Transcripts For CSPAN3 Declassified CIA Documents On The Cold War Soviet Navy 20171226

Next up, a panel of cia analysts and Navy Historians discuss recently declassified cold war documents on the soviet navy. Cohosted by the Central Intelligence agency, the National Museum of the u. S. Navy and the Naval Historical Foundation. The hourlong event was titled red navy revealed, soviet Navy Intelligence and analysis during the cold war. All right. Well, good morning, everyone. Thanks for coming out to the National Press club. The worlds oldest and Largest Organization of professional journalists. My name is kevin wency, on behalf the jetblue and directors of the press club, i want to welcome you and our audience on cspan and other media. Thank you very much. We have a special program for you today. First, i wanted to introduce claire sassen from the Naval Historic Foundation claires the executive director. Thank you, kevin. Can you hear me . I know you want to hear from everyone else on the panel, not me. Ill only take a minute of your time. We are delighted to work with the cia to bring you this, we think, exciting briefing this morning. Also, i want to thank kevin and the National Press club for hosting us this morning. For those of you that dont know the Naval Historical Foundation we are a nonprofit membership organization. We focus on preserving and commemorating naval heritage. And we use naval history to help educate the American People on the importance of our navy, cpower and the mamaritime brig. We work closely with the naval time history command. The board four of whom are sitting here, david, add miller and kevin are here. Our board, our members, are a wealth of knowledge on naval history sand proviand providingl context into activities happening today. We hope that you will use us as a resource as youre getting your research and writing articles. And thats it. We just want to say thank you for coming and enjoy the briefing. Thank you very much, clare. Let me go through our list of speakers today. Dr. David rosenberg, from the institute of analysis and retired naval captain. Celia mansfield. Welcome. Norm an pullmar. Naval and intelligence historic and a wealth of all things navy and marine corps. Rear admiral thomas brooks, u. S. Navy. Director of naval intelligence. Welcome aboards. And Eugene Sullivan retired cia naval officer. Everyone, thank you for being here today. David, id like to actually, cecilia. Would you like to kick it off . Tell us about the report and the documents, thank you. And then q a after everybody has had a chance to say a few words. Id ask you to stand up, state your name, accident fidentify y source and make it a precise question. Thank you very much. Good morning and welcome. I have remarks i have prepared. Just as a reminder, from 4 00 to 6x p. M 6 00 p. M. , we have a symposium at the naval yard. And that will be a twohour session in which well give a little more detail on the documents. I want to first thank our Navy Colleagues and our panelists. Its been wonderful working with everyone. And its been a real learning experience for myself. Let me start by saying that i have the absolute best job, not only do i get to tell the Central Intelligence agency story, i also work with the talented and diverse workforce, including the expert reviewers and researchers who are critical to making this collection and others like it, available to the public. It is a great privilege to be here today, to discuss the results of their hard work. As the historical programs coordinator, i manage the review and release of classified cia documents in the department of states Foreign Relations of the United States. And the discretionary release of historically significant document which is included over the last couple of years, the release of the president s daily briefs. Our goal is to declassify what we can, while protecting what we must. With this in mind, we strive to increase Government Transparency with academia, historians and the public. And one possible, we seek to correct the historical record on what cia has been involved with in the past. For todays events we have produced a booklet which many of you have picked up on your way in. And it just providing an overview of the history of the soviet navy and the u. S. Navys posture during this time, as well as a catalog. And the catalog is in the back of the booklet, describing the documents recently released for todays events. The documents can be found on the website under historical collections. Since this is about history, lets go back 2500 years ago. Almost 2582 years ago, the chinese theorist stressed the intelligence and the art of war. To win 100 battles is not the skill. On the other hand he stressed to subdue the enemy without fighting is the true skill. And a Nuclear Holocaust was averted. This current collection of documents is our story of the soviet navy in the cold war. With previously released collections in the series focused more broadly on the warsaw pact and the soviet military strategic issues. So, i can specifically talk about the documents. The documents provide a fascinating peek into the soviet navy during a critical time of its development. Resulting analysis at that time serve a National Security policy issue as well. Documents in this collection include intelligence assessments, intelligence memoranda and Research Reports as well as the Clandestine Research behind the product. The analytic products were written by a cadre of analysts of the office of Strategic Research and constitute about 30 of collection. With the reminder representing the clandestinely acquired intelligence used as the basis for the finished analytic products. These products were prosecuted for policymakers and Intelligence Community partners. In total, there are 82 documents, theyre newly released, and it amounts to about 2,000 pages. Much of our analysis of soviet military Strategic Thinking and for this collection, specifically, the cold war soviet navy, with its evolving naval strategy and development of its Nuclear Submarine force was zee arriderived by related and warsaw tech documents written by military leaders and strategists. These documents can greatly influenced the analysis on how the United States viewed the soviet union. They were obtained by the colonels, many of the individuals youve heard about. And one of these extraordinary heroes spoke for saul all for a them when he wrote, and i quote, considering that my place in these troubled times is on the front line. I must remain on this front line in order to be your eyes and ears. God grant only my modest efforts be used in the fight for high dael idealed for mankind. Those words were written by a highly placed soviet intelligence officer. He was president kennedys most secure source during the berlin crisis in 1961 and 62, as well as during the cuban crisis in 1962. He provides together with ima imagery critical intelligence on the so far yet missile readiness that president kennedy needs to go eyeball to eyeball with kushev. And reporting on soviet military organization, policy doctrine, strategy and tactics and finally the colonel who served from 1972 to his immigration to the United States, in november of 1981, reported on soviet actions leading to the declaration of martial law in poland that same year. And i wanted to talk about from an analyst point of view what these documents mean, if you could just give me a couple minutes just to talk about that. So, access to how the navy debated key issues about their own naval theories and practices, as well as their view of u. S. Naval strength made the difference between knowing facts and more importantly understanding and gaining the intuitive edge to determining the other sides intentions. From collective intelligence, the analyst will know thing. However, collective intelligence that helps us understand things contributes to making accurate analytic projections. Understanding also provides a context that allows the stitching together of disparate pieces of information to identify a more accurate picture of the situation. For example, we might have a picture that shows an increase in the number of ships. However, understanding the why, allows us to predict intentions for that increase in ship numbers. The detail in the clandestinely acquired military articles and the other soviet military thinkpieces in this collection were critical to the analysts understanding of why. Another important aspect of analysis, and youll probably pick up on some of the discussion today as we go through some of the questions, is that the Intelligence Community debates and had some debates in these early years on the interpretation of intelligence on certain issues. Community debates are healthy means to arrive at the understanding analysts seek of the situation and their episodes intentions. In closing, id like to thank john and joe byrd who are responsible for this collection. They spent about a decade doing a lot of pulling together of the documents and doing a lot of the research to allow this collection, as well as two other collections that already have been released. One fortunately our john byrd sadly passed away a couple months ago. Were deeply grateful to john and joan for the hard work on the project and dedication. Thank you. Think very much, celia. David, do you want to do opening remarks . Sure. Thank you. Good morning, my name is david rosenberg, i do work at the institute of defense. I work at Temple University and most recently the u. S. Naval academy and ive been doing history for more than five decades starting back in the 1960s. So i have been in many, many of the archives, and i alsos have a Navy Intelligence officer have been behind the scenes so im providing you with interesting comments. I wish i had a submarine model here but unfortunately, im talking from documents. So, let me provide a bit of insight on how to understand what cia has released. The first thing that i want to do is congratulate cia and thank them. What cia has been doing over the last few decades has been remarkable in terms of releasing both finished intelligence. And the materials that youve seen here, but also in the other collections of getting open human intelligencederived documents that were provided by agents behind the iron curtain. And the thing is, that when you put this together with material, that was released understand mandatory declassification verification review or freedom of information requests but which also cia processed and the Intelligence Community processed, you get a remarkable picture of the other side of the story. And this is very, very important. Because very rarely, this soon thereafter, are you able to in fact get that kind of picture. The other thing i need to thank cia on with an asterisk is the fact that they have put all of these online. This collection has been available since earlier this summer online. But in addition, if you look in the back of this lovely booklet, what you will find is a list of other documents related to it, that have also been declassified. And its a very, very fine collection that includes the first and Subsequent National intelligence commitment the asterisk and something that i have checked with celia about, so i can say this, is that cia has on their whats called the cia Research Tool it the ack rom him in is c. R. E. S. T. , previous to this year, or i think late last year, c. R. E. S. T. Was only available at the international archives. C. R. E. S. T. Is now Available Online at the cia freedom of information website. That is remarkable. The problem is it has one of the worst Search Engines i have ever dealt with in which if you type in even the most precise search tools you will get Something Like up to in one case 1500, you know, following web pages in which you could then search for something that might work for this. Celia has noted that this is a pain and didnt mind me saying this but i thought i would at least note this publicly. What do we have here on the web site . We have a collection of material that, in effect, covers, if youll pardon the phrase, the waterfront on understanding a good bit of the soviet navy. We have individual 1950s and 1960s human intelligence derived documents, some of which are respective from material released under the socalled iron bark series that corn pinkovsky provided. What is new in a number of cases are late 1960s and early 1970s formerly classified formal intelligence assessments of the soviet navy particularly understanding the soviet navy in its anticarrier role, antisubmarine role and a whole series of other points that had not previously been released. This fills a huge gap in terms of things to understand. There are also, and this will be a focus of the discussion this afternoon, a series of cia assessments on the role of the soviet navy in interdicting sea lines of communications in the event of world war iii. If you want to think about it, we are talking about it the third battle of the atlantic. Would this have occurred . Would the cia would the soviet union, with its vast collection of submarines, okay, come out and attempt to do what the germans had attempted to do in two world wars . And thats an important a very important issue, and is a way we can focus some of the discussion. In addition there is remarkable material coming out of cia collections of military thought, pardon my accent but i was told this was the right way to say it [ speaking Foreign Language ] okay, so far so good. That was the general staff classified journal that was provided by pinkovski, popov and k clchlt ukinsky. And also the warsaw pact journal. And this was the way that much of the military questions were in fact debated and naval strategy was, in fact, talked about. Finally, we have essentially nine documents that represent the 13 chapters of the combat regulations of the soviet navy, 1983 that were published in 1986. Human derived but very important if you want to delve into the mindset of how soviet naval officers are going to think. And then finally we have two book length studies. One a study with a number of redactions on kruschevs miscalculation in the cuban crisis and then a book on the trail of soviet disasters. As i said, you have to look at this and that is the value again of this marvelous booklet. I dont know if there is any hyperlink . Is this going to go on line . It should be. Will there be hyperlinks . It would be on the website with the documents above. We did a short summary paragraph so there will be a pdf. Right under the well the beauty of this is that there you can go to the website, you can find this now and then in addition you can, at least, copy and paste into the Search Engine the title of some of these things and that would be the way to find some of these documents. The documents that were released still hold stuff that the cia has been releasing over time that i think john and joan byrd made the decision they needed to fill in. So, this is actually a celebration of that act, but everything that came before it. Because if you really want to understand this you have to understand and look at the other documents, particularly something i want to mention and that is the issue of the National Intelligence estimate on the soviet navy that came out in 1982, National Intelligence estimate 11. 15. 82d. This has been out for some time and whats important about that is thats the estimate that was a gamechanging assessment off the soviet navy. That while not part of this, you can see things leading up to it. I want to at least note the importance from the key judgments that i think is very critical because it represented such a departure for american admirals on one hand and to understand the soviet navy and how it worked. That was this quote, within the soviets overall wartime strategy, the primary initial task for the navy remained to deploy and provide protection of ballistics missile submarines in preparation for and conduct of strategic and Theater Nuclear strikes and to defend the ussr and its allies by strikes in enemy ballistic submarines and Aircraft Carriers. This is something thats very, very different than the United States navy would contemplate. It was something that took awhile to get the United States navys leadership to understand. The United States Navy Leadership was worried about interdiction and soviet navy coming out and the fact was how did this work . The final point that i want to note is that you need to understand that the way the United States went about collecting information on the soviet union was all source. There were all sorts of things that in effect contributed to these formal intelligence assessments. This includes the technical collection that was undertaken by satellites, overhead imagery but also electronic intelligence, as well as signals and communications intelligence. There were a range of other sources that contributed to this. The United States navy itself redid the way it did intelligence, capitalizing on what it did in the second world war, and in the early 70s created something called the ocean surveillance Information System that provided tailored information to fleet commanders on the doings of the soviet navy. All of this was a remarkable system of systems that brought us a lot of very important information, and so if you want to understand this, the good news is, realize that theres a very, very large iceberg behind what you are reading. With that kevin i will turn it over. Terrific. I think well open it up to q a now oh, sorry. You want to make a statement . Please go ahead. Absolutely. Im sorry, let me move this over for you a little bit. We want to hear what you have to say. Hi, as the only press club member on the panel no, no, kevin. Skefen, of course. Im sorry. I mean hes an officer. Im just a member for 60 years or whatever. These documents are, one, fascinating. Some ive had the privilege of seeing related to work ive done in the past. A large number i have not. So i consider myself a consumer all of this. Having made a dozen trips to the soviet union and russia and having discussed some of the issues in here in these papers with senior officers, as well as submarine designers, i have written several books a couple of books on russian submarines, let me say that these are eyeopening documents. The problem is, as Dave Rosenberg just pointed out, prior to 1982, a lot of our perceptions of what the soviets would do, how they would do it, turned out to be pretty bad. Pretty bad. This evening i will speak about the sloc, sea lines of communication interdiction. How the u. S. Navy in the roughly first 30 years of the cold war, the primary Wartime Missions were one, Nuclear Strike against the soviet union with Aircraft Carriers, with Cruise Missiles, with polaris, poseidon, trident missiles, that was the number one mission, Nuclear Strike against the soviet union. The number two was protecting the atlantic sea lanes because we knew the germans had tried in world war i to cut off europe from the United States. Had tried again in world war ii with submarines, and had failed. But with the numbers of submarines the soviets were producing in one year, 60, 70 submarines, they could probably do it. So, we spent a lot of time, effort and resources in the concept of protecting the atlantic convoys, which it turns out the soviets were not planning to go after. That was a secondary, tertiary mission for them. I will close by saying this evening i will go into much more detail on that with some of the documents. Also, i must take issue with some of my panel members. I often take issues with organizations and some of you have seen me on tv and read my books and articles. Let me just say the cia is totally wrong, incorrect, just unbelievably bad during the cold war lots of shots were fired, and several score americans and several score russians, were killed. I will be happy to go into details afterwards. Thank you. I think he would like to make a statement, too. Id like to amplify on one point. That the references have been made to disagreements that sometimes exist in the Intelligence Community around this panel is going to focus on the issue of sloc interdiction. Id like to point out one particular paper in those that have just been released. And that is the 1978 paper by jerry sparks, of the office of Strategic Research, on the role of interdiction at sea in soviet naval strategy and operations. As an analyst for the past 27 years i have had the experience of writings a paper and you like the bcht2, i launch them, i dont know where they landed. But jerry sparks paper produced a virtual fooir irestorm of opposition from i put the admirals. Admiral shapiro. Admiral wickland, admiral holloway. A lot of opposition in the navy to jerrys message. So, what you see in these released papers are not only the finished products but you see a lot of how the sausage is made. Because there was a lot of debate, a lot of anger, within the community in discussing this issue. You may say why would the office of Strategic Research care what the admirals felt . We didnt work for the admirals. But in fact we did because our director of Central Intelligence at the time was admiral stansfield turner. So one of the great things about this release of documents is that you see not only the finished products, you get an insight into the arguments about what the finished product would look like. You get fascinating anecdotal material of, for example, admiral turner having a meeting with secretary of defense harold brown talking about the slocs. And admiral turner says, we did a paper on that. Secretary of defense brown says i loved that paper. Admiral turner says i wasnt too crazy about it myself. So theres a lot of stuff here that really points to the difficulty, sometimes, of getting the message out. I feel that they do in the long run really mark recognition for the excellent work of jerry sparks as the author and even more so for john byrd who was jerrys Branch Manager at the time and kind of the first line advocate and combatant in what was at times a pretty nasty exchange of views in the Intelligence Community. But truth prevailed. And its interesting, for the scholar, its a great trove of evidence to see how the system, how the Intelligence Community system, works, not simply the final products. Admiral brooks wants to make a quick comment before we go to q a. I would like to repeat as we said before, congratulating the cia on this huge project of get being all of these documents released. And previous documents to this, as well. I would also like to leave a thought with the audience. As you go through this and read this, you have to stop to think there still are some things that can only be collected by human beings from human beings. No satellite or antenna could have collected the information that is compiled in the back of this document. The value of the worlds oldest form of intelligence remains as important today as it has been throughout history. Thank you everybody on the panel. We will open it up to questions. It is interesting this comes out right now considering the world situation. Sir, right in the back. You, sir, right there. Thank you. Im a member of the press club and bloomberg. We hear a lot today about putins navy and his admirals prowling the black sea and baltic threats and black sea from a base in the crimea and mediterranean from a base in syria. What has putin and his admirals learned from the period that you were discussing . Where do we stand today with the new russian threat and how to counter it . And for the benefit of the audio with whoever answers, reintroduce yourself. Do you want to start with that . No. Ill take that one. Today the soviet navy has an interesting dichotomy. The surface navy is in big trouble. They have one Aircraft Carrier much smaller than our 100,000 ton Nuclear Powered ships. The one carrier they have is now in the yard for two, three, possibly four years, to be rebuilt and modernized. They probably cannot add another carrier to the fleet for another seven, eight, nine, possibly 10 years. Surface Ship Construction of destroyers and cruisers has come to almost a complete stop because these were ships powered by gas turbine engines. The main factory that produced them was in ukraine. And ukraine will not sell gas turbines to russia for their ships. By the same token, theyre building lots of small corvettes that their gas turbines can power and diesels. These small corvettes, small frigates, fortunately from their viewpoint, have terrific weapons systems. One of their frigates and three of their corvettes in the caspian sea launched missiles 900 miles into syria. So, the surface navy is small ships with increasingly potent capability. The major threat i still believe is on the submarine side. Where they are building very slowly, very advanced submarines. Missile submarines, ballistics missile for the strategic role and what we would call in our navy torpedo attack and Cruise Missile submarines. When the soviet union disintegrated in december of 1991 half the surface shipyards were lost. They were in other countries primarily ukraine but other countries. All five of the submarine building yards, they have changed the order of them, all five remained in russia and most of components suppliers remained in russia. So, whereas the surface ship navy has made a contribution in syria, the carrier briefly, surface ships and submarines firing missiles, in my opinion, the area that is going to be i dislike using this word, its a very journalistic term and im a journalist, the threat is going to be from the undersea, the submarine side. And this is where their emphasis is today. Would you reintroduce yourself . We cant really see that little blue sign in front of you. Oh, yeah, yeah. Im sorry. Norman polmar, this says naval and intelligence historian. I appreciate let me follow up, norman. Im not in a position to talk about Current Affairs given that the work i do on Current Affairs has nothing to do with this, or if it does i cant tell you about. So i will note as follows. There is the interesting question that as we look at and interpret how russia is going about its use of its navy an important lesson to remember is that which is symbolized by that startling statement in the National Intelligence estimate from 1982. Namely that things that the u. S. Navy thought that the soviet union was going to do for 30some odd years were things that they, in fact, were shown through the accumulation of a significant amount of very valuable evidence, they werent going to do. So, the issue is, to talk about what norman just noted, the russians are building very capable submarines. They are advanced and given at least the things i have heard from norman, given his relationship with some of the soviet submarine designers, they are really rather remarkable system. But the fundamental question is how will they be used . How would they be used in wartime . I think we can venture one thing and that is that it is not likely that the russians would in fact be using their submarines to interdict North Atlantic Sea lines of communication. The fundamental question is how would they use them and where would they use them . And i can at least venture one thing, which is available when you look at it in these documents, thats also important to look at. The russians pioneered the use of antiship Cruise Missiles. Going back to the 1950s. And that if you want to start with understanding the history, and the utility of the russian navy for the future, start with the antiship Cruise Missile. Sir, i think you have a question . Thank you, my name is jeffrey. Im going back to the a little bit of history rather than the current day. I wonder if miss mans field can elaborate on a statement that she made a little bit earlier because id like to take that statement and reverse engineer it and to see how that works out with the available documents, and public domain. Please give me the statement that khrushchev was the first to blink during the cuban missile crisis. Now the publicly available documents state that the United States also withdrew quietly its Nuclear Missiles pointed at the soviet union at the time from turkey. Is that a viable statement . Im not the expert on the cuban missile crisis, so i cant comment on that. There is, however, and i believe that david mentioned, theres an analytic document from 1964 that gives a lot of analytic detail on what we knew at the time. So, it is a very indepth study and probably the definitive study that i have ever seen and it is released and part of this collection. So i would commend that to you to take a look at. Im not sure, and maybe somebody else can talk to the turkey issue, if that was brought up. There was a excellent book publiced called operation anandare which was the russian code name for sending troops and missiles to cuba. It is an excellent book written, coauthored, the first half written by an American General who was involved, the back, second half written by a soviet general who was involved. And i think you will find if not specifics at least indications who will answer your question. Theres also a book by a guy named gresham and paul marr call defcom2. Which was the only time i think the only time in the cold war we went to defcom2 level which was everything but war. But everything was primed to start attacking. But the operation anandere is probably the best published resource on that issue. Were there any u. S. Missiles removed from turkey either during or shortly after the crises . The missiles, i think there were only one or two missiles operational in turkey at that time. Only one or two missiles. And they were removed after the crisis. Not during, but after. But im pretty sure, and the book goes into this, as i recall, there were maybe two of the planned, i forgot 16 it 24, that was the order of magnitude of missiles that were being installed. Either 16 or 24, as i recall. But only one or two were operational at the time of the crisis. Just very briefly. What norman said is true. I think there were more missiles that were, in fact, operational because this was a decision that was made by the Eisenhower Administration back in the 1950s as part of the nato atomic stockpile to provide these missiles in turkey and in italy. These remain a bit of a point of controversy because of the difficulty on the part of the u. S. Government and the department of energy to admit even though theyve been out for years whether or not these things actually were in turkey with Nuclear Weapons on them. They continue to redact some of information about that. But theres enough material on government websites and the official United States air force history. The key point is that the jupiters in turkey were really pretty horrible weapons that could be disabled by a rifle bullet and were in range of highways and the fact that kennedy ordered their removal because of their vulnerability, and the fact was that in the end, there was a kind of secret quid pro quo that the Kennedy Administration didnt admit that they would, in fact, remove the missiles. But they were leaving anyway and they didnt happen during the missile crisis, but they were, in fact, discussed. In a private set of negotiations between robert kennedy, and ambassador the new ambassador dobrynin about all of this. Site was back channel diplomacy that made the difference and had nothing to do, whatever, with the blockade, which was another key part of all of this. Great. Do we have other questions . Way in the back. Hi, National Public radio. To anyone on the panel, could you tell us more about what the u. S. Navy was doing to prepare in the decades when they believed the soviets might try to block sea lanes . And after that realization came about, what changed or what was done differently . I will be happy to make a couple of comments on that. The missions of the navy, we are talking about 1960s, 1970s in particular is pertinent to these documents, we viewed our missions as, number one, fielding, and sspn force, Strategic Deterrence as we characterized it. Sea control. Power projection and presence and support of diplomacy. That was roughly how we categorized our missions. The sea control mission, a very large sub seth of a sea control mission envisioned getting the convoys through to western europe to reinforce nato, and before, and particularly after the beginning of the war. Again, having in mind and remember the admirals who were planning this all were world war ii admirals. Admiral zumwalt was Naval Academy class of 1941. Many of them were submariners. Many of them sauz that despite what the soviet intention might be to interdict sea lines of communications, that the soviets with the huge number of submarines that they had, had the capability to interdict sea lines of communications. For those had the audience who were naval officers who served in the military you will know that from the Naval Academy through all of our war colleges and all of our educations, you are taught when considering the enemy, you consider capabilities first, intentions are very, very much secondary. You can change intentions very, very quickly. You cant change capabilities very, very quickly. A good example of that which was cited to me as a young officer at the time was do you remember that of course i didnt remember it because i was five years old when pearl harbor happened, but do you remember that five hours after pearl harbor happened, secretary knox sent a message to the fleet saying commence unrestricted submarine warfare. Something that to us was absolutely taboo. We had we had denounced it, we had said that it was criminal, we would never execute unrestricted submarine warfare. Four or five hours after pearl harbor, we executed it. To the surprise of the japanese, i suppose, but also to the surprise of a lot of naval officers, because we are not trained for that. That was not our doctrine. But our intentions changed very, very quickly. When you look at the investment the navy was making in those years, the Carrier Force was far and away despite the fact sea control was listed as our number two mission the money was spent on power projection. Two or three carriers off vietnam at any given time conducting strikes. A lot of money was spend on asw and submarine warfare, mainly used in world war ii ships. And in the 1970s, as those ships were wearing out, it became necessary to try to replace the asw sea control capability. We had a sea control ship that never saw the light of day and highlow mix of ships. But the navy continued to train considerably in asw and invest but not in the program where the carrier warfare program. I hope that helps answer the question. Just kind of a rambling answer. If there is anything more specific i can address let me know. Just a footnote to what admiral brooks just said, in the 1950s as an example the soviets built 236 submarines of what we you all the whisky has or nato calls them. 236. We saw four shipyards producing these 60 to 70 some a year, we knew that had to be the mission of those submarines, to interdict the sea lanes. Interestingly, the soviets never considered the whisky class as ocean going submarines. They built them with the idea of Coastal Defense against our Aircraft Carriers and amphibious landings. We looked at them as submarines capable of going to sea so obviously they tried to do what the germans had tried. And part of the reason we thought that way is after the war, world war ii, the british and americans armies and navies, literally hired or got hundreds not hundreds, scores of german generals and admirals to write about fighting the soviets. And i have an example back there in my bag if anyone wants to see it afterwards of how it was for the germans to fight the soviets. We were that influenced, our thinking was influenced by these papers, and books, that the german admirals, and in a few cases captains and colonels wrote. And they all having fought a battle of atlantic said it is unquestionable the soviets will do the same thing. What is fascinating to me as a naval and intelligence historian, it says, its just fascinating to me that the largest class of submarines built since world war ii, the 236 whiskeys, were intended for Coastal Defense, not for longrange operations. Im going to just adding, Eugene Sullivan retired cia analyst. If you look at the papers that are published about soviet sloc interdiction, they cover both intentions and capabilities. And the intentions thing says the soviets didnt intend to do it. But its accompanied by a careful assessment of suppose they did decide to do it. And the papers that the agency published found they really were not capable of doing it. Because we you looked at the submarine numbers and factored in things like endurance, torpedo loads and ability to differentiate different types of targets, the finding of the agency papers were they were not capable of doing it unless perhaps they totally abandoned every other mission including the protection of ssbns and even then it was doubtful if they could carry out a successful sloc interdiction effort. But the papers are the way to look at this problem, see what the arguments are and see what the counterarguments are, but thanks to the celias efforts, theyre all available for extensive looking into. Just a quick followup, and so after that sort of realization set in, can you give sort of concrete examples about that change, how that might have changed the way in thinking, deployments . On a deeper note if youll pardon use of this phrase, let me address a couple of issues that did take place in the u. S. Navy during this time. Antisubmarine warfare became a point of serious concern with the advent of the missile submarine. And in fact from 1957 on it became a high priority for them chief of naval operations. But more importantly this is something that as things were developing up in new london, connecticut, under submarine group two and submarine Development Squadron twelve this was the rise of american submarines, particularly Nuclear Attack submarines with very large sonars. In cooperation with a much larger system or systems seeking to understand where, find, target and so forth. So the soviet submarines, the creation of submarines as antisubmarine weapons in effect became. This is something the u. S. Navy, in effect, made a significant priority for its submarine force. Im sure all of you have seen, either read the book or seen the movie the hunt for red october and the delightful trail carried out fictionally of the red october. And the fact is the capability to do that is something that the u. S. Navy did very, very hard at with the goal of building 100 Nuclear Attack submarines that in effect i think we achieved 90something in the 1980s that were going to be as former commander of the Pacific Fleet once called it, the capital ships of world war iii. For Everything Else you would using carriers and surface ships but these would be the capital ships of world war iii if you needed to get into it. In addition as i noted, the navy also built a remarkable system built on National Intelligence capabilities to track the soviet navy from home orders, into forward deployments. And to find ways of figuring out where they were and what they were doing. At the risk of providing any plug i will note there is available one book called the admirals advantage written by christopher a. Ford and edited and directed by myself. This was a Navy Reserve Intelligence project. Weve never gotten any money. Was published in 2005 and reprinted with a introduction or forward in 2014. And it is the cutting edge of declassification that talks about how we track the soviet navy. And without that, youre not going to necessarily be able to vector those submarines in to go find what youre looking for. So that was a big part of it. May i make a few comments about the other side . One of the problems in asw, antisubmarine warfare, we encountered, was the soviets did things with submarines that one, we didnt think could be done. Or two, we couldnt do. For example, the worlds fastest submarines were soviet, not american. One of a kind popa class was the worlds fastest 44. 7 knots. Soviet planned to build 30 of those submarines. These were Cruise Missile antiship submarines. Their alpha class, which they built seven of as i recall, six operational, one just a troublesome boat. Could do 42, 41, 42 knots. They built submarines that could go to 1,000 meters, 3,000 feet. Based on published material that is roughly three times as deep as our submarines go and much deeper than any of our antisubmarine weapons can go. Their goal, according to russian publication, was 2,000 meters. The problem with a submarine operating there is you are not going to find it because of all the thermal changes between the surface and even 1,000 feet let alone 3,000 or 6,000. They have also done a few other things that we didnt believe they could do or they did, automation. Their attack submarines today have less than half the crew numbers of ours. Theyre the only navy that built Nuclear Submarines with escape pods or capsules for the entire crew. They have a number of things we said couldnt be done or surprised us. Because we didnt think they would do it. Just wanted to put in a plug for the other side. Do you want to make a comment . Just to wrap up the question as you asked. The discussion of slocs is an illustrative issue on the larger issue of how do we go about finally fully understanding the missions of the soviet navy. Daves book, the admirals advantage, goes into that. It was a number of sources, some of which were human sources, some were overhead imagery sources, a combination of many, many things. But highlevel intelligence to us in the 1970s that enabled us by the end of the 1970s to pretty well understand the soviet mission. Soviet naval missions. And there were some dimensions of those missions which quite frankly surprised us, and the reason they surprised us is because we didnt think that way. One of the major soviet Navy Missions was to protect their ssbn force to provide huge numbers of forces to protect their sspns. We dont do that. Our entire philosophy is the sspns will go to sea and get lost out there in the vast expansie expanse of the ocean and isnt threatened by anything. The soviets had a difficult problem particularly before they got longrange missiles and patrolled off our coast. Even after they did they wanted to protect bastions where they were operating their ssbns. We didnt appreciate this until very much later on in the evaluation of all of the intelligence that became available in the 1970s. We may have time for one last question. Yeah, go ahead. It is double barreled. I want to ask for those of us who may not be able to stand this afternoon if you will say a word about the incidents in which you said there was an you said its not so, as the cia put it, that there was never any shots fired in anger. Oh, okay. Let me hit that one. Very quickly. Everyone here knows of gary powers being shot down. But the soviets also shot down eight, ten, twelve, i dont recall the exact number, a dozen u. S. Air reconadvance aircraft. The first one in 19467 a Navy Patrol Bomber lost i think twelve crew men. Tlp were also a couple of shooting shoot ing insy dents in germany where americans were killed. At least one russian badger Reconnaissance Aircraft crashed while flying low over a u. S. Carrier. She did a turn. Didnt quite make it. One of the wing tips hit the water thap they lost eight people in that aircraft as i recall. In vietnam, there were russians who were killed, technical advisors if you will. And i believe we know of at least two or i have seen references to two russian pilots who were killed in vietnam. So, people were killed during the cold war on both sides. And shots were fired and as i say, probably a dozen u. S. And russian Reconnaissance Aircraft were lost, not counting the u2 where there was no casualty onto the u. S. Side. But one of the missiles that were fired as i recall did hit a russian fighter that was trying to intercept the u2 flown by gary powers so there were real shots fired and casualties on both sides. They aircraft was lost by its pilot. On a slightly different matter you mentioned vietnam and i wanted to ask about the whack the duke umts slow about u. S. Conclusions about soviet access or the soviet use of cameron bay in vietnam, starting in 1980s, and the important of cameron bay as a launch pad for possible future u. S. Operations. Or if not a lunch point i dont believe that this collection of documents cover that aspects of all. It was 82 documents, i dont think that was part of the practice as i remember. I dont recall anything. Theres some mention of that in the later National Intelligence and 111582 and 111584 and some of the later fsh intelligence information mem ran today and portion of these declassified but nothing else in great detail. With respect to the future, that is the future. Ladies and gentlemen i want to thank you on behalf of the National Press club for being part of this morning meeting. I think the panelists will be around if you have followup questions. Thank you again for being here at the National Press club. American history tv on cspan3. This week in primetime, starting at 8 00 p. M. Eastern, tonight, u. S. Army special force des tachment stationed in berlin, germany, during the cold war. Two teams would remain in the city just to give the russians and east germans a hard time. Troy radio stations and power plants while the other guys would cross over the walls to east the east targets. Rail yards. Wednesday night. Black Voter Suppression in the 1940s. During the congressional debate representative ludlow of indiana said quote what a travesty. Were sending negroes by the multiplied thousands are being sent to the first line to dial for freedom when telling them theyll have no part of freedom at home. Andrew jacksons political struggle to challenge and even cripple the powerful bank of the United States. Already by 1829 june of 1829 when hed been president all of these months, jackson was writing friends that the only thing that can prevent our liberties to be crushed by the bank and its influence would be to kill the bank itself. And friday night an interview with senator john mccain. On the vietnam wars impact on his life and the country. I dont hold a grudge against the north vietnamese. I dont like them. Theres some that i would never want to see again. But at the same time, i was farther of a conflict, okay . And i thought they were some of the meanest people ive ever met in my life. And i never want to see again. But there were several that that were good people. And that were kind to me. So thats why it was much easier for me to support along with president clinton and others the normalization of relations with our two countries to heal the wounds of war. Watch American History tv. This week in primetime, on cspan3. Cspan cities tour takes you to springfield, missouri, on january 6th and 7th while in springfield were working with mediacom to explore the literary scene and history of the birthplace of route 66 in southwestern missouri. On saturday, january 6th at noon eastern on book tv, author jeremy neile talks about the conflict occurring along the kansas missouri border over the struggle over slavery. In 1958 john brown having left kansas comes back to the territory and he begins a series of raids into western missouri. During which his men will liberate enslaved people from missouri, and help them escape to freedom. In the course of this theyll kill a number of slave holders. And so, the legend or the notoriety of john brown really gross. Its part of this struggle that people locally understand is really the beginning of the civil war. Then, sunday, january 7th, at 2 00 p. M. On American History tv. We visit the nra National Sporting arms museum. Theodore roosevelt was probably our shootingest president. He was a very, very avid hunter. First thing he did when he left office, was organize and go on a very large hunting safari to africa. This particular rifle was prepared specifically for roosevelt. It has the president ial sale engraved on the breach. And of course, roosevelt was famous for the Bull Moose Party and there is a bull moose engraved on the side plate of this gun. Watch cspan cities tour of