STUDIES IN INTELLIGENCE WINTER 1984

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP87M00539R001101470013-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 101
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 7, 2010
• Sequence Number: 13
• Publication Date: October 2, 1985
• Content Type: LETTER

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EXECUTIVE SECRETARIAT
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"Executive Secretary
11 OCT 85
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'1CuYfeb Zfafez , ierrafe
October 2, 1985
The President
The White House
Washington, D.C. 20500
Fxsc~~.-,y ~?
>>35~ 3 G 11
In the past we have written to you seeking information about the long-
standing problem at-the Central Intelligence Agency regarding an apparent
analytical bias which continuously under-estimates Soviet intentions and
capabilities.- Some have even characterized this bias as "pro-Soviet." We
posed a series of questions, the answers to which would assist us in
reviewing this problem, on April 25, 1985; to date no response has been
received.
Now the problem has surfaced in public again. According to a recent
newspaper article, the CIA's internal publication Studies in Intelligence,
recently published a book review-of a volume-by-two distinguished academic
scholars on the topic of Soviet Disinformation. Soviet Disinformation is a
very serious intelligence and political problem to which you, Mr. President,
have personally called world-wide attention.- Soviet Disinformation
techniques are part of a larger intelligence problem which entails Soviet
"Active Measures"-the so-called Maskirovka techniques of Camouflage,
Concealment and Deception.
Yet according to the article attached, the review by CIA's
publication reads as though it were written in Moscow. Instead of
criticizing the analysis of the authors, it attacks the very concept that
Maskirovka actually exists. Indeed, according to the information available, -
the CIA's review reads -like a piece of disinformation itself,-and appears to -
serve Soviet-foreign policy interests.- Of-course, we do-not have-the actual --
text, so we ask:.-that-you supply.-the text-to us-.-- The article we seek is an
unclassified -review by Avis Bouteil- in-Studies in Intelligence of _the book
Dezinformatsia: by . Richard :H.:-Shultz and - Roy-Godson;
It seems strange for-the-CIA-to be attacking the=serious-analysis of- - -
Soviet Disinformat-ion,- when-the CIA should. be taking -the :-lead.` in- unmasking
Soviet Disinformation. --This appears to -be part- of _the -well--documented, much-----,----.--
larger problem at--CIA--the long-standing habit of the CIA of under-----. - -
estimating Soviet intentions and military capabilities.- America is now
faced with the_ dangerous, implications of Soviet military supremacy, as-you _
have confirmed by at least-eight statements you have made since 1982,-- and by the numbers and trends in comparative U.S.-Soviet armaments..
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The President
October 3, 1985
Page 2
In the most important measures of military power, the gaps between
U.S. and Soviet capabilities are growing larger, not smaller, despite your
vigorous Defense Modernization Program. We are still losing ground to the
Soviets--and these gaps will continue to widen over the next five years. In
fact, we are over 38 billion dollars behind President Carter's Five Year
Defense Program, as you pointed out on March 22, 1985. Thus the
"correlation of forces" has indeed decisively shifted against the United
States, as Soviet political and military leaders frequently assert.
The bias of the CIA for under-estimating Soviet intentions and
capabilities over the last 25 years has already had a deleterious effect on
U.S. national security..- But the recent implications of information -
suggests that we should inquire further into STAT
the problem of this-bias. -Accordingly; we therefore request answers to the
following additional questions as soon as possible:
1. Why does the --CIA produce single-source analysis-of Soviet_and--
Communist Chinese open publications such as is done by Foreign Broadcast
Information Service?
2. Is there an internal CIA review process to identify possible pro-
Soviet bias in published unclassified-or classified analytical products?
3. Was the attached article mentioned above screened to detect its
possible pro-Soviet bias? If not, why not?- If so, why was it published
under the official imprimatur of the CIA?
4. Is there a possible pro-Soviet bias in many CIA products over the
past 20 years?
5. Is there any evidence of the influence of possible pro-Soviet
penetrations;--moles or--bias-in 'the preparation, analysis and -dissemination==== of intelligence products- on- the.---Soviet -Union over the epast--20- years-? -=
6. Has any important intelligence analysis -or--evidence related-to---
Soviet Union-ever--been withheld or suppressed within or- by the C-IA? Did----
the
any of this intelligence evidence.-or analysis reveal- Soviet-=deception?- What =-- _ -
is the Counterintelligence-significance of.-.the--suppression -of: intelligence == = = __=
on Soviet deception? _- ~- :_
7. Could a possible pro-Soviet bias have played a-.role- in. the---_-_--
prolonged and.worsening-CIA under-estimates of Soviet strategic forces in
the 1960's and.1970's?----
8. We have recent reports-that the CIA:--=
a.) Has further, down-graded Soviet-Backfire-bomber range
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Tfi4p President
October 3, 1985
Page 3
estimates;
b.) Is negatively reassessing evidence of Soviet Biological and
Chemical Warfare arms control violations:
e.) Is denying and down-playing evidence of Soviet Camouflage,
Concealment and Deception (Maskirovka);
Are these recent reports correct? Are they best explained by an
under-estimative analytical bias, a possible pro-Soviet bias,
bureaucratic incompetence, or all of the above?.
9. Was John Paisley likely to have been a Soviet KGB mole inside the
CIA, who may have been assassinated by the KGB in order to protect other CIA
moles? What is the best assessment of Paisley's full career and death?
Have traces of other CIA moles ever been detected?
10.' Are reports that CIA has regressed-into continued-under-estimation
of Soviet military spending--correct?
13. Has the CIA consistently under=estimated-Soviet-global--objectives
and misunderstood Soviet arms control objectives?
STAT
STAT
STAT
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The President
October 3, 1985
Page 4
14. Can at least five years of the 10 year 1980-1990 U.S. "window of
vulnerability" be attributed to under-estimates by CIA of Soviet ICBM
accuracies?
In sum, we strongly agree with CIA Director Casey's initial assessment
of the CIA's analytical-track record made on February 13, 1981:
"The most frequent criticism is that our [CIA's] interpretations and
assessments have shown a tendency to be overly optimistic, to place a
benign interpretation on information which-could be interpreted as
indicating danger-. It's our obligation to present conclusions which
emphasize hard reality undistorted by preconceptions or by wishful
thinking.. .1 found in SALT I, for example, that some of the [CIA]
judgements were soft.--They leaned toward a-kind of benign
interpretation rather that.a-harder interpretation of assessing or
viewing a situation-as being more dangerous."- (Emphasis added..) --------
We fear,-however, that despite Director Casey's best efforts, the
CIA's performance has not improved.
Thank you for your prompt response to these important questions. We
also again request belated answers to our April 25, 1985 questions (letter
attached.) -
Sincerely,
Copies to:
Director, CIA---
Deputy Director for Intelligence--
Director-CIA Counter-Intelligence-_-
National Intelligence Officer-for- Deception--
- Chief, Arms Control Intelligence Staff-----
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The President
October 3, 1985
Page 5
National Intelligence Officers for U.S.S.R. and Strategic Forces
Director, DIA -
Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
Chairman, President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board
Chairman, Intelligence Oversight Board
Chairman, Senate Intelligence Committee
Attachments:
Washington Times Article "Misinformation on Disinformation" (July 16, 1985)
Unanswered Symms Wallop-Helms letter to the President of April 25, 1985
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PART II -- MAIN EDITION -- 16 JULY 1985
WASHINGTON TIMES 16 July 1985 Pg.1D
1\'lisinformation on_ disinformation
tributed publicly since some articles the world in which its analysts live
t'-.Ui OLLl B UCH[ N are classified; others, such as the then some of the egregious errors
book review I am discussing, are about Soviet intentions made by the
unclassified. The essay-review, in C over the past IS or more years
recently read a review, pub- tt eazine's winter 1984 issue, errors which have been public dis-
lished in a certain magazine to was written by. Avis Boutell, a CIA cusse in the press and the two
0 be identified later. of a book, analyst, who wor- s forte Foreign - congressional committees on into i-
Dezinformatsia; by two-- Broadcast InformationService._ - gence oversight, become un er-
respected academics, Professor When I read the Shultz-Godson standahle.
Richard H. Shultz Jr. of TLfts Uni- took some months ago to prepare One could take apart, paragraph
versity's Fletcher School of Diplo- my own favorable review, I found it _ by paragraph, this CIA hook review
m a c y and Roy- Godson of a cool, scholarly examination of to demonstrate its use of the rhetoric -
Georgetown University. The review Soviet propaganda and disinfor- of overkill. -
made the following serious charges - mation strategies. So did a number -- Here I want merely to deal with
against this book: of other distinguished Sovietologists - -- the political approach of a CIA ana-
? The book was said to use "spe- - - and publicists, such as Professors lyst whose views, no matter what the
cious arguments to. prove the obvi- - Adam Ulam and Uri Ra'anan, Dr. --CIA might say, seem to harmonize
ous." Robert Conquest, and Professor Sid- with the agency's ethos, which I pray -
? It misrepresents reality to prove ney Hook, who wrote the-laudatory is not that of William J.- Case v. CIA
a simplistic point. _ ---`=- introduction. director. That this review got -past-
It is "misguided;' exhibits a The book, now in its third edition, Mr. Casey, I can understand: he has
"total lack iif understanding" about included what I regarded as highly more important problems to deal
C:lausewitz, shows-''a superficial informative interviews with defec-- with. But isn't there somebody in his--
understanding of current history - - tors who had specialized, while in organization who has the wit, under-
and the Soviet Union" the service of the KGB in the Stan ine_ and common decency _ to
? It didn't "fairly report" the con- - - U.S.S.R. and Czechoslovakia, in - - realize that the language used to dis-
tent o ovie tnurna s, it as Create "active measures:' The Soviet cuss the Shultz-Godson hook might
the subject "irresponsibly," it suffers - strategy of "active measures" be better suited to a review of Hit
from "extraordinarily naive - - involves, for the most part, covert- Icr's Mein Kam assumptions" and "erroneous his- disinformation as "a non-attributed Th a iths sneering, reductive sen-
tor}" or falsely attributed communica- tence in the review: "They Ithe
? And the book was said "ulti- tion, written or oral, containing authors] seem less concerned to
m a t e l ? " to serve "neither intentionally false, incomplete, or understand the Soviet Union than to
sc olarship nor the national inter- misleading Information Ifrequently prove that it is irrational and the
est" combined with true information], West totally benign,"
rich harsh language about the which seeks Lo~ deceive, misinform, Now anyone who has read this
published work of academics can be and?or mislead Chi 'T 'Fget accord- book knows that the authors do not
'efined as a form of character assas ing tote Shultz-Godson definition. seek to prove that the U.S.S.R. is irra- -
sination, since it questions- their- __ =In_ other words, the book tional. On the contrary, what they
honor as teachers and researchers-.-- ---describes a panoply of Soviet tactics-- - - - -- demonstrate is that-the Soviet KGB -
For my part, to- be even-harsher, I -- --= to manipulate the---media in is. performing with great skill
would sal that=this- review. could democracies, the use of "agents of - =_=assignment to further-the Politbu- _
wit little editing have appeared in: T -< influence: sponsorship of clandes= __ rd's -foreign-policy objectives The -
--- tine radio broadcasts-,:and: use o .= -giv,Paway phrase in alai sentence is- -
a Soviet ublication:= n- _ ?__ -z_ ntcrnationa ront -organizations! =' -_ ='toprove...the Westtotallybenign
ow, then, would you like to guess=-- _. ese- strategies and - tactics are- == -- =Of course, the authors nowhere=
in what- left-wing, pro-Soviet, pro---_- -excellently described in this impor try ao show that the West is totally-
gressive journal this-book review- _.= = tant book. ?--- benign. Such a thesis is irrelevant to
appeared? If you're very smart and Not only is Studies in Intclligenci - = the book since it is- merely
sophisticated; you might- try- -an -official government magazine, attempting to discuss-Soviet"active - -
guess, but you'd be wrong. I'll have =_ -- but it also is published by a -U.S.---- - - measures;'not the good intentions of--
to tell you: secret service. It therefore must be the West.
This book review appeared in an _ =-assumed that whatever is published =_- But Iet's face it: couldn't a victim
official magazine of the government--_ =-.therein represents the official view - - - --- of Soviet totalitarianism,--rotting in -
-s e y t e Centrallntelli ence_ - point of view of CIA analysts. As a- _---=-Andrei Sakharov--or Anatoly-
gency- yes, by the CIA.under the =t'nalo , a Voice of-America edito Shcharansky-say that ; in compari?
supervision of the Deputy Director- for examp a must be appru~e son-to_the wholly rational tyranny of
ate for Intelligence that is responsi=- by responsible State Department the _U.S.S.R, the West--is "totally
ble for all CIA analyses-of world- = _ _ -officials before it can he read on the __ benign?"
affairs. - air. --What the author (and in this, I am
caned Studies in inteingence, is-an the political cu turev the-CIA and
"in-house" Dublication. It is not -MI-SIN FORMATION'- . Pg:2-F
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July 15, 1985 (16)
Fero
sPace-7ai/y Page 6 S
SDI ON SHUTTLE: The Strategic Defense Initiative Organization has reserved two half bays
per year on the Space Shuttle starting in 1987.
s
SDI FUNDING ABROAD: U.S. officials estimate that the U.S. could spend as much as $1
billion on SDI research undertaken by major NATO allies as well as Israel and Japan.
?
COST TO ATTACK: Sen. Albert Gore Jr. (D-Tenn.) says the inference of a Congressional
Research Service study on the cost to attack is that a force of 500 Midgetman missiles, on
mobile hardened launchers, could indeed be destroyed by the Soviets-but the price would be a
very large portion of their ICBM force. Gore says the cost to attack U.S. silo-based weapons
and Midgetman would approximate the entire inventory of Soviet counterforce weapons. In the
aftermath of such an attack,, he says, the U.S. would still have a "massive bomber force" and,
once the Trident- D-5 missile. is deployed, "a very .large and invulnerable-second strike force
with counterforce capabilities of its own."
E
-16 July 1985 - Pg.10
gzoveaw fth
W . a ut
BEIRUT - A public guilty, the hijackers
prosecutor yesterday ord- could be sentenced to
ered authorities to death, said prosecutor
investigate and Identify _ Maurice Khawam, whose-
the air pirates who hi- jurisdiction includes Bel-
jacked TWA Flight 847 rut Airport.
and killed U.B. Navy-_ Khawam Identified one
diver Robert Stethem. - of the hijackers as All
U tried and found Atweb s:.d ordered police
MISINFORMATION ... from Pq.l-F
(9
and authorities at the air. - nis and Ahmed Gborbleh.
port to Identify the others. as well as Atweh, as the
- The U.S.. seeking an in= -principal hijackers.
ternational boycott of the Legal sources dismissed
airport, has demanded the investigation as polti-
that Lebanon bring Ste. cal, saying- "No one seri-
them's killers to justice. ?- ously believes the air pi-
State-run Beirut radio rates will be arrested or
last week named All You. brought to trial"
Ford detente period, out of convic _ Soviet invasion of Afghanistan?
of the CIA establishment) clearl tion sincerely ascribed to the West But let us assume that the
rejects an the targets of the "realistic, positive qualities." - reviewer is correct in some of her
review do not) is the meaning of n she attacks the authors- for_- criticisms. Does that call for a- sav- _
arxism-I nimsm as a t .--.not giving due credit to this thawing- age rhetorical barrage which bord-_ -111911 constituent o oviet foreign ]'c .-==T--of-the::eternal Soviet. :winter.- Of ers.on high-level billingsgate? Does'-
is at octme means is -that= = _ course h Soviet media were will' = it call for a cannonade of unprovable=-
Mikhail Gorbachev cannot regard as. in - to _be kinder and less -stn dent charges such as the claims thaLthe
legitimate any system of rule other'-- ,because it was during detente that -b "hurts' the profession-of inter--_
than communism: Marxism = thedtS:S.R. engaged without West == 71 ence,an t e e t f o r t s t o e e e p"a= --
Leninism sees=other - political sys-- - ern_o osition in the greatest arms-. - - _ - = rational -foreign policy ,. an that the--7
tems as doomedto fall because of ttie-? -,- =_- hui din ro ram of- an- country i n book-'serves "neither.- sc o ars ip-.? - - -
" c o n t r a d i c t i o n s of capitalism.."_ ==-=-his . The Soviets-continue- that - nor the national interest?-" -If any-- -
Since Marxism-Leninism carries- _ ---aerogram to is very- ay.- body has "hurt" the pr ession: of
the banner of history-and the future, -- - --But then there came came a time - - _ _- -intelligence, it would be Avis outell-
the U.S.S.R. -alone has the-right -to ---- -when-the kissing had to-stop. The- _= - an w never edits the -CIA- judge who shall live and who shall Soviet media changed the lovey- ---- azine.
die.That is why negotiation with, the -- ---dovey, bear-hugging music. What in -- - = - ' What kind of behavior is that, Wil-.
Soviet Unions-.except -on itE - own--- -- heaven's name did the West do that - - liam Casey? Is someone down there -
terms, is doomed to - fail until -the-- --forced upon a doting Soviet-Union a=- --- trying -to get even with somebody--
Soviet Union accepts- in practice,-_ ----change-of tune, from detente mel-= - else?-- - - -
not in joint communiques- - an-_--- - lowness to cold war-harshness?-Was- __-_ --_ - -- -
amendment to=the eschatology of==-=-=the error to accept sadly t-he-= =. -==Arnold Beichman,-a-founding-
Marxism-Leninism.-=- destruction of 269 lives on KAL t~7?==-^ =- _merriber of the Consortium for the'
The CIA reviewer demonstrates Sadly accept the killing of Major =_- Study of Intelligence, of which Pro--
- let's call it naivete -a surprising _---- Nicholson? Sadly accept-the attempt -= __-=- - fessor Godson is coordinator.- fre-__
naivete in assuming that the Soviet= - on the pope's life? Sadly accept mar- = -_ ---- _quently writes about-- intelligence
pia, during the Nixon-Kissinger-- - ---- tial law for Poland? Sadly accept the-mutters.- - _--
2-F
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Book Reviews
Dezinformatsia. By Richard H. Shultz and Roy Godson. Pergamon-Brassey's:
1984; 211 pp.
This book sets out to demonstrate that Soviet leaders believe their country
is in an adversarial relationship with the United States and that they are com-
mitted to using "active measures" to achieve what they perceive to be their
national interests. It reviews some examples of Soviet active measures-overt
propaganda as well as covert media activities and political influence opera-
tions-to prove its point. It concludes that the United States should respond
more decisively by countering and emulating Soviet active measures.
Unfortunately, the authors begin with extraordinarily naive assumptions
and resort to specious arguments to prove the obvious. Their detailed exami-
nation of Soviet overt propaganda misrepresents reality to prove the simplistic
point that the Soviets are hostile to the United States. In the process they
disregard the complexity of Soviet propaganda and the interests and policies
that it reflects.
The authors begin with the assumption that "there is a fundamental dif-
ference between the perspective of Soviet and Western leaders on the nature
of world politics." (p. 7) The Soviets, they maintain, believe that "world poli-
tics remains a continual situation of conflict and war" (p. 9), while "democratic
governments ... make a sharp distinction between war and peace, and do not
assume that a continual state of conflict is characteristic of international rela-
tions." (p. 7)
The generalization that Moscow sees world politics as an arena of conflict
is accurate, although the authors' attempt to support it seems misguided. For
example, their references to Soviet affirmations of Clausewitz's formula that
"war is a continuation of politics by other means" are essentially irrelevant and
exhibit a total lack of understanding of what Clausewitz meant or of the
complex arguments that have taken place in the Soviet Union about interpre-
tation of his formulation in a nuclear era.
Far more perplexing is the authors' contention that democracies are so
naive as to assume that politics, international or otherwise, do not involve
conflict. During almost a quarter century in the intelligence business, I have
yet to meet a professional officer who did not assume, in the words of Hans J.
Morgenthau, that "international politics, like all politics, is a struggle for
power." Politics always entails conflict, whether a nation is at war or not. A
democratic leader who believes otherwise will ill serve his or her country and
democracy.
The authors go to considerable lengths to prove another obvious point:
that propaganda and political influence techniques do in fact constitute sig-
nificant instruments of Soviet foreign policy and strategy." They justify the
effort they expend to reach this conclusion by raising as a straw man "many
specialists" who allegedly disagree. I know of no such specialists and the au-
thors provide no examples. Unfortunately, a simplistic effort to defend this
truism defines much of the book.
The methodology employed by the authors to examine Soviet overt prop-
aganda reflects, at best, a superficial understanding of current history and the
"^: "All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed in Studies in Intelligence are
those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect official positions or views of the
Central Intelligence Agency or any other US Government entity, past or present. Nothing
in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying US Government endorsement
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Soviet Union. They base their conclusions on a textual analysis of articles in the
Soviet foreign affairs weekly New Times and a statistical analysis of the
Pravda foreign affairs column "International Review" during selected periods
between 1960 and 1980.
This approach has built-in drawbacks since, despite the authors' claims to
the contrary, it is limited to propaganda that is almost invariably nonauthori-
tative and inconsequential.
Far worse, however, was the authors' decision to exclude from their study
the entire first half of the 1970s, when detente was in its heyday. Having thus
adjusted the documentary record, they were able to offer this simplistic con-
clusion about the 1960-1980 period: "In sum, whether the Western allies have
perceived East-West relations to be in a period of cold war or a period of
`detente,' Soviet overt propaganda has continued to portray the United States
and NATO in negative and defamatory terms." (p. 188)
This is simply not true. When it has suited Moscow's purpose, Soviet
propaganda has portrayed the United States as a benevolent power whose
interests coincide with those of the Soviet state. At times in the early 1970s, for
example, Soviet propagandists managed to discuss the war in Vietnam without
even mentioning that the United States was a party in the conflict.
The extent to which the authors skewed the record to reach their conclu-
sion can be demonstrated by taking a look at their statistical analysis of Pravda
references to Western hostility and realism-willingness to cooperate with the
communist world. If the period of the early 1970s had been included in their
study, their generalization would have been obviously false, as is demonstrated
graphically below with the addition to their chart on hostility and realism of a
single three-month period representative of the detente era. The addition is
highlighted in color. During this sample period (May-July 1973), seventy-five
percent of the paragraphs in the Pravda International Review column that
discussed the West ascribed realistic, positive qualities to it; only five percent
were hostile.
nu960- No?61-
po, 61 S.0162 June 67.Oec 69
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4 5 6 1 0 9 I'D II 17 13 14 15 16 17 IE
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19 70 21 27 79 24 25 26 27 29 2,9 3,0 01 22 22 3'. 35
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It is clear that the defining motivation for Soviet propaganda is not irra-
tional hostility but rather, as with all states, perceived national interests. In
order to understand Soviet interests and priorities, a scholar or analyst cannot
dismiss changes in the relative degree of hostility toward the West in Soviet
propaganda.
The authors' "textual analysis" of New Times is also distorted by the
arbitrary periods they decided to consider. In addition, an extremely limited
review of their summation of commentary turned up instances in which they
did not fairly report the journal's content. In at least two cases, for example,
they attributed to New Times statements which were, in fact, made by Amer-
icans and merely quoted by the journal (pp. 74, 75); in another they used the
term "the extreme right" in paraphrasing a New Times reference to "the
Republicans." (p. 76)
In some instances the authors resort to patent sophistry. They use such a
technique to try to prove their contention that Soviet leaders do not really feel
threatened by the United States: "While the United States persistently was
characterized as the major threat to world peace, careful analysis of Soviet
propaganda indicates that in reality the Kremlin did not perceive any direct
threat to its security interests emanating from alleged US aggressiveness and
militarism." (p. 188)
To suggest that the Soviet Union does not really see itself threatened by
US "aggressiveness and militarism" is to phrase the issue in terms akin to the
old question, "Have you stopped beating your wife?" As the issue is presented,
the reader must label the United States either "aggressive" or "militarist" in
order to suggest that Moscow might see itself threatened. This begs the ques-
tion of whether Moscow genuinely believes itself to be threatened by US mil-
itary and political power and intentions.
The authors' conclusion that Moscow does not perceive itself to be threat-
ened rests on the convoluted argument that fluctuations in Soviet propaganda
use of the theme of Western militarism "appear to reflect the stops and starts
of US defense spending and strategic developments, rather than Soviet respon-
siveness to a genuinely perceived, ongoing, and long-term threat to the USSR.
In other words, Soviet use of this propaganda line apparently was not a reflec-
tion of Moscow's concern regarding actual Western military power per se, but
instead was a response to the periodic threat of a serious escalation in Western
defense spending." (p. 95)
One wonders why the Soviets would view an escalation in Western de-
fense spending with alarm if there were not a fundamental assumption in the
Kremlin that the West represents a threat to the USSR. Even more, one won-
ders why the authors made their argument in the first place. They seem less
concerned to understand the Soviet Union than to prove that it is irrational
and the West totally benign.
In sum, the book touches upon important intelligence and policy issues,
but they are treated irresponsibly, as though the authors were dedicated more
to proving that the Soviet Union is evil than to a realistic effort to understand
Moscow's foreign policy objectives and tactics. Ultimately, books such as
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Dezinformatsia can only hurt the profession of intelligence and efforts to
develop a rational foreign policy. Naive asumptions and erroneous history
make good propaganda but bad policy. They serve neither scholarship nor the
national interest.
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 -
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"
^: All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed in Studies in Intelligence are those
r~ e
!F ?, i'ti,
t+s'?~h`~ t,of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect official positions or views of the Central ,,`
VIT
9Intelligence Agency or any other US Government entity, past or present. Nothing in the k
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contents should be construed as asserting or implying US Government endorsement of an,>lt?
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article's factual statements and interpretations. 3 ~ I"4'y; ,
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All opinions expressed in the Studies are those of the authors.
They do not necessarily represent the official views of the
Central Intelligence Agency or any other component of the
intelligence community.
WARNING NOTICE
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NATIONAL SECURITY INFORMATION
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STUDIES IN INTELLIGENCE
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The final responsibility for accepting or rejecting
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Except as may be otherwise announced from year to year, articles on any subject
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CONTENTS
Economic Intelligence in CIA .................................................
Raison d'etre (SECRET NOFORN)
The Apostle in Seat 4-F ...........................................................
After Long Silence (UNCLASSIFIED)
The Intelligence-Policy Relationship ......................................
From arm's length to love-hate (UNCLASSIFIED)
Intelligence and US Foreign Policy, 1945-1954 .....................
Historian's preliminary observations (UNCLASSIFIED)
Operation Barbarossa .................... ................................... (UNCLASSIFIED)
Dezinformatsia ..................................................................
(UNCLASSIFIED)
Nomenklatura ....................................................................
(UNCLASSIFIED)
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ECONOMIC INTELLIGENCE IN CIA
Economic intelligence in CIA has reached maturity; it has become ac-
cepted as a central function by all major components of the Agency. But,
although CIA established a preeminent position in the US Government as a
source of analysis and judgment on foreign economies and international eco-
nomic issues a decade ago, questions as to the necessity and even legitimacy of
aspects of economic intelligence have persisted. Why can't State or Treasury
or Commerce do it? Is it a legitimate requirement for CIA? Is it really intel-
ligence?
The Agency's discomfort with aspects of economic intelligence reflects
some fundamental characteristics of this discipline that differ substantially
from those of military or political intelligence. First, the bulk of basic infor-
mation on economies is in the public domain, and consequently is unclassified.
To a large extent, intelligence agencies use much the same information base to
assess economic issues as do international institutions, private firms, and gov-
ernment units doing unclassified research. Even in denied areas such as the
USSR, the great bulk of economic information is unclassified. Still, classified
sources fill important gaps, especially on communist economies and in certain
areas of other economies, and provide judgments as to government intentions.
Sometimes they make a critical difference to economic assessments. Thus,
clandestine collection is essential.
Another unique characteristic of economic intelligence is that it serves a
policy community that is of necessity disparate, generally unstructured, and
concerned with both domestic and international issues. International economic
issues are important not only to our national security and foreign policy but
are also intimately linked with domestic economic policy. For example, any
policy decision concerning exports of grain to the USSR must consider not only
the impact on Soviet military power and foreign policy and on the interests of
other grain exporters, but also the implications for US farmers and consumers.
While CIA will focus on the international aspects of a problem, many of its
policy customers will try to use CIA's assessments for domestic policy purposes
and will angle their questions accordingly. The policy customers of CIA's eco-
nomic intelligence include not only State, Defense, the National Security
Council Staff, and Treasury, but also Commerce, Agriculture, the Special
Trade Representative, and sometimes Interior and Labor. All of the latter are
primarily concerned with the welfare of domestic constituencies, and in some
cases are funded by Congress specifically to protect these constituencies.
These characteristics of economic information and policy inevitably cre-
ate uncertainties and ambiguities for economic intelligence. They require
judgment to define the unique contribution of CIA in cases where unique
sources are not a factor. They require careful navigation in dealing with the
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complexities of the economic policy community. But in my view they do not
detract from the importance of the role CIA's economic intelligence has
played and can continue to play in the US Government.
In what follows, I will try first to sketch the phases of development of
economic intelligence in CIA since its inception. Then I will discuss how eco-
nomic intelligence was produced-with people, methods, products, and
sources. Finally, I will touch on a few lessons'from the past that I. believe have
useful implications for the future.
Phases of Development
The history of economic intelligence in CIA through 1972 is exceedingly
well covered in a three-volume history of the Office of Research and Reports
and the Office of Economic Research in its earlier years by a 25X1
former ORR/OER analyst and branch chief and a professional historian, who
died in January 1982. Like any good history, this study weaves the influences
of people, organizations, outside forces, and internal responses into a dynamic
picture of how economic intelligence developed. It is on file in the Office of
Global Issues. For the period since 1972, I have relied mainly on my personal
knowledge, refreshed by a quick review of key documents.
The Preliminaries. From the foundation of CIA in 1947 to the creation of
ORR in November 1950, economic intelligence was limited to less than0 25X1
hundred specialists concentrating on key Soviet industries, commodities, and
transport; the most important function of this work was to support export
control policy. As the cold war intensified and especially during the Korean
War, policy officials turned to CIA for answers to questions on Soviet and
Chinese economic vulnerabilities to Western economic warfare or military
operations. During, the early 1950s, the economic intelligence effort became
better, integrated, bringing together in ORR a growing number of industrial,
agricultural, commodity, and transport specialists, a newly hired staff of pro-
fessional economists, and what had been a separate group of Soviet area spe-
cialists who focused on current intelligence 25X1
By 1953, the ORR economic intelligence effort had been expanded 25X1
to almost professionals. 25X1
The Assault, on the Soviet Bloc Economies. Creation of a single all-source
economic intelligence unit and rapid expansion of its personnel enabled CIA to
undertake a massive research effort, which at first was focused almost exclu-
sively on the Soviet economy, and by the mid- and late-1950s included a
substantial effort on Eastern Europe and China. Although CIA made contri-
butions to current intelligence publications and national estimates, and re-
sponded to ad hoc requests from the NSC and other policy-level customers, the
great bulk of its work went into basic research. This effort began with what
was appropriately called "an inventory of ignorance," in which what little was
known about the Soviet economy was put side by side with what needed to be
known. The process of building up information was slow, painstaking, and
labor-intensive until Moscow in 1957 began publishing annual statistical hand-
books and releasing other statistical information. A picture of Soviet,economic
capabilities-transport system, plant capability, current production, technol-
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ogy-had to be pieced. together from odds and ends of information,F--]
Most
studies were voluminous and detailed. Although they were of little direct pol-
icy relevance, except in the area of export controls, they enabled CIA to de-
velop a unique information base and expertise on the Soviet economy.
Support of export control policy was a major CIA economic intelligence
function from the beginning and reached a large scale in the early 1950s as
ORR's expertise on the Soviet economy developed. CIA analysts prepared
assessments of Soviet industrial and technological capabilities and deficiencies
and of the availability of selected products and technologies from other West-
ern countries for use in the implementation of domestic export control legis-
lation and in multilateral -negotiations on export controls in COCOM. These
functions have continued through the present.
As the flow of officially released economic information expanded, it be-
came possible to spend less time on.plant-by-plant studies and more time on
analysis of the growth and structure of the Soviet economy and of Soviet
economic policy. National estimates on the Soviet economy, which were pro-
duced annually beginning in the mid-1950s, became the instruments for inte-
grating the entire economic research effort, since they required contributions
on each industry and sector, which were combined into assessments of overall
economic growth and the allocation of resources. Policy interest in these stud-
ies was enhanced not only by the traditional questions about effectiveness of
economic warfare but also by Nikita Khrushchev's declaration of an economic
race with the United States and his boast that the USSR would catch up eco-
nomically by 1985.
On a smaller scale, systematic work was also launched on the East Euro-
pean economies, especially after the Polish and Hungarian crises of 1956.
Interest in the Chinese economy surged during the Korean War, especially in
assessments of Chinese economic vulnerabilities and of the potential impact of
a US blockade. Exploitation in the mid-1950s of what was then relatively good
Chinese data established a sound analytical base which made it much easier to
assess Chinese developments in what proved to be a long period of information
drought during the 1960s and early 1970s.
This was also a period during which CIA was given formal authority for
producing economic intelligence on Soviet Bloc countries: NSCID 15 (June
1951) directed CIA to "conduct, as a service of common concern, such foreign
economic research and produce such foreign economic intelligence as may be
required: (a) to supplement that produced by other agencies ...; (b) to fulfill
requests of the Intelligence Advisory Committee." Then on 14 September
1954, DCID 15/1 on the production and coordination of economic intelligence
assigned "all economic intelligence on the Soviet Bloc" to CIA, with several
exceptions. Defense took the main responsibility for military-economic intel-
ligence; State remained primarily responsible for economic doctrines, the po-
litical and social aspects of economic institutions, and the relationships be-
tween political and economic policies. It was recognized that some overlapping
work would be necessary.
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Entering the Free World. Having established a preeminent position for
research on the Soviet Bloc economies, in the early 1960s ORR became in-
volved on a substantial scale in research on free world economies. From the
beginning, CIA had done some work on non-communist economies, mostly in
response to specific requests from policy levels. During the mid and late 1950s,
ORR closely followed the early phases of Khrushchev's efforts to use Soviet
economic aid as an instrument of penetration in less developed countries. In
addition, there was a continuing demand for comparative analyses of the size
and growth of the Soviet Bloc and Western economies. In the early 1960s
world events and bureaucratic changes involving the State Department and
CIA gave a major boost to CIA's role on free world economic issues, putting in
motion a process of expansion in this area that would continue at least through
the 1970s.
US Government concern about the stability of third world countries, and
especially about US-Soviet competition in the third world, grew rapidly as the
Soviet economic penetration program mushroomed during the late 1950s and
early 1960s. It came to a head during the Cuban missile crisis, which helped to
trigger an activist approach to the third world by the Kennedy Administration.
Policy support requests on ORR multiplied, first on Cuba and then on all of
Latin America and many other third world countries. In response to these
requests, first a Cuba branch and later a Latin America branch were formed.
The critical bureaucratic change which propelled CIA into free world
economic research was the decision by the State Department to relinquish to
CIA the responsibility for producing the economic sections of the National
Intelligence Surveys. In 1961, the Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and
Research, Roger Hillsman, decided that producing NISs detracted from what
he considered to be INR's principal role, which was to provide research and
analysis in support of the Secretary of State and his top aides. Hillsman appar-
ently hoped to compensate for part of the loss of NIS positions by obtaining
some new positions from the department which would be used to hire sophis-
ticated professionals to perform the policy support functions. But these hopes
were disappointed. INR did not receive new positions. Moreover, because NIS
funds represented about half of INR's budget, while the resources used to
produce the NISs were far less than half of the total, INR lost not only the NIS
function, but also a substantial capability to do other things. Faced with the
necessity to cut its personnel from seven hundred to three hundred-fifty, INR
took the deepest cuts in economic research in order to protect a reasonable
capability for political research. Many INR economic units were cut by three
quarters or even more and, as a result, coverage of free world and even Soviet
Bloc economies became thin or nonexistent. The NIS functions and a few
analysts were initially transferred to CIA's Office of Basic Intelligence, which
managed the NIS program. Subsequently, the responsibility for producing the
economic and political /social sections was shifted to ORR and the Office of
Current Intelligence, respectively, together with a small number of positions.
These shifts in NIS functions had a major impact on ORR, which over the
next few years had to develop a research capability on every country in the
world, including some forty new African states, in order to fulfill NIS commit-
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ments. At the same time, with State's capabilities for economic research and
analysis greatly weakened, the Office of National Estimates began relying on
ORR as the principal source of economic inputs for National Estimates. Poli-
cymakers in the NSC and the various government departments also began to
seek research assistance from CIA, especially on third world countries. As
experience with NISs and NIEs grew, ORR became bolder, initiating its own
research projects on free world economies. Most of the effort was focused on
the less developed countries; CIA's role on the industrial economies and on
core issues such as economic growth, inflation, finance, and trade remained
peripheral, with some notable exceptions mentioned below.
To cope with the growing effort on free world countries an International
Division in ORR was established in 1964. This expansion, together with the
rapid parallel growth of military and military-economic research, led to the
division of ORR into three separate offices. An Office of Geographic Research
was broken out in 1965 and the remainder of ORR split in 1967 into an Office
of Strategic Research and an Office of Economic Research.
The new CIA economic functions were accepted implicitly but not for-
mally sanctioned. In a letter to the Secretary of State in March 1963, DCI
McCone stated that CIA needed to produce economic intelligence on free
world countries for both departmental and national purposes. Although State's
silence could be taken as implying tacit agreement to what amounted to a
major expansion of CIA responsibility, the formal existing authorities under
the NSCID of 1951 and the DCID of 1954, which gave State primary respon-
sibility for national intelligence on free world economic issues, was not
changed. This apparent conflict between reality and authority proved almost
immaterial; it never limited the demands on CIA for work on free world
economies and had little effect on CIA's willingness to undertake such work.
The Vietnam War Period. Development of the Vietnam problem into a
major US war during the mid- and late-1960s placed heavy new demands on
OER which temporarily slowed the development of free world economic re-
search and forced a substantial reduction in research on the Soviet economy.
The decision to take on detailed analysis in OER (rather than in OSR or OCI)
not only of the economic aspects of the war in Indochina, but also of military
logistics and, after the Tet offensive, of military manpower and operations,
required a major diversion of personnel from other functions, especially from
work on Soviet industry and transportation, and on international shipping and
communications. At peak, about ER professionals worked on aspects of 25X1
the Indochina war while only abou new positions were provided for 25X1
this purpose.
From the early 1960s to the early 1970s, there was a steady erosion of the
research effort on the Soviet economy, particularly the coverage of Soviet
industries, energy, and agriculture. For example, by the early 1970s coverage
of Soviet energy had been reduced from more than a nalysts; 25X1
of Soviet agriculture from ; o Soviet chemicals from 25X1
of Soviet metals rom a and of Soviet 25X1
machinery from perhaps who eat mostly with high technol- 25X1
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ogy sectors and with export control issues. At the same time, the free world
effort continued to expand slowly.
Into the Mainstream of International Economics. Just as growing Soviet-
US competition in less developed countries had pulled CIA into free world
economic research, so the loss of US predominance in world finance and trade
during the late 1960s and the two severe oil shocks of the 1970s drew CIA into
the mainstream issues of economic analysis and policy. The fundamental
change was the transformation of the US global economic role from one in
which economic policy could be largely subordinated to foreign policy and
security objectives, to one in which the growing importance of US commercial
and financial interests had to be balanced with foreign policy and national
security concerns. The forces underlying this fundamental change include: two
decades arapid economic growth in most other industrial countries than
in the US; the emergence of Japan as an economic superpower; a large increase
in the role of foreign trade (both imports and exports) in the US economy, from
less than five percent of GNP in the 1950s to over ten percent by the late 1970s
and nearly fifteen percent recently; large-scale penetration of the US market
by imports of major products, such as automobiles, steel, textiles, and con-
sumer electronics; a US shift from self-sufficiency in crude oil to a large net
import position; and, for almost a decade prior to the abandonment in 1971 of
fixed exchange rates based on the US dollar, a growing erosion of the US
international competitive position and of the willingness of foreign central
banks to increase their dollar holdings. Because of these fundamental trends,
the State Department, which had successfully taken the leading role in formu-
lating and managing US and foreign economic policy since the start of the
Marshall Plan, found its positions increasingly questioned by Treasury, Com-
merce, Agriculture, and executive agencies such as the Council of Economic
Advisers, which were concerned less with foreign policy than with domestic
economic problems and constituencies. For most of the 1970s, attempts to
reconcile these often divergent points of view were made through the staff of
the Council for International Economic Policy (CIEP) which was headed by a
Special Assistant to the President. Inevitably, these diverse economic policy
departments and CIEP came to CIA for analysis that did not' suffer from a
departmental bias, was all-source, and took a broad perspective. By the mid-
1970s, CIA had become the most important source of analysis in the govern-
ment on such key questions as economic growth, inflation, trade, international
finance, and energy.
The process of expansion into these core economic areas began in the late
1960s as a result of recurring international financial crises and growing con-
cern about the stability of the international financial system. During the ster-
ling crisis of 1967, which forced the devaluation of that currency and created
serious concern that a general assault on the dollar might follow. OER became
aware that
ing 1967-69, various types ofl (provided the raw material for a
regular series of reports on gold markets and on South African gold policies
and activities, which had become important because of US Government efforts
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to make a new international agreement on the official price of gold stick in the
face of growing market pressures and South African manipulation. Treasury
was the principal customer for this analysis. Other early OER work on core
economic issues included assessments of foreign reactions to the US decision to
suspend gold convertibility (November 1971), and major studies of US trade
relations with Japan, Japanese formal and informal import restrictions, and the
Japanese steel industry. At the same time, major briefing books were prepared
in 1970-71 for the Secretary of Commerce on US relations with Japan, West-
ern Europe, and Canada. In response to these growimz demands for licy
support, OER created new branches to better cove the
European Community, and international energy, fortunately a year or more in
advance of the big international crises of 1973 and subsequent years.
The growing CIA role in free world economic intelligence was recognized
and strongly supported by the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board
in its report to the President on economic intelligence in December 1971.
PFIAB noted that State had not carried out its assigned responsibilities for
collection and analysis on free world economic activity; noted that OER was
the only US Government unit capable of doing the needed production; and
recommended that resources be added for production of economic intelli-
gence, that requirements be reexamined, and that the community served by
intelligence producers be expanded to include the entire economic policy com-
munity. In effect, the concept of economic intelligence was once again broad-
ened to include not only US foreign policy considerations, but also considera-
tions of US economic power and international competitiveness. Even so, it was
not until the Executive Order of 1978 that CIA was formally given the respon-
sibility"(not exclusive) to produce economic intelligence on the entire world.
By the time of the Arab oil embargo and subsequent tripling of oil prices
in 1973, OER had established the organization and some of the expertise
needed to respond effectively to demands for intelligence support from the
policy levels and had the support of top Agency management, the President,
and key economic policy officials. The oil shock created economic problems of
a different nature and magnitude from those to which policy officials had
become accustomed. During the oil embargo there was of course an enormous
demand for information on how much oil was being produced, where it was
being shipped, and what was happenin in world markets, was
only a limited amount of information~ 7h
CIA
was the only agency capable of putting all available information together into
a coherent, up-to-date picture useful to policy officials at the NSC, State,
Treasury, and elsewhere. What became an OER-indeed a CIA-best seller,
the weekly International Oil Developments (IOD), later renamed Interna-
tional Energy Weekly (IEW), was born in December 1973 in response to a
request from the NSC staff. At the same time, OER greatly increased its en-
ergy effort, which evolved, as the crisis eased, from monitoring the embargo to
assessing the short-term oil market, and then to projecting longer-term energy
trends. Before long CIA had become a dominant source of information and
analysis in the US Government on international oil issues.
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The energy crisis in turn created great uncertainties for the world econ-
omy, throwing the US and other industrial countries into a severe economic
recession in 1974-75 which appeared for a while as if it would be deep and
lasting. There were great uncertainties about how the oil price increases would
work themselves through the world economy; about their impact on overall
economic activity and inflation; about whether the massive increase in the
financial assets of the OPEC countries would be "recycled" by the banks or by
the OPEC governments to less developed oil importing countries which were
running big deficits as a result of higher oil import costs. Because of the mag-
nitude of the shock and the resulting uncertainties, what had traditionally
been the principal sources of routine judgment and projections on the world
economy-OECD and the Treasury Department-no longer seemed ade-
quate. In this situation, OER was able to leap into the breach. OER began to
produce regular estimates of economic growth, inflation, trade, energy, and
economic policies on all the major industrial countries, as well as on key LDCs.
Regular reports were also produced on OPEC assets (their size, location, and
currency); LDC debt problems; world commodity prices; trends in world
trade; and troubled industries such as steel, textiles, and automobiles. By the
latter part of the Ford Administration, CIA estimates and forecasts of the
principal world macroeconomic trends were being used as a basis for discus-
sion at Cabinet-level meetings, such as the Economic Policy Board. Economic
intelligence had indeed come to encompass not only the economic sinews of
our enemies' military power but also the economic activities and policies of
neutrals and allies which affected US foreign policy and economic interests.
This new, large expansion of OER functions was funded entirely through
internal reallocation of OER personnel-in effect, the position
professionals) which had been shifted mainly from Soviet analysis to the Viet-
nam War were in turn transferred to free world research, especially on energy,
trade and finance, and industrial countries as the effort on Vietnam was
phased out. There were some small additional cuts in aspects of Soviet eco-
nomic work. The effort on China remained about constant as CIA continued to
piece together information from a wide variety of sources, much as it had
done on the Soviet economy in the early 1950s. This painstaking all-source
process was necessary because the Chinese released virtually no economic data
between the late 1950s and the late 1970s. Indeed, OER studies, many of
which could be sanitized and published in unclassified form, became essential
inputs into private sector research on China.
As to Soviet work, the period of East-West detente shifted policy demands
from economic warfare to trade promotion possibilities. At the same time, the
disappearance of US surplus grain stocks left the world grain market and US
consumer prices highly vulnerable to big increases in Soviet grain imports in
years when Soviet crops were bad, notably 1972 and 1975. There was great
interest in CIA crop estimates not only in the NSC staff and State, concerned
with foreign policy implications and leverage, but also in the Council of Eco-
nomic Advisers, Agriculture, and Commerce concerned with the impact on US
farmers and on the US cost of living.
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CIA Goes Public. In April 1977, President Carter at a press conference
made reference to an OER report in response to a question on the outlook for
the oil market. In effect, he used a CIA estimate to help explain why he
considered the energy problem to be "the moral equivalent of war." The
President's statement thrust CIA into the public eye and started a period of
fairly open CIA participation in public discussion of major economic issues
that lasted until 1981. This openness had mixed effects, some good and some
bad, on CIA's economic intelligence.
Publication of unclassified studies on economic topics by CIA was far
from new. CIA analysts began to prepare articles for publications of the Joint
Economic Committee of Congress on the Soviet, Chinese, and East European
economies beginning in 1962, and these contributions continue through the
present. Although the JEC contributions are reviewed within CIA, they are
attributed to the author, not to the Agency. Unclassified publications under
CIA imprimatur also began in the 1960s. Most of these dealt with unclassified
statistics on communist economies or with technical or methodological topics
of interest primarily to academics and other experts-for example, Soviet
GNP by sector of origin and use; indexes of Soviet industrial and agricultural
production; Chinese foreign trade data. These specialized publications were
useful to CIA in establishing contacts and developing dialogue with academics
and other private sector specialists; as a means of building CIA's reputation for
work of high quality; and as an aid to recruitment of economists. These studies
never caused problems because they were not estimative, forward-looking, or
politically controversial.
Estimative studies were another matter, especially on politically sensitive
topics. Prior to President Carter's press conference, there had been two inten-
tional and one unintentional CIA incursions into unclassified estimates. In
April 1958, DCI Allen Dulles publicly presented ORR estimates that Soviet
GNP was growing at annual rates of six to seven percent, double that of the
US, and might reach fifty percent of the US GNP by 1962. This rapid Soviet
growth presented, he said, "the most serious challenge this country has faced
in time of peace." This public statement was widely criticized as a blatant
attempt to justify increases in US military budgets, even though CIA officials
defended their estimates in public testimony before the Joint Economic Com-
mittee. CIA then moved out of the limelight on economic issues until January
1964 when DCI John McCone, at the suggestion of the President, gave a press
conference on the Soviet economy at which he revealed that Soviet economic
growth had slowed to a one and one-half percent rate in 1963, that the USSR
faced a difficult hard currency situation, and that gold stocks had fallen to low
levels. The initial CIA plan had been to release this information in an unclas-
sified State Department paper, but the press found out that CIA was the
source. The public reaction was mostly negative, focusing on motives rather
than facts. Specifically, CIA was accused of trying to justify controls over
exports and credits to the USSR and the press gleefully collected adverse re-
actions of all kinds from real or self-appointed experts. The fact that most
outside experts eventually recognized that CIA was correct never received
much publicity. This unfortunate experience led to a new, temporary embargo
on CIA unclassified publications. A third flare-up over unclassified publications
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occurred in the spring of 1967 when CIA unintentionally became involved in
political controversy in Congress over licensing of US equipment for the Soviet
automobile plant for which Fiat was the prime contractor. At that time CIA
provided State with some unattributed material for use in congressional testi-
mony and also published an unclassified paper on the Soviet automobile in-
dustry. This paper, although basically descriptive and straightforward, was
used by Senators and Representatives on both sides of the controversy, and the
flap led to another temporary embargo on unclassified CIA publications.
The return of CIA to public controversy on economic issues in 1977 in-
volved some totally new dimensions. CIA did not seek the publicity President
Carter had forced on it but, once pushed into the public eye, tried to resolve
problems by participating in public debates as much as security considerations
permitted. Indeed, DCI Turner generally sought to promote this openness both
to enhance the reputation of CIA as a source of high-quality, objective analy-
sis, and to divert attention from clandestine operations.
As a result of the President's press conference, two OER papers were
released in unclassified form. One of these predicted a decline in Soviet oil
production and a potential shift in the USSR's oil trade from a large net export
to a net import position. The other paper incorporated the Soviet forecasts into
a projection of global oil supply and demand which predicted another massive
oil price increase within a very few years. The message that came through
clearly to Secretary of Energy Schlesinger and to President Carter was that oil
prospects were even worse than they had thought. The new Soviet oil estimates
in turn had a major impact on a comprehensive study of the prospects for the
Soviet economy, which was also published in unclassified form in 1978. Re-
duced rates of GNP growth to a range of two to three percent were projected
for the 1980s, partly because of a growing energy constraint. The OER esti-
mate on Soviet oil identified some fundamental problems which will probably
cause oil production to decline this decade. But it underestimated Moscow's
willingness to pour added resources into oil development as a result of which
the decline was postponed and a severe crisis was averted.
OER began to back off from its Soviet oil estimate as early as 1978,
recognizing that Moscow could not afford to become an oil importer because
of its heavy reliance on oil as a source of hard currency earnings. Although the
1977 projection should have been interpreted as a notional gap between de-
mand and supply that would not necessarily be eliminated through foreign
trade, the wording was ambiguous. But then, OER discovered another serious
cause for pessimism as to prospects for the world oil market. It had become
apparent that oil company plans for expanding oil production in the Persian
Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia, through the 1980s were pipe dreams. The
planned capacity increases were not taking place; indeed, Saudi Arabia and
other countries were cutting the investments necessary even to sustain the then
current rates of production in the longer term. In 1978, OER predicted an-
other big jump in oil prices at some time during the 1979-81 period (an un-
classified version was released in July 1979). OER was right but in part for the
wrong reasons. It was of course the Iranian revolution that triggered the price
rise although many other forces to set up the rise were in place. The 1979-80
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price shock set off a new series of studies on global economic impact-indus-
trial countries, the developing countries, OPEC countries, and communist
countries. By 1981, the world economy was again in recession, and energy
conservation and substitution of other energy sources for oil was building
rapidly. Consequently, the oil market turned soft and it has remained soft.
OER's incursion into controversial economic, especially energy, public
estimates on balance probably enhanced CIA's reputation for high quality
analysis. Although the initial public reaction was mainly negative-reflecting
both CIA's departure from conventional wisdom and the readiness of the press
to attribute political motives-public comments later turned generally favor-
able, especially in 1979-80 when the new oil crisis CIA had predicted did
occur (if partly for different reasons). In the process of explaining their esti-
mates, OER analysts participated in numerous meetings and conferences
where they often gave presentations as well as engaged in discussions with
experts from the oil industry, academia, state governments, and even foreign
countries. In the process, CIA analysts became accepted members of the ex-
pert community, especially on energy, macroeconomics, and econometric
modeling. Recruitment of well-trained economists became easier and some of
the top economists in the country became interested in at least informal con-
sulting. But there were negative effects as well. Participation in public discus-
sion took too much time away from intelligence work. The need to explain and
defend estimates in public reinforced the tendency to look harder for corrob-
orating than for contrary evidence. If CIA's Soviet oil production estimates
had not been constantly under public attack, they probably would have been
changed more promptly than they were. Finally, the fact that classified
sources were used in the estimates prevented full documentation, and even
several years of partial openness could not eliminate the ambiguities inherent
in a public CIA role.
Economic Intelligence Becomes Everybody's Business. Throughout the
1950s, 1960s, and much of the 1970s, economic intelligence production in CIA
was the almost exclusive domain of the Economic Research Area of ORR and
then of OER. OCI produced some current economic intelligence on the free
world and the geographic intelligence units worked on some specialized eco-
nomic topics, such as transportation. As economic issues grew in importance, it
was inevitable that they would become of concern to all the main intelligence
production units in CIA. The Office of Geographic and Societal Research,
working with the Office of Research and Development, developed methodol-
ogies for estimating the Soviet grain crop that required specialized expertise
(agronomists, photo interpreters, statisticians, and linguists, as well as econo-
mists) and inputs of highly specific information on weather and status of crops.
Use of this methodology was expensive-requiring several times more people
and contract money than the traditional methodology used by OER-but
proved substantially more accurate, at least in the years when the main prob-
lem was drought. In 1979-80, elaborate methodologies were also developed to
estimate likely production in major Soviet oil fields and likely reserves in major
oil regions.
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These intensive analyses also required inputs of detailed data that were
collectible by technical means. Previously, the very thin OER coverage of
major Soviet sectors and industries made it necessary to rely heavily on pub-
lished information and on simpler techniques, since collectors were generally
unable to obtain critical unpublished information at a relatively high level of
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Economic intelligence also expanded into the field of science and tech-
nology. In addition to a major increase in the long-standing effort on transfer
of technology to the USSR, CIA developed a substantial capability to assess
technological developments in free world countries and their impact on indus-
trial trends and competitiveness. Beginning in the late 1960s with what was
mainly a series of externally contracted OSI studies on high technology in free
world, industries, the effort developed into a division-sized 25X1
unit in the Office of Global Issues doing systematic analysis of free world
industries, especially high technology industries. Consequently, what had been
a major gap in CIA's coverage of free world economies has been partly filled.
At the same time, economic intelligence has become a more fully inte-
grated part of intelligence analyses and assessments on individual foreign
countries. This process began well before the reorganization of the Directorate
of Intelligence in 1981, especially with an increasing number of joint
OER/Office of Political Analysis studies. With a reorganization primarily
along geographic lines, it became inevitable that political analysts would be-
come more aware of economic issues and vice versa.
There have also been some changes in economic intelligence priorities in
recent years. With an oil glut taking the place of severe oil shortages, the
absence of any major global economic shocks, and the expansion of global
macroeconomic analysis in other government agencies and the private sector,
the need for independent macroeconomic estimates from CIA has declined.
Moreover, the Reagan Administration has given an increased priority to issues
of economic structure and efficiency and a smaller one to macroeconomic
policy. Most important, East-West detente has given way to a renewed cold
war which once again gave prominence to economic warfare issues such as
export controls, technology transfer, Soviet dependence on imports from the
West, and Western economic leverage on the USSR. The Carter Administra-
tion decision to impose economic sanctions on the USSR in response to its
invasion of Afghanistan led to innumerable requests for intelligence support
from CIA. The Iranian hostage crisis and the resulting US economic sanctions
against Iran had a similar impact. The imposition of martial law in Poland
caused a tightening of US restrictions on import of oil and gas equipment to
the USSR and led eventually to the Reagan Administration's attempt to pre-
vent construction of the West Siberia to Western Europe pipeline. All of these
economic issues involved major demands on CIA's economic intelligence units.
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Resources and Processes
The enormous changes over the past thirty-five years in the functions of
economic intelligence in CIA have occurred with a fairly constant overall level
of staffing but with frequent, often massive shifts in the distribution of effort,
in the types of intelligence products, and in analytic methodologies. In turn,
these shifts had a major impact on collection requirements for economic intel-
ligence.
People. Personnel costs have always been the predominant part of the
economic intelligence budget. External contracting was quite small until the
late 1970s and early 1980s when in-depth analysis of oil facilities requiring
very specialized methodologies and expertise became both important and fea-
sible. Although precise comparisons are impossible because of changing func-
tions, some of which can be classified in a number of ways, it is clear that the
total number of people engaged in economic intelligence reached a peak in the
1950s, reflecting the high labor-intensive requirements of the nuts and bolts
approach to the Soviet economy; the number declined slightly during the
1960s to abou professionals, and again in the 1970s to about
professionals, and then rose somewhat in the early 1980s as
part of the general expansion of the DDI. These ups and downs are far less
important than the massive shifts that occurred within the economic intelli-
gence effort: in the 1960s from the USSR to the developing countries and then
to Vietnam; in the 1970s from Vietnam to the industrial nations to global
economic trends such as energy, economic growth, and trade; and in the 1980s
to international finance and to free world high technology industries. During
the same time span, State INR's effort in economic intelligence declined pre-
cipitously from about people in the 1950s to in
the 1970s.
Maintaining even a constant personnel strength required a large, contin-
uous recruitment effort because of a very high rate of professional turnover,
which reflected the substantial opportunities available to economists in the
private sector. During the 1960s, when government salaries were generally not
competitive with the private sector, the professional turnover rate in ORR was
between one and one-half and two percent a month, or some twenty percent
annually. In the 1970s, with a more competitive salary scale, the turnover rate
fell and then stabilized at about one percent a month. Even so, this meant that
OER had to hire at least economists each year just to stay even.
And, largely because most app scants had other irons in the fire and often
could not wait until CIA personnel processing and clearance were completed,
we had to put applicants in process each year to offset anticipated
turnover. To reinforce the efforts of the Office of Personnel, ORR, and then
OER, sent senior economists to recruit graduate students in universities and
took advantage of those trips to develop and strengthen contacts with faculty
members and generally to try to enhance the image of CIA as a good place for
economists to work. Fortunately, this recruitment effort has been continued
since the DDI reorganization.
The majority of new hires had the equivalent of a master's degree in
economics or related fields, with perhaps twenty percent in recent years en-
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tering with a Ph.D. degree or having completed the course requirements for a
Ph.D., and another twenty to twenty-five percent with a bachelor's degree and
perhaps a little graduate work. Only a small number came into economic
intelligence through the Career Trainee program, although some of these have
been among the most successful analysts. Changing functions also changed the
mix of skills that was sought. During the 1970s, econometricians, economists
with experience in the analysis of international trade and finance, and energy
experts were much in demand.
To handle changing functions, it was necessary not only to recruit dif-
ferent kinds of experts, but also to retrain those already on board. The change
during the 1950s from specific industrial studies to macroeconomic analysis of
the USSR, Eastern Europe, and China, required more sophisticated handling
of economic issues. Since many of the commodity and industrial analysts and
branch chiefs in ORR had received little if any formal training in economics,
it became office policy to upgrade all professionals to an equivalent of a
master's degree in economics, with the help of in-house courses taught by CIA
economists under the auspices of local universities. A broad training program
in the use of automated data processing and various analytic methodologies
was introduced in the late 1960s and later broadened so that all OER analysts
had at least a basic ADP capability.
But the principal means of tackling new functions was to identify indi-
viduals who were among the brightest and the most dynamic and creative
professionals in the office and to put them in charge of new issues. Although
the general thrust of economic intelligence priorities was apparent, the partic-
ular development of the effort could not be foreseen. It was necessary to give
creative leaders considerable flexibility to take initiatives, react to customer
requests, and carve out a role for CIA. Frequently, new functional units were
created to tackle new problems-for example, on international trade and fi-
nance, energy, and analytic methodologies. Since these units were concerned
with issues that were also central to the geographic units
conflicts of responsibilities often occurred which were
sometimes exacerbated by personal conflicts. Although this forced interaction
was wasteful at times, on the whole it was creative in that it caused the major
economic-issues to be approached from more than one perspective.
Methodologies. In economic intelligence as in other types of intelligence,
methodologies have become more and more sophisticated. ORR and OER
relied mainly on the traditional tools of economists, which themselves evolved
considerably over the years. The simplest tools-national accounting and bal-
ance of payments analysis-are of course regularly used to facilitate orderly
analysis of economic trends and structure.
Some preliminary ADP programs were developed early in the 1960s for spe-
cial purposes such as calculating an index of Soviet industrial production and
obtaining reports on communist economic and military assistance to LDCs.
But it was not until an OER Systems Development Staff was established in
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1969 that a systematic effort to provide analysts with high quality ADP and
methodological support was launched. This effort included training, research
and development, and service-with the emphasis initially on training and
research and development. As the service function developed-to include con-
struction of data bases of common concern, methodological problem-solving,
and development of models on issues of central concern to the office, the
Systems Development Staff was expanded into a Development and Analysis
center. By the late 1970s, OER had one of the most sophisticated econometric
efforts in the world. Beginning with some adaptations of existing econometric
models of foreign economies, OER built its own model of the world economy
which linked the principal countries through foreign trade flows and which
could approximate and simulate the global impact of changes in national eco-
nomic policies or of major shocks to the world economy. This Link model, as
well as the individual country models, proved extremely useful in answering
"what if" questions from policymakers throughout the government. For exam-
ple: What would be the economic impact of a doubling of oil prices on eco-
nomic growth, inflation, trade? Or what would be the economic impact of a
one-percent increase in US government expenditures? As energy problems
worsened, the energy sector of the Link model was greatly elaborated to
address more complex questions on energy, price, and use. The develop-
ment of econometric models and of related macroeconomic methodologies
required both some first class econometricians and methodologists in OER and
access to the talent in academia and elsewhere. OER used a series of annual
conferences with some of the best economists and econometricians in the coun-
try to help give direction and focus to the development of its methodological
effort on macroeconomics and energy. These conferences were also helpful in
strengthening CIA's reputation and contacts in the top ranks of the economic
profession.
By the late 1970s, a large proportion of OER analysts had some familiar-
ity with ADP techniques and were using and manipulating data banks (for
example, on trade statistics) and a substantial number were using econometric
models as tools of analysis. CIA models were available on the major OECD
countries, on several LDCs, and on the USSR. In addition, CIA steadily broad-
ened its access to commercially available data banks and models
As mentioned earlier, economic intelligence in recent years has used not
only the techniques of economic and econometric analysis, but also engineer-
ing and agronomic simulations. A model which simulates the phases of plant
growth and the impact of shortfalls of moisture and of other weather condi-
tions on plant yields has been the central element of the methodology for
estimating Soviet grain crops. Engineering models of major oil fields of a type
in general use in the oil industry are being used to estimate oil reserves and
production potential. Engineering models also are being used to assess the
potential impact of damage to oil facilities in various countries.
This broad expansion of analytical methodologies has required not only
larger in-house expertise but also much greater use of external contracts, some
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of which are quite costly. These expenditures can be justified only on issues
that require in-depth analysis.
Sources. As mentioned earlier, the most important sources of economic
information are unclassified. They include the official statistical publications of
foreign countries and international institutions, newspapers, journal articles,
and radio broadcasts. Unclassified sources generally constitute the foundation
of any economic analysis, even on the USSR and other communist countries,
and provide an essential context to interpret classified material and how it fits
into the overall picture. Second in importance is reporting from State and
Treasury attaches who provide interpretation and color, as well as up-to-date
information. Over the years, information obtained from private US citizens
and organizations has probably been the third most important source of eeo-
nomic intelligence.
The role of clandestine collection of economic intelligence was quite
limited so long as CIA concentrated on the communist countries and covered
free world countries only lightly. Clandestine collection on Soviet internal
economic issues has generally been weak
Clandestine sources have been consistently more important on Eastern
Europe than on the USSR, and have been of great importance for nearly
twenty years on Soviet and East European trade, arms shipments and sales,
and financial activities in the third world.
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Products. The change in the mix of economic intelligence products re-
flected the evolution of ORR and OER from a primary orientation to basic
research to a focus on short- to medium-term policy support. During the 1950s
and early 1960s, most OER products were large research reports or NISs.
Contributions to current intelligence publications were written by a small,
specialized staff. There were few papers prepared in a response to direct re-
quests from policymakers. By the early 1970s, as OER developed research
capabilities across the entire gamut of international economics, responses to
policy requests averaged nearly three per work day and were largely driving
the office's work. Indeed, this large expansion of policy support work made it
impossible for several years to pursue any sort of coherent production plan-
ning; in the late 1960s, annual production planning was abandoned because
the majority of planned projects were not done and most projects that were
done were not planned.
During the early and late 1970s, the principal mechanism for maintaining
some coherence in OER's research and production was the weekly publica-
tions. There were two: one on energy (the International Oil Developments,
later called the International Energy Weekly) and one on other economic
developments (the Economic Intelligence Weekly or EIW). Although these
publications, especially the IEW, covered some current developments, their
primary function was to provide relevant background, analysis, and perspec-
tive on issues of current policy interest, and on those to which greater policy
attention should have been given. Important policy support memorandums
were revised and rerun in the publications to reach a wider audience. Articles
were planned in anticipation of major international economic policy decisions
or meetings. Others were written to warn of potential problems, to explain
those that had occurred, or to estimate their impact. The results or partial
results of OER basic research that appeared to provide new perspectives on
important issues were included. In sum, the publications covered practically
all OER had to say that was of interest to the policy levels. And they were a
success. Both publications and the combined publication, the International
Economic and Energy Weekly, that followed them were, and are, regularly
read at the top and middle levels of the economic policy community.
Economic inputs to current intelligence publications also increased, espe-
cially once the President's Daily Brief became established as the principal
means of communicating intelligence to the President. Less attention was paid
to the National Intelligence Daily because OER's own publications were serv-
ing the principal economic policymakers.
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Longer studies in the form of intelligence memoranda or reports contin-
ued to be published if they represented research building blocks or if assess-
ments needed elaboration. Most of the work on the Chinese economy and a
substantial part of that on the Soviet economy, for example, continued to take
the form of these larger studies which are read mainly by specialists.
A serious attempt was made to distinguish clearly between research stud-
ies and other forms of intelligence production. Research projects were planned
well in advance and sometimes stretched over several years. For example, a
systematic study of the growth and structure of the Soviet economy was
planned in the early 1970s and took more than five years to complete, resulting
in a number of classified and unclassified publications
Some of the most elaborate products were never formally published.
Briefing books for top-level policymakers had been prepared since the late
1960s. Beginning with the Tokyo economic summit of 1979, CIA has either
written most of the background sections of the presidential briefing books or
provided substantial inputs in their preparation.
Relations with Policymakers. The complexity and diversity of the eco-
nomic policy community make it necessary for CIA economic intelligence
producers to work hard to ascertain the needs of policymakers, the priority of
these needs, and the proper role of CIA in meeting these needs. Relations with
policy officials were relatively easy in the 1950s when CIA's economic intelli-
gence was largely limited to communist countries. But when this role came to
encompass the entire gamut of international economic issues, and requests for
intelligence multiplied, it became necessary to gain an understanding of the
requester's purpose and his role in the national policy process. Although few
high- or medium-level requests were turned down, many were modified to
better reflect our interpretation of priorities and the legitimate role and capa-
bilities of CIA. This meant a process of frequent interaction with policymakers
rather than a passive acceptance of their tasking. It also meant that economic
intelligence producers generally dealt directly with policy officials at the NSC,
CEA, State, Treasury, and Commerce. In addition, a senior OER analyst was
detailed to Treasury beginning in the early 1970s to prepare daily or weekly
briefings for economic officials at the Cabinet, sub-Cabinet and senior staff
levels, and to obtain feedback-a function that was eventually incorporated
into more formal intelligence liaison units in policy departments. There was
relatively little indirect tasking through the Directorate of Intelligence, the
National Intelligence Officers (except on national estimates), or the intelligence
liaison units in other agencies.
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Issues and Lessons
Although economic intelligence has become one of the central areas of
concentration for both producers and collectors in CIA, a number of questions
continue to be raised concerning the scope and uses of economic intelligence.
In the concluding section of this article, I will raise the most important of these
issues and indicate what I believe to be the lessons experience has taught us on
each of them.
To What Extent is Economic Intelligence CIA's Job? The narrowest
view of CIA's economic intelligence function has been that it should be limited
to collecting information that cannot be obtained by overt means and to anal-
yses and estimates based to a substantial extent on such information. This
definition was always too narrow, even when economic intelligence was lim-
ited largely to communist countries. The fact is that CIA provides several
ingredients, in addition to special sources, which make for a unique contribu-
tion. These ingredients include: the ability to bring a wide variety of skills and
perspectives to bear on a problem (economic, technical, political, and military);
and, perhaps most important, a mission and organization designed to serve the
needs of the national policy community rather than those of a single depart-
ment. The particular mix of ingredients that yields a unique contribution
varies from subject to subject. In assessments of damage to oil facilities during
the Iran-Iraq War and its impact, for example, special sources and the ability
to use them are critical. In estimates of the future oil market, it is the ability to
combine an understanding of the determinants of the demand for oil and of oil
market behavior with assessments of political, economic, and military factors
which affect oil production in major OPEC countries that constitute a unique
contribution. In the case of briefing papers for the Economic Summit, it is
simply CIA's broad scope and organizational ability that justifies taking on the
work. Moreover, CIA must give some coverage to all major global economic
issues and to all foreign countries in order to understand the way events work
their way through the world economy. But it is not necessary to give all coun-
tries or issues equal treatment. Not only are some more important than others,
but some topics are treated much more fully by other government agencies or
in the private sector than others. For example, free world agriculture is cov-
ered fairly thoroughly by the research unit of the Department of Agriculture,
as are world minerals by the Department of the Interior. CIA makes the
largest contribution on agriculture and minerals in communist countries, but
its coverage on the rest of the world is appropriately thin. CIA also puts in a
relatively greater effort on countries which constitute a major security threat to
the United States, notably the USSR In conclusion,
there are no international economic issues that CIA should ignore, but it is
appropriate that the degree of coverage by other agencies be taken into ac-
count in determining the distribution of the CIA effort.
With regard to clandestine collection of economic information, there
should be no issue of principle. At bottom economic intelligence is no different
from political intelligence. Indeed, economic issues are the everyday meat of
national politics in every country. The reluctance of clandestine collectors to
try to obtain material that could be collected by regular State, Treasury, and
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Commerce officials is understandable, but should not become an excuse for
inaction. The important thing is to identify those governments, other institu-
tions, and issues that deserve a systematic clandestine collection effort in the
longer term so that well-placed sources can be developed. This approach must
be selective, aimed at a few key countries such as the USSR,
and such definable issues as arms sales, nuclear power, or sales of civil
aircraft. Development of sources must be based not on detailed requirements,
which cannot be projected two or three years ahead, but rather on a judgment
that the country or issue is of sufficient importance that requirements for
clandestine collection are certain to develop and probably to continue over a
period of time. Once sources are in place, the requirements must be as specific
as possible and must take into account the capabilities of overt enlleetnrc
Should There Be Unclassified CIA Publications in the Economic Area? I
believe that building block research which does not reveal classified sources
and methods and is of interest to experts in the private sector should be pub-
lished unclassified. Such publications are important to sustain the generally
high reputation CIA economic research has enjoyed in academia and else-
where in the private sector. These publications help recruitment and make it
easier to make effective use of consultants, some of whom do not want to go
through clearance procedures. With the exercise of reasonable care and con-
trol, the odds on such publications triggering adverse publicity or political flaps
are minimal.
I believe that the historical record gives ample reason to avoid unclassified
publications on estimative, forward-looking topics. There is no doubt that se-
lective CIA attempts to publicize certain research findings have backfired.
Selective unclassified publications, especially if publicized at the top levels of
the Agency, are bound to be interpreted as attempts to influence policy and
public opinion. Unclassified publication of estimative intelligence on a broader
scale, such as was attempted in the late.1970s, would make sense only if the
DDI were separated from the rest of CIA and became viewed as a kind of
research service of common concern to the US Government. This appeared to
be the trend in the early years of the Carter Administration, but it never got
very far and has obviously been reversed since. Moreover, with the far more
intensive use of special sources in the past few years, any separation of the
analytical function from the collection function would severely reduce the
usefulness of the product. I conclude that any thought of publishing unclassi-
fied estimative economic intelligence material by CIA should be abandoned.
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Should the Organization of Economic Intelligence Be Mainly Geo-
graphic or Mainly Functional? It should be both geographic and functional. I
believe that OER's experience shows clearly the importance of approaching
any important issue with more than one perspective. It is extremely dangerous
in any bureaucracy, especially a large one like CIA's, to assign the entire
responsibility for important issues to a single unit with a particular form of
organization. It is too easy for the point of view of an analyst or branch to
become the party line for an office, or even for CIA, unless it can be chal-
lenged or approached from a different point of view as well. This does not
require a formal matrix organization, but it does mean that two or more units
will have to share the responsibility for producing intelligence on major issues.
In OER's free world work, for example, the basic organization was geographic,
but functional units were formed to deal with major issues such as economic
growth and development, trade and finance, energy, agriculture and materials,
which were also of central concern to each of the geographic units. This is
quite different from creating functional units to work in specialized areas, such
as international shipping or arms sales, which generally are not of major con-
cern to the country analyst. Joint responsibility creates frictions and conflicts,
some of which are time-consuming. But in my opinion it also fosters creativity
and makes it far easier to use dynamic people effectively in a bureaucratic
environment. The DI reorganization has similar elements both in economic
and political areas. For example, responsibility for LDC debt problems is
shared by OGI and the regional offices, and I believe that this joint effort on
the whole has been productive and creative, with one group stimulating the
other to doing better work. I only hope that the process of building functional
units not to supplant but rather to interact with geographic units will continue
as it has during the past two years. And even in a primarily geographic organ-
ization, it is important to sustain a home base for analysts who want to retain
their identity as professional economists, rather than develop into area experts.
Such economists should be rotated within the DI, and perhaps elsewhere. They
should probably keep their home base in a functional economic unit.
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The Future of Economic Intelligence in CIA
Economic intelligence in CIA has become too useful to other parts of the
US Government and too well established to be vulnerable to drastic cuts in the
future, but it is difficult to imagine any major future expansion of its functions,
since these already encompass virtually all important international economic
topics. To foster high quality work in the longer term, CIA needs to:
- Anticipate new demands by clearly reading the changing world forces
and the changing role of the US Government and take the initiative
accordingly to reallocate resources. As ORR and OER history clearly
shows, new directions must be taken if possible before policy custom-
ers demand them and certainly far in advance of any funding or
personnel allocations.
- Continue to develop new ways of using classified information to im-
prove economic estimates.
- Provide an environment conducive to high quality research and anal-
ysis and to attracting and retaining first-class economists by establish-
ing or strengthening functional units dealing with the critical analytic
issues in international economics.
- Make certain that important issues are approached from more than
one perspective by forcing regional and functional units to share the
responsibility for all important economic issues.
- Adapt the bureaucratic system to give particularly energetic and cre-
ative people an opportunity to make a mark and to develop new
research directions and functions.
This article is classified SECRET NOFORN.
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After Long Silence
THE APOSTLE IN SEAT 4-F
I was looking forward to the flight home from Denver and did not mind
the 7 a.m. departure because it was Saturday and I had an interesting book to
finish. I had read the review in the Washington Post and heard Tom Braden
and Pat Buchanan interview the author, Michael Straight, on their evening
talk show. Each had asked him the same question: Why did he wait until 1963
to tell the Federal Bureau of Investigation that his Cambridge University
friends, Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt, were Soviet spies? He had known
about Burgess since at least 1940 and had himself been recruited for service to
the COMINTERN by Blunt at Cambridge in 1937. Straight responded that he
had written the book to answer that question.
I was assigned to an aisle seat. The middle seat was empty and as I placed
my book in it before buckling up the man in the window seat looked over,
smiled, and asked what I thought of it. I realized that his was the same face
that peered at me from the back dust cover. I would spend the next four hours
chatting with Michael Straight, former Cambridge communist and member of
the elite secret Apostles society, bomber pilot, magazine editor, deputy chair-
man of the National Endowment for the Arts under President Nixon, and
author of After Long Silence.' The picture had been retouched; the original in
seat 4-F revealed a few more wrinkles. Michael Straight proved to be a
friendly, articulate conversationalist and a man of many interests. He was
reading a book by Solzhenitsen's editor and he described the great emotional
difficulties the experience had caused her. It was a situation he could under-
stand.
Straight had been editor of the New Republic after World War II and
during the McCarthy era. His mother Dorothy was a Whitney heiress, his
father Willard, an international businessman who helped introduce the rail-
road to China. Together, they founded the New Republic magazine in 1914,
two years before Michael's birth on 1 September 1916. Willard Straight died of
pneumonia at the end of World War I while serving in the Army in Europe.
When Dorothy Straight later married an Englishman she decided to leave her
Long Island home and settle in England. So it was that young Michael, his
older brother (later to head Rolls Royce and British Overseas Aircraft Com-
pany) and his older sister (who would become an actress) grew up at Darting-
ton Hall, South Devon.
' Michael Straight, After Long Silence (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1983) 351 pp. Early in the
conversation Straight asked what I did. I said I was with the CIA; he responded, "Oh, I see," and then we
continued talking about his book. He answered all my questions with apparent candor; I detected no
evasiveness. The conversation led me to a review of the incidents discussed and ultimately this article.
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In November 1934, during his first year reading economics at Cambridge,
Straight joined the University Socialist Society and then, in early 1935, a com-
munist cell. It was at Cambridge that he met Guy Burgess and became friends
with Anthony Blunt as well as a number of others who would serve the Soviet
Union in one way or another. In 1936 he was accepted in the secret Cam-
bridge Conversazione Society, which had been founded by Alfred Lord
Tennyson. In addition to Burgess and Blunt, others in this elite group included
John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forester, and Victor Rothschild; members were
called Apostles. After graduation in 1937 Straight followed the instructions
from the COMINTERN and returned to America, eventually establishing con-
tact with his case officer. He was to hold several government and private
positions before entering the Air Corps in 1942. He did not see any of his
Apostle friends again until after the war when he was editor of the New
Republic. Then he met several times with Guy Burgess, once in Washington
during the Korean war, when Burgess was a second secretary at the British
Embassy. And though Burgess reaffirmed his continuing links to the Soviets,
Straight said nothing. When Burgess defected to Russia two months later with
his Cambridge classmate, fellow spy and diplomat Donald Maclean, Straight
remained silent. When H. A. R. (Kim) Philby went over to the Soviets in
January 1963 and there was talk of still other moles in the British Secret
Intelligence Service, Straight remained silent. Then in June 1963 he learned
that President Kennedy was to nominate him as chairman of the newly
formed Advisory Council on the Arts. The only credential that stood in the
way was the FBI security approval, a necessity for presidential appointments.
Assuming the worst from an investigation, Straight talked. First he talked to
the FBI in 1963 and then, in 1964 he spent many hours with MI-5 detailing his
knowledge of communist activity at Cambridge in the 1930s. His role was kept
from the public until 1981 when it leaked in England. Subsequently, nearly
twenty years after his initial unburdening, he wrote After Long Silence.
These events bound an unusual and fascinating life much of which is
revealed in his memoir. As we talked, several questions which he answers but
does not fully explain in the book, at least from an intelligence viewpoint,
recurred in various forms. They are summarized as follows: Was Michael
Straight, as many journalists and others suggest, a Soviet spy (he says no)? Why
did he wait so long to reveal those he knew to be Soviet spies? Was he a traitor
(again he says no)? And finally, why did he really write the book? Michael
Straight's responses to these and related questions are both provocative and not
completely satisfying even to him, as our conversation and the book made
clear. But they are worth considering; he is the last of the publicly identified
former communists from Cambridge-the only American in the group. Thus
he provides a unique opportunity to acquire insight about this period in the
history of intelligence.
Was Straight a Soviet Spy?
... in the early 1930s, the NKVD ... concentrated ... on recruitment
of young men of influential families. The political climate ... was
very favorable ... the young generation was receptive . . . to the sub-
lime ideas of making the world safe from the menace of fas-
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cism and of abolishing exploitation of man by man. This was the
theme on which the NKVD based their appeal to young men who
were tired of a tedious life in the stifling atmosphere of the privileged
class ... they were told they could be much more useful if they
concealed their political views ... and entered the revolutionary un-
derground. The idea of joining a "secret society" held a strong appeal
At Cambridge, Michael Straight " ... felt ashamed of the privileges that
the students took for granted." (p. 59, ALS') It was a problem he would
continue to live with without effective resolution. He was shocked when he
discovered waiters in the dining hall pocketing food to take home for their
children. Paradoxically, he chose to deal with his relatively excessive affluence
by increasing his own austerity and dismissing his gentleman's gentleman,
apparently not realizing the difficulty he imposed on the gentleman con-
cerned. As a solution for the immediate world problems of fascism and fam-
ine, he turned to the Cambridge communist cell and the Socialist Society. He
was "interested in ideas, (he) wanted to believe."
Straight admits to having been spotted and assessed while attending the
London School of Economics the year prior to Cambridge. He was recruited
and if not trained at least instructed by Anthony Blunt while at Cambridge.
Just before graduation Blunt informed him that it was his duty on behalf of
the COMINTERN to fake a rejection of communism and show symptoms of a
nervous breakdown over the death in the Spanish Civil war of his closest
friend, John Cornford. This behavior would lay the groundwork for his return
to the United States to seek a position on Wall Street where he could be of
service to the COMINTERN. Straight objected to the whole idea; his plans
were to become a British citizen and stand for parliament. Blunt sought guid-
ance from his COMINTERN masters and they were unyielding. He was di-
rected by his control in London to reiterate the instructions and tell Straight
that the issue had been decided by Stalin himself! Since he had not elaborated
this point in the book I asked Straight whether Blunt had actually used Stalin's
name. He declared that "Blunt had indeed, it is not something one forgets."
Then he added that he wondered at the time whether using Stalin's name was
"pure fabrication to encourage me."
Ultimately Straight did as he was ordered, implicitly accepting COMIN-
TERN control, and went home to Washington not Wall Street, a change to
which the COMINTERN agreed. Before Straight left for the States, Blunt
asked him for a "highly personal document." He provided a small drawing.
Blunt tore it in half, giving one part to his recruit and telling him that he-
2 Alexander Orlov, Handbook of Intelligence and Guerrilla Warfare (Michigan, Ann Arbor: University
of Michigan Press, 1963), pp. 108-109.
This abbreviation of After Long Silence will appear throughout the article.
Victor Suvorov, Soviet Military Intelligence (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1984), pp. 19-21. Suvorov
relates an incident which suggests that the use of Stalin's name to induce cooperation was not unusual. He
tells the story of potential German GRU agents who demanded CPSU membership before they would
cooperate. The GRU just issued the cards, adding gratuitously they had been written out by Stalin himself;
the agents were very productive.
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would be contacted in America by someone with the other half. Straight left
Cambridge for Washington in the fall of 1937, having graduated with first
class honors. After visiting the President "in his White House study" and with
the help of Mrs. Roosevelt, he accepted (in late 1937) a position as an unpaid
volunteer in the Office of the Economic Advisor in the State Department. He
found rooms in the same town house as Joseph Alsop with whom he became
friends, went to dinner with Charles Beard, met Dean Acheson, wrote a col-
umn for a congressman which was published in the New York Times, and
began a study of Hitler's ability to wage war.
In late April 1938, Straight received a phone call from someone with a
European accent who said " . . . I bring greetings from your friends in Cam-
bridge University ... " and promptly went to meet the stranger in a nearby
restaurant. This was his first contact with his case officer, Michael Green, who
said he had "mislaid" the other half of the drawing; Straight did not press the
point. When Green suggested he take home and study any interesting docu-
ments that crossed his desk, Straight said no documents were routed to him.
Green replied they would be in time and he was right. (p. 129, ALS)
In early 1939 Straight left State to take a paying job with presidential
advisor Tom Corcoran writing speeches for the President and Democrats in
Congress. In late 1940 he returned briefly to State in a paid position in the
European Division. At that time he mentions (p. 156, ALS) handling a report
on Britain's chances for survival prepared by then Ambassador to the Court of
St. James, Joseph Kennedy, and stamped "STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL,"
which he told me he did not give to Green. But there would be other sensitive
documents coming his way and since his return to State Green's "interest in
(him) was renewed." Thus, he tells us, he resigned for good in early 1941 and
appointed himself Washington editor of the New Republic. Nevertheless,
Straight continued to meet with Green and provided at least one more docu-
ment (a personal memorandum urging the Soviets to give up their revolution-
ary ideology) at their last meeting "early in 1942," when he terminated the
relationship to join the Army. (p. 168, ALS) Straight stressed to me that the
documents he passed were "not classified ... my own opinions ... relatively
harmless ... and all critical of the Soviet Union...." Still, he admits they
included the one on Hitler's war making ability,4 on which Secretary of State
Hull had written "splendid," and for which Acheson had praised him, and
about which Alger Hiss (who was a Soviet spy at the time-Straight said he did
not know it) had called him to his office to discuss various points. More on this
later.
In summary, in the opinion of many reviewers and journalists,s the events
in Michael Straight's life from Cambridge to his final meeting with Green
amount to spying for the Soviet Union, a charge Straight strongly denies.
' William Rusher, "Judiciary Committee Should Probe Michael Straight," Human Events, 12 February
1983, p. 7. Rusher argues that in the late 1930s to say that because he had no access to classified documents
the information passed was harmless is "pure nonsense as anyone knows who has ever worked in Washington.
Classified documents were a dime a dozen in FDR's administration."
5 See for example: Rusher, op. cit., fn #4; Godfrey Hodgson, "Moles and Old School Spies," Washington
Post, 23 January 1983, p. 1, Bookworld; Barrie Penrose and Simon Freeman, "Inside story of an older traitors
circle," The London Sunday Times, 14 November 1982.
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The distinction is in part semantic: a spy, says Webster, is any person who
is employed by a government to clandestinely obtain secret or otherwise
unobtainable material from or information about another country. In one
sense of the word "employ," as in employee, Michael Straight is correct; he
was not a Soviet spy. On the other hand, in the sense of "employ" which
suggests to use or make use of, there is a more apt descriptor-agent. A defi-
nition of agent is provided by Hans Moses,6-a tested source, usually witting,
who has accepted a continuing relationship with a secret service, often on a
contractual basis, and who may receive financial compensation. Moses makes a
further distinction by describing a source under consideration for agent status
as a "contact." In our conversation and in the interview with the Washington
Post 7 this subject was raised directly and Straight applied a different different
definition of agent. He said he was not a Soviet agent because "I never took
any orders." When it was pointed out that he met with Green when asked to
do so, Straight said, "I just acknowledged his presence and didn't repudiate
him. He was aware from the very start that he couldn't give me orders. The
meetings were very irregular and it was just a matter of getting out of a very
awkward situation." He agreed that when Green asked for documents he pro-
vided some but, he said, the document that was praised by Acheson and Hull
(Secretary of State) "was not information;" it just contained his opinions. When
asked why he did not simply stop meeting with Green, Straight replied that it
would have been the equivalent of desertion on the field of battle ... "cutting
all my ties." However comforting, even understandable, this rationale, it does
not change the facts. By his own description of events, allowing for his reluc-
tant cooperation, and regardless of whether the documents provided were
classified, one is obliged to say Michael Straight was once at least a developing
Soviet agent and contact.
There is yet another category of clandestinity into which Straight's rela-
tionship with Soviet intelligence fits rather well as Ernest Cuneo points out in
his reviews It is not surprising, considering the track record of the KGB in this
regard (not only in Britain but in the United States as well), that Straight's
actions also qualify him as an agent of influence; i.e., a person in a position to
sway opinion and/or influence behavior as directed by the case officer. By this
definition, the quality and classification of the initial documents could be as
innocuous as Straight claims, their primary purpose being to cement the rela-
tionship. More important, because of his many contacts with the affluent and
powerful, which included the President, the Secretary of State, Supreme Court
'Hans Moses, "The Clandestine Service of the Central Intelligence Agency," p. 7, a monograph published
by the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, McLean, VA, 1983. Moses also defines an "occasional
source" as one who rarely reports information.
7 Curt Suplee, "Setting the Record Straight," Washington Post, Style section, 24 January 1983, p. B-1. See
also: Duncan Campbell, "Coming Cleanish," New Statesman, March 1983; Campbell takes the opposite
view, "Straight was not a Russian agent (he says; no one has disputed it) ... Nonetheless considering the
amount of blood that appears near the author's hands throughout, he does not emerge in a pleasant light."
" Ernest Cuneo, "After Long Silence: An Appraisal From An Intelligence Standpoint," unpublished
manuscript provided by the author. A sharply edited version of the review appeared as, "The Fatal Silence"
in the Foreign Intelligence Literary Scene, Vol. 2, No. 3, June 1983, pp. 5-6. Mr. Cuneo served as wartime
liaison between the Office of Strategic Services, British Intelligence in the US, and the FBI. In the complete
version Mr. Cuneo discusses at length his views on Straight as an agent of influence.
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Justice Frankfurter, members of the press and Congress, a cousin in the CIA, a
list which would surely grow, Straight was very likely to have been viewed by
Green as a most valuable potential agent of influence.
It should be noted, as Straight explained to me, he was not content with
the situation regarding Green and wanted to extricate himself. He assumed he
was succeeding because there was little pressure and Green was not upset with
the product, even when Straight's memos were critical of the Soviet Union and
he asked that they be sent to Stalin.9 But from Green's position, there is a more
probable explanation for this situation. He was very likely trying to bring
Straight along without losing him. When we remember that the
COMINTERN/NKVD/GRU during that period were very demanding of the
many other agents in Washington and consider what possible pressures might
have been brought to bear on Straight, it is reasonable to assume that the
Soviets were either waiting for the right moment, or that they applied pressure
and Straight did not mention it. To a counterintelligence officer this is a loose
end that requires investigation. to
As a last bit relative to Straight as an agent, I asked him whether he had
been used as a spotter, a point not mentioned in his book. He replied that he
had been asked only once, at the last meeting with Green, and then it was to
recommend a replacement.11 He said he gave Green only one name, Michael
Greenberg (subsequently named by self-confessed Soviet spy Elizabeth Bent-
ley as one of her agents), at one time an aide to presidential assistant Lauchlin
Currie (who was named by both Bentley and Chambers as a Soviet agent).
Straight said that he suspected Greenberg's sympathies were what Green was
looking for.12
In sum, from an intelligence officer's point of view, whether he realized it
or not, Michael Straight was at minimum a contact or developing Soviet agent
and a potential agent of influence-in everyday terms, a spy.
Why The Long Silence?
There is no summary answer to this question. The book leads the reader
to this conclusion through carefully crafted, frequently eloquent, always inter-
esting vignettes of the author's life. One answer, not articulated but strongly
implied, is that he did not think being silent made much difference except to
9 See: Suplee, op. cit., fn #7. Straight told Suplee essentially the same thing.
19 See: Allen Weinstein, Perjury (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978). Although focusing primarily on the
Hiss-Chambers affair, Weinstein recounts the state of espionage in the US from the interwar to the postwar
period of McCarthy. He discusses most of the names mentioned in this article. His source notes and his
bibliography provide a good start for the scholar. Recently released Chambers documents reveal some of the
information he kept from the FBI and did not include in his book, Witness (see fn #12), as insurance against
the Soviets; he knew Walter Krivitsky, see fn #35.
" The likelihood of this happening only once is small viewed from a case officer's perspective in light of
what is known about Soviet intelligence operations. Experience suggests that Straight was either unaware of
the realities or Green was more professional and subtle than Straight realized.
12 See: Whittaker Chambers, Witness (New York: Random House, 1954); Elizabeth Bentley, Out of
Bondage (New York: The Devin-Adair Co., 1951); Weinstein, op. cit., In #10. There is some doubt as to
whether Currie was a member of the CPSU, but these sources document that he was at least a fellow traveler.
Straight said he was unaware of this at the time; apparently Greenberg's links to Currie did not suggest a
similarity of views.
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himself and his friends. That this was his decision to make no one argues. That
he should have acted sooner is a message clearly communicated; why he did
not is worth examining.
When British diplomats Burgess and Maclean defected in 1951, Straight
says, "I was' ready at that moment to tell the authorities all I knew." He went
to see "the British official (he) knew best in Washington," and told him he had
information about Burgess. His friend replied, "My dear fellow, you will have
to take your place at the end of the line. And I should warn you, the line runs
all the way around the block." (p. 252, ALS) After arguing the toss with him-
self, he decided that if he talked, Blunt's role was sure to come out. And since
he believed Blunt had "given up the world of espionage" after World War II
for the world of art history (he then taught at Cambridge, and was Surveyor of
the Queen's Pictures), he rationalized that talking would do little good because
Blunt would, "I was certain, refuse to admit his role." Still, he concludes this
anecdote by saying, "I should have gone to the end of the line and waited
there; I know that. Instead I told myself that Guy was gone forever, and that
Anthony had been rendered harmless. With mixed feelings and uneasiness, I
went back to my own work."
At about the same time a similar experience occurred with Straight's
cousin, "a high official of the Central Intelligence Agency." 13 When this point
came up in the conversation he said that he had been going to tell his story to
Tracey Barnes (at that time a senior operations officer) during lunch at the
Metropolitan club: "I did say I was fearful about infiltration of the British
secret service (in the book he said "Intelligence services"), but he didn't pro-
vide the needed word or gesture of encouragement, he didn't show any inter-
est in what I was trying to say. I let it drop." In his book he was more direct,
" ... I lacked the resolution to carry my impulse through." Aside from the
character implications, the curious thing about these comments is that Burgess
was a diplomat. Why then was Straight talking about intelligence services?
Perhaps he thought that Burgess was really in the secret service.
Sidney Hook, himself a former Marxist and fellow-traveler, challenges
Straight on his resolution with the conviction of the converted, seeing his si-
lence as dedication to the communist cause. Hook states, ". . . he had enough
will to decline, he just wanted to serve the Soviet Union and the world inter-
national communist movement ... a dedicated neophyte." 14 Straight disputes
Hook's point candidly in the Washington Post interview, saying, "I lacked the
will, I lacked the sense of self." But he in turn is challenged by his longtime
liberal friend, Gus Tyler, in an open letter. "Why did it take you so long, then,
to break the long silence?" Tyler asked. "You say to inform runs counter to the
determination that we all share-not to inflict pain on others." Tyler concludes
13 Straight, op. cit., p. 313. I asked Straight whether Green knew about Tracey Barnes and if so if he had
told him. He replied that he certainly had not told him, it "would have been the last thing I would have done,
I was trying to get out of the relationship." He did not know if Green knew; "If he did he never mentioned
14 Sidney Hook, "The Incredible Story of Michael Straight," Encounter, December 1983, Vol. LXI No. 4,
p. 68. Hook's article should be read with caution. He argues that not every communist is a potential espionage
agent and gives the example that someone "with a stutter would be ruled out." How unfortunate that he was
not the one who interviewed Philby (whose stammer was a trademark) for his MI-6 position.
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that this explanation is "so human and rational" that he likens it to the street
code where one does not tell on friends.15
But there were other more practical even more persuasive reasons for
Michael Straight's silence. If he had talked in the late 1940s or early 1950s
about communists in Britain, he risked being called before Senator McCarthy
to talk about himself in Washington. His magazine, his family, his political
ambitions, his friends, would be jeopardized. As he put it, "These were not
easy prospects to face." The social and psychological pressures experienced by
the self-confessed former Soviet agents of the late 1940s, when forced to reveal
the involvement of their friends, certainly inhibited Straight as well.16 For all
these reasons Straight contented himself with remaining silent and attacking
Senator McCarthy in the New Republic.17
Having survived the McCarthy era and built a reputation as a liberal
Democrat, Straight was offered a position as head of President Kennedy's new
art council. This created a dilemma which he could not evade. He concluded
the FBI investigation prerequisite to the job would certainly have turned up
his communist past. Thus his acceptance and silence would risk embarrassing
the administration and jeopardizing the long sought arts program. In the end
he reluctantly asked that his name be withdrawn from consideration. I asked
him why he thought his links to communism would surface if he remained
silent. He replied that on two occasions, one in the United States and one in
Britain, these links had become known to others, though so far overlooked
generally. When he decided to run for Congress from New York City just after
the war, the local Democratic committee was told he had been a communist in
England (he never knew who originated the story). He withdrew and went
back to the New Republic. In Britain, a short biography, which he did not
mention in the book, appeared in the Cambridge magazine GRANTA (1937)
in which he was identified as, inter alia, a communist. Although he could have
given some other reason for not accepting, he chose to end his silence at this
point (June 1963) and give the real reason. Why then? Timing was probably
's Gus Tyler, "An Open Letter to Michael Straight: The Communist Who Wasn't," the New Leader, 21
February 1983, pp. 12-13. Tyler makes the argument that Straight was not really a communist in the true
sense of the word. He was more interested in close friends and helping mankind than in Marxist-Leninist
ideology, and did not know how to deal with the professionals. He points out that Straight was a Keynesian,
not a Marxist economist, that he did not have a party card, or belong to the British Communist Party. Straight
was candid when I mentioned these latter points. He said he was prohibited by law from joining the British
Communist Party until 21 (although he said the really dedicated did so anyway), so rather than join the
Communist Youth League he joined the Cambridge cell which did not issue cards.
16 Weinstein, op. cit., fn #10. During the spy revelations of the late 1940s and early 1950s, most of those
who came forward voluntarily expressed great reluctance to involve others with whom they had worked. But
like Straight they eventually had no choice.
17 Straight had many overt links to known communists and fellow travelers as did those attacked by
McCarthy, but for whatever reasons his name was never mentioned in that connection. He had joined the
American Veterans Committee (AVC) after World War II along with Cord Meyer. Both worked to prevent
a communist takeover of the AVC and both describe the same incidents in their books without mentioning
the other directly. Meyer does allude to one AVC member as having " . . . been a controlled secret agent of
the KGB." Straight told me he was concerned that Meyer meant him, which he said would have been an error.
He wrote Meyer asking for clarification but never received a reply. Ironically, it was Meyer who was
investigated (and cleared) by the Agency for allegedly having had communist friends and associations (though
not involving the AVC). See: Cord Meyer, Facing Reality (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1980), pp.
51-55.
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the main factor. McCarthyism was a bad memory, the Kennedy administra-
tion was likely to be more understanding, and there can be little doubt that he
had long had a troubled conscience. In the event, it was suggested by Arthur
Schlesinger at the White House that he go to the FBI, which he did; Blunt's
days were numbered.
Straight summed up the morality of his position when he told the Wash-
ington Post: "The center of the argument against me so far is that I failed to
do anything with the information I had for twenty-five years, and essentially
that's true. I'm not looking for praise-or justified condemnation. I'm perfectly
happy for people to say I was wrong and weak." 18. Only Gus Tyler saw it
differently.
Was Michael Straight a Traitor?
While he judged the center of the argument against him to be focused on
his long silence, others asked what that silence meant in terms of loyalty to the
United States. These inquiries arose out of his relationship with Guy Burgess,
whom he met at least four times after leaving Cambridge. The first meeting
was at Straight's Olde Towne Alexandria home in 1940; Burgess was in town,
called Straight, and invited himself to dinner. They spoke of their Apostle days
and Burgess asked if Straight could put him in touch with their "friends." He
told Burgess he could not and would not if he could. (p. 142-143, ALS) It is
doubtful either was telling the truth. Burgess did not have to ask Straight, and
Straight knew the emergency number Green had given him. Perhaps a little
sparring; Straight learned Burgess was still associated with Soviet intelligence;
Burgess left not feeling threatened.
It is worth considering what might have happened had Straight reported
his knowledge to the FBI at that time (1940). Walter Krivitsky (who defected
from the GRU in 1937) had told the British of a Soviet agent who was a British
citizen working for the Times in Spain during the civil war, and of two other
Soviet agents who were in the British Foreign Service. Krivitsky did not know
the agents' names and the British did not put it together, although they had the
facts. Had MI-5 been alerted by Straight and reacted with an investigation of
Burgess, Blunt, and Klugman, this would have led to others like Maclean and
Alan Nunn May (Cambridge University scientist and one of the atom-bomb
spies caught after the war), and in the process to Philby particularly in light of
his service as a Times correspondent in Spain. In that case, Philby could not
have passed to the Soviets the MI-6 organizational material during the war.
And more important, neither Philby nor Blunt could have informed the
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Soviets of the ULTRA intercept intelligence from Bletchley Park.19 When
Straight finally did tell the British in 1964 they told him that it was the first
hard evidence they had obtained on Blunt and the others he named, although
many had been under suspicion, including Blunt. Whether the FBI would
have taken action in 1940 is open to conjecture. There is precedent to indicate
a slow reaction. In 1939 former Soviet spymaster Whittaker Chambers first
told his story (implicating Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, and more than
twenty other highly placed administration officials as known communists) to
Assistant Secretary of State Adolph Berle in the presence of journalist Isaac
Don Levine. It was four years before Berle turned the report over to the FBI
and another three before the FBI did anything.20
The second Straight-Burgess meeting occurred in London in 1947 when
Straight was accompanying Vice President Henry Wallace on his trip to Eu-
rope and Burgess showed up "uninvited" at a party. Again they talked of
intelligence but this time more specifically espionage involving former col-
leagues; Burgess said he was "about to leave the government for good." (p. 209.
ALS) If Straight had talked at this point it could still have reduced the peace-
time intelligence damage inflicted by Burgess, et. al. As to personal risk, con-
ceivably MI-5 would have kept his role quiet, especially when the significance
of his contribution became apparent. Both the Americans and the British knew
there was a serious leak in the British Embassy in Washington, but they knew
little else. They did not suspect that Burgess had blackmailed Maclean (in
1944), with pictures, into taking the post as first secretary at the British Em-
bassy in Washington where he also served until 1948 as secretary of the joint
Nuclear Commission with a no-escort badge to the Atomic Energy Comission;
Maclean was the leak. Furthermore, had Straight acted then Philby's role
would very likely have been revealed; then he could not have betrayed the
agents in Albania and Eastern Europe, among others. And of course Blunt
would have been burned, too, and as he later did in return for immunity, give
evidence against the others. But it does not appear that Straight long contem-
1fl Andrew Boyle, Climate of Treason (London: Coronet Books, 1980), pp. 279-281. Boyle discusses how
strongly Philby felt that the Soviets should be given the "Bletchley intercepts." What Boyle did not know,
and what Cambridge Professor F. H. Hinsley told me during a discussion in 1981, was that Anthony Blunt
had formal knowledge of ULTRA and presumably he informed the Soviets. Hinsley thinks Philby had formal
knowledge of the Abwehr intercepts only, but probably put "two and two together" regarding an expanded
capability at Bletchley, giving the Soviets another source. Hinsley served as liaison officer between Bletchley
Park and Whitehall during the war, one of very few who had knowledge of the collection and use of ULTRA.
Note: this edition of Boyle's book contains data about Blunt that was censored in the hardbound English and
American versions; the latter was titled, The Fourth Man. Chapman Pincher, in Too Secret Too Long (New
York: St. Martin's Press, 1984) states that British scientist R. V. Jones "assured" him that Philby had "complete
details" of the ULTRA decrypts and told the Soviets "everything'.' p. 297.
2? Weinstein, op. cit., p. 64, 328-9. Berle told the President promptly, but he (the President) dismissed it
as unfounded rumor. Note: Until the end of World War It the FBI was mainly interested in bank robbers
and Germans. By the time Straight went to the FBI (1963), communists were more important and Hoover
did not tell MI-5 about Straight's knowledge although he did convey the impression he was well informed
about British spies. They found out informally from a Hoover antagonist, William Sullivan, about seven
months after the fact and then made a formal request. See: Straight, op. cit., p. 324; Sanford J. Unger, FBI
(Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1976), pp. 100-106.
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plated this alternative. Did he accept E. M. Forster's precept that, "betraying
one's friend is worse than betraying one's country?" 21
In 1949 when Straight was in London again, he "happened" to meet
Burgess for the third time, on the street near Whitehall. Burgess asked him to
attend an Apostle reunion later that night; he accepted.22 Blunt was also at the
reunion and he asked Straight to meet with him and Burgess the next day. At
this meeting, again the subject was in part espionage with the primary purpose
of determining whether they could rely on Straight to remain silent. Blunt said
that he had left the government for art history. Burgess left the impression he
"was still engaged in espionage," although he again suggested he would leave
the foreign office shortly. At one point Burgess asked him, "Are you still with
us?" Straight says he replied, "You know that I am not," but he did acknowl-
edge that he was "not totally unfriendly" as demonstrated by his presence.
Upon reflection, Straight concluded that "it was a weak, evasive answer; the
sort I habitually gave when I faced a confrontation of some kind. It reflected
my continuing inability to force an issue, to resolve a conflict, to make an
enemy of another individual, and in this instance, to break completely with
my own past." (p. 229-230, ALS) It should be noted that Straight was least
likely to speak out at this time when anti-communist fever was peaking in the
US.23
The critical (to this discussion) fourth meeting occurred in Washington in
March 1951, when Straight again encountered Burgess "accidentially," this
time outside the British Embassy. Burgess said he had been working at the
embassy in Washington on "Far Eastern affairs" since October 1950, a few
months after the Korean War started. Straight says he realized that Burgess
would have told the Soviets about US plans to advance into North Korea, and
his spying " . . . could have caused the deaths of many American soldiers." He
said to Burgess, "You must have known about our plans." Yes, Burgess said.
"Everyone knew about them ... including the Chinese." He added that the
Chinese tried to warn the US not to get too close to the Yalu, but MacArthur,
Acheson, and the CIA said it was a bluff. Then Straight reminded Burgess that
he had said he was leaving the government in 1949; Burgess replied that
"they" insisted that he accept this posting. Straight responded that being at
war, " ... if you aren't out of the government within a month from now, I
swear to you, I'll turn you in." (pp. 249-251) This exchange, when revealed in
the book, was taken to mean that if the Chinese had not known our plans in
21 Boyle, op. cit., pp. 252-334.
22I asked Mr. Straight if he had known about the reunion prior to meeting Burgess. He said he had
probably received an invitation several months previously, but had forgotten about it because he had not then
thought he would be in Britain. He said he was reluctant to go even then because he was not anxious to see
either Burgess or Blunt. He added that the Apostles still exist and have annual meetings. The current president
is an Oxford man. Straight said he has not been to a reunion since the one in 1949.
23 Weinstein, op. cit., pp. 3-69; H. Montgomery Hyde, The Atom Bomb Spies (New York: Atheneum,
1980). These citations provide a good start toward an appreciation of the causes and nature of the public and
official atmosphere of the period.
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advance, American lives would have been saved and this brought forth cries of
treason.24
William Safire attacked Straight on this point in his column, calling Bur-
gess a "top Soviet agent." 25 But despite his concern about Burgess' spying
mentioned above, Straight replied in a letter to the Times 26 that "far from
being the top Soviet agent, Burgess was a minor and discredited official with no
access to highly sensitive material." Straight does not indicate how he knew
Burgess' level of access and his assessment is complicated by the fact that while
Burgess was indeed considered by most Americans and British as disreputable,
he was still selected as Anthony Eden's escort while Eden was in Washington
(for which he received a personal note of thanks) and allowed access to classi-
fied material.27 Pat Buchanan, on his radio show (March 1983), said neither
Burgess' reputation nor his position in the agent hierarchy makes any differ-
ence; Straight should have turned him in as a matter of loyalty and let the FBI
worry about the problem, period!
I asked Straight about these articles and several others which appeared at
the same time on both sides of the Atlantic, and the apparent contradiction
between what he wrote in the book about concern over American lives and
what he said to Safire about Burgess being only a discredited official. He ex-
plained that his initial estimate of Burgess' role had changed and recently been
confirmed by an article in the London Sunday Telegraph 28 which quoted "a
reliable Soviet source" as stating that Donald Maclean claimed he had revealed
to Stalin every significant decision on the war including the one where Presi-
dent Truman told Prime Minister Attlee the US would respect China's borders
and not use the A-bomb in the Korean War. At the time of the Truman-Attlee
meeting (December 1951) Maclean headed the American desk in the British
Foreign Office and would have been privy to the intelligence.29 From this
information, Straight inferred that Burgess was not involved and thus that he
(Straight) had not, as he once thought and others now claimed, done damage to
the country by keeping silent. But had Straight acted then, he might still have
prevented the defection of Burgess, Maclean, and Philby.
Clearly then, Straight's silence was extremely costly insofar as it delayed
the breaking up of the Cambridge spy ring. While acknowledging the many
24 See for example: P. H. Terzian, "Michael Straight's Listless Ambition," The American Spectator, June
1983; Michiko Kakutani, "Books of the Times," the New York Times, 15 February 1983, C-13; Curtis Carroll
Davis, "Recriminations of a fellow traveler," Christian Science Monitor, 30 May 1983.
25 William Safire, The Straight Story," New York Times, 6 January 1983, p. A-27.
26 Michael Straight, letter to the editor, New York Times, dated 7 January 1983.
27 Boyle, op. cit., p. 379.
28 John Miller, in Moscow; "Maclean coup in Korea war," London Sunday Telegraph, 20 March 1983.
Miller reported that Maclean, who had died a few days earlier, boasted to Miller's Soviet source that his spying
for Russia dictated the course and outcome of the Korean war. Miller also noted that George Blake, another
British spy for the Soviets who defected after escaping from jail, was at Maclean's funeral, but Kim Philby
was not.
29 Boyle, op. cit., pp. 384-5. After Maclean defected a numbered copy of the Prime Minister's account of
his meeting with President Truman regarding Korea and the A-bomb was found in his personal files.
Curiously, on page 387 Boyle labels Maclean the "prime suspect in mid 1950s" and on page 384 he refers to
the "still unsuspected Maclean" in April 1951.
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"ifs" involved, he had at least four key opportunities (which he sensed) to
break his silence, each of which could have made a tremendous difference to
the history of intelligence.
With regard to the impact of any intelligence passed by the ring on the
Truman-Attlee meeting, the US decision to cross the 38th parallel, and the
Chinese decision to use troops in North Korea, the evidence suggests that it was
nil. Joseph Goulden, in his study of the Korean War, documents that the
Chinese decision to use troops in North Korea was in effect made by the
United States when it crossed the 38th parallel. China had prepared for this
contingency and, as Burgess told Straight, had warned the US and Britain what
would happen in the event they proceeded. The US decisions to cross the 38th
parallel, to limit UN troops near the Yalu to South Koreans (which MacArthur
disregarded), and not to invade China were made before Burgess arrived in
Washington. If they were reported to Stalin by Philby or Maclean, as they very
likely were, this could have made Stalin's support of China's decision to use its
troops in North Korea less risky. But, according to Adam Ulam and Dean
Acheson,3? it is doubtful Stalin would have held back the Chinese if he had not
known; he did know the UN would not support fighting in China and there
was ample evidence the US wanted to avoid it also. As to the Truman-Attlee
meeting and Truman's "decision" not to use the A-bomb, the record indicates
this was more a gesture to Attlee than a firm policy commitment. The Presi-
dent later moved atomic weapons to Asia; the Chinese knew it at the time and
that may have affected truce negotiations. The A-bomb decision could not
have affected the Chinese decision to intervene since they did so the month
before it was made.31 If Straight had spoken up any time prior to 1951, it
would have had little effect on the Korean War, although he did not know it at
the time.
"Can Michael Straight fairly be called a traitor?" asks Safire. "Not
really," he says, "because no purpose or passion guided his double life." For a
semanticist like Safire, this is a spongy criterion for such a crucial question. Of
course, by his definition he is correct. Straight counters, and he too is right by
his definition, that he is not a traitor in the sense the Constitution uses the
term; he did not give aid and comfort to the enemy, nor did he commit an
overt treacherous act in the present of two witnesses.
This brings us to the final two aspects of this issue which remain to be
considered; one definitional the other operational. First, the word "traitor" has
meaning outside the Constitution-in Webster's dictionary-a kind of every-
day definition: "one who betrays another's trust or is false to an obligation or
duty." In this context, regardless of the nature of the material passed to Green
3? Adam Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence, 2d. ed. (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1974), p. 529. See also:
Dean Acheson, Present At the Creation (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1969), pp. 443-45.
31 Joseph C. Goulden, Korea (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1982), pp. 245, 280-285, 416-417.
Goulden cites a sensitive CIA report (now declassified) received at the White House less than seventy-two
hours after Truman told Attlee he would not use the A-bomb, as an indication that the Soviets knew of the
decision (it also indicated there were leaks on both sides). Note: the documents on the Truman-Attlee A-bomb
issue and Truman's movement of A-bombs to the Far East were found in the Truman Library by history
professor Roger Dingman of the University of Southern California. He is writing a book on Truman and
MacArthur which treats this point.
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or the informality of his relationship to the State Department, there was an
implicit obligation of loyalty which Straight did not honor. But from Straight's
point of view, this definition is not helpful for other reasons; i.e., to speak
sooner would have betrayed the trust of his friends at Cambridge, been false to
his obligation (if he had no obligation he would not have met with Green) to
the COMINTERN, and put himself at risk at the height of the cold war. Any
way he would lose; he chose the only alternatives to disclosure-delay and
procrastination. Nevertheless, even in 1937-42 it was wrong, if not traitorous,
to betray the trust of the State Department by dealing secretly with Soviet
intelligence.
As to the operational or counterintelligence (CI) context of treason, the
concern is not so much with treason itself, but rather its obverse, the agent
behavior that is the essential central element in cases which lead to charges of
espionage or treason. Thus if we view After Long Silence as a exercise in
counterintelligence, different questions arise. In the abstract, for example, with
whom did the agent associate and what was the nature of the relationship?; are
there patterns of activity that cannot be adequately explained?; what is his
world view, his background?; what are his objectives and motivations? In the
case of Michael Straight, we find most of these topics treated in some length in
the book but not from a CI viewpoint. As a consequence some puzzles remain
and two will be mentioned here. William Safire noted one:
Another puzzler: Some time after Michael Straight left his post as
editor of the New Republic in the mid-50s, the magazine hired H. A.
R. Philby to write a series of articles, spanning 28 months, about the
Middle East ... the Soviet spy wrote nine pieces in 1957-58 ... (Safire
finds it interesting) that of all the publications in American journalism,
the New Republic-founded by Michael Straight's family-was the
one that became the outlet of, and cover for, the Soviet spy intimately
linked to Mr. Burgess and Mr. Blunt.32
At the time of these articles, Philby was not a well known journalist. Yet
his name was prominently displayed on the cover of at least three issues of the
New Republic.33 In the 9 September 1957 issue, the Philby piece is preceded
by a note which says, "The editors (emphasis mine) of the New Republic
addressed some further questions to Mr. Philby ... " Now, while it is true as
Safire indicated that Straight left his post as editor in April 1956 (judging by
the masthead), it is also true that he remained as editor-at-large until Septem-
ber 1958, and as a contributing editor from then until January 1963. Thus he
could have exerted some influence on the choice of Philby. But since he must
have known Philby had been the target of press speculation that he was the
"third man" who tipped off Burgess and Maclean in time to defect 34 (although
officially denied in 1955), why would Straight help Philby unless obligated to
do so? Straight told me he had no contact with nor did he know or even hear
32 William Safire, "Straight Story (II)," New York Times, 17 February 1983, p. A-31
a3 H. A. R. Philby, "Letter from the Middle East," the New Republic, 9 September 1957, pp. 14-15; H.
A. R. Philby, "Saudi Arabia-A Correspondent's Report," the New Republic, 1 April 1957, pp. 7-8; H. A. R.
Philby, "What Obsesses the Arab," the New Republic, 7 October 1957, pp. 8-9.
34 34. Boyle, op. cit., pp. 443-447.
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of Philby until after Burgess' defection. Granted the truth of this statement,
the reason why the New Republic hired Philby remains open. In sum, these
facts would stimulate a CI officer to consider Straight as a potential agent of
influence in this matter. In the process he would have to deal with the data
which follow.
Straight and Philby both went to Cambridge (Philby left in 1933, Straight
arrived in 1934), to the same college, Trinity; both read economics and had the
same tutor; they had many of the same friends (two in particular besides
Burgess; John Cornford and James Klugman were close friends of Straight's
and sponsored him to join them in the communist cell there). Straight and
Philby both were members of the Cambridge Union Socialist Society (CUSS),
of which Philby was treasurer in his final year. In November of 1934 when
Straight joined the CUSS he attended the meetings regularly. (p. 60, ALS)
Philby returned to Cambridge in 1934 to address the CUSS, but I was unable
to determine just when. Straight told me he does not remember the event. This
of course is possible. He was newly arrived, Cambridge had over a thousand
undergraduates and was a club- and group-oriented institution in 1934. Still,
these common links should be clarified.
Continuing a similar line of thought, still from the CI point of view, one
must ask: Were the three "coincidental" meetings Straight had with Burgess
really coincidence or were they planned (perhaps without Straight's knowl-
edge) to pass instructions, make requests, activate a sleeper for a specific task?
However outrageous and unjust this might seem to Straight, the question must
be addressed. We know the NKVD/GRU/COMINTERN took advantage of
people like Straight if they could. They were experts at using agents of influ-
ence and they employed sleepers to be activated as required; Burgess, Mac-
lean, Philby, and Blunt had all experienced this status. Moreover they were
persistent and capable of pressure to the extent of executing uncooperative
agents and even former case officers.35 It is possible then that the fourth meet-
ing (and perhaps earlier ones) with Burgess was operational and used to desig-
nate another contact for Straight since Burgess planned to leave soon; it could
have been Philby. Burgess was living with Philby at the time. Is it reasonable
to assume that Burgess would not have contacted Straight (a fellow Apostle)
socially, as Straight claims, if there had not been an official requirement pre-
venting him? Did Straight not know Burgess was stationed in Washington?
They both had acquaintances in common (e.g., Joseph Alsop). After consider-
ing these questions the likelihood of Straight's influencing Philby's contract
with the New Republic, at the behest of the Soviets, Philby, or others, is less
remote. While this is just speculation, one precedent for enlisting help of this
kind from former agents involved Anthony Blunt, cousin of Britain's queen
mother. Blunt resigned from MI-5 and was "allowed" to leave the NKVD by
the Soviets after World War II to pursue art history. But when Burgess and
Maclean defected he was activated first by the NKVD to draft and help im-
3S Alexander Orlov, Handbook of Intelligence and Guerrilla Warfare. See also Weinstein, Perjury and
Walter Krivitsky, in Stalin's Secret Service (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1939). Krivitsky was
found shot to death on 10 February 1941 in the Hotel Bellevue in Washington. The death was ruled a suicide.
But Krivitsky had told friends that if he were found dead under conditions which looked like suicide, not to
believe it.
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plement their escape plan, and then by an "old boy" in MI-5 to help search
Burgess' rooms. In the process of the latter cooperation he pocketed letters
damaging to himself.36 Now if Blunt could be called on when needed, why
could not Straight?
Overall, there can be little doubt that Michael Straight was false to an
obligation and duty to his country. In the process he has left us with many
unanswered questions, one more of which will be dealt with here.
Why Did He Write The Book?
He did not have to. He does not need the money. In response to the
newspaper articles and telephone calls he could have said nothing, just let the
turmoil dissipate. If he wanted to clarify the circumstances for his grandchil-
dren (as he indicated to one author), why not just write them a letter, or talk to
them? 37 If he was compelled to go public, why not just an article? Straight
knew too that writing the book would subject him to the criticism of the press,
and yet he did it, a real self-inflicted wound. But he was not without support.
When the book first came out, Straight told me, John Kenneth Galbraith called
him to say he was glad he had written it because the 1930s are a period we
should know more about today.38
To put this question another way, if he had to say anything, would it not
have been smarter to have omitted mention of any contact with the COMIN-
TERN and Green? Why did he ever tell the FBI about this aspect in the first
place? There is no indication from Straight that anyone else might have told
the FBI. His decision to tell as much as he did supports several explanations.
First, one could conclude that he told the whole truth, sloppy tradecraft and
all, to purge his conscience, knowing it would force upon him an accredited
victim status. Second, with his family's support, Straight tells us he was com-
pelled to "write his own epitaph" rather than live with the erroneous inter-
pretations from journalists like Britain's Chapman Pincher and Nigel West
who published their own descriptions of these events. 39Third, as many review-
ers have pointed out, there could be complex psychological explanations (sug-
gested by Straight's comments in the book) which may be right but do not
provide any way of telling, and therefore tend to be dismissed perhaps un-
justly. Finally, some combination of these possibilities may be the answer, but
more likely there is no guillotine finality here. In my view, although I confess
to a juggler's confidence on this issue, aside from the fact that spy stories sell
and that the book is an intensely personal and well written account of recent
3' Boyle, op. cit., p. 415.
3' Straight did record an oral history for Columbia University, but it cannot be heard nor can the transcript
be read until after his death. Source: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York, oral history collection,
Miss Geri Nunn.
3" Knowing that Galbraith had done graduate work at Cambridge, Straight asked him if he had been
tempted by the communists. Galbraith replied that he had indeed and would have joined like everyone else
but his studies took too much time. Galbraith added that Arthur Koestler had told him that he should have
joined because one tends to diminish the severity of the problem unless one has experienced it.
39 Chapman Pincher, Their Trade Is Treachery (London: Sidgwick & Johnson Ltd., 1981); Nigel West,
The Circus: MI-5 Operations 1945-1972 (New York: Stein & Day/Publishers, 1983). This edition of West's
book has a few items that were censored from the British edition, called A Matter of Trust.
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controversial times, there is another message in After Long Silence: while
Straight's perspective and perception are unique, what he experienced is not.
It could happen again. Clearly the results of the Soviet penetration efforts in
the 1930s, particularly those related to foreign policy and the intelligence
profession, were catastrophic. Not only in Britain, but in America too. During
the period discussed above, twenty-five British subjects and fifty-seven Amer-
icans were discovered working for the Soviets.40 There is adequate precedent
for believing the KGB/GRU will continue what has worked well in the past.
Read in this context, After Long Silence is a good case study where what
is not presented is as important as what is. Whether or not one accepts
Straight's interpretation of specific events, the general description of the times
he presents can be verified. Knowledge of how the communist movement
operated can diminish the likelihood of successful repetition. It provides a
basis for analyzing the present while illuminating some of the motivations and
events which created it. Furthermore, it makes us appreciate the power of the
ideological recruitment of idealists. If this be in part why Straight wrote his
book, he has done a service. As to Michael Straight himself, no semantic con-
trivances can avoid the conclusion to which he guides us; as both man and
agent he was too gullible, too idealistic, too self-serving, and too long silent.
40 Peter Hennesy and Alasdair Palmer, "Good Year for a Mole Mania Revival," the London Times, 15
February 1983. Note: not all the British spies came from Cambridge, though most of those caught studied
there. In the United States the communists worked hard to recruit members and fellow-travelers at the best
universities; publicly identified examples include; Donald and Alger Hiss (the latter took his undergraduate
degree at Johns Hopkins), and Lauchlin Currie and Noel Field; Harvard. Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth
Bentley went to Columbia; Stanford graduated Harry Dexter White (who also attended Harvard).
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From arm's length to love-hate
THE INTELLIGENCE-POLICY RELATIONSHIP*
STAT
If we in intelligence were one day given three wishes, they would be
to know everything, to be believed when we spoke, and in such a way
to exercise an influence to the good in the matter of policy. But absent
the Good Fairy, we sometimes get the order of our unarticulated
wishes mixed. Often we feel the desire to influence policy and per-
haps just stop wishing there. This is too bad, because to wish simply
for influence can, and upon occasion does, get intelligence to the place
where it can have no influence whatever. By striving too hard in this
direction, intelligence may come to seem just another policy voice,
and an unwanted one at that.
In the catechism of the intelligence officer, the thesis that intelligence is
and should be strictly separate from policy is taken as axiomatic. It is as hal-
lowed in the theology of intelligence as the doctrine of the separation of
church and state is in the US Constitution. For much of our early history we
tended to view intelligence somewhat self-righteously as objective, disinter-
ested, and dispassionate, and to regard policy somewhat disdainfully as
slanted, adulterated, and politicized. And we strove mightily to maintain the
much-touted arm's length relationship with policy, believing that proximity to
policy would corrupt the independence of our intelligence judgments. Indeed,
legend has it that members of the Board of National Estimates of the 1950s
and 1960s systematically discouraged analysts and estimators from going
downtown to have lunch with policymakers, for fear that such exposure would
make them policy advocates and tempt them to serve power rather than truth.
Whatever the validity of this legend, such strictures were quite in keeping
with the traditional view of a proper intelligence-policy relationship. By en-
forcing this kind of rigorous separation, the old Board no doubt hoped to
protect the policy neutrality of intelligence; what it did, of course, was to
impose a splendid isolation upon intelligence that assured its eventual policy
irrelevance. The vanishing applause for its product coming from the policy
side caused intelligence to reexamine its assumptions, and a new, unconven-
tional wisdom came to be heard. Its message was that our faith in the arm's
length relationship was misplaced, that no such relationship really ever existed,
and that close ties between intelligence and policy are not only inevitable, but
essential if the policymaker's needs are to be served.
Adapted from a presentation at the "Conference on Intelligence: Policy and Process" at the United States
Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, June 1984.
" "Estimates and Influence," originally presented in London, September 1966, subsequently published in
Foreign Service Journal, XLVI, (April 1969).
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A new way of thinking about intelligence and policy began to emerge,
seeing the two communities as awkwardly entangled and intertwined in what
might be described as a competitive and often conflicting symbiotic relation-
ship. Thomas Hughes put it most aptly, when he spoke of the relationship "as
a two-way search: of intelligence in search of some policy to influence and of
policy in search of some intelligence for support." * Suddenly, out is the com-
forting illusion that intelligence stands outside of and above the policy fray;
that it can load its analytic and estimative ammunition on its wagon and let
the wagon roll down in the general direction of the battle without worrying
where it will come to rest, whether the ammunition is of the right caliber and
how it will be used-to say nothing of whether someone might shoot it back.
And in is the less comfortable notion that intelligence, if it is to be at all
relevant to policy, is very much a participant in the battle; that it must be
attuned to the strategy and tactics being pursued; and that it is by no means
invulnerable to being seesawed and whiplashed in the sociopolitical tug of war
known as the policymaking process.
How this process unfolds in the real world and the intricate ways in which
intelligence interacts with it have, within the past decade, been the subject of
some first-rate analytic writing. Three contributions to this intelligence-foreign
policy literature are particularly worthy of note:
1. One is the observation, vividly illustrated by Thomas Hughes," that
the intelligence community is no more a unitary actor than the policy com-
munity; that it should be seen, rather, as a hydra-headed agglomoration of
competing institutions often at odds with each other, and not necessarily in
predictable patterns. Observing the budgetary, organizational, and substantive
struggles within this community, Hughes notes that
the cross-cutting complexities were striking: position disputes within
agencies, alliances shifting with issues, personal strayings from organ-
izational loyalties, hierarchical differences between superiors and sub-
ordinates, horizontal rather than vertical affinities, and much ad hoc
reaching for sustenance somewhere outside. Thus, while the struggles
within the intelligence community sometimes mirrored simultaneous
struggles in the larger policy community, they did so by no means
invariably and never symmetrically.
It should not be astonishing, therefore, to find that policymakers perceive the
intelligence process with as much ambivalence and suspicion as intelligence
makers perceive the policy process and that the interactions among them tend
to be contentious and rivalrous. To quote again from Hughes:
Tom Hughes deserves great credit for being the first, and surely most articulate iconoclast toppling the
old conventional wisdom. His two Farewell Lectures as departing Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and
Research of the Department of State in July 1969 contain the above quotation. The Lectures were
subsequently reprinted in Thomas L. Hughes, The Fate of Facts in a World of Men-Foreign Policy and
Intelligence-Making (New York: Foreign Policy Association, Headline Series No. 233, December 1976).
Thomas L. Hughes, The Power to Speak and the Power to Listen" in Thomas M Frank and others,
eds., Secrecy and Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford University Press 1974), p. 15
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Viewed from above by the ranking policymakers, the intelligence
community often seemed cumbersome, expensive, loquatious, prob-
ing, querulous, and at times axe-grinding. Viewed from below by the
intelligence experts, the policy community often seemed determined
to ignore evidence plainly before it-or (even worse) to mistake the
intelligence managers for the experts. Viewed from in between at the
intelligence-policy interface, it looked like controlled chaos-and not
surprisingly, for here was where means and ends were brokered, ju-
risdictional rivalries compromised, contentious controversies
delineated.'
2. Another is the thesis, persuasively argued by Richard Betts," that
intelligence failures, so-called, are more often than not policy failures; or to
put it more gently, that it is usually impossible to disentangle intelligence
failures from policy failures, since (intelligence) analysis and (policy) decisions
are interactive rather than sequential processes. Betts sees the intelligence role
as seeking "to extract certainty from uncertainty and to facilitate coherent
decision in an incoherent environment." In seeking to reduce uncertainty,
intelligence is often forced to extrapolate from evidence that is riddled with
ambiguities. Inability to resolve these ambiguities leads to intelligence prod-
ucts that oversimplify reality and fail to alert the policy consumers of these
products to the dangers that lurk within the ambiguities. Critical mistakes are
consequently made by policymakers who, faced with ambiguities, will substi-
tute wishful thinking and their own premises and preconceptions for the as-
sessments of professional analysts. As Betts puts it:
Because it is the job of decision-makers to decide, they cannot react to
ambiguity by deferring judgment.... When a welter of fragmentary
evidence offers support to various interpretations, ambiguity is ex-
ploited by wishfulness. The greater the ambiguity, the greater the
impact of preconceptions.
3. A third example is the recent revelation by a former Chief of Israeli
Military Intelligence and Advisor to the Israeli Prime Minister, Yehoshafat
Harkabi,"" that the tensioned and ambivalent relationship between intelli-
gence and policy is not a uniquely American phenomenon.
These dilemmas and foibles of the intelligence-policy interface are hardly
novel or startling to seasoned intelligence practitioners, especially those senior
officers charged with "brokering" the intelligence-policy relationship-the
communicators and interactors who reside in the twilight zone between intel-
ligence and policy. For them, this is familiar terrain. As managers and stimu-
lators of intelligence production, they know with what difficulty a crisp, lucid
analytic product is extracted from a dissentious community; as participants in
Idem, P.19
Richard K. Betts, "Analysis, War and Decision: Why Intelligence Failures are Inevitable," World
Politics, XXXI (October 1978)
"' Idem, p. 70
Yehoshafat Harkabi, The Intelligence-Policymaker Tangle," in The Jerusalem Quarterly, Number
30, Winter 1984. (The article was reprinted in the Summer 1984 issue of Studies in Intelligence, Volume 28,
Number 2.)
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the interagency policy process, they observe with what ease that product can
be selectively utilized, tendentiously summarized, or subtly denigrated. But
for these privileged practitioners who move readily from the world of analysis
to the world of action, familiarity with policy does not breed contempt.
Rather, an appreciation of the murky and frenetic policy environment tends to
evoke a certain sympathy for the policymakers' plight.
Such knowledgeable, involved practitioners, however, represent only a
very small fraction of the intelligence population. The vast majority of that
population-collectors, operators and analysts-is essentially isolated from the
hurly-burly of the policy process. The intelligence services at large, therefore,
are often mystified and frustrated by the policymakers' perennial unhappiness
with their product. Given this puzzlement, it seems worthwhile to try to delve
a little more deeply into the reasons for the unhappiness.
The View from the Bridge
It should be clear from what has been said that policy does not speak with
a single voice. Policies have multiple authors. The numerous players who take
part in policy formulation differ in temperament, education and experience, as
well as in personal and institutional loyalties. Their attitudes toward intelli-
gence, therefore, and their propensity to accept or reject its assessments will
also vary widely. Nevertheless, although generalizations are always hazardous,
we can discern some common attributes and concerns of policymakers, espe-
cially the "national security principals" '-the key players at the highest levels
of government-that predispose them to react to intelligence offerings in pre-
dictable ways.
First, it is well to remember that the key decision makers are political
leaders who have risen to their positions by being decisive, aggressive, and
self-confident rather than reflective, introspective, and self-doubting. They at-
tribute their success at least in part to their tried and proven ways of thinking,
their simplified models and paradigms that explain to them what makes the
world go 'round. They often regard themselves as their own best analysts and
hence tend to be distrustful of the untested and often counterintuitive judg-
ments of the intelligence professionals.
Second, they have a strong vested interest in the success of their policies
and.will, therefore, be disproportionately receptive to intelligence that "sup-
ports" these policies. They bear the burdens of great responsibility and find
themselves perpetually embattled with a host of critics, competitors, and op-
ponents, all eagerly looking for chinks in their armor. They thrive on optimists
and boosters, but encounter mostly alarmists and carping critics.
Festooned in this way, and operating in so hostile an environment, these
highest level consumers of intelligence can hardly be blamed for responding to
its product with something less than boundless enthusiasm. In fact, it can be
documented that every President since Eisenhower, and virtually every Sec-
retary of State since Acheson, has expressed dissatisfaction and irritation with
They include, at a minimum, the President, Vice President, National Security Advisor, Secretary of
State, and Secretary of Defense.
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intelligence analysis, either in his memoirs or in public or semipublic state-
ments. The best-remembered and widely quoted expostulation was reported to
have been delivered by Lyndon Johnson to his Director of Central Intelligence
at a White House dinner:
Policymaking is like milking a fat cow. You see the milk coming out,
you press more and the milk bubbles and flows, and just as the bucket
is full, the cow with its tail whips the bucket and all is spilled. That's
what CIA does to policymaking.'
Is intelligence at fault for creating this unhappiness? Should it alter its
ways to court greater popularity? Or is the problem integral and endemic to
the intelligence-policy relationship? The answers to these questions may be-
come clearer as we look at some of the concrete ways in which the frictions
arise.
Why Policy Resents Intelligence: Five Ways to be Unpopular
Presidents and their senior advisors will be unhappy with intelligence
when it is not supportive of their policies. They will feel particularly frustrated
when:
1. Intelligence fails to reduce uncertainty-
Policymakers operate under a burden of pervasive uncertainty, much of
it threatening the viability of their policies. They are forever hopeful that
someone will relieve them of some of this uncertainty, and so they look to
intelligence for what common sense tells them should be reserved to augury
and divination. Forecasting, to be sure, is the life's blood of the intelligence
estimator. But there is a world of difference between a forecast (an analytic
judgment resting on carefully defined assumptions) and an oracular prophecy
(secured by divine inspiration). Unfortunately, much of what is expected of
intelligence by policymakers lies in this latter realm.
A good example is the perennial complaint that intelligence failed to
predict a coup d'etat-a coercive regime change or palace uprising-but, of
course, a coup is typically a conspiratorial act that depends for its success on
preservation of absolute secrecy. If intelligence gets wind of such an event, it
means that secrecy has been compromised and the coup is almost certain to
fail.
Intelligence forecasting is actually done quite respectably by the commu-
nity, and can be of real value to the thoughtful policy analyst. When it stays
within its legitimate bounds of identifying and illuminating alternative out-
comes, assigning subjective probabilities to them, and exploring their possible
implications for US policy, the decision maker is well served. But he will rarely
think so. For such a forecast, rather than narrowing uncertainty, will make
him aware of the full range of uncertainty he faces and make his calculations
harder rather than easier. Indeed, much intelligence estimation is and must be
Henry Brandon, The Retreat of American Power (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1973), p. 103.
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of this nature. Precisely because it seeks to reflect complex reality, its product
often renders the harassed decision maker's life more difficult.
2. Intelligence restricts their options-
Every new administration comes into office with a national security
agenda of its own, bent upon putting its mark on the nation's foreign policy. It
believes that a significant shift in that policy is both desirable and possible. It
will encounter a foreign policy bureaucracy (including intelligence) that be-
lieves it is neither. Intelligence professionals will greet the administration's
new policy initiatives with cogent analyses showing how vigorously allies will
oppose these, new policies, how resolutely neutrals will pervert them to their
own ends, and how effectively adversaries will blunt them. At every step, it
will appear to the policy leaders that intelligence fights them, seeks to fence
them in, and, indeed, helps them fail.
And the pattern persists. As the policy leadership begins to face unex-
pected foreign challenges, its quick responses will often be met with more
intelligence assessments that seem to be saying "it didn't work" or "it will
almost certainly not succeed." The decision makers will conclude that intelli-
gence not only constricts their room for maneuver, but also arms their political
opponents. Worst of all, it constantly and- annoyingly reminds them of their
limited capacity to influence events. No matter how well the interaction may
serve the interests of sound policy, there is no-question that it builds tension
between the two sides.
In these encounters, we should acknowledge that intelligence does not
always "know better." There are times when intelligence is unaware that
stated objectives are not the real objectives of policy, and will leave out of its
analysis elements of the picture that may be important to the decision makers.
Presidents paint upon a canvas far broader than the particular segments on
which intelligence tends to focus. Its assessments, therefore, may be quite valid
for those segments, but may miss broader considerations that Presidents care
about.
A vivid example is provided by the Carter Administration's proposal to
impose sanctions-including a grain embargo-on the USSR, in response to
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The stated objective was to penalize the
offender by imposing political and economic costs on him. When intelligence
was asked to assess the potential impact of the sanctions package, it responded
with a judgment, the thrust of which was that the sanctions package would not
be an effective instrument. Absent solid participation by our allies, sanctions
would do no serious damage to the. Soviet economy nor impair the leadership's
objectives in any significant way. Not surprisingly, President Carter gave the
assessment a rather frigid reception, but its negative judgments turned out not
to be a decisive factor in his calculus. From the President's perspective, the
sanctions package was just right. He considered a highly visible response to
Afghanistan as imperative, but it had to be low-risk. A military undertaking
was ruled out as far too hazardous. Inaction was ruled out, because it would be
read in the rest of the world as a signal of US irresolution and condonement.
The sanctions, though unsatisfying in terms of direct effects, would convey a
strong signal of disapprobation and censure, without engendering worrisome
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consequences. It would satisfy the popular need to express the nation's sense of
outrage and would portray the President as willing to take the political heat of
angering an important domestic constituency-the farmers-for the sake of a
foreign issue of principle.
It goes almost without saying that intelligence could not then, and cannot
ever, be expected to take such considerations into account.
3. Intelligence undercuts their policies-
Administrations have often found intelligence analyses appearing at times
and in ways unhelpful to the pursuit of policies on which they had embarked.
This can happen in two ways: (1) Through a genuine and protracted diver-
gence of intelligence judgments from publicly stated Administration views of a
given situation, and (2) Through fortuity or inadvertence. An example of the
first phenomenon was provided by the stubborn independence displayed by
the intelligence community in the early phases of the Vietnam escalation in
1964-65, when its national estimates consistently offered up a far more pessi-
mistic assessment of North Vietnamese staying power than was reflected in the
Johnson Administration's public assertions. While this divergence between in-
telligence and policy did not become public knowledge until the appearance
of the Pentagon Papers in 1971, the mid-1960s intelligence performance
evoked considerable disquiet and chagrin among policy insiders at the time.
The days of such protracted differences of view between intelligence and
policy are probably over. In the intelligence-policy environment of the 1980s,
it seems highly unlikely that a divergence of assessment could be sustained for
very long. Congressional oversight and its intimate access to intelligence anal-
ysis would bring any significant disparities quickly to the surface and thus
cause them to be resolved.
The other cause, policy-undercutting by fortuity and inadvertence, is
more likely to survive, as it is a matter of human frailty. Sometimes it is merely
a question of miserable timing-as in the classic case of the intelligence reas-
sessment of North Korean military forces that credited them with substantially
greater capabilities than had been previously appreciated. The estimate was
fine, but it just happened to "hit the street" within a week of President Carter's
announcement of his controversial decision to begin withdrawal of US forces
from South Korea. A pure coincidence, but it caused understandable conster-
nation.
At other times it is a matter of inattention-as in the so-called discovery
of the Soviet brigade in Cuba which, it turned out later, had been there, in one
form or another, all along, but had simply been lost sight of. Issues of this kind,
seemingly unimportant, can suddenly escalate into heated public controversy
and make life difficult for the policy leaders. However minor the transgression,
they will regard intelligence less fondly.
4. Intelligence provokes public controversy-
From time to time, routine differences within the community over how to
interpret ambiguous intelligence evidence turns into heated, and perhaps even
acrimonious debate. When the competing interpretations clearly affect impor-
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tant policy issues, the internal controversy can easily spill out into the public
arena. In the 1950s and 1960s, when what transpired in the world of intelli-
gence remained largely opaque, such disputes could be easily contained within
the Executive Branch. In more recent times, with the progressive "opening
up" of intelligence through the Congress and the media, and through its more
visible involvement with policy, a disputation within the community is soon
drawn into and exploited by the public debate, often in ways that make life
more difficult for the national security policymaker.
Examples of policy-relevant debates that have been stimulated or inten-
sified by intelligence controversy come quickly to mind:
- Whether the Tupolev Backfire bomber is an intermediate-range or an
intercontinental-capable bomber;
- Whether extensive Soviet civil defense preparations add up to en-
hanced "survivability" for Soviet society;
- How significantly Western technology contributes to the growth of the
Soviet economy and its military power;
- Whether Western calculations of Soviet military spending adequately
reflect the real size and burden of Soviet defense;
- To what extent the Soviet natural gas pipeline will aggravate Western
Europe's dependence on imported energy.
This brief sampling is probably sufficient to suggest that the issues in
dispute often bear on strategic, budgetary, arms control, or economic policy
decisions important to an Administration's overall strategy. To the extent that
intelligence controversy helps arm the opposition in such disputes, its contri-
bution is not exactly appreciated.
5. Intelligence fails to persuade-
Ever since John F. Kennedy's tour de force in unveiling photographic
intelligence on the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba to a hushed UN audi-
ence, successive administrations have sought to emulate that feat. Though the
results have been mixed at best, hope springs eternal that a release of intelli-
gence findings or a public display of exotic evidence will enlighten an unin-
formed or misinformed public, win over a cynical journalist, or convince a
skeptical congressman. At one time limited to an occasional State Department
White Paper and a private briefing here and there, the intelligence product
now finds its way into the public domain through more and more channels and
in ever greater volume-most of it, of course, at the instigation and under the
aegis of the policy community. It moves through such vehicles as press confer-
ences, media briefings and backgrounders, testimony on the Hill, formal Re-
ports to Congress, and official glossy publications.
In a general way, this sea change in public access to intelligence has
undoubtedly had its beneficial impact on public understanding of often com-
plex and murky situations. It is far more questionable, however, whether in-
telligence can be used effectively as an instrument of public persuasion;
whether the marshalling of intelligence evidence on one side or another of a
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sharply debated issue ever succeeds in gaining solid converts. In a tactical
situation, say, when a heated debate moves toward a crucial vote, a well-
focused, lucid intelligence briefing can often sway a wavering agnostic and
stiffen an irresolute supporter. But the record suggests that the conversion will
not stick, that the gnawing doubts soon return.
Reasons for this phenomenon are not hard to find:
- Time was when public disclosure of intelligence was a rare and nota-
ble event that summoned up an aura of mystery and miracle, endow-
ing the product with uncommon authority. That is no more. As dis-
closure became ever more routine, the gloss wore off, and an inevita-
ble "debasement of the currency" set in.
- Intelligence assessments, when lifted out of their context, fuzzed and
diluted ("sanitized") to protect sources and methods, lose much of
their authenticity. To the intelligence professional who has built his
mosaic from a welter of carefully evaluated raw data, often accumu-
lated over years, the evidence may be totally compelling. To a public
audience, coming to the issue cold and exposed only to the sanitized
version, the evidence will often seem ambiguous and the judgments
inadequately supported.
- Intelligence evidence is brought into public play often in situations of
deep controversy, where the contention usually is not over observable
facts, but over points of principle. The physical things that intelli-
gence is best at recording are often not much help in settling points of
principle. Central America offers a good example: Divergent views of
that threat center on the conceptual question of whether the revolu-
tionary situation in El Salvador is fundamentally endogenous, i.e.,
rooted in and fueled by internal, historic forces, or exogenous, i.e.,
externally stimulated and sustained. That conceptual issue cannot be
resolved by displays of intelligence evidence, however persuasive, that
Soviet arms do indeed flow through Nicaraguan ports to the Salvado-
ran rebels.
- The impact that intelligence can have on public perceptions is further
constrained by the understandable tendency of people to reject bad
news-what social psychologists used to call "cognitive dissonance."
Many of the issues on which intelligence is brought to bear publicly do
indeed have unhappy implications. Acceptance of the bad news
means having to draw costly, risky, or generally unsettling conse-
quences. A classic example is the case of "Yellow Rain," the discovery
of lethal toxins being used under Soviet tutelage in Southeast Asia and
Afghanistan. In spite of the overwhelming weight of confirmatory
evidence accumulated over eight years, extensively published, briefed
and shared worldwide, the findings continue to be challenged and
contested, sometimes with offerings of bizarre scientific counter-
explanations that defy common sense. The extreme reluctance to ac-
cept the evidence at face value cannot be attributed simply to the fact
that intelligence can never meet the rigorous laboratory standards for
evidence that scientists like to insist upon. The explanation for the
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continued questioning must surely lie in the unpleasantness of the
implications, insofar as they seem to raise doubts about the viability of
arms control agreements.
In sum, for all the reasons enumerated above, policy leaders are bound to
develop a rather ambivalent view of the support they can hope to get from
their intelligence community. From what has been said, it should be clear that
the resulting "love-hate" relationship is endemic to the situation and that there
is not much that intelligence can do, or should do, to alter it. Indeed, a greater
effort to "serve policy well" could lead to even greater ambivalence and dis-
cord on the part of those we seek to serve. Which takes us back to Sherman
Kent's admonition in the leitmotif at the beginning of this paper:
By striving too hard in this direction, intelligence may come to seem
just another policy voice, and an unwanted one at that.
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Historian's preliminary observations
INTELLIGENCE AND US FOREIGN POLICY, 1945-1954*
Neal H. Petersen
The point has been made that there exists inherent tension between his-
tory and intelligence. Historians seek to reveal, to clarify. Intelligence requires
secrecy to accomplish its purposes. Until recently, the literature of intelligence
has been an unattractive commodity for historians, ranging from pro-CIA
institutional advertising to sensational and emotional denunciations. It has
been the realm of journalists and theoreticians, often tendentious, and seldom
resting on a firm documentary foundation.
On the bright side, historians and intelligence specialists have much in
common. Both feel that they are keener than other people, possessed of a
unique approach to interpreting human affairs that provides them with the
capacity for exceptional understanding. There is additional common ground.
Practitioners of both disciplines are frequently successful because they are able
to analyze. They have a common thirst for and respect for the facts, and a
healthy skepticism that produces a reliability less often found in other disci-
plines.
Historians have had a preeminent role in US intelligence from OSS to the
present, and intelligence specialists have produced great history. One need
only think of William Langer, Sherman Kent, Raymond Sontag, Ray Cline,
and Everett Gleason.
Diplomatic history has now pushed out the edge of the envelope, as they
say in the Right Stuff, to approximately 1954. The early postwar statesmen
have written their memoirs and passed on. The official record is largely pub-
lished and the preponderance of archival sources is now open for research at
the National Archives, presidential libraries, and in private collections. Inter-
pretation of the origins of the Cold War has experienced traditional, revision-
ist, and post-revisionist phases. Scores of well-documented monographs have
appeared treating subjects of the 1945-54 period.
There remains the task of incorporating an appreciation of the role of
intelligence into historical understanding of the period. Important sources are
at last available to make this possible. Ray Cline's The CIA: Reality vs. Myth
and Anne Karalekas' History of the Central Intelligence Agency provide ex-
cellent overviews. George Constantinides' Intelligence and Espionage, an out-
standing 1983 analytical bibliography, discusses some fifty books that pertain
to 1945-1954. Thomas Troy's Donovan and the CIA is a roadmap for intelli-
gence sources for 1945-1947 as well as the wartime period. Foreign Relations
volumes for the 1950s contain abundant finished intelligence. A new wave of
memoirs by former intelligence officials includes works by William Colby,
' This article is adapted from a presentation to the annual conference of the Society for Historians of
American Foreign Relations, at George Washington University, Washington, August 1984.
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Cord Meyer, Peer De Silva, David Atlee Phillips, Joseph Burckholder Smith,
Harry Rositzke, and Kermit Roosevelt.
Some one thousand feet of records of the Office of Strategic Services and
successor organizations have been open for some time among the holdings of
the National Archives. NARS has now received from CIA an additional three
thousand feet of operational records for 1941-1947. The National Security
Agency has retired a series of "Special Research Histories," some of which deal
in part with the postwar period. Substantial military intelligence for the 1940s
is now available, including reports of the Joint Intelligence Committee and the
Military Information Division. Other pertinent NABS collections include Na-
tional Security Council records containing some intelligence-related reports,
and a vast collection of OSS and State Department intelligence research
papers.
The Truman Library may offer the richest source of declassified intelli-
gence material now available, particularly in the President's Secretary's File.
The intelligence portion of the PSF offers hundreds of Office of Research and
Evaluation reports, CIA Reviews of the World Situation, National Intelligence
Estimates, and Korean War intelligence. The PSF also includes records of NSC
meetings with intelligence components. Intelligence documentation at the
Eisenhower Library is less concentrated and less completely declassified, but
constitutes an essential source. Numerous intelligence documents across the
government have been released under the Freedom of Information Act since
1974.
Given this substantial body of available material, it is appropriate to con-
sider the relationship of sources to particular topics, develop some general and
tentative substantive conclusions, and offer methodological suggestions for re-
lating intelligence to the overall study of US foreign policy in the first decade
of the postwar era.
President Truman abolished the Office of Strategic Services less than two
months after the end of the war on the recommendation of the Bureau of the
Budget. This decision was consistent with the hostility of the military services,
the Department of State, and Congress to centralized intelligence. Research
and analysis was transferred to State where, as Dean Acheson puts it in his
memoirs, the Department muffed its intelligence role. Opposition within State
to unified intelligence resulted in fragmentation, even at the Foggy Bottom
level. When a Central Intelligence Group was established in early 1946 it
operated under the direction and at the pleasure of Army, Navy, and State via
a National Intelligence Authority. President Truman received a daily intelli-
gence summary from CIG as well as military reports and a daily from State,
but no unified, coordinated product.
During 1946 and 1947 the US Government addressed the intelligence
problem in the context of the need for a coherent national security policy
mechanism. Secretary of the Navy Forrestal and study groups commissioned
by him took the lead in developing plans that led to the National Security Act
and establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947. The process
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whereby General Donovan's dream of a unified intelligence organization was
realized is described in great detail in Thomas Troy's Donovan and the CIA.
Tom Braden's article on the birth of the CIA in the February 1977 issue of
American Heritage is an outstanding short treatment.
The paramount historical question of the two years from Tokyo Bay to
the creation of the National Security Council is the origins of the Cold War.
Until recently, scholarship had little basis upon which to evaluate the intelli-
gence reaching the President and other top policymakers regarding the capa-
bilities and intentions of the Soviet Union. Melvyn Leffler's meticulously re-
searched article appearing in the April 1984 issue of the American Historical
Review, reflecting intelligence reports from the President's Secretary's File at
the Truman Library and Army and Joint Chiefs of Staff intelligence materials
from the National Archives, is evidence that evaluation is underway. It seems
likely that Truman found ominous indeed the intelligence that crossed his
desk, some of it virtually unprocessed, much of it military, and none of it the
result of government-wide coordination. In this sense the inadequacy of the
US intelligence system either exacerbated US-Soviet misunderstanding or for-
tuitously contributed to the President's inclination to take strong and prudent
measures, depending on one's estimate of the nature of the Soviet threat that
existed at the time. The failure of the Baruch Plan and initial postwar arms
control negotiations should also be reappraised in light of new intelligence
sources. The lack of US capability to assess Soviet forces or to provide verifi-
cation of whatever agreements might have been reached certainly was a neg-
ative factor.
1947-1950
The creation of the National Security Council structure in 1947 and the
establishment of the CIA improved US intelligence, but not as rapidly or
completely as one might expect. A series of National Security Council Intelli-
gence Directives (NSCIDs), now declassified, sought to coordinate the
government-wide effort and define responsibilities. However, the Departments
dominated the new CIA much as they had CIG. Admiral Hillenkoetter, the
first Director of Central intelligence, lacked the clout to assert the prerogatives
of the new organization. The National Security Act specified that CIA should
coordinate national intelligence, but instead it produced its own reports
through its Office of Research and Evaluation. ORE reports did find their way
to the White House and NSC, but were of uneven quality and influence.
Admiral Hillenkoetter transmitted intelligence information directly to the
President, but it came in a virtually unevaluated form. Ray Cline recalls per-
sonally working in 1949 on CIA's "Review of the World Situation" which
received high-level distribution but was based exclusively on what could be
pieced together from the work of regional analysts, augmented by a reading of
the newspapers.
Nor was CIA effectively plugged into the national security structure.. Hil-
lenkoetter, and indeed Truman, seldom attended NSC meetings. US intelli-
gence was badly surprised by the Soviet atomic test of 1949. The CIA contri-
bution to the development of NSC 68 was largely confined to the efforts of a
single representative. CIA reports provided long-range warning of the attack
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on South Korea, but were not pointed enough to gain notice. The US intelli-
gence community fell victim to total surprise in June 1950 in the tactical sense.
When the NSC convened to formulate the US response to the North Korean
assault, the Director of Central Intelligence was not present, nor did he or
other CIA officials play a visible role in the decision-making process.
In the 1947-1950 period, State Department intelligence made considera-
ble progress. Secretary Marshall restored the centralized system under an As-
sistant Secretary-level Special Assistant for Intelligence. State's intelligence
entity produced a significant amount of research and briefed Department
officials regularly. It is less clear that it performed an important role in the
government-wide process.
As has been established by congressional reports, memoirs of intelligence
veterans, and monographs published on the basis of documents obtained under
the Freedom of Information Act, the United States initiated a program of
covert operations in 1948 with the objective of countering Soviet subversive
activities. Inspired by officials in State and the national military establishment,
this program was implemented under the direction of CIA's Office of Policy
Coordination. OPC operated with guidance from State and Defense outside of
the CIA chain of command. It was not a rogue elephant nor was it subject to
direct White House control. Programs were rather limited in scope initially,
concentrating on support for democratic elements in Western Europe. While
the overall configuration of this activity is now known, operational details are
likely to remain classified for an extended period.
The outbreak of the Korean War resulted in massive strengthening of US
intelligence comparable to the military rearmament that occurred. President
Truman appointed General Walter Bedell Smith Director of Central intelli-
gence effective October 1950. Smith's tenure began inauspiciously with the
failure of the intelligence community to predict Chinese intervention in No-
vember and the DCI's statement to top policy makers at the darkest moment
of the ensuing crisis that the United States should withdraw from Korea. But
Eisenhower's World War II Chief of Staff brought new vigor, prestige, and
organizational ability to American intelligence, and was supported by enor-
mous new resources. Seeking to accomplish CIA's original purpose, the prep-
aration of integrated national intelligence, he implemented many of the re-
form proposals contained in the Dulles-Jackson-Correa Report Prepared for
the NSC, "The Central Intelligence Agency and National Organization for
Intelligence," 1 January 1949, now declassified. He summoned distinguished
historian and OSS veteran William L. Langer from Harvard to establish an
Office of National Estimates that would provide National Intelligence Esti-
mates based on information obtained by the entire intelligence community.
Although the value of the NIEs and other integrated intelligence reports of the
1950s has been questioned in light of their lowest-common-denominator char-
acter wrought by a government-wide clearance process, they were a vast im-
provement over the previous product.
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The Korean War brought the National Security Council system to life.
The NSC met far more frequently after June 1950. Truman now presided, and
there was always a place at the table for General Smith. CIA participated fully
in the NSC committee system and contributed to its numbered reports.
The conduct of special operations and psychological warfare increased
during the Korean period on a scale at least comparable to the expansion of
intelligence research and analysis. The President established a Psychological
Strategy Board in April 1951. CIA-supported foreign broadcasting operations
expanded. Covert support for democratic and anti-communist elements in
Europe intensified and similar efforts were launched in other parts of the
world. Much on the US organization for such activities and knowledge of the
existence of particular programs is already in the public domain, but historians
are unlikely to have access to operational records in the foreseeable future.
When President Eisenhower took office, US intelligence had already
achieved a measure of maturity as the result of the achievements of General
Smith. As illustrated in Stephen Ambrose's Ike's Spies, the incoming President
had great respect for the value of intelligence as the result of his experience as
a military commander. His insistence on formal, orderly, and extensive staff
work resulted in an unparalleled reliance on the NSC system. With John Fos-
ter Dulles as Secretary of State, Bedell Smith now Under Secretary, and Allen
Dulles Director of Central intelligence, the intelligence component was fully
integrated into foreign policy. Smith's presence gave State new authority and
responsibilities in intelligence matters. Intelligence research and analysis con-
tinued to improve at CIA with another historian, Sherman Kent, succeeding
Langer as Director of the Office of National Estimates. Many NIEs and Special
Estimates (SNIEs) of the period appear in the Foreign Relations series volumes
for 1952-1954, for instance in the recently-released volume on Korea. Debate
continues on the utility of these estimates, but not on the effort put into them
or the extent to which they were read throughout government. The Soviet
Estimate by John Prados provides a highly significant analysis based on NIEs
and other intelligence materials obtained under FOIA for the period begin-
ning in the 1950s.
It is well known that under Eisenhower the United States vigorously pur-
sued a program of covert activities around the world to counteract Soviet
influence and to support governments and forces deemed sympathetic to US
interests. As a former OSS operative in the field, Allen Dulles accorded this
area of intelligence a high priority. The special operations of the Eisenhower
Administration included continuation of the funding of friendly elements
abroad, foreign broadcasting, and on occasion the use of force to influence
events. These operations were conducted within the national security frame-
work of the US Government. Some documents such as NSC 5412 of 1954
setting forth procedures governing the conduct of covert operations have been
declassified.
The two most prominent covert operations of the period were the top-
pling of regimes in Iran and Guatemala by indigenous opponents with the
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support of the CIA. Much valuable material has been made available on both
incidents, including scholarly monographs based on FOIA requests, memoirs
of participants, and documents released in the Foreign Relations series. De-
finitive judgment on the nature and basis of US involvement, as opposed to the
fact of involvement, must await further evidence.
The Eisenhower Administration placed a high value on psychological
warfare, which sometimes entered into the field of intelligence. Under Eisen
hower, the Operations Coordinating Board assumed the functions of the Psy-
chological Strategy Board. C. D. Jackson conducted psychological strategy
planning in the White House.
Espionage and Communications Intelligence
The research and analysis aspects of the intelligence component of US
foreign policy in the 1945-1954 period are gradually becoming visible. The
historian can also perceive at least the gray outline of covert action and its role
in overall strategy. Other critical areas of the intelligence equation are still
essentially beyond unclassified reach. Intelligence literature on espionage and
counterespionage after the war is substantial, yet fragmentary and unreliable.
The works of John Barron and Harry Rositzke have brought together much of
what is known about Soviet espionage and the KGB. David Martin's Wilder-
ness of Mirrors on espionage and counterintelligence deals in part with
1945-1954. Military intelligence records at the National Archives and opera-
tional files of the OSS and its successors to late 1947, now being opened incre-
mentally, may shed some light on the US-Soviet intelligence struggle in dev-
astated Europe.
The Maclean and Philby cases remain a mystery of potentially supreme
importance. Maclean participated in the work of the US-UK Combined Policy
Committee in 1947 and 1948, thus having access to fundamental information
on the dimensions of the US atomic energy program as it related to foreign
policy. When Maclean defected in 1951, Dean Acheson is reported to have
said "he knew everything." Philby, as British liaison to US intelligence, prob-
ably betrayed the Western attempt to overthrow the communist government
of Albania and other top secret operations. Despite all that has been written
about Burgess, Maclean, and Philby there remains uncertainty of what they
actually conveyed to their Soviet superiors, the question of primary signifi-
cance. The Philby Conspiracy by Page, Leitch, and Knightly makes a good
effort to address this subject. The inscrutability of espionage does not diminish
its importance. Allen Weinstein's treatment of the Hiss-Chambers case is evi-
dence that use of interviews, Freedom of Information Act, and historical
method can surmount the most murky and emotion-charged of research prob-
lems.
Still further beneath the surface lies the world of technical collection. The
ULTRA secret remained intact for thirty years despite the end of the war,
which entirely transformed the world situation and eroded the need for se-
crecy. The reality of the constant and intense communications intelligence
battle of the first postwar decade comes to light only episodically as in the
discovery of a microphone in the Great Seal plaque of US Ambassador George
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Kerman in Moscow in 1952. Evidence indicates that US capabilities in com-
munications intelligence declined after World War II with other intelligence
activities, and were similarly revived and strengthened vastly with the out-
break of war in Korea. In early 1952 the Brownell Committee which included
Charles Bohlen, General John Magruder, and William H. Jackson drafted a
report, now declassified, recommending centralization of COMINT activities.
Implementation of the report resulted in the establishment of the National
Security Agency. James Bamford's The Puzzle Palace sheds some light on
NSA's antecedents and initial operations.
Present evidence warrants two interrelated generalizations about US in-
telligence in the first postwar decade. First, it was essentially inadequate up to
the outbreak of the Korean War and only began to assume its modern com-
petence and configuration by about 1953. Second, the Central Intelligence
Agency was established as part of the National Security Council system and
operated within that structure. US intelligence improved and was more effec-
tively used by policymakers as the NSC structure improved. At no time, even
during its early period of disarray, did the CIA or intelligence community
operate as an independent entity.
The integration of the intelligence component into the history of the first
postwar decade is under way and will continue over an extended period. Much
finished intelligence that was considered at the highest levels is now available.
The historian's methodology must now be applied to it. One primary objective
must be to produce a sort of Cold War sequel to Lewin's Ultra Goes to War,
in the sense of determining with precision what the intelligence actually said,
how policymakers used it, and what difference it made. Care must be taken to
avoid assigning excessive importance to a few particular documents, but to
consider the entire take before the policymaker.
Intelligence specialists ceaselessly remind us of the biases of consumers.
The historian is also well advised to analyze the analysts, much as efforts have
been made to assess the values and mentality of the Foreign Service. Was the
intelligence professional of the first postwar decade experienced enough and
realistic enough to estimate Stalin's intentions competently, as well as to accu-
mulate factual knowledge?
Another consideration governing the study of intelligence and foreign
policy is the fact that the documentation is seldom satisfactory. Information
will become available incrementally. The interview, as applied by Powers in
The Man Who Kept the Secrets, may sometimes be the only possible source of
evidence. Some instructions or policy statements conveyed orally may never
be reconstructed. Other critical information obtained by sensitive means, and
operational details of covert activities, are likely to remain classified for the
foreseeable future in order to protect vital sources and methods. This must not
deter the historian from proceeding with the study of intelligence.
There prevails today a myth of a golden age when historians had early
and convenient access to essential documentation including intelligence mate-
rial. There of course was no such age. The Foreign Relations series of World
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War II scarcely mentions OSS. The standard treatments of the war were writ-
ten in ignorance of ULTRA. By contrast, no nation, save as a result of defeat in
war, has ever released so much so soon, willingly. and otherwise, about its
intelligence and intelligence-related operations as has the postwar United
States. Tremendous gaps remain, of course, some not soon to be filled.
George Constantinides points out in his recent intelligence bibliography,
"experience teaches that in this field secrets spill out, now in droplets, now in
gushes, which modify and at times alter entirely our previous comprehension
of particular events," and that in view of this process of constant revision great
tolerance and humility is needed in dealing with the world of intelligence.
For diplomatic historians, reinterpreting the first postwar decade in light
of the intelligence component of policy will be excruciating, fascinating, and
obligatory.
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1. Overviews, Bibliographies, and Finding Aids
Ray S. Cline, The CIA: Reality vs. Myth (Washington: Acropolis Books, 1982) is a semi-
autobiographical account by a top CIA analyst of the period who later served as Deputy Direc-
tor of CIA and Director of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. With about 75 pages on
1945-1954, it is an important bridge between history and intelligence studies. Anne Karalekas'
History of the Central Intelligence Agency (Laguna Hills, Calif.: Aegean Park Press, 1977) is
widely regarded as the best short treatment of CIA. Written as part of the Church Committee
Report (Book IV), it is based in part on internal CIA documents. It devotes about 50 pages to
1945-1954. Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA
(New York: Knopf, 1979), contains abundant information on 1945-1954, but it is scattered
through the book. Armies of Ignorance: The Rise of the American Intelligence Empire by
William R. Corson (New York: Dial Press, 1977) is, contrary to the impression conveyed by its
title, an important book containing about 150 pages on the period in question. Harry Howe
Ransom's The Intelligence Establishment (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1970) is
a useful survey.
Intelligence and Espionage: An Analytical Bibliography by George C. Constantinides
(Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1983) permits identification of some 50 entries (of 500) that deal
to some degree with 1945-1954. Comments on each item are helpful and reliable. Other impor-
tant recent bibliographies include Paul W. Blackstock and Frank L. Schaf, Jr., Intelligence,
Espionage, Counterespionage, and Covert Operations: A Guide to Information Sources (De-
troit: Gale Research, 1978); Defense Intelligence School, Bibliography of Intelligence Litera-
ture, 7th edition, (Washington, 1981): Marjorie W. Cline, et al., A Scholar's Guide to Intelli-
gence Literature: Bibliography of the Russell J. Bowen Collection (Frederick, Md.: University
Publications, 1983), which constitutes a catalogue of an important source at Georgetown Uni-
versity; and Myron J. Smith, The Secret Wars, Vol. II, "Intelligence, Propaganda and Psycho-
logical Warfare, Covert Operations, 1945-1980" (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio, 1981).
Vincent and Nan Buranelli, Spy-Counterspy: An Encyclopedia of Intelligence (New York:
McGraw Hill, 1982) consists of sketches and suggestions for further reading on numerous prom-
inent individuals and episodes.
The Declassified Documents Reference System, published by Carrollton Press and more
recently by Research Publications, provides reference to and microfiche copies of thousands of
documents released under the Freedom of Information Act since 1974, including numerous
papers relating to intelligence. The system produces quarterly catalogs and retrospective guides.
Many libraries have both the guides and microfiche copies of documents. Another finding aid
for FOIA material is Former Secrets: Government Records Made Public Through the Freedom
of Information Act, by Evan Hendricks (Washington: Campaign for Political Rights, 1982). It
organizes material by subject, requester-author, and ultimate publication result. The Central
Intelligence Agency, and to a lesser degree the Department of State, have the capability to
identify and provide copies of documents already released on particular subjects. This enables
the researcher to obtain material relatively rapidly without initiating a new FOIA request.
The Foreign Intelligence Literary Scene, edited by Thomas F. Troy (Frederick, Md.:
University Publications) is a bimonthly newsletter and book review that provides current infor-
mation on the study of intelligence and new sources.
II. Memoirs and Monographs
The memoirs of White House, State, and Defense policymakers of the period 1945-1954
are notably unhelpful for study of the intelligence component. President Truman comments on
the dismemberment of OSS in Year of Decision (New York: Doubleday, 1955). The Forrestal
Diaries, Walter Millis, ed. (New York: Viking) contain bits and pieces on intelligence organiza-
tion. Dean Acheson's Present at the Creation (New York: Norton, 1969) has a short chapter on
organization for intelligence in 1946. George Kerman writes of the 1952 Moscow bugging inci-
dent in Memoirs 1950-1963 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972).
Standard works by intelligence veterans providing theoretical concepts and defense of
intelligence as an institution, but little hard factual information, include Allen W. Dulles, The
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History
Craft of Intelligence (New York: Harper & Row, 1963); Sherman Kent, Strategic Intelligence
for American World Policy (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1965); and Lyman B. Kirkpatrick,
Jr. The Real CIA (New York: Macmillan, 1968).
An outstanding work on transition from OSS to CIA is Thomas F. Troy, Donovan and the
CIA: A History of the Establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency (Frederick, Md.:
University Publications, 1981). This notable administrative history was written as an official
study within the Agency on a classified basis and subsequently released with minor excisions.
Bradley F. Smith, The Shadow Warriors: OSS and the Origins of the CIA (New York: Basic
Books, 1983) is a thoughtful and well researched treatment of the subject. The story is told in
brief by Tom Braden in "The Birth of the CIA," American Heritage, February 1977.
A new wave of memoirs by intelligence veterans has come forth since the mid-1970s
providing important information. A review article on this phenomenon appeared in the October
1979 issue of Washingtonian, "Old Boys Never Talk Until Now," by David Atlee Phillips.
Intelligence memoirs pertinent to study of 1945-1954 include William E. Colby, Honorable
Men: My Life in the CIA (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), which sheds light on postwar
activities in Western Europe; Cord Meyer, Facing Reality: From World Federalism to the CIA
(New York: Harper & Row, 1980), containing information on the effect of McCarthyism on
intelligence; Peer De Silva, Sub Rosa: The CIA and the Uses of Intelligence (New York: Times
Books, 1978); Joseph Burckholder Smith, Portrait of a Cold Warrior (New York: Putnam's Sons,
1976);' David Atlee Phillips, The Night Watch (New York: Atheneum, 1977) which includes
anecdotal information on intelligence in Latin America in the 1950s; Harry Rositzke, The CIA's
Secret Operations: Espionage, Counterespionage, and Covert Action (New York: Thomas
Crowell, 1977), and The KGB-The Eyes of Russia (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981) each
presenting over 100 pages on the intelligence struggle with the Soviet Union from 1945 to 1954;
and Kermit Roosevelt's account of the overthrow of the Mossadegh regime, Countercoup: The
Struggle for the Control of Iran (New York: McGraw Hill, 1979). William L. Langer's In and
Out of the Ivory Tower (New York: Neale Watson Academic Publications, 1978) has disappoint-
ingly little on his service as head of the Office of National Estimates.
Secondary sources of special value on particular aspects of the period include John Prados,
The Soviet Estimate (New York: Dial, 1982) which breaks new ground as an effort to evaluate
US estimates of Soviet military strength by actually examining the documents. The study con-
centrates on the period after 1954, but also deals with earlier years employing NIEs and other
declassified material. In The Puzzle Palace (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982), James Bamford
uses interviews and FOIA to cast light on the National Security Agency, including its origins and
early operations. Stephen Ambrose, Ike's Spies: Eisenhower and the Espionage Establishment
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981) has about 75 pages on 1945-1954, including chapters on
Iran and Guatemala operations. Prominent among treatments of Guatemala based on recently
declassified documents are Richard H. Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy
of Intervention (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982); Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen
Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (New York:
Doubleday, 1982); and Gordon L. Bowen, "U.S. Foreign Policy Toward Radical Change: Covert
Operations in Guatemala, 1950-1954," Latin American Perspectives, Winter, 1983, pp. 88-102.
Blanche Weisen Cook, The Declassified Eisenhower: A Divided Legacy of Peace and Political
Warfare (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981) treats Guatemala and other special operations.
Wilderness of Mirrors (New York: Harper and Row, 1980) by David C. Martin treats the
East-West intelligence counterintelligence struggle over the years. John Barron's KGB: The
Secret Works of Soviet Secret Agents (New York: Reader's Digest Press, 1974) provides infor-
mation on early postwar agents and a guide to additional study. William Hood, Mole (New
York: Ballentine, 1982), an account of the Popov case by a former CIA officer, is a useful source
on the espionage battle in Europe in the 1950s. The Climate of Treason: Five Who Spied for
Russia by Andrew Boyle (London: Coronet Books, 1979) and Bruce Page, David Leitch, and
Philip Knightley, The Philby Conspiracy (New York: Doubleday, 1968) treat the Maclean and
Philby cases. Allen Weinstein's Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case (New York: Knopf, 1978) is a
landmark example of historical method applied to the obscure and emotion-charged world of
espionage.
Critiques of US intelligence containing vital information and insights on the 1945-1954
period but which must be read with caution include Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks, The
CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (New York: Knopf, 1974); and David Wise and Thomas B.
Ross, The Invisible Government (New York: Random House, 1964).
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III. Government Publications
Foreign Relations of the United States, the Department of State's official history of US
foreign affairs, contains little intelligence documentation prior to the volumes for 1950. This is
attributable in part to the unavailability of material to the editors, particularly the President's
Secretary's File at the Truman Library. An exception was 1948, Vol. V, part 2, The Near East
and South Asia, which includes a number of intelligence estimates on the Palestine situation.
More finished intelligence appears in 1950 and 1951 volumes, such as 1950, Vol. VII, Korea. The
triennial volumes for 1952-1954 contain substantial amounts of finished intelligence, particu-
larly National Intelligence Estimates. For example, see 1952-1954, Vol. XIII, Indochina, and the
recently released Vol. XV, Korea. Volume IV, the American Republics, presents extensive doc-
umentation on Guatemala, but less than scholars may have liked on US involvement in the
overthrow of the Arbenz government.
The Pentagon Papers, U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Vietnam Relations, 1940-1968
(Washington: Government Printing Office, 1971) includes a number of NIEs and SNIEs for 1954
and earlier. The Gravel edition (Boston: Beacon, 1971) contains an after-action report on covert
operations in Indochina, 1954-1955.
The 1955 Hoover Commission task force on intelligence, chaired by General Mark Clark,
produced a report on the existing status of intelligence activities: Commission on Organization of
the Executive Branch of the government (Hoover Commission "Intelligence Activities: A Report
to Congress;" Washington: GPO, 1955).
Jack Zlotnick's National Intelligence (Washington: GPO, 1964) prepared under the aus-
pices of the US Industrial College of the Armed Forces, is a concise description of the US
intelligence community as it existed in the early 1960s, with some treatment given to its devel-
opment since 1945.
The report of the Brownell Committee to the Secretaries of State and Defense in 1952 that
was instrumental in the establishment of the National Security Agency has been published as
George A. Brownell, The Origin and Development of the National Security Agency (Laguna
Hills, Calif.: Aegean Park Press, 1981).
The report of the Commission on the Organization of the Government for the Conduct
of Foreign Policy (Murphy Commission) (Washington: GPO, 1975), Appendices, Vol. VII, Ap-
pendix U, Intelligence Functions Analyses, contains information relating to 1945-1954.
Reports of the House Select Committee on Intelligence (Pike Committee), the House Per-
manent Select Committee on Intelligence, and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
from 1976 to 1980 contain occasional material pertinent to the 1945-1954 period. The same
pertains to hearings and reports of the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Oper-
ations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (Church Committee). The final Report of the
Church Committee (Senate Report No. 94-755) was released in November 1975 in six volumes,
three of which are of special interest: Book I, Foreign and Military Intelligence; Book IV
Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence and Military Intelligence, containing the
History of the CIA by Anne Karalekas; and Book VI, Supplementary Reports on Intelligence
Activities which includes historical material on covert activities.
A judicious and well organized selection of congressional documentation generated by
hearings from 1970 to 1976 is presented in Tyrus Fain, et al., eds. The Intelligence Community:
History, Organization, and Issues (New York: R. R. Bowker, 1977).
The Modern Military Branch of National Archives (NABS) presently has custody of nearly
one thousand feet of OSS records which have been open for some time. This collection includes
a small amount of postwar material of successor organizations. NABS is now receiving an addi-
tional three thousand feet of OSS operational records from CIA for 1941-1947, which are being
processed and opened incrementally.
The National Security Agency has retired considerable World War II material, including
intercepts. NSA records at NABS also include a series of "Special Research Histories," some of
which deal in part with'the postwar period.
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History
Records of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, including some papers of the joint Intelligence Com-
mittee and Joint Intelligence Staff, have been reviewed through 1960, and are open although
much has been withheld. Records of the Office of Naval intelligence are open through 1946.
War and Army Department records housed in the Military Field Branch of NARS at
Suitland, Maryland include Plans and Operations Division files from 1946 to 1950 which contain
some intelligence material. Records of the Army's Military Information Division and Military
Intelligence Service are open for research for the early postwar period. Records of US Army
theater commands also include intelligence documents.
Over eight thousand intelligence reports prepared by the Research and Analysis Branch of
OSS and by the Department of State through 1961 are arranged in a single series in the Legis-
lative and Diplomatic Branch. All the reports through 1947 have been declassified, as have
certain later items requested under FOIA. Little significant intelligence documentation is now
to be found in State Department decimal files, nor have departmental office files dealing with
postwar intelligence been transferred to NARS.
Records of the National Security Council recently obtained by the Judicial, Fiscal, and
Social Branch, while now in only the initial stages of declassification review and certainly no
substitute for collections at independence and Abilene, do provide access to intelligence mate-
rials such as numbered NSC reports NSC 10, NSC 50, and NSC 5412.
The United States Military History Institute at Carlisle Barracks, Pa. has custody of the
personal papers of General William Donovan, comprising some three hundred boxes. This
collection includes some postwar documents. The Institute also administers the personal papers
of many prominent postwar Army officers which contain widely scattered intelligence-related
documentation.
The Harry S. Truman Library at Independence, Mo. offers perhaps the richest source of
largely unexploited postwar intelligence material now available to historians. The primary per-
tinent collection is the President's Secretary's File, particularly a fourteen-box intelligence file.
The PSF collection contains hundreds of intelligence reports, many of which are stamped "Copy
No. 1. President of the United States." Categories of reports include Current Intelligence Bul-
letins, ORE's (Office of Research and Evaluation of CIG and CIA), CIA Reviews of the World
Situation, National Intelligence Estimates, Special National Intelligence Estimates, reports of the
Office of Scientific Intelligence, Daily Korean Summaries and other Korean War intelligence,
and memos from Director of Central Intelligence Hillenkoetter to President Truman on partic-
ular issues. The PSF file also contains intelligence records of an organizational and administra-
tive nature. The PSF National Security Council files, including the almost entirely declassified
records of NSC meetings, provide a unique window on the role of intelligence in the national
security process. The White House Central Files have an important file on General Donovan
and the origins of the CIA.
The intelligence sources at the Eisenhower Library are enormously rich, but less concen-
trated than those of the Truman Library. Despite the release of considerable documentation for
the Foreign Relations series and under Freedom of Information, including National Intelligence
Estimates and information on operations in Iran and Guatemala, much remains unavailable.
Intelligence documentation is widespread in the national security-related collections of the Li-
brary, including the National Security Council records of the Eisenhower Papers as President
(Whitman File), the Files of the Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, and the files of
the Office of the Staff Secretary. Intelligence materials are dispersed according to subject
through the DDE Diaries, the John Foster Dulles collection, and the White House Central Files.
The records of the Operations Coordinating Board and the C. D. Jackson collections are impor-
tant for psychological strategy matters.
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INTELLIGENCE IN RECENT PUBLIC LITERATURE
Operation Barbarossa: Strategy and Tactics on the Eastern Front, 1941. By
Bryan Fugate, Presidio Press, Novato, CA; 1984; 415 pp.
Far from being surprised by the Nazi assault in June 1941, Stalin and
Zhukov, the principal architect for the defense, actually were superbly pre-
pared for it and arranged the Soviet forces to suck the Germans into the
dreadful Russian killing ground, far to the east. So argues Bryan Fugate in this
stunning revisionist interpretation of events surrounding the greatest cataclysm
of modern times. Actually, Fugate suggests, Stalin would have preferred the
war to come two years later when Soviet forces would have been prepared to
take the offensive at the outset, but he was quite satisfied to deal with it in
1941, confident that he could lead the Germans to their deaths deep inside the
USSR.
Operation Barbarossa carefully documents a case for a colossal deception
perpetrated against Hitler and his staffs-and, incidentally, against the Soviet
people themselves-and one which continues to this very day. Contrary to the
poor intelligence held by Colonel Kinzel's "Foreign Armies-East" section of
the German General Staff, Soviet forces deployed in the border areas in June
1941 were not the cream of the Red Army, and they were deliberately de-
prived of modern equipment, particularly tanks and aircraft. Much of their
artillery was withdrawn before the Nazi assault, nominally "for training" in
the rear. The real military strength of the Soviet Union was being concentrated
in a second "operational" echelon some five hundred kilometers to the rear
and, subsequently, in a third, "strategic" echelon still deeper in the interior.
Zhukov's strategy, which he had developed in war games in January 1941, was
to lure the German panzer groups beyond the support of foot-mobile infantry
and then to unleash the fury of the Soviet combined arms counteroffensive,
spearheaded by the new T-34 tanks and supported by new MIG-3 fighter
aircraft. The decisive battles would be fought after the German logistic train
had been severely stretched, not in the forward areas where everything fa-
vored the invader.
Fugate makes a startling case, based largely on German documents, for
the extent of the Soviet deception. The Germans thought they faced the flower
of Soviet strength in the border area, some ten armies, backed by a fortified
belt-the "Stalin Line" two hundred to three hundred kilometers to the rear.
They estimated that if they could penetrate these zones in the summer months
the Soviet Union would be theirs for the taking. They had not counted upon
the Russian principle of surprise operation-dubbed reflexive control-involv-
ing deception to the point of mind control over the opponent. Unfortunately,
the case cannot be fully corroborated on the Soviet side.
So dense was the cloud of secrecy over the defensive plan, argues Fugate,
that major aspects cannot be opened up even today. Fugate points out the
curiosity of the arrest and execution of the forward area commander, General
Pavlov, after his weakened defenses were penetrated (the only front com-
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Book Reviews
mander to be "liquidated" in World War II). In disgrace and death>Pavlov
had to be made to serve the fiction that he had held the single greatest hope for
the defense of Mother Russia. Actually, his was a hollow command, designed
to deceive the Germans, delay as it could, and then to submit to massacre or
capture by the enemy. This first echelon was never intended to halt the attack.
The Soviet regime has yet to say anything about a plan to deliberately
entice the German invasion on to Soviet soil, nor does it admit to any strategy
other than the mounting of a vigorous defense at the frontier. The official
position remains as Khrushchev related it in his de-Stalinization speech in
1956, that Stalin was inept and surprised by the German attack.
Fugate musters persuasive arguments for the deception thesis:
- The Soviet withdrawal of artillery from the forward areas before the
invasion.
- The rapid regroupment of the Red Army in the late summer and
early fall after sustaining severe losses close to the frontier in June.
- The appearance of T-34 and KV tanks, along with the latest model
MIG-3 aircraft in October, after the Germans thought they had de-
stroyed the bulk of Soviet armor and air forces.
- The Soviet counteroffensive of December 1941 around Moscow with a
force of seven armies-fifty percent larger than Wehrmacht forces in
the area.
But Fugate does not credit all of the Soviet success to the genius of Stalin
and Zhukov. Incredible German intelligence blunders, countered with good
intelligence on the Soviet side, contributed significantly. In 1940 the German
High Command estimated that eighty to one hundred German divisions would
be required to execute the campaign in four to six weeks against "fifty to
seventy-five good divisions" of the Russians. On 2 July 1941 Colonel Kinzel
reported to General Haider, Chief of the General Staff, that the Russians had
only between twenty-one and twenty-six divisions remaining facing the Ger-
man Army Groups North and Center. This prompted Haider to estimate the
conclusion of the campaign to be less than two weeks off. The cold realization
of Kinzel's errors became obvious to all the following month when three hun-
dred sixty Russian divisions had been identified across the eastern front.
On the other hand, the Rote Kapelle ("Red Choir") Soviet spy network
was functioning in high gear inside Hitler's headquarters, transmitting streams
of high-level intelligence to Moscow. F. I. Golikov, the Soviet General Staff
intelligence chief, accurately summarized the evolution of the "Barbarossa"
plan to Zhukov in March 1941, three months before the attack. On 14 Sep-
tember Richard Sorge, the Soviet spy in Tokyo, notified Moscow Center that
the Japanese would make no move against the Soviet Union, facilitating the
shift of additional forces from east to west.
Another contributor to Soviet success was the strict control which Stalin
enjoyed over his field commanders through the NKVD, while the Germans
struggled with a confusing command structure which enabled headstrong field
commanders, such as Guderian, to ignore inconvenient orders from higher
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authority. It never was very clear on the German side whether Moscow or the
Ukraine was top priority. (The only thing that was clear to everyone was that
no one should ever try to detach a unit from Guderian's Panzer Group 2.) The
strict control on the Russian side ensured a singleness of purpose which the
Germans could never attain. Fugate singles out Guderian for special fault,
describing his role as pivotal in the survival of the Hitler regime in the period
of anti-Nazi plots and virtually decisive in Germany's loss of the war and the
ultimate extension of Soviet power into central Europe.
Operation Barbarossa opens an entirely new thesis regarding the greatest
military struggle of the century. While it has its technical faults (so-so maps,
typographical errors), it will give soldiers, scholars and, most particularly, in-
telligence officers cause to reexamine their views of the events which have
shaped conventional wisdom in the past. This book is "must" reading for
everyone concerned with warning, deception, and surprise.
STAT
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Book Reviews
Dezinformatsia. By Richard H. Shultz and Roy Godson. Pergamon-Brassey's;
1984; 211 pp.
This book sets out to demonstrate that Soviet leaders believe their country
is in an adversarial relationship with the United States and that they are com-
mitted to using "active measures" to achieve what they perceive to be their
national interests. It reviews some examples of Soviet active measures-overt
propaganda as well as covert media activities and political influence opera-
tions-to prove its point. It concludes that the United States should respond
more decisively by countering and emulating Soviet active measures.
Unfortunately, the authors begin with extraordinarily naive assumptions
and resort to specious arguments to prove the obvious. Their detailed exami-
nation of Soviet overt propaganda misrepresents reality to prove the simplistic
point that the Soviets are hostile to the United States. In the process they
disregard the complexity of Soviet propaganda and the interests and policies
that it reflects.
The authors begin with the assumption that "there is a fundamental dif-
ference between the perspective of Soviet and Western leaders on the nature
of world politics." (p. 7) The Soviets, they maintain, believe that "world poli-
tics remains a continual situation of conflict and war" (p. 9), while "democratic
governments ... make a sharp distinction between war and peace, and do not
assume that a continual state of conflict is characteristic of international rela-
tions." (p. 7)
The generalization that Moscow sees world politics as an arena of conflict
is accurate, although the authors' attempt to support it seems misguided. For
example, their references to Soviet affirmations of Clausewitz's formula that
"war is a continuation of politics by other means" are essentially irrelevant and
exhibit a total lack of understanding of what Clausewitz meant or of the
complex arguments that have taken place in the Soviet Union about interpre-
tation of his formulation in a nuclear era.
Far more perplexing is the authors' contention that democracies are so
naive as to assume that politics, international or otherwise, do not involve
conflict. During almost a quarter century in the intelligence business, I have
yet to meet a professional officer who did not assume, in the words of Hans J.
Morgenthau, that "international politics, like all politics, is a struggle for
power." Politics always entails conflict, whether a nation is at war or not. A
democratic leader who believes otherwise will ill serve his or her country and
democracy.
The authors go to considerable lengths to prove another obvious point:
that propaganda and political influence techniques do in fact constitute sig-
nificant instruments of Soviet foreign policy and strategy." They justify the
effort they expend to reach this conclusion by raising as a straw man "many
specialists" who allegedly disagree. I know of no such specialists and the au-
thors provide no examples. Unfortunately, a simplistic effort to defend this
truism defines much of the book.
The methodology employed by the authors to examine Soviet overt prop-
aganda reflects, at best, a superficial understanding of current history and the
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Book Reviews
Soviet Union. They base their conclusions on a textual analysis of articles in the
Soviet foreign affairs weekly New Times and a statistical analysis of the
Pravda foreign affairs column "International Review" during selected periods
between 1960 and 1980.
This approach has built-in drawbacks since, despite the authors' claims to
the contrary, it is limited to propaganda that is almost invariably nonauthori-
tative and inconsequential.
Far worse, however, was the authors' decision to exclude from their study
the entire first half of the 1970s, when detente was in its heyday. Having thus
adjusted the documentary record, they were able to offer this simplistic con-
clusion about the 1960-1980 period: "In sum, whether the Western allies have
perceived East-West relations to be in a period of cold war or a period of
`detente,' Soviet overt propaganda has continued to portray the United States
and NATO in negative and defamatory terms." (p. 188)
This is simply not true. When it has suited Moscow's purpose, Soviet
propaganda has portrayed the United States as a benevolent power whose
interests coincide with those of the Soviet state. At times in the early 1970s, for
example, Soviet propagandists managed to discuss the war in Vietnam without
even mentioning that the United States was a party in the conflict.
The extent to which the authors skewed the record to reach their conclu-
sion can be demonstrated by taking a look at their statistical analysis of Pravda
references to Western hostility and realism-willingness to cooperate with the
communist world. If the period of the early 1970s had been included in their
study, their generalization would have been obviously false, as is demonstrated
graphically below with the addition to their chart on hostility and realism of a
single three-month period representative of the detente era. The addition is
highlighted in color. During this sample period (May-July 1973), seventy-five
percent of the paragraphs in the Pravda International Review column that
discussed the West ascribed realistic, positive qualities to it; only five percent
were hostile.
Themes of (a) Western Hostility and (b) Western "Realism"
A.960- Nor 61-
Ao, 61 Sept 67 June 67-Om 69 .in 76-Dec 79
Hostility
I ~
I 1
I
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ; I'D I'l 1'2 6 14 115 16 17 18
^Y 1 / Lr,,,J/ \
1 \
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It is clear that the defining motivation for Soviet propaganda is not irra-
tional hostility but rather, as with all states, perceived national interests. In
order to understand Soviet interests and priorities, a scholar or analyst cannot
dismiss changes in the relative degree of hostility toward the West in Soviet
propaganda.
The authors' "textual analysis" of New Times is also distorted by the
arbitrary periods they decided to consider. In addition, an extremely limited
review of their summation of commentary turned up instances in which they
did not fairly report the journal's content. In at least two cases, for example,
they attributed to New Times statements which were, in fact, made by Amer-
icans and merely quoted by the journal (pp. 74, 75); in another they used the
term "the extreme right" in paraphrasing a New Times reference to "the
Republicans." (p. 76)
In some instances the authors resort to patent sophistry. They use such a
technique to try to prove their contention that Soviet leaders do not really feel
threatened by the United States: "While the United States persistently was
characterized as the major threat to world peace, careful analysis of Soviet
propaganda indicates that in reality the Kremlin did not perceive any direct
threat to its security interests emanating from alleged US aggressiveness and
militarism." (p. 188)
To suggest that the Soviet Union does not really see itself threatened by
US "aggressiveness and militarism" is to phrase the issue in terms akin to the
old question, "Have you stopped beating your wife?" As the issue is presented,
the reader must label the United States either "aggressive" or "militarist" in
order to suggest that Moscow might see itself threatened. This begs the ques-
tion of whether Moscow genuinely believes itself to be threatened by US mil-
itary and political power and intentions.
The authors' conclusion that Moscow does not perceive itself to be threat-
ened rests on the convoluted argument that fluctuations in Soviet propaganda
use of the theme of Western militarism "appear to reflect the stops and starts
of US defense spending and strategic developments, rather than Soviet respon-
siveness to a genuinely perceived, ongoing, and long-term threat to the USSR.
In other words, Soviet use of this propaganda line apparently was not a reflec-
tion of Moscow's concern regarding actual Western military power per se, but
instead was a response to the periodic threat of a serious escalation in Western
defense spending." (p. 95)
One wonders why the Soviets would view an escalation in Western de-
fense spending with alarm if there were not a fundamental assumption in the
Kremlin that the West represents a threat to the USSR. Even more, one won-
ders why the authors made their argument in the first place. They seem less
concerned to understand the Soviet Union than to prove that it is irrational
and the West totally benign.
In sum, the book touches upon important intelligence and policy issues,
but they are treated irresponsibly, as though the authors were dedicated more
to proving that the Soviet Union is evil than to a realistic effort to understand
Moscow's foreign policy objectives and tactics. Ultimately, books such as
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Dezinformatsia can only hurt the profession of intelligence and efforts to
develop a rational foreign policy. Naive asumptions and erroneous history
make good propaganda but bad policy. They serve neither scholarship nor the
national interest.
STAT
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Iq
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Book Reviews SECRET/NOFORN
Nomenklatura: The Soviet Ruling Class, an Insider's Report. By Michael S.
Voslensky. Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York; 1984;
455 pp.
This is an updated and expanded version of the original German Nomen-
klatura. Die herrschende Klasse der Sowjetunion, published in Vienna in
1980. The updating takes in events of 1983 and 1984, including Chernenko's
election as CPSU General Secretary. The new version has an enthusiastic pref-
ace by former Yugoslav party leader Milovan Djilas, who had raised the issue
of communist leaders becoming a new "class" of rulers as early as 1957 in his
book The New Class. Voslensky's book is getting worldwide exposure; it has
been translated into Russian, French, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, and a number
of other languages, making it a landmark event.
Voslensky's thesis is that the Soviet Union (as well as other communist
states) is ruled by a new privileged class institutionalized in the system called
the nomenklatura. The nomenklatura basically denotes the list of posts to
which appointees must be selected by party bodies at various levels; it also
refers to the individuals who hold posts subject to appointment by key party
bodies. As Voslensky illustrates in detail, it has come to include in addition a
whole system of special rights, benefits, privileges, and powers which set the
nomenklatura apart from the rest of society as a privileged class of power
holders.
While Voslensky draws a largely valid and realistic picture of the USSR
run by a ruling class of "nomenklaturists," he winds up carrying the image to
extremes and underestimating the influence of leaders as individuals. In eval-
uating the role of the top party leader, for example, he writes that the dicta-
torship of the Secretary General is "the dictatorship not of an individual but of
a class that needs consensus at the top level. The collective dictatorship of the
Politburo and the Secretariat and the apparently personal dictatorship of the
Secretary General are merely the two faces of the dictatorship of the nomen-
klatura" (p. 261). Elsewhere, referring to Central Committee headquarters,
" ... it is not the omnipotent party secretary who reigns here, but the anony-
mous class of nomenklaturists that reign through him" (p. 268). Further, "even
in his exalted position, Chernenko (as before him Andropov, Brezhnev,
Khrushchev) does not make policy personally; that is left to the nomenklatura,
the true ruler of the Soviet Union" (p. 384).
Voslensky's picture of rule by a conservative, mindless, corrupt class of
bureaucrats would seem to hold out relatively little hope for peaceful evolu-
tion in the Soviet Union or perhaps even for fruitful negotiation with a lead-
ership which is unwilling or unable to break out of its rigid mold. The record
of the past three decades, however, does suggest that top leaders, with their
varying styles and predispositions, can make a difference and have been able
to undertake meaningful initiatives in foreign and domestic policy. Hence, the
picture may not be as bleak as it appears.
The book's most valuable sections are those drawn directly from
Voslensky's own experience as an insider. Judging by his comments and other
available information, he had extensive contacts with prominent members of
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the Soviet elite. Unfortunately, the book does not make clear the status he
really had, identifying him only in academic posts. In fact, he had more mean-
ingful informal ties which provided him with contacts at a very high level and
opened the doors of the nomenklatura's inner sanctums to him.
Voslensky grew up in the privileged class. He studied with children of the
elite at Moscow State University's history faculty (for example, with Stalin's
daughter in 1943-44; see p. 238) and at the prestigious Institute for Interna-
tional Relations. He joined the elite in the establishment of scholars and offi-
cials in international affairs. His public jobs were in the Institute of World
Econonics and International Relations (IMEMO) and the USSR History Insti-
tute; but more significantly, early on he became an informal consultant to the
Central Committee's International Department and a protege of Boris
Ponomarev, who has headed the department since the early 1950s and has
been a Central Committee secretary since 1961. As a result, Voslensky visited
various departments in Central Committee headquarters and had contact with
prominent officials. He himself has publicly mentioned contact with Secretary
Kapitonov (p. 87), with Ponomarev (in the Swedish paper Svenska Dagbladet,
18 December 1983), and even with the then Kazakh First Secretary Brezhnev
(p. 357).
In this special position, he was accorded unusual trust and was allowed
frequent contact with foreigners and travel abroad.
The circumstances of his defection are not explained in his book or in his
other public statements, leaving the reader somewhat mystified at how some-
one from the Soviet inner sanctum could so quietly pass over to the West and
begin writing books like this one. The German edition of his book simply says
that he has lived in the West since 1972, teaching at several German and
Austrian universities. The Vienna newsmagazine Profil (19 April 1982) indi-
cated that he had become an Austrian citizen in 1976. In fact, during one of
his visits to West Germany, Voslensky decided to stay. He had high-level
Western contacts from his work in the SALT talks (he was secretary of the
Academy of Sciences' Disarmament Commission and a participant in East-
West prenegotiations) and in Soviet talks with West German leaders (during
which he met West German President Heinemann). In defecting, he managed
to get the intercession of Heinemann, who worked out a deal with the Soviet
Ambassador to West Germany, whereby the Soviets would not bother Voslen-
sky if he refrained from public attacks on the USSR. Eventually, the deal
collapsed and Moscow withdrew his Soviet citizenship. Voslensky now is di-
rector of the Institute of Contemporary Soviet Research in Munich.
Voslensky never says that he himself was a member of the nomenklatura
at any level (although as secretary of the Disarmament Commission, he would
have been) or even a party member, but he clearly lived among the privileged
class, for thirty years enjoying perquisites not accorded most Soviet citizens.
From his portrayal of the nomenklatura system-especially his biting satire of
one day in the life of a typical Central Committee official (pp. 411-439)-it is
obvious that repulsion against the system of privilege was one of his prime
motives for defecting.
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Based on his extensive experience, Voslensky provides fascinating descrip-
tions of how the nomenklatura system works in practice, the atmosphere pre-
vailing within the Soviet apparat, and the attitudes of those who have made
their way into this bastion of privilege and power. He provides noteworthy
detailed descriptions of the Soviet official telephone system (pp. 207-13) and of
procedures for getting a visa to travel abroad (pp. 302-12). His description of
the functioning of the Politburo and Secretariat (pp. 261-68)-obviously not
based primarily on personal observation-is perceptive and occasionally sup-
plemented with details drawn from talking with other insiders. For example,
on p. 267 he explains that Central Committee resolutions need the approval of
only five of the twelve secretaries (including one or two senior secretaries and
the secretary responsible for the field involved), rather than of a majority. On
the same page, he notes that each senior Central Committee secretary has two
assistants and two secretaries and that junior secretaries each have one assistant
and two secretaries.
Unfortunately, in this updated version Voslensky could not resist the
temptation to explain how and why Andropov succeeded Brezhnev, even
though he is no longer privy to extensive insider information. His description
of the struggle for power (in Chapter 8) is distressingly weak and filled with
tales of intrigue and murder that strain credulity. Moreover, in explaining
Andropov's ascension, Voslensky appears to undermine his own central thesis
that the nomenklatura is virtually the all powerful ruling elite. He presents
Chernenko as the natural candidate of the nomenklatura and Andropov as his
challenger and the threat to the nomenklatura. He points out that Andropov
launched a campaign against the corruption and abuses so prevalent in the
nomenklatura, threatening the nomenklatura's privileges and forcing "nomen-
klaturists to feel that they, too, were vulnerable" (p. 373). But if the nomen-
klatura is so powerful and Andropov was threatening its power and privileges,
how could he have been elected General Secretary? Voslensky not very con-
vincingly argues that Andropov used KGB force and possibly even murder to
intimidate the Politburo and the nomenklatura into accepting him as General
Secretary (pp. 371-377).
The book includes large sections on the nomenklatura's relationship to
Marxist theory (pp. 112-177), the concept of a ruling class according to Marx,
Lenin, and Stalin (pp. 14-45), as well as such practical aspects as how one joins
the nomenklatura (pp. 75-81) and privileges of members (pp. 81-88, 178-242).
Noting that Soviet secrecy about the nomenklatura makes even "an approxi-
mate estimate" of its size very difficult, Voslensky devotes pp. 92-96 to work-
ing out a rough estimate of the number of people on the nomenklatura, sug-
gesting about 75,000 for the "top category" and a total of about 750,000 for all
levels. Although references to the nomenklatura in official Soviet publications
are indeed extremely rare, there has been some fairly precise official informa-
tion on the size of the key element, the Central Committee's nomenklatura. A
March 1979 Voprosy istorii KPSS article by party historian B. A. Abramov,
head of a sector in the CPSU History Department of the Institute of Marxism-
Leninism, specified that as of 1 October 1947 the Central Committee's nomen-
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klatura was a little over 40,000. This was the size after the nomenklatura
assumed its present form in 1946, when, according to Abramov, a new docu-
ment outlining the "nomenklatura of positions" was adopted.
This top layer-the Central Committee nomenklatura-is itself broken
down into hierarchical sub-groups, based on who they are appointed by. The
highest and/or most sensitive posts belong to the Politburo, somewhat lower
posts to the Secretariat, while others are filled by individual Central Commit-
tee secretaries or even department heads. Voslensky occasionally mentions
such distinctions, specifying that appointments to the posts of first deputy head
of a Central Committee department, minister, ambassador, or patriarch of the
Russian Orthodox Church belong to the Politburo, while appointment of dep-
uty heads of departments, deputy ministers, and directors of institutes belong
to the Secretariat (pp. 224,75). He does not provide a detailed breakdown and
probably never saw a complete list himself; he writes that such lists are "top
secret documents" (p. 70). The limited information on this provided by
Voslensky generally conforms to the hierarchical breakdown of the Polish
Central Committee nomenklatura, which was revealed in two published Polish
Politburo decisions.' The Polish documents specify that the Politburo appoints
province first secretaries, Central Committee department heads, the premier
and deputy premiers, ministers (and deputy ministers for the key foreign af-
fairs, interior, and defense ministries), ambassadors, and the chief editor of
Poland's top party paper Trybuna Ludu, among others. The secretariat as a
body appoints deputy heads of Central Committee departments, most deputy
ministers, heads of departments within the interior ministry, and heads of the
press agency and radio-television committee. In addition, individual Central
Committee secretaries have the power to appoint editors of most papers and
journals, directors of industrial associations, commanders of province militia,
and various other officials, and Central Committee department heads can
name secretaries of party organizations in ministries and directors of various
government agencies. In contrast to Voslensky's statement that Soviet institute
directors are appointed by the Secretariat, in Poland institute directors are
appointed by the head of the appropriate Central Committee department
(while the president of the Academy of Sciences is named by the Politburo, his
deputies by the Secretariat, and heads of the Academy's divisions by the ap-
propriate Central Committee secretary). Somewhat distinct from other cate-
gories are appointments in the sensitive military sphere: They are kept exclu-
sively in the hands of the Politburo (commanders of services and military
districts and all general-rank promotions) and Secretariat (deputy chief of staff,
deputy commanders for political questions of services and military districts,
and head of the defense ministry cadres department).
Finally, there are at least a few errors in the new English version. In one
notable translation error on p. 259, the Party-State Control Committee headed
The Polish decisions were originally published in Warsaw in booklet form. They were reprinted in
French in Thomas Lowit, "Ya-t-il des Etats en Europe de I'Est?," Revue Francaise de Sociologie, Vol. 20,
1979, and in German in the special study Nomenklatura in Polen by Japanese Professor Takayuki Ito, issued
by the Bundesinstitut fuer ostwissenschaftliche and internationale Studien in Koeln in December 1983.
94 SECRET/NOFORN
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Book Reviews SECRET/NOFORN
the state." Another error, perhaps also involving translation, has Central Com-
mittee Secretary Ryabov as "deputy vice president" of the Council of Minis-
ters (pp. 263-64)-a nonexistent title.
Regrettably, the value of Voslensky's book as a research tool is marred by
the incompleteness of the index. Although the book discusses many individ-
uals, most of them-including such prominent figures as Central Committee
Secretary Kapitonov, Politburo member Voznesenskiy, Georgian First Secre-
tary Shevardnadze, Central Committee Administrative Organs Department
chairmen Mironov and Savinkin, and USA Institute Director Arbatov-are left
out of the index. In other cases, only some of the references are indexed. For
example, Voslensky's reference to studying with Stalin's daughter Svetlana
Alliluyeva (p. 238) is not included in her entry in the index. Since the author
has interesting things to say about many prominent figures, the book should be
a useful reference source. But this eclectic index is worse than no index at all,
misleading the reader into thinking there are no mentions of people who in
fact are discussed at length.
Still, the book has much worthwhile information for the student of Soviet
politics and leadership, both in specific detail and in descriptions of how the
system works.
This review is classified SECRET NOFORN.
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Nomenklatura: The Soviet Ruling Class, an Insider's Report. By Michael S.
Voslensky. Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York; 1984;
455 pp.
Nomenklatura is a masterful analytical study of the ruling class of the
Soviet Union, a ruling class created by Stalin, numbering today around
750,000. Author Michael Voslensky points out that the domestic policy of the
nomenklatura class is to consolidate its dictatorial power, and its foreign policy
is to extend it to the whole world. The nomenklatura is becoming more and
more parasitic. Its contribution to society is nil and its stubborn desire for
world domination involves the grave danger of world war.
Dr. Voslensky's representation of the nomenklatura rings with authentic-
ity, for he writes from personal experience inside the system. He is a promi-
nent Soviet historian, a graduate of Moscow University with extensive post-
graduate study in the Soviet Union and East Germany. He has been professor
in the Academy of Sciences in Moscow, executive secretary of the Disarma-
ment Commission, vice chairman of the Bilateral Historians Commission,
member of the Soviet Committee for European Security, and professor at
Lumumba University, Moscow. He defected without public notice in West
Germany in 1972. He is the author of five books and 450 other publications
(most in the USSR before his defection) and is internationally recognized as
one of the foremost experts on the internal affairs of the Soviet Union.
The term nomenklatura derives from the Latin, meaning a list or index
of names. Although it is rarely used in the Soviet Union today, the term was
defined in the Soviet publication Administrative Management (1964, 1968,
1971 editions) as a "list of positions whose ranks are confirmed by higher
authorities." This meager definition conveys little of what the nomenklatura
has become.
Voslensky begins with an historical analysis of the antecedents of the
nomenklatura. He devotes considerable space to contrasting Lenin and Marx,
charging that Lenin, the pragmatist, adapted, revised, and often directly con-
tradicted the work of Marx. Rather than awaiting the spontaneous develop-
ment of revolution, Lenin said it must be brought to the working class by a
corps of professional revolutionaries. Having seized power, Lenin and his pro-
fessional revolutionaries began to establish a new governing class, a process
which soon went out of control. The country was so large that the organization
of professional revolutionaries alone was not large enough to govern it, to fill
all the responsible positions. Applicants rushed to fill these positions and all
that was required was that they not be of noble or bourgeois origin and must
be members of the party or komsomol. Thus, the most important selection
criterion was political, not professional, a condition which remains to this day.
Stalin succeeded in controlling all appointments to key positions in the
country. He created the nomenklatura as we know it today, a ruling class
selected by political qualifications, which assures complete devotion to those
with the power to hire and fire.
By Voslensky's estimate there are approximately 750,000 nomenklaturists
occupying responsible positions in three categories: (1) leaders of the party,
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Book Reviews
komsomol, trade unions, and other social organizations and their sub-divisions
(numbering altogether about 100,000); (2) heads of state administration and
their deputies, belonging to the state apparatus, not the party apparatus
(150,000); (3) key positions in economy, scientific and learned institutions and
education (400,000 to 500,000). Together with their family members they
number about three million or one and one-half percent of the population of
the Soviet Union.
Every nomenklaturist belongs to the nomenklatura of a definite leading
party agency. It is this agency that appointed him, and it alone can dismiss
him. For example, ministers and ambassadors as well as the Patriarch of Mos-
cow and All Russia belong to the nomenklatura of the Politburo; deputy min-
isters and directors of institutes belong to that of the Secretariat of the Central
Committee. In practice, once on the nomenklatura list, one can expect never
to be removed. Every holder of a nomenklatura post is assigned a deputy
whose name is entered on a reserve list. When the post becomes vacant, the
committee concerned decides whether to appoint the deputy.
The many privileges that come with belonging to the nomenklatura
greatly increase the total value of the position's salary, which is considerably
above non-nomenklatura salaries to begin with. Vacations for nomenklaturists
are twice as long as those for the ordinary Soviet worker, are free, and provide
better class accommodations. Nomenklaturists have special government tele-
phone lines. This is important in a country where telephones are status sym-
bols. There are special food stores for nomenklaturists who receive coupons
allowing them to get their food there. These kremliovka coupons entitle the
bearer to "medical nutrition." Three coupons per day can be exchanged at the
Kremlin canteen for meals whose helpings are so generous that a single portion
is enough to feed a whole family. Many nomenklaturists prefer to exchange
their kremliovka coupons for food baskets full of luxuries normally unobtain-
able in Moscow.
How does one become a part of the nomenklatura? Today the trend is
toward nomenklaturists obtaining nomenklatura posts for their children. An
enterprising young man can still work his way into a nomenklatura position by
first of all joining the party, then establishing a reputation for ambition and a
willingness to do anything to obtain the desired appointment. He cultivates
those who can be useful to him, showing a special doglike devotion to the man
in his chain of command whose position gives him power to propose new
members of the nomenklatura. Voslensky takes us on a journey with just such
an aspiring young careerist, the fictional Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov, and we watch
him achieving the desired nomenklatura appointment and then always striving
to rise to a yet higher position. Although the privileges that come with a
nomenklatura position are considerable and make life easier and more enjoy-
able, what matters most to the nomenklaturist is power.
It is impossible to make one's way in the nomenklatura class without a
great deal of support. It is essential to join a faction in which everyone helps
everyone while at the same time trying to undermine rival factions. Nowhere
is this factional rivalry more visible than in the struggles for power in the
Kremlin. Herein lies the weakness of the nomenklatura, the inability to guar-
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antee an orderly and routine succession of power. Voslensky shows us the
factional struggle with its subtle intrigues that was under way even before
Brezhnev's death.
Voslensky tells us that corruption is rampant in the Soviet Union. Even
though nomenklaturists are forbidden to accept bribes, they do so frequently,
on a large scale, and punishment is rare and mild. The indulgent attitude
toward corruption can be attributed to the solidarity among the nomenklatur-
ists, all of whom are equally keen to add to their material wealth. Voslensky
contends that Andropov's anti-corruption campaign was designed mainly to
exert control over the nomenklaturists, to remind them of their vulnerability
and to whom they owe their allegiance.
Nomenklatura is unique in the view it affords the reader of the inner
workings of the contemporary Soviet political system. The book provides in-
sights into the workings of the Soviet system as a whole, emphasizing the
collective concern of the nomenklatura and its constraints on individual lead-
ers. This is of particular interest as one addresses the issue of the personal
strength, power, and authority of Konstantin Chernenko as General Secretary
of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as compared to his colleagues in
the Politburo and other elements in the Soviet government and party.
According to Voslensky, no single person is in complete control in the
Soviet Union. While the Foreign Minister and Defense Minister appear to
operate with a certain degree of autonomy in their respective spheres of in-
fluence, they, like Chernenko, are operating within the constraints of the
nomenklatura collective. Toward the end of his book, Dr. Voslensky addresses
the concerns of the nomenklatura in the field of foreign policy. He contends
that Soviet leaders genuinely do not want a nuclear war, not from a desire to
protect the good citizens of the Soviet Union, but because they know that the
destruction brought about by a nuclear confrontation would also mean the end
of their power, and probably even their own personal demise. The nomenkla-
turist as portrayed by Dr. Voslensky is striving to preserve and enhance his
power at all costs. What the nomenklatura wants, then, is world domination
for the Soviet Union without war, victory over the West without fighting. Dr.
Voslensky contends that the Soviet leaders make a show of pugnacity for the
purpose of persuading the West that communism is preferable to catastrophe;
Voslensky holds that the Soviet threats are nothing but bluff.
Nomenklatura is flawed by an inadequate index which will lessen its
value to researchers. The book gets off to a slow start. Many readers will find its
emphasis on historical analysis, harking back to Marx and Lenin, sleep induc-
ing. Others will make the same complaint about Voslensky's discussion of the
Soviet economy. Of particular interest, however, is Chapter 6, "Dictatorship of
the Nomenklatura" in which Voslensky focuses on the most important political
bodies in the Soviet Union: the Politburo and the Secretariat.
While the pace of the book is uneven, Nomenklatura should be on the
reading list of all who aspire to understanding how the Soviet Union is
governed.
STAT
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