LETTER TO VAL PETERSON FROM ALLEN W. DULLES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80M01009A001402390001-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 11
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 7, 2013
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: January 23, 1954
• Content Type: LETTER

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23 January 1954
The Honorable Val Peterson
Administrator
Federal Civil Defense Administration
Washington D. C.
Dear Governor:
I return herewith the corrected transcript of nay informal
remarks at the recent White House Conference of ki4y3ra, which
you sent L-L.e with your letter of 28 December last.
It is the general in CIA not to give out publicly any
of our intelligence api-raisals. Normally these are limited in
distribution to the policy makers to whom we report.
.4 a eessible alternative if you feel it is important to have
a statemeut c .?cring the general subject matter of my remarks,
I would endeavor to prepare a resume, eliminating clavaified matter,
which you might give out as coming from the F.
Faithfully yours,
Allen SV. Dullec
Direct,:r
Enclosure ?
AWD/c
Distribution:
Orig & 1 cc--addressee
1 cc--Executiv:"*.gistry
1 cc--DCI file
1 c c- -R eading
1 cc--DIVI
1 cc--VML chrono
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ALL:?.., have asked Gov. Peterson's permission to reverse
him on one point. I welcome questions. If I can't or shouldn't
answer them, I will let you know very frankly. While I only have 20
minutes to address you., / will try to cut off at least three or fcur
of the minutes at the end so if there are any questions you can .00 them
(
to me. I may be seeing some of you this afternoon at the White,Vouse?
and we can Get together there possibly there are any more.
The job of the Central Intelligence Agency is to try to ferret
out facts and present those facts to the policymakers of Government. It
is not our job to say what should be done with the facts. It is merely
our job--and that is a hard enough one--to try to find out what the facts
then you are dealing with Russia, sonetimes the best you can do
is to come up with an educated guess, based on inadequate facts, and
an estimate of what they have done in the ;est.
In that connection--and this is more from the point of view of
your particular functions as ggyors of our great cities--the Soviets are
able to learn a great deal more about us than we are about them. We pub?
lish the essential facts of our situation to the world. We tell the world
where our installations are where we are making this and that. We give
them a great deal of information. In fact, I think we give them probably
too much, but it is a very difficult problem. When you have to decide
between the maintenance of our freedoms, our freedom of the press and
our other freedoms, and possibly disclosing more information than an
intelligence officer would like to see disclosed, I can quite understand
that maybe our freedoms are much more important. If we start to abridge
them in any respect, it is hard to tell where we will end.
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To turn briefly to the position of the Soviet Union as we see it.
Men Stalin died, early last spring, a change came about in the Soviet
Union; but that Change, in our opinion, has not affected its basic foreign
policy. The change was largely internal. We had not realized.-and not
until Stalin's death did we realize the-extent to Weida that old dicta.
tor had really taken hold of the country and of all the people there and
forced it into a pattern that was not a pattern that the other leaders
of the Kremlin liked. When Stalin was buried, he was really buried; and
one of the extraordinary things is the extent to which his successors
have buried his memory. There has been very little mention of Stalin.
The Lenin line has been disinterred and brought out again; the Stalin
line has been pretty well interred.
St in had frozen the Soviet Internal policy into a rigid framework
and the framework is still rigid enough. Re had set so rigid a framework
that the people themselves were beginning to fcelimpatient. He bad
frozen their foreign policies into a rigidity that even men like Jelotov
did not like. They blamed Stalin for the break with Yugoslavia. They
probably blamed Stalin pretty largely for the war in Korea and for many
other rigid actions in foreign policy. So when he disappeared, they
decided to change certain features of their system. That does not mean,
as I said before, that they have relaxed to any Great extent. They have,
however, in agriculture taken a new look at the situation. They have
clamped certain restrictions on the internal police. Deria's dismissal
and execution is undoubtedly due to the fact that they wanted to curb
the secret police. They more or loss put a sign up: Don't walk on the
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grass, but if you walk on the path, me won't worry you so much. In the
other days, you never could tell?you might be walking on the ps.1 and
still you find yourself in jail.
They also found apparently that they n't giving their people
enough from the point of view of consurer's goode, and they are reking
a real effort now to give them more. One of the interesting things that
me have to match is as to 'what extent, if at all that will force them
to cut down on their production of munitions and war material. So far
me have seen very little sign of any reduction. They have been using
recently quite a little of their gold to buy consumer's goods in the
foreign market. You may have 8'6.m in the papers reports of sale of
Soviet gold, That is going on; the gold sales of the last three or four
months have gone up quite spectacelerly, largely, we think, so that Russia
can buy consumer's goods in the market.
We believe that the military now exercise greater authqri1r in the
Soviet Union than they did before Stalin's death. It is hard to prove
that, but the execution of Eerie who was the artisan of putting in politi.
cal commassars in the Army, is one of the reasons for our belief in that
respect.
Vie see no signs, however, of a change in their
a.
policy
as far as objectives are concerned. They are more flexible. Fraterni?
zation is on. The Rusolate are perfectly willing now to nix?where they
never mould befere.?mith the foreigner. They are trying to give outwardly a
more flexible, a more amenable air; but when it comae to the hard question
as to whether they will make any concessions, either in regard to Lurope
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or as regards a treaty in Korea, we find no Change statever
vental attitude- of their negotintorr. The result is that aose ea reason
to relamas far 413 ie. are oonoerned. The policy in fact is more astute
and a. goOd deal cleverer because the present policy of the Soviet playa
into the neutralist tendencies of many countries of the worlds particularly
oountries like India, countries in Southeast Asia, and to certain people
even on the Continent of Europe especially in Francs and. in Italy.
Regarding Soviet intentions, it is our view that the Soviet does not
desire to provoke a hot war. They could etude into one. They might
Thai they more crowded into ono, but we do not feels looking over the next
couple of years, that the Soviets desire deliberately to provoke, or by
surprise attack to initiates a hot war within that period. It is hasard-
ous to predict for a. longer period. They are doing well in the cold war.
They have prospects for further successee in the Far East particularly in
Indochina.
They are also building up their atomic stockpile to f
wise,
and they are constantly improving their long.rane bearer fleet..-ane
will speak of that a little later.
The Soviet has such inherent military strength that it woe
safe for us to let our guards down. They have a groat advantage, of
course in having a central position from stitch they can strike out In
various directions, proteoted by their great land miss, the Soviet Union,
including Siberia and then flanked by their watellites. Ctih of the
reasons for their keeping a tight hold on the satellites is to protect
the Soviet heartland. That makes them, as history baa Mown, in the long
run relatively invulnerable to land attack, and presumably the only
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vulnerable to air attack. They have a very lerge stand/11j Army. rrob-
ably the Soviet Army, plus their security troops-- should say military
forces--ArnY, Navy, and Air Force--would be around 4.5 millton. There
is an additional 4 million in China and about half a million in the satel-
lites, making a military force?Arey, navy, Air Force, and security forces'
of around 9 million in the Soviet orbit.
To turn to a point even more interesting from your angle?their
Air Force: Total numbers are probably very misleading. They have a long-
range bomber force based an the B-29 that they obtained from us during
the war, probably so at improved. We would estimate that they have
between 1,000 and 1,500 of these medium bombers, called the TU-4. Their
total range etripped down would be 4,000 to 4,500 miles probably. That
would mean that these bombers are capable an a one-way mission of reaching
almost any important point in the United States. Those of you who live
in the tip of Florida, southern part of Texas, probably have a little
more immunity than those living in the other parts of the country. But,
by and larue, assuming they did not care whether the planes got back or
not, they could reach any pert of the United States?practically any part
of the United States. They have not yet got significant number sof heavy
bombers which could get to the United States and get back to their base.
Of course, with refueling--and we mnst assume that they have the plower
to refuel--they could reach a good part of the United States and presumably
get back. They could not reach P13 of the United States; and refueling
in a long-range mission of this kind?particularly two-way refueling--
presents serious difficulties. One refueling presents not many difficul-
ties, assuming they have the techniques that we have.
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We have felt that in the scientific and technical field, it is not
safe for us to assume that we can do thins they can't do. There is
nothing wrong with the Russian brain. Blum they put their mind to it,
with the help they have received free the scientists they have acquired
from other:counties and stolen from other countries, particularly Germaey
they have the technical ability in any particular field. Mere it comes
to aircraft, engines for JIG aircraft, radar, and ehat they have dens in
the thermonuclear field, they have in many respects surprised us by the
speed and skill with which they have reached results thet we had hoped
they would not reach. So in eeneral me assume--and must assume to be safe-.
certainly in the Central Intelligence Agency ?that they can do *let we
can do.
Vhsre it comes to mass production, where it comes to the technical
skills--riGht down the line--ere it comes to doing what re do in our
automobile and our other factories--no, I don't think they can do it,
because by and large, taking the Soviet citizen from top to bottom, the
level of intelligence of the American and of mare, of the Europeans is
higher. The educational standards in the Soviet Union are increasing,
and if you can give them a long tine, they may reach the proficiency that
we have now reached. I think our Great superiority lies in the character
and ability of the American citizen from top to bottom, and vie should
not count very largely on a great technical superiority merely in the
scientific field.
That was a little aside as I was dealing with the aircraft situation,
but I tried to make clear on the bomber situation, one-way mission, they
can reach practically any target in the United States. Nome as to whether
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they can get through our defense, you will hear about that from Gov.
Peterson and others, because my problem is looking at the Soviet Union
and not looking so much at what we can do in the way of a counterattack.
Whether they would rick their planes on suicide missions of this kind
whether the would not prefer to wait, if they are going to attack, -until
they have the long-range bomber that we new believe they are starting
ia production and may have in a couple of years--that is a question that
I cannot answer today. But we are inclined to think that certain of the
reasons which would lead them not to attack at the moment would be the
fact that they do not have long-range bomber capacity that they could
come to the United States and go back and also, as I will come to later,
they certainly presumably would desire to increase their stockpile of
atomic weapons before they made the attack, if they had the choice, un-
less they felt they were forced to a situation where they had to attack,
We know they have the NIG-15, an excellent plane for defense, They
have that in mass production, and they have quite a lot of them. They
have a good light bomber, jet bomber, the TU-44 that I mentioned before
is a prep bomber (propeller). The IL-28 is only awilable for shorter
missions. The force of the :levy lies chiefly in their large subnrine
force, and a certain number of good cruisers. They have no aircraft
carrier at the moment, and they only have a few obsolete battleships.
They have developed their submarines and they have developed their cruisers,
both light and heavy.
On the atomic side, the President the other day in his speech at
the UN gave you the essential facts, and I won't repeat what he said there.
They have had some tests. They have produced atomic bombs. We believe
they have a substantial stockpile of atomic boobs of various types.
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They have produced at least a prototype bomb with thermonuclear reactions)
indioating the possibility that they have or will shortly have we4Pons
with a very higi arnont of explosive pallier.
We have some ideas about their stockpile. Ituraily, keep
ideas secret) just as we keep our own stockpile secret. But
if they were forced into a situation where they folt it was neces arY or
desirable to attack the United Stateo, and if they could get their boobers
through) it would be -unsafe to assume that the:, could not put on us a
eubstantial load of atonic bombs. I don't think they have the kind of
Stockpile they would like to have to make that sort of attack) but it
would not be safe for us to assume that they do not have very serious
potentialities immediate' - in that field.
I noticed some questions that were submitted by several of the
ore from ealifOrldap in which they also raised the question of bacteri-
ological warfare. Our general view on that is this: Nhore you have a
choice of weapons) you choose the weapon that you think is most destruc-
tive. We believe that at the present ti oe if thy had a choice of carry-
ing an atomic weapon or a bacteriological or gas warfare weapon) they
would choose the firotthat is, the atomic. We should not, hoplever)
let our gurards down as to the possible developments both in the bacteri
?logical and in the field of chemical warfare.
To back their defensive system, the Soviets aro developinc
strength. Their vvoafs national produotim has boon increasing very rapidly
over recent years at the rate Of about 7 or 3 percent per annum over the
last four years. That will probably level off. On the militAry eide
they devote to 'military poo-oposes much larger proportions of their inchostrial
production than wo do. They dont t go in so much far re-.igerators,
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automobiles, and so forth. They go in for planes and tank., instead.
have one or two examples here. Take electronics: We believe about
90 percent of their work in electronics goes into the military side
whereas with us it is only about 37 percent?and that is rather typical.
mentioned that in the agricultural field they were having certain
difficulties, and they have had to admit that in certain sectors of their
agriculture they have _made really no 'progress as far as production is
concerned from the days before World ;Jar I.
said at the beginning that we thought i was unlikely that they
weuld deliberately choose mar at this tire. One of the reasons for
reaching that conclusion is that they are quite successful with certain
techniques that they are carrying on now?the policy of divide and pene-
trate. With their phony peace offensive they are trying to divide Us.
In their propaganda campaigns they have been extremely effeetive. They
have their apparati abroad and their communist parties in various countries,
particularly in Europe, in France, and in Italy. We know of the influence
they have in various parts of Southeast Asia, They have other possibilities
for maneuvering, particuleely in the Far East. The result is that since
they have not yet the capacity they would desire either from the point of
view of atomic weapons or aircrafi, and because they have still a good
deal of maneuverability in the foreign field n their policy ye are in-
clined to think they would choose the latter that is, to continue the
cold war, rather than to indulge immediately in a hot ear.
There is no reason for either panic or complacency. 'While we cannot
guarantee to you time, we believe that there will be time for planning.
But that time should be used. We have to keep in mind that the Soviet
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. ,
has the present capacity to inflict ver,y serious dArhige, but probably
not with the intention of irrwhdiately uLing it. Consequently, we have
a duty to be on the alert from now on, particularly in view of the unre-
solved wars in Korea and Indochina *which might create at any tin* politi-
cal. impasses which in the Soviet's view mijit force them to change their
policy. Unless the iseues that face us are solved or eased over the
coming 3,-ears I am afraid we have to look forward to the possibility that
our dangers will increase over the next three to Sive years as their
potentiality both frov, the point of view of long-range aircraft and atomic
bombs increases. But that is a potentiality we should face with calm
planning rather than with panic.
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