the feisty culture existing at CIA when I arrived, and the culture that dominated CIA debates until Casey and Gates introduced their brand of “McCarthyism” in the 1980s—a brand that dished out more than enough to turn a contrarian into a dissident.
My first 15 years at the CIA were a time of great excitement and fulfillment on a personal and professional level. My daughter was born in 1970, and my son was born in 1972. I took on a great professional challenge in going to Vienna in 1971 as part of the SALT delegation, which led me to miss my daughter’s first steps and first words. That was a mistake that I still regret as I watch my 11 grandchildren go through such developmental landmarks. My son was born during a teaching sabbatical at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. Soon after returning from Storrs, I went to the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research for a two-year rotation, where I worked with a talented group of Soviet analysts with strong academic backgrounds.
I spent a summer in Moscow at the U.S. embassy in 1976, working in the political section on Soviet relations with Asia. I traveled to most of the Soviet republics, and celebrated the 200th anniversary of U.S. independence with an interesting group of expatriots at a rooftop restaurant in Uzbekistan. The trips to Ukraine, Georgia, Estonia, and Lithuania, my ancestral homeland, were particularly rewarding. For the first time, I could actually study first-hand the places that I had read about in graduate school or examined from satellite photography at the CIA. I realized as never before that intelligence and academic reporting had greatly exaggerated the power and prospects of the Soviet Union. I conversed with Soviet officials and citizens at every level. If only I had taken my Russian language studies more seriously.
In Moscow, I shared an apartment with Lynn Jones, a former graduate school classmate from Indiana University, who was the bureau chief for ABC. As a result, I met many Soviet media personalities, and traveled with Jones on weekends to various places outside of Moscow to cover stories. We prepared interesting pieces on racetracks, wedding receptions, and dog shows. The chief of the political section, Jack Matlock, an excellent Soviet scholar and linguist, probably would not have approved. Twenty years later the New York Review of Books published Matlock’s favorable review of the book that my wife and I co-authored on Eduard Shevardnadze.16 The review made a big impact on my academic mentors.
There were many intelligence successes during this period that were a source of great professional and personal pride. The CIA’s analysis of the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s opened the door to U.S. triangular diplomacy between Washington, Moscow, and Beijing that established better U.S. relations with Moscow and Beijing than the Soviet Union and China had with each other. The improved relations with China opened the door with the Soviets to the SALT Agreement on limiting offensive strategic ballistic missiles; the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which was the cornerstone of strategic deterrence; and the Treaty of Berlin kept the divided city of Berlin from becoming a possible flashpoint between the United States and the Soviet Union in Europe. The arms control treaties of 1972 would not have received congressional ratification without the CIA guarantee of verification of the terms of the treaties.
These events took place despite the vulnerability the U.S. created for itself by waging an unwinnable war in Vietnam. The CIA’s intelligence throughout the 1960s and 1970s described the weakness of the U.S. military and political position in Southeast Asia, and, if that intelligence had been accepted, the United States might have been spared the Vietnamese setback, including the loss of more than 56,000 servicemen and women in an egregious war. There is no utility in good intelligence if it is not read and absorbed.
In my first 15 years, until Casey’s arrival as director, the CIA performed its analytical role as President Truman intended. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the CIA produced excellent intelligence that demonstrated that U.S. air power was meaningless against the guerrilla struggle in Vietnam and that the absence of an ally in South Vietnam meant no possibility of success against North Vietnam. CIA verification of the SALT and ABM treaties created the conditions for congressional ratification of the treaties as the agency stood up to the Pentagon’s opposition to disarmament. The CIA had a good understanding of the Soviet reasons for invading Afghanistan in 1979, which conflicted with the view of the White House and the National Security Council.
Intelligence analysts have a great deal of regional expertise and are often in a position to inform policy options, but only if policymakers are willing to engage. A typical example of conflict between policy and intelligence took place in the mid-1970s when Secretary of State Kissinger refused to recognize the qualifications of the leftist Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA) because he wanted to pursue a wrong-headed policy on behalf of South Africa against the Soviet Union and Cuba.
Several of us were contrarians in trying to prevent the unnecessary dust-up over the Soviet combat brigade in Cuba in 1979, but we were unsuccessful. This wasn’t a case of intelligence corruption, but it demonstrated the ability of a national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, to have untoward influence over the CIA’s national intelligence officer, Arnold Horelick, which spoke to the dangers of intelligence officials getting too close to policymakers. Several of us, however, managed to convince CIA director Casey and President Reagan that the “war scare” in Moscow was genuine and that U.S. actions had something to do with it. These events depicted the different worlds of intelligence and policy that are discussed in the following chapter.
FAILURE AS WELL AS SUCCESS
There were major intelligence failures during this period as well, particularly the failure to anticipate the Egyptian-Syrian attack on Israel in 1973, the October War. There is no doubt that Egyptian president Anwar Sadat surprised Israel’s Mossad as well as the CIA in organizing the attack on Israel. Less than 24 hours before the attack, the CIA told President Nixon that “both sides are becoming increasingly concerned about the activities of the other. Rumors and agent reports may be feeding the uneasiness that appears to be developing. The military preparations that have occurred do not indicate that any party intends to initiate hostilities.”17 Israeli intelligence also failed, despite the availability of an Egyptian spy who happened to be the son-in-law of former Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser and who provided advance intelligence of the Egyptian military operation.
Not only was the CIA terribly wrong about the possibility of hostilities, it told the president two days after the war began that “after several days of heavy fighting” the Israelis would complete the destruction of the Syrian army and “destroy as much as possible of Egypt’s army.”18 This was a much greater intelligence failure, involving group think and flawed intelligence that had dire consequences for Israel, because Kissinger dragged his heels on resupply of military equipment for the Israelis. Secretary of Defense Schlesinger finally convinced Kissinger that Israel was suffering huge losses and needed U.S. resupply as soon as possible.
The CIA’s track record on military intervention, the outbreak of war, and revolution is particularly weak. In addition to the October War, the stunning list of failures includes Korea in 1950, Hungary in 1956, the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Iranian Revolution in 1979, martial law in Poland in 1980, the Tiananmen Square nightmare in 1989, and Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. More recently, the Arab Spring in 2010–2011, the rise and consolidation of Islamic militants in Iraq in 2014, the Russian seizure of Crimea in 2014, and the introduction of Russian military forces in Syria in 2015 were not anticipated by the CIA. War is an irrational process in many respects, and intelligence analysts pride themselves on being rational, which may explain some of these failures. But in the cases of the October War, martial law in Poland and particularly September 11, 2001, there was ample early warning and strategic intelligence. Overall, the intelligence collection was good; the analysis was poor.
The value of intelligence in wartime should not be written off, however, as intelligence analysis during any war or crisis pays huge dividends in terms of up-to-date situation reports for military planners and policymakers. Decision-making during the Cuban missile crisis benefited from timely CIA intelligence that allowed President Kennedy to know how much time he had to respond in view of the time the Soviets needed to deploy medium-range and short-range missile systems. One of the CIA’s most important Soviet agents, Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, had provided