THE ROCKEFELLER REPORTS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79R00904A000200040012-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 8
• Document Creation Date: November 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 20, 1998
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: November 1, 1955
• Content Type: MF

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CENTRAL INT'E.LLIGENCE AGENCY
OFFICE OF NATIONAL ESTIMTES
1 November 1955
DRAFT ME 10RODUM FOR TI.OE DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
DOCUMENT NO. _ -6
SUBJECT: The "Rod.cefeller Reports" NO CHANGE IN CLASS. ^
1ECLASSIFIED
ASS. CHANGED TO: TS S C
NEXT REVIEW DATE: 75X1 9
DATE: ~0
DATElI REVIEWER:
1. The "Rockefeller Reports" are a series of papers analysing
European opinion trends before and after the Suit Conference at
Geneva. They are based largely upon the USIA2s Barometer Surveys
in the principal countries of Western Europea
2a The Barometer Surveys themselves are published by the USIA
on an intermittent basis. They are based on a sample of about 800 in
each country drawn up according to the customary practices aimed at
gett:gag a reliable cross section. The interviewing is done by contract
under local auspices. USIA believe the results to be accurate within
five percent.
I/
In these other areas, the opinions recorded are derived from press
and authoritative sources rather than, from opinion polls,
One of the pape.es concern European opinion of Far Eastern questions
and some of the papers contain aecticns on opinion in other areas.
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3o The Rockefeller Reports are primarily an analysis and extension
of the Barometer Surveys. They consider the trend in opinion, and they
draw some general conclusions about the development and state of opinion
in relation to US policy. They are, therefore, something more than a
flat statement of poll results.
4. In general, the introduction of the Barometer series has been
a very valuable development in the intelligence art. It provides a most
helpful additional factor for the use of analysts in assessing the results
of individual foreign policy moves and the magnitude of some of our foreign
policy problems. The Barometer reports constitute a supplemental, and
sometimes a corrective, factor to regular Embassy reports, which are
always open to error because of the interests and capabilities of the
reporting officers.
5. The Rockefeller Reports are an attempt to add sorm thing to
these Barometer reports, and they contain extensive and highly, sophis-
ticated interpretation of opinion data. However, the Rockefeller
Reports use the poll data without informing the reader of the size of
sanple used or the percentage of possible error. For example, in a
report of June 11 discussing opinion factors relating to the Summit
Conference the following are among the analyses made:
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ao Surveys had shown responses from West Germany, the UK,
France, and Italy ranging from 36 to 43 percent in favor of siding
with neither the East or West in the cold war, and figures ranging
from 40 to 54 percent of responses in favor of neutrality in the
event of a hot war between the US and the USSR. It was also
pointed out that only half of those favoring neutrality thought
their country could in fact remain neutral. This was interpreted
by the writer as indicating only "the scope of the desire for
neutrality" and an "aspiration" for neutrality at the public opinion
level.
bo It is concluded that public opinion in Western Europe
"appears to be a compromise between two factors, among others:
(a) strong aspirations for 'peace' and hence, in certain circum-
stances, for 'neutrality'; (b) practical considerations having to
do with 'security', among vh ich US defense support looms large".
6o There is, however, always a danger of attempting to draw toe
many conclusions or too firm conclusions from public opinion surveys,
even if one assumes that the poll is technically sound, that is, that
the sanple is large enough and properly balanced, that the right
questions were asked in the right way, etc. One such difficulty lies
in maintaining a consistent degree of reserve in interpreting the data.
W3m
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The illustrations noted in the preceding, paragraph were from the
first report, dated 11 June. But the data considered three months
later, in a report of 23 September, was not treated with the same care
and attention to its limitations. For example, this report states in
its introduction:
a0 "There is little doubt that the net result (of the
Summit Conference) has been a further undermining of the Western
Alliance, as represented by NATO,-in terms of public opinion
support, including the opinion of the more influential upper
socio-economic groups.
b0 "American foreign policy in genera]., and US military
security in particulars are based on a system of alliance, of
which NATO is the most important0
Co "The opinion situation developing in Western Europe
appears to challenge the bases of American policies with respect
to Europe mo and, in particulars raises the question of whether
continuing reliance can be placed on NATO as the core of US-
European policy."
70
The above conclusions were evidently based upon a battery of
questions asked in August. The pollsters found that the percentage of
persons interviewed who knew their country was a member of NATO ranged
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from 43 percent in Germany to 63 percent in Italy. In France 1i9 per-
cent, and in the UK 60 percent, were aware of this fact. It was also
found that the percentage of favorable responses on whether NATO had
"done well" ranged from 10 percent in France to 30 percent in Britain.,
that the number of responses favoring replacement of NATO by a security
system to which the US and USSR were both a party varied from 38 percent
in Germany, Italy and the UK to 43 percent in France, with only 12-19
percent favoring retention of NATO as an alternative, and that those
favoring withdrawal of troops from the continent and overseas bases by
the US and UK and Soviet withdrawal to their own borders varied from
It 1t percent in the UK to 57 percent in West Germany. In the case bf the
upper socio-economic groups., the numbers favoring NATO were only
slightly greater,, while the troop and base withdrawal proposition drew
greater support from the upper group in Italy and the UK than from those
countries as a whole. There was moreover a 20 percent increase between
June and August in the number favoring the hypothetical withdrawal prop-
osition. From all these data it is concluded in the text that attitudes
favorable to NATO are by no means "firmly structured in the minds of
either the general public nor the upper groups of Western Europe," that
NATO "appears highly vulnerable from the opinion point of view.," and
that "at the least, it appears that the people of Western Europe are
now w111ing to consider security arrangements alternative to NATO."
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.8. The data developed from the polls are certainly disquieting
on their face, but there are a number of reasons wIW we do not believe
they should on their face be accepted as sufficient reason for the
alarming conclusions which are Prawn from them
a. There are no comparable data for earlier periods. It
is therefore entirely possible that knowledge of NATO and support
for it is greater now than in the past*
b. The polls were taken during the first flush of popular
optimism resulting from the friendly atmosphere at Geneva.
co Much of the sympathy for the broad security arrangements
and the troop withdrawal proposition which were postulated could
just as well be regarded as a "desire" or an "aspiration," moth
as the writer interpreted the so-cal led "neutrality" sentiment
which emerged from earlier polls. Moreover the annoyances which
normally accompany the presence of foreign troops, and, in the
case of West Germany, the clear implications of troop withdrawal
for reunification were almost certainly factors in the responses of
many of those polled.
d. It is an over-simplification to say that "American foreign
policy in general ... (is) based upon a system of alliances." It is
true that one very important aspeat of American policy is the North
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Atlantic organization, but the fact that this alliance was in
response to a threat _- and even at times an imminently dangerous
threat -m was always made clear to the USSR and was defended in
those terms by European governments before their parliaments. It
is natural, therefore, that if the imminence and magnitude of
that threat should appear to have receded, the responses to it
in terms of maintenance of bases and forces abroad or the.substi4
tution of what could be defended as a superior treaty arrangement
should be those recorded. This should not, however, necessarily
be regarded as an "undermining of the Western alliance." The
questions asked were hypothetical propositions mhich struck a
favorable chord in the aspirations of people who were encouraged
by the Geneva, atmosphere; those questions did not go to basic
foundations of the North Atlantic communityo
9. We wish to make it clear that we believe there are dangers
in the post-Geneva world which we have developed at some length in
PIE l00-7-55 (Current World Situation), and we do not wish to minimize
the problem of West European opinion, which is obviously in need of
careful developmento To this end, the Rockefeller Reports provide a
number of valuable mialyses and insights developed from and going
somewhat beyond the base results of the polls upon which they are
d7o
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principally based. We detect, however, a natural tendency to build
too large a structure of conclusions upon the foundation. of such polls.
This tendency is kept under scrupulous control in the earlier issues
of the Reports. In the later issues, we are disturbed by the drawing
of broad implications from what seems to us an insufficiency of data.
Some danger therefore exists in furnishing papers of this nature
direct from the Rockeleller office to policy makers unless they are
clearly and continuously on notice that such papers represent an
analysis of only a fraction of the available evidences
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