[STUDY OF SOVIET STRATEGIC STRENGTH]

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP81M00980R002000090125-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 26
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 4, 2004
• Sequence Number: 125
• Publication Date: February 16, 1978
• Content Type: PREL

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HARRY GOLDWATER, ARIZ., VICE CHAIRMAN
A LEE P. CASE.
ADLAI
D. HUD ILL. CLIFFORD
WILLIAM D. HATHAWAY. MAINE JAKE GARN, UTAH WALTER D. HUDDLES LESTON, KY. CHARLES MCC. MATHIAnews release S. )R., MD.
JOSEPH R. BIDEN. JR., DEL. JAMES B. PEARSON, KANS.
ROBERT MORGAN, N.C. JOHN H. CHAFES, R.I.
GARY HART, COLO. RICHARD G. LUGAR. IND. ICK
. E, HAWAII
WALLO Senate Select Committee DADANIEL NIEL K `INOUY ROBERTHAN
C. BYRD. W. VA.. EOLM X OFFIC OP. WYO.
HOWARD H. BAKER, JR., TENN., EX OFFICIO
on Intelligence
FOR USE AT 6:00 P.M., THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 16,. 1978
WILLIAM G. MILLER, STAFF DIRECTOR
EARL D. EISENHOWER, MINORITY STAFF DIRECTOR
?L C.
76,o2.3014
/ PAC/(
[The following report is the second of a series prepared
by the Senate Intelligence Subcommittee on the Quality of
Intelligence, chaired by Senator Adlai Stevenson, (D-Ill.) and
Senator Clifford P. Case (R-N.J.), Vice-chairman. The report
on THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATES - A-B TEAM EPISODE
CONCERNING SOVIET STRATEGIC CAPABILITY AND OBJECTIVES also
carries the separate views of Senators Gary Hart (D-Colo.),
Daniel P. Moynihan (D-N.Y.) and Malcolm Wallop (R-Wyo).]
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, as part of
its oversight function, has conducted a study of the 1976 "A Team-
B Team" experiment in comparative assessments of Soviet strategic
strength which was initiated by the President's Foreign Intelli-
gence Advisory Board (PFIAB). The Committee conducted this
inquiry under its mandate to evaluate the collection, production
and quality of U.S. intelligence, in this case assessing whether
the A-B experiment had proved to be a useful procedure in improving
National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) on a centrally important
question.
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The pertiiient facts of the A-B case are (a) that PFIAB
commissioned three ad hoc outside groups (composing the
"B Team") to examine the data available to the U.S. intelli-
gence community's analysts (the "A Team"), to determine whether
such data would support conclusions on Soviet strategic capa-
bilities and objectives different from those presented in the
community's NIEs; and (b) that during the exercise details of
these sensitive questions leaked on several occasions to the
press.
The Committee has prepared a classified Report on the
subject, sent copies of that Report to the executive branch,
made copies available to certain members of the B Team for
review and comment, and subsequently rechecked the record
thoroughly and accommodated some of the B Team members' com-
ments. A summary of the Committee's Report follows.
Scope of the Committee Inquiry
The Committee sought to determine the facts and issues
central to the A Team-B Team case, and to give a critique of
the procedures which underlay the principal judgments and
conduct of both the A and B Teams. The Committee's Report
makes no attempt to judge which group's estimates concerning
the U.S.S.R. are correct. The Report focuses on the processes
followed; its findings and recommendations for improving the
quality and utility of future NIEs on Soviet strategic capa-
bilities and objectives are primarily directed at procedural
issues.
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Principal Judgments and Recommendations
The Committee's report includes these central judgments:
-- That the concept of a review of the NIEs by
outside experts was a legitimate one.
-- That the B Team made some valid criticisms of the
NIEs, especially concerning certain technical intel-
ligence questions, and some useful recommendations
concerning the estimative process, but those con-
tributions were less valuable than they might have
been because (1) the exercise had been so structured
by the PFIAB and the Director of Central Intelligence
(DCI) that. the B Team on Soviet objectives reflected
the views of only one segment of the spectrum of
opinion; and (2) that Team spent much of its
effort on criticizing much earlier NIEs rather
than, as had been earlier agreed upon by the PFIAB
and the DCI, producing alternative estimates from
certain of those of the 1976 NIE.
-- That the value of the A-B experiment was further
lessened by the fact that details concerning
these highly classified questions leaked to the
press, where these appeared in garbled and one-
sided form. It has not been determined who was
responsible for the leaks.
-- That, most importantly, NIEs on Soviet strategic
capabilities and objectives still need improvement
in a number of important respects.
The Report's principal recommendations include:
-- That a collegial estimative group be formed in
place of individual National Intelligence Officers.
-- That outside critiques of NIEs should continue to
be conducted, but should in each instance be made by
expert groups which are broadly representative in
character, and whose procedures are thereafter more
strictly monitored by the commissioning authorities
than obtained in the A-B case.
The Committee's investigation was based upon study of primary
documents; examination of the NIE record since 1959 on Soviet
strategic weapons developments; and interviews with principals
from the A and B Teams, the intelligence community, and the
PFIAB. The Committee has enjoyed the full cooperation of all
the above parties. The comments of DCI Stansfield Turner on the
Report and the present Statement and the views of certain members
of the B Team on Soviet Objectives have been given consideration
by the Committee.
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The Facts of the Case
In the broadest sense the NIE-B Team episode derived
from a growing concern over the U.S.S.R.'s steady increase
in strategic weapons strength over the course of the past
decade and disagreement within the U.S. intelligence community*
on the meaning of this growth.
The B Team experiment in competitive analysis stemmed from
the PFIAB's opinion that the NIEs had been underestimating the
progress of Soviet strategic weapons.** In an August 1975 letter
to President Ford, PFIAB Chairman George W. Anderson, Jr. proposed
that the President authorize the NSC to implement a "competitive
analysis." The then Director of Central Intelligence (DCI)
William E. Colby, speaking with the unanimous agreement of the
United States Intelligence Board (the chiefs of the intelligence
community components), responded with a proposal that the PFIAB
first examine an applicable NIE then underway and thereafter
determine what specific course of action to take.
The PFIAB found weaknesses in that NIE and, after
having made further investigations of its own, again pro-
posed' (in April 1976) an experiment in "competitive analysis."
The PFIAB recommended that the exercise be placed under the
DCI's jurisdiction. and that it address certain critical
estimative issues.
In the past the U.S. intelligence community included the
Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency,
the National Security Agency, and the intelligence components of
the State Department, Army, Navy, and Air Force, FBI, Energy
Resources Development Administration, and Treasury.
;;;; As of August 1975, the PFIAB's members, in addition to Chairman
George W. Anderson, Jr. (Adm. USN, Ret.), were William 0. Baker,
Leo Cherne, John S. Foster, Jr., Robert W. Galvin, Gordon Gray,
Edwin H. Land, Clare Booth Luce, George P. Shultz, and Edward Teller.
As of mid-1976, Mr. Cherne had become Chairman, and these addition-
al members had jointed the PFIAB: John B. Connally, General Lyman
L. Lemnitzer, Robert D. Murphy, and Edward Bennett Williams. The
PFIAB function has since been abolished by President Carter.
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Responding to the PFIAB initiatives, the new DCI, Mr. George
Bush, consented to the experiment, and by June 1976, the PFIAB
and the DCI had worked out ground rules for a competitive
assessment experiment. The DCI, through his representatives,
made arrangements for and monitored the experiment in accordance
with those ground rules. Members of the PFIAB were called upon
to assist in the formation of the three B Teams and took an
active role in the selection of team members.
The exercise did not simply pit an A (or NIE) team
against a B Team. There'were three B Teams: two on technical
questions and one on Soviet objectives. As for the A side, an
NIE on Soviet strategic weapons had already been regularly
scheduled earlier in the year, and work on it by the intelligence
community had already begun before the B Teams came into being.
This NIE was much broader in scope than the particular estimative
questions the B Teams had been commissioned to address, and the
individual civilian and military analysts involved in producing
that NIE represented a wide range of views held within the depart-
ments and agencies of the Intelligence community on the NIE's
many questions.
The NIE participants and the B Teams proceeded to produce
their two sets of studies independently, with only occasional
direct contact during the drafting phase. After the initial drafts
of the three B Teams were completed, the two sides confronted one
another formally on three occasions. Once the decision to pro-
ceed with the exercise had been made, procedural cooperation was
good between the intelligence community and the three respective
B teams. The specific results differed, however, in the three
cases. Those concerning technical questions were the most
Through its Committee on NIE Evaluation (Messrs. Robert
Galvin, Edward Teller, and John Foster).
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rewarding: there was a mutual give and take, and these B
Teams clearly made a constructive contribution. By contrast,
the discussions concerning Soviet objectives were more contro-
versial and less conclusive. The B Team on Soviet Objectives
contributed some useful critiques concerning certain technical
intelligence questions, but there was not much give and take on
broader issues. The view cited in a December 1976 press article*
that the B Team challenge turned the NIE "around 180 degrees" is
incorrect.
Critique
It is the view of the Committee that past NIEs could have
profited from drawing on experts on Soviet strategic questions
from outside the intelligence community,'b'oth in-'and out of
government, and from subjecting NIE analyses and judgments
on this and other areas to competing assessments from such
sources. The PFIAB's 1975-1976 proposition that outside
expertise should be used to criticize and evaluate the NIEs
was a legitimate one. The exercise in practice, however,
fell short of the initial conception.
The composition of the B Team dealing with Soviet objectives
was so structured that the outcome of the exercise was pre-
determined and the experiment's contribution lessened. The
procedures followed by the intelligence community in the A-B
episode also weakened the overall effort to some degree. The
intelligence agencies were cast inaccurately in the role of
"doves," when they in fact represented a broad spectrum of views.
They needlessly allowed analytic mismatches, by sending relatively
junior specialists into the debating arena against prestigious
and articulate B Team authorities. And, the monitoring of the
procedures of the B Team on Soviet Objectives was subsequently
fairly loose.
New York Times, December 26, 1976
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The B Team contributions and the 1976 NIE can also
be faulted on various substantive grounds. Because of its
narrowly specified purpose and scope, influenced strongly in
recent years by the preferences of senior policymaking readers
regarding format, the NIE did not address the question of how
Soviet strategic weapons development fits into important larger
concerns [the entire panoply] of Soviet domestic, military,
diplomatic, economic, and cultural efforts. As a consequence,
the NIE's discussion of Soviet objectives was too brief to be
useful. In the view of some readers, its discussion of Soviet
military hardware in certain respects was inadequate to be
helpful to high-level officials.
A weakness in both the NIE and the B Team Report is their
lack of expressed sensitivity to the fact and the significance
of world developments other than those directly related to the
U.S.-Soviet arms race. The strategic weapons balance is the
chief subject of both documents, but both documents none-
theless are dominated by military hardware questions and
define "strategic power" quite narrowly. By design, in neither
the NIE nor the B Report are U.S.-Soviet strategic matters set
within the wider framework of other dynamic world forces, many
of which are essentially the creatures of neither U.S. nor
Soviet initiative or control.
Committee Findings
Estimates should of course be written in an accurate and
dispassionate manner. They should reflect the best and most
broadly representative expert knowledge possible, from both
inside and outside the government. The sensitive estimative
questions at hand should not be argued in the press. These
requirements did not obtain in the case of the NIE-B Team exercise.
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The field of strategic weaponry is complex, and there is
much valuable expertise on the subject outside of the intelli-
gence community. The quality of NIEs on these subjects would
benefit from more extensive use of this outside knowledge than
is now the case. In this respect, the PFIAB initiative was
justifiable and desirable.
To be of maximum value, however, such efforts must
employ the best and most competent expertise available. Panels
representing only one perspective, whether "hard" or "soft,"
are not desirable. In this respect, the B Team "experiment"
was not as constructive as it could have been concerning
Soviet objectives.
The exercise in competitive analysis was devalued by the
fact that, contrary to the expressed directions of both DCI
George Bush and PF'IAB Chairman Leo Cherne, word of these sens-
itive matters leaked to the press, where it appeared in garbled
form.
The A-B Team experience sharply demonstrated the intense
preoccupation of the CIA, the rest of the intelligence community,
the PFIAB, and pol.icymakers with Soviet strategic weapons and
their consequences. This subject is of enormous significance
to U.S. policymaking, but there are also other significant
questions. The greatest intelligence attention often is given
to the least likely Soviet actions, nuclear attack, rather than
to Soviet intentions and assertive world activity short of those
extremes.
Of most significance, the A-B Team case has demonstrated:
(a) that the key question of Soviet strategic intentions and
conduct is one which demands the best possible marshalling of
U.S. intelligence resources and American brainpower; and
(b) that the estimative process needs improvement in this area
of concern.
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The Committee's recommendations for improving National
Intelligence Estimates concerning Soviet strategic weapons
capabilities and objectives included these judgments:
-- The Intelligence Community must more effectively meet
the particular needs of particular policymakers. Creative use
shd.uld be made of other estimative formats, in addition to the
current categories of NIEs, tailored to the particular needs,
but not the views, of different policymaking entities and levels.
-- There is need for competitive and alternative analyses.
Both within the estimative body and with respect to outside
expertise, competing and on occasion alternative estimates should
be encouraged. To be fully useful, such initiatives must avoid
panels with narrow preconceptions, of whatever kind, to assure
the balance necessary for the competitors to evaluate evidence
which is often both conflicting and ambiguous.
-- Estimates must openly express differences of judgment,
and clearly indicate the assumptions, the evidence, and the
reasoning which produce alternative readings.
-- Estimates should highlight significant changes
from related past: estimates, including changing probabil-
ities, the emergence of new important alternatives, and find-
.
ings that make past estimates false or less relevant.
-- NIEs should define "strategic matters" more compre-
hensively than has obtained in recent years, so that Soviet
military developments can be better seen within the context of
Soviet interests and policies, and in interaction with U.S. and
world developments. Enchantment with the details of military
hardware must not: permit either the producers or the policymaking
consumers of intelligence to become deflected from pursuit of
the most important estimative questions at hand, those of
intentions.
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Reliable net assessments are needed to complete an
effective estimative process, so that policymakers can better
appreciate Soviet strengths and weaknesses by having system-
atically compared them with those of the U.S. -- a function
which the NIEs are not designed to perform. The NSC should
commission such net assessments, to be prepared by experts at
the national level, including some from the intelligence com-
munity.
-- Policymakers must define the questions, not the
answers. The DCI and the intelligence community's estimative
body must remain independent in judgment. Judgments must not
be bent or suppressed by outside pressures or fear of an
uncongenial reaction.
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The drafters on the NIEs on Soviet strategic forces, and
the members of Dr. Richard Pipes' B-Team came up with sub-
stantially different evaluations of the Soviet Union's
intentions and future capabilities. The Committee --
especially the Subcommittee on Quality of Intelligence --
rightly found this difference of opinion interesting, and
after gaining the views of Dr. Pipes and certain other mem-
bers of his Team on the Committee's Report, asked the staff
to re-check the "facts and issues" of the controversy. This
remained an inquiry, however, into the quality of competing
products. For although the re-checking has produced a Report
on the A-B Team episode which is much improved from the orig-
inal, it is still fundamentally flawed, because, in the words
of the Report, it "makes no attempt to judge which group's
estimates concerning the USSR are correct." Therefore the
Report's "findings and recommendations for improving the
quality of future NIEs on Soviet capabilities and objectives
are primarily directed at procedural issues." But it is
logically impossible to determine the quality of opposing
arguments without reference to the substance of those arguments.
After all, the quality of an estimate depends above all upon
its accuracy. In order to make judgments concerning quality,
never mind suggesting improvements, one must judge where the
truth lies against. which the estimate's accuracy is to be
measured.
Of course, because there is controversy over the signi-
ficance of the Soviets' buildup of strategic forces, any
report that touches on the facts is likely to be fought over.
But we cannot and should not try to avoid responsibility for
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substantive judgments in this area. The flow of events won't
let us. Moreover, as is the case here, judgments on sub-
stance turned away at the front door often come in through
the windows.
Although the Report finds some elements of value in
the fact that the NIE's drafters had some competition, it
still tries to denigrate the B-Team by giving the impression
that the NIE team contains a wide variety of points of view,
while its competitor was a narrow band of zealots with pre-
conceived notions. It even implies that Dr. Pipes, head of
Harvard's Russian Institute, wrote on Soviet intentions
before looking at the data. In fact Dr. Pipes did no such
thing. The Report focuses on the leakage of information
about the B-Team's report. Although it states that the
leakers were "persons unknown" it leads the reader to ask
cui bono? and gives the impression the B-Team benefited.
This is pure innuendo.
But above all, this sort of thing distracts from the
main point: the B-Team was constituted because for ten
years in a row the NIEs had been giving a picture of Soviet
strategic programs which appeared out of touch with reality.
(I am not referring to relatively short range projections of
numbers of launchers, which are easier to estimate.)
While the Soviets were beginning the biggest military
buildup in history, the NIEs judged that they would not try
to build as many missiles as we had. When the Soviets
approached our number, the NIEs said they were unlikely to
exceed it substantially; when they exceeded it substantially
the NIEs said they would not try for decisive superiority --
the capability to fight and win a nuclear war. Only very
recently have the NIEs admitted that possibility as an
"elusive question." Now the NIEs say the Soviets may be
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trying for such a capability but they cannot be sure it will
work. While there were divisive views in the intelligence
angencies responsible for the NIEs, the views which dissented
from the abovementioned line were confined to little foot-
notes. Only recently, under the pressure of events, have
dissenters gained the privilege of setting out contrasting
views in parallel text. Thus while it would be inaccurate
to cast the agencies in the role of doves, it is quite
accurate to characterize the NIEs' thrust and tone as very
dove-ish indeed! The President's Foreign Intelligence
Advisory Board was therefore quite right to ask whether the
data on Soviet strategic programs would support more somber
views.
The Report's main charge against the B-Team on Soviet
Objectives is that it "reflected the views of only one seg-
ment of the spectrum" and that consequently "the outcome of
the exercise was predetermined and the experiment's contribution
lessened." One might ask whether the Report is to be read
to imply that what it calls the "prestigious and articulate
B-team authorities" wrote predetermined, that is to say
academically dishonest analyses. The B-Team's critique was
indeed pointed. It had a definite thrust. But, it seems
to me, the direction of that thrust was called for by the
relationship between the NIEs' past analyses and the reality
of the Soviet buildup.
The fundamental argument, of course, is over the Soviet
Union's intentions. Soviet professional literature has not
deviated from the pattern set in Sokolovskii's book Soviet
Military Strategy that nuclear weapons do not change the
fundamental nature of warfare. Nuclear wars, like all others,
have winners and losers. The Soviet military's task is,
above all, to win wars. The Soviets have considered the
doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), on which our
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military posture is based, but they have always rejected
it. /As the Report states, the NIEs in question do not deal
adequately with the Soviet leadership's mind-set on nuclear
war. But the problem is not brevity, but rather, that while
consciously refusing to entertain the Soviets' own conception
of what they are about militarily, the authors of the NIEs
have ended up conceiving of the Soviet's enterprise in terms
of our own doctrine of MAD. The B-Team's position is that
the Soviet Union is building its forces with a view to
fighting, surviving, and winning a war. That position could
be attacked simply by adducing evidence that the Soviet Union
accepts MAD as a permanent condition. But the B-Team's
detractors have not come up with any
We need more confrontation of opposing points of view
on the basis of evidence. It is well known that experts,
especially in bureaucratic settings, acquire interests in
positions painstakingly built and long defended. The last
thing we need are mechanisms for reaching more consensus
on intelligence estimates, least of all should any such
mechanisms be placed under so politicized a body as the
National Security Council. Rather we need separate, compet-
itive, teams of analysts, each making the best possible case
for what the evidence at hand seems to indicate. Of course
it is more comfortable for a policymaker to receive a single
estimate on any given subject, especially if that estimate
tells him what he wants to hear. But, while competititve
analysis is not likely to make either policymakers or the
intelligence community happy, it is likely to make all
concerned more responsible.
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THE A-TEAM/B-TEAM EPISODE
SUPPLEMENTARY VIEWS OF SENATOR GARY HART
The most unfortunate result of the experiment in com-
petitive analysis was that the objectivity of one of the
nation's most important intelligence judgments was compromised.
And through leaks to the press, the credibility and quality of
earlier estimates was unfairly and inaccurately brought into
question.
The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Soviet
Forces for Intercontinental Conflict is one of the most
important intelligence documents produced each year.
As the Director of Central Intelligence's official
report to the President on the Soviet strategic threat, it
is a document that can affect tens of billions of dollars in
defense spending; the potential for arms control agreements,
and the confidence with which we guarantee our own security
and fulfill our commitments abroad.
Thus, it is essential to protect the objectivity of this
judgment of the strength and intentions of our most formidable
adversary.
The Committee report and information from other sources
has convinced me that "competitive analysis" and use of selected
outside experts was little more than a camouflage for a political
effort to force the National Intelligence Estimate to take a
more bleak view of the Soviet strategic threat.
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The correspondence about the exercise shows that the
President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) in-
cluded members more interested in altering the conclusions of
the national estimate than in improving its quality. From the
outset of the PFIAB's initiative in this case, it believed
existing NIE's were "deficient" because the PFIAB's members
disagreed with the NIE conclusions.
William Colby, who was then the Director of Central
Intelligence, was successful in halting PFIAB's first effort
to have "competition" in analysis. Later, DCI George Bush
consented to such an experiment.
The A-Team/B-Team experiment has also been explained
as an effort to allow greater dissent and conflicting views.
This overlooks the procedures to accommodate differing view-
points that are already a part of the national estimates pro-
cess. Representatives of the Defense Department, Army, Navy
and Air Force and State Department work with the CIA in pro-
ducing the estimates. The participating departments also have,
and frequently exercise, the right to dissent from an estimate
as a whole or in part. In producing the 1976 estimates, for
example, the Department of Defense had more members of the A-Team
than either CIA or the State Department. Because of the selec-
tion of outside experts with known views and a mandate to advo-
cate a specific position, the A-Team/B-Team experiment did not
promote dissent. To the contrary, it intimidated and stifled
the expression of more balanced estimates of the Soviet threat.
I also disagree strongly with one of the apparent goals
of the B-Team exercise: That is, to make a "worst case" analysis
of the Soviet threat. There is real value in such analysis but
it should not be the mainstay of the National Intelligence
Estimate.
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In his NIEs the Director of Central Intelligence should
provide not only a catalogue of what an adversary country
might do, but also has his own best judgment of what is actually
likely to happen -- a judgment that should not be tainted either
by a desire to justify greater defense spending and new weapons
systems, or by any motive to limit these expenditures.
The Pro-B Team leak and public attack on the conclusions
of the NIE represent but one leement in a series of leaks
and other statements which have been aimed at fostering a "worst
case" view for the public of the Soviet threat . In turn this
view of the Soviet threat is used to justify new weapons
systems.
It is neither possible nor necessarily desirable to remove
such politics and debate from the defense budget. But it is
essential to protect our key intelligence judgments from these
pressures.
The business of intelligence must be restricted to report-
ing the unvarnished facts. Any attempt to bend intelligence
to serve political needs other than the truth is a danger as
great as the Soviet threat itself.
In conclusion, let me add two recommendations to supple-
ment those contained in the Committee report. We need better
mechanisms--some outside the national estimates procedure--to
create a more orderly and balanced debate about Soviet strength,
objectives and intentions.
The estimates themselves should be better protected from
political influence and remain the Director of Central Intelli-
gence's best judgment about key intelligence questions. These
estimates should remain highly classified to help guarantee the
President the best possible advice, unaffected by fears of poli-
tical consequences of reporting facts that do not support
established policy or preconceptions.
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At the same time, the DCI should take steps to allow a
:e orderly and informed public debate about Soviet strength,
jectives and intentions. A great deal of this information
ready becomes available through selective leaks and occasional
1blic disclosure. To replace this haphazard and occasionally
ilegal process, the DCI should regularly review our strategic
?telligence product to determine what information may be
afely released to promote an informed public debate.
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THE A-TEAM/B-TEAM EPISODE
SEPARATE VIEWS OF SENATOR MOYNIHAN
The subject of the "B Team" report has been before our
committee for a year now, during which, if I am not mistaken,
rather a striking shift has taken place in the attitude of
what might be called official Washington to the then unwelcome
views of this group of scholars and officials. Their notion,
that the Soviets intend to surpass the United States in stra-
tegic arms and are in the process of doing so, has gone from
heresy to respectability, if not orthodoxy.
In his annual report, Defense Secretary Brown referred
to "a substantial and continuing Soviet [strategic] effort,
[which] is highly dynamic." Although puzzled as to "why the
Soviets are pushing so hard to improve their strategic nuclear
capabilities," Brown noted that "we cannot ignore their efforts
or assume that they are motivated by considerations either of
altruism or of pure deterrence."
Last month, a member of the House of Representatives,
Mr. Les Aspin, in a paper the State Department promptly en-
dorsed, warned that if the Senate did not ratify a proposed
SALT agreement, we would be "entering a race in which we are
already behind." Even after spending $20 billion on strategic
arms, in his judgment, we would still be comparatively worse
off.
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This, by the way, is not a completely new argument in
favor of SALT. In 1972, then-Presidential Assistant Henry
Kissinger had reference to the "not the most brilliant" bar-
gaining position in which he found himself due to the imbal-
ance between the Soviet and American paces of strategic arms
development.
It is worth reflecting on how we got into this unfavorable
bargaining position, if we are indeed in it. While many
different political and economic factors could be adduced,
it is impossible to ignore the quality of the intelligence
that our top leaders were receiving throughout the long period
during which American nuclear superiority was eroded, and
during which we placed ourselves in the situation so alarm-
ingly described by Representative Aspin.
It was a sense that the National Intelligence Estimates
had not adequately performed their function of informing our
top leaders as to the dynamism of the Soviet strategic buildup
that led to the "B Team" episode. Prior to its abolition in
early 1977, the President's Foreign Intelligence Adivsory
Board had the mandate (in the words of Executive Order 11460)
to "conduct a continuing review of foreign intelligence. . "
and to "report to the President concerning [its] findings and
appraisals and make appropriate recommendations for actions
achieve increased effectiveness . . . in meeting national
intelligence needs." This group persuaded the then Director
of Central Intelligence, the distinguished George Bush, to
take the courageous step of allowing-an outside group of-ex-
perts full access to the resources of the Intelligence Commun-
ity. This group (the "B Team") was to examine all the data
available to the analysts of the Intelligence Community to,
in the words of the Committee Statement, "determine whether
such data would support conclusions on Soviet strategic
capabilities and objectives different from those presented in
the Intelligence Community's National Intelligence Estimates."
The B Team reached "somber assessments" of the Soviet strategic
challenge, which subsequently leaked to the press, most notably
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Given the B Team's purpose, it is hardly surprising that
its members' views reflected "only one segment of the spectrum
of opinion." Inasmuch as the main purpose of the experiment
was to determine why previous estimates had produced such
misleading pictures of Soviet strategic developments, it
was reasonable to pick Team members whose views of Soviet
strategy differed from those of the official estimators,
just as a similar experiment, had one been conducted in 1962,
might have called for a "B Team" composed of strategic analysts
who had been skeptical of the "missile gap."
The goal of the B Team was to place Soviet weapons
developments of the past dozen or so years in the contest
of an overall Soviet "grand strategy." In its view, the
estimates had avoided a conscious discussion of Soviet strat-
egy and, as a result, had resorted willy-nilly to explaining
Soviet developments in terms of U.S. strategic concepts.
Unfortunately, these concepts corresponded to the Soviet
reality less and less as the years went by.
This contribution should not be disparaged on the grounds
that the B Team did not reflect the whole spectrum of opinions
on the questions it discussed; surely the point of "competitive
analysis" is to sharpen the issues and to force bureaucratic
committees -- so often characterized by consensus-seeking, to
say nothing of plain inertia -- to face the difficulties in
the lines of argument with which they have become comfortable.
The Committee Statement concludes that "judgments must not
be bent or suppressed by outside pressures or fear of an
uncongenial reaction." This is certainly an important object-
ive, and one in terms of which the current trend toward
centralized management of the Intelligence Community ought
to be evaluated. While "national" control might help dampen
the bureaucratic rivalry (inter-service, and military vs.
civilian intelligence) which occasionally raises its head
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in the estimates, it would tend to make it even more difficult
for intelligence analysts to draw conclusions which would
complicate the lives of the senior policymakers. Calling in
outside experts from time to time is a healthy corrective
against the tendency of any organization to become set in
its own way of thinking. The particular panel of experts
chosen, however, will always be subject to charges of being
"unrepresentative" or "biased" by those who do not like its
findings, including those in the intelligence community who
are, after all, the ones being criticized.
Knowledge is power; and the ability to define what others
will take to be knowledge is the greatest power. It is not to
be wondered then, that the National Intelligence Estimates
-- the sources of "official truth" -- escape irrelevance only
at the price of controversy. Any attempt to improve the
estimates will be denounced as an attempt to manipulate them
by those who disagree with the new directions they take. The
objective standard will be to look at how well one institutional
arrangement, or one line of argument, has preducted and explained
recent events.
In the current case, it would appear that the National
Intelligence Estimates of the past dozen years have by and
large failed this test. The B Team Report, the heart of which
did not find its way into the press, was in my view a credit-
able attempt to place recent developments in a context which
makes them more understandable, and which offers the possi-
bility of greater predictive success. No one should have
expected that the intelligence community would accept the
entire B Team position; but it should not miss the opportunity,
provided by a powerful critique of some of its past failures,
to sharpen its own thinking.
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The drafters on the NIEs on Soviet strategic forces, and
the members of Dr. Richard Pipes' B-Team came up with sub-
stantially different evaluations of the Soviet Union's
intentions and future capabilities. The Committee --
especially the Subcommittee on Quality of Intelligence --
rightly found this difference of opinion interesting, and
after gaining the views of Dr. Pipes and certain other mem-
bers of his Team on the Committee's Report, asked the staff
to re-check the "facts and issues" of the controversy. This
remained an inquiry, however, into the quality of competing
products. For although the re-checking has produced a Report
on the A-B Team episode which is much improved from the orig-
inal, it is still fundamentally flawed, because, in the words
of the Report, it "makes no attempt to judge which group's
estimates concerning the USSR are correct." Therefore the
Report's "findings and recommendations for improving the
quality of future NIEs on Soviet capabilities and objectives
are primarily directed at procedural issues." But it is
logically impossible to determine the quality of opposing
arguments without reference to the substance of those arguments.
After all, the quality of an estimate depends above all upon
its accuracy. In order to make judgments concerning quality,
never mind suggesting improvements, one must judge where the
truth lies against which the estimate's accuracy is to be
measured.
Of course, because there is controversy over the signi-
ficance of the Soviets' buildup of strategic forces, any
report that touches on the facts is likely to be fought over.
But we cannot and should not try to avoid responsibility for
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substantive judgments in this area. The flow of events won't
let us. Moreover, as is the case here, judgments on sub-
stance turned away at the front door often come in through
the windows.
Although the Report finds some elements of value in
the fact that the NIE's drafters had some competition, it
still tries to denigrate the B-Team by giving the impression
that the NIE team contains a wide variety of points of view,
while its competitor was a narrow band of zealots with pre-
conceived notions. It even implies that Dr. Pipes, head of
Harvard's Russian Institute, wrote on Soviet intentions
before looking at the data. In fact Dr. Pipes did no such
thing. The Report focuses on the leakage of information
about the B-Team's report. Although it states that the
leakers were "persons unknown" it leads the reader to ask
cui bono? and gives the impression the B-Team benefited.
This is pure innuendo.
But above all, this sort of thing distracts from the
main point: the B-Team was constituted because for ten
years in a row the NIEs had been giving a picture of Soviet
strategic programs which appeared out of touch with reality.
(I am not referring to relatively short range projections of
numbers of launchers, which are easier to estimate.)
`while the Soviets were beginning the biggest military
buildup in history, the NIEs judged that they would not try
to build as many missiles as we had. When the Soviets
approached our number, the NIEs said they were unlikely to
exceed it substantially; when they exceeded it substantially
the NIEs said they would not try for decisive superiority --
the capability to fight and win a nuclear war. Only very
recently have the NIEs admitted that possibility as an
"elusive question." Now the NIEs say the Soviets may be
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trying for such a capability but they cannot be sure.it will
work. While there were divisive views in the intelligence
angencies responsible for the NIEs, the views which dissented
from the abovementioned line were confined to little foot-
notes. Only recently, under the pressure of events, have
dissenters gained the privilege of setting out contrasting
views in parallel text. Thus while it would be inaccurate
to cast the agencies in the role of doves, it is quite
accurate to characterize the NIEs' thrust and tone as very
dove-ish indeed! The President's Foreign Intelligence
Advisory Board was therefore quite right to ask whether the
data on Soviet strategic programs would support more somber
views.
The Report's main charge against the B-Team on Soviet
Objectives is that it "reflected the views of only one seg-
ment of the spectrum" and that consequently "the outcome of
the exercise was predetermined and the experiment's contribution
lessened." One might ask whether the Report is to be read
to imply that what it calls the "prestigious and articulate
B-team authorities" wrote predetermined, that is to say
academically dishonest analyses. The B-Team's critique was
indeed pointed. It had a definite thrust. But, it seems
to me, the direction of that thrust was called for by the
relationship between the NTEs' past analyses and the reality
of the Soviet buildup.
The fundamental argument, of course, is over the Soviet
Union's intentions. Soviet professional literature has not
deviated from the pattern set in Sokolovskii's book Soviet
Military Strategy that nuclear weapons do not change the
fundamental nature of warfare. Nuclear wars, like all others,
have winners and losers. The Soviet military's task is,
above all, to win wars. The Soviets have considered the
doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), on which our
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military posture is based, but they have always rejected
We need more confrontation of opposing points of view
on the basis of evidence. It is well known that experts,
especially in bureaucratic settings, acquire interests in
positions painstakingly built and long defended. The last
thing we need are mechanisms for reaching more consensus
on intelligence estimates, least of all should any such
mechanisms be placed under so politicized a body as the
National Security Council. Rather we need separate, compet-
itive, teams of analysts, each making the best possible case
for what the evidence at hand seems to indicate. Of course
it is more comfortable for a policymaker to receive a single
estimate on any given subject, especially if that estimate
tells him what he wants to hear. But, while competititve
analysis is not likely to make either policymakers or the
intelligence community happy, it is likely to make all
concerned more responsible.
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