THE NONEXISTENT MIGS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302350003-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 24, 2012
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: November 16, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/09/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302350003-9
TPL."EARED
-za _ r
WASHINGTON POST
16 November 1984
Philip Geyelin
The Nonexistent MiGs
When anonymous background briefers were rat-
tling us with "credible evidence" that the Soviets
were shipping MiG jet fighters to Nicaragua, the
specter of another Cuban missile crisis came
quickly to mind. The MiGs apparently not having
materialized, a better analogue becomes the spuri-
ous scare over a "Soviet brigade" in Cuba in 1979.
Analogies are never perfect. But in crucial re-
spects having to do with crisis management?
Who's in charge? Who can be trusted??you can
find in these two seemingly disparate episodes
significant common elements: calculated leaks of
half-baked intelligence reports; publicly stated
administration purposes put at risk by irresponsi-
ble ideologues within its ranks; the potential (real
in the case of the ':brigade," so far only potential
in the case of the MiGs) for serious conse-
quences for U.S.-Soviet relations.
I am ta_king.it on faith that the leaks in the mat-
ter of the Nicaraguan MiGs were not authorized.
-W%te House officials ir?iit-this so? I
said e I e "en a ? a riminal act " '
State e-T?Sealh-g---"keulhe meant it when
vbe.n j
ILlessthe president is iti_a_m_outentAl
subterfuge, no lar :e of his could be served ?
yed -tantiat ence re rts
to infiathe suspicion of the Soviet Union at
a time when he_ilproclaiminprovects
ger.a71-ri arms cont?Tht negotiations in partial- "
tar to be
?ut official disclaimers of high-level responsibil-
ity are no comfort. On the contrary, they confirm
the state of disorder in the administration's foreign
policy making that robbed the president's first
term of clear purpose and single voice on critical
issues having to do with East-West relations, and
threatens to do the same the second time around.
That's what makes Jimmy Carter's experience
in 1979 instructive. He had negotiated the SALT
II arms control agreement with the Soviets and
wanted Senate approval. The last thing he \
needed was a trumped-UP crisis threatening to ,
shatter congressional confidence in Soviet reli-
ability. But his administration, like Reagan's
today, was in disarray, sharply divided between
soft-liners and hard-liners.
"Linkage" was the hard-liners' strate of
choice: arms control was to be heldosta ; e to
jr;r1 1111
viet
viets
ble in
ormance
an surro
nca.
1 " I
across
ates
viet
rutin
were malun bi trou-
uban connection wa
hen 'Meth ence
S.
covered" what looked like a new an menacm
ult militaryresence in ua te p omats
quietly tried to work it out with oscr. ut t e
rers were sound the alarm.
Confidential brienligs inciudcu..ey members of -
Congress, notably the late Sen. Frank Church, .
chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, who
was Under intense conservative attack in his race
for teclection. He was quick to state the "linkage"
publicly: SALT II could not be ratified until the
Soviets withdrew their combat unit from Cuba.
Critics of SALT II were as quick to take up the
cry. An exhaustive intelligence effort demon
strated that the Soviet brigade had-been in Cub
or some 17 years a fact known to four previous
administrations . But by that time the damage
had been done. The Carter administration reluc-
tantly put off Senate consideration of the SALT
II treaty until 1980, when it was knocked dead
by the Sovief invasion of Afghanistan.
In May of that year, Soviet Foreign Minister
Andrei Gromyko told newly installed Secretary
of State Edmund Muskie he would never believe
that the Carter administration had not cooked up
the crisis over the Soviet brigade as an act of bad
faith, by way of reneging on SALT II. That's the
point: the Soviets are not all that sophisticated
about the freewheeling workings of the U.S. gov-
ernment, accustomed as they are to a certain
discipline in their own.
One can only guess what Gromyko is now
making of Ronald Reagan's second-term inten-
tions. But if the Carter experience is any guide, ?
he will be reading dark motives into the sudden
explosion of concern over nonexistent MiGs, ?
even though it has now dissipated into a more
generalized concern about the buildup of Soviet
arms aid to Nicaragua.
The question is not whether the administration
is justified in the latter concern. It is whether the
. administration intends to play fast and loose with
"linkage"?tying revived arms-control negotia-
tions to exaggerated claims about Soviet arms
shipments to Nicaragua. The administration is sup-
posedly taking a fresh look at 4everything. It could
be there is no firm policy. But history tells us it is
at just such junctures that the ideologues in a
divided administration tend to strike.
If the "crisis" of the MiGs is behind us, the man-
agement questions it raises are not. They will not
be answered until there is some better explanation
of how and why the whole thing blew up in the first
place?and what this says about Reagan's capaci-
ties for command and control.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/09/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302350003-9