The executive director. She wanted to say a word about the partnership on this. And well get into the statements. Thank you. Can you hear me . I will only take a minute of your time. We are delighted to be able to work with the cia to bring you this we think exciting briefing this morning. Also want to thank kevin and the National Press club for hosting us this morning. For those of you who dont know the Naval Historical Foundation were 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. And the mer time domain. Were located the Washington Navy yard. And we work closely with the naval history and heritage command. Our board and members throe of whom are four of whom are sitting who are today. David admiral kevin and norman polmar. A wealth of knowledge on naval history. And providing mistor kal context into activities that are happening today. We hope you will use us as a resource. As youre doing research and writing articles. Thats it. We want to say thank you for coming and enjoy the briefing. Great. Thank you very much. So let me go through the list of speakers today. David rosenberg. For the institute of defense analysis. And retired u. S. Navy captain. Mansfield from the Central Intelligence agency. Welcome. Norman polmar. Naval intelligence historian. And wealth of knowledge about all things navy and marine core. Thomas brooks. U. S. Navy. Retired former director of naval intelligence. And sullivan, retired cia senior officer. Everyone thank you very much for being here today. David id like to kick it off actually. And tell us about the report and the documents that will be released. And a question and answer after everybody says a couple words. Stand up and raise your hand. Identify your name and media source. And make did a really precise question if you could. Good morning and welcome. I have remarks that i have already prepared. So just in the way of reminder later on today from 4 to 6 00 p. M. We have a symposium at the naval yard. And that will be a two hour session. In which well gif a little bit more detail on the documents. I want to first thank our Navy Colleagues and panelist. 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 work source. The reviewers and researchers critical to making this collection 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 to revie and release of classified cia documents in the department of states Foreign Relations of the United States. And the release of significant documents which included over the last couple of years the release of the president daily briefs. Our goal is declassify what we can. While protecting what we must. With this in mind we strive to increase Government Transparency with with. We have produced a booklet which many have picked up on your way in. And provides an over view of the history of the soviet navy and the posture during this time. As well as a catalog. Its in the back of the booklet. Describing the documents. Recently released for the event. The documents can be found on our cia. Gov web site. Under historical collections. Since this is about history lets go back 2,500 years ago. That Chinese Military theory stressed the importance of intelligence in his book. The art of war. That same book he noted that to win 100 battles is not skill. On the other hand he stressed to subdue the enemy without fighting is indeed the true skill. The cold war was won without a shot being fired between the super powers. And a Nuclear Holocaust was averted. This collection of documents is our story of the soviet navy in the cold war. With previously are leased collections in the series fox on the warsaw pact and strategy issues. Resulting analysis at that time served on National Security policy issues. Documents in this include intelligence assessment, intelligence and Research Reports as well as the acquired reporting from behind the iron curtain. The analytic products were written by the direct tr of Intelligence Office of Strategic Research. And constitute 30 of the collection. Used as the basis for the finished products. These products were prepared for a policy makers and Intelligence Community partners. In total there are 82 documents. Newly are e leased and amounts to 2,000 pages. Much of the analysis of soviet military strategy thinking and for this collection the cold war soviet navy. With the naval strategy. Was derived from a special collection of soviet military thought articles. And related classified warsaw pact documents written by the military leaders and strategists. These greatly influenced our analysis in how the United States viewed the soviet union. They were obtained from lieutenant, colonel and many of those individuals you have heard about. One of the extraordinary heros spoke for all of them. When he wrote and i quote consider that my place during the troubled times is on the front line. I must remain on the front line in order to be your eyes and ears. God grant that only my modest efforts be useful in the fight for our high ideals for mankind. Please belief me that your soldier shall take a worthy position among his comrades who search for justice. Written by colonel a highly placed soviet Intelligence Officer. He was president kennedys most secure source during the berlin cry is in 1962. As well as during the cuban missile crisis. In 1962. He provided together with imagery over flights critical intelligence on the soef yet missile readiness that president kennedy needed to go eyeball to eyeball. And indeed the first to blink. He served from 1953 to late 1950s and reported on soviet military organizations policy strategy and tactic. And colonel served from 1972. In november of 1981 reported on soviet actions leading to the declaration of marshall law in poland that same year. I want to talk about from an analyst point of view what the documents mean. If i could 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 determine the other sides intentions. From collected intelligence the analyst will know thing it is. However collected intelligence that helps us understand things contributes to making accurate analytic projections. Understanding provides a context that allows the stitching together of misses of information and sorting through the 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 oufr understanding the why allows us to predict intentions for that increase in ship number. The detail and the other soviet military strategist think pieces in the collection were critical to the analyst understanding of why. Another important aspect of analysis and youll probably pick up on some of the discussion today as we go through. Is that the Intelligence Community debates and had debates in the early years on the interpretation of the intelligence on certain issues. Community debates are healthy means to arrive at the understanding that analyst seek of the situation and adversaries intentions. In closing, id like to thank john and joan bird who are responsible for the collection. They spent about a decade doing a lot of pulling together the documents and doing the research. To allow this collection and two other collections. Unfortunately john bird passed away a couple months ago. And we are deeply greatful to both for all their hard work on the project. And dedication. Thank you. Thank you. David, you want to good morning. My name is david rosenberg. I do work at the institute for defense analysis. I am representing myself in the Naval Historical Foundation. Im a historian by training. I have been doing history for five decades. Starting back in the 1960s. So i have been in many of the archives and also as a navy Intelligence Officer have been behind the scenes. Im providing interesting comments on this. I wish i had an aircraft model. Im talking about documents. Let me ro virgin islaprovide in. The first thing i want to do is congratulate cia and thank them. What they have been doing over the last few decades has been remarkable in terms of releasing both finished intelligence and in the materials that you have seeb here. And other collections. Of getting open human intelligence derived documents. That provided by agents behind the iron curtain. And the thing is that when you put this together with material that was released under mandatory declassification review. Requests. Which also cia processed and also the Intelligence Community processed you get a remarkable peckture of the other side of the story. This is very important. Because very rarely this soon there after are you able to in fact get that kind of picture. The other thing i need to thanks cia on. Is the fact they have put these online. This collection has been available since earlier this summer. Online. In addition if you look in the back of the lovely book what you will find is a list of other documents related to it that have also been declassified. Its a very fine collection. That includes the first and Subsequent National intelligence estimate on the navy and so forth. However something i have checked about. Is that cia has on their cia research tool. Crest. Previous to this year, or late last year, crest was only available to the national archive. Crest is now Available Online at cia freedom of information act web site. This is remarkable. The problem is it has one of the worst Search Engines. If you type in the most precise search tools you get 1,500 following web pages. She noted this is a pain and didnt mind. I thought i would note this. Okay. What do we have here. On the web site. We have a collection of material that in effect covers if youll pardon the use of the phrase the water front on understanding the soviet navy. We have individual human intelligence derived documents. Some are repetitive. What is new in a number of cases are the late 1960s and 1970s formally classified formal intelligence of the soviet navy. Understanding the navy and the anticarrier role and series of other points that had not previously been released. This fills a huge gap in term of things to understand. There are also this will be a focus of the discussion this afternoon a series of cia assessments on the role of the soviet navy in interdicting lines of communication in the event of world war 3. The third battle of the atlantic. Would this have occurred . Would the soviet union with this vast collection of submarines come out and attempt to do what the germans had attempted to do in two world wars. Thats an important issue. And a way we can focus the discussion. In addition theres remarkable material coming outs of cia collection of military thought pardon my accent. I was told this is the right way to say it. That was the general staff classified journal. That was provided by. Remarkable material and the warsaw pact journal. This is the way that much of the military questions were in fact debated and naval strategy was in fact talked about. Finally we have a essentially nine documents that represent the 13 the 13 chapters of the combat regulations of the soviet navy in 1983 that were released that in fact were published in 1986. Human derived, but important if you want to delve into the mind mindset of how soviet naval officers are going to think. Are then finally two booklength studies. One a study with a number of redactions on kruschevs miscalculation on the cuban missile crisis and also on the trial of soviet disasters. Now as i said, you have to be, have to look at this and thats the value again of this booklet. I dont know if theres any hyperlink. Is this going online . It should go online today. It will be on the website with the documents we did a short summary paragraph. So itll be a pdf. The beauty of this 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. They have to be the documents that were released fill holes of 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 a celebration of that act but also of everything thats come before it. Because if you really want to understand this you have to understand and look at the other documents. Particularly something that i do 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 111582d. This has been out for some time, and whats important about that is thats the estimate that was a gamechanging assessment of the soviet navy, that while not part of this you can see things leading up to it. And i want to at least note the importance from the key judgments that i think is very, very critical because it represented such a departure for american admirals on one hand and to understand the soviet navy and how this worked. And that was this quote. Within the soviets overall wartime strategy the primary initial tasks of navy remain to deploy protection in conduct thurk strikes and to defend the ussr from enemy ballistic submarines and aircraft carriers. This is something very, very different than the United States navy would contemplate. Its something that took a while to get the United States navys leadership to understand. The United StatesNavy Leadership was worried about interdiction, was worried about the soviet navy coming out. And the fact is how did this work. The final point 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 sourced. That were all sorts of things that in effect contributed to these formal intelligence assessments. This includes the technical collection that was undertaken by satellites, overhead imagery, but also electronic intelligence as well as signals and communications intelligence. There were a range of other sources that contributed to this. The United States navy itself redid the way it did intelligence, capitalizing on what it did in the Second World War and in the early 70s created something called the ocean surveillance Information System that provided tailored information to fleet commanders on the doings of the soviet navy. All of this was a remarkable essentially a set of systems that brought us a lot of important information. If you want to understand this, the good news is realize theres a very, very large iceberg behind what youre reading. I think well open it to q a now. So again raise your im sorry, you want to make a statement . Absolutely. Please go ahead. Let me move this over for you a little bit. We want to hear what you have to say. As the only press club member on the panel. Oh, no, kevin. Oh, kevin, of course. Im sorry. Hes an officer. Im just a member for 60 years, whatever. These documents are, one, fascinating. Some ive had the privilege of seeing related to work ive done in the past, a large number ive not. So i consider myself a consumer of all of this. Having made a dozen trips to the soviet union and russia and having discussed some of the issues in here in these papers with Senior Officers as well as submarine designers, ive written a couple of books on russian submarines, let me say these are eye opening documents. The problem is as Dave Rosenberg just pointed out, prior to 1982 a lot of our perceptions of what the soviets would do, how they would do it, turned out to be pretty bad, pretty bad. This evening i will speak about the slac, sea lines of communication interdiction, how the u. S. Navy in the first roughly 30 years of the cold war, the primary Wartime Missions were one, Nuclear Strike against the soviet union with aircraft carriers, with regulus Cruise Missiles, with polaris, poseidon, trident missiles. That was the number one mission, Nuclear Strike against the soviet union. The number two was protecting the atlantic sealanes. Because we knew the germans had tried in world war i to cut off europe from the United States, had tried again in world war ii with submarines and had failed. But with the number of submarines the soviets were producing, in one year, 60, 70 submarines, they could probably do it. So we spent a lot of time, effort, and resources in the concept of protecting the atlantic convoys, which it turns out the soviets were not planning to go after. That was a secondary, tertiary mission for them. Ill close by saying that this evening im going to go into much more detail on that with some of the documents. But also i must take issue with some of my panel members. I often take issue with organizatio