TO CHECK ON THE CIA, SEND IN THE B TEAM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000301860002-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 21, 2012
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: January 17, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Declassified n Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/21 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000301860002-5
5
ARTICLE
ON PAGEAM -
LOS PtIGELES TIMES
17 January 1986
To Check on the CIA, Send In t
By EDWARD JAY EPSTEIN
The ambiguous nature of secret intelli-
gence is often not fully appreciated, espe-
cially by top Central Intelligence Agency
executives who boast that they are privy to
the intentions of the Kremlin through
sources that report to them directly from
its inner sanctum, the KGB.
The "facts" that proceed from secret
intelligence are not discrete objects, like
marbles, that can easily be separated by
color, lined up and counted. They tend to
change their shape, color and meaning
depending on how, and by whom, they are
arranged.
Consider the case of Vitaly S. Yurchen-
ko. He came to Washington last August as
a "defector" from the highest stratum of
the KGB. Then, after the deputy director of
the CIA, John N. McMahon, had staked his
reputation on the quality of Yurchenko's
information and CIA Director William J.
Casey had proclaimed him "for real,"
Yurchenko returned to Moscow.
Despite this embarrassment, Casey con-
tinued to assert that Yurchenko had pro-
vided extraordinarily important informa-
tion to the CIA during his curious visit.
That very same week, on the basis of a
briefing about the case by his national-
security staff, President Reagan said
categorically that "the information he
provided was not anything new or sensa-
tional." He added that the putative defector
had told the CIA nothing more than it
"already knew."
Clearly the CIA director and his deputy,
and the President and his national-security
adviser, had looked at the same set of
secret intelligence "facts" from the same
defector, but they arrived at diametrically
opposite conclusions about their value.
The issue goes far deeper than the
credibility of a single defector. It cuts to the
core of the CIA's assumptions about Soviet
deception. Does, for example, the KGB
systematically attempt to mislead Ameri-
can intelligence by allowing its agents to
reveal misleading data? The CIA's current
position on this vexing question, as stated
in a letter sent to the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence, is that it can
find no evidence of such kinds of deception
on strategic issues in the past 20 years.
Counterintelligence experts outside the
government, such as those at the Rand
Corp., reached the opposite conclusion.
The problem can be resolved neither by
insiders, who are committed to a denial of
deceptions, nor outsiders, who lack access
to the highly classified data. Nor does the
evidence speak for itself. What is needed to
break this conceptual logjam, if only on a
temporary basis, is another "B Team."
The B-Team idea stretches back a
decade, when George Bush was the CIA
director. Data from reconnaissance satel-
lites had raised serious doubts about the
CIA's assessment of Soviet bomber and
ballistic strategy. The question again
was not the raw data but what might be
missing from it. In order to settle the
matter, Bush appointed two teams to look
at the same data. The A Team, headed by
Howard Stoertz, the CIA's national intelli-
gence officer on the Soviet Union, consist-
ed entirely of CIA insiders; those on the
B Team, headed by Richard Pipes, a
professor of Russian history at Harvard,
were all outsiders (with proper clearances)
who were not committed to any prevailing
view of Soviet strategy.
The most dramatic result of this un-
precedented competition was a radical
reassessment of the Soviet threat, based on
the B Team's conclusion that the CIA had
seriously underestimated the accuracy of
earn
Soviet missiles. It also shook up much of
the complacency at the CIA.
Casey, at his confirmation hearings,
suggested that there was definite value in
these kinds of competitive analysis. If so,
the current crisis in counterintelligence
presents a golden opportunity for a new
B Team.
The team should be chosen by Casey, not
in his capacity as the director of the CIA
but in his wider role as the head of the
intelligence community. As in the model of
the 1976 B Team, these experts should be
drawn both from other U.S. intelligence
services, such as the Defense Intelligence
Agency and the National Security Agency,
and from think tanks, such as Rand and
R&D Associates, that have been working
on these problems for a decade or more. To
head the team, Casey might consider a
senator who has served on the intelligence
committee and is respected for independent
thinking on these issues, such as Malcolm
Wallop ( R- Wyo. ) or Daniel Patrick Moy-
nihan (D-N.Y.).
Since this B Team's primary purpose
would not be to investigate but rather to
test the CIA's imagination, it should have a
limited mandate and be confined to two or
three specific issues. These might include
Soviet use of double agents and Soviet
disinformation tactics to confuse anti-
ballistic-missile strategy and mislead U.S.
submarine deployments. The idea would be
to test the proposition that analysis with
diverse views might discern different clues
from the same raw data. The results, again,
might prove both surprising and useful.
Edward Jay Epstein, the author of "Leg-
end. The Secret World of Lee Harvey
Oswald," is completing a book about inter-
national deception.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/21 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000301860002-5