Transcripts For CSPAN Reagan CIA And The Cold War 20111226

everybody sing it. birthday ♪ happy birthday ♪ happy birthday dayppy monument ♪ happy birthday ♪ happy birthday ♪ happy birthday ♪ happy birthday ♪ happy birthday ♪ [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> michelle bachmann is here, i understand, and she is thinking about running for president. which is weird, because i hear she was born in canada. [laughter] yes, michelle, this is how it starts. >> it is so amazing to be in washington d.c., all of this history, these amazing buildings, and here we are, at the hilton. [laughter] the red carpet outside was amazing. >> who are you wearing? >> what does it matter, i'm going into the hilton. [laughter] >> c-span's coverage from the white house correspondents' dinner, are ranked among youtube's top 10 most viewed political videos. you can watch them on line at youtube.com/cspan. >> for this year's video competition, part of the constitution has meaning to you, and why? get it to c-span by january 20, 2012. that is less than a month away for your chance to win the grand prize of $5,000. there is $50,000 in total prices. the documentary competition is open to students 6-12. -- grade 6-well. for more permission, go to student mdot.org. -- studentcam.org. >> c-span series "the contenders" looks back at 14 candidates that ran for president and lost, but have a lasting impact on american politics. on monday, thomas dewey, who ran against harry truman. >> tuesday on c-span2 a look back at the tributes and memorials held this past year. we will begin with a tribute to former kansas senator and republican presidential candidate bob dole. just after noon on the teas -- on tuesday, the memorial service for first lady betty ford, who passed away in july. longtime friend and former first later -- first lady, cokie roberts. members of congress and the 38 presidents children spoke at the next event. you can watch the tomorrow at 1:35 p.m. eastern on c-span2. tuesday on washington journal -- "washington journal" a discussion on libertarians in campaign 2012 with nicholas p.. -- nick gillespie. after that, it look at the drawdown of troops in iraq. and later we will chat with jeffrey passel on the statistics of illegal immigrants in the u.s.. that is live at 7:00 a.m. eastern here on c-span. wednesday morning on "washington journal" spotlight on magazines, historian and author command a foreman on her newsweek cover story about margaret thatcher's tenure as prime minister. you can find a link at our website c-span.org and see the author wednesday morning at 9:15 a.m. as she takes your phone calls. up next, an event looking at former president ronald reagan's use of intelligence leading up to the end of the cold war. the cia, co-sponsors of this event, released more than 200 declassified documents, photos, and reaping videos. you're from former forms control director, ken adelman, cia director peter clemons, and former kgb -- kgb general oleg kalugin. this is an hour and 35 minutes. >> on behalf of our director and our chief information officer, i want to thank you very much for coming. i hope you enjoy the afternoon. almost every day, i get to go to cia headquarters in langley, virginia. i walked across the agency seal and the floor, the one that u.s.c. and buy movies, and i walked past the -- that you have seen in the spy movies. i walk past the director on the left for strategic services. [computer booting up noises] [laughter] >> i did not know there was a ghost in the memorial hall. there are 102 stars on the wall today, 49 of which have been added since i've been working at cia. i go past a couple of big guards with big guns from up a few steps, and passed a bust of vice president george bush, a former president of the cia, and i go to the left. at the end of the hall is a mural of the statue of liberty and below that is printed the agency's model. it read, "we are the nation's first line of defense. we accomplish what others cannot accomplish. and we go where others cannot go." in order to accomplish those things and go to those places, much of what we do must necessarily remain secret. if our adversaries had access to this information, our methods would quickly become ineffective. as you can imagine, which take this declassification business very seriously. information management services, the office that my deputy and i lead at cia, is responsible for the records at cia, records that remained secret for a very long time. although operating a secret intelligence organization in a democracy has inherent tensions, as an organization, we believe we will those records in trust for the american people, and when their sensitivity decreases over time, we have a duty and responsibility to release them saw americans can see for themselves. our director once said to me, how you decide when a secret is no longer a secret? about the only thing i could come up with was a very difficult task, to which he immediately agreed, and he offered that he was glad he did not have to personally do it himself. at cia, we have very dedicated, very experienced officers to go line by line, page by page, for millions of documents each year, protecting what they must in the interest of national security and releasing what they can in the interest of the american people. these officers were under incredibly tight time lines and by and large without any expectations of acknowledgment whatsoever. i will break tradition right now. if you work in information services siong or csis at the cia, would you please stand? [applause] thank you very much. thousands of hours going to declassification projects like the ones we are engaged in today. these folks that just stood a moment ago have spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours, and have worked on this particular event for the past two years. finding documents, redacting documents, and ultimately, releasing documents. history is a very fluid thing and what we know about the past is always subject to reassessment when new information arises. the reason we look forward to events like this conference today is the -- is they provide a wonderful opportunity to reexamine the narrative is that a company pivotal event in our nation's history. the -- that accompanied pivotal events in our nation's history. some of them challenge misconceptions about intelligence leading up to the cold war. the myth, for example, the president ronald reagan was an unsophisticated consumers of intelligence provided by the cia, where the contention that u.s. policymakers were blindsided by the fall of this to be a union if due to the failure of intelligence. -- of the soviet union due to the killion of intelligence. -- the failure of intelligence. on the back of your program, there is a dvd, and a variety of things that were produced for president reagan. it is a treasure trove of information, and i highly recommend you look at it when you get a chance. before i get 1000 calls back in washington that it does not work, the dvd is designed for your computer and not the one attached to your television. [laughter] i'm so excited to hear the fantastic speakers that we lined up today. i want to close. before i do that, i want to recognize a couple of current and former senior cia officers in attendance today. peter clemons, r. deputy director for intelligence today is here. our chief information officer is here with us today. without her leadership, events like this do not happen. our former duprey director of central intelligence is with us today, and you will hear from him on the podium as well. and we have a gentleman who at cia needs no introduction at all, because he is a legend. former officer in the office of strategic services and charter member of the cia 1947, major- general john passing cloud peridot -- major general johnsinklow. [applause] thank you for coming today. i hope you enjoy it. especially the young folks here today, our next generation of history makers. [applause] >> thank you, joe. when you have conferences and symposiums what is, you realize that -- how to open our society really is. i think we should feel extremely poor unfortunate -- extremely fortunate that we can do that. when ronald reagan took office in 1981, it was doubtful that anyone could predict the collapse of the soviet union and the cold war a decade later. no one, that is, except ronald reagan. he worked to make the world a safer place. but he also knew the importance of a strong military, as well as good intelligence. as you will learn today, information provided to the president and his advisers is critical. in all fairness, things were not always easy, nor was there full agreement on the course of action. and there was disagreement probably caused some consternation in washington. today, we offer an insightful look at that amazing time in history. we have a stellar group of speakers and panelists who will provide important perspectives and perhaps, some lively discussion. our keynote was there on the front lines with ronald reagan. we're quite fortunate to have him with us today because he graciously agreed to modify his gavel so he could be here. unfortunately, all -- modify his schedule so he could be here. unfortunately, he has to break because he has to check the red right -- take the ride back home this evening. ken adelman is a senior government official as well as ambassador. there are a few other things you might not know about him. in a program that he called "movers and shakespeare's.com" he uses the lessons learned from shakespeare to teach the top executives. in 1974, traveling down the congo river on the 100th anniversary of the legendary expedition, he was there. he been transferred -- translated for mohammad ali and a fight with george foreman. all of this provides a unique perspective for our symposium today. ladies and chairman, please give a warm welcome to ambassador ken adelman. [applause] >> thank you, do. that was a wonderful introduction. it was so much nicer than the introduction i had in indianapolis when i was in office, and the fellow there from the rotary club said i had been with ronald reagan for all of these important things, in and out of the white house constantly, and i knew everything was happening -- that was happening. at the end of my introduction with a grand flourish he said, so listen carefully and hear the latest dope from washington. here is kendeigh kettleman. -- here is ken adelman. [laughter] and about a year later i was giving a talk on northeast asia and the head of the foreign affairs committee in tokyo after my speech got up -- a wonderful japanese man -- after my speech he got up and he said, ambassador edelman, for your service to this free world and for your remarks today, you deserve much clap. [laughter] i told him, it was all right. of all the things the world, much -- of all the things in the world i wanted, much clout is not one of them. [laughter] i always think of the first commencement address that ronald reagan gave as president of the united states and it was at the eureka college. he was there a few months after he was shot and reagan came out and he thanked the president and the faculty for giving him an honorary degree, and then he said, it is wonderful to get an honorary degree from eureka college. to tell you the truth, i always thought the first grade i got was honorary as well. [laughter] and then he said, just, -- you know, i did not get great great year, but just the other night i was sitting on the truman balcony and it was a starlit night and nancy and i were sitting some wine. to the right, i looked and there is the lincoln memorial, the washington monument, the jefferson memorial, to the left, the capitol building. and i said, nancy, next become going to uber college. she said, yes, i know, dear. i said, i did not get very good grades at eureka college. and she said, i know, dear. and i said, you know, there is no telling what i could have become had i really applied myself and been diligent at eureka college. [laughter] a want to start today the symposium, a really wonderful symposium on the role of intelligence during the reagan administration by looking at the main question of that hearing, and the main question that i hope our panel talked of today. -- botox of today. that is, the question of how reagan got it really right on the big issues, the really big issues, when those of us who worked with him in the intelligence community and in academia, and policy-makers, who had spent so much time more time on these issues than he did, who knew the subject so much better, who work, we thought, so much smarter -- how did he get it right and we did not? for starters, let's go to the finish. clearly, by 1982, ronald reagan saw that communism would -- as he stated publicly in 1982, "enda on the ash heap of history." according to the materials i have read recently, it was in the 1970's that he worked out in his own mind how the cold war would end, namely, we win, you lose. the intelligence community did not come to a conclusion like bad until 1989. and even then, with a caveat and footnotes. for this cardenaz, the cia has been roundly criticized -- for this tardiness, the cia has been roundly criticized. it is something of a bad rap. the cia had been moving in that direction for years. besides, to conclude, before 1989, to conclude that the soviet union would be relegated to the ash heap of history was not only unthinkable in the cia, but also in the kgb. such thinking was pie in the sky, believed to singularly by ronald reagan. we policy wonks, the real soviet experts, we knew better, but we knewere wrong. our remember telling president reagan three times -- i remember telling president reagan three times, you know, since 1970 -- 1917, some 30 countries have gone from capitalism to communism. not one country has ever gone from communism to capitalism, and it is it unlikely that it is going to happen anytime soon. he looked at me and shook the head of his in his wonderful way and said, thank you, ken, that is very interesting. and then went on to say it again a few minutes later. for ronald reagan to believe that we could and would win the cold war, and fairly soon, that idiosyncratic view is more than just -- as shakespeare would say, passing strange, and ford have real consequences then and consequences that none of us could ever imagine. if you to abandon conventional and quite convincing view that the u.s.-soviet rivalry was for all ages as far as the eye could see, as far as the mind and imagination could go, then you had to get along, avoid blowing each other up, and make do. the rivalry then became like a bad marriage without divorce. from which there was no escape. orrin john paul sartre -- or in john paul sartre's play, no exit. you had to make things as least -- at least as taller boy as you could make it. this mind-set led to the liberal view of u.s.-soviet a combination, or to the kissinger view of tough-minded detente. on the other hand, if you go with the distinct construct that the u.s.-soviet competition was temporary, that it would end soon with their losing and are winning since their system contradicted human nature and was therefore illegitimate, and our system complemented human nature, allowing the full flowering of the human nature and therefore legitimate, then you took a radically different view. this approach, stemming from a different mindset that ronald reagan had, broke with previous presidents, especially nixon and kissinger, who felt they had to adopt a realistic foreign policy, one that accepted soviet power forever more and one that would legitimize this predicament and legitimize the soviet government. in contrast with reagan's mind set, he would be willing to sit down with the soviets, but he would also be willing to stand up to them. moreover, he would begin to adopt the so-called reagan doctrine of vigorously challenging moscow, rolled back as it is called, but not as envisioned in central europe, but in central america, central asia, like afghanistan, and in central africa, like angola. moreover, you would confront them where it hurts the most, in the central nervous system. you would engage mightily in the war of ideas, you would say our right to the soviets, "reserve unto themselves the right to commit any crime, to lie to, to cheat" to against their aims, as ronald reagan did in his very first presidential press conference. you have to understand, this was ok for a speaker on the g circuit to say. it was ok for a speaker at the republican national convention to say. it was ok to say it in the water club. but for the president of the united states to say it in his first press conference right there, setting the stage for diplomacy over the next eight years, that was awfully new. presuming that their government was illegitimate, you would call the soviet union an evil empire, and the focus of evil in the modern world. and you would cry out, "mr. gorbachev, tear down this wall." all of this stems from the unconventional mind set that somehow reagan adopted. similarly, he saw or felt the transforming nature of sdi. a lot of us thought strategic defense was helpful. in fact, i had written an article for the heritage foundation policy review a year before the migration is saying that we should revise strategic defense. but we considered it not revolutionary, but contra group -- complementary to traditional deterrence. i was amazed in november of 1985 during the first summit between reagan and gorbachev, the first u.s.-soviet summit in seven years, when the soviet daud -- a delegation spent 75% of their time in a very agitated nature about sdi. and remember pat buchanan, who was then the director of white house communications, and saying, don't they understand this is just a presidential speech? two and half years after the president gave his speech in 1983 advocating sdi, the pentagon had done virtually nothing on it. it was just rhetoric. it was just presidential words. and remember pat saying, don't tell them that. they think is a real program that the pentagon has under way. similarly, as d i became a make or break issue at the -- sdi became a make or break issue at the next summit, 25 years ago last month. on that historic sunday morning in october of 1986, after we had negotiated from 8:00 p.m. until 6:20 a.m. in the morning, after i told president reagan in the secure bubble of the room with an arrow of top secret conversations at about 8:30 a.m., i said, mr. president, we have accomplished more in the previous evening then we have for seven consecutive years in geneva. and alternatively on that, gorbachev then played his sdi card. he tied all of our arms control agreements, which the president ended up either snuffed out or shaved down -- which would mean the president either snuffing out or shading down as the guy. the president did not back down. in short, the president went nuts about the policies, while people like me went nuts about the pentagon not beginning to work on the sdi possibilities. i now believe that reagan, in gauging the vigorously in the war of ideas and launching sbi, were most critical in bringing down the soviet union. i say this to contradict today's common explanation, at least in some sophisticated circles, that the u.s.s.r. collapsed because of its own internal decay, not because of any actions by any u.s. president, certainly not the one that clark clifford, washington's foremost wiseman, called that dunst, ronald reagan. it had to collapse, so says this argument. but then you wonder why it had to collapse. history is complete -- is replete with poor countries editor state court or get poorer, but do not under our system of a revolution, and especially not a peaceful abandonment of the empire. the turkish and russian empires worked for and got poorer over several centuries. -- work for and got poorer over several centuries. to a certain inevitability of the revolutionary soviet breakup -- to assert the inevitability of the revolutionary soviet breakup is simple-minded. it leaves out people from the historic portrait of that era. to someone who is chattering class, there is room for a portrait in the historic -- there is room for a face in the historic portrait of the era. and that faiz is mikheil core which of. mind you -- and i face is mikheil gorda joseph. and mind you, he deserves some of the credit. but amidst all of the adulation heaped upon gorbachev, someone applied a simple question that should be pos about any leader in history, and the question is, did that liter achieved her or his goals? here.apply it on march 11, 1985, did gorbachev set out to break up the soviet union? to toss it on the ice sheet of history? to end its vast empire? and to totally discredited ideology that he, and especially his wife, had proclaimed for their whole lives? was this his goal? --e these he's aspirations his aspirations when he took up the oath of office that march day? or a baby summary of the goals and aspirations -- or were they the summary of the goals and aspirations of that other fellow, who would go to -- who we go to any lengths to avoid giving credit to? the other guy who raised his oath -- his arm to take the oath of office if you years before in 1981. when all the opponents assert these twin planes, the inevitability of it all due to a soviet client -- declined, were rich of's doing it all, they bring to mind -- or garbage of's do it all, they bring to mind george orwell's quit that they are so stupid that they could have done it. [laughter] i scramble back to the beginning. to return to the question posed by our two panels this afternoon, what and how did our television -- intelligence do during the reagan administration? the intelligence community did much better, fairly good, in fact, a solid b +. i say this not only because the cia as opposed to this great conference this afternoon, and being as you know, it basically polite fellow, i will not offend my host. but the record stands up very nicely. there is nothing like the mass of intelligence failure that we had from 1995 through 2003 on iraqi weapons of mass destruction. instead, there was a solid record of reporting quite accurately, as it turned out, the status of soviet forces, but sliding fortunes of the soviet economy, and garbage of -- gorbachev's intractable coherence on these issues the cia's failure to predict the breakup of the soviet union, so did the k.g.b. and the soviet government. the decades of economy are treated very fairly it -- very fairly by those you will hear the doctor knew, baidoa hartle tebow with it. -- and by the wonderful books but go with it. the problems stem from the intelligence community hyping the overall size of this economy, which lowball the defense burden, on the smaller than estimated the economy. the intelligence community then deemed to the soviet gop half the size of the united states gnp, which was sexually and one- third or less. what has been dubbed a bombshell -- which was estimated at 1 darla spirit what has been dubbed as a bombshell raise the appraisal of the soviet defense and in up to 11% to 30% of its gnp. i was then working as a special assistant. i was young, and to tell you the truth, not to special. to the young and very special secretary of defense, donald rumsfeld. rumsfeld launched a veritable first strike against the then director of central intelligence, george herbert walker bush, for low balling even this number. 11%e bush's cia estimated to 13%, rumsfeld felt it was more like 13% to 15%. these two men, whose pitchers would hold even bigger jobs, -- whose futures would hold even bigger jobs, had a round -- a rather minimum regard for each other. the president tried to mediate, but soon his administration, and with it, this angry, heated exchange ended. but looking back, we can now see that they're hot dispute, 11% to 30% vs. 13% to 15%, is rather comical. upon opening up the kremlin kimono, we found the true figures were closer to 30%, or even 40% of gnp. both of bush and the rumsfeld the estimates were off by more than a factor of two. again, to be fair, in the forest of analysis on soviet military spending, like much of the intelligence, there is an epistemological difficulty. how do we know anything for sure? like everything important in life, william shakespeare and the streets this -- illustrates this perfectly. in a scene in one of his plays, a fellow, who was the commander of the military of venice is summoned by the duke and senators. he is summoned to defend an attack. he needs to know how big an attack turkey launched in order to size his own forces. in the 16th century situation room of venice, the first intelligence briefers declares that turkey has lost -- has launched 107 ships. mind you, it is not around 110. it is not more than 100. 107 ships. it sounds like he really knows what he is talking about, doesn't it? until the next briefer comes he has a very clear reports that turkey has launched 140 ships. a fellow start to look from the room and says, how do i know what is right around here? until a center comes in and he has a confirmed report -- a senator comes in handy as the confirmed reports that the turks have launched 200 ships. as mcvet says in another context, "-- as macbeth says in another context, confusion has made his masterpiece. and yet, another intelligence officer rushes in directly from the front telling them the turks have launched -- the turks have attacked and the art "of 30 sales." they did not know how many ships the turks have launched. they probably had somewhere between 3200, but we do not know for sure. -- between 30 and 200, but we do not know for sure. presumably, a fellow new -- othello new. presuming precision on what we think we know may be myopic at times. complicating this already messi field of soviet defense estimates were further doubts of not only whether the cia was estimating these things right, but whether the cia was estimating even the right things. during the reagan years, a very gifted analyst, harry rowan, pushed for a grander definition, winnetka encompass the soviet union's cost of empire. this -- this category consisted of keeping the warsaw pact's initiative and all of that. it brought the agency's estimates to over 20% of soviet gnp, which is closer, but as one beneficiary of the soviet cost of empire would say in havana, still no cigar. these battles over soviet military and spending were fought on so many fronts over so many years, and were actually of minimal importance in the real world of about a waiting the u.s. and soviet military balance. why? because a larger one did not mean a greater capability. our technical collection showed and appraise these capabilities rather well. instead, in larger numbers show a greater soviet inefficiency. these initiatives became marginally more importance on a higher strategic planning has indicated the degree to which the soviets would become an stay global military power. just how much the kremlin would make its people sacrifice for its world wide ambitions. but this issue was not minimal, or even marginal, to me. in arms control it was major. why? because of the prevalent argument then that without arms control, the soviets could break out and build an even greater military arsenal. without having the -- let's call them blessings -- of the office of management and budget, congressional appropriation committee, congressional hearings, and an array of , aeral anti-defense ngo's totalitarian regime like that in moscow could accelerate quickly and leave us in the dust militarily. but if moscow was already allocating between 30% and 40% of its gnp, there was very little acceleration left in that engine. it was already doing as much as it could possibly be doing. after all, during world war two -- during the world war ii by for just a struggle for civilization, the u.s. allocated 32% of our gnp to defense in 1943, 36% in 1944, and a high level mark with 37% in 1945. the soviet or russian -- or roughly allocating what we had allocated during the hottest of all hogwarts. -- hot wars. what the cia knew and watched, i5's were what had to deal with. it gave us a clear window on soviet capabilities. from the 1960's and on -- this is very important -- including the 1980's when we were in office, there were no surprises from the soviet weapons characters. there were no bomber gaps, as in the 1950's, no missile gap is as in 1960. the start of the youtube monitoring -- u2 monitoring in 1966 and it fears of a bomber gap. and in 1961, which proved the myth of the missile gap. we quickly learned that the soviets were not building new icbm's as quickly as the u.s. air force had forecasted. and in 1964, with corona and satellite, every single soviet missile field had been located and photographed. it helps to gauge soviet compliance with arms control. this was something of a mixed bag over the years. personally, i became rather curious about all of the fuss over verification, especially by fellow conservatives. it was and remains the top of everybody's list of critical concerns, especially during the reagan administration. ronald reagan himself drove mikheil gorda jeff -- gorbachev fairly nuts with his constant refrain, trust but verify. it was a slogan that was crisp and running in russian and day marty sentiment. -- and grind in russian and a mighty sentiment. i wondered what we would do without verification of these claims. not much, as i suspected. during our time in office, we found there radar unambiguously violation of trading. as it sat on the soviet missile field facing outward, clear violation of three terms. -- treaty terms. this was a rare, but important miss that for several years running our own intelligence totally missed. even though the radar was on, and it was several football fields long and on the verge of a soviet missile field, regardless, when all was said and done, a lot more would be said about verification than ever done because of it. my suspicions were confirmed during a white house luncheon in september 1987, with at the soviet foreign minister, and torture are not see. with the sovietron notti foreign minister. he told president reagan that he too was critical of the treaty. the more recounted this issue on the more he agreed with us, which kind of took our air out of our balloon, i would say. and the more we said we what -- we wanted it, the whole regard, long,al football fields rober removed, he, too, agreed that it was thought he wanted it removed. it was big and expensive and it was there, and he was foreign minister. what is a fellow to do? well, what could we do in such a predicament? i guess the only thing that tough-minded, red blooded american conservatives could possibly do. we went on with another conversation and then enjoyed our deserve being served. throughout the reagan administration and before a game the argument that arms control was beneficial to u.s. intelligence gathering. here, too, i was a bit skeptical. its arms control probably hurt our overall intelligence gathering. for one thing, the soviets never revealed anything they did not want to reveal, either in arms control or with the weapon systems that stay outside where we can photograph them in clear view of our satellite. at times, they did not want us to reveal much of anything there is a wonderful episode in salt one where ambassador gerard smith at the beginning of the salt talks, he goes and he tells the soviet delegation that he is now going to tell the number of american missiles in a certain category and the number of soviet missiles in that category. and before he does, the head of the soviet delegation stops and he says, ambassador smith, can i talk to you for a minute? the two delegations break and he says kamal ambassador smith, members -- and he said, ambassador smith, members of my delegation are not clear to hear the number of soviet missiles. [laughter] you can proceed, please, as telling the number of american missiles you have, but when you tell the number of soviet missiles, please do it to me privately. [laughter] one of those golden moments before arms control. to some degree, arms control damaged our intelligence gathering, by taking resources away from the military realm of appraising actual soviet capabilities to the legalistic realm of appraising soviet compliance with arcane and convoluted treaty language. moreover, some arms control agreements close-up intelligence sources. and we knew, for example, more about soviet military capability when they tested in the atmosphere, and a lot less after the test ban treaty pushed the soviet testing underground, which ironically, spiked up the number of nuclear tests. under this treaty, which is the pinnacle of the kennedy era idealism, the soviets increase their nuclear testing program and expanded their nuclear arsenal faster than before the treaty. the other section of arms control and intelligence got amusing at times. this was most welcome, since arms control was not a cheery as to -- was not the most cheery of topics that i've dealt with in my life. we began identifying soviet missile types are the kinds of offenses that they built around a missile field. i envision a manual of missile field fence construction. it was geared around and to have ass18's different kind of fence then ss17's. this was very important because we could see the hatches, but not what was inside of it. allow me to brad a minute now -- brag a minute now. after a number of very thorough briefings, i became a true expert on soviet missile field fences. [laughter] and now regretfully, i have not been able to ever called upon again in the past 25 years. like all government agencies, the cia spent the dogs of resources on what turned out to be marginal -- spend gobs of resources of one drought to be -- on what turned out to be marginal information. there were no long-term plans for its or for anything, including himself. he died shortly after taking office, something like the pope john paul the first of the soviet sphere. there was a wonderful time when we remember brezhnev diedwho whe funeral. we were good friends with the italian ambassador at that time. the italian ambassador really loved opera. i said to him, you are really going to the funeral? he said, yes, do you not understand? i bought tickets to the entire series. [laughter] likewise, i recall many hours wasted on the cia over thinking gorbachev's economic programs. like that old story of horse meat in oklahoma, the more you chu, the bigger it gets. the more i learn, the bigger my ignorance. with growing frustration, and decided to sit down one evening and actually read an entire gorbachev speech on the economy that was recently done. initially, i figured the translation must be awfully confused. then i figured it was gorbachev who was confused. he had no idea how his or any economy actually worked. he believed he had a record unblemished by success. [laughter] while our guys were wasting their time on peripheral or useless topics, their guys were too. one great day, i was in my office in the arms control agency, and the cia briefer who was then assigned to me came in. he was kind of a dour fellow. he came and -- i always kind of heard this boris karloff music playing in the background. he said, i have to shut the door and tell you something very, very serious. i said, what is that? she said, we have it on very good information that your home phone is being bugged by the kgb. i bit my cheeks to keep from laughing because i did not spend that much time at home. the time i spent there was with the family or being called back to the office for something. we did have too early teenage daughters who were 12 and 14. -- two early teenage daughters who were 12 and 14. [laughter] you can imagine what they were like in those days. the first thing they would do was rushed home and get on the line with each other and say how billy looked to susan, what roger was doing, all of this drivel and suing for eight hours after school. to think that there was a team of kgb officials with your phone's not only taking down all of this stuff, but translating it into russian, caused me great, a great pleasure. i said, do nothing about trying to intercept those. let them of my fun. it is quite all right. i figured that one time, when all of the kgb files are opened, there will be a frozen moment for our daughters to go through. who was that? what did she say about roger? all of that. being accurate on the large issues but sometimes wasting a lot of resources on marginal ones, the cia missed a lot of very big factors. though admittedly i did not think it at the time, i am now convinced that we all missed the huge impact of chernobyl. for gorbachev, the impact of such a terrifying nuclear incident led right to write a victim and his conversion to real nuclear reductions. for the soviets and need -- and the ukrainian people, even under the communists with a human face, gorbachev, that was it. for them, it became the final straw in tolerating a disgusting governmental system. even under this guy gorbachev, the kremlin decided -- denied news of contamination for days and urge little boys and little girls to go out as normal and play in the area, to get infected, to get a formed and to get killed as a result. chernobyl, i now believe, brought on the finality of the deal led to an adjacent -- finality of the de legitimization process that ronald reagan brought on during his presidency. u.s. policy officials are always asking what have we done by someone who has not made up his own mind yet or even thought about doing anything at all. this brings up the difference between a secret, something notable but hidden, and a mystery, something unknowable until now. secrets we needed to know for verification, but mysteries we needed to know for arms control. 25 years ago last month, if i could have the photos of their, you will see a golden moment at that time. what we figured it would remain a secret became revealed when secretary of state george shultz heard the definitive fact from the intelligence briefers and everybody in the system that gorbachev would not do much at all. it would be a meet and greet event, a howdy summit. here is a scene from that sunday afternoon. you can tell clearly that i have died my hair since then. it is actually jet black underneath that i decided to keynote that i needed to have died here. this is where the president came up two or three times that afternoon. this is right before he goes and decides that he is going down to talk to gorbachev for the very, very last time. the weekend was, i would have to say, the great weekend of my life. but i must say that the kgb surely judge just very adept at disinformation -- surely judge to us as very adept at disinformation. when secretary shultz looked as if he had been kicked in the stomach at his final press conference and declared that the summit was a dismal failure, at the same time, i was being interviewed by peter jennings on abc that it was a great triumph. ok, the summit broke down without an agreement. but i reckon the soviets were bluffing, a temporary ploy that they would not long continue. they would go back to what we had done, and a few months later, they did. so we proceeded full steam ahead her on the only treaty ever to eliminate an entire class of nuclear weapons. it was signed by ronald reagan and mikhail gorbachev in the east room. the previous march, i had told the president that if we could get an agreement done, i would leave right after, having accomplished more than we had ever set out to do in the seven years her that i was with the reagan and ministration. two days, after gorbachev departed from washington, i departed from my grand office. besides missing the importance of chernobyl and much intelligence -- political intelligence -- the cia missed opportunities. the whole intelligence community focus on threats to the nation and never on opportunities for the nation. their reports were confined to elements which did or could endanger us cannot ever what did or could advance us -- and dangerous, and not ever what did or could advance us. my weeks of poring through the mountains of documents on the ultimate intelligence secret of the 1980's may have rattled my brain as i have come to a very peculiar thought. this, the guber-secret of how much the soviets who spent -- how much the soviet union actually spent on its military, may have been a mystery to the soviet union itself. maybe no one knew. gorbachev publicly said defense spending was 94 billion rubles. his top assistant put it at 120 billion rubles. the foreign minister said it was 117 billion rubles. the defense minister said it was 132 billion rubles. it sounds a lot like the estimates of a fellow was hearing about the number of turkish ships -- othello was hearing about the number of turkish ships. my main point here is that intelligence is awfully tough. there is a great scene in the movie "the lion in winter" where the king and admonishes everyone "just face the facts." the queen replies "which ones? there are just so many of them." because intelligence is tough, those who dedicate their lives to serving the nation in the intelligence realm deserve our highest admiration and respect. samuel goldwyn once said, allow me a few words before i begin to speak. please, i asked you, allow me a few words before i end my speaking. and that is to tell you one final story about that great weekend. it happened 10 years later. the icelandic government had asked members of the delegation from the united states and the soviet union to come back 10 years later and talk about everything that had gone on at the summit. i readily accept it, went to iceland, and was just amazed the explosion of emotion that i felt going through that room and seeing what we had done in the afternoon, going through, sitting in the bubble where we had briefed the president, going to the ambassador's house were the president had stayed and where we had lunch with him and dinner. going through the places, i would just -- i just was so moved that i went into a drug store, got a nice post card of the hump the house where we had -- of the house where we had night, and all nine nig knowing that president reagan was then in the darkness of written thathe had wonderful letter in 1994, and this was about two years later. still, i wanted to write him a post card. i addressed it ronald reagan, los angeles, california, usa. i got some stamps and i mailed it. a week later i was here at the library and i saw mrs. reagan. i said, i was in iceland last week and i read your husband a post card. -- wrote your husband a postcard. she looked at me like i was a little crazy and said, you did? i said yes, it was such an emotional thing been there 10 years after the summit. she said, what did you say in your postcard? i said, mr. president, i am back here 10 years later reliving the experience, and was just amazed to think back at what a sensational job you had done 12 years earlier on behalf of the country and how exceptionally proud i was to have served you then. and i mailed it. i did not know nancy reagan very well. she looked at me. she started to cry a little bit. i started to do the same. and i thought what a great honor it was, the seven years i was in the reagan administration. every time i walked into the white house, i had a chill. the hair on the back of my neck stood up. i thought what an honor and privilege is to serve this great country. i looked at mrs. reagan and i said to her, boy, we were just lucky to have him, weren't we? she certainly agreed. since that time, it is no secret that ronald reagan was a great president. it remains, however, a mystery, where his music came from, that this fellow marched to a different drummer than everybody else at the time. thank you very much. [applause] cahowkeken.u, abho now it is my pleasure to introduce the director of analytic programs at the cia. he spent his first 25 years focused on the soviet union. he was a presidential daily briefer for vice president cheney and condoleezza rice. mr. clement holds a ph.d. in russian history and a master's in european history. he is also an author and adjunct professor for many universities critics mateys and gentlemen, please welcome peter commented. -- universities. ladies and gentlemen, please welcome peter clement. [applause] >> thank you very much. i am a big history fan and i am especially glad to be here today to introduce our featured speaker. there is a biography of him in your program, so i will just tell you a short anecdote on my perspective of him. he is one of those rare individuals who we do not get to see much of because he was, in fact, a very senior member of the kgb. when i was an analyst, a young analyst, back in the 1980's, during the reagan years, looking as soviet foreign policy, one of my tasks was to figure out why the soviets do what they do. what are the real policy intentions? what motivates them to do the various things they are doing, for example, in the third world? why are they in cuba or ethiopia? being a diligent analyst, i decided i needed to get to the bottom of this. how you get into people's minds? how do you find out what really motivates them? during the course of my research, i discovered that a lot of these leaders in the politburo got their information from the kgb because it is the committee for state security domestically. but they had a foreign intelligence arm called the first chief directorate, and that was how the directorate in which our speaker served. that provided a good deal of knowledge and insight into what was going on in the rest of the world. it occurred to a lot of us who were working on foreign policy accounts that to understand a little bit about why soviet leaders may decisions they made, you had better understand how the kgb operates, how it collects information, and how that information is presented to the senior leadership. i am going to stop theire, because i believe you all get an answer to that question from our speaker. these come to the stage. -- please come to the stage. [applause] >> good afternoon, everyone. it is a pleasure and honor to be a guest at the c.i.a.-sponsored conference. [laughter] i was involved heavily in fighting the cia and trying to penetrate to the organization. we did a good job before the cia popped up on the public arena. let me give you some figures which are not generally known. before 1953, the soviet intelligence handled over 300 assets inside the united states. every single skier of public, science, you name it. -- s. fiore -- sphere of public, science, you name it. to thewonderful access caho research and development of atomic weapons. we a 12 intelligence sources inside the manhattan project. we did have a lot of stuff in that sense, and we actually started to work inside the united states before world war ii. one of the episodes in my career as a young officer in the kgb, i wasn't that time moscow correspondent to the united nations -- i was at that time the moscow correspondent to the united nations. that was my cover. prior to that, i was a food writer at columbia university. as i came to new york again, i was told by my superiors in moscow to try to revive the good working relationship with one of the senior american journalists, a really top guy in the media in the united states. he used to serve in moscow before world war ii, and he was at that time contacted by russian security services, and he told them at that time, on june 15th, i believe, of 1941, the germans are going to attack russia on june 22nd. it was immediately reported by the kgb to stalin. scala and read the message and said, what a provocateur -- st alin read the message and said, what a provocateur. he is lying. we're friends with germany. he was kicked out of the soviet union, and a week later, germany attacked. when i was back in the united states, i tried to revive the relationship. he was a senior figure, very influential. i said, i a corrine best wishes from your friends -- i bring best wishes from your friends in moscow. he said, if you call again, i will call the fbi. that was the end to it. we had over 300 sources, but they were mostly ideological driven. they believed in socialism or communism as the future of humanity. i myself, when i graduated from high school in 1952, i was a stalinist. stalin was alive. coreas a great, victor victorious leader. when he passed away in 1953, my mother called me and said, our dad passed away. i said, what the mean -- what do you means? she said, our data joseph passed away. i told my class. everyone cried. it was such a shock. in 1956, when nikita khrushchev revealed the atrocities and brutality of joseph stalin, for all of us is something we never recovered from. the soviet system, we cannot build a paradise on earth from the bones of millions of people. from that moment on, i came to the united states. i came as a fulbright scholar and my first impressions of the united states were based on my education, upbringing. i came to times square and was totally revolted by the vulgarity and low taste. the next day went to the bowery. i said this is a symbol of the future? in no way. i became a more dedicated communist than ever. i had a good career as a radio correspondent. i recruited seven americans. one of them have access to information of historic value. it was access to solid fuel for misfiles. -- missiles. later, as a correspondent for radio moscow, i recruited americans. at some point, one of them was a member of the united states communist party, but when stalin and hitler made a pact of friendship, he quit. i met his young son, who worked for a nuclear lab at columbia university. he professed to be a socialist, so i said, why don't you write a piece for me about the life of american students who have to work and study? he said, ok. when we met a week later, he said you are is soviet, i am an american. you are a socialist. you are a fake. a week later, and what -- i walked down the broadway area near columbia university and i was approached by a man in his late 40's early 50 's. i thought he fbi. he told me, do not touch my son. you tried to recruit my son. he said, i will work for you. i know what you want. i said ok, what can you do for us? i was young and inexperienced. her later when i reported to moscow, they said, he -- later, when i reported to moscow, they said he was a fake. he was fbi. he would do a lot of things. he would travel out of the country as an american. he would establish contact with sources. he had an important mission in case the war was imminent between the united states and the u.s.s.r.. one of his missions was to blow up the electric lines in the washington, d.c. or new york area and to poison water supplies. he did not want to kill people, but just sort of make them, you know, uneasy. that was part of the mission. thank god he never had to do that. that was just one of the old days when we really thrived on ideology. what may be interesting to, one of the guys was a high school kid, a graduate. he was fingered by one of the old members of the united states communist party. they said, why don't you meet this young man? he wants to become a member of the communist party. he wants to become a member of the united states communist party. i said, ok, do you know that the party is totally infiltrated and controlled by the fbi? but if you do really want to become a member, why don't you fill out the form, you know, and the application. give it to me, and i will pass it to moscow. they will keep it in a safe place and you will be a secret member of the communist party. he said ok. we developed a good working relationship and he grew up and became a mature man. these were small things. let me tell you, crews jeff's speech delivered a moat -- nikita khrushchev's speech delivered a mortal blow to the ideals of communism. we really felt pressures that would later be picked up by the great president reagan. it was mr. gorbachev recalled president kennedy a great president. crescas not happen often when a soviet leader would -- that does not happen often when a soviet leader would call an american leader a great leader. i came to washington, and there were no ideological spies anymore. illusions were destroyed. we would capitalize on those who wanted to make money. i will tell you one case because it may be interesting how you treat intelligence and what may happen. john walker was one of the guys i have in mind. he was the total money motivated guy. he was a volunteer. he would work for the next 20 years. we recruited his son and brother. anyway, in 1968, i am acting chief of kgb station in washington. august 21st, the soviet troops are about to move into czechoslovakia's to crush the anti socialist element. i received a cable from moscow saying that if the ambassador -- that i should go to the ambassador. i bring him the cable the troops will enter czechoslovakia tomorrow to crush the anti- soviet, c.i.a.-sponsored revolt. that was really a moment. i have access to jon kyl, walker's information who -- to john walker's confirmation -- information. so, i give this cable to the ambassador. he reads it, looks at me, i looked at him. and then, for the first time in my life, i say, fools. the investor response, idiots. that is how we became friends. we called our leadership fools and idiots. that did not prevent me from my career because no one knew we were good friends. when i became chief of foreign intelligence, we had 164 in assets -- 160 foreign assets. let me tell you, as i mentioned, in the united states we had over 300 agents total. the next country was france, 160. the third country was india, 150. the fourth was united kingdom, over 50. well, you know, some of the guys, george blake, i supervise them, not in london, but in moscow. that is not counting former employees or officials of the secret service. some of them are not quite happy. they would drink a lot or commit suicide. well, anyway, in moscow i became chief of foreign counterintelligence, and we managed to increase our agent network to more than 500. two-thirds of them were members of foreign intelligence and counterintelligence organizations and radio free europe, radio liberty. creations of the cia, we tried to penetrate and redirect them and get some information from the inside. the chief of the russian section of radio liberty would become a soviet agent. when i became a public figure at some point in my life in the u.s.s.r. and denounced the kgb, that i was already back in russia because he was to be arrested, and he denounced me publicly as a traitor. and i said, listen, you were working for the kgb for many years, it is no surprise you call me a traitor. but i worked more than you did. it is no comparison. anyway, counterintelligence had four major functions, penetration of intelligence, penetration of all emigre organizations, russian, ukrainian, baltic states. one of the best penetrations we made at the time, and still going on, the russian orthodox church. you must understand, the russian orthodox church survived and adjust itself to the post-soviet regime because they collaborated. i will give you one example. many years later when i became a public figure and i said what i have told you about the russian church association with security, the kgb, i called the kgb in former. his response was interesting. he invited me to dinner at his home, the two of us. he said listen, i was an informer, that is correct, but you are a young man, and i will tell you something. the roughen -- russian orthodox church after the communist revolution, one-third had to immigrate, the other third were jailed or executed, the rest had to adjust to realities. i had to survive, and this is how we promote the church. i am just talking about that, because in the old days the soviet system was built on three pillars, communist party number one, kgb number two, military- industrial system #three. the organization with the reputation of the kgb, 1000 employees of the kremlin administration, and of course mr. putin himself, who was one of my subordinates, they were kgb informers or officers. some of the guys would say publicly -- and i was rather cautious in my public pronouncements, but one died of poisoning in london after attacking mr. putin. by the way, i was against intervention in chechnya and i stated it publicly. let them go. where would they go? they would have to deal with russia anyway. stop that war. that was one of the major clashes with the current regime, and at one point mr. putin called me a traitor. i called him a war criminal. i said he will face a trial like mr. milosevich of yugoslavia. well, anyway, back to the old days. gorbachev, when he came to power, really revived and resurrected russia on a different path. before that, because of my internal criticism, and because i was suspected of being a cia agent -- i am very proud it was released later on that i was recruited by the cia in 1958, together with another guy. he was also a student, in world war ii veteran. we were both recruited by the cia, and from that moment on, we will try to push the soviets out of the way and provide a free ride to the cia. in that sense, and i am going back, president reagan played a tremendous role. i remember so well, "teardown that wall, mr. gorbachev," despite the open, friendly relationship. gorbachev reacted in a friendly way. no wonder he was suspected at some point. he was too friendly to the united states. he was called sometimes a trailer. no one knows. well, that was the thing that happened, but when i spoke for reforms inside the kgb, and my experience that the united states was not a waste of time, i learned that a free country would have several organizations dealing with intelligence and security. the other way is the road to dictatorship, and that is exactly what happened in russia. kgb, no one else. the military intelligence was all infested with kgb. and the defense department as well. in the united states, these five different organizations, and that was my idea, well, i'm very happy to say that it did happen. the russian intelligence service, a russian domestic equivalent to the fbi, half a million altogether now, a small organization. well, of course, the equivalent of the national security agency, i mean all of these people decoding foreign intelligence, all sorts of diplomatic traffic. presidential security service. in the former u.s.s.r., it was blown out of proportion. as a result, mr. gorbachev said that i was a traitor. i was charged with treason and i was stripped of my rank and decorations. i was summoned to face charges of treason. i was a candidate to the russian parliament. from that moment on, i became even more vocal, and i have traveled all over the united states and all over saying what i am saying to you now. that was years ago. gorbachev was hated by the kgb, really, because he produced some of those liberal reforms. he had the human touch with president reagan. he wanted to reform the country without losing great communist ideals, but he did not understand what i said earlier, you cannot build a paradise on earth on the bones of millions of people. he wanted to change, but he encountered great opposition from the military, from the kgb. when i spoke openly about that, i was charged, as i told you. but later on, after the events of 1991 when gorbachev came back to power fully reinstated, i was invited to the kremlin reception by gorbachev personally. he apologized, shook my hand, and i was so happy. i did not realize the six weeks later the u.s.s.r. will exist no more. gorbachev emerged as the leader of the russian federation and all of the baltic states became independent. that was the beginning of the new year. i was appalled. i did not mean that. i thought the more solidarity we had, that was good for the whole world. the dissolution of the soviet system was a fact of life. now, mr. putin, my former head -- my former subordinate, as i mentioned, the only place abroad he ever worked west germany. he was a liaison officer between the russian kgb and the east german stasi, the intelligence service. when he came back to leningrad, st. petersburg, where i was born -- we were born almost in the same block, mr. clinton and i -- mr. putin and die. -- and i. it was revealed on the internet some of the ugly things from his personal life. i'm not going to say about that. he made for the first time an opening to the west and he found a friend, and probably kind of a mentor or so with president reagan. that was something of a great event in the history of the two countries. i recall in the early 1980's when president reagan publicly mentioned the star wars program, the soviets were in dismay. we have to do everything to get rid of him. as it turns out, president reagan was a really pragmatic guy who had his own ideals and wanted to finish this ration system without a single shot. the soviet union fell apart without a single shot, and president reagan played a crucial role in bringing down the soviet system. as i mentioned, there is a growing restoration of the soviet ways in current russia. this is what you have to bear in mind. so it intelligence has been -- soviet intelligence has been revived. the three pillars are kgb, number one, russian orthodox church, number two, russian business people who are willing to collaborate. if they are not, -- a well-known billionaire and i met in washington one day is years ago , and he said he thought vladimir putin was a bit of a player who we could manipulate. he was wrong. that would not work. he is now in jail serving 5-7 or whenever increased number of years he is going to be in prison. and the other guy now lives in israel because that is the best way to defect. some russians are facing difficult problems. mr. gorbachev and president reagan did move things forward and found ways to cooperate despite our ideological, national and ethnic differences, and that is why we're here paying tribute to president reagan and his library. thank you. [applause] >> more now from this conference at the reagan library looking at president reagan's use of intelligence leading up to the end of the cold war. the panel include cia analysts and historians, some of whom work directly with the reagan white house and the 1980's. >> well, i would like to welcome you all back. now it is time for our first panel. leading this first group is a cia historian. he came to the agency in 1990 as an analyst on the soviet union. he also served as a speechwriter for central intelligence and was the deputy chief editor of the president's daily brief. he is a frequent contributor to the daily journal as well as an author. in fact, he wrote, "the literary spiry," under a pen name -- spy," under a pen name. please welcome him. >> thank you. i had the honor and privilege of being a cia staff historian, which is about as interesting as it sounds, for the last six years. i have been working for the last two on this particular event. the history of the cia is part of the center for the study of intelligence, which is the agency's internal think tank. we are proud to be co-sponsors of this event along with the historical division. the panel, the first of two we have today, the subject, reagan's use of intelligence from the perspective of the cia. later on we will deal with the policy perspective, but for now, our focus is on the intelligence itself, however was produced, tasked, delivered, the interactions between the intelligence people and policy foe, an issue surrounding all of those matters. we are fortunate to have a distinguished panel of members, and i have the privilege of introducing them. there is a common misperception that intelligence analysis is about a prediction. it is not. intelligence is foremost about understanding what is and where things might go. but i will attempt to predict what our panelists will say as i introduce all four of them before we begin our discussion. our first panelist is the former deputy director of intelligence, the chief of the analytic directorate under much of the reagan ministration. he was the chief of the soviet analytic shop. on at least two occasions, he personally briefed the president. he will give us an overview of c.i.a. soviet assessments, particularly on the soviet economy and on the military, and on the analysis that the situation was unsustainable. i hope he will also find time to speak about depreciation of the societal issues -- about the creation of the societal issues branch, which was a matter of great importance to president reagan, and i hope he will do all of it in about 10 minutes. [laughter] the second panelist is david lodge. if you want to know what they genuine c.i.a. kremlin ologist looks like, there he is. i have asked him to speak about his work with regard to the soviet succession issue, which kept coming up again and again, how that analysis was tasked, packaged and delivered, and regarded by the reagan white house. our third panelist is a well- known and highly respected scholar of the intelligence discipline who got his start as a cia political military analyst on the u.s.s.r. in the late 1970's and early 1980's. his essay on the intelligence record regarding the u.s.s.r. is in your symposium booklet. it is well worth your time to read. i hope you will summarize some of the points from there and also give us some insight into the internal zeitgeist of the soviet analysts at the time, and i hope you will address the successes, the sources of our success at the cia as well as the shortcomings. finally, we will have admiral bobby ray, director of national security agency when he answered president reagan's personal appeal to him to become deputy director of central intelligence under william casey. it is safe to say that the admiral had some concerns about that assignment, but he did it for his president. his president very much appreciated your service, sir, and thank you for being here today. with that, let's start with doug, who will set us straight on the record of soviet analysis. >> well, i cannot do that in 10 minutes. >> i know. >> i will come however, try to make as straightforward a statement as i can, so i will be missing some of the subtleties that would be appropriate, given the atmosphere. if i had to characterize the intelligence of the reagan administration -- that was the title of our panel, so that is what i focused on. i would say it broke into two different periods. the first, entry into office, with all of the administration, i would say was tense. there is nothing new about that in the sense that it is always that way. in comes a group. they have an idea. they had just defeated the previous group whose ideas were clearly wrong. one of the reasons they were wrong was those stupid intelligence people. now we're going to get it right, so the first thing we will do is fix intelligence. he may think i'm exaggerating, but i with to begin with, and this had started back in the 1970's and had built up. it was all about how you have jeopardized the security of the united states by underestimating the magnitude of the soviet threat. the second period began about 1985, when two things happened. kabul have david talk about some of this later. the president himself, contrary to what many of his close associates were saying, the president had started to read a lot of the intelligence about the economic and social issues there. our concern was that all the talk about the soviet union was missiles are no missiles, and there was a society and a history there. there was all kinds of ethnic differences, and these had a direct effect on the sustainability of the system, in addition to the fact that the economy was going down the tubes, and we had been saying that repeatedly. however those aspects treated? on the status of the nuclear threat -- i keep glancing at my watch, if you'll excuse me. the first thing we heard and were subjected to was how we had got a dramatically wrong. by this time we already had the salt treaty, and it did fix certain numerical limits. secondly, we had some pretty good collection capabilities with silos and lots of tanks. i was once asked how we got soviet military manpower. i said you divide by two and come up with the number. we did have a pretty good set on what was there and it held up later even when we got the on- site inspections. so the argument was over the intention about the buildup in the future. my first couple of years in the reagan administration, i was a debrief for myself. i moved into the soviet office in 1984 and to messages were given to me, one by my predecessor who was outgoing. every year we've rejected a huge increase in soviet military build up spending, and every year it did not happen the next year, so we just pushed the ball way of out another year -- bow wave out another year. i got a call from a senior official in the administration, whose name i cannot deny or reveal. i got a call from a senior person inside the cia who said why it was the cia underestimating the soviet build up? my response was, sorry to say, every year we have been overestimating it, not underestimating it, and i will get you the data. we put it together and it is now in a paper that is now declassified. the fact of the matter is, beginning about mid-1970s up until the 1980's, every year we matter projection and there were two different sets of projections. if the soviet union broke the treaty, this is what we would have. we did not bother with that one because it was a free-floating, atmospheric world. what we did was we took a look at the other set of projections. if they stay with the overall limit but modernize to more capable systems, here is our projection. i can show you the charts for the next 10 years, we gave a low side and a high side. at the end of the period, they never got to the low side. that is provable. that was part of the atmosphere in coming in. the second thing is, and i have documents. all this talk about us over estimating the soviet economy, we got hammered for underestimating it, for saying it was too low. one of the best days of my career was when i got a letter from a senior official complaining -- it is in my briefcase, but i will not show it to you. saying i am sick and tired of you guys giving us this 1.5% growth rate every year. some academic institution was criticizing us for this inflated estimate of 2% growth. if you make one person happy, you will make another unhappy, or if you are lucky will make the most unhappy. this is for the transition took place. the president was paying attention to these things, i have heard from a lot of sources with access that he was actually interested in this. i also heard he was very interested in starting to read all the things we were talking about about how they were undermining the system itself. during a transition, the first thing you face, you cannot deny the fact that the economy was going down the tubes. they were having a lot of problems. the first response was, well, that's all right, that will still build up their military forces and make the populace suffered. the next one was, gorbachev is going to lure us into complacency, use of arms control and cut the thing down for a while, while they repair their economy. once they get that thing going again, boom, out we go. that one did not get a lot of traction from a lot of people. here is where i would argue that based on everything in the perspective i had, it was the president himself who started talking about the idea of zero nukes. if you check the documents, you will see the number of times he races that in discussions. first he got to geneva, and people asked, when did the cold war end? the in started november 1985 in geneva. gorbachev and the president agreed that what they wanted to do was stop this confrontational situation, both in the nuclear arms and in the other warfield, which the director of the cia had taken on as -- in angola and sudan. a few problems emerged during that time. it really did change. after backing, the role of the intelligence with the president and with his closest advisers, and some of them still did not want to buy into it, was there is an opportunity here. this system is failing, but we have a chance, mikhail and i, to take this thing down the road. that was the seismic change that took place. i will remind you that was 1985. with all those problems you heard about negotiations and the summits, we signed the treaty two years later, and in 1988 -- there is one thing i forgot to mention. the incoming vice-president of that administration became president. they basically continue that momentum, start one, start to, comprehensive test ban treaty, reduction of conventional forces in europe. i would argue that transformed the geopolitical situation. when it was also tense, we had another thing giving us a lot of problems in addition to the economic and the military. that is, who the is going to be the next guy to take over -- who the hell is going to be the next guy to take over? he died in 1982, and andropov was laying in bed comatose. the next one was already basically dead by the time he walked into office. if you look at the dates on succession, you will say this guy is going to follow turn talking to people who were telling us it was going to be gorbachev, and that is who it was. if i had one thing i would do to try to reform intelligence, i would get hold of every dictionary there is an have the word prediction redacted. we can forecast, like you do weather. how can this play out? what will affect it? what is there that we don't know that might have an impact here? what might be added to the situation? mr. policy person, mr. or mrs. policy person, there is something you might want to encourage -- inject into that. if you will check predictions, the prediction that they would never invade czechoslovakia, because three days before brezhnev agreed to go on television and announced the beginning of the strategic arms limitation talks, or they are never going to be afghanistan, i have my salt ii tree sitting up on capitol hill waiting for confirmation. i would agree, get the predictions out of here. if you check the written record, by 1988 you will find documents that say there is a good chance that by the end of the decade, gorbachev will undertake unilateral military reductions, which he did before the end of it. he made unilateral cuts and pulled all those forces -- a lot of the forces out of europe. we definitely did say, and it is in the written record again, he is making angry a whole lot of people with the changes he is making, because it is undercutting the power of the party and putting power in government. we think there is a real chance there is going to be a move to oust him, and that was three years before the move took place. it is a tough world. if you think you are going to work in intelligence for another 10 or 20 years and not have every change in our government bring in a new outlook that you have to figure out how to do with, then you had better sign up. it was not all right, but it definitely was seen coming, and i would argue that partnership between ronald reagan and mikhail gorbachev had more impact as a turning point history than about anything during my recollection in my life. >> thank you, dove. -- thank you, doug. [applause] speaking about this revolving door of soviet leaders, david. >> good afternoon. it is certainly a pleasure for me to be here with this panel today to give you the working level analyst perspective on president reagan's use of intelligence. it is particularly as a pleasure for me to do this here in this magnificent setting of this reagan presidential library. this really does not remind be much of a typical library whatsoever. we have had a wonderful tour of the entire facility this morning. there are thousands of documents and artifacts and things like that, but i could not find a card catalog anywhere. [laughter] i could not see anything on the shelves that was organized around a good old duodecimal system. does anybody remember the old p dewey decimal system? those of you with your hands up must be very old, so i will speak loudly into the microphone. [laughter] i would bet that ronald reagan would have his hand up on that question, and i would bet that if he were in a library like this that was organized around an old dewey decimal system, he would be browsing around in the 920 section. here is your real test today. what was the 920 section in the old dewey decimal system? right, the biographies. the people section. reagan would have been spending most of his time in that section, because of his understanding for the importance of knowing about an understanding the people behind issues of the day. that is why he was particularly fascinated, and that is what i will focus my remarks on today, by what we call leadership analysis, studying the profiles of the four officials he was dealing with. especially the soviet leader's -- of the foreign officials he was dealing with. most tend to associate reagan with his dealings with gorbachev, but as has been mentioned already, it is important to remember the entire first term when raise an -- when president reagan was in office were spent with brezhnev's and candor of -- andropov. the president really did love all those profiles which gave him, who is standing next to who on the kremlin wall. i don't know if it shows up in his personal diaries and notes or not, but i know he was also quite taken by that russian term that translates as who is playing who, or who is doing what to do, or who is on first? everybody remembers president reagan saying that russian proverb, trust but verify. the phrase he was most seized with and was fascinated by the different profiles of the different contenders forgiving him all the time period that included -- the differing contenders we were giving him all the time. he referred to gorbachev as the tractor guy. eight months after gorbachev first came into power, before reagan had the chance to meet him in november of that year in geneva, during those eight months he avidly read all the profiles and portraits we could give him of gorbachev and the other folks on the leadership team. he even went through the video profiles and the -- on gorbachev and the new foreign minister so he could be ready for his meetings with these folks. he took on were the personal comments he was able to get from the market bought -- from mark braxtomargaret thatcher. i cannot emphasize enough the importance of doing business with the new soviet leadership as one of the key tenets and intelligence issues in forging his relationship with moscow. in that context, i want to mention the special role that reagan's commerce secretary, malcolm baldrige, played over those years, before his unfortunate death in 1987. he was a key point man in president reagan's agenda to promote trade in business with the soviet union as part of this new era, along with the arms control. my wife brenda was on his personal staff during those years. i was fortunate enough to have several opportunities to meet privately with aldridge and to brief him on the officials he was dealing with from the soviet union, but also to glean some insight from him on his thinking and president reagan's thinking on the commerce and business intelligence aspects of this new administration's relationship with moscow. if we do have a little time later, i have a couple of fun anecdotes that i picked up from secretary baldrige that i can pass on to you regarding brigance use of intelligence and director casey. i do want to focus on the special reagan-gorbachev relationship and how power agency's intelligence profiles helped to shake all that. with all the different by graphic and personality profiles on gorbachev that we updated and provided to president reagan during the summit meetings he had with him, i think the biggest impact was reagan's fascination with any intelligence we could give him on how gorbachev thinks, his thought processes, his approach is an reasoning behind the arms control and other issues that the two men were negotiating and discussing. one of the highlights for me was the historical analogy that reagan drew on comparison of leader's ship style -- leadership styles. at the famous camp david accords that president quarter review president carter had conducted back in 1978 with egyptian president sadat who was assassinated during reagan's first year of office. if he could figure out this computerized card catalog system, i would love to see what president reagan's notes showed about his discussions with president carter and getting his tips on dealing with leaders with different negotiating styles. sadat was clearly the big picture guy, who wanted to talk on and on about the grander human emotional aspects of generational peace and making the world safer for our children's children. begin, on the other hand, had little time for that. he wanted to cut to the chase and pick up a pencil and say i want to make this change on page three, paragraph four, line seven. you could hardly have those two men and the same room together until it was time for the final handshake and signing the papers they had finally hammered out. for the reagan-gorbachev dynamics, i think there was a little bit of the same stylistic difference being played out. gorbachev was very much the business done who had very little interest in our capability for what reagan loved and flourished then, which revolve around combine the business details with personal anecdotes and smallpox. i think it was one of reagan's chief frustrations that he was not able to get gorbachev to loosen up and engage in that kind of small talk about his life in russia, his agricultural background, sports, whether, anything. just trying to make that personal, friendly kind of small talk. it was almost like gorbachev was constitutionally it -- incapable of doing that, which was the exact opposite of ronald reagan. it is not like reagan did not try to engage him more in this kind of small talk or family talk. he really did. the theme would like to close on is to make the point of how reagan actually look on his relationship with those of us in the intelligence community as a two-way street. in addition to be an avid consumer of whatever we could provide him in a way of leadership profiles and analyses on gorbachev or the other officials who is dealing with, he also like to think of himself as an intelligence collector, always on the lookout for new tidbits are facts that he could pass on back to us to help us flesh out or update our profiles. i guess we trained him pretty well on that score. in fact, it was just before his washington summit meeting with gorbachev that president reagan actually invited us to provide him with a list of questions about gorbachev that we would most like him to try to get more information on. so we did. curing that entire summit, the president kept with him that little list of a dozen or so questions we had given him on different aspects of gorbachev's background, his family, and remarks he would make on some of his dealings with his associates back home, things like that. we were pleasantly shocked the following weekend when we got that she questions back with reagan's personal handwritten notes in the margins on every one of those questions, and his initials right on top. i almost wish we could have kept it to sell on ebay later. even though there's not much knew that he was able to provide us on those questions, his tone was almost apologetic that he could not get gorbachev to loosen up more and talk about some of the issues that were not on his official talking points script. but the fact that president reagan was willing to take the time and effort to try to answer those questions for us is certainly illustrative of the kind of president he was, how he used to intelligence, and how much you value our role in the community's role in helping shape his dealings with gorbachev and these other foreign leaders. and how it was just his nature to want to make it a two-way street and look for ways to help us do our jobs better. with that, i am ready to close, but my current had as a cia training instructor for new analysts compels me to want to restate for you before themes that i ought to have been taking notes on and will remember from these remarks to today. here they are. number one, how much the president really did rely on and utilize our intelligence personality profiles and analyses on the soviet leaders he was dealing with. number two, the primacy that he placed on economic and commercial and business intelligence in dealing with the soviet union and the societal issues and how the economy was affecting life in russia, and health secretary baldrige was his point man for that intelligence -- house secretary baldrige was his point man. number three, how he took seriously the point of falling historical intelligence precedence and analyses like the camp david accords in preparing for his own negotiations with foreign officials, and number four, how reagan treated his dealings with those of us in the intelligence community as a two- way street, as an avid consumer of intelligence, but also trying to help us and rich over understanding for his use and for future consumers as well. it is only fair for me to remind you that all four of those points will be on your final exam at the end of the symposium. thank you. [applause] >> i also want to mention that the video on the andropov succession is included in your dvd. >> when you read those reports describing quarter job, when you say source with access, that is the president you are talking about. >> dr. berkowitz para >> i will keep the short so i can leave a lot of time for discussion. i would like to talk a little bit about the article i wrote, and the need has asked me to talk about how that reflected the thinking -- nick has asked me to talk about how that reflected the thinking -- you need to listen more closely. [laughter] i remember our briefly served for the senate intelligence committee for about a year and a half. this is when bill casey was the dci. he was notorious for having selective fidelity in his speaking presentations. the notice that when i got to the committee that the committee had rigged up microphones that came to right here, and you could not possibly avoid it. but i would like to talk a little bit about today is the article that i wrote that talks about the actual record of the intelligence community in predicting the soviet decline in collapse, and talk a little bit about why even to this day, there is a misunderstanding about how well the community performed. i will then conclude by discussing what are the lessons we can draw from this episode. 1994, mid-1990's, around some of the cold war intelligence estimates were just beginning to be declassified and released. an old classmate of mine, jeff richardson, who has written extensively on intelligence and uses of the freedom of information act extensively got hold of some of these estimates. that had been previously cited in mckinsey study. pdf, who knew me from graduate school, called me and said bruce, i have been looking at these estimates, and they are pretty good. the intelligence community was not that far off the mark. ,his was in the early 1990's and the common consensus was the starting to form that the intelligence community -- the collapse of the soviet union was the common wisdom. that was one of the reasons why the brandt commission was established in 1994. jeff pressed me a bit more, so we decided this might be the makings of a good article, we never did say it to set the record straight, but at least to put the record on the table. having worked in the past with many of my colleagues who worked on those estimates, i set up a couple of interviews, and we talked to the policymakers and we published an article in the national interest in 1995 called "the myth of the soviet collapse." the record that had been released up to then show that if you measured the intelligence community along three dimensions, giving it strategic warning, immediate warning and intermediate warning, then they did pretty elkridge strategic warnings, telling leaders 10 years before the fact that your major adversary has some serious problems, as implications for how you were going to deal with them down the road. intermediate warning say five years or so before the fact that you can see the political forces starting to take shape that might influence events, and then immediate warnings, telling the policymaker that you have specific things to watch for, that this is reaching a crisis point, and if you expect big things to happen with these conditions, it lays out what the scenario should be. we published this, and our assessment was that the intelligence community actually did pretty well. about 10 years later, the editor who had me work on that article with jeff came back to me and said, we would like to write another particle and revisit this topic again. even now, many years later, people still seem to think in some fundamental way that the intelligence community failed to predict the collapse of the soviet union. so i wrote another article, and that is the one that appears in your book. i think that one of the reasons why, even after of the documentary record had become really well published -- and by that time not only did we have the earlier one release, the cia itself had published on the political and military side for its 1999 conference at the end of the cold war, and even then people were still not fully aware of what the record said. at that point, in addition to all the other reasons, the initial lack of information, the fact that american policymakers seem to have some difficulty coming to grips with the changing events in the soviet union, and also some people just insisted on pushing this line that the intelligence community in this case failed. in addition to all that, one of the reasons why people were not fully aware of what the quality of intelligence was was that the linkage between intelligence and policy had not been understood. towards the end of the 1990's and into the years that followed, the national security archives were also opened, and we began to see some of the policy directives that came out that were issued during the reagan and later the bush administration. what we saw then was something that was even more interesting, which was that not only was the intelligence for the most part pretty good in anticipating soviet decline, seeing the political forces leading to the soviet crisis, and then giving tactical warning of the crisis itself, but it had a direct effect on policy, so that you could see what the intelligence was saying, and you could see how it actually affected ronald reagan's policies for dealing with the soviet union. much of that is there in the article, and i encourage you to read it. the point is that -- the point i would like to leave you with in entering the request to talk about the zeitgeist within the intelligence community at the time is that the zeitgeist within the intelligence community is that we sort of took the soviet decline as a given. we were not surprised by it. we were -- we were following it all the time. i can remember actually having a conversation with one of my colleagues who is here today, and he said next year -- this is in 1979. he said they are not going to have any growth next year. it might be 0.5% or 1%, but foreign analysts, that is a big deal. it was not as though we were having to wrestle with the issue of whether or not there were in decline. the context we worked in was, here is a decline. now what is going to happen? that was the intelligence challenge. the option was, and they will either have to pick and choose what they are going to do with their limited resources, may be selectively continue their military buildup, which at the time we just saw as a sort of in exorable force, or perhaps they will just have to gut it out and make the soviet people do with even less than they were doing then, or perhaps they were going to have to rethink their military build up. that was the big challenge. and that was the context. that context was what moved up to the national security council and the white house. that was the context that ronald reagan was working from as he realized that the soviets were in this pinch, and that was the big question, how do we deal with that? if you look at the national security council documents, you will see that u.s. policy was aimed in forcing this transformation of the soviet union. now the policies never said that we were going to try to bring the soviet union down. the policy said that what we are going to try to do is take advantage of the situation to channel the soviets. they always refer to the soviets, not the russians, which sort of assumes that the soviet system itself was going to survive, but in some fundamentally modified form. that is what the policy was. and the policy worked. maybe not in the way that we had fully anticipated, but it was finally transform because of these tidal forces that we followed all that time. so what are the lessons to be learned from this? one thing i would really like to get across to you is, what is the atmosphere in which an intelligence analysis operates? in routine business, analysts are rarely asked galactic questions like whether the soviet union, or whether it now -- whither now? thousands of people go to work on the problem. what happens over time is that this group of people that is working and talking together develop selected knowledge. that is probably the most important organizational asset of the u.s. intelligence community's analytic pattern is this collective understanding of the target that usually other people don't have the ability or interest or opportunity to follow at that detail, and ideas get kicked around. that analysis gets translated into better collection, because when we put together estimates, but it is not to come up with a grand truth so much just to summarize the collective wisdom of the community, including where we have debts. -- where we have gaps. it is those understandings of where the gaps are that drive day today and major investments to try to fill them. over time, this knowledge accumulates, and if, as in this case, it is well-connected to the consumer, and the consumer asks intelligent questions and is willing to ask for that intermission, the process works. if you really have the right people in the right time, you win the cold war. i will leave you with that. thank you. [applause] >> admiral inman, and i will start by making sure you can hear me in the back. january 1978, had been invited to the bohemian grove in northern california where the george h.w. bush would make his first lakeside speech. there were three of us active , and we went back to the bush camp for lunch, and there among the guests was governor reagan. along the way, he made a five minute oration on fighting the barbary pirates, and it was a magnificently inspirational talk. mr. bush turned to me and said, "damn, he is good." it foreshadowed what was going to happen later. fast forward to november 1980. a week later, i got a call from the cia had of transition for the incoming administration, saying they would like you to be the new deputy director of central intelligence. i said no thank you, i am retiring next summer, i am blocking promotion opportunities for bright youngsters whose careers i had helped develop. i had already been an officer two years longer than any of my previous predecessors. about a week later, i got a call from the head of the transition team, saying, i understand you are not interested in being the head guy. i had planned a trip to australia in the office of the secretary of defense. i got called out by the former secretary of the navy, saying i cannot understand why your turning down this wonderful opportunity to be the deputy director of central intelligence. i was even more blunt about my plans. fast-forward to the 21st of january. the secretary comes in saying the president is coming, and i presumed it was president carter, continuing the dialogue in getting the hostages out of iran. he could not have been more charming, and he laid out the entire story for me. after they lost a primary in new hampshire, he had asked casey to chair the campaign. he asked him, what do you want to do if we are successful? his response was, if i cannot be secretary of state, i would like to be director of central intelligence. he would have had a great time running operations in europe. fast forward to election night, they are sitting there watching the returns. it is clear that he has won three the president-elect turn to bill and said "bill, are you ready to be the director of central intelligence." he said if i cannot be secretary of state. they all laughed. an hour later, a call came in from senator barry goldwater who got governor reagan in politics. he said i just have one request. i have the perfect candidate for you to be the director of central intelligence. he is currently the director of the national security agency, that is admiral bob inman. he said i appreciate that, but i have already given the job to bill casey. klong silence, because there was deep animosity between goldwater and casey from republican party politics. over the next week, the president said he got more calls about me than any other single candidate for any job, as cold water and moynihan were out court-martialing -- goldwater and moynihan were out. so now we are in office, and speaking as your commander in chief, i need you, and i want you to take the job as bill casey's deputy. under the circumstances, mr. president, i will be honored, but hopefully no more than 18 months to two years, and he agreed to that. i said by the way, thank you and i am going to nominate you for a fourth star. it was an unusual arrangement in many ways. normally, the director of central intelligence deals with the outside world, and the deputy director runs the cia day today. that was not what bill casey wanted at all. he wanted to run the clandestine service and the analytical arm personally. he did not to -- he did not want to have anything to do with science and technology or administration. minimal involvement with the other agencies, and certainly not with the budget, but he wanted to do all of the communications with the present. so we marched off on that track, but there was a little modification of that last part. when the president talked about rebuilding the intelligence community, and bill casey told him of the division of effort he had made, the president sent for me to say he wanted to rebuild the intelligence community. spend whatever needed to be spent to doing, and tell the deputy secretary of defense, find a place to hide the request, whatever he wanted. this is a lesson for us now. we had drawn down the training establishment so much that there were finite limits of how many people we could train and position and put to work rebuilding the intelligence community. i never encountered the president that he did not have a joke to tell. he did not wrote need scriptwriters. he was just naturally a warm, engaging person. he made a comment that one of the meetings that nothing really good for the country had ever come from arms control agreements. i spoke up and beg to differ. he said tell me. i described how the soviets had made a decision because of the limits to put much more of their capability in land and mobile missiles, and less in undersea missiles. he said nobody ever told me that, and then he used it later. he picked up very quickly. when he was interested, he retained it and used in the appropriate manner. my last meeting within before i was leaving for 18 months, the british had moved into the falklands. they were at the outer limits of their military capabilities. mrs. thatcher had asked for the use of the ascension island. it was a british territory, but it was entirely seated over to the u.s. and there was a major collection site there. there was an airfield. we had a meeting to deal with the request, and the very learned ambassador of the un, jeane kirkpatrick, right french ships in the western hemisphere -- great friendships in the western hemisphere. he said it would destroy -- what hemispheric solidarity? it is not there. it never existed. the british have been with us any time we have been in conflict or any time we have had a need, they have always been there. the president smiled and said sari, tell maggie she can use -- sorry, tell maybe she can use ascension island. a quick ability to see the big picture. he was truly a very remarkable man to work with. [applause] thank you. >> obviously we are over time on the schedule, but i am assured we need not curtail questions and answers. i want to remind everyone to actually ask a question instead of simply commenting. i will shamelessly exploit my position by asking the first question of the soviet analysts , doug and david lot. as a historian, i had some doubts about some of the assertions. i wonder if he would comment on the idea that trying to figure out gorbachev's economic program was a waste of time and resources, that the agency ignored the significance of chernobyl in the soviet collapse, and that the cia did no opportunity analysis. you can take anywhere all parts of that question. >> i will leave chernobyl right here. what was the first question again? >> figuring out more jobs economic policy. >> i was tempted at the time he said that to give him a two-word answer, the initials are b.s. [laughter] it was gorbachev's economic objectives -- there is a book written about gorbachev by a guy who was his assistant when he started out and he moved up and state lithium. -- stayed with him. he described that gorbachev did not ever have vote massive plan. what he did know was where he wanted to get. he was inventing it as he went along. none of our presidents have ever done anything like that. [laughter] that is just nonsense. >> opportunity analysis. i am not sure the head of arms control agency would have seen in an analysis. >> again, that was one of the priorities. the first opportunity analysis was, they have gone through three coffins in a row and the economy is going down. this guy was being touted by all the people, he would even reported by one of the leading czech dissidents who had actually gone to college, who had told us later, gorbachev was calling a classmate, and of all the college students he went to school with in moscow, the russian who was most like an east european was gorbachev. or draw himself was described as an opportunity. >> many of those analysis are actually included in the dvd. >> david, on chernobyl, what is the story there? >> if and when gorbachev himself really did not how bad we did not know how bad that was himself. the more it became clear as the weeks and months went by, it is part of what drove him to open up more in reykjavik and began to push more toward scaling back on nuclear weapons and the nuclear energy front. on the economic and commercial front, i think reagan based a lot of his thinking on a clear assumption that of course the russians, like anybody else, would want more open trade, more commerce, more opportunity to engage with the west and buy and sell goods and things like that. so the economic council and the commercial enterprises that he instituted with the soviet union or one of the key underpinnings of his entire relationship, along with arms control and the military buildup to keep the pressure on. i don't think there was any doubt in his mind that he was in visioning and mcdonald's on the corners of streets in moscow and coca-cola sons and movie theater showing western movies and things like that. it was just a natural thing that the soviet union would aspire to, and that was one of the opportunities to do this is what the russian people surely wanted, and we will make that happen and the rest will take care of itself. >> let's open it up to the audience. if you are soft-spoken, please come to the microphone. >> [inaudible] >> beginning in 1947, leadership of the country wanted encyclopedic knowledge of the entire outside world, and resources " to build that. there was a great build up from 1947 that plateaued about 1958. large numbers of people around the world maintaining a national intelligence survey on every country -- the plateau hit in 1958 and continued to 1964. the decision to get into vietnam needed more tactical support create instead of continuing to add, it was shift resources. so we got the first in-depth look at latin america, the next year africa -- i've got those reversed -- and the next year western europe. because of the interest in israel security. in 1967, president johnson was worried about creating he instructed every u.s. representative, refered responsibility is to reduce the official american presence in your country. each president follow that until president reagan. over that time frame, 40% of the overt human observers, foreign service, military attache is, were reduced. you did not take in -- you did not need a lot of the languages because you were not focused anywhere. that is where the real damage was done to the human intelligence capabilities. it was more cost-effective to run them out of embassies then through unofficial cover. so another great switch in the process. there are a lot of myths about how we got into the condition of very shallow human intelligence. we maintained some terrific, clandestine, focused efforts, and with a lot of successes that hopefully you will not read about for another 40 years, but it was the overt human collection capability that was decimated and has never really been rebuilt. >> [inaudible] when the president has 10,000 other items on their agenda [inaudible] >> that is another one of those myths about how intelligence works. the president is the most important consumer, but the thing that characterizes the national security establishment today is that a lot of people fall down the chain, military, diplomatic, and so on. thinking in terms of how you deliver it specifically to the president is not necessarily the problem. they have their own responsibilities so they can do their own jobs. but within the intelligence committee itself, it is important to get analysts across different organizations to talk to each other so they can exchange information and find solutions that require this kind of combined knowledge. and also give the collectors -- did the collectors, who are increasingly interdependent. you have to get the technical operators, and you have to have the different kinds of technical operators to work together. focusing on that one critical notes is not going to solve your problem. you need to have a greater interconnect city. >> a quick observation, if i may. 22 years in the intelligence community, dealing with a lot of users, consumers, iowa -- if what i've provided them fit their preconception, i heard how brilliant i was. [laughter] if what i gave them conflicted comment that is a bunch of garbage. there is the reality. we may work to produce, the consumer or user may or may not have an open mind. >> if i could make -- i ran into that same problem. shocking as it may seem. [laughter] >> [inaudible] >> i do not think it was phrased that way. the reality was president reagan was committed to rebuilding our defense capabilities as well as the intelligence capabilities. the focus on the reality of the need for expanding conventional forces. the soviets saw that as a major challenge. if we do not invest more and smart, conventional forces, we will fall behind in superpower status. the answer he got back, they could not afford to spend more. it was not a deliberate effort to bankrupting the soviets union. it was a deliberate effort to build the scale of forces and capabilities that president reagan about this country needed to have. >> [inaudible] >> first of all, the question was, what were the sources of our knowledge of assessing the soviet system. >> i do not want to mess up happy hour. [laughter] sdi, the concept -- the soviets saw themselves as behind the curve. at the time, he was recommending -- nuclear war is a war that could never be fought and won. instead of spending all our money on this, and the americans are getting 9 miles ahead of us. he was time to reallocate their resources. as far as sdi is concerned, they saw that as the balance temper. -- balance tipper. that would tip the whole scales and put them in a situation of having to deal with it. interestingly enough, the description was a simple case -- i will give you an abstract political signs. policy makers are trying to make a deal, he cannot accept it. he could not say yes to all these other things while not stopping sdi. it was a double whammy. it was a deal breaker. >> i understand that. [inaudible] >> we had a substantial disagreement within the intelligence community. there were some good thought they were far ahead of where they actually were. it turned out reality, that there were much further behind than even the advocates stock. it was a combination that they did not have detected college -- chemical capacity on their resources. >> that was -- they were already seeing themselves as behind. even the concept of it was something they saw. the most important perception was their perception, that would completely tip the scales. >> they thought we could do it. >> we could go on, but i am getting the high sign. i would like to thank our panelists for this discussion. we have a break scheduled. how much do we want to take? five minutes? [applause] >> this final panel of the event looks that intelligence, the fall of the soviet union, and the opening of the berlin wall. from a policy perspective. speakers include historians and cia deputy director of intelligence, and authors. >> ok. it is time for the second paddle. the first one was fascinating. i do wish we had more time. it will be available after words if you want to ask more personal questions. after this panel, we will have questions and answers, also, but we really need people to use the microphones because c-span is covering best. it is difficult to pick up the sound of the question years, even those who can project. we will have people holding the microphones. if you want to raise your hand, the person will come to you. i would like to invite backup to the podium -- peter. >> thank you. but will be focusing on the issue from the policy makers perspective of the uses of intelligence and how it iraq's the decision -- how did iraq's the decision making process. -- informs the decision making process. in the current position, i spend a lot of time looking at the arab spring. in my lifetime with the agency for 33 years, this is the single biggest event, for me. it is pretty big and seismic. i can distinctly recall in 1985, around march 10 or 11th, i did my very first trip to the soviet union. i landed in moscow the night he died. all of my neighbors through the connection between my arrival and his death. i've assured him that was not the case. the reason i'm telling you this is the absolute sense of excitement, as a young analyst at the time. if you are a real criminologist, there's nothing more important than being at the funeral. the analysis that goes into who is speaking, who is standing around, and the decisions that have to go into the next general secretary. this is our third death and about three years of the general secretary. there was a great amount of anticipation about the future. we had 3 -- we had seen three robert old leader selected. -- robert old leaders selected. -- rather old leaders selected. it did turn out to be gorbachev. i gets energized thinking about how exciting it up. that was. -- a period that was. we have four very distinguished speakers here. i will quickly go through the four speakers. she currently is an associate professor at usc. she has recently published a wonderful book that got the bulk of the year award for the financial times. i will let her promoted. it is a terrific book. the events surrounding the collapse of the berlin wall. i will not go through the entire sheet on all of our speakers. if you go to pages 66, 68, 69, you can read all the fine print. i had had the pleasure to work with them in the past. he is the director of the senate for risk and security analysis. in an error in your life, -- our third speaker, david holloway. i am thrilled to meet him for the first time. as a professor at stanford, a top trade expert in the field. our last speaker is a distinguished fellow at the hoover institute and she has recently published another book called "ratigan's -- reagan's secret war." i have a feeling she has a lot of firsthand insight to that as well. if we could welcome our first speaker. >> thank you very much. i feel very honored to be year. and stand in front of the audience. thank you to serving, for many of you in the audience. >> you need a microphone. >> can you hear me now? they cannot hear me now. >> can you stand at the podium? >> can you hear me now? >> that is working on. >> how about that? all right. given that is a little bit late in the afternoon, i thought i would bring some images along with me to help keep us all awake. i want to talk about one of the findings from my book that intersects with the theme today. uses of intelligence [inaudible] one of the many challenges facing the intelligence committee is predicting something in foreign government does not even know it is gone to do. the actual opening of the berlin wall is a classic example. i will talk briefly about the transition from president reagan to present a blush. -- president bush. president reagan had a great impact on the sequence of events. i will show you a video clip of the opening of the wall. i will say a few words on contingency and intelligence. this, of course, is a map of cold war europe. during the reagan presidency. you see the border between east and west germany. this is a map of my childhood. berlin was an island inside east germany. berlin was a further subdivided. it was encircled by the berlin wall. of course, president reagan famously it went to berlin in june of 1987 and there is an image of him here. president reagan, dairy he is, standing in front of the berlin wall. this is the image in which he says teardown this wall. the actual opening to a place to years later, november 9, 1989, after vice president elect george h. w. bush had assumed the presidency. you see them here in new york at the end of 1988. the events of 1989 were as unexpected as what is going on in the arab spring. it was difficult to predict what would happen. of course, we know now that what happened in 1989 saved people. by comparison, at the example of june 1989, the same day poland had free elections was the same day the communist party decided to use the army against the people. you see the protest in june of 1989. the people's liberation army had cleared the square. even though we know the outcome of the events in 1989 were peaceful, it was not apparent at the time. it was breathtaking when the east german government decided to respond to a massive street protests. they took their inspiration from the solidarity movement in poland. you see it this city -- there were massive protests in east germany. it was looking like the east german government may follow the chinese example. the east german was very instrumented -- interested to know. there were great concerns that these kinds of protests could send in similar violence. of course, that did not happen. we know that what did happen, what did happen -- [laughter] was the peaceful overcoming of the berlin wall. this is one of the great examples of contingency industry. the east german government did not intend to open the berlin wall. the government despised what gorbachev was doing. found a very sympathetic soul mates in beijing. - millions of people on the streets. it decided to start holding press conferences, which was a very bad idea. they decided to start holding press conferences and decided to announce a relatively minor change in the travel laws. this is not well understood. even the voice-over on the video was not accurate. the east german government decided to make it easier to apply for a visa to leave the country. you still had to have a passport, which was a whole different bureaucratic in denver. you had to file an application and you were told whether or not you could leave the country. they had to announce this at a press conference and did not understand the complicated change. i will show you a few minutes. he bungles this announcement about regulations and the immediate consequences as the flabbergasted border guards are confronted with tens of thousands of people demanding to cross. all right. we just have to advance its a little bit. to save some time. >> [speaking german] >> that this flashed around the city. east berliners rest to see if the checkpoints in the walt work really opening. -- what were really opening. the border guards were baffled. >> we did not get any instructions from our superiors. none. >> we tried many times to speak to our superiors. nobody got back to us. >> you have to bear in mind that our soldiers were fully armed on this day, as always. we had one order. >> that order was to stop anyone trying to escape, but the crowds were huge. suddenly, the guards gave vent. -- gave in. they opened the barriers. [applause] [cheering] >> that opened the borders and did not take in the measures. they did not get my approval. >> i found myself in a group of people who were applauding. i did not understand. then i realized. i really was in west berlin and west berliners had come to the border and they were applauding us. we were all crying and embracing each other. even now, when i look back, my heart is racing. it was so moving. >> [speaking german] >> west berliners arrived from the other direction. they began to demolish the wall in front. ♪ >> that was a clip -- [applause] i wish i could take credit for it. i did not work on the video series. i just wanted to show that brief clip to show that this -- this is a picture of a unified europe. that was the consequence of what happened that evening. it was not supposed to happen. it is a terrific example of contingency in history and one of the challenges that intelligence collectors face. since the government had been trying to organize a crackdown, if you have access to that information, you would come to the conclusion that another square was about to happen in east germany. the miraculous event -- reporters thought it meant the ball is open. it would be something very difficult to predict. president george h. w. bush then had a very different challenge on his hands. an unexpected event, it was clear the materials back east germany was going to collapse. there are times when intelligence is very influential to policymakers. but there are times when it is overtaken by events. this is one of the classic examples of that happening. i am so fascinated by this and that is why i decided to write a book on it. i think i have exhausted my 15 minutes. [applause] >> thank you, peter. it is a pleasure to be here with old colleagues. it is nice to be back here and a library has been a wonderful addition. i have the opportunity a few months ago and was passed by a british magazine, what should we expect of our intelligence services? what should we reasonably expect? intelligence and the fall of the soviet union. i do not think intelligence is meant to be the prediction business. a lot to forecast, we like to assess. i used to take some comfort in the fact that -- i hope this is true -- predictions of continuity between the weather forecaster. if it is sunny, and it will be sunny until it rains. i used to think, they have lot of data and they still cannot predict the weather. how can they expect us to predict something as complicated as the fall of the soviet union? it is a fair question. we did not presume the soviet union was gone to fall, but we had a policy pursued over a number of administrations called containment. if we kept some pressure on them, eventually, the soviet union would collapse. could we have done better at understanding what was going on? i would like to pursue that intelligence policy relationship for four points. one is puzzles and mysteries. second come the questions that did past and not passed. third, -- questions that get asked and not asked. puzzles are those things that have an answer we just do not know. because the soviet union was secretive, we spent billions of dollars on intelligence systems to try to ferret out those puzzles answers. how many missiles during the soviet union have? it was impressive. mysteries are different. mr. rees have no answer. they are contingent -- mysteries have no answer. they depend on what we do as a matter of policy. they have some history and theory. for instance, what the inflation rate is going to be is a mystery this year. nobody knows the answer. not medvedev or putin. we know how -- economies work, so we have a basis of knowing what to look for. the soviet union was a hard mystery in thinking about its possible collapse. we knew via economy mattered a lot. the small sample size of those empires that have fallen -- we could not get much guidance from other places. questions that are not passed are not likely to be answered by intelligence. my most vivid example, i was in a why house that was not the reagan white house. murray -- things were going in the direction for the soviet union that rich countries should not go. life expectancy for males was going down, not up. in retrospect, there were other clear warning signs of a six society, at the same time the emigres were coming out and telling stories of how toaster's more out krajina were more likely to explode and to make toast. -- toasters were more likely to explode and to make toast. we really focused on the military potential, then came the invasion of afghanistan. we were not asking that question, and not asking the question, we did not get much of an answer. imagine if an analyst at approached mr. reagan early in his term and said, i don't know if you really have to worry about the soviet union much, we should not worry about expansion into the third world. what you ought to be worried about is the prospect that this place will collapse, maybe within a dozen years. my guess is mr. reagan -- that analyst would have found himself or herself counting submarines in the illusions as their next -- indy aleutians as their next job. thinking that intelligence is really about telling stories and adjusting stories. you don't have a story -- if you don't have a story, then new information is just a factoid that may bounce off. if the story gets too fixed, we call that a mind-set, and that often leads to intelligence failures. but we did not have a story for understanding those demographics or the exploding toasters. we had a story that said well, we know that the soviet defense industry is a thing apart. no surprise, the domestic industry is bad. dibble said we had a story that says when push comes to shove, the soviets can just make people suffer a little more and keep up, spent more on military measures and expansion. the closest i have found to someone who predicted the fall of the soviet union was a conservative british columnist in 1977. he got the story right, but mostly for the wrong reasons. his reasons were some stereotyping about cultures and ideology. he said the soviet union, when it falls, is not going to fall to the bottom -- not fall from the bottom, it will fall from the top. he thought that largely for cultural reasons, he thought the russians were so passive they could not be bothered to restore themselves to revolt on their own, it would take someone from the top. he thought the motivation would be a lost for freedom. in fact, it was gorbachev finally understanding just how bad the soviet economy was. but at least he had a story. we cannot know when it is going to happen, but let's pick the 200th anniversary of the french revolution, so he said 1989 as many of my predecessors have said, i have looked at the analysis of the soviet union in this time, and two things about it struck me. i agree with the assessment that on a whole, it was not bad. it was pretty good. one assessment said the soviet problem continues to be that of a less developed country with remarkable little -- marc elrich -- with remarkably loyal pattern of modern progress. the problem was, we moakley indeed mostly focused on the nuclear weapons parts, and we found it difficult to put the economic and social, political halves together. that got better once they focused on the more explicitly, but at the heart of it, we don't do it well anywhere. it was a particularly hard task in the soviet union. this is the irony of the story. talking about not being have to understand gorbachev's economic plan, doug was right, it needed to be studied and looked at, but it absolutely made no sense. it was mostly pain for no gain. once the analysts saw that and saw the story, several of the senior people like bob gates, like one of his successors, the director of nsa, they looked at this and said it cannot be right. what gorbachev is doing is going to lead to the end of the soviet union. that had the story, but the could not believe the story could be right. indeed, the story did not have to be right, but for gorbachev, that magnificent bungler who had no idea what to do about it, the soviet union might have gone along for a few more years. very hard to make a prediction when one depends ultimately on the actions and ineptitude of one particular soviet leader. just a word about capabilities. the challenge of putting economic, social politics it together -- we have lost a lot of that capacity to do what i think of a strategic analysis that puts a particular issue in a wider context. we have been through a very tactical period, including the cia, and those are mostly puzzle solving exercises, not mystery framing exercises. i had the opportunity to walk around various agencies a few years ago and asked about the state of analysis in the various intelligence agencies. i heard over and over again, we used to do analysis, now we mostly due reporting. there are so many more issues out there, so many more consumers that it seems to me the challenge of doing more strategic analysis, putting the pieces together and helpful ways, is more and more important. let me conclude with my own favorite story about the end of the soviet union, which is also a good story for the cia. soon after the end, i was in moscow with the national security delegation. it was the most fun i have ever had in moscow. asyou don't speak russian, an official in the old days, the line between hospitality and imprisonment was late short one. the point of the realm was a pack of cigarettes would get in trouble, out of trouble across town. my favorite moment and i never expect to have this happen again, we were in a gathering of soviet officials, one came over and said he had not been out of the soviet union in 20 years. he spoke impeccable american english. for all the did wrong, the soviets did do language awfully well. bill colby was on the delegation and the soviet said, will you introduce me to mr. colby? i took him over and introduced him to build. he turned to bill and said, i want to thank you for being part of the pressure that led to change in the soviet union. that is not going to happen again, but it was nice to have that happen once. [applause] >> david holloway. >> i feel very honored to be here. i did not work in the reagan administration. i have never worked for an intelligence agency, and moreover, i come from stanford and have been at stanford law enough to remember when this library might have been sighted at stanford and not here. it is with a sense of deep red that i have to make that point -- with a sense of deep regret. i am going to talk about a specific issue that arises in the documents in the collection that we have been given. it has to do with an incident sometimes known as the war scare in moscow in november 1983. it has to do with the impact of the report of this scare on president reagan's attitudes to the soviet union and the kind of policy he wants to pursue towards moscow. there are really two questions here. the first is, was there really zero war scare in moscow in the sense that the soviet coup leaders believed that a nuclear attack by the united states and nato was possible in the short term, and a second questionnaire is, what impact did reporting on this have on the reagan administration and the president's approach to the soviet union? the first question, was there a eight war scare or not, is highly controversial. in the collection there are documents that give different answers to the question. the issue is basically this. many of you will recall, 1983 was a year of great tension. i want to go between the united states and the soviet union -- i will not go into the background and causes, but andropov made a comment in september of 1983 that if anyone ever had any illusions about the possibility of an evolution for the better annexed policy of the present american administration, those illusions are completely dispelled now. in the early part of november, between the second and 11th, nato conducted an annual command post exercise named able archer, which was to practice procedures for releasing nuclear weapons in the event of a war. soviet intelligence monitoring this very closely, as would be its practice. on november 8, in the middle of the exercise, kgb residencies a whole broad received an urgent telegram mistakenly reporting and implying that the alert might mark the beginning of a countdown to nuclear war. according to one report, the chief of the general staff went to his wartime bunker on the first day of exercise and ordered some soviet missile forces onto a higher stage of the lord, and other military measures were taken to enhance the readiness of soviet air forces in central europe. a kgb agent in london who had been turned by the british was acting as a double agent. on november 5, he informed his case officer at the secret intelligence service that the telegram had come to london from moscow center, warning that once the preliminary decisions had been taken to go ahead with a first strike, nuclear missiles were likely to be launched within a week or 10 days, and the kgb was to watch out for signs of preparation of such an attack. this information was passed to mrs. thatcher, and jeffrey howe writes in his memoirs that the message left us in no doubt of the extraordinary but genuine russian fear of real life nuclear strike. in the collection of documents we have been given, there are two, one a memorandum of december 30 prepared by the intelligence director of the cia entitled "soviet thinking on the possibility of armed confrontation could the united states." it concludes, moscow does not appear to anticipate and near- term military confrontation with the u.s. it said that moscow leaders were very worried about the long-term trend in american policy, the deployment of intermediate range nuclear forces in europe, the development of the trident 2 missile and submarines. they were afraid of how things might turn out in five or 10 years, but not afraid about what might happen in a matter of weeks. this memorandum seems clearly to be a response to the question, did the soviet leaders, or to the soviet leaders anticipate a near-term military confrontation with the u.s.? we do not have the documents that pose the question, we have the memorandum that answers the question by saying no, the soviet leaders do not expect an attack. but that memorandum did not settle things. there was a special national intelligence estimate done five months later on implications of recent soviet military political activities. this reached the same conclusion, "we strongly believe that soviet leaders do not perceive a genuine danger of imminent conflict or confrontation with the united states." now, in this context, it is quite interesting to note that bob gates, who was deputy director of intelligence at the time, is much more equivocal about soviet thinking. in the same paragraph he writes "there is a good chance, with all the other events in 1983, that the soviet leaders really felt a nato attack was at least possible, and they took a number of measures to enhance their military readiness, short of mobilization. while they may not have believed a nato attack was imminent, they did seem to believe the situation was dangerous." in a study that was done in the late 1990's, a very interesting study of the whole crisis, fisher comes to the conclusion that in 1983, the soviet that reaganieved might order a first strike against the soviet union. in a commentary of a later study for by the president's intelligence advisory board in the late 1980's, it criticized the earlier cia estimates for relaxed aboutusly reluc the dangers that existed at the time. i find this all very puzzling. i actually don't think there was a war scare in moscow, and certainly people have talked to -- but maybe i have talked to the wrong people in moscow -- have assured me that was the case. deep anxiety about how the relationship was developing, for all the reasons we have heard about today, economic difficulties and so on. what is interesting is depth the cia evidence, if we include the cra studies, it is really quite equivocal on whether there was a war scare. this is important for two reasons. one is, if we actually think that in november 1983, when the soviet union had over 10,000 nuclear warheads on strategic missiles, and thousands of nuclear warheads deployed in central europe, if the soviet leader spot in that context that nuclear deterrence would not work, we have to rethink what we understand about nuclear weapons. clearly, there was no doubt at that time that they could retaliate in a devastating way if the u.s. and nato had attacked. in some sense, that would cast .oubt on deterrencts it is more understandable in terms of the way we have thought about deterrence and the strategic relationship. the final point i want to make is that in reagan's diary for the 18th of november, just a little time after this exercise, he writes "george shultz and i had a talked mainly about setting up zero little in-house group of experts from the soviet union to help us in setting up some channels. i feel the soviets are so defensive minded, so paranoid about being attacked, that without being in any way soft on them, we ought to tell them that no one here has any intention of doing anything like that. what the hell have they got that anyone would want?" [laughter] some people have said he must have written this in response to being told about the alarm over the exercise in moscow, about the war scare. i don't think that is necessarily the case. tensions were very high. it could be just a response to the more general situation. iseover, i don't think it some conversion on the road to damascus. during 1983, he had been seeking ways to build channels to the soviet leadership, to discuss how to deal with the difficulties and move forward to a better relationship. but i think what is very striking, to my mind, is that his response to reports, however they came or whatever their substance was, about fear and paranoia in moscow was actually to proceed to provide reassurance as a basis for moving forward. i think it is a critical turning point in his policy towards the soviet union, and ultimately, it paid off in the greatest way when he formed his relationship with gorbachev. thank you. [applause] >> we will turn to our final speaker, annelise anderson. >> there is a fascinating collection of documents. i was just saying how fascinating in this collection of documents is that has been put together by the cia where you can see what kind of information reagan and his administration getting, and on the other hand, the national security documents where you can see what he actually decided and how he used the intelligence. also the national position directives that came out of this. the national security council documents show reagan in action. he shared 300 it -- chaired 355 of these meetings, plus probably another 20 that are recorded in a formal list of national security council meetings. there were men's taken of these, what everybody said -- there were minutes taken of these. a great many of them have been released and the library is releasing more of them. my husband first got access to them, martin anderson, and read them in the vault in this library, and read through all 300 -- all 355 for which there were minutes. i want to talk about reagan and what we know about reagan that we might not be able to learn from reading the cia documents about the information he received. reagan's views on the soviet union and his strategy for dealing with them car reflected very early in his own writings -- with them are reflected very early in his own writings. they were rattled well- established when he took office. -- they were rather well established when he took office. second, reagan made all the decisions. this is pretty clear from reading the documents, and the most riveting conclusion that comes from reading through all of them -- the most striking conclusion. and from reading his personal diary, which has only been available since 2007. third, i think i am probably disagreeing with other members, some speakers. reagan's decisions and the actions that his administration took had a profound effect on what the soviets did. this was not all baked in the cake. it was not that the soviet union was going to collapse in any case, that the policies of the reagan administration really had an influence. in terms of reagan's strategy, i want to quote something from a document that he broke for a speedy that he wrote for a speech in 1963. we are talking even before he gave this speech to pardon goldwater, and it sums up his strategy and goals. he says the only sure way to avoid war is to surrender without fighting. the other way is based on the belief, supported so far by all the evidence, that in an all-out race, our system is stronger. eventually the enemy gives up the race as a hopeless cause. then a noble nation, believing in peace, extend the hand of friendship and says there is room in the world for both of us. just think of it, that is 1963. basically, that describes what he accomplished. that is it. between the time he was governor, when he left the governorship in 1975, until he ran for president in 1980, he did 1024 radio commentaries, each won three minutes. he wrote 686 of them himself. they are here in the reagan library as part of his personal papers, because they were written while he is not in office. he says in one of them, communism is neither an economic nor a political system, it is et form of insanity. -- it is a form of insanity that will one day disappear from the earth, because it is contradictory to human nature. he had a great deal of confidence in the united states and its people. he said in his 1980 campaign, he basically said the same thing that he said in 1963. it was not just the one time thing. he said he does not think the soviets want war. he says the soviets want peace and victory. they seek a superiority in nuclear strength that in the event of a confrontation would leave us with the choice of surrender or die. but if we have the will and determination to build a deterrent capability, we can have real peace, because we will never be faced with such an ultimatum. the man in the kremlin could not decide the true arms limit -- decide that true arms limitation makes sense. in 1983, he said he wanted to be remembered as a president who took away the dreadful fear of nuclear holocaust that was hanging over the world, that we woke up with every morning. he burst started talking about -- he first started talking about going to zero nuclear weapons as an ultimate goal. he never proposed this in negotiations, but he talked about it as an ultimate goal, beginning in 1982. as the decisionmaker, in his first meeting, which is one of the documents in this collection, he says to all his assembled advisers, who are members of the national security council, i will use that -- i will make the decisions. he was very conscious of his prerogatives as the decisionmaker. when he fired alexander haig, his first secretary of state, and replaced him with george shultz, he wrote in his diary, because haig had given a little television speech about how he and reagan disagreed over policy. reagan writes in his diary, the only disagreement was whether i made policy or the secretary of state did. heat was very jealous of his decision making authority. -- he was very jealous. he tolerates extensive disagreement among remembers of his administration, and he says i am going with george on this one and i think bill gates has this right. and so he disagreed -- he recognizes that they disagree, and he wants to hear these different views. they come from different places , and there are huge differences, and he tolerates that. he is obviously capable of firing people, and he keeps all of them, in spite of their disagreements. two of his decisions are especially important. one is the is decision when he s that he wants to follow up the zero-zero path on intermediate weapons in europe, and if the soviets did not take the missiles out, he will put pershing ii and cruise missiles into western europe to be aimed at moscow atkiev in the city yet -- in the soviet union. he is determined about that and he works very hard on that. there is a document that shows they provided information to help us work with allies on achieving this subject, but reagan is absolutely determined on that. in november of 1983, we started introducing the pershing ii and cruise missiles in europe, and the agreement to remove them was not signed until gorbachev agreed to the imf treaty, and that was signed in december of 1987. the nse minutes show the many decisions that reagan made about soviet access to western technologies, source of currency, and general economic help that they could get from the west. if you go back to the 1963 speech, again, this policy is foreshadowed there. he says this in 1963 -- if we truly believe that our way of life is best, are the russians more likely to recognize that fact and modify their stance if we let the economy, and hinged so the contrast is a parent? in human though it may sound, should we not through the whole burden oon their slave masters who are having trouble feeding themselves? i find in the cia documents a little bit of conflict in whether or not or uncertainty about whether or not the military, they are really increasing their military resources. they had a lot of troops appeared there were also clearly, the record shows, increasing their nuclear warheads at about 2000 per year, and the number of nuclear weapons and warheads increased steadily, especially intercontinental ballistic missiles, right to the end of 1986. it continued a couple of years after gorbachev went into office. the turning point come out went the soviets had more nuclear warheads than the new united states, occurred during the carter administration. during reagan's, the number of u.s. nuclear warheads stayed virtually to same, so the number of soviet warheads 5,000.sed to 45 once they went to iceland, even though reagan refused to get in on that, they negotiated on these things later, and the number of soviet nuclear weapons starts to drop by up to 2000 per year, and the united states drops dramatically. reagan is the first president actually persuade the soviet union to reduce their near clear weapons, and there is a dramatic reduction down to about 12,000 for the soviets and 5000 for the united states by 2010 or so. so, in 1988, when gorbachev meet with reagan to last time, and he goes to the u. n, and he announces the reduction in conventional forces, especially those in eastern europe, and basically, the cold war is over at that point. reagan never crowed about winning the cold war. what he says is the cold war is over and freedom won. thank you. [applause] >> i want to thank the speakers for being to be diligent and getting us closer to to are closing time. we have another 20 minutes for questions and answers, assuming there are questions out there. if i could ask questioners, if you could raise your hand so you could talk on the mike? i see one on the back here. gentlemen? someone beat you to the punch. we will get you next. >> this question is for mr. clement, on the basis back in regin's time when it was difficult to predict outcomes of events that dealt with large crowds like the berlin wall, and the difficulty in forecasting outcomes of events that had been analyzed like the weather, if we fast-forward to the present day, should we or do we used computer modeling to analyze the outcomes and predict success, for instance, in a chess game, a computer can predict win, lose, or truck, after a few moves, and the weathermen can tell us where the hurricane is going to go. should the president be getting computer model forecasts regarding intelligence? >> i will take a shot at this, but i what greg to deal with this as well. my personal view is i am much more of the few that there are all sorts of factors that come into play, and let me give an example with the arabs prepared if you thought by watching what happened in cairo was going to be the model, would then ask you, explain to me why we saw what happened in libya, and more importantly, what is unfolding now in syria? they did not exactly stick to the model. this gets you into a variety of factors that have to do with the nature of society, demography's, sectarian divide, leadership, their past experiences, and most important, their willingness to use force to suppress and kill their own people, which clearly the military that worked for mr. mubarak did not want to do. we're seeing a different side of things in syria. i would be a bit weary of trying to the price assessments of how leaders and political elites would respond to larger crowds. greg? cautions are well taken. what strikes me when i did this work looking about the agencies, there are surprisingly little uses of methods and technology in most intelligence analysis. computers can be used for search, not much beyond that, but there is data that is available, not definitive, but if you are trying to see patterns come out and cover all patterns, remember old patterns, remember hypotheses you have forgotten, making much more use of at it and computers i think is important but it does not give you the answer. is just another set of tools, to track aggregate subjective judgments in a systematic way that may work. recently, a look at forecasting across the intelligence agencies said -- found most the day did not use methods, and did not even know there were methods out there that are useful in forecasting, and the single most prevalent method they found is one we know is not good, and that is bringing together a group of experts, hammering out a consensus view. they are better off asking them separately. we can make much better use of the method and technology granted peter's reservations about providing answers. >> footnote to that, and i should have stated this at the outset, it depends on the nature of the question. if it is an issue about political decision making, i would stick to my theory. a good example might be the uses of computers that goes into crunching data for people who do terrorism analysis. i will not get into a lot of details, but there is a tremendous amount of data crunching that goes on in terms of the hunt for relations and patterns and networks that we would be hard to do the job without them. >> we have a question here. a gentleman in the back. if you could raise your hand so someone could get a mike to you. >> i would like to thank the panel for an absolutely fascinating symposium. i have two questions. the first one is more specifically toward the panel itself. the second one is for professor holloway, and the first question is, i had the opportunity to have 30 seconds of discussion with admiral inman, i was hoping my question will be elaborated upon, and that is there existed a trio, and that trio was president reagan, pope john paul ii, and edward teller. anecdotally and analytically, that trio interacted and plotted and certainly in treat on certain levels to plan or least lays some of the groundwork for the ultimate fall of the soviet union. but clearly, john paul ii, because of his very warm relationship with president reagan, played an absolutely pivotal role. edward teller may have played a pivotal role in convincing reagan that it was worth pursuing. john paul ii provided the catalyst that brought together solidarity in poland. but if you look at the time of his visits and the progressive durations of his visits to poland, it looks as though there was a very close collaboration between president reagan an hour late pope. for professor collie, my question is the soviet union showed remarkable foresight in anticipating the possibility that the united states would launch a nuclear weapons program, and that goes back to 1939, so therefore site was a very long standing. they had the option of pursuing german or american developments. but earlier this afternoon, it was referred to the penetration of 13 agents into the manhattan project. i say modest because the penetration was probably more widespread than that, and certainly existed in uk. professor holloway, for the second question, if you could elaborate on the astonishing prescience shown by the kgb, and that assessment. thank you very much. >> anybody want to take the first question? take the question first, david. >> let me address the second question. yes, if you are looking for an example of a highly successful -- one of the most successful intelligence operations in the 20th century, and the kind of scientific and technical side, then clearly the soviet espionage in the manhattan project has to rank very high. we now have to -- we now have a great number of the documents that were pass over to the s viet union by klau7 fuchs, by number of other people, and we also have more interestingly the assessments britain of the intelligence received by the physicist in charge of the soviet project. there are some blips in the story. the very initially they thought this was disinformation, and in the early period, i'm trying not to givet started on this. the first information really arrived late in 1941, really significant information. the russians had done some very good work on nuclear fission for the german invasion, and then that worked stop because of the conditions in the country. the question was, went to renew it? it was renewed at the end of 1942, 1943 on a very small pieces come to see if something could be done. and even by august 1945, when the bombs were dropped on hiroshima, it will still be essentially a lab project. it was not a big investor project of the kind at the manhattan project was. the manhattan project employs 120,000 people at its peak during the war. it is really two weeks after herschel made -- hiroshima stalinist signs a decree that creates a committee on the atomic bomb, which is turned into a crash program. there was in the 998's a dispute between the physics community and the intelligence community in russia, where kgb people were saying this it was we who built the bomb. the physicists said it was good to get the intelligence, but you have to be a good physicist to understand how to put it together. the first soviet bomb is the copy of the bomb dropped on nagasaki. may i address the second? i think the first question -- i do think that john paul ii played an absolutely critical role, and indeed, poland craig a critical role in the ending of the soviet union. i recently read the politburo minutes for a meeting in december 1981, just a few days before martial law was imposed in poland. there was a very interesting discussion, members of the politburo, and they said we're not sure they're right to do what we want them to do, imposing martial law, but we will not go in with military force. where fighting a bore in afghanistan. there will be pressure from the west. i the most people thought if the leader does not act, the soviet union will intervening, and the people justified his actions in terms of sync if he hadn't acted the soviet union would have sent in forces. in the politburo, they said there was no disagreement. it is very revealing that the movement in poland, which of course got enormous help from the election of the pope, and we have to think the holy ghost in the end for what happened -- [laughter] it was extremely important. >> thank you, david. we have a question are in the back. >> this is directed for the members who care to tackle it. for the past 25 years, we have had a national obsession with transparency. that has been fined for legal, legislative, and financial matters, but when it comes to the military and the intelligence services, how do you feel that affects our national security? >> greg? >> it has a big effect. i did work recently on use of social networking media by the intelligence agencies, and it was a nice look at the wave that is going to wash over intelligence. transparency is going to increase. already you can be located, searched. it is going to make lots of traditional ways we have done intelligence and a lot harder, traditional cover is going to become virtually impossible, so it is gone to have a big effect.

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