Next up, a panel of cia analysts and Navy Historians discuss recently declassified cold war documents on the soviet navy. Cohosted by the Central Intelligence agency, the National Museum of the u. S. Navy and the Naval Historical Foundation. The hourlong event was titled red navy revealed, soviet Navy Intelligence and analysis during the cold war. All right. Well, good morning, everyone. Thanks for coming out to the National Press club. The worlds oldest and Largest Organization of professional journalists. My name is kevin wency, on behalf the jetblue and directors of the press club, i want to welcome you and our audience on cspan and other media. Thank you very much. We have a special program for you today. First, i wanted to introduce claire sassen from the Naval Historic Foundation claires the executive director. Thank you, kevin. Can you hear me . I know you want to hear from everyone else on the panel, not me. Ill only take a minute of your time. We are delighted to work with the cia to bring you this, we think, exciting briefing this morning. Also, i want to thank kevin and the National Press club for hosting us this morning. For those of you that dont know the Naval Historical Foundation we are a nonprofit membership organization. We focus on preserving and commemorating naval heritage. And we use naval history to help educate the American People on the importance of our navy, cpower and the mamaritime brig. We work closely with the naval time history command. The board four of whom are sitting here, david, add miller and kevin are here. Our board, our members, are a wealth of knowledge on naval history sand proviand providingl context into activities happening today. We hope that you will use us as a resource as youre getting your research and writing articles. And thats it. We just want to say thank you for coming and enjoy the briefing. Thank you very much, clare. Let me go through our list of speakers today. Dr. David rosenberg, from the institute of analysis and retired naval captain. Celia mansfield. Welcome. Norm an pullmar. Naval and intelligence historic and a wealth of all things navy and marine corps. Rear admiral thomas brooks, u. S. Navy. Director of naval intelligence. Welcome aboards. And Eugene Sullivan retired cia naval officer. Everyone, thank you for being here today. David, id like to actually, cecilia. Would you like to kick it off . Tell us about the report and the documents, thank you. And then q a after everybody has had a chance to say a few words. Id ask you to stand up, state your name, accident fidentify y source and make it a precise question. Thank you very much. Good morning and welcome. I have remarks i have prepared. Just as a reminder, from 4 00 to 6x p. M 6 00 p. M. , we have a symposium at the naval yard. And that will be a twohour session in which well give a little more detail on the documents. I want to first thank our Navy Colleagues and our panelists. Its been wonderful working with everyone. And its been a real learning experience for myself. Let me start by saying that i have the absolute best job, not only do i get to tell the Central Intelligence agency story, i also work with the talented and diverse workforce, including the expert reviewers and researchers who are critical to making this collection and others like it, available to the public. It is a great privilege to be here today, to discuss the results of their hard work. As the historical programs coordinator, i manage the review and release of classified cia documents in the department of states Foreign Relations of the United States. And the discretionary release of historically significant document which is included over the last couple of years, the release of the president s daily briefs. Our goal is to declassify what we can, while protecting what we must. With this in mind, we strive to increase Government Transparency with academia, historians and the public. And one possible, we seek to correct the historical record on what cia has been involved with in the past. For todays events we have produced a booklet which many of you have picked up on your way in. And it just providing an overview of the history of the soviet navy and the u. S. Navys posture during this time, as well as a catalog. And the catalog is in the back of the booklet, describing the documents recently released for todays events. The documents can be found on the website under historical collections. Since this is about history, lets go back 2500 years ago. Almost 2582 years ago, the chinese theorist stressed the intelligence and the art of war. To win 100 battles is not the skill. On the other hand he stressed to subdue the enemy without fighting is the true skill. And a Nuclear Holocaust was averted. This current collection of documents is our story of the soviet navy in the cold war. With previously released collections in the series focused more broadly on the warsaw pact and the soviet military strategic issues. So, i can specifically talk about the documents. The documents provide a fascinating peek into the soviet navy during a critical time of its development. Resulting analysis at that time serve a National Security policy issue as well. Documents in this collection include intelligence assessments, intelligence memoranda and Research Reports as well as the Clandestine Research behind the product. The analytic products were written by a cadre of analysts of the office of Strategic Research and constitute about 30 of collection. With the reminder representing the clandestinely acquired intelligence used as the basis for the finished analytic products. These products were prosecuted for policymakers and Intelligence Community partners. In total, there are 82 documents, theyre newly released, and it amounts to about 2,000 pages. Much of our analysis of soviet military Strategic Thinking and for this collection, specifically, the cold war soviet navy, with its evolving naval strategy and development of its Nuclear Submarine force was zee arriderived by related and warsaw tech documents written by military leaders and strategists. These documents can greatly influenced the analysis on how the United States viewed the soviet union. They were obtained by the colonels, many of the individuals youve heard about. And one of these extraordinary heroes spoke for saul all for a them when he wrote, and i quote, considering that my place in these troubled times is on the front line. I must remain on this front line in order to be your eyes and ears. God grant only my modest efforts be used in the fight for high dael idealed for mankind. Those words were written by a highly placed soviet intelligence officer. He was president kennedys most secure source during the berlin crisis in 1961 and 62, as well as during the cuban crisis in 1962. He provides together with ima imagery critical intelligence on the so far yet missile readiness that president kennedy needs to go eyeball to eyeball with kushev. And reporting on soviet military organization, policy doctrine, strategy and tactics and finally the colonel who served from 1972 to his immigration to the United States, in november of 1981, reported on soviet actions leading to the declaration of martial law in poland that same year. And i wanted to talk about from an analyst point of view what these documents mean, if you could just give me a couple minutes just to talk about that. So, access to how the navy debated key issues about their own naval theories and practices, as well as their view of u. S. Naval strength made the difference between knowing facts and more importantly understanding and gaining the intuitive edge to determining the other sides intentions. From collective intelligence, the analyst will know thing. However, collective intelligence that helps us understand things contributes to making accurate analytic projections. Understanding also provides a context that allows the stitching together of disparate pieces of information to identify a more accurate picture of the situation. For example, we might have a picture that shows an increase in the number of ships. However, understanding the why, allows us to predict intentions for that increase in ship numbers. The detail in the clandestinely acquired military articles and the other soviet military thinkpieces in this collection were critical to the analysts understanding of why. Another important aspect of analysis, and youll probably pick up on some of the discussion today as we go through some of the questions, is that the Intelligence Community debates and had some debates in these early years on the interpretation of intelligence on certain issues. Community debates are healthy means to arrive at the understanding analysts seek of the situation and their episodes intentions. In closing, id like to thank john and joe byrd who are responsible for this collection. They spent about a decade doing a lot of pulling together of the documents and doing a lot of the research to allow this collection, as well as two other collections that already have been released. One fortunately our john byrd sadly passed away a couple months ago. Were deeply grateful to john and joan for the hard work on the project and dedication. Thank you. Think very much, celia. David, do you want to do opening remarks . Sure. Thank you. Good morning, my name is david rosenberg, i do work at the institute of defense. I work at Temple University and most recently the u. S. Naval academy and ive been doing history for more than five decades starting back in the 1960s. So i have been in many, many of the archives, and i alsos have a Navy Intelligence officer have been behind the scenes so im providing you with interesting comments. I wish i had a submarine model here but unfortunately, im talking from documents. So, let me provide a bit of insight on how to understand what cia has released. The first thing that i want to do is congratulate cia and thank them. What cia has been doing over the last few decades has been remarkable in terms of releasing both finished intelligence. And the materials that youve seen here, but also in the other collections of getting open human intelligencederived documents that were provided by agents behind the iron curtain. And the thing is, that when you put this together with material, that was released understand mandatory declassification verification review or freedom of information requests but which also cia processed and the Intelligence Community processed, you get a remarkable picture of the other side of the story. And this is very, very important. Because very rarely, this soon thereafter, are you able to in fact get that kind of picture. The other thing i need to thank cia on with an asterisk is the fact that they have put all of these online. This collection has been available since earlier this summer online. But in addition, if you look in the back of this lovely booklet, what you will find is a list of other documents related to it, that have also been declassified. And its a very, very fine collection that includes the first and Subsequent National intelligence commitment the asterisk and something that i have checked with celia about, so i can say this, is that cia has on their whats called the cia Research Tool it the ack rom him in is c. R. E. S. T. , previous to this year, or i think late last year, c. R. E. S. T. Was only available at the international archives. C. R. E. S. T. Is now Available Online at the cia freedom of information website. That is remarkable. The problem is it has one of the worst Search Engines i have ever dealt with in which if you type in even the most precise search tools you will get Something Like up to in one case 1500, you know, following web pages in which you could then search for something that might work for this. Celia has noted that this is a pain and didnt mind me saying this but i thought i would at least note this publicly. What do we have here on the web site . We have a collection of material that, in effect, covers, if youll pardon the phrase, the waterfront on understanding a good bit of the soviet navy. We have individual 1950s and 1960s human intelligence derived documents, some of which are respective from material released under the socalled iron bark series that corn pinkovsky provided. What is new in a number of cases are late 1960s and early 1970s formerly classified formal intelligence assessments of the soviet navy particularly understanding the soviet navy in its anticarrier role, antisubmarine role and a whole series of other points that had not previously been released. This fills a huge gap in terms of things to understand. There are also, and this will be a focus of the discussion this afternoon, a series of cia assessments on the role of the soviet navy in interdicting sea lines of communications in the event of world war iii. If you want to think about it, we are talking about it the third battle of the atlantic. Would this have occurred . Would the cia would the soviet union, with its vast collection of submarines, okay, come out and attempt to do what the germans had attempted to do in two world wars . And thats an important a very important issue, and is a way we can focus some of the discussion. In addition there is remarkable material coming out of cia collections of military thought, pardon my accent but i was told this was the right way to say it [ speaking Foreign Language ] okay, so far so good. That was the general staff classified journal that was provided by pinkovski, popov and k clchlt ukinsky. And also the warsaw pact journal. And this was the way that much of the military questions were in fact debated and naval strategy was, in fact, talked about. Finally, we have essentially nine documents that represent the 13 chapters of the combat regulations of the soviet navy, 1983 that were published in 1986. Human derived but very important if you want to delve into the mindset of how soviet naval officers are going to think. And then finally we have two book length studies. One a study with a number of redactions on kruschevs miscalculation in the cuban crisis and then a book on the trail of soviet disasters. As i said, you have to look at this and that is the value again of this marvelous booklet. I dont know if there is any hyperlink . Is this going to go on line . It should be. Will there be hyperlinks . It would be on the website with the documents above. We did a short summary paragraph so there will be a pdf. Right under the well the beauty of this is that there you can go to the website, you can find this now and then in addition you can, at least, copy and paste into the Search Engine the title of some of these things and that would be the way to find some of these documents. The documents that were released still hold stuff that the cia has been releasing over time that i think john and joan byrd made the decision they needed to fill in. So, this is actually a celebration of that act, but everything that came before it. Because if you really want to understand this you have to understand and look at the other documents, particularly something i want to mention and that is the issue of the National Intelligence estimate on the soviet navy that came out in 1982, National Intelligence estimate 11. 15. 82d. This has been out for some time and whats important about that is thats the estimate that was a gamechanging assessment off the soviet navy. That while not part of this, you can see things leading up to it. I want to at least note the importance from the key judgments that i think is very critical because it represented such a departure for american admirals on one hand and to understand the soviet navy and how it worked. That was this quote, within the soviets overall wartime strategy, the primary initial task for the navy remained to deploy and provide protection of ballistics missile submarines in preparation for and conduct of strategic and Theater Nuclear strikes and to defend the ussr and its allies by strikes in enemy ballistic submarines and Aircraft Carriers. This is something thats very, very different than the United States navy would contemplate. It was something that took awhile to get the United States navys leadership to understand. The United StatesNavy Leadership was worried about interdiction and soviet navy coming out and the fact was how did this work . The final point that i want to note is that you need to understand that the way the United States went about collecting information on the soviet union was all source. There were all sorts of things that in effect contributed to these formal intelligence assessments. This includes the technical collection that was undertaken by satellites, overhead imagery but also electronic intelligence, as well as signals and communications intelligence. There were a range of other sources that contributed to this. The United States navy itself redid the way it did intelligence, capitalizing on what it di