HARRY ROSITZKE/SOVIET UNION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000201180012-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 23
• Document Creation Date: December 21, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 10, 2008
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: April 25, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

' Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-01070R000201180012-5
RADIO TV REPORTS, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 [phone]
DATE April 25, 1984 8:00 P.M.
Harry Rositzke/Soviet Union
Washington, D.C.
FRED FISKE: Harry Rositzke has spent much of his adult
life studying the Soviet Union. He's a Harvard Ph.D. who taught
at Harvard, at the University of Rochester, and other places.
Before that, before he went into intelligence work, Harry
Rositzke was with the OSS in World War II; one of the first with
the CIA, where he was Chief of Soviet Operations. His job was to
dispatch agents into the Soviet Union. He also served with the
CIA in Munich and in New Delhi.
What Harry Rositzke has to say in his new book, Managing
Moscow, published by William Morrow, is unexpected, coming from a
man with his background, and very important for the peace of the
world. Essentially, he argues that our Soviet strategy has not
worked and ought to be changed, that we should recognize that our
effort at military containment has failed and that we should
adopt a forward-looking economic strategy.
Harry, it's very good to see you again.
HARRY ROSITZKE: Nice to see you.
FISKE: What's it, the third book we've been doing?
ROSITZKE: Yeah. Yeah. Getting old together.
FISKE: Well, you look very, very well indeed. You've
been retired from the CIA for 10 years now?
ROSITZKE: Fourteen years now.
FISKE: When did you arrive at the very interesting
conclusions that you express in this book? Was it during your 25
OFFICES IN: WASHINGTON D.C. ? NEW YORK ? LOS ANGELES ? CHICAGO ? DETROIT ? AND OTHER PRINCIPAL CITIES
Material supplied by ondkn lv Remrtc Inn- rmv he used for flee and reference ourposes only. It may not be reproduced, sold or publicly demonstrated or exhibited.
Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-01070R000201180012-5
 Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
years in the CIA, or since your retirement?
ROSITZKE: Well, the first 15 or 18 years in the CIA
were all-enveloping. It was the Cold War. We were in the fore-
front. We were sending agents into Mos -- into Russia. We were
fighting the Russians all the way along the Cold War line in
Europe and working against them in the Far East, etcetera. So
there wasn't much time for reflection in those years.
I think when I started looking at this thing kind of
sanely -- because none of us were all that sane during the Cold
War -- was during my five years in India, when I had a chance to
see how the Soviet-American confrontation looked from there. And
from that point of view, to a certain extent, I realized more and
more the enormous political and economic factors in this, that
just stopping the Russians with arms had not prevented them from
making great advances in the Third World.
And mind you, they started that program only in 1955,
when Khrushchev decided this was our soft underbelly and that if
he could capture the political allegiance, and eventually the
markets, of the Third World, the capitalist world would be pretty
hard up.
So that started a train of thought, I think, which,
since I retired, I've worked on, I've thought about, I've dis-
cussed with some of my more expert economic and military friends.
And the simply fact was -- and this really dawned on me only
after I got out -- that for 35 years we have never taken a
serious foreign policy action that wasn't triggered by an actual
Soviet or Communist, or purportedly Soviet or Communist, action.
In other words, we've been reacting.
ROSITZKE: And it's my feeling that I don't know of any
other great nation in the world that has only had a policy of
stopping somebody else.
FISKE: You refer to it as being the world's policeman,
and that policemen have to react to what they find on their
beats.
ROSITZKE: Exactly. And that means the other side has
the initiative, the other side picks the spots, the other side
takes the opportunities in those areas where they think there is
something to be done. And we wait for them to act, and then we
react. And we often overreact.
In my mind, there isn't any question we overreacted in
Vietnam. I think our reaction to Grenada was really almost a
Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
 Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
childlike overreaction. And I certainly we feel we are over-
reacting in Central America.
FISKE: It's being trumpted as a great victory by many.
ROSITZKE: Well, I think it was needed at one moment to
flex our muscle and show the world that we were still the great
power we always have been. I think it was patriotically very
successful. But if one looks at it, is this the way a great
power proves its competence to the world, to send in a handful of
troops against a handful of mostly civilians and grab an island?
Well, to that extent, that was rather symbolic and not
particularly needed.
FISKE: Harry, your conclusions are one thing. They're
very interesting. They're different. They're certainly worth
reflecting upon. You make a very good case for them. But what's
even more surprising is your premises and your chain of reasoning
leading you to those conclusions. You feel that our fears of
Soviet military adventurism, on which our policies have been
based, have been ill-founded; that the Soviets have been
cautious, that they have not sought military adventures outside
their sphere, that the fears that we have of the Soviet Union,
which are leading us to spend huge amounts of money in defense
and are the basis of our foreign policy and our alliances, and so
on, that those fears are without basis.
Now, this coming from a man who headed Soviet operations
in the CIA.
ROSITZKE: Let us say that the fears are exaggerated,
that they have created an emotional climate in this country where
the Russians have become bogeys and threats and sources of evil
far beyond the bounds of any kind of common-sense approach, and
that if one accepts the fact that we must always have a deterrent
capable of stopping a strike against us by the Russians, once
that is done, then I think we'd better start thinking about what
we do in the rest of the world.
My objection to the hawks or to the professional anti-
Soviet military are that once they've gotten that far, they don't
know what else to do. And yet if you start looking at Soviet
expansion of power and influence in a mere 30 years, you find
that they are the dominant power in the Subcontinent, that India
and Russia together, for example, form a relatively strong coun-
terpoise to China. You find they have two or three rather stal-
wart friends in the Middle East, which helps them, particularly
today with Syria, to exert an influence there that no number of
American troops or bombs can affect. We find that they have two
or three very good friends in Africa -- Ethiopia, Angola,
Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
 Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
etcetera. They have had now for 20 years a very good friend in
Cuba.
In other words, we haven't, by our past policies,
stopped them from expanding their power and influence in the
Third World. To a certain extent, I think what we've done is
assumed that extension of power always comes, somehow, through
military means. And yet they have never used their divisions
outside,of their border areas. That includes Eastern Europe, but
it also includes Afghanistan, which is crucial to their security,
in their eyes. They have never sent contingents of Soviet troops
to advance their interests in any part of the world. We have, of
course, and we paid a great price with American lives to stop
such forward moves as the North Vietnamese, the North Koreans.
So, all I'm suggesting here is that we have half a
policy: Let's keep the Russians from attacking us. But the
other half is: Let's start taking a forward policy in the Third
World that will, in effect, over the long run in crucial areas of
the Third World, advance our political and economic interests.
And we have the economic clout to do it the Russians can't even
begin to match.
FISKE: What your thesis is, that, in fact, the Soviets
can match us militarily, probably have matched us militarily...
ROSITZKE: Let's call it military parity. Yeah.
FISKE: All right.
But that they are no match for us in the sphere of
economics, and that's where we ought to be playing our strong
suit.
ROSITZKE: Right. They will help out so-called wars of
national liberation, in Angola, in other African countries. And
what happens after the revolutionary powers have taken over? The
Russians haven't got the capacity to give them the kind of
economic and technical aid they need. Right now...
FISKE: Which is why they lose some of them after a
ROSITZKE: Well, Mozambique is a Marxist country.
Angola is. Guinea. They are now coming to the United States and
saying, "We'd like to have trade. We will give you good condi-
tions for investment," etcetera.
Well now, if that happens, these so-called American
countries become part of our, if you want to call it that, sphere
of influence. They become our friends. [Unintelligible] their
Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
 Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
politics follows economics. And that I've become completely
convinced of. It's a Marxist notion, but I think more and more,
as we see what's happening in German, East German, East European,
French relations, as we begin realize now what we want out of
China, what the Chinese want out of us, politics follows...
FISKE: It's largely economics. The President will be
there tomorrow, and the reason is to arrange some economic
goodies for the Chinese to cement their friendship.
[Confusion of voices]
FISKE: Harry, I would assume that the policy these last
35 years, which you're so critical of in your book, has been
formulated on the basis of intelligence provided the State De-
partment and various Administrations by the CIA, of which you
then were an integral part, an important part. Agree? Were you
wrong?
ROSITZKE: I would suggest that for the last 35 years
the various Administrations, on the broader levels of foreign
policy, haven't listened to intelligence at all. I call it
stomach thinking. They haven't used their heads. They have been
so allergic to this Communist menace, to Marxism-Leninism -- we
have a high pitch of it today under the Reagan Administration.
We had the highest pitch, obviously, in the 'SOs, to the extent
where any move anywhere on the other side, or a purported move,
immediately triggered a reaction, which then got to be automati-
cally carried out, whether it made sense or not.
FISKE: Harry, I have spoken to a lot of CIA types.
I've read a lot of their books. It seems to me that most of them
have been virulently anti-Communist, have advocated courses of
action and attitudes toward the Communists which may well have
resulted in the kinds of policy that you deplore. It's one of
the reasonss that I raised my eyebrows when I read your book
Managin7c. Moscow. I think it's such a departure from the kind of
reasoning, the kind of argumentation we've been hearing from CIA
people and former CIA people.
ROSITZKE: Well, once you are committed, as I was for
many, many years, to both the espionage and the covert action
against the Russians, once you've been alerted to looking every-
where across the world for the strength of the Communist Party,
what they're up to, etcetera, etcetera, you obviously get a cast
of mind which is bound to be narrowed by your own professional
function. Well, I certainly had that.
But I think one of my few virtues is that I taught
English at the university for six years before I came in, so I
did have a career other than this. And looking at facts
Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
 Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
unemotionally, drawing conclusions from them is a habit which I
trust I learned in those days. And after I got out and started
taking a good cool look at the history of the relations between
these two countries over the last 30 years, I came to the con-
clusion, as a few people are coming more and more to that con-
clusion, as Nixon did, as some of the people in the White House
did in those days, that the Russians are there to stay, they are
a political, economic, ideological threat. We will always be
competitive. We will always be enemies. But my conclusion is,
yes, for the next 10, 20, 50 or 100 years. And no matter how
large our arsenal, that will not keep them from spreading both
their institutions and their ideas to other parts of the world
which are just waiting for some help from the industrialized
nations. And in the long run, they're going to be a highly in-
dustrialized nation.
FISKE: And you say we should not fail to contest them,
but we ought not contest them militarily; we ought to contest
them economically.
ROSITZKE: Yeah. The only time we can contest them
militarily is when they take military action. But most of their
actions are not military.
FISKE: They use others.
ROSITZKE: Political, propaganda.
FISKE: Harry, there's a lot of argument about the
extent to which the Soviets are using surrogates to stir up mis-
chief, to arm, equip, advise, direct guerrilla forces in various
parts of the world. To what extent is that true, based on your
experience?
ROSITZKE: Well, to start with, there isn't any question
that that was one of the elements in the Vietnamese, the North
Vietnamese war. But what we tend to do, I think, is think that
these other countries, like Cuba, like North Vietnam, like Syria,
they're just automatic puppets of the Soviet Union.
In most cases, let's say in our own hemisphere, the
revolutions in Cuba and in Nicaragua to took place, to start
with, as straight nationalist movements. The Soviets didn't
direct them. These came out of the circumstances, the social,
the political, the injustice, the dictatorships that were there,
from local situations.
Once that happens and these people get into power, the
Soviets couldn't be more eager to help them out. But to consider
them the makers of these situations, that somehow or other they
instigated these situations, whether it's the African colonial
Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
 Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
countries, whether it's Central or South America, that, I think,
is false.
FISKE: Well, don't they, haven't they all these years
had home-grown Communists in these various countries, particu-
larly those countries that were seen as ripe for revolution, ripe
for the establishment of Marxism, who in fact have sought to take
advantage of the adverse conditions existing in those countries
to set up Marxis revolutions? Didn't they attempt to do it here?
Don't they attempt to do it in every other country where they
exist?
ROSITZKE: Fred, there were practically no Communist
Parties at all in Africa, outside of the Union of South Africa,
south of Egypt and the Sudan. These people who fought these
various guerrilla factions -- and there were so-called good guys,
from our point of view, as in Angola, and bad guys -- they were
on the nationalist grounds, for the most part, starting insur-
rections.
After the guerrilla warfare, the insurgencies we had in
Latin America in the '60s, they were almost totally squelched. I
doubt very much -- and only the State Department could tell, and
they probably would find it hard to tell -- that there are more
than 50 or 75 or 100 Communists -- that means members of a Com-
munist Party under Soviet control -- in Nicaragua or Salvador.
In other words, let's not identify these nationalist
insurgencies as Communist.
FISKE: Is that an impression, or do you have knowledge
ROSITZKE: The latest figures from the State Department,
when they kept track of Communists, which they didn't do during
detente, because that didn't look very polite, I think there were
25 members of the Salvadorian Communist Party left then.
And you remember that farce about the Dominican
Republic, where we went in because there was a lot of chaos and a
lot of leftist people at work? But when President Johnson said,
"Give me a list of the Communists behind all this," he got a
list, quickly put together, of 50 people, some in jail, some
dead, some in Europe.
In other words, we've got to stop this business of iden-
tifying every anti-capitalist, anti-dictatorial movement as being
Communist, in the technical sense.
FISKE: You say in your book that fear of Communism is
deeply embedded in the American psyche, leading us to believe, as
Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
 Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
you think, that we start with that fear; and then, I suspect,
that we find justification for it.
ROSITZKE: It's a deep emotional reaction which, for
example, you cannot find in Europe. There are Communist Parties
in Europe. There are Communists in the French Cabinet. You can
invite someone to dinner there even if he is a Communist. These
are political groups that are fighting for power.
Now, we don't have that kind of thing in our country.
In our country, the Communists have always been looked upon as
foreigners, as absolutely anti-American, as stooges of a foreign
power, etcetera, etcetera. And it was this that led, for
example, to the hysteria of the late '40s and early '50s. This
all came about again in the early '60s, when Presidents actually
agreed to assassinate a nasty Communist like Castro.
In other words, to me, this is not sane thinking. That
Communists and Communist Parties, as such, are against our inter-
ests and that we should do all we can to keep them from moving
ahead, and that most of them are actually, let's call it, they're
puppets of Moscow, although there are still Chinese Communist
Parties in Latin America and the Middle East that take their
orders from Peking.
Let's be realistic about it. Let's take it on as a
political...
FISKE: But we divided them into. good Communists and bad
Communists. Right?
ROSITZKE: How easy that is, isn't it? Suddenly we are
against Communists, we are anti-Communist, and the President goes
to Peking. And the only man who I think really brought a little
sanity into this was President Nixon, because he said, "We've got
to live with them. Let's work out our problems as best we can by
talk." And I think that's the one thing that's missing today.
FISKE: Harry, you argue that we, in fact, don't know
the Soviets. We have an erroneous perception of what they're
about and how they operate. How well do they know us?
ROSITZKE: Over the last 10 or 15 years, the Russians
have gotten to know us much better. Stalin had a childish notion
of capitalism, Wall Street running the White House, etcetera.
Khrushchev, somewhat more realistic. But over the last 10-12
years, they've made a very strong effort, through an institute
which has both classified and unclassified material available,
the Arbatov Institute, where they now have over 350 people trying
to understand the U.S. better and better. And they'll never
understand us in toto, as we can't understand a strange society
Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
 Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
like theirs, but I think they're much more realistic about the
fact that, for example, there are pressure groups in this
country, the pressure groups have a great effect upon legisla-
tion, that Wall Street doesn't dictate legislation, that the
President also is open to popular opinion, which is, after all,
not a possible thing in the Soviet Union itself. So I think they
are more and more realistic.
But when, for example, the President of the United
States gets up and starts talking, as he did earlier, about par-
tial strikes or limited wars or...
FISKE: Or evil empires.
ROSITZKE: ...evil empires. They're a fairly dignified
people, and they don't like insults. This then gives them a
reinforced feeling that this President really hates them and will
do everything he can against them, a feeling they didn't have,
for example, under Nixon.
So, to that extent, they can understand us. But I think
they probably are as scared of us, at that level, as we are of
them.
FISKE: You argue that on the basis of history, they are
more scared of us, the fact that we, in fact, have on several
occasions taken action against them. We landed troops there
during the Bolshevik Revolution. We formed alliances of which
they're very suspicious. We shut them out after World War II was
over, didn't aid them the way we aided some of our former
enemies, and so on. And they harbor strong resentments about
that.
ROSITZKE: There isn't any question. We had their
borders covered by military bases, military pacts all through the
'50s. It was perfectly clear that we were potentially an aggres-
sive power and that we had the capability of really hurting them.
Now, today, when you get down to the business of do we
understand their concerns, Arbatov makes the point, "If you had a
billion Chinese soldiers in Canada and you had the NATO alliance
in Mexico, how would you feel about your own security?" So they
make the point, and I happen to agree with them, they are pri-
marily defensive-minded when it comes to military action, and
that they have been very, very cautious for 35 years now not to
confront us and face American military force.
FISKE: Fair to say you didn't have this view when you
were in the CIA?
ROSITZKE: Partly, to a certain extent, in the late '40s
Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
 Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
because we were realizing then what enormous difficulties Stalin
was in: almost half the economy destroyed, people hard to handle
in the Ukraine and Central Asia, etcetera, with an enormous com-
pulsion on the regime to make their country whole again. As we
began to realize that, I thought to myself, "Well, these are the
last people who are going to start another war. They're certain-
ly not going to invade Western Europe. They've got enough
troubles controlling Eastern Europe. What would the do with
Western Europe? Would they try to have occupation forces form
Scandinavia to the U.K.?" It was all totally unrealistic.
But we still worried then, particularly after Korea,
they're going to invade Western Europe.
Well, 30 years later, they still haven't done it. And
today it's even less likely than it was then.
FISKE: Harry, you make an argument in your book that
one of the difficulties in the formulation of our policy, from
the perspective that you give us in this book, is that the CIA
has for a substantial portion of its history been directed by
military men who approach it with a military mentality, leading
our policy in the direction that we've taken.
Would you like to elaborate on that?
ROSITZKE: Well, I'm not -- no, I don't think I say we
have been led. We were born in a khaki uniform. We had generals
to start with, and admirals, as directors. But when Allen Dulles
came into power, since that time it's almost always been civilian
directorship.
And the other thing, I think, to keep in mind...
FISKE: A few admirals.
ROSITZKE: A few admirals. Yeah. Not too long.
Since the Director of the CIA really can't do anything
on his own, since he is an instrument of the President, since any
projects we get into have to be approved by the President, it's
perfectly clear that what determines their actions, our actions
over the last 35 years is the Administration in power. And, in
fact, in the mid-'70s, when Senator Church exposed these nasty
things CIA had been doing, he used a phrase, "They're a rogue
elephant." It became perfectly clear from the discussions that
[unintelligible] raised that it was the President who was the
rogue elephant'. The President was the one who decided that we
would go into Guatemala, we'd go into Cuba, we'd go into Angola.
In other words, that is not a policy determination of the
Director.
Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
 Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
FISKE: The Director provides information; he doesn't
make policy.
ROSITZKE: He provides information, and he also will
take action when instructed.
FISKE: But policy is made by Presidents, you say.
ROSITZKE: The National Security Council is really the
President's top policymaking apparatus. And that means the Se-
cretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, and Treasury are the
main role-players.
FISKE: Do the political realities in the United States
make it more politically advantageous to a President to be tough
than to seek some sort of detente or agreement or coming together
or softening?
ROSITZKE: I'd say the advantages are on what I call the
hard boys. Anybody who doesn't feel that this is primarily a
military affair and you've got to deal with them toughly, they're
soft, they're wimps, they're liberals, I think is the nice word
they use today. And there is no question, it's terribly tempting
to stand up and be against the enemy, because that pulls all the
people together.
Now, the man who broke that for the first time, really,
was President Nixon. President Ford didn't go on this too hard.
President Carter tried to get a little moderation into our ap-
proach to the Russians, but their invasion of Afghanistan really
forced him to realize, "They really are the hostile ones."
And then, to me, President Reagan comes in with about
the same kind of stance that I lived through in the '50s, when
John Foster Dulles was determining our attitude, because he had a
he was the father of what I call `theological anti-Communism,
because the put the whole thing on a moral plane, where they were
evil and we were good, they were Satan and God was on our side.
So, to that extent, I'd say the really tough, hard men
who scare the American people, obviously -- they have to to get
their budgets -- are in a stronger position than the soft men,
because fear is something easy to exploit.
But it's gotten now, I think, to the point where some
people are afraid that this has gone so far that our defense
budget will assist us in developing a kind of economic status
which would be against all our interests.
FISKE: Do you agree with General Haig, who when he was
Secretary of State said that the Soviet Union funds international
terrorism?
Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
 Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
ROSITZKE: I took it upon myself a couple of years ago
to write an article for the New York Times on that. And the
issues was, if there was no KGB, would there be any less terror-
ism? I feel fairly strongly, looking at the evidence as well as
I can, that most, if not all, of the major terrorist movements
have their own spontaneous political purposes, they have their
training and equipping, all through the Middle East, in Libya,
even in Algeria; and that here and there the Russians might take
an interest in making a contact with one of these groups, but
that they themselves do not sponsor it, except, for example, with
the PLO if it's in their long-term interest.
FISKE: Well, the PLO is providing tactics and weaponry
and training for many of these guerrilla groups all over the
world. There would seem to be some sort of centralization in-
volved there. I don't think that the PLO itself has the
resources or the weaponry or the capability of doing that without
the kind of help that it's suspected they receive from the Soviet
Union.
ROSITZKE: Well, I think the main help they get and
they've gotten for the last 20 years is really basically in
Syria. That is where the most terrorist-minded of the Palestine
Liberation Organization groups live, where they're trained. And
to that extent, one can say that Syria; Cuba, in terms of sup-
porting revolutionaries; Libya across the whole board; and, to a
certain extent, Algeria.
But to try to draw the line between simple terrorism,
the worst possible kind of almost pointless murder, and wars of
national liberation is a hard line to draw. And I suppose in the
long run we're talking now about state-sponsored terrorism. One
would have to find some evidence that that state and that state
and that state are supporting it.
And of course, unfortunately, right at this stage, we're
supporting the terrorists in Nicaragua.
FISKE: How do you feel, as a former CIA official, when
you read about the covert activities in Nicaragua and the harbor
mining?
ROSITZKE: Well, I have two reactions. One, CIA should
not be in a business that makes the front pages. In other words,
they ought to take the paramilitary function away from us. All
the way from the Bay of Pigs on, we have not had a paramilitary
operation yet that was covert in the real sense, that it couldn't
be traced to the President.
FISKE: And mining is especially hard to trace.
ROSITZKE: That gets to be public, but that also gets to
Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
 Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
introduce other factors, whether CIA does it or the Pentagon does
it: that here we are dealing with an action which, at best, can
really serve very little purpose, and, at worst, really goes
against both the legal and moral principles I think we tend to
abide by.
FISKE: Well, it would seem that while policies of
various sorts, such as you've described, were made by Administra-
tions, that covert actions are strictly a CIA area.
ROSITZKE: They're carried out by CIA. The great argu-
ment, as you know, over the last month has been whether or not
CIA adequately briefed the House and Senate Intelligence Commit-
tees on their actions. And I gather, from what has been said,
some people heard about it, some didn't.
But it's also a fact that the House and the Senate In-
telligence Committees must be briefed, but they can't veto an
action that the President has recommended. And so to that ex-
tent, the whole Nicaraguan operation is a direct presidential,
NSC decision.
FISKE: I would be very surprised if the President re-
commends an action of that sort without first receiving a recom-
mendation from the CIA about its feasibility and its wisdom,
etcetera.
ROSITZKE: I should think they would make a proposal and
say what's good and bad about it.
FISKE: You know, you wrote this book some time ago. You
can never tell what happens, as a result. But you refer here to
Muammar Qaddafi. And in this book, in this book, Managing
Moscow, you say that the support of terrorism, Qaddafi's invasion
of Chad, his threats to Egypt and the Sudan, it's easy enough to
throw out his diplomats and tweak his nose with aerial dogfights
off the Libyan coast, but our hostility has so far managed only
to magnify his prestige without affecting his actions. Must he
be outlawed? Many Europeans and some of the Americans who still
work in Libya do not see the advantage of that to the West.
Now, how do you think about that view now that Qaddafi
has taken the stand and said what he's had to say about the dif-
ficulties in London, the shooting?
ROSITZKE: I think there's going to be more of this. My
only point would be that Qaddafi has certain interests. Now,
they happen to be mainly with the Europeans because they are
buying a great deal of his oil. They depend on Libyan oil. So
they can't afford to be too moral about this thing, even though
this horrifies, pretty well, everybody.
Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
 Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
My point would be nothing can be lost by, if you want to
call it that, a quiet kind of diplomacy in which talks are held
with even such strange characters to try to find out what they're
really up to and what can be done in terms of, obviously, giving
him something he needs to cut this out. Now, there may be no
results whatever. But the fact remains that if we simply keep on
talking about Castro and Qaddafi and Khomeini as being the out-
laws of our generation, I can't see that we're doing anything
very much to affect their behavior.
FISKE: Okay. An invitation to our listeners to join
the discussion....
Good evening.
MAN: ...nationalist movements in the Third World and
how, in a sense, the present Administration is sort of...
FISKE: Can we ask you to speak a little louder, sir?
MAN: I make a point about the general idea that nat-
ionalist movements in the Third World are diverse, that they're
not Communist, etcetera, etcetera, and that it's a mistake to
take a monolithic view of this. The thing is, I think, in a
sense, that's an evasion, because while there's no question the
evidence that many of these Third World movements and leaders who
we dislike are not Communists -- I mean, obviously, Khomeini and
Qaddafi are far from being Communists --we know that Fidel
Castro, when he initially took power in Cuba, was not a Com-
munist. He hadn't been...
FISKE: There's some dispute about that.
MAN: There's some dispute. But even the Sandinistas,
the Communist Party in Nicaragua played a very small role.
But my point is this: The one thing they all seem to
have in common is a hatred for America. In a sense, the common
bond between these various national liberation movements,
terrorist organizations, and leftist regimes in the Third World
is anti-Americanism, which puts them on the same course as the
Soviet Union. For instance, in Nicaragua they laud the regimes
in North Korea, in Vietnam, etcetera, etcetera. Their foreign
policy pronouncements, as well as many of their actions, puts
them very much in alliance with the Soviets.
So, I mean, you know, so what that they're not members
of Communist Parties? The bottom line is that they hate the
United States and that they seem to take actions which are
directly against American interests.
FISKE: Harry?
Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
 Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
ROSITZKE: Well, I agree with you. I would say not so
much anti-American as anti-capitalist. The anti-Americanism, I
think, is particularly powerful in Latin America, for reasons I
think you and I could both understand. But in Africa, for
example, they were working against European colonial powers.
They were anti-capitalist in the sense that they wanted to get
the foreign exploiters, as they call them, out of the way. To
that extent, their international affiliations are important.
But the point I tried to make was that they could be
made not anti-American, that what they need, in many cases, is
the kind of assistance, and profit to us, as well, that they do
need; and that whether they're Communist or Marxist, whatever
that now means, or Leninist, or strictly nationalist, we have the
capacity to get them at least, if not on our side, not 'on the
Soviet side.
And if in the long run we're trying to diminish Soviet
power and influence, that obviously is a forward movement.
MAN: Harry, I appreciate your comments. And I think
that a rational, objective view of the situation around American
policy is much needed.
You mentioned a lot of things that contradict the way in
which people perceive the world around them. I think in the
conversation you were having, you were not abstracting the word
Communist to mean the evil outside, which I see the population in
this country gets worked up in periods to a hysteria, and the
word Communist does not necessarily any longer have meaning as a
political or economic line, or political movement. It becomes
the feared outside. And it becomes a pretext or a delusional
state as we go to war and we kill. You know, we have a ritual
killing of our young.
Could you talk more in a dynamic -- I don't know. It's
a very deep, deep archaic, barbaric thing that American foreign
policy is. And I wouldn't say that populations around the world
are anti-American. They are being murdered, and they're not even
counted here. I mean Kissinger and the Administrations during
the Vietnam war, when questioned how many Vietnamese were killed,
they had no idea. They just said, "We didn't count. We didn't
count that."
And what I'm trying to say is it stems from a very, very
deep, very, very dark place within our psychology in this
country, which enables us to dovetail our economic interests into
an archaic, you know, atrocious brutality...
FISKE: Okay. I think we get your point.
Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
 Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
ROSITZKE: Well, I'm aware more, as I read some of the
memos, memoranda, and the Haig and Kissinger stories, of the last
35 years, that there is a deep-seated attitude, which I consider
mainly fear, and therefore can be called upon to hate, inside the
American psyche, more so, I think, than in some of the European
countries, where they've actually suffered directly a great deal
more than we have. To that extent, it's there to be called upon.
And one of the questions I raise is, do we need an
enemy? Do we need an enemy to focus all our national
discontents, frustrations, anxieties on? And at this stage of
life, I think we still do need an enemy. And that's why it's so
easy for a man like President Reagan to come to the fore, say
again, as we said 30 years ago, "This is the enemy," and get most
of the American people behind him.
FISKE: Can't we make the same argument for the Soviets?
Even though you argue that they are not likely to engage in an
international war -- and, of course, it's silly. They've been
able to spread their ideology, which is their purpose, without
doing so -- that they also need an enemy, and Uncle Sam has
become their enemy? It's part and parcel of their theology, if
you will, their political ideology to spread it. They've
announced it repeatedly. It's part of their basic doctrine.
Don't they use us in that same way?
ROSITZKE: Fred, there is no question about it. They
have worked against the enemy -- not only America. It was Great
Britain in the '30s. The enemy really is a system and a set of
ideas. It's capitalism. It's what they call bourgeois values.
And they have exploited that both at home and broad for 35 or 40
years. And, in effect, I would say that the kind of paranoia
they have toward the rest of the world, whether or not it's
justified, is exactly what I'm afraid we are ready to share now
and then, which makes us less capable of handling their
hostility, their competitiveness.
So, what we're really saying is they are the profes-
sionals at the use of fear and hatred of the enemy that we are,
now and then in our society, beginning to share. And I see that,
s,o far as we're concerned, that does not make us more effective.
FISKE: Good evening.
MAN: I'm especially pleased to hear the kind of inter-
pretation you give to the problems of our foreign policy as we
view them in the Third World, the kind of thoughtful consider-
ation you give to the needs of, say, the Latin Americans and the
underlying reasons why they would revolt or they would join a
Communist Party. And the implications of that are, obviously, I
Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
 Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
think -- I hope I'm not putting words in your mouth -- that our
foreign policy ought to undertake a_ more forthright democratic
response to the needs of, say, Latin America than just running
guns down there.
However, what I don't hear from you -- and since you're
such a dramatic expert in this field, I'm going to ask you a
questions about this. What I don't hear from you is a
characterization of the Soviet Union per se and what it has done
in Eastern Europe as being anything all that awful.
Now, to explain. I come from a fairly liberal back-
ground that agrees with all the foregoing. But my experiences,
my life experiences in meeting people that have come out from
behind the Iron Curtain, quite frankly, leave me shocked and
mortified, to gain the appearance that the Soviet Union is every
bit as bad and every bit as evil as some feverish-minded right-
wing Reaganite would suggest.
ROSITZKE: There isn't any...
MAN: What's your perception of it?
ROSITZKE: There isn't any question -- under Stalin,
less so under his successors -- that there is a highly
authoritarian government in the Soviet Union that will do every-
thing it can, through a very efficient internal security service,
the Second Chief Directorate of the KGB, to control dissent, to
see to it that the so-called dissident intellectuals don't have
much in the way of freedom to speak. They are putting people in
jail, etcetera. It's nothing like the Stalin days, you know,
with the millions in the Gulag.
It is also true that in Eastern Europe, which vary now
-- after all, Hungary is not like Poland, and Poland isn't like
Czechoslovakia -- the Russians, themselves, will guaranty to
themselves that they'll maintain control of Eastern Europe at any
cost.
MAN: Is there any chance, sir -- I'd like you to go a
little further with this, this Eastern Europe. Is there any
chance that the United States, through its foreign policy activi-
ties, could somehow regain any measure of political freedom for
the peoples of Eastern Europe?
ROSITZKE: I doubt if that is possible without, as we
knew back in the '50s, another war.
What we can do, and I suggest this, is we can make the
way of life of East Europeans somewhat better than they are now.
Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
 Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
ROSITZKE: The economic instrument. And, for example, I
am all for having trade, as Germany and France are, with Poland,
certainly with Hungary, which is growing every day, making their
way of life in, let's call it, economic terms much more satis-
factory. But I don't think there's anything we can do directly
to see to it that the system, the one-party control system, gets
weaker.
But there is another factor. If people there are more
prosperous, if they actually could take care of their own needs,
if they can get along without being forced to depend on the
Russians for gas and oil, etcetera, the odds are that those Com-
munist Parties in Eastern Europe will be able to afford to be
somewhat more liberal.
Now, Dubcek was obviously the example, and to a certain
extent he went to extremes. But it's conceivable that, as in
Hungary today, with a tough party but a good way of life, that
these other countries can approach a level of well-being which
will make their people happier, even though they are not in a
socialist democracy.
30 years.
That's as far as I can see it going in the next 10, 20,
MAN: I just wanted to point out to Harry Rositzke the
title of several recent books that have appeared that would seem
to dispute some of the premises that he's been outlining on this
program. And the first one is by France's most famous media
voice,, and a man of the left, Jean Francois Revel, whose book How
Democracies Perish was a bestseller for 23 weeks last year. It's
coming out in this country in October. And it outlines, with
scores of examples, how disinformation, Soviet disinformation
operations have been conducted inside the Western media, a point
that Mr. Rositzke disputed four years ago.
The next book that he should know about is something
called Disinformatio, written by Professors Shultz and Godson,
which appeared three weeks ago, also documenting scores of Soviet
disinformation operations inside. the Western media.
And then Terrorism: The Soviet Connection -- that is
the title of the book -- by Ray Cline and Yona Alexander, the
latter having spent months poring over the thousands of documents
captured in South Lebaon by the Israelis in 1982, which does
indeed reinforce what the emcee said earlier, or one of your
questioners said earlier, and that is that terrorists from 26
non-Arab nations were being trained by the PLO. All of this
Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
 Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
under close supervision by KGB officers. There are scores and
scores of smoking guns in this book.
And while there isn't a war room in the middle of the
Kremlin that directs terrorist operations, there have been so
many -- there's been so much testimony now from Soviet defectors
on these connections, that I don't see how Mr. Rositzke can argue
that this is just very loose liaison work.
Thank you.
ROSITZKE: If you want my opinion, I can simply say
this: that terrorism at work in the world today is based upon a
series of both places and nationalities -- and I tend to put them
mostly in the Middle East -- with. whatever help that needed. And
that does normally not mean training. These people are better
trained at terrorist and can train terroists than, I think, any-
body in the KGB or in the GRU can.
So, I don't want to discount that factor. But if there
were no Soviet assistance, the factor would remain that terrorist
activities, particularly in the Middle East, but also in Spain,
in Latin America, in Ulster, are factors that we have to deal
with on the ground.
Now, I started working against terrorists, in terms of
intelligence, back in the late '60s. And the fact remains,
whether you're talking about the Baader-Meinhof Gang or we're nw
talking about the renewed Red Brigades in Italy, etcetera, we're
faced with almost the same kind of thing that we face with the
Mafia. We have to work getting in where there is a front office,
but mainly it ends up to be a kind of police,
counterintelligence, passport-control item which has to attack
every one of these problems right in the place where they take
place.
FISKE: As I read you, Harry, you don't deny that the
Soviets are interested in and will do whatever they can to
subvert capitalism, as they see it, and replace it with Marxism-
Leninism where they can. And even to the extent that they fund
terrorist movements or guerrilla groups, they're not the kinds of
people we fight with the kind of sophisticated military weaponry
which we're now spending so much of our resources on. You're
argument is that that can be better defended against
economically.
ROSITZKE: The subjects that have been raised now,
really, you can't do much about. To me, it is an almost global
counterintelligence problem to start with, because you have to
know who is doing what. But when we start getting back to that
old story, let's go back to the source, I don't know what that
means in terms of counterintelligence.
Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
 Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
MAN: Can I have one more question?
MAN: There were a number of references to Libya and to
Qaddafi earlier in the program. And I don't know if Mr. Rositzke
is aware -- he must be aware, just from reading the papers, that
the French have been forced to put 3000 troops into Chad, a
pretty empty, useless desert, only because this French Socialist
government's credibility was on the line vis-a-vis French-
speaking African heads of state who had begged them to intervene
in Chad to block Qaddafi's expansionism.
So, I can't go along with Mr. Rositzke when he says our
European friends don't think that we're handling Qaddafi correct-
ly, when the French feel forced to put in 3000 troops there.
ROSITZKE: I think we're dealing with two different
things. The moment you have armed forces going across a border
into another country, particularly if that country is of interest
to any Western nation, then obviously the answer is, our answer
has been for a long time, the French is here, let's give them the
wherewithal to stop the invasion.
MAN: But the French have also launched countless covert
paramilitary operations, that the world, of course, is not aware
of because they were truly covert, including Chad, before they
put in their 3000 troops.
ROSITZKE: Well, you're right. I don't know about their
covert operations. But all I can say is that, in effect, what
they're doing is taking each problem, and this is certainly
separate from the normal terrorist approach, as it is in seeing
what they could to to counter it. That's what we've been doing
for 30 years. But up to now, I think we find it very hard to
handle that terrorist sector, which the Germans have handled
pretty well, the Italians have handled pretty well, the British
are trying to handle.
MAN: The last thing that bothered me, Mr. Rositzke, is
when you referred to the Soviet totalitarian dictatorship as an
authoritarian regime. You wouldn't get one dissident or defector
to agree with you on that, whether it's Andrei Sakharov, who is
still in exile in his own country, who is still a hero to every
liberal in the Western World -- I think he would be shocked to
hear you describe it as an authoritarian regime rather than a
totalitarian dictatorship.
ROSITZKE: Well, I don't quite follow Jeanne Kirk-
patrick's distinction between the two. But let me say this: that
one of the elements in Soviet history which I think in
Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
 Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
the long run will not be disregarded is that it was a bloody
one-man dictatorship for several decades, and that from
Khrushchev on, the general handling -- put it that way -- of the
Soviet population has been certainly a lot milder than it was in
the old days; that there are people being put in jail for their
thoughts, there are people being put in psychiatric hospitals,
but they're not being murdered by the hundred thousand.
Now, from their point of view, that's progress. From
us, it's a long way to go before we get the kind of regime there
we'd like.
FISKE: Sir, we appreciate your call.
Good evening.
MAN: I'd just like to say that I'm in complete agree-
ment with your guest this evening. And it's great to hear
another point of view as to what's going on in El Salvador and
around the world in general. And I think it's really fantastic.
Thank you very much.
FISKE: Good evening.
MAN: I wonder if you could elaborate a little bit on
your economic theory. Do you mean to cut them off, or to involve
them so quickly with the riches of capitalism that the conform?
ROSITZKE: Well, in the long run, I don't confine this
strictly to using our economic clout with the Soviet Union. What
I'm suggesting, for example, is that we develop anchors in the
Third World of strong political and economic support in places
like Brazil, the Congo when it gets a little more reformed, obvi-
ously Nigeria, Indonesia, India.
Toward the Soviet Union, I think economic sabotage does
absolutely nothing at all, that we are being outstripped by our
West European friends in terms both of trade with the Soviet
Union and East Europe, and particularly capital investment in the
Soviet Union.
I feel that we can work out with the Soviet Union -- and
we already have started on a crucial sector, and that is selling
them grain -- trade relations which in the long run will obvi-
ously help them become more prosperous, as it will help us become
more prosperous, but need not contribute to their continuing
hostility. If anything, for them to have such interest and
capital in our goodwill and our trade, that they will modify
their international policy.
FISKE: But that didn't seem to be borne out, you know,
Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
 Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
by the trade that we established with them in recent years, be-
fore Afghanistan, when, in fact, our, relations chilled so great-
ly.
ROSITZKE: Well, the relations really didn't chill
until, I suppose, '74 or '75. And if we're talking about effec-
tive relations between two great countries, then what we're talk-
ing about is what will be the impact ove a 10- or 20-year period.
I think one of the best things that we could have done
for the Russians, in terms of their needs, was the grain. Well,
that happens also to be in the American interest. There are
other sectors of that sort that can be found.
And if one follows the notion, which I think is true
--this is certainly true in Western Europe today -- that politics
follows economics, that increasing trade with the Soviet Union --
and we are beginning to increase it with China -- will, in
effect, make them more acceptable members of the family of
nations.
MAN: I recall earlier in your introductory remarks, Mr.
Rositzke, you said Mr. Khrushchev started out with the Third
World thinking that if he could bring a lot of them into the
Soviet sphere of activity, if not influence, then they could make
things awfully rough for the West. And he, in effect, enunicated
that politics would follow economics, in that sense, didn't he?
ROSITZKE: He did. And he and his successors were un-
able to follow it up because they cannot give the kind of support
that the people, for example, in Angola or Mozambique want.
They've invested an awful lot in Cuba because that's pretty
crucial to them.
What I am saying is if we compete with them in the Third
World economically, we've got it all over them.
FISKE: Harry, let's follow that up a little bit. A
great advantage we have now is that the Soviets cannot deliver
the economic aid which they would like to deliver to solidify the
support of these countries where they've had revolutions of one
sort or another. But if in fact we trade with them, as you have
advocated, to improve their economic strength and viability,
might they not then be in such a position? And is that not the
reason for which a great many people do not want us to trade
anything to the Soviet Union which can have any possibility of
strengthening them?
ROSITZKE: Fred, you've hit the nub of the problem. And
that is, can the capitalists or the Communists outdo each other
Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
 Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5
in the production of goods and their sale abroad? I happen to
have enough faith in our system, and also in the West European
system, that if it comes to the next 30 years, and even though
the Russians get so they, let us say, can export more goods, that
we can outbeat them in a way that they cannot compete with,
because we have a capacity here to satisfy human needs by
delivering goods, and with profit to ourselves, that no other
nation has, except possibly the Japanese.
Now, if you look at the expansion of Japanese influence
in the world, you find that they do it almost strictly through
the economic platform. They have now spent several billion
dollars to get a monopoly on semiconductors in the Third World.
By the time we get ready to compete with them, they will have
almost all the markets cornered.
In the long run, perhaps, the Russians will be able to
do that, but not if we've progressed, with our superior tech-
nology, and outdid them any place they go.
FISKE: We have five minutes of news coming up....
Approved For Release 2008/12/10: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000201180012-5