INTERVIEW WITH WILLIAM COLBY AND ANTHONY CAVE-BROWN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00901R000500080007-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 13
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 14, 2000
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: June 30, 1981
• Content Type: TRANS

I WILLARD AVENUE, CHEW CHASE:, MARYLAND 20015 656-4068
470
STATINTL
AI Fo lea1 10 p14"
. DATE June 30, 1 9 8 1
Washington DC
sur3JEcr Interview with William Colby and Anthony Cave-Brown
. ROSS CRYSTAL; When we think of the Cold War we think
of the '40s and on after. Well, we're going to to l k about the
Cold War a few years before that.
Joining me right now, here is former CIA Director
William Colby, and Anthony Cave-Brown, British journalist, cur-
rently an author of, his latest book, "On a Field of Red."
And you, too, have the notion it was -- I think most
people, the consensus was the '4'0s. And you found a lot doing
research, didn't you?
ANTHONY CAVE-BROWN: Yes. When we set out to write
the book "On a Field of Red," the premise was that the Cold War
really began, the present state of relationships between the
West and the Eastern Bloc really began at Yalta in 1945. But
during the research process for the book, we discovered, of
course, that not only was the present tensions a permanent state
of modern life, but also it was inherent in the relationship
between the Western powers and the Communist Bloc, and was part
of the doctrine of the 20th Century, and therefore was a -- as
I've just said, a permanent feature of life today.
standing?
CRYSTAL: Mr. Colby, why do you think the misunder-
WILLIAM COLBY: Well, I think we all refer to the Cold
War. But there was a hiatus in it caused by Hitler's rise, and
Hitler provided a threat to both the Western powers and to the
Soviet Union. The Soviet Union once made a pact with him, thin-
king that that would turn him off for a while. But nonetheless,
the basic Communist doctrine, espoused by Lenin even before he
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went to Russia In 1917, was the necessity for a world revolution
and a continuing conspiracy to create that, to create revolution,
help history along, because history inevitably had to be advanced
by revolution. That was their -- they were busy at it during the
'20s and '30s, as well as during the '40s and '50s.
CRYSTAL: In researching and finding out about Comintern,
more of it, what did you learn? What right away struck you?
CAVE-BROWN: I think what struck me most vividly were
the known facts about the organization, that the Comintern, or the
Communist International -- Comintern the term in brief for the
Communist International -- was supposed to have been formed in
1919, As a matter of fact, it was formed a good deal earlier
than that, for the purposes of prosecuting the Russian Revolution
and the associated revolutions in Eastern Europe, and perhaps even
in Central Europe.
But moreover, the Russians claimed that -- Stalin claimed
that the organization had been dissolved, that the world revolution
of the proletariat, as it was cal led, had been dissolved in 1943.
But In the course of our inquiries in the late '70s, we established
quite clearly that while the organization called the Comintern may
have been dissolved, in point of fact i n practice, the world revo-
lution of the proletariat, as it was ca l l ed , had continued unceas-
ingly ever since the formation of the Comintern in Moscow in 1919.
CRYSTAL: Now, to get to t h i s book as a f i na l product,
you gained access to some fascinating documents. And how did you
go about doing that?
CAVE-BROWN: Well, I mean, this is -- the essential
source of the documentation, of course, was the Freedom of Infor-
mation Act here In Washington, combined with certain private col-
lections, such as the collection of Major General William J.
Donovan, who was Mr. Colby's -- one of Mr. Colby's predecessors.
Donovan being the founder of OSS and the conceiver of the Central
Intelligence Agency. He, in his later years in life, collected
every piece of documentation that he could find about Russia, the
theory of the perpetual revolution, as Trotsky described it.
And we are In a state of perpetual revolution, by the
way. When you come to look at the last five or 10 years, you'll
see that there's been nothing but revolutions all over the world,
a systematic series of revolutions, many of which appear to me
and appear to my coauthor, Charles McDonald, to have their origins
or their inspiration in Moscow.
But the essential source was unquestionably the Freedom
of Information Act, and nothing more glamorous than the National
.Archives in Washington. I mean all the paper is there. All that
you have to do i s to have the time and the money to be able to go
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down there and dig Into the papers. There were certainly no
secret revelations.
COLBY: I think Mr. Cave Brown is not putting foward
we I I enough h i s own -talent for making very alive and I i ve l y and
amusing some of these rather dead documents. He can put them
together in a fashion that makes them read like yesterday's spy
novel or this morning's newspaper. And some of these stories
of the early days in the Soviet Union and the revolution there,
the actions against the revolution by the Western powers to try
to stop it, the problems that arose in Germany as the revolution
attempted there i n 1 9 1 9, and so forth.
CRYSTAL: What struck you? What was the one, or more
than one, fascin -- that struck you, that you might not have
known?
COLBY: Well, I'think the -- most of it, in gross
terms, I was aware of. I was fascinated by the Communist Inter-
national even when I was back in college in the 130s. And I was
aware that there were Communist groups there that were promoting.
We now learn that the man who almost became the head of the Bri-
tish Intelligence Service was recruited as a Communist agent out
of Cambridge in the late '30s. So that that plot, that effort
to recruit people to conduct the revolution was going on at that
time.
Friends of mine went to Spain during the Spanish Civil
War in the '30s, and there they fell under the control of the
Communists. The Spanish Civil War was a war between an essen-
tially right-wing fascist group that were trying to suppress a
republic -- the problem was that the democracies refused to help
the republic because they thought it was a little left. And the
o n l y people he l p i ng it turned out to be the Communists, the Sov-
iets. And with that, they asserted control over it. So they
actually did achieve control.
George Orwell, in his "[unintelligible] to Catalonia"
puts this very clearly. He spent some time there. But that
showed at that time that Moscow was thinking in terms of the
expansion of its influence, aiding the revolution throughout the
world.
CRYSTAL: Let's move through the '40s, through the
McCarthy era. How did Comintern change?
CAVE-BROWN: Well., of course, the Communist Interna-
tional was formally dissolved by Stalin in 1943, in an attempt
to come to terms, or an apparent attempt to come to terms with
the Western powers, and particularly with the United States,
which was, of course, as It was called at the time, the arsenal
of democracy. Russia needed American trucks, American tanks,
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American aircraft, American munitions. The only way it was going
to get them was by modifying its revolutionary principles for the
duration of the emergency.
But immediately after the war was over, the Kremlin
reverted to its old imperialist, Communist-imperialist stance.
This was not immed iately recognized in the United States, nor
was it immediately recognized in Great Britain. But the effect
of it was to create a bureau called the Cominform, Communist
Information Bureau, which was innocuous enough at its face, but
which was in fact the recreation of the Comintern under another
name. And its purpose was to propagate the Communist faith
throughout the democracies, which were much weakened by war.
But more particularly, it was also to reestablish and renourish
the old roots of the Comintern so that the Russians could rees-
tablish themselves and their undergroud apparats, as they called
them, apparatuses, in the Western democracies, and especially
in the United States of America, which, of course, was the one
remaining capitalist democratic power which stood in the way of
Russian ambitions.
And over the years, they have consistently expanded,
until practically every nation In the world is -- well, yes,
every nation in the world, I would say, including, sometimes one
believes, in Antarctica, has its own little cell of Communist --
of faithful Communists who are prepared to propagate...
CRYSTAL: Can we for a second talk about the effect
now on other countries, on Britain, on Germany, that have evolved
from '40 to today?
CAVE-BROWN: Yes. That was the object, of course, when
we set out to do the book. We switched from one era of the -- of
Communist manipulations to the second era.
COLBY: Well, I remember a very vivid example of this.
I n the fa l l of 1 94 1 , right after -- or just before -- the fa l l
of, excuse me, 139 and '40, when Hitler had made a pact with
Stalin, nonaggression pact between those two dictators, which
really led to the outbreak of World War I I , but -- and led to
the carving up of Poland and various other things and the assump-
tion of power by the two dictators.
Now, during that time, Hitler was trying to keep Amer-
ica out of supporting Britain while he went to work to destroy
Britain, then later to turn on Germany -- on Russia. But during
that period, the object In America was to keep America quiet.
And so I. remember at Columbia University in the fa l l
of 1939 and early '40, and through the Battle of France and during
that period, Communist groups in Columbia carrying coffins around
In an antiwar protest: "Keep America neutral. Keep America out
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of war." That was the Communist line in 1940, until Hitler at-
tacked Stalin In 1941. At which point, the call for solidarity
with our embattled Soviet allies became the watchword.
CRYSTAL: Gentlemen, I've got to break for one second.
CRYSTAL: "On a Field of Red," the book by Anthony Cave-
Brown and Charles B. McDonald. Anthony Cave-Brown with me right
now, as well as former CIA Director William Colby.
And the Cold War is being won, or has consistently,
as we were talking about a couple of seconds ago, been won in
the past...
COLBY: We[I, I think it's still going on. That's one
of the themes of the book, and a very accurate theme. But I think
it is important not to panic and give up and say it's hopeless.
Because we have defeated two major campaigns by the Soviets. The
first was during the 1950s, an ideological campaign to take over
Western Europe by subversion, through the Communist Party, through
youth groups, the peace movement, and all the rest. Now, we met
that with a political, ideological campaign for freedom and
strength in freedom, with the Marshall Plan, with the NATO, and
with the political efforts by CIA, among others, of helping with
things like Radio Free Europe and other programs. Now, at the
end of the 150s, that attempt by the Soviets to take over Western
Europe had clearly failed.
During the '60s they turned to the Third World, Khrush-
chev's idea of wars of national liberation and the Soviets the
natural ally of the dispossessed of the world. And they were
doing pretty well at the beginning of the '60s. They had some
very successful relationships in Indonesia, in Egypt, and various
other parts of the world. The Cuban Revolution succeeded, and
it succeeded against the efforts of the Americans to set it back.
And it looked like things were rol l ing very well.
By the end of the '60s, however, thanks to a program
of American support of some of these small countries, helping
them to develop their capability to meet this kind of a campaign,
you saw some major changes in the world. The Malayan attempt to
overthrow-the free government of Malaya had failed. The Com-
munists were chased out of Indonesia by the Indonesians, not with
any outside help. And this was happening in a variety of places.
The Egyptians since have changed their orientation.
And I think the point being that you have to understand
this Ideological thrust that M.r. Cave-Brown is presenting in this
book, and then design the appropriate tactics and weapons to meet
that kind of a challenge. There's no use putting an MX system in
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the desert and think it's going to solve some problem of a guer-
rilla or a traitor in some country. You have to meet it with the
appropriate weapons.
CRYSTAL: Then, what are the appropriate weapons? And
what does the Reagan Administration look at today?
CAVE-BROWN: I think there are two issues that Mr.
Colby did not present which are very important, indeed. One is
the question of industrial espionage, which has been a Soviet
method, a Soviet tactic, a soviet strategy ever since the Com-
munist International. One of the reasons why the Communist In-
ternational was formed was to obtain by the cheapest possible
means Western technology. That's one very, very important point.
The Soviet industrial base, and especially in advanced
industries, such as the aircraft industry, is almost wholly based
upon Western technology which has been stolen, systematically and
very cleverly stolen by keepers of the faith throughout the world.
The second most Important thing is the -- in other
countries, not the United States of America -- is this question
of the undermining of the established governments and the estab-
lished system -- established systems of those countries. And
Egypt comes rapidly to mind here, Turkey, Greece, Italy to a
point, France. One finds that the Communists are infiltrating
not for the good of the nation In which they live, but for the
furtherance of the Soviet doctrine, Soviet system. In point of
fact, they are carrying out, and have been systematically car-
rying out for well over 60 years, without too much impediment,
the doctrines laid down for them by Lenin and Trotsky at the
time of the Russian Revolution. They've been very faithful to
those doctrines. And they're there, just like "Mein Kampf" told
us exactly what Hitler was going to do. So Lenin's works and
Trotsky's works are telling us, with great veracity, what it
was that the Russians intended to do.
I think, myself, that the -- and one of the things
that emerges very strongly from "On a Field of Red" is -- the
inquiries which went into my book -- Is that -- is this question
of industrial espionage, because that Is the foundation for --
the technological foundation of the Soviet state. Without that
foundation, they would not be the superpower that they are today.
They might have all the manpower in the world. They might have
the industrial base, but they would not have the technological
base. And we are giving it to them for free.
COLBY: And we saw these two fel lows arrested yester-
day for exactly that kind of a thing. A Pole -- and you know
his information would go on to. the Soviet Union -- was buying
for $100,000 some secrets from the Hughes Aircraft Company,
through an employee of It who had some access to the secret
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technical information of that company.
CRYSTAL: Mr. Colby, you say MX missiles are not the
way. Then, what is --- what are the weapons?
COLBY: Well, good intelligence, so that you do under-
stand this technique and who the operators are, who the people
are, what the organizations are.
Secondly, programs to increase the political strength
of the countries that are under attack. I don't mean necessarily
just the military strength, but the political cohesion and
strength.
When the -- the Administration has a program today for
$ 1 2 5 m i l l i o n for economic assistance to E l Salvador, and about
25 million for next year for security and military assistance, I
think you see the right balance: 125 for the economic and social
advances for those countries, to strengthen their cohesion, and
25 for protective efforts against the guerrillas who are trying
to overthrow them. That's not a bad balance in the way to ap-
proach this kind of -- this level of threat.
CAVE-BROWN: I was thinking of another point here, too.
What has to be understood are the Soviet techniques on the ques-
tion of subversion. Their methods are extremely clever. What
they aim at is to undermine the confidence of ordinary people,
such as you and I, in the government system, in the law, in the
banks, in the insurance Industry, to peck away at the newspapers
and at the television, at the publishing industry, all the things
that we accept each day as part of our lives. Their technique
is to try and systematically undermine our confidence in those
institutions.
And, of course, to a certain degree -- Sacco and Van-
zetti, for example, is a very good case in point, which we dis-
cuss at great length in this book here. A lot of people don't
agree with us, but we think that Sacco and Vanzetti were quite
rightly convicted and executed because they were guilty of murder.
A lot of people in the United States do not agree with that.
But all the facts and all the papers seem to us, in all fairness,
to indicate that those two gentlemen were guilty of murder. And
the law of the land provided the supreme penalty for that.
But by clever, very clever propaganda on an interna-
tional scale, beautifully manipulated from the great centers of
the Communist International in Moscow and in Paris, it appeared
to the American nation that their system of justice was defec-
tive, that these men were apparently being made the fall guys
of a defective judicial system.
One of their techniques, but only one of very many --
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the whole program is most cleverly and beautifully thought out.
And it can only be resisted and beaten by a more profound of
their methods and techniques.
CRYSTAL: In that sense, better intelligence, as was
just stated by Mr. Colby...
CAVE-BROWN: Oh, I agree. I agree absolutely.
CRYSTAL: ...add anything to that?
CAVE-BROWN: Absolutely. Better intelligence. And
I would have thought -- although probably Mr. Colby won't agree
with me -- to make it possible for the Central Intelligence Agency
to do its work beyond the light and the glare are of the public eye.
A lot of this -- we're dealing with the dark side of the moon
here, and what happens there, and it's not always desirable that
the work of secret agents and that sort of thing should be ex-
posed to -- exposed in Congress on the Hill and in public dis-
cussion. To a certain limited extent, the laws have to be re-
vised to permit the agency to do its work in such a fashion that
the other side cannot always be aware of what's going on them-
selves.
COLBY: Well, I agree with that principle. I just think
that there are ways to conduct our intelligence system under our
constitutional system. We have two good committees of the Con-
gress who have proved that they can know the secrets and keep the
secrets for about four years now. Now, that's a pretty good re-
cord. And yet they provide the congressional check-and-balance
which is a fundamental element of our constitutional system.
CRYSTAL: Should we go back to a stricter and tighter
security system?
COLBY: Oh, we certainly have to correct some of the
absolute nonsense that goes on now, of people being able to write
books about what they said, and then only have a squabble over
royalties. Anyone who goes out of the agency and reveals the
secrets he learned there, I think he ought to go to jail. And
I think there's a law coming on the books that will send him to
jail. And that's absolutely right. Groups who go around trying
to expose our intelligence officers around .the world, they ought
to go to j a i l.
CAVE-BROWN: Oh, that's a crime, isn't it.
COLBY: It's a crime. And it ought to be a crime.
CAVE-BROWN: People who make lists and publish them
in newspapers of the identities of...
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COLBY: I think that the Congress is going to pass this.
And it's necessary that they do this to tighten the thing up.
CAVE-BROWN: It's very interesting. If you look at the
system -- I'm not quoting the British system to you as an example.
But if anybody does this type of thing in England, you go to jail
for 14 years at hard labor.
CRYSTAL: Gentlemen, I would like to go on. Unfortun-
ately, I cannot. But I can tell them the book is "On a Field of
Red," and there It is, by Anthony Cave-Brown, Charles B. McDonald.
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 STATINTL
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RITI~I~f INC
4701 WWVILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20015 656-4068
DATE June 30, 1981 6:10 PM CITY I Washington, DC
Interview with William Colby
PAT BUCHANAN: By a vote of 7 to 2, with the liberal
Justices Brennan and Marshall in dissent, the court.had revoked,
or at least indicated that the President of the United States
and the Secretary of State have the right to revoke a passport
on national security grounds. The passport belongs to Mr. Philip
Agee, who's the CIA turncoat who's spent a good deal of his time
abroad trying to identify American agents abroad and bringing
them to public attention.
Right now we're going to talk with former CIA Director
Wi l l iam Colby.
Have you looked at the stories on the decision about
Mr. Agee and, I guess in the New York Times, the excerpts from
the court opinion itself?
WILLIAM COLBY: I haven't seen the opinion itself. But
I think it's well-settled law that the government has a right to
distinguish between free speech and action,. which is what...
TOM BRADEN: Bill, that was what Burger tried to do.
I must say I thought he was on a tight -- a very tight wire and
fell off It.
COLBY: Well, this fellow,-- this fellow did a lot more
than just speaks. I mean he's conducting a campaign, and not just
by speaking, but by acting...
BRADEN: Well, listen., Bill', let me...
COLBY: ...by putting it out with a deliberate inten-
tion, which he's quite frank to express.
OFFICES M WASHTVAgNED~1" ' ie'R `Ip?P?i 19 RfVGi %I` - `t~fAC)4C3Q'M'C1A9P0?09 QAP7 aPAL CITIES
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 ~~
ALW. f v p,oelease 2001 /03 07Crito-R P91-00901
27 June 17c 1
By Ron Nessen
"it would be like giving Anne Frank's
address to the Nazis."
With that graphic argument, NBC News
correspondent Richard Valeriani urged
his network not to broadcast his discovery
that six American Embassy officials in
Iran had avoided being taken hostage in
November 1979 and were hiding at the
Canadian Embassy in Tehran. -
NBC executives realized that the story
almost certainly would have resulted in
:.the capture of the fugitive Americans by
militant Iranian revolutionaries, and so the
story was not broadcast. The six Amer-
ican diplomats were later spirited out of
Iran to safety on fake Canadian passports.
"That was an easy one to decide,"
-'_Valeriani remembers.
But the choice of whether to suppress
-or broadcast a scoop on television news
is not usually so clear-cut. The decision--
i,on occasion literally one of life ordeath-
:-places enormous pressures on corre-
spondents like Valeriani and their network
=news superiors. :
On the one hand, they are mindful' that
-.broadcasting a -sensitive story could
undermine national' security, endanger
=lives (as in the case of the Tehran fugi
~tives), upset delicate diplomatic negotia-
tions or provide comfort and propaganda
to the Nation's adversaries. On the other
hand, the networks are sensitive to their
First Amendment rights and responsibili-
ties, and to the need to resist pressure
-from Government officials who may wish
to kill a legitimate story only because it is
embarrassing or politically damaging.
Acting White House press secretary
Larry Speakes foresees the time when the
Reagan Administration "will have to ask
reporters to hold back on using a story
when exposure could cause an explosive
crisis." Speakes says he is confident that
if the White House appeals on a case-by-
case basis to the "best instincts" of jour-
nalists, the networks will voluntarily agree
not to broadcast secrets that could harm
the national interest:,.
He may be wrong. The TV networks=
and the news media generally--have be-
come less willing to withhold news stories
since their - bitter experiences with
i attempted press manipulation during the
Vietnam War, the Pentagon Papers case.
and, most of all, Watergate. .
In the never-ending controversy over what
constitutes improper censorship and what
constitutes proper. concern for national
security; both sides cite dramatic epi-
sodes to support their arguments.
Yn 's hot d1a Owl
-ce iP51then ?
undermine 3 Iional
Legislation here similar to England's
Official Secrets Act-which allov,s for
censorship of classified information-
would, Colby believes, violate the U.S. i
Constitution. The former CIA director feels
that television and the press must be free
from Government censorship. "That's the
cost to have this kind of free country." he;
Those who claim that TV should broad-
cast what it knows in virtually every case
point to President John Kennedy's famous
lament after the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco:
Kennedy expressed regret that The New
York Times had bowed to his plea not to
reveal in advance what they knew of the
plans for the invasion of Cuba. Had the.
Times blown-the operation's cover, :Ken-
nedy mused later, -he might have recon-
sidered the ill-fated landing. - -
? Those who argue on the other side, that
the networks damage the national interest
when they ignore Government requests to
suppress sensitive secrets, cite the case
of the Glomar Explorer, a sophisticated
ship built for the CIA to raise a sunken
Soviet missile submarine from the---+I
floor of the Pacific Ocean.
--'The-three networks and a number of
newspapers learned of the Glomar and its
mission in early ?1975. But they voluntarily
withheld the story at the request of then
CIA director William Colby while the ship,,
which had already brought up halt of the
Soviet sub, . prepared to grapple for the -
other half,.. believed to contain valuable
Says ABC's Jack Anderson: 'I
have a duty to report what the
Government is doing, which is
,,,not always what spokesmen
say it is doirtg..~ - ::-
Soviet coding equipment
Then, in March 1975, Jack Anderson
went on the air-and broke the Glomar
Explorer story. As a result, the CIA says, it
canceled efforts to bring up the rest of the
submarine for fear that the Soviets-their
discomfiture spotlighted on TV for all the
world to see--might feel compelled to
flex their muscles by interfering with, or
even sinking.. the Glomar Explorer.
Anderson. now with ABC, explains his
role in the incident this way: "I have a duty
to report what the Government is doing,
which is not always what the authorized
spokesmen say, it is-doing." Yet, Ander-
son says, "Admittedly, reporters are not
security experts and the publication of
military secrets is always a thorny ques-
tion." . :...
Surprisingly, despite his experience in
the Glomar Explorer episode. Colby is
opposed to any legislation that would
give the Government the power to prohibit
the broadcast or-publication of informa-
tion by legitimate news organizations,
even it authorities consider the informa-
tion inimical to the national interest.
declares.
in an unexpected reversal of the normal
roles in this debate. NBC's Valeriani dis-
agrees. "Britain has an Official Secrets
Act." he. points out, "and it's still a very
good, functioning democracy." It TV cor-
respondents and other reporters act irre-
sponsibiy-by divulging the identities of
undercover intelligence operatives, for in-
stance--then Valeriani thinks some re-
straints may be necessary.
"t don't believe in total freedom of the
press." the veteran NBC correspondent
explains. "I'm not a First Amendment"
absolutist."
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Gl rf.
ocrFes
Mysteries surrounding the mission of the
Glomar Explorer, a salvage vessel built by
Howard Hughes for the Central. Intelligence
Agency; mayinever be solved. A federal ap-
peals court~ruled.recently that}the:CIA can
.keep it:Glomarfiles'secrets *..; ' ;'
Concluded the' courtr"The:~record before
us:suggests ;either that the-CIA still has
something to1.hide-or'1; that:it viishes'to hide
from our adversaries the fact. that it has
j nothing.tolhide:,;-O
'? In court,papers the-CIS refused to con-
- cf'cie that the Glomar's purpose-was to re-
cover a sunken, Soviet, submarine in 1974.
But plaintiffs in the disclosure arse;. led by a
;citizens`~grvup called= the-?Military~~ Audit
Project. and, an organization supported by
the American Civil. Liberties . Union, coun-
tered"byiciting.:a passage=from the. French
edition.4 forrner.CEk director William Col
by's `autobiography',:
The passage, which' doesn t appear.in the
English edition of the_ book, says the 131o-
mar's mission "was- to recover a Soviet sub-
marine-stranded. some 15,500 feet deep at
the bottom of the
A -lawyer' for=the CIA says Mr." Colby's
tatement ,?U' accurate; is-not.'anl official
governmept;:pmnouncement;: because,-he is
>no longer annagency official.':
The CIA also says Mr. Colby never sub-
mitted the passage' for review by the agency
'prior
to'publicatiorr:` .:? :'
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 STATINTL
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ARTICLE APPFARED
ON PAGE C? -
From Washington
NATO ou,~S, ends
Warsaw
P
Since 1970, the NATO countries have
outspent the Warsaw Pact countries by
more than $200 billion, according to
U.S. government figures. This fact is
particularly relevant at a time when
President Reagan's administration has
proposed vastly increased military
spending on the ground that excessive
Soviet spending has led to a military
imbalance.
In presenting his new economic plan
to Congress and to the nation early
in 1981, Ronald Reagan stated: "Since
1970, the Soviet Union has invested
S300 billion more in its military forces
than we have. . . . To allow this imba-
lance to continue is a threat to our
national security." Reagan's figures
are based on a CIA. report, "Soviet and
U.S. Defense Activities-1970-1979: A
Dollar Cost Comparison."
The CIA's comparison' paints ' a"'dou-
bly misleading picture of the U,S.- Year
Soviet strategic balance.. First, the 1970
methodology of. the-report itself has , 1971
- 1972
been the subject. of considerable con- 1973
troversy; the CIA readily admits that its 1974
calculations. of. Soviet. defense. spend- .. 1975
1976
ing, a rough estimation. at. best, contain .1977
an upward bias. Second, in restricting, 1978
its. analysis to-only the United States 1979
and the SovietUnion, the e1Ar; has iieg
lected a more'reallstic comparison;':the
directly contending forces of NATO -an([
the Warsaw .Pact,_It is, clear that a true
THE BULLETIN OF THE ATOMIC SCIENTISTS
June-July 1981
figures on Soviet defense spending are.
the only official estimates available.
Yet even based on these.. figures, an
analysis of. total alliance defense
spending shows a NATO advantage of
$207 billion over' WVarsaw Pact mili-
tary spending during the period, 1970-, of 4.5 million at our high volutltary
1979. army rates of pay plus upkeep (over
As the table indicates, NATO has in
fact outspent the Warsaw Pact coun-
tries each year for the past decade,
even though the margin has narrowed
in recent years. According to Defense
Department projections, NATO will
continue to outspend the Warsaw Pact
nations through 1986 at a minimum,
and with a widening of the disparity.
NATO VS Warsaw Pact
Military Spending
(in billions of 1979 dollars)
Warsaw NATO
NATO Pact advantage
$201.8
$149.5
$52.3
192.8
153.7
39.1
195.6
159.4
36.2
190.9
166.7
24.2
193.9
173.4
20.5
190.5
178.6
11-9
186.6
186.2
.4
193.5
186.8
6.7
195.4
190.7
4.7
205.6
I94.6
11.0
1,946.6
1,739.6
207.0
Source. "World Military Expenditures and
Arms Transfers 1969-1978; U.S- Arms Con-
trol and Disarmament Agency. 1979 figures
from former Secretary of Defense Harold
Brown's January 1981 final report to Congress.
analysis of the military. balance has to
compare both systems, as_ a whole.
Whatever their limitations, the CtA's
Edward Hay, research
associate at the
Council for a Livable
World, is a student
on leave of absence
from Harvard College.
In short, whatever the alarmist
figures used by the President to justify
an increasing U.S. military budget, if
there is indeed art imbalance in defense
expenditures, it is one which, favors
the United States and our allies. And
that $247 billion spending- gaps un-
doubtedly understates the NATO advan-
tage by- using a CIA approach which
serves to overstate Soviet military
spending, -
In examining the CIA's methodology
for comparing simply U.S.: and Soviet
military -spending; an appraisal which
removes some of the upward biases'
would further tip the scales in favor of
NATO:
? Measurements in dollars rather ?,
than rubles tend to exaggerate Soviet
expenditures, as ..the CIA .admits:'
Valuing, for example, the USSR army
$15,000 per soldier) adds up to almost
$70 billion a year. Soviet salaries plus
cost of upkeep are probably no more
than one-third of ours.
? About 20 percent of total Soviet
military expenditures and one-half of
their recent buildup have been directed
not at NATO but at China.
? Soviet expenditures in both dol-
lars and rubles should be reduced still
further to allow for the generally lower
quality of Soviet equipment as well .as
the less sophisticated technology.
embodied in their weapons systems;
CIA estimates insufficiently reflect
these factors.. Former CIA Director
William Colby has stated; "To the ex-
tent that we are not able to 'Sovietize'
[the method for estimating the cost of
Soviet equipment when there is no
direct equivalent in our owrt forces]
and U.S. weapons used in the cost -
estimating methodology are more com-
plex, our estimates tend to overstate
the costs of' producing the: Soviet, de-
sign."
According to Franklyn Holzman,
professor of economics at Tufts Uni-
versity, proper comparisons can be
made between U.S. and Soviet ex-
penditures, by valuing each in both dot-
Jars and rubles and taking a geometric
mean of the two. Comparisons of ex- I
penditures in ruble prices would put
both nations at approximate equality;
in dollars, however, Soviet spending.
appears to be 50 percent higher. Q i
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