.
Soviet troops deployed to Czech border.
Czechs persuaded to permit Soviet troops
to enter country for Warsaw Pact "exer-
cise. Deployed forces conducted
"silent invasion" of Czechoslovakia.
Mobilization and deployment of Soviet
and Warsaw Pact forces. Heavy pressure
brought on Czechs to meet. Soviet Cen-
tral Committee Plenum endorsed any ac-
tion leadership considered necessary,
giving it free hand thereafter. Friendly
parties informed force would be used if
needed.
USSR toned down polemics against Czechs
but continued military preparations for in-
vasion, announcing a series of "exercises"
as cover. Czechs failed to tighten con-
trols as promised.
Final military preparations for the in-
vasion completed. Propaganda against
Dubcek increased but without direct
warning of imminent invasion. US informed
of Soviet agreement to begin SALT talks.
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political decision had been reached. Within a month, deployments were undertaken
with the intention of "invading" under cover of a Warsaw Pact exercise, the scope
and purpose of which had been grossly misrepresented to the Czechoslovak leaders.
Whatever doubts we may have had about the purpose of all this were, or at least
should have been, dispelled when the Soviet troops failed to leave the country after
the exercise despite mounting Czechoslovak concern and demands. Finally, contro-
versy over the nature and size of the Soviet forces which had entered for the "exer-
cise" was largely resolved by attache sightings the end of July which confirmed the
presence of at least one full division, fully combat prepared, and not the usual
token forces used in Warsaw Pact exercises.
So what did the Pact allies discuss in Warsaw in mid-July, following which
the mobilization and deployments of the invasion forces occurred? What is meant
by those who maintain that no decisions were then taken on future actions, but only
"contingency" preparations in case it was later decided to use force, and that the
Soviets themselves never made up their minds until three or four days before the
invasion? I personally find this reasoning extremely shallow and non-perceptive,
and illustrative of a fundamental error in the warning process -- to wit, a reluctance
to come to judgments on the grounds that the enemy has yet to make his decision, so
how can we tell what he will do? I will try to explain why this type of reasoning
does not hold water, at least in this instance, recognizing, however, that this will
not be convincing to all readers, perhaps not even to most. But it is the heart of the
warning problem, and the difference between those who "had warning" of the invasion
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V L V l\ L l
of those who did not.
First, the course of events up to mid-July, as well as a great deal of informa-
tion received in the following two to three weeks, provided a convincing amount of
evidence that the Soviet leadership was desperately seeking to bring the Czechoslo-
vak situation under control, and that nothing held higher priority to them than this.
There was a true crisis atmosphere, which belied any judgment that the Soviets were
exaggerating their concern or bluffing. Moreover, we received virtually unequivo-
cal warning by the end of July that foreign non-ruling Communist Parties had been
informed that the USSR would take whatever means were necessary, including force,
to bring the situation under control and, even more explicitly, a reliably sourced
report that the decision had been taken to break the Czechoslovak will by force if
necessary.
The scale of the military buildup also was consistent only with a decision to
carry out preparations for full-scale invasion, and could not reasonably be dismissed
as "exercises," an attempt to bring "more pressure," or preliminary contingency
measures. This fact was recognized and reported, at least to the extent that the
forces were held to be in a "high degree of readiness" to invade. Moreover, in
addition to the forces deployed along the Czechoslovak border, the movement of
substantial additional Soviet forces into northern Poland (apparently as backup or
reserve forces) provided further evidence of a bona fide buildup of combat forces
rather than mere "pressure" on the borders of Czechoslovakia.
What, then, was the most probable nature of the decisions taken in mid-July,
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and again a few days before the invasion, and which was the most important?
Which was "the" decision, or "the" Politburo vote sometimes referred to as if
there had been only one? It appears to me that the crucial decisions with respect
to the invasion must have been taken in mid-July, and that the massive military
buildup was initiated because the USSR and its allies became convinced that a
solution by political means was unlikely, and that a military invasion would there-
fore probably be required to bring the situation under control-. Or, to put it another
way, the Soviet leadership reached the basic decision in mid-July to carry out an
invasion unless a political solution could be reached. At the same time, it was
apparently also decided to make one more effort toward a political solution before
proceeding with invasion, and thus probably to defer a final decision on whether
military actionwould inevitably be required -- and hence also the decision on its
timing.
And what was "decided" on 16-17 August that required the meetings of the
leadership (but not, we may note, the reconvening of the full Central Committee
which had already given its endorsement of the mid-July decisions)? So far as we
can tell, these meetings were concerned with two things: a final decision to pro-
ceed with the invasion on the night of 20-21 August, and the last-minute details
of the plans -- including the message to President Johnson agreeing on SALT talks.
We remain uncertain why this date was chosen, although it is likely that both politi-
cal considerations (the final acceptance that Dubcek was either unwilling or unable,
or both, to implement the Cierna and Bratislava agreements in the sense in which
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the USSR intended) and military considerations (the forces were fully ready and
probably had been so for at least several days) prompted the final decision to go
ahead. Although this decision was not, of course, "inevitable" -- the basic
decisions of mid-July could always have been reversed and the invasion called
off -- the most crucial decisions and votes were nonetheless those of July.
From then on, invasion was always a probability barring some political miracle,
which the Soviet leadership really did not expect. Moreover, the action fol-
lowed logically from the earlier decisions, almost certainly dating back to April,
that by one means or another Czechoslovakia must be kept within the Warsaw Pact.
The analysis above, while convincing to me, will not necessarily be so to
others, particularly those who have long maintained that the USSR did not "decide"
to invade until 16-17 August. We cannot answer the question definitely; the
evidence does not permit an absolutely firm conclusion and will continue to be
interpreted differently by different individuals. The case does illustrate the dif-
ference in reasoning, however, between the individual who says that the Soviets
were "just keeping their options open" and then stops analyzing, and the individual
who asks "what options did they have Ieft? " To understand this difference is truly
to perceive the warning problem on Czechoslovakia.
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PART VI: SOME MAJOR ANALYTICAL PROBLEMS
CHAPTER 28: ASSESSING THE TIMING OF ATTACK
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ov%arcn iy/z
CHAPTER 28: ASSESSING THE TIMING OF ATTACK
One of the most widespread misconceptions about warning is the belief
that, as the hour of the enemy attack draws near, there will be more and better
evidence that enemy action is both probable and imminent. From this, the
idea follows naturally that intelligence will be better able to provide warning
in the short term and will, in the few hours or at most days prior to the attack,
issue its most definitive and positive warning judgments. Moreover -- since
there is presumed to be accumulating evidence that the enemy is engaged in
his last-minute preparations for the attack this concept holds that intelli-
gence will likely be able to estimate the approximate if not the exact time of
the attack. Therefore, if we can judge at all that the attack is probable, we
can also tell when it is coming.
This concept of warning -- as a judgment of imminence of attack -- has
adversely affected US thinking on the subject for years. As of this writing, the
official definition of strategic warning in the JCS Dictionary is, "A notification
that enemy-initiated hostilities may be imminent." (See discussion of this
question in Chapter 2). More explicitly, the US national warning estimate
of 1966 concluded: "Intelligence is not likely to give warning of probable
Soviet intent to attack until a few hours before the attack, if at all . Warning
of increased Soviet readiness, implying a possible intent to attack, might be
given somewhat earlier."
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However logical these suppositions may appear in theory,, they are not
supported either by the history of warfare nor the experience of warning analysts,
and in recent years more realistic assessments of this problem have begun to
appear in warning papers and estimates.
For the fact is that warning judgments are not necessarily more accurate
or positive in the short term and that assessing the timing of attack is often the
most elusive, difficult and uncertain problem which we have to face. It is
simply not true that the last few days or hours prior to the initiation of hostilities
are likely to bring more and more specific indications of impending attack which
will permit a better or more confident judgment that attack is likely or imminent.
In many cases experience shows that the reverse will be true, and that there will
be fewer indications that the attack is coming and even an apparent lull in enemy
preparations. This can be quite deceptive, even for those who know from experi-
ence not to relax their vigilance in such circumstances. Those who do not under-
stand this principle are likely to be totally surprised by the timing -- or even the
occurrence -- of the enemy action. They will probably feel aggrieved that
their collection has failed them and they will tend to believe that the remedy
for the intelligence "failure" is to speed up the collection and reporting process,
not appreciating that the earlier collection and analysis were more important and
that a judgment of probability of attack could have been reached much earlier
=. and should not have been dependent on highly uncertain and last-minute collec-
tion breakthroughs.
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Principal Factors in the Timing of Attacks and the Attainment of Surprise
Nearly all nations, except in unfavorable or unusual circumstances, have
shown themselves able to achieve tactical surprise in warfare. History is replete
with instances in which the adversary was caught unawares by the timing, strength
or location of the attack -- even when the attack itself had been expected or
considered a likelihood. Even democracies, with their notoriously inept security
in comparison with closed societies, have often had striking success in concealing
the details (including the timing) of their operations. To cite the most conspicuous
example, the greatest military operation in history achieved tactical surprise even
though it was fully expected by an enemy who potentially had hours of tactical
warning that the massive invasion force was approaching. It was the Normandy
invasion. In Chapter 29 we will discuss the role which deception played in this
operation.
It is not only by deception, however, that tactical surprise is so often
achieved and that last-minute preparations for the attack can be concealed.
A more important and more usual reason is that the indications of attack which
are most obvious and discernible to us are the major deployments of forces and
large-scale logistic preparations which are often begun weeks or even months
before the attack itself. Once these are completed, or nearly so, the enemy
will have attained a capability for attack more or less at the time of his choosing,,
and the additional preparations which must be accomplished shortly prior to the
attack are much less likely to be discernible to us or may be ambiguous in nature.
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Staff conferences, inspections, the issuance of basic loads of ammunition and
other supplies, and the final orders for the attack all are measures which require
little overt activity and are not likely to be detected in time except by extra-
ordinarily fine collection and rapid reporting -- such as a well-placed agent
in the enemy's headquarters with access to some rapid means of communications,
or the fortuitous arrival of a knowledgeable defector. Even the final deploy-
ments of major ground force units to jumpoff positions for the assault may be
successfully concealed by the measures which most nations take to insure tactical
surprise -- including rigid communications security and night movements. Thus,
unlike the major deployments of troops and equipment which almost never can
be entirely concealed, the short-term preparations have a good chance of being
concealed, and quite often are. And, even if detected, there will often be
minimal time in which to alert or redeploy forces for the now imminent attack,
still less to issue warning judgments at the national level . Such tactical warning
usually is an operational problem for the commander in the field. Ten minutes
or even three hours warning does not allow much time for the political leadership
to come to new decisions and implement them.
Another facet of the problem of assessing the timing of attack is the diffi-
culty of determining when the enemy's preparations are in fact completed, and
when he himself will judge that his military forces are ready. As we have noted
elsewhere, it is particularly difficult to make this judgment with regard to logistic
preparations. In fact, I can recall no instance in my experience in which it could
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be clearly determined that the logistic preparations for attack were complete,
particularly since heavy supply movements usually continue uninterrupted even
after the attack is launched. There has often been a tendency for intelligence
to believe that all military preparations are completed earlier than in fact is
the case -- the discrepancy usually being attributable to the fact that the major
and most obvious troop deployments had apparently been completed. Thus,
even when intelligence has come to the right judgment on enemy intentions,
it has sometimes been too early in its assessment of the possible timing of the
attack.
In addition, the enemy command for various reasons may not go through
with an attack as soon as the forces are fully prepared, or may change the date
of the attack even after it has been set. A recent study has compiled some
data concerning the frequency with which D-Days are not met, and the effects
of this on the adversary's judgments. Of 162 cases analyzed where D-Days
applied, almost half (about 44 per cent) were delayed, about five per cent went
ahead of schedule, and only slightly more than half (about 51 per cent) remained
on schedule. The most common reasons for delay were weather and administrative
problems, presumably in completing or synchronizing all preparations. Some
attacks have had to be postponed repeatedly. For example, the Germans' Verdun
offensive of 21 February 1916 was postponed no less than nine times by unfavorable
weather.1
1 Barton Whaley, Stratagem: Deception and Surprise in War (Cambridge, Mass.,
MIT Center for International Studies, April 1969), pp. 177-78, and A-69. See
Chapter 29 for a more detailed discussion of this work.
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Such changes in plans have sometimes had notable effects on the
opponent's assessments, particularly when he has gone through one or more
alerts of impending attack which foiled to materialize. Whaley notes that
the finding that procrastination can help to generate surprise is explainable
by the "cry-wolf" syndrome -- whereby the false alert, and particularly a
series of them, breeds skepticism or downright disbelief of the authentic
warning when it is in fact received. "Moreover, the trend is that the
greater the number of false alerts, the greater the chance of their being
associated with surprise.... [The] Aesopian moral seemingly holds..., the
false alarms serving mainly to undermine the credibility of the source and
dull the effect of subsequent warnings.... It is ironic that. .some of the
D-Day warnings were quite authentic, the enemy having merely unexpectedly
deferred the operation. The consequence was, of course, that several superb
intelligence sources including Colonel Oster, Sorge and Rossler received
undeserved black marks on the eve of their subsequent definitive alerts."1
Of all aspects of operational planning, the easiest to change and most
flexible is probably timing. Once troops are in position to go, orders to attack
usually need be issued no more than a few hours ahead, and the postponement
of even major operations rarely presents great difficulties to the commander.
Attacks have been postponed -- or advanced -- simply because there was reason
to believe that the enemy had learned of the scheduled date. Obviously, among
1 Ibid, pp. 187-188.
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the simplest of deception ruses is the planting of false information concerning
the date of operations with the enemy's intelligence services.
In addition to general preparedness, tactical factors and surprise,
operations may be delayed for doctrinal reasons or to induce enemy forces to
extend their lines of communication or to walk into entrapments in which they
can be surrounded and annihilated. The delayed counteroffensive, designed
to suck enemy forces into untenable advanced positions, is a tactic which the
Communists have employed with devastating effect. Obviously, misjudgments
of the enemy's intentions in such cases have been heavily influenced by the
seeming delay in his response, which induces a false sense of security that he
will not respond at alI .
Political factors also may weigh heavily or even decisively in the timing
of operations. This, of course, will be particularly true when (as is often the
case) the nation in question intends to resort to military operations only as a
last resort and hopes that the threat of such action will induce the opponent
to capitulate. Obviously, in such cases, the decision of the national leader-
ship that the political options have run out and that only force will succeed
will be the determining factor in when the military operation is launched (see
Chapter 27). In this event, operations may be deferred for weeks beyond the
date when military preparations are completed, and the assessment of the timing
of the attack may be almost exclusively dependent on knowledge of the political
situation and insight into the enemy's decision-making process.
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Still another political variant which may affect the timing of attack
is when one nation is attempting to induce the other to strike the first major
blow and thus appear as the aggressor. In this case, a series of harassments,
border violations and various clandestine tactics may be employed as the
conflict gradually escalates until one or the other power decides to make an
overt attack. Clearly, the point at which this may happen will be very
difficult to predict.
Apart from the various reasons noted above, there may be other largely
tactical considerations which will affect the timing of attack. Weather, as
already mentioned, is one of these -- not only visibility, but in some cases
winds, tides, moonlight or lack of it. Conditions of roads and terrain of
course have been a major determining factor in when some operations will be
launched. Military operations and logistic movements of Communist forces
in Southeast Asia have traditionally been greatly slowed, if not halted alto-
gether, at the height of the rainy season, and spring thaws on the plains of
central Europe have delayed many operations. In cases where weather effec-
tively precludes overland movement, it is of course highly probable that attacks
will not occur. Nonetheless, there is always a chance that an enemy may
choose to attack even in highly adverse conditions in the interests of achieving
surprise.
As is well known, many attacks are initiated near dawn, for two
ef,:ions: the nighttime cloaks the final deployments of the attacking units,
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and the hours of daylight are desirable to pursue the operation. Several Com-
munist nations, however, have shown a marked favoritism for attacks in the dead
of night. This has been particularly true of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong
forces, which have shown themselves highly adept in night penetration operations
and assaults. The USSR also has often launched attacks or other operations hours
before dawn: the operation to crush the Hungarian revolt began between about
midnight and 0330; the Berlin sector borders were sealed about 0300; the invasion
of Czechoslovakia began shortly before midnight.
The USSR also has shown some favoritism for Sunday, both the Hungarian
and Berlin operations having occurred in the early hours of a Sunday morning.
It would be dangerous, however, to assume that this would be the case. The
invasion of Czechoslovakia occurred, for instance, on a Tuesday night, slightly
to the surprise of some who had come to expect Soviet operations to begin on
Sundays. Whaley has found some preference for Sunday operations among Com-
munist states but not in a majority of cases; it was true in only about one-fourth
of the operations which he studied.I Among other nations, there does not appeal
to be any evident preference for particular days of the week. In cases where
Sunday is chosen, it is not for any anti-religious reason, but because the alert
status of most Western nations is then usually lowest. The Japanese selected
Sunday for the Pearl Harbor attack because their observations had shown that
most US ships would then normally be in port.
1 Whaley, o cit, pp. 180-181,
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Some Examples of Problems in Assessing Timing
Because of space limitations, discussion of more than a few examples
is precluded, and even these must be covered briefly. There is considerable
military historical writing, particularly on World War II, which may be
consulted by those who wish to study this aspect in more detail, as well as
the many examples in Whaley's previously cited work. Since much of this
material is readily available and the timing of the Normandy invasion also
is addressed in Chapter 29 of this book, the examples below include only
two from World War II with the remainder drawn from more recent intelli-
gence experience.
- The German attack on Holland, Belgium and France, May 1940:
World War II had been under way for eight months before Hitler finally launched
his offensive against Western Europe in May 1940, the long delay in the opening
of the western front having generated the phrase "phony war." All three vic-
tims of the final assault had ample and repeated warnings, and indeed it was
the redundancy of warnings which in large part induced the reluctance to accept
the final warnings when they were received. The "cry-wolf" phenomenon has
rarely been more clearly demonstrated -- Hitler is said to have postponed the
attack on the West 29 times, often at the last minute.
Owing to their access to one of the best-placed intelligence sources of
modern times, the Dutch had been correctly informed of nearly every one of
ih -se plans to attack them, from the first date selected by Hitler, 12 November
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1939, to the last, 10 May 1940. Their source was Colonel Hans Oster, the
Deputy Chief of German Counterintelligence, who regularly apprised the Dutch
Military Attache in Berlin of Hitler's plans -- and of their postponements.
Although in the end Oster provided one week's warning of the 10 May date,
and there was much other evidence as well that the German attack was probably
imminent, the Dutch ignored the warnings and failed even to alert their forces
prior to the German attack. The Belgians, more heedful of the numerous warn-
ings received, did place their forces on a general alert. The French, having
also experienced several false alarms of a German attack, seem to have ignored
the repeated warnings of their own intelligence in early May, including a firm
advisory on 9 May that the attack would occur the following day. These instances
also clearly demonstrate two fundamental precepts of warning made in Chapter 3
of this work: "more facts" and first-rate sources do not necessarily produce "more
warning," and intelligence warnings are useless unless some action is taken on them.
The Soviet attack on Japanese forces, August 1945: This is one of
the lesser studied World War II examples, but clearly demonstrates the difference
between strategic and tactical warning. The Japanese, who were able to follow
the Soviet buildup in the For East from December 1944 through July 1945, correctly
judged that the USSR would attack the Japanese Kwantung Army in Manchuria.
As noted in a preceding discussion (Chapter 16), they had also concluded by July
that the Soviet troop and logistic buildup had reached the stage that the USSR would
be ready to attack any time after 1 August. Despite this expectation which almost
certainly must have resulted in a high degree of alert of the Japanese forces in
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Manchuria, the Kwantung Army had no immediate warning of the timing of the
attack, which occurred about midnight on the night of 8-9 August.
The North Korean attack on South Korea, June 1950: This was
a notable example of both strategic and tactical surprise, and indeed one of the
few operations of this century which truly may be described as a surprise attack.
Neither US intelligence, at least in its official publications, nor policy and
command levels had expected the attack to occur, as a result of which there had
been no military preparations for it. The South Koreans, despite many previously
expressed fears of such an attack, also were not prepared and had not alerted
their forces. Since strategic warning had been lacking, the short-term final
preparations of the North Korean forces (insofar as they were detected) were
misinterpreted as "exercises" rather than bona fide combat deployments. In
considerable part, the warning failure was attributable to inadequate collection
on North Korea -- but the failure to have allocated more collection effort in
turn was due primarily to the disbelief that the attack would occur. In addition,
the "cry-wolf" phenomenon had in part inured the community -- for at least a
year, there had been about one report per month alleging that North Korea would
attack on such-and-such a date. When another was received for June, it was
given no more credence than the previous ones -- nor, in view of the uncertain
reliability and sourcing of all these reports, was there any reason that it should
have been given greater weight. Although we can never know, most and per-
haps all of these reports may have been planted by the North Korean or Soviet
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intelligence services in the first place. The attack is a notable example of the
importance of correct prior assessments of the likelihood of attack if the short-
term tactical intelligence is to be correctly interpreted.
Chinese intervention in the Korean war, October-November 1950:
Among the several problems in judging Chinese intentions in the late summer and
fall of 1950 was the question of the timing of their intervention. Based on the
premise that the less territory one gives up to the enemy, the less one's own forces
will have to recover, the Chinese can be said to have intervened much "too late"
in the conflict. And this conception of the optimum time for Chinese intervention
strongly influenced US judgments of their intentions. From the time the first
direct political warning of the Chinese intention to intervene was issued on 3 Octo-
ber (to the Indian Ambassador in Peking) until the first contact with Chinese forces
in Korea on 26 October, all Communist resistance in Korea was rapidly collapsing
as the US/UN forces were driving toward the Yalu. As the Chinese failed to
react and the Communist prospects for recouping their losses appeared increasingly
unfavorable, the Washington intelligence community (and probably the For East
Command as well) became increasingly convinced that the time for effective Com-
munist intervention had passed. In the week prior to the first contact with Chinese
forces, the US national warning committee (then known as the Joint Intelligence
Indications Committee, the predecessor of the Watch Committee) actually went on
record as stating that there was an increasing probability that a decision against
overt intervention had been taken.
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L_ I
Once the Chinese forces had actually been engaged, there was an
interval of a month before they became militarily effective and launched their
massive attacks in late November. Thus in this period the intelligence process
again was confronted with the problem of assessing the timing of any future
Chinese operations, as well of course as their scope. The four-week period
produced many hard indications, both military qnd political, that the Chinese
in fact were preparing for major military action. But there was virtually no
available evidence when such action might be launched, and even those who
believed that the coming offensive was a high probability were somewhat per-
plexed by the delay and were unable to adduce any conclusive indications of
when the attack would occur. As is well known, tactical surprise was indeed
achieved.
Even in retrospect, we cannot be sure whether the Chinese delayed
their intervention and their subsequent offensive because of political indecision,
the need for more time to complete their military preparations, or as a tactical
device to entrap as many UN forces as possible near the Yalu. I believe that
military rather than political factors probably delayed the initial intervention
and that both preparedness and tactical considerations accounted for the delay
in the offensive, but I cannot prove it. Others may argue -- and they cannot
be proved wrong -- that the Chinese may not have decided inevitably on inter-
vention by 3 October, and/or that negotiations with the USSR and North Korea
may have delayed the intervention as much as military factors.
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The Arab-Israeli Six-Day War, June 1967: There were many
indications of the coming of this conflict. From 22 May, when Nasser closed
the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping, tensions had been mounting, and the
possibility of war was universally recognized. Both sides had mobilized and
taken numerous other military preparedness measures. Before 1 June US intelli-
gence was on record that Israel was capable and ready to launch a preemptive
and successful attack with little or no warning, and that there was no indication
that the UAR was planning to take the military initiative.
Inasmuch as the Israeli attacks on the morning of 5 June, and particu-
larly the decisively effective air strikes, have often been heralded as one of
the most brilliant examples of tactical surprise in this century, one may reason-
ably ask who was surprised, and why and in what way? The answer to the who
is that the Arabs were surprised, although we were not. US intelligence
predictions of the likelihood and probable success of an Israeli assault were
highly accurate, although the precise timing and tactics of the operation, of
course, were not known to us.
The Israelis screened their plans from the Arabs by a combination of
rigid security (there was no leak of their decisions or final military preparations)
and an exceptionally well-planned and effective deception campaign. There
were several facets of the deception plan, one of which was to lead Egypt to
believe that the attack, if it occurred, would be in the southern Sinai rather
than the north. In addition, numerous measures were taken in the several days
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prior to the attack to create the impression that attack was not imminent. These
included public statements by newly appointed Defense Minister Moshe Dayan
that Israel would rely on diplomacy for the present, the issuance of leave to
several thousand Israeli soldiers over the weekend of 3-4 June, public announce-
ments that concurrent Israeli cabinet meetings were concerned only with routine
matters, and so forth. In addition, the attack was planned for an hour of the
morning when most Egyptian officials would be on their way to work and when
the chief of the Egyptian Air Force usually took his daily morning flight. I
The greatest surprise in the Israeli operations was not their occurrence,
however, or even their timing, but their devastating effectiveness in virtually
wiping out the Egyptian Air Force on the ground. And this success in turn was
due on the one hand to the excellent planning of the operation and its meticulous
execution by the Israeli pilots, and on the other to the ineptitude of the Egyptian
military leadership in having failed to prepare for the possibility of such a strike
or to have dispersed or otherwise protected at least a portion of the air force.
It is of interest to note that the USSR, which was providing at least some intelli-
i nce assistance to Nasser, was seemingly as surprised as Egypt. One result of
thMs was that the USSR soon began to adopt measures to reduce the vulnerability
,f its own air forces to surprise attack, including the widespread construction of
individual hangarettes to protect aircraft.)
A great deal of material on the Israeli planning has been brought to light,
as of it unclassified. An excellent, unclassified summary of the techniques
ception and tactical surprise has been prepared by the Syracuse University
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The invasion of Czechoslovakia, 20-21 August 1968: In the
previous chapter we examined the series of Soviet decisions leading up to the
invasion and the problems of determining just what decisions were taken, and
when. Obviously, our perception of the USSR's decision-making process in
this case has major bearing on our understanding of why the attack occurred
when it did, rather than sooner or later. And, since our knowledge of the deci-
sions of the Soviet leadership although considerable is still incomplete, we must
also remain somewhat uncertain as to why the invasion occurred on 20 August
rather than some time earlier that month, or alternatively why the USSR did not
wait to see the outcome of the Czechoslovak party congress scheduled for early
September, as many people believed that it would.
Regardless of one's views on this point, however, the invasion of
Czechoslovakia illustrates some of the pitfalls of trying to assess the timing of
military operations. First, we are not sure in retrospect whether the USSR was
fully ready to invade on about 1 August when the deployments appeared largely
completed and US intelligence concluded that Soviet forces were in a high state
of readiness to invade. We do know that logistic activity continued at a high
level thereafter (see Chapter 16) and that the conclusion of the so-called rear
services "exercise" was not announced until 10 August. Thereafter, other mili-
tary preparations were continuing, including inspections of forces in the forward
area by the high command, which the meticulous Soviet military planners may well
have desired to complete before any invasion. Indeed it is possible, on military
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evidence alone (the political evidence is less persuasive), to argue that the
invasion was always scheduled by the military for 20 August, and that it was
we who were wrong in our assessment that the military forces were in high
readiness to go on 1 August.
It can also be argued that military factors may have prompted the
invasion somewhat earlier than the political leadership might have chosen and
that it was this which occasioned the leadership meetings and final decisions
on 16-17 August. If so, the approaching autumn and the problem of housing
Soviet forces in Czechoslovakia into the winter might have been a major factor
in determining the timing of invasion.
More important, however, are the lessons to be drawn for our judgments
in the future concerning the timing of operations. The Czechoslovak case well
demonstrates the psychological effects on intelligence assessments when an
operation does not occur as soon as we think it might, and when the community
is most ready for such action. When the Soviet Union did not invade in early
August but instead reached a tenuous political agreement with Czechoslovakia,
a letdown occurred and intelligence assessments almost immediately began
placing less stress on the Soviet capability to invade. In fact, of course, that
capability was being maintained and actually was increasing. So long as this
was so, the possibility was in no way reduced that the USSR sooner or later would
exercise its military capability.
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Above all, the Czechoslovak case provides an outstanding illustration
of the critical importance for warning of the judgment of probability of attack
and of the lesser likelihood that intelligence will be able to assess the timing
or imminence of attack. US intelligence in this instance, as in others, placed
too great weight on short-term or tactical warning, and too little on the excel-
lent strategic intelligence which it already had. Moreover, many persons
(including some at the policy level who were aggrieved that they had not been
more specifically warned) tended to place the blame on the collection system
which in fact had performed outstandingly in reporting a truly impressive amount
of military and political evidence, much of it of high quality and validity,
bearing on the Soviet intention. The intelligence community, while clearly
reporting the USSR's capability to invade, deferred a judgment of whether or
not it would invade in seeming expectation that some more specific or unequivocal
evidence would be received if invasion was imminent. On the basis of historical
precedent and the experience derived from numerous warning problems, this was
a doubtful expectation; an invasion remained a grave danger, if not probable, so
long as the military deployments were maintained, while the timing was for less
predictable. The history of warfare, and of warning, demonstrates that tactical
evidence of impending attack is dubious at best, that we cannot have confidence
that we will receive such evidence, and that judgments of the probable course of
enemy action must be made prior to this or it may be too late to make them at all
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- North Vietnamese attacks in Laos and South Vietnam, 1969-70,
1971-72: As a final example of problems in timing, three instances of North
Vietnamese attacks in Laos and South Vietnam provide quite striking evidence
of the problems of assessing timing of attacks even when the preparatory steps
are quite evident.
Traditionally, in the seesaw war in northern Laos, the Laotian government
forces made gains in the Plaine des Jarres area during the rainy season, and the
Communist forces (almost entirely North Vietnamese invaders) launched offensives
during the dry season (November to May) to regain most of the lost territory and
sometimes more. In the fall of 1969, evidence began to be received unusually
early of North Vietnamese troop movements toward the Plaine des Jarres, includ-
ing major elements of a division which had not previously been committed in the
area. As a result, intelligence assessments beginning the first week of October
unequivocally forecast a major Communist counteroffensive. After eight consecu-
tive weeks of this conclusion (qualified in later weeks by the proviso "when the
Communists have solved their logistic problems"), it was decided to drop it --
not because it was considered wrong, but because consumers were beginning to
question repeated forecasts of an enemy offensive which had not materialized yet,
and the impact of the warning was beginning to fade. In mid-January, evidence
began to become available that preparations for an attack were being intensified,
and a forecast of an impending major offensive was renewed. The long-expected
offensive finally came off in mid-February, or four months after the troop buildup
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and the initial prediction of the attacks. The delay was not a surprise to experi-
enced students of the area, who had learned that the North Vietnamese meticu-
lously plan and rehearse in detail each offensive operation and that their attacks
almost always were slow in coming.
Two years later in the fall of 1971, a very similar repetition of the North
Vietnamese buildup in northern Laos began, again in October and again involving
the same division, although this time there were indications (such as the introduc-
tion of heavy artillery) that an even stronger military effort would be made.
Intelligence assessments again forecast major North Vietnamese attacks in the
Plaine des Jarres but for the most part avoided any firm judgment that they were
necessarily imminent. There was almost no tactical warning of the attacks which
this time were launched in mid-December in unprecedented strength and intensity.
Within a few days, all Laotian government forces were driven from the Plaine, and
within three weeks thereafter, the North Vietnamese launched an offensive against
government bases southwest of the Plaine.
Concurrently, the North Vietnamese were preparing for their major offensive
against South Vietnam which finally kicked off on 30 March 1972 after months of
buildup and intelligence preuictions that an offensive was coming. Initial expecta-
tions, however, had been that the attacks most likely would come some time after
mid-February, possibly to coincide with President Nixon's visit to China later that
month. Once again, timing proved one of the most uncertain aspects of the offensive,
and we remain uncertain whether Hanoi originally intended to launch the attacks
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earlier and was unable to meet its schedule, or never intended the operation to
come off until the end of March. In retrospect, it appears that the forecasts
of another "Tet offensive" in mid-February probably were somewhat premature,
since the deployments of main force units and other preparations continued
through March. Nonetheless, the intelligence forecasts were essentially right,
and it could have been dangerous in February to suggest that the attacks would
not come off for another six weeks.
Growing Recognition that Warning is Not a Forecast of Imminence
It is from experiences like these (which are truly representative and not
selected as unusual cases) that veteran warning analysts have become extremely
chary of forecasting the timing of attacks. They have learned from repeated
instances, in some of which the timing of operations appeared quite a simple or
obvious problem, that this was not the case. In most instances, attacks have
come later and sometimes much later than one might have expected, but even
this cannot be depended on -- sometimes they have come sooner. But except
in rare cases any forecast of the precise timing of attack carries a high probability
of being wrong. There are just too many unpredictable factors -- military and
political -- which may influence the enemy's decision on the timing and a multi-
tude of ways in which he may deceive you when he has decided.
This experience has finally borne fruit at the national estimative level.
The last estimate to address possible warning of Soviet attack in Europe reversed
the previous estimate (cited on the first page of this chapter) that warning of
probable attack could not be given until a few hours before. It concluded instead
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that, once deployments and other military preparations had been largely com-
pleted, the chance of obtaining evidence of further military preparations would
be greatly reduced, and that final warning that attack was imminent could likely
be dependent largely on chance or other unpredictable factors.
The lesson is clear. Both the analyst and his supervisor should keep
their attention focused on the key problem of whether the enemy is in fact
preparing to attack at all -- a judgment which they have a good and sometimes
excellent chance of making with accuracy. Judgments often can be made,
with less confidence in most cases, that all necessary preparations have probably
been completed. A little less confidence still should be placed in forecasts as
to when in the future all necessary preparations may be completed. At the
bottom, and least reliable of all, will be the prediction of when the adversary
may plan to strike. Asa general rule, analysts wil I do well to avoid predictions
of when precisely an attack may occur, particularly when some preparedness
measures have not yet been completed. If pressed, it will normally be best
to offer some time range within which the attack appears most likely, rather
than attempt too specific a guess (for that is what it is). And some explanation
of the uncertainties and perils of forecasting dates, backed up by historical evi-
dence, may be helpful from time to time for the benefit of the policy maker as
well .
Some official papers notwithstanding, strategic warning is not a forecast
of imminent attack. Strategic warning is a forecast of probable attack and it is
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this above all which the policy official and commander need to know. If we
recognize the uncertainties of timing, we will also be less likely to relax our
vigilance or alerts because the enemy has not yet attacked even though he is
seemingly ready.
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PART VI: SOME MAJOR ANALYTICAL PROBLEMS
CHAPTER 29: DECEPTION: CAN WE COPE WITH IT?
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CHAPTER 29: DECEPTION: CAN WE COPE WITH IT?
Stratagematic security is absolute, if the deception operation
succeeds in anticipating the preconceptions of the victim and
playing upon them. In that case the victim becomes the
unwitting agent of his own surprise, and no amount of warning
(i.e. security leaks) will suffice to reverse his fatally false
expectations.'
Confidence that a study of history and of techniques and principles of
indications analysis will enable us to come to the right judgment of the enemy's
intentions fades as one contemplates the chilling prospect of deception. There
is no single facet of the warning problem so unpredictable, and yet so potentially
damaging in its effect, as deception. Nor is confidence in our ability to pene-
trate the sophisticated deception effort in any way restored by a diligent study of
examples. On the contrary, such a study will only reinforce a conclusion that
the most brilliant analysis may founder in the face of deception and that the most
expert and experienced among us on occasion may be as vulnerable as the novice.
The Infrequency -- and Neglect -- of Deception
There can be no question that deception is one of the least understood,
least researched and least studied aspects of the warning problem. It has, in
1 Barton Whaley, Stratagem: Deception and Surprise in War (MIT Center for
International Studies, April 1969), p. 225. This work will be published by Praeger
in 1973. I wish to express my indebtedness to Mr. Whaley for many of the prin-
ciples and examples cited in this chapter. This work is one of the few existing
analytic studies on the nature of deception, and also contains a wealth of examples
and.case studies which will be a real eye-opener to any student of,indications and
of warfare. It is essential reading for all warning analysts.
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fact, been almost totally neglected in the training of US intelligence analysts
and, even in its tactical applications, receives only scant attention in US military
schools, or so I am told by those who have attended them. It is a measure of the
inattention to the subject that so much of Whaley's research on the topic really
broke new ground, and that some military historians have never even perceived
the role which deception has played in the outcome of some major military opera-
tions. I When one considers the potential effects of deception on the conduct of
warfare, intelligence analysis and the national decision-making process, this
neglect of so important a problem becomes almost unbelievable.
One reason for the scant attention to deception almost certainly is its
rarity. If true warning problems are seldom encountered, useful examples of
deception are rarer still, and indeed a number of major crises of recent years
seemingly have involved relatively little if any deception. A second, and
related, factor is that the deception effort is likely to be the most secret and
tightly held aspect of any operation and that nations often have been reluctant,
even after the fact, to relax security on the deception plan, even when other
aspects of the operation are fairly well known. Not surprisingly, this has been
particularly true of our security-conscious enemies. The exceptions, in which
the deception operation has been recorded for our benefit and study, usually have
been the result of the publication of articles or memoirs by participants in the plan,
I Whaley claims, for example, that even analysts of that most studied of surprise
attacks? Pearl Harbor, in nearly all cases have failed to give adequate attention to
the Japanese deception effort as a contributing cause to the US failure to have
recognized the likelihood of the attack.
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or the declassification of operational war records, usually well after the event,
Thus Whaley's examples from World Wars I and II appear quite complete and
reliable. In more recent cases, his unclassified data not surprisingly are quite
incomplete and may even be misleading.
Deception tends to be forgotten and neglected between wars because it
is not an instrument of peace. Few if any nations have made a practice of
extensive or elaborate deception in time of peace, and this includes even Com-
munist nations which we have characteristically considered to be highly devious
by nature and masters of deceit and surprise. One reason that active deception
is reserved for the exceptional situation -- usually one in which national security
interests are at stake -- is that success in deception is heavily dependent on its
rarity and on the prior establishment of credibility. Any nation which constantly
or even frequently disseminates falsehoods would rapidly lose credibility and accept-
ance with other nations, and with its own populace. It is one thing to be highly
security conscious and not to reveal much, and quite another to engage in an active
deception effort to mislead. The most effective deceptions are by those whom we
have come to trust, or at least who have been relatively truthful in their dealings
with us over a period of years. Thus the true deception operation, at least a major
and sophisticated one, usually is reserved only for that critical situation in the life
of the nation when it is most essential to conceal one's intent. And this will
usually be in preparation for or in time of war.
Deception versus Self-Deception
Still another reason for our limited understanding of deception is the inter-
relation of, and even confusion between, deception and self-deception. Anyone
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who thinks that the distinction between the two is, or ought to be, clear doesn't,
as they say, understand the problem. The writer participated in a post-mortem
study of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in which the analysts, drawn from
the intelligence shops of several agencies, were utterly unable to agree among
themselves on whether the Soviet Union had or had not engaged in deception, on
whether it expected us to be deceived or not, and whether we had been the victims
of self-deception. And this, of course, was in retrospect. Still less was the
problem analyzed or even perceived to be a problem before the invasion. Did a
majority of analysts fail to perceive the likelihood of invasion because the USSR
took positive steps to deceive or mislead us, or was it only our own misconceptions
of Soviet national priorities and unwillingness to accept that the Soviet Union
would do such a thing, despite the evidence at hand? Space will not permit a
discussion here of this fascinating and still unresolved problem. It is my own
opinion that both contributed, but that we were probably more the victims of self-
deception than of active Soviet deception.
The fact is that the most successful of all deception plans and operations
are those which capitalize on and actively encourage the enemy to believe his
own preconceptions -- as Whaley notes in the quotation which opens this chapter.
A similar point has also been made in an earlier section of this handbook (Chapter 10).
There, it was noted that studies have shown that people do not perceive all new
information objectively and that their preconceptions will sometimes lead them to
ignore or reject entirely information which is inconsistent with their already formed
opinions. Thus a relatively simple and unsophisticated -- even obvious -- deception
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effort may be highly effective in these circumstances in deluding the victim.
And, even in retrospect, he may be unable to perceive that he was deceived by
his own preconceptions as much as, or even more than, by the enemy's deception
plan. With this cautionary reminder, we will proceed to examine some of the
principles and techniques of active deception plans -- again drawing heavily on
Whaley.
Principles, Techniques and Effectiveness of Deception
The principle of deception, most simply stated, is to induce the enemy to
make the wrong choice; or, as General Sherman put it, the trick is to place the
victim on the horns of a dilemma and then to impale him on the one of your choos-
ing. If this is left entirely to chance, the probability of the enemy's making the
right or wrong choice will be in direct ratio to the number of alternatives which he
perceives as equally viable. While surprise can result from sheer misunderstanding,
"the possibility of surprise through misunderstanding diminishes nearly to the vanishing
point as one considers the more elaborate strategic operations." I Therefore, the
planner must develop one or more plausible alternatives as bait for his victim and
then employ a range of stratagems to mislead him. "The ultimate goal of stratagem
is to make the enemy quite certain, very decisive and wrong."2 If this ideal cannot
be achieved (and this writer believes that it would be a rare situation in which such
total deception could be achieved), the mere presenting of alternative solutions none-
theless will serve to confuse the enemy and lead him to disperse his effort or to make
at least a partially wrong response:
W~ ha y, op.cit, pp. 131-33.
2 Ibid! P. T35.
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"In other words, the best stratagem is the one that generates a set
of warning signals susceptible to alternative, or better yet, optional
interpretations, where the intended solution is implausible in terms
of the victim's prior experience and knowledge while the false solu-
tion (or solutions) is plausible. If the victim does not suspect the
possibility that deception may be operating he will inevitably be
gulled. If he suspects deception, he has only four courses open to
him:"
These are, in summary:
1. To act as if no deception is being used.
2. To give equal weight to all perceived solutions (in violation of
the principle of economy of force).
3. To engage in random behavior, risking success or failure on
blind guesswork.
4. To panic, which paradoxically may offer as good a chance of
success as the "rational" course in 3.1
Thus, even a primitive deception effort will, by threatening various alterna-
tives, create enough uncertainty to distract the most wily opponent and force him
either to disperse his effort or gamble on being right. Further, concludes Whaley
in a judgment of greatest importance for warning, even the most masterful deceivers
have proved to be easy dupes for more primitive efforts. "Indeed, this is a general
finding of my study--that is, the deceiver is almost always successful regardless of
the sophistication of his victim in the some art. On the face of it, this seems an
intolerable conclusion, one offending common sense. Yet it is the irrefutable con-
clusion of the historical evidence."2
A related, and also unexpected, finding of Whaley's study is that only a
small repertoire of stratagems is necessary "to insure surprise after surprise." The
I Ibid, pp. 142-43.
2 Ibid, p. 146.
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fact that the victim may be familiar with specific ruses "does not necessarily
reduce much less destroy their efficacy. This can be predicted from the theory,
which postulates that it is the misdirection supplied by selective planting of
false signals that yields surprise and not the specific communications channels
(i.e., ruses) used." i In other words, the same tricks can be used over and over
again, and stratagem can be effective with only a small number of basic ruses or
scenarios.
Whaley goes on to note that, as between security and deception, deception
is by far the more effective in achieving surprise, although both may contribute
and usually do. Security will also be greatly served by a deception operation
since the only important security in this case will be the protection of the deception
plan itself, which usually needs to be revealed only to a very small number of
individuals. If the security on the deception plan is tight enough, security on
the rest of the operation can be outright sloven, and "the most efficient stratagems
calculatedly utilize known inefficiencies in general operational security."2
Whaley cites some examples of the extreme security maintained on deception
plans, which the warning analyst should well heed, since it wil I upset all accepted
theory that enemy plans may be learned from full confessions of high-ranking pris-
oners or defectors, or from interception of valid communications, authentic war
plans, etc. Thus, in preparation for the Pearl Harbor attack, the Japanese Navy
issued a war plan on 5 November which gave full and accurate details of the planned
I b dd 228.
2 Ibid, p. 244.
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attacks on the Philippines and Southeast Asia but which omitted any reference
to the Pearl Harbor missions of the Navy, this portion of the order having been
communicated only verbally. In the Suez attack in 1956, the entire British
military staff from the Allied CinC on down were not informed on the collusion
of the UK and France with Israel, so tightly was this held. In the Korean war,
the US planned an amphibious feint (the so-called Kojo feint) which only the
most senior commanders knew to be a bluff; even the planners and commanders
of the naval bombardment and carrier strike forces thought the operation was
real and behaved accordingly. Thus, the misleading of one's own people has
been an important feature in many deceptions, with the unwitting participants
in the plan convincingly carrying out their roles in good faith and thus contributing
materially to the success of the operation. So effective has security been on
deception operations, that Whaley concludes that there have been almost no
cases in which the deception plan itself was prematurely disclosed to the victim.
Types of Deception
This subject may be approached in a number of ways. Whaley identifies
five specific varieties of military deception as follows:
Intention (i.e., whether an attack or operation will occur at all)
Time
Place
Strength
Style (i.e., the form the operation takes, weapons used, etc.)1
pp. 210-12.
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For strategic warning, the subject of this book, it will be obvious that
the first of these (intention) is the most important. Indeed, some might say
that this is the only variety of deception which should properly be defined as
strategic, the other types above being essentially tactical problems. In fact,
however, strategic warning or the perception of the enemy's intention often
does fall victim to one or more of the other foregoing varieties of deception as
well . Thus, in the Tet offensive of 1968,.we were less the victims of misper-
ception of the enemy's intention as such (it was obvious that attacks of some
type and scope were in preparation) than of the other factors. We greatly
underestimated the strength of the attacks; we were astounded at some of the
places (particularly cities) in which the attacks occurred; we misperceived the
style of the offensive in some degree (i.e., the extent of covert infiltration of
saboteurs and troop units, again particularly into the major cities); and there
was something of a misestimate of the timing of the attacks in that it was generally
assumed that they would be launched before or after the holidays rather than
during them (a factor which accounted for so many South Vietnamese troops being
on leave and for the lax security). Thus, it was all these misperceptions of the
enemy's planning and intentions which contributed to the surprise -- and initial
success -- of the Tet offensive. We were the victims of a combination of effec-
tive security, enemy deception and self-deception.
The history of warfare is filled with examples of the achievement of
surprise in time, place or strength, or a combination of them. Whaley finds
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that, of the examples which he studied in which surprise was achieved, the most
common mode was place (72%), followed by time (66%), and strength (57%).
The least frequent type of surprise which Whaley found was style, which prevailed
in 25% of the cases he analyzed.1 There are nonetheless some very famous
examples, including the dropping of the first atomic weapon on Hiroshima, and
the introduction of Soviet strategic missiles into Cuba.
We may close this very inadequate discussion of this approach to types of
surprise and deception by observing that one of the greatest and most successful
military surprises in history, the Pearl Harbor attack, involved at least four of
these modes. The United States had not correctly perceived the Japanese intention
to attack US territory at all and thus to bring the US into the war -- a step which
logically appeared to be a gross strategic miscalculation, as indeed it was. The
place of attack was not perceived, since the great bulk of the evidence pointed to
Japanese attacks in Southeast Asia (which were in fact initiated almost simultane-
ously). The time of the attack contributed greatly to its success, Sunday morning
having been deliberately chosen because the bulk of the US warships would then
normally be in port. The strength of the attack of course was not anticipated
(since it was not expected at all where it occurred), security and deception having
effectively screened the movements of the Japanese task force
A second approach to types of surprise and deception, which is somewhat
broader and perhaps more pertinent to strategic warning, is to examine the various
methods or measures which may be used to achieve one or more of the foregoing types
Ibid, p. 214.
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of surprise. We may identify roughly five of these:
Security
Political deception
Cover
Active military deception
Confusion and disinformation
a. Security in itself is not strictly speaking a type of deception,
in that it involves no active measures to mislead the adversary to a false conclusion,
but is designed only to conceal preparations for attack. Thus the sophisticated
analyst should take care to distinguish normal or routine security measures from true
deception. Nonetheless, the line between deception and security is narrow, and
the two are very often confused. Moreover, an effective security program often
can do much to mislead or deceive the intended victim of attack even if no more
sophisticated measures are undertaken. Although security alone will not normally
lead the adversary to undertake the wrong preparations or to misdeploy his forces,
it may lead him to undertake very inadequate countermeasures or even to fail to
alert his forces at all, if security is totally effective.
The Communist nations which have been our principal adversaries since
World War II are, of course, proponents of the most rigid military and political
security. Even the most minor and seemingly unimportant military facts are rou-
tinely considered state secrets, and all sorts of data which are revealed in the press
of democratic nations are never published in Communist states -- for example, the
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true unit designations of military units, along with their locations, strengths,
equipment, and usually their commanders as well . This routine security, which
may seem ridiculous in peacetime, insures that similar security will also prevail
when units are mobilizing or deploying for war and makes it unnecessary to
impose many new security measures which in themselves might serve to alert
the adversary to an unusual situation.
Political security in closed or dictatorial societies may be even more
effective. The number of persons privy to high-level decisions in Communist
states is very small indeed, and we have remained in ignorance for months of
major political developments or decisions in such countries. Needless to say,
political decisions on the initiation of hostilities or other major military prepara-
tions are among the most rigidly restricted. We have earlier (in Chapter 10)
cited the introduction of Soviet missiles into Cuba and the closure of the Berlin
sector borders as two examples of the effectiveness of Soviet military security.
More generally, it may be said that apparently there has never, at least since
World War II, been an inadvertent leak of the specific military plans or intentions
of a Communist nation. They have sometimes told us, or virtually so, what they
planned to do, but there has never been a breach of security concerning such a
decision, unless it was communicated to third parties. It follows that it will be
most unlikely that we will be able to learn directly of such plans in the future.
Effective as such measures may be, however, there is a limit to what can
be concealed by security alone, and our potential enemies know this as well.
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In general, the greater the number of military measures which must be undertaken
for the operation, the larger the mobilization and deployment of forces required,
the less likely it is that security alone can mislead. Whaley cites the views of
Clausewitz that the high visibility of large-scale operations makes their conceal-
ment unlikely, and that true surprise is therefore more likely to be achieved in
the realm of tactics than in strategy. This in fact has been borne out in recent
examples. Although it was possible in large measure to conceal the military
deployments required for the closure of the Berlin sector borders, it was not pos-
sible to conceal those for the invasion of Czechoslovakia, and in fact the USSR
made no particularly great effort to do so. Some writers have argued that modern
collection systems and communications will make security measures even less
effective in the future -- and this would appear likely to be the case. Thus, the
prospects are that various forms of active or deliberate deception will assume even
more importance if surprise is to be achieved.
b. Preeminent among such methods is political deception -- probably
the easiest of all deception measures and possibly the most common. While
political means may be used to promote tactical surprise, this method is of particular
value as a strategic measure to conceal intent. Moreover, it is one of the most
economical means of deception and one in which the likelihood of disclosure is
remote, since so few people need be involved in the plan. There are a variety of
political deception tactics, of which we will note a few:
The direct or indirect falsehood may be put forth through diplomatic channels,
official statements, the press or other media. In its simplest and most crude form,
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... Lam.... L. ^
the nation simply denies that it has any intent whatever of doing what it is pre-
paring to do and asserts that all such charges are false -- a method sometimes
used, particularly if the stakes are very high. The more subtle method of the
indirect falsehood is often preferred, however, and permits the leadership to
maintain some degree of credibility after the event, or at least to deny charges
of outright prevarication. This tactic was used by the USSR in a number of its
public statements prior to the Cuban missile crisis -- for example in the celebrated
TASS statement of 11 September 1962 in which the USSR stated that all weapons
being sent to Cuba were "designed exclusively for defensive purposes," and that
there was "no need" for the USSR to deploy its missiles to any other country.
Another method of political deception which has often been used, particu-
larly to lull suspicions in the relatively short term as final preparations for the
attack are being made, is to offer to enter into "negotiations" to discuss the matter
at issue when in fact there is no intention of reaching any sort of agreement. This
tactic was used by the USSR on the eve of the counterattack to suppress the
Hungarian revolt in November 1956, when Soviet officers opened negotiations with
the Hungarians on Soviet "troop withdrawal." A form of this ruse was also used
by the North Koreans for about two weeks before the attack on South Korea in
June 1950 when they issued "peace proposals" calling for a single national election.
Whaley has identified a slightly different form of this deception tactic, which
is to lead the enemy to believe that the firm decision to attack is actually bluff.
"This is a fairly common type of ruse, one intended to restore the initiative and insure
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surprise by implying that options other than war are still open, thereby concealing
the full urgency of a crisis and encouraging the intended victim in the belief
that he has more time and more options than is, in fact, the case." 1 He notes
that this ruse was used at Port Arthur in 1904, at Pearl Harbor, in the German
attack on the USSR in 1941, by the British in the attack at Alamein in 1942, and
in the Israeli attack on Egypt in 1967.
A somewhat similar and relatively subtle form of political deception is to
downplay the seriousness of the situation in diplomacy and in public statements
in an effort to create the impression that the nation does not consider its vital
interests at stake, or that its relations with the intended victim are pretty good
or even improving. This may result in a quite sudden shift in propaganda to a
more conciliatory tone, and friendly gestures to the adversary, after the decision
or at least contingency decision to attack has already been reached. This is a
quite common tactic, and one in which dictatorships, including the Soviet Union,
are usually masters, particularly since their complete control of the press makes
a shift in the propaganda line so easy. The USSR employed this tactic for weeks
and even months prior to its attack on Japanese forces in Manchuria in August
1945, when it undertook an ostensible easing of tensions with Japan and began to
be "almost cordial" to the Japanese Ambassador in Moscow, while the buildup of
forces for the attack was under way in the For East.
The effort to deceive by political means will often entail not only the decep-
tion of many of one's own people, but may extend on occasion even to the leadership
Whaley, haley, o .cit, p. A-548.
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of allied nations, if the issue is of sufficient importance. And true practitioners
of the art of deception even have been known to deceive their superiors (by
failing to inform them of their plans) -- although clearly this is a risky business
undertaken only in the interests of tactical surprise for a specific military opera-
tion when war already is in progress.
c. Cover (here meaning the "cover plan" or "cover story") is a
form of military deception which should be distinguished from active military
deception, although it may often be used in conjunction with it. Cover will be
used when it may be presumed that the military buildup itself cannot be concealed
from the enemy, and its purpose therefore is to offer some seemingly plausible
explanation (other than planned aggression) for the observable military activity.
It may involve simply the putting out of false statements about the scale or purpose
of the military buildup in order to conceal the real intention by attributing the
military preparations to something else. Throughout history, the most usual
explanation offered has been that the troops are "on maneuvers," although it is
possible to think of other pretexts which might sometimes be used to explain troop
movements, such as an alleged civil disturbance or disaster in a border area. The
likelihood that the pretext of maneuvers would be used by the USSR to mask prepara-
tions for aggression has long been recognized by Western intelligence, and the USSR
and its Warsaw Pact allies have also professed to believe that NATO exercises could
serve as a cover for attack.
Despite the presumed acceptance of this principle, however, the USSR
ViIr,+1'eved at least partial success with its several announcements during July and
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August of 1968 that its troops were engaged in various "exercises" in the western
USSR and Eastern Europe. In fact, there were no bona fide exercises and the
sole activity under way was the mobilization and deployment of Soviet and Warsaw
Pact forces for the invasion of Czechoslovakia. The gullibility of many analysts
in swallowing, at least partially, these transparently obvious "explanations" may
be attributed to various factors -- among them a lack of education or experience
in deception and a failure to recognize the true objective of the buildup. The
USSR, in turn, had probably laid the groundwork for this gullibility by its practice,
during previous years, of issuing valid public announcements concerning a series
of Warsaw Pact and Soviet exercises. Thus analysts had become accustomed to
accepting such announcements -- which had never proved false in their experience --
and were conditioned to do so even when the circumstances should have alerted
them to the likelihood of deception. This conditioning, interestingly enough, even
extended to some studies written after the invasion which persisted in referring to
the "exercises" as if they had really occurred.
d. Active military deception is at once the most difficult form of
deception to carry out, at least on any large scale, and also one of the most effec-
tive and successful. If security and political deception measures are most effective
in lulling suspicions as to intent, active military deception is the primary means
whereby the adversary is led to misdeploy his forces and to prepare for an attack at
the wrong place and the wrong time. Even when strategic deception has failed, or
was never possible in the first place, positive military deception has proved enormously
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effective in achieving tactical surprise, and hence in gaining victory and/or
greatly reducing the attacker's casualties in the operation. Whaley in his
treatise has compiled some impressive statistics on the effectiveness and rewards
of positive deception operations, some of which have been so valuable and
successful as literally to affect the course of history (e.g., the Normandy
invasion which is discussed in greater detail later in this chapter).
The successful military deception operation may range from a relatively
simple hoax or feint to a highly complex series of interrelated and mutually
consistent measures all designed to create the wrong impression in the mind of
the enemy (or to support his original but false conceptions) as to timing, nature,
strength and place of the attack. Among the recognized techniques of active
military deception are:
Camouflage of military movements and of new military installations
Maintenance of dummy equipment at vacated installations or in
areas of the front where the attack is not to occur
The simulation of a great deal of activity using only a few pieces
of military equipment moving about
The use of noisemakers or recordings to simulate a lot of activity
- The planting of seemingly valid, but actually false, military
orders in the hands of the enemy
- The sending out of "defectors" with seemingly plausible but false
stories
- The use of doubled agents for the same purpose
- The sending of invalid military messages by radio in the clear or in
ciphers which the enemy is known to be reading
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The maintenance of normal garrison communications while the units
themselves deploy under radio silence
The establishment of entirely spurious radio nets to simulate the
presence of forces which do not exist at all or to convey an impres-
sion of a buildup of forces in some area other than the planned
attack
A concentration of reconnaissance, bombing or artillery fire in an
area other than the area of attack, or at least the equalization of
such activity over a wide area so that the actual area of attack is
not discernible from such preparatory measures
False announcements or other deception as to the whereabouts of
leading commanders
Obvious training exercises for a type of attack (such as amphibious)
which is not planned
False designations for military units
Actual deployments or feints by ground or naval units to simulate
attack in the wrong area
The use of enemy uniforms and other insignia
Announcements that leaves are being granted on the eve of attack,
or even the actual issuance of numerous passes for a day or so just
prior to attack
The above list does not exhaust the tricks and ruses which have been devised
and successfully used in military operations. Such active deception measures of
course are often supplemented by political and propaganda deception measures,
cover stories and extremely tight security on the real military operation. Thus the
effect of the measures collectively can be the total misleading of the enemy as to
the coming attack -- even sometimes when he has accepted its likelihood and indeed
may be well prepared for it in other respects. The reader is referred to some of the
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fascinating examples cited by Whaley and to other studies of specific deception
operations.
It is obvious that a number of ruses cited above would be of limited use,
and indeed could be counterproductive, in a strategic deception designed to
conceal that an attack is planned at all, or in any area. In such cases, one
does not wish to stir up a lot of military activity, or plant false documents about
impending attacks, which will only arouse suspicions and stir the enemy's intelli-
gence services into greater collection efforts. Some measures, such as bombing
and artillery fire or even highly obvious and unusual reconnaissance, cannot be
undertaken at all before hostilities have begun. For these reasons, some of the
time-honored devices of military deception would not be used prior to an initial
surprise attack which opens a war, the attack with which strategic warning is
particularly concerned. At the same time, the reader can easily see that a
substantial number of the tactics cited above could be most effectively applied
to deceive us in a period prior to the initial attack. Among the ruses which
should particularly concern us are: communications deception, especially the
maintenance of normal communications accompanied by radio silence on deploy-
ments; planted military orders and other documents; the use of false defectors and
doubled agents; and any of the other measures which might be used effectively to
distract us from concentrating on the preparations for the real attack. For we may
be reasonably certain that the greater and more important the operation, the greater
and more sophisticated will be the positive deception effort. The fact that we have
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encountered relatively few cases of active military deception since World War II
should not reassure us -- in fact, it only increases our vulnerability.
e. Confusion and disinformation probably rank second only to
political deception in the ease with which they can be used to mislead and distract
the opposition. Indeed,.of all types of deception with which this writer has any
personal experience, this tactic has proved the most effective -- although this
is not to say that this would necessarily be true in the future. Confusion and
disinformation tactics do not have to be highly sophisticated to be successful,
although of course they may be. Even an elementary program to flood the market
with a mass of conflicting stories and reports can be highly effective in distracting
the time and attention of analysts -- and their superiors -- from the reliable, hard
intelligence on which they should be concentrating their efforts. Particularly if
a crisis atmosphere already exists, as is highly likely, and some of the reports are
sensational but have some degree of plausibility, they can prove to be a tremendous
distraction. If the volume of such planted information is large enough, the analyti-
cal system can literally be overwhelmed to a degree that some important and valid
facts become lost in the mill, and others are not accorded their proper weight.
There is almost no end to the damage which this type of deception can do in a
crisis situation. Moreover, such a mass of material compounds immeasurably the
problem of analyst fatigue, always a factor in crisis situations, and may tend to
generate a series of "cry wolf" alarms which will reduce the credibility of the
authentic warning when or if it is received.
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The most conspicuous example in recent years of the damage that can
be done by a large volume of false or unevaluated information was in the
Chinese Communist intervention in Korea in October-November 1950. This
is not to say that the Chinese themselves necessarily had devised a sophisticated
or extensive disinformation program. It is probable that a high percentage of
the mass of spurious and contradictory reports which so confused the situation
and distracted the analysts that summer and fall was never planted by the Com-
munists at all but was rather the product of the several highly productive paper
mills in the Far East. The result was much the same, however, and in fact the
confusion may have been compounded by our inability to tell with certainty
whether a report might have been a Communist plant rather than a spurious report
manufactured by some information network which had no contacts whatever in
mainland China. Most of those who have examined the intelligence failure that
year have given altogether too little, if indeed any, attention to the adverse
effects of the volume of this spurious material on the analytical process. Regard-
less of the origins of the material in this case, something of the some problem
could surely arise again in another crisis should our adversaries choose to exercise
their full capabilities to employ such tactics.
Deception in the Normandy Invasion
"In wartime," said Winston Churchill, "truth is so precious that she should
always be attended by a bodyguard of lies." The remark was made at the Teheran
conference in November 1943 where the Allies began the planning for the inter-
national deception operation which was to confound the Germans in the greatest
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single military operation in history, the Normandy invasion (6 June 1944). Appro-
priately, the codename for the international deception plan was BODYGUARD.
The complex series of stratagems specifically designed to mislead the Germans con-
cerning the invasion of France carried a half dozen or more codenames. Of these
the most important was FORTITUDE, the deception plan for the Normandy landings,
which in turn carried the operational codename of OVERLORD.
Since the space limitations for this handbook will not permit an examination
in detail of the specific tactics of various deception operations, we have selected
the Normandy invasion and its accompanying and follow-on deception operations
to give the reader some insight into how deception is planned and implemented and
how effective it can be.1
1
When the initial draft of this chapter was prepared, information on the deception
operations was available only in fragmentary and incomplete form from a number of
general works on the invasion. Since that time, two books have appeared dealing
exclusively with the deception plans, particularly with the British use of doubled
Nazi agents to plant false information with the Germans. These two fascinating
books are:
- J. C. Masterman, The Double-Cross System in the War of 1939 to 1945
(New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1972). This is the authoritative
account of the British doubling of the German agents, which was written immedi-
ately after the war and declassified by the British (with a few omissions and changes)
more than 25 years later.
- Sefton Delmer, The Counterfeit Spy (New York, Harper & Row, 1971).
This work, which also appears to be reliable, covers essentially the same material as
the Masterman book, concentrating on the work of the outstanding doubled agent but
also providing information on other aspects of the deception operations.
Earlier works which discuss the deception operations in less detail include:
- Cornelius Ryan, The Longest Day (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1959).
- Charles B. MacDonald, The Mighty Endeavor (Oxford University Press, 1969).
- Forrest C. Pogue, The Supreme Command (Washington, D. C., Department
of the Army, Office of the Chief of Military History, 1954).
- Whaley, op. cit.
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It was patently impossible to conceal from the Germans that an invasion of
the continent was in preparation, and more specifically to conceal the enormous
buildup of troops and equipment in the United Kingdom which permitted the Nazis
correctly to conclude that the main invasion thrust would be made from the British
Isles. The deception operations, therefore, were designed to mislead as to the
time, place and strength of the invasion, rather than the intent. The plans suc-
ceeded, almost beyond the dreams of their instigators, despite the fact that the
operation involved a massive movement of ships and amphibious equipment across
up to 100 miles of open water, against an enemy which fully expected the invasion,
had made formidable defensive preparations for it, and had an extensive and seem-
ingly effective espionage and intelligence service. How was this surprise achieved?
- Securit : Knowledge of the deception plan was restricted to as few
persons as possible, with all planning papers under stringent safeguards. From mid-
April onward (for approximately two months before the invasion) security measures
were tightened to deny the entry of civilians into coastal areas, to prohibit military
leaves outside the United Kingdom, to censor mail and news dispatches leaving the
UK, and even (over diplomatic protests) to prohibit foreign diplomats from sending
or receiving uncensored communications or dispatching couriers. Although there
were some famous security slips, apparently the only important leak to the Germans
was in Ankara, where the agent known as "Cicero" (the valet to the British Ambassa-
dor) learned the codename OVERLORD but not the date or specific area of the invasion.
Feints and Diversions: Although the Germans were unlikely to conclude
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that the main invasion would be made elsewhere than in France, positive deception
measures were taken to encourage them to believe that secondary but major thrusts
might be made against the continent in other areas -- specifically in Norway and/or
the Mediterranean. A variety of means was used to accomplish this, including
communications deception and the planting of false information through the dou-
bled Abwehr agents in the United Kingdom and the United States. By these means,
the Germans were led to accept a false order of battle in Scotland, largely com-
posed of what the British call "notional" (that is, non-existent) divisions, which
seemingly posed an ominous and imminent threat to Norway. To divert attention
to the Mediterranean, the British also carried out a celebrated ruse; they sent a
British actor to Gibraltar and Algiers shortly prior to D-Day disguised as Marshal
Montgomery.
- Confusion and Disinformation: To confuse the enemy, the Allied
intelligence services planted a vast amount of false or otherwise misleading informa-
tion in German hands. Deliberate use was made of the doubled German intelligence
agents, and of rumors, in order to spread all kinds of erroneous or confusing informa-
tion about the date and place of the invasion. Whaley notes that, of over 250
agent reports received by German intelligence prior to D-Day concerning the inva-
sion, only one disclosed the correct time and place -- and even this one had been
deliberately planted by Allied intelligence on an Abwehr agent. I The officer in
charge of radio intercept operations for the German Fifteenth Army on the French
1 Whaley, op. cit, p. A-373. See discussion below on timing.
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coast had, by D-Day, become thoroughly skeptical of German intel I igence: "he
knew from past experience that Berlin's sources of information were inaccurate
ninety per cent of the time. He had a whole file of false reports to prove his
point; the Allies seemed to have fed every German agent from Stockholm to Ankara
with the 'exact' place and date of the invasion -- and no two of the reports agreed."'
In this connection, mention must be made particularly of the tremendously
successful British handling of the doubled German agents. The recently published
Masterman and Delmer accounts have done much to explain the success of the
entire deception effort. These works confirm that the British actually controlled
and ran the entire German espionage system in Great Britain throughout the war;
that is, the Germans received no information from their "spies" in the United King-
dom other than what the British wished them to receive. The British accomplished
this extraordinary feat -- which incidentally could probably only have been done
in a small country lacking a land border with the enemy -- by capturing apparently
all of the German agents who were introduced into the country, doubling those who
could be persuaded actively to cooperate or assigning radio operators of their own
to maintain communications with the Germans in other cases. These operations,
begun early in the war, were planned from the beginning with a view to using the
agents ultimately to participate in the grand deception for the invasion of the con-
tinent, and when that time came their contribution clearly was indispensable.
Masterman throughout his book constantly reminds us that the doubled agents served
1 Ryan, op. cit, p. 32.
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only as the channel to convey the false information, and that all credit for the
deception itself belongs to the deception planners. Nonetheless, the foresight
of the British intelligence service in perceiving the future use of these agents
and their masterful handling of the individual agents must be rated one of the
great intelligence accomplishments of that or any war. So successful was the
British effort that those agents who did the most to put over the deception effort
were, until the end, the most trusted by the Nazis.
- Timing: It is not altogether clear why the Germans failed so badly
to perceive the time of the invasion -- particularly since there is some evidence
that the time was compromised, as we shall discuss below. The most important
reason, however, seems to have been that they did not believe that the Allies
would invade in such poor weather -- which, in fact, did postpone the invasion
for 24 hours and almost caused a further delay. It was only because the conse-
quences of a delay could be so disastrous and that the tides and moon (if it broke
through) were favorable that Eisenhower reluctantly decided to go through with
the invasion as planned. The Germans, however, could not conceive that the
Allies would invade in such treacherous conditions. According to Ryan, "All
along the chain of German command the continuing bad weather acted like a
tranquilizer." German confidence was based in large part on studies of earlier
Allied landing operations which showed that they had never been attempted unless
the weather was very favorable. "To the methodical German mind there was no
deviation from this rule..."' -- an interesting manifestation of the principles of
i Ibid, pp. 79-80.
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preconception and self-deception. A contributing factor also was the fact that
the Germans had now been expecting an invasion for months, and as it failed to
materialize, a certain degree of skepticism as to the validity of indications of
its possible imminence had set in.
These factors, however, cannot fully account for the failure to have paid
greater heed to the reported interception of the messages to the French underground
that the invasion was imminent. For the Abwehr had obtained information in
January that two lines from a Verlaine poem were to be broadcast in the clear on
separate nights by the BBC, intermixed with other open code messages to the under-
ground and a large number of meaningless messages. The first line, to be broadcast
on the 1st or 15th of the month, would be a general warning that the invasion was
coming soon; the second line would mean that the invasion would begin within 48
hours. The first line was picked up on the night of 1 June by monitors of the Ger-
man Fifteenth Army who immediately understood its significance and promptly
informed the German command in the West; this resulted in the alerting of the Fif-
teenth Army near the Belgian border but not of any other German forces along the
coast. The second line, monitored by the Fifteenth Army a few hours before the
invasion and again promptly passed on to Field. Marshal von Rundstedt's headquarters,
also failed to result in the alerting of German forces on the Normandy coast. As
Ryan notes, it is a mystery why the intercept of this most crucial message did not
lead von Rundstedt's headquarters to alert the whole invasion front from Holland to
the Spanish border -- the more so since the Germans claimed after the war that
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they had monitored and correctly interpreted no less than 15 BBC messages pertain-
ing to D-Day.1
Both Allied deception and good luck apparently accounted for the extra-
ordinary absence of so many German commanders from their headquarters at the time
of the invasion. On the morning of 4 June, Marshal ("Desert Fox") Rommel, com-
mander of Army Group B which included the forces in Normandy, left for Berlin to
see Hitler and to celebrate his wife's birthday (he almost certainly had learned prior
to his departure of the intercept of the first of the Verlaine lines). On the day of
the invasion, all senior German commanders in Normandy had assembled, as previ-
ously planned, for war games exercises in the city of Rennes in Brittany, and they
were thus some time getting back to their units. For various reasons, some other
German commanders in France also were away. On the eve of the invasion, the
German High Command even "decided to transfer the Luftwaffe's last remaining
fighter squadrons in France far out of range of the Normandy beaches. The fliers
1 Ibid, pp. 31-34 and 96-97. Essentially the same account is also given by Delmer,
op. cit., pp. 198-99; both accounts are apparently derived from official German mili-
tary records. One preeminent intelligence authority who has read this chapter, how-
ever, is skeptical that the Allies would ever have permitted the timing of the invasion
to have been conveyed in advance to the French underground, given the very high
risks of compromise. It is thus possible that there is some flaw in this story, perhaps
even that some deception was used to lead higher German authorities to disbelieve
the validity of the Verlaine lines. There is no indication that the Allied deception
planners themselves believed that the time of the invasion was compromised. In order
to maintain the credibility of their star double agent, they carefully arranged for him
to convey the time of the invasion to the Germans just prior to the actual landings but
too late for them to react to the news.
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V V V ^ 1 ^- ^
were aghast." i
- Deception of Place and Strength: The most elaborate, and success-
ful, aspect of the FORTITUDE ruses was the stratagem to convince the Germans
that the main invasion would be at the Pas de Calais, the narrowest point of
the Channel some 150 miles to the northeast of the actual invasion sites. A
largely fictitious army group was "created" for this purpose. Known as the
First US Army Group (FUSAG), its headquarters was genuine but most of its forma-
tions were imaginary. In due course, the very real Lt. Gen. George S. Patton
was appointed its commander. Leaks to the press and information planted through
German espionage agents concerning the order of battle of FUSAG were reinforced
by various positive military deception measures to create the appearance of the
buildup of a massive force along the Dover coast. They included huge tent encamp-
ments and other fake installations, as well as dummy landing craft in the Thames
estuary, which the Luftwaffe of course was permitted if not encouraged to photo-
graph. This delusion was strengthened by the creation of a fictitious radio network
which convincingly simulated the existence of the dummy headquarters and its units,
and which, by landline routings, further created the impression that Montgomery's
headquarters near Portsmouth was actually in Kent. This elaborated stratagem was
reinforced by a plan of aerial bombardment which concentrated on the Pas de Calais
and maintained this bombardment even on D-Day itself. On that day, an Allied
invasion force of eight divisions (five moved by sea and three airlifted) was opposed
1 Ryan, op. cit pp. 16-21, 35-36, and 80-82.
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in Normandy by only three understrength German divisions, so successful had
the deception been. "In combination with the logical German mind, it was
strikingly successful. None among Hitler's military high command in France and
the Low Countries doubted that the invasion would strike the Pas de Calais."1
Still more important, the Fuehrer himself believed it.
But this was not al I .
Deception in the strength of one's forces most usually is intended to lead
the enemy to underestimate the buildup, so that he may be overwhelmed with
forces he did not suspect were present. In the Normandy invasion, the deception
was calculated to give the opposite picture -- that the Allies really had much
larger forces in the UK than were actually there. And the objective of this was
not only to mislead the Germans as to the place of the initial landings. The
deception plan was further designed to convince the Germans that the Normandy
invasion, even after it had occurred, was not the main assault but would be fol-
lowed by another and still larger invasion in the Pas de Calais area using the
massive and as yet uncommitted forces of FUSAG. In addition to the skillful
Allied subterfuge in creating this non-existent order of battle, at least one key
German intelligence officer reportedly was so disturbed by Hitler's unwarranted
optimism that he began deliberately inflating the Allied threat by uncritical
acceptance of many agent reports.2 In any event, on D-Day, when the Allies
1 MacDonald, op. cit, p. 257.
2 See Delmer, op. cit, pp. 144-147.
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had about 39 operational divisions in Britain, the German estimate was somewhere
between 70 and 93.1 Hence, with the continuation of the Allied grand decep-
tion plan (now known as FORTITUDE II) and even though the Germans had captured
two valid invasion orders on D-Day, they were successfully duped not just for days
but for weeks after D-Day into believing that the main invasion was still to come
in the Calais area. The hoax was successful until at least early August -- primarily
because the fiction of FUSAG and security on Patton's real command were effec-
tively maintained. The result, not surprisingly, was a major misdeployment of
German reserves and the immobilization in the Calais area of some 19 German divi-
sions during this most crucial phase of the consolidation of the Allied landings in
France.
The Soviet Participation in BODYGUARD in the Belorussian Offensive:
The great international deception plan extended still further -- to the planning for
and timing of the USSR's offensive in Belorussia which was launched on 22 June 1944,
or 16 days after OVERLORD. The plans for this, which had been worked out with
the US and the UK, were intended to make the Germans believe that the offensive
would be launched in the Ukraine rather than in Belorussia and that it would not start
I MacDonald, an authoritative historian for the US Army, gives 93. Whaley gives
about 80, based on a variety of reports from other historians ranging from 70 to 85.
According to Delmer, an official German OB estimate one month before the invasion
was 75 to 80 "large formations," and one week before D-Day, Allied strength in
Britain was assessed as the equivalent of 87 combat divisions. Hitler's own estimate,
conveyed to the Japanese Ambassador in Berlin in late May, was that about 80 Allied
divisions were in readiness to invade. It would appear that there were various German
order of battle estimates--all calamitously wrong. OB analysts take note!
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until July. The deception effort got under way about mid-April. Among the
propaganda and public statements intended to mislead the Germans as to the nature
of the summer offensive was a deceptive May Day slogan. Elaborate camouflage
and security concealed the buildup in Belorussia while active deception (includ-
ing dummy equipment and simulated radio networks) created the appearance of a
major troop buildup in the Ukraine. Reconnaissance was carried out along the
entire Western front, rather than concentrated. Only six Soviets were witting of
the whole plan, and all orders were hand-delivered in a single copy.
As a result of the successful deception, the Soviet commanders in the Belo-
russian sector (Marshals Zhukov and Vasilevskiy) achieved a buildup of forces there
one-third greater than was estimated by the Germans; it included overwhelming
armored forces and permitted the Russians to obtain a superiority of up to 10-to-I
at the initial assault points. Like Rommel on D-Day, the local German commander
had left for Germany for an interview with Hitler. Surprise was complete and all
Belorussia was cleared in 36 days.
Soviet operations in support of the overall Allied offensive also included
the attack on Finland, launched on 10 June. This was both in the nature of a feint
for the later Belorussian offensive and a move to tie down German forces that might
otherwise have deployed to France by misleading the Germans to believe that a major
invasion of Scandinavia might be forthcoming. Of course, the attack on Finland
also served other Soviet national objectives.1
1 For discussion of this phase of BODYGUARD, see Whaley, op. cit., pp. A-391 -
A-393h, and A-387 - A-389.
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Deception in National Doctrine and Practice
The student of warning may be only slightly encouraged, after reading
the foregoing, to learn that Whaley considers that the Soviet Union is compara-
tively unsophisticated in the techniques and practice of deception. He
attributes this in part to the stifling effect of Stalin on advances in Soviet
military doctrine, and he considers that the USSR places too great weight on
security and too little on active deception.
The most sophisticated practitioners of the arts of deception in World
War II were the British -- from whom both the US and the USSR learned some
of the tricks of the trade. Not only were the British very largely responsible
for such masterpieces of deception as the Normandy invasion, they also prob-
ably were responsible for much of the sophistication of the Soviet deception
in the Belorussian offensive of 22 June 1944.
Whaley's treatise deals at length with German, and to a lesser extent
Japanese, deception operations in World War II. Space will not permit their
summary here, but any student of warning and indications will find them both
fascinating and instructive.
In the period since World War II, the Israelis as well as the British
emerge as the foremost and most sophisticated practitioners of deception, at
least in the Western world. In this time, the Israelis have had at once the
greatest need to use deception, several opportunities to practice it, and their
operations (particularly in the six-day war of June 1967) have been a
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spectacular success. The US, which relearned the art of deception from the
UK in World War II, has achieved some notable successes in deception, but,
according to Whaley, lags behind both the Israelis and the British in both
understanding of the art and recognition of its importance in warfare.
Based on experience with a number of operations since World War II --
including several which Whaley does not treat -- I am inclined to agree that
the USSR and its Warsaw Pact allies have not, in these instances, displayed
any great sophistication in deception, particularly in positive military decep-
tion. This could be dangerously misleading, however, since there have been
few if any instances in this time which would have required an elaborate
military deception effort to insure military success -- for example, it was
unnecessary for either the suppression of the Hungarian revolt or the invasion
of Czechoslovakia, and in the first instance there was not time to devise one.
As we have noted, nations do not normally devise elaborate military deception
plans except when national security interests are at stake. Moreover, the
USSR has demonstrated a mastery of military security which is probably unmatched
by any power in the world today -- as the Cuban missile crisis should constantly
remind us.
Still more pertinent may be our evidence that Soviet military doctrine
places high value not only on security but also on positive deception. The
USSR in 1968 released an account of the deception operation for the Belorussian
offensive, discussed above, in a context which clearly indicated that its purpose
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was to teach the lessons of military deception to a new generation of officers.
An article published in the September 1970 issue of PVO Herald was entitled
"Ruses in Modern Battle," and it stated in part:
In working out tasks of combat training, officers of National
PVO are called upon at the same time to take into account
the skillful use of ruses in modern battle.
Military ruses mean the ability of the commander to hide
from the enemy one's real intentions and to lead the enemy
into delusion and to use this for the achievement of one's
own successes ....
In spite of the great saturation of National PVO troops with
modern equipment, the role of stratagems in modern war has
not decreased, on the contrary, it has grown. Stratagems
help the commander hide from the enemy one's own plans and
intentions, make the enemy give away his plans, tactical
methods of the formation of his groupings ahead of time, and
assure surprise of strike which with the dynamic, swift and
decisive character of actions in modern battle plays a very
important role. This is why the Minister of Defense USSR
demands from the command staff that they give fundamental
attention to tactical preparation, persistently teach troops
to use tactical methods unexpected by the enemy, military
ruses, false actions...
It would be foolish to assume that Soviet strategists have not studied the
lessons to be learned from successful deception operations (including in
recent years, those of the Israelis). We must presume that they would be
capable of much more sophisticated deception than they have been willing
to tell, or to show, us.
There is one type of deception which the USSR will unquestionably
employ in any circumstance where it suits its interests, and that is political
deception and its military hand maiden, cover stories. This is probably as
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near a certainty as almost any statement which can be made in the field of
indications intelligence. The Soviet leadership since Lenin has shown a
predilection for secrecy, security and surprise which virtually guarantees
some form of political deception in any military operation. In such instances
the Soviets are confirmed, if not always consummate, liars.
As for the Asian Communist nations, the combination of traditional
Oriental inscrutability with Marxist doctrine and an obsession for security
has for a generation left us considerably more confounded and uncertain as
to"their intentions, both political and military, than of those of the USSR.
Indeed, in comparison, the USSR often appears downright above-board and
scrutable. Few Westerners can make any pretense of understanding the
Chinese. One is reminded of the diplomat in Peking (himself an Oriental)
who observed, at the peak of the Sino-Indian crisis in October 1962, that
one might as well use astrology as political analysis to attempt to fathom the
intentions of the Chinese. Our advantages, if any, in these circumstances
may be that at least we are prepared to expect deception and deviousness
from the Orientals, and that we have now had some experience in two recent
wars with their tactics of military deception.
What Can We Do About It?
As should now be evident even from this brief discussion, all nations
are vulnerable to deception, including even those who are sophisticated
practitioners of the art themselves. Logic also suggests that, in some respects
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at least, democracies are likely to be more vulnerable to deception than are
dictatorships and closed societies -- and it is undeniably more difficult for
open societies to practice it. Moreover, the history of recent years supports
the judgment of experienced warning analysts that the US, at both its intelli-
gence and policy levels, is highly vulnerable to deception.
What, if anything, can we do to make ourselves less vulnerable?
Is it hopeless? The suggestions which are offered below would, I believe,
be of help in real situations -- although one must once again add the caution
that the most sophisticated and perceptive of us also are vulnerable, and that
there can be no guarantee that we will see through the enemy's deception
plan. Nonetheless, despite our generally poor record, I am somewhat less
pessimistic than Whaley on this score.
The first thing that is necessary, if we are to have any hope of coping
with deception, is for people to learn something about it -- and to study some
case histories. Our neglect of this problem has been noted earlier in this
chapter. It is symptomatic of this neglect that, despite over 20 years continu-
ous experience in indications and warning, this writer knew practically nothing
about the history of deception until the research for this chapter was begun.
It is imperative that this subject -- along with warning problems in general --
be given more time and attention in both the intelligence and military schools
of this nation. While we may all be vulnerable in some measure to old ruses,
as Whaley maintains, we need to know what some of these ruses are if we are
-to have much chance of recognizing them.
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Secondly, both the intelligence services and perhaps even more the
policy and command levels need to understand that deception is likely to be
practiced in certain situations -- not only by our enemies but sometimes even
by our friends. It is essential to the recognition of deception that the proba-
bility or at least the possibility of its occurrence be anticipated -- or else we
will almost inevitably be gullible victims of even a simple deception plan.
And how can we recognize such situations? It is when great national objec-
tives are at stake, when military forces are mobilizing and deploying, when
it is clear that the adversary is "up to something." In such situations, it is
the height of folly to presume that he will not also employ deception. We
must be continually alert in such situations for the possibility of deception
and assume its likelihood -- rather than unlikelihood. Rather than wax indig-
nant over the enemy's "perfidy," as is our usual wont, we should be indignant
at ourselves for failing to perceive in advance such a possibility. Bluntly, we
need to be less trusting and more suspicious and realistic.
To recognize that deception is being practiced at all may be half the
battle. For the recognition of this in turn will alert us: (1) that the adversary
is very likely preparing for some unpleasant surprises -- else why bother to
deceive us? -- and (2) to start attempting to figure out what his real plans or
intentions may be behind the smokescreen of the deception effort.
The easiest (or more accurately least difficult) of smokescreens to see
through should usually be the political deception effort, and its accompanying
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.,._..I.._ .
military "cover story," during a period of massive military buildup. When
the political conduct of the enemy is out of consonance with his military prepara-
tions, when he is talking softly but carrying a bigger and bigger stick, beware.
This is-the simplest and least sophisticated of deception methods. No nation
should be so gullible as to fall for such tactics, without at least asking some
searching questions. While the recognition that such deception is being prac-
ticed, or possibly is, will not in itself necessarily lead to a clear understanding
of what the enemy is going to do, it will at least alert us that what he is going
to do is probably not the same as what he says. And for strategic as opposed to
tactical warning this recognition may be the most important judgment of all .
For, as Whaley notes and modem history confirms, it is virtually impos-
sible to conceal the preparations for great military operations. The enemy,
despite the most elaborate security precautions, is not going to be able to build
up his forces for a major attack in total secrecy. If we are deceived or surprised
in such circumstances, it will be because we either fell for his cover story or
offers to enter into peaceful negotiations, allowed our preconceptions to over-
ride our analysis of the evidence, or because we were grossly misled as to the
time, place or strength of the attack and thus failed to take the right military
countermeasures at the right time.
As opposed to strategic warning or the recognition that the enemy is
preparing to attack at all, tactical warning may be highly dependent on our
cbility to see through the enemy's active military deception plan. And on this
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score -- which is largely the type of stratagem and deception which Whaley
addresses in his book -- experience teaches us that the chances of successful
enemy deception are indeed high. Even when it is recognized that deception
is being practiced -- for example, if camouflaged equipment is detected --
this will not necessarily lead to the right conclusions as to the strength, place
or date of attack. The military commander, in other words, will still have
the problem of penetrating the specifics of the enemy's deception plan and
preparing his defenses against it, even though the likelihood of attack itself
has been generally accepted. Thus the tactical warning problem will remain
even though the strategic warning problem may in large part have been resolved.
For both strategic and tactical warning, confusion and disinformation
tactics present an enormous problem. The prospect that we could, in time of
great national emergency, be confronted by such tactics should be a cause for
grave concern. The releasing of the full disinformation capabilities of the
KGB or the comparable counterintelligence systems of other nations, together
with the use of other deception techniques, could place an unprecedented
requirement for sophisticated analysis and reporting on the collection mechan-
ism, on which the substantive analyst would be heavily dependent for evaluation
of the accuracy and potential motivation for deception of the informant. It is
critically important in such circumstances, as we have noted elsewhere, that
the collector provide as much information as possible on the origins of the
report and the channels by which it was received, since the analyst who receives
it will be almost completely dependent on such evaluations and comments in
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XLVI%" I
making his assessment. At best, it will be extremely difficult in time of
emergency to distinguish even a portion of the reports which have originated
with the enemy's intelligence services from those which have other origins.
The tracing of the origins of rumors, for example, is often virtually impos-
sible, yet in many cases rumors are valuable indications of authentic develop-
ments which the analyst cannot afford entirely to ignore.
In addition to the points above, there are two general guidelines
which will usually assist the analyst in perceiving the enemy's most likely
course of action through a fog of deception. They are:
- Separate the wheat from the chaff. Weed out from the mass of
incoming material all information of doubtful reliability or origin and assemble
that information which is either known to be true (the "facts") or which has
come from reliable sources which would have no personal axes to grind or
reasons to deceive. This will allow you to establish your reliable data base
which, limited though it mcy be, will serve as the yardstick against which
the reliability or consistency of other data and sources may be judged. It
sounds simple and obvious; it is usually not done.
- Keep your eyes on the hardware. In the end, the enemy must
launch operations with his military forces and what they do will be the ulti-
mate determinant of his intent. Warning has failed in some cases primarily
for lack of this concentration on the hardware. There are alI kinds of ruses
and red herrings, both political and military, which the enemy may devise,
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and they have often been highly successful in distracting attention from the
all-important factor of the military capability. So long as that capability
is being maintained, or is increasing, the analyst and military commander
who concentrate on it are usually likely to have a much more accurate
perception of the enemy's intention than are those who have permitted their
judgments to waver with each new piece of propaganda or rumor of the
enemy's plans.
Finally -- more for policy makers and commanders -- the best defense
of all against the enemy's deception plan may be the alerting and prepared-
ness of one's own forces. If these are ready for the possibility of attack, no
matter how unlikely that may seem, the enemy's efforts may be largely foiled
even though his operation itself is really not anticipated. In other words,
it is possible to be politically or psychologically surprised, and at the same
time militarily prepared. The dispersal of the US fleet from Pearl Harbor as
a routine readiness measure against the possibility of attack, however remote
that might have appeared, would have saved the fleet even though all other
assessments of Japanese intentions were wrong.
29-43
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