FBIS ITEM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00901R000600190027-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 15, 2005
• Sequence Number: 27
• Publication Date: March 5, 1986
• Content Type: BULL

? Office of C r&iatoIw4utio oa c$ie18usp
CIA Operations Center
1\ ws Bulletin : FBIS Wire Service, Story 025/T4498
Current listing of: T4498:3
Slug:TASS: CIAS MCMAHON RESIGNS; DR
STAT Category:FBIS
03/05/86 06:19 Page:
Date: 03/05/86 06:19:36
Story: 025
MOSCOW TASS IN ENGLISH 1024 GMT 5 MAR 86
(TEXT) WASHINGTON MARCH 5 TASS -- BY TASS CORRESPONDENT
ALEKSANDR LYUTYY:
JOHN MCMAHON, FIRST DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF THE U.S. CENTRAL
INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, HAS RESIGNED FROM HIS POST FOR "PERSONAL
REASONS".
C PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN ACCEPTED HIS RESIGNATION AND APPOINTED
TO THE POST ROBERT GATES, THE AGENCY'S DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR
INTELLIGENCE.
ACCORDING TO UPI NEWS AGENCY, SEVERAL EXTREME RIGHT-WING
ORGANIZATIONS LED BY THE REACTIONARY FREE THE EAGLE GROUPING HAVE
SOUGHT MCMAHON'S RESIGNATION FOR SEVERAL MONTHS BECAUSE HE, AS
DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR OPERATIONS IN CHARGE OF THE CIA'S CLANDESTINE
SPY NETWORK FROM 1978 TO 1981. DOUBTED THE ADVISABILITY OF
PROVIDING ARMAMENTS TO ANTI-AFGHAN BANDITS THROUGH CIA CHANNELS.
EVEN IF THE CHARGES AGAINST MCMAHON WERE UNTRUE, THE
ADMINISTRATION, AS NEWS ANALYSTS BELIEVE, COULD NOT KEEP IN THE
AGENCY'S NO. 2 POST A PERSON WHOSE COMMITMENT TO THE UNDECLARED WAR
AGAINST AFGHANISTAN WAS IN DOUBT.
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 naxt?nnra.~o?owa.o.Release zo :1,"`~g1
Soviets lead
in laser beam
weapons for
space shield
By Tom Diaz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Soviet labor battalions have worked for years in the cold
clear air of the high mountain near Dushanbe in the Thjik
Socialist People's Republic, patiently hacking a giant military
facility out of the rock at 7,000 feet.
Just as patiently. U S sov satellites orbiting overhead have
photographed the progress of the work. Its significance only
recently has become clear to intelligence
There at the top of the world, where the Soviet Union bor-
ders Afghanistan, the Soviets are building what U.S. officials
now believe will be a powerful
laser-beam weapon capable of
knocking down U.S. satellites
and perhaps ballistic missiles.
A senior administration of-
ficial, who asked not to be
identified, said the Dushanbe
site underscores the lead the
Kremlin enjoys in key areas of
the high technology that is be-
ing explored by the U.S. Stra-
tegic Defense Initiative, the
missile defense program pro-
posed by President Reagan in
March 1983.
"They have some very in-
teresting facilities right now
which we do not fully understand, but which have the potential
in a few years of giving them at the very least, strong ground-
based, directed-energy [laser] capabilities against satellites, if
not a beginning and emerging capability against ballistic mis-
siles," the source said.
The site at Dushanbe, he said, "hasn't yet put out a single
.
photon."
"But it's a big, big construction site that has been under way
for a long time;" he said. "It appears to be a major directed-
energy facility composed of multiple elements, and our best
estimate today is that it could well be a ground-based laser."
He and other U.S. officials believe the Soviets will be the
first to deploy a working laser weapon, despite the great pro-
gress the United States has made in its SDI research program,
popularly known as "star wars."
"Things are progressing at a
rather incredible rate;" Lt. Gen.
James A. Abrahamson, director of
the Strategic Defense Initative Of-
fice, said in a recent interview.
Many U.S. officials are confident
that America can build an effective
missile shield before the end of the
century. But their official public
forecasts are hedged by caution.
"There's a lot of science yet that
we have to do, and even more en-
gineering," Gen. Abrahamson said at
a November press conference. "But
I'm confident that the job can be
done. The real question is just how
fast and what is the best way."
The enthusiastic reports have
done little to quell the debate over
SDI.
Powerful political voices oppose
the very idea of ballistic missile de-
fense and some scientists remain
skeptical of the claimed scientific
advances.
Their skepticism contrasts
sharply with the optimism of the
March 1983 speech in which Mr.
Reagan called upon scientists "to
turn their great talents to the cause
of mankind and world peace, to give
us the means of rendering these nu-
clear weapons impotent and obso-
lete."
Four prominent opponents of SDI
ripped into Mr. Reagan's proposal in.
an article appearing in the winter
1984-85 issue of "Foreign Affairs,"
that has become holy writ in the anti.
SDI ranks.
The authors were former National
Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy,
Sovietologist and former Ambassa-
dor George F Kennan, former De-
fense Secretary Robert S. McNa-
mara and Gerard Smith, chairman
of the Arms Control Association and
chief negotiator of the 1972 SALT I
treaty.
"We believe the president's initia-
tive to be a classic case of good inten-
tions that will have bad results be-
cause they do not respect reality,"
they wrote. "What is centrally and
fundamentally wrong with the
president's objective is that it cannot
be achieved."
The core of their case was that a
100 percent effective missile de-
fense shield is technically impossi-
ble. A shield less than perfect is
worse than no shield at all, because
it will encourage the Soviets to build
more missiles to overwhelm it, and
deal arms control a fatal blow.
But supporters of SDI say a mis-
sile defense need not be perfect to be
effective. In any case, they say, the
Soviet missile defense program is
roaring ahead. The SDI program has
proven its worth in the arms control
field by spurring the Soviets to re-
turn to stalled talks in Geneva, the
supporters argue. Eventually, it will
lead to massive reductions in offen-
sive nuclear arms, phased in while
both sides are sheltered behind de-
fensive shields.
For now, most opponents concede,
the pro-SDI forces are ahead in the
debate. Congress has approved an
ambitious research program, orig-
inally scheduled to spend $27 billion
between 1985 and 1990 but pruned
by about one-fifth in each of the last
two fiscal years.
SDI critics say the president has
the edge only because he hasn't put
a specific system for deployment on
the table. That won't happen until
the early 1990s. Once specific pro-
posals are made, opponents say, the
debate will get much hotter. The
American people then will have to
decide two grand questions: Can it
be done? Should it be done?
Americans already have seen a
cartoon version of the debate in tele-
vision ads produced by SDI
proponets and opponents. But the
arguments that will ultimately de-
termine the fate of SDI involve not
cartoons, but the world of nuclear
strategy and arms control.
In that dark and mysterious
world, two basic camps are power-
fully divided by widely different
views on two key issues:
? The nature of the Soviet Union,
its military force and its intentions
for the use of that force.
? The reach and grasp of modern
science and technology.
The camps drew battle lines over
these two issues long before Mr. Rea-
gan's 1983 speech. Many of the same
people slugged their way through a
similar debate in the late 1960s and
early 1970s.
The opponents of ballistic missile
defense won that debate. Their vic-
tory is enshrined in the 1972 SALT I
Anti-ballistic Missile [ABM] Treaty,
which forbids either country to de-
velop, test or deploy a national ABM
system - the kind SDI envisions -
or any of its components.
Tb understand the ABM treaty,
one must refer to the grim logic of
nuclear deterrence, and the concept
of "mutually assured destruction"
(known as "MAD") on which it is
based.
For a decade after World War II,
the United States held an effective
Continued
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 AIRTICLE APrP!EAREDApproved For Release 20X51 2 l EL61A- RDI''1-00901 F 000600190027-6
13N PAGE =.?~L.... 17 .1a?11ar%1 i oQA II
To Check on the CIA, Send In the B Team
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
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.
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 Administration Accused of Ambiguity in li ilit
-'Upeed For Release 20A/aIU~-
IT"
Rebels' Backers on Hill Press Ai
By David B. Ottaway
Washington Post Staff Writer
Congressional supporters of the resistance move-
ment to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan,
backed by outside lobbying groups, are pressuring
the Reagan administration to improve the effective-
ness of its military aid to the guerrillas and end its
ban on the delivery of American-made arms, par-
ticularly antiaircraft weapons.
These congressmen also are seeking to get the
administration to name a high-level White House
presidential adviser' to coordinate U.S. policy to-
ward Afghanistan and the expanding American aid
to the rebels. the Central Intelligence Agency, the
~ gency for International Development and a en-
a on each has its own program.
One oo t e c ie charges a nng veled against the
administration by U.S. supporters of the Afghan
guerrilla struggle is that Washington's noliev has no
clear objectives. The critics are charging the White
House has never made up its mind whether it wants
a clear-cut Afghan guerrilla victory or a low-level
campaign of harassment of the Soviet Union.
Outside analysts and even some administration
officials concede that six years after the start of the
U.S. aid, American objectives remain ambiguous-
caused by Washington's concern over the Soviet
reaction to a more direct U.S. involvement and by
caution in Pakistan toward the conflict.
Despite this ambiguity, the U.S. commitment to
the guerrilla forces has grown steadily. While the
,level of funding for the CIA's Afghan opera ion re-
mains a secret con ressiona nd other sources s
the House an nate intelligence comma ee iini-
tia y a prov million or co~rt milItary =
t
t
proved a supplemental $300 million
in aid over two years. It is not clear
whether the supplement is re-
flected in the $470 million figure or
is in addition to it.
Congress now has approved $15
million in annual' humanitarian as-
sistance, which AID will administer,
and another $10 million for the De-
fense Department to cover the cost
of transporting such nonlethal items
as clothes and blankets to Pakistan
for Afghan refugees.
While President Reagan repeat-
edly has stressed his commitment
to the Afghan resistance, the main
thrust for steady increases in aid
has come from Congress. According
to a former Senate Select Intelli-
gence Committee staff member, the
committee each year has doubled
the administration's initial request.
Unlike divisive debates over the
administration's desire to provide
covert military aid to rebel groups
fighting the Sandinista government
in Nicaragua or Marxist rule in An-
gola, Congress has achieved con-
sensus on providing more assist-
ance to the Afghan rebels.
This has made the administration
nervous. about the implications for
its relations with Moscow.
Administration spokesmen de-
s ante as
spring or a current isca r. fend the current program as a ma-
ster, ere wer ad ap- jor success, citing the ability of Af-
ghan guerrillas to fight the esti-
mated 118,000 Soviet troops sta-
tioned in- Afghanistan to a stalemate
and claiming that they have shot
down nearly 800 aircraft-a figure
met with some skepticism by inde-
pendent observers.
The spokesmen say the United
States is doing all it can, given its
dependence on Pakistan to funnel
aid to the rebels, and that the ad-
ministration's general caution only
reflects Pakistan's.
"We have a right to be cautious.
We're dealing with another
sovereign country and it could blow
up in our face," said one U.S. official.
The administration's critics also
charge a lack of direct U.S. control
over the delivery of U.S.-purchased
arms, which, U.S. critics and guer-
rilla leaders alike charge, has re-
sulted in many weapons not getting
through to the battlefield.
Some congressmen also are coin-
plaining that the CIA, in the ab-
sence of a clearly stated White
House objective in g ants a s
making policy on its own. its so
damn obscure what the policy is.
There is no clear objective, said
Sen. Malcolm Wallop - yo. ,
adding that CIA Deputy irec or
John McMahon "has told me it i v. ~.
ai cannot be too success u .
Wallop and en. or on uni-
phrey (R-N.H.) have been instru-
mental in lobbying the administra-
tion for a clearer, all-out commit-
ment to an Afghan guerrilla victory.
Other congressional sources said
McMahon had argued before the
House and Senate intelligence com-
mittees last year against provision
of American antiaircraft weapons or
a much larger covert program, say-
ing the administration was con-
cerned they might provoke the So-
viets into retaliating against Pak-
istan and believed authorities there
would not agree to either.
Rep, Charles Wilson (D-Tex.)
asserted that the CIA and McMa-
Iion are taking "a bum rap an that
tie agency is doing "as much as is
humanly possible within the param-
eters of our policy-which is no
,Americans and no American arms
involve in Me onflict,
"The president as got to decide
on a change," said Wilson.
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