I've left the entire contents list for list members to see
the type of material Johnson's Russia List provides.
Only items 1 and 2 are re-posted below.
AJ
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Johnson's Russia List
#5142
10 March 2001
[log in to unmask]

[Note from David Johnson:
  1. Reuters: CIA releases 859 documents of Cold War analysis.
(DJ: Go to www.cia.gov or www.foia.ucia.gov/historicalreport.htm)
  2. AP: CIA Doubted USSR's Capabilities.
  3. RIA: GAZPROM-MEDIA CHIEF DISCUSSES NTV DEVELOPMENTS IN U.S.
PRESIDENT'S NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL. (Kokh)
  4. MSNBC: Dana Lewis, Russia's coldest winter in a century.
  5. Jonathan Sanders: Berezovskii on 60 Minutes Sunday.
  6. Gordon M. Hahn: No Confidence Vote.
  7. New book: SINO-RUSSIAN MILITARY RELATIONS: THE FATE OF TAIWAN
AND THE NEW GEOPOLITICS by ALEXANDR V. NEMETS AND JOHN L. SCHERER.
  8. Eric Chenoweth: Re: 5138-Ware/Chechnya.
  9. Scott Blacklin at CSIS in Washington: DOING BUSINESS IN RUSSIA.
  10. Wall Street Journal: Jeanette Borzo, Russian Technology Draws
The Interest of Esther Dyson.
  11. St. Petersburg Times: Gareth Brown, A Defense of Advertising:
Why Ban Proposed by Duma Makes No Sense.
  12. BBC Monitoring: Obshchaya Gazeta, Audit findings at Russian gas
giant mask financial plight. (Gazprom)
  13. AP: Summers Said Suggested for Harvard.
  14. International Herald Tribune: Gareth Evans, Force Is Not the Way
to Meet Central Asia's Islamist Threat.]

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#1
CIA releases 859 documents of Cold War analysis
By Tabassum Zakaria

PRINCETON, N.J., March 9 (Reuters) - The CIA on Friday released 859 secret
documents of Cold War analysis on issues ranging from the impact of a Polish
Pope on the Soviet Union to the response to former President Ronald Reagan's
"Star Wars" plan.

The release of the previously classified Central Intelligence Agency
documents, written between 1947 and 1991, was timed to coincide with a
two-day conference at Princeton University on the CIA's analysis of the
Soviet Union.

"This is a treasure trove of great material," Lloyd Salvetti, director of the
Central Intelligence Agency's Center for the Study of Intelligence, said. The
documents will be available on the CIA's Web site www.foia.ucia.gov.

A 1987 analysis of the Soviet's response options to Reagan's 1983 Strategic
Defense Initiative known as "Star Wars" concluded that the Soviets were
likely to pursue arms control measures to gain U.S. concessions on the
proposal.

A 1981 intelligence report said there was "conclusive evidence" that the
Soviet Union supported revolutionary groups that used "terrorism,"
specifically mentioning El Salvador.

And a 1963 paper showed U.S. intelligence analysts at odds with each other
over how close the United States and Soviet Union came to the brink of
nuclear war during the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

IMPACT OF POPE

A 1978 CIA memo said the selection of a Polish Pope, John Paul II, would be
"extremely worrisome to Moscow" because it would make it more difficult to
integrate Poles more closely into a communist Soviet-dominated system of
alliances.

Other CIA documents throughout the period addressed the outlook for Soviet
commodities such as oil, grain, and gold, and analyzed Soviet relations with
countries such as China, India, North Vietnam, Nicaragua, Iraq and Cuba.

Some material echoed themes relevant today such as a 1978 analysis on the
flare-up of nationalist sentiment in the Soviet Transcaucasus and a 1988
analysis of unrest in the Caucasus. Russia has recently engaged in fighting
separatists in the southern rebel province of Chechnya.

Since the newly-released CIA documents were products of the analysis division
they did not cover clandestine operations.

Still, the reports were "carefully scrubbed" to exclude intelligence sources
or sensitive information that could impact current U.S. relations with other
countries, Ed Cohen, director of CIA's Office of Information Management,
said.

In addition to the CIA documents, 12 National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs)
from the National Intelligence Council were released. NIEs can include input
from all U.S. intelligence agencies and focus on issues such as Soviet
weapons.

Gerald Haines, the CIA's chief historian, said analysis of the NIEs showed
they continued to overestimate the Soviet missile build-up in the 1980s.

A September 1991 CIA analysis of the defense implications of a break up of
the Soviet Union concluded that a Russia without Ukraine and other republics
would "retain the potential of a major military power."

GORBACHEV'S SOBRIETY CAMPAIGN

In 1986 the CIA analyzed Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's anti-alcohol
campaign and concluded that success in curtailing alcohol abuse, when
consumption had doubled over the prior 30 years, would strengthen his
political position.

Several analyses of Gorbachev's policies were released, and Salvetti said the
documents showed U.S. analysts "trying to keep pace with a rapidly moving
train."

He added: "It was often the case where analysts were just trying to determine
what it is that Gorbachev's intentions were when it was really hard for
Gorbachev himself to understand where he was going."

A 1986 CIA report said a controversial Soviet radar under construction in
Krasnoyarsk was mainly for ballistic missile detection and tracking rather
than for satellite detection as the Soviets argued.

CIA's analysis was the basis for U.S. administration policy which declared
the radar a violation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and that it
be dismantled, CIA historians said.

Haines said the newly-released documents overall showed how CIA analysis
became based more on facts rather than speculation after technical means of
gathering information were employed.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the CIA was operating with "no eyes and
ears," he said. But then the U-2 spy plane and Corona spy satellite began
operating and "gave the United States tremendous advantage," Haines said.

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#2
CIA Doubted USSR's Capabilities
March 9, 2001
By ROBERT BURNS

WASHINGTON (AP) - At the same time Ronald Reagan's ``Star Wars'' plan was
arousing public fears of a new arms race, the CIA was advising the president
that the Soviet Union was too weak to counter a U.S. space-based missile
defense with its own missile buildup, according to newly declassified
records.

The CIA told Reagan in 1987 that the Kremlin would pin its hopes on diplomacy
to stop Star Wars rather than accelerate its own missile defense research or
greatly expand its offensive missile arsenal.

That secret assessment, which proved on the mark, is contained in 19,000
pages of newly declassified CIA reports, some of which overestimated the pace
of Soviet military modernization from the mid-1970s to mid-1980s.

The documentation, some heavily censored to protect what the CIA calls
sensitive sources and methods of intelligence collection, was released in
conjunction with a conference that started Friday at Princeton University on
CIA analysis of the Soviet Union from 1947 to 1991, the year the U.S.S.R.
dissolved.

The reports show how the Central Intelligence Agency struggled to understand
Soviet leaders' intentions, not just in the military field but also on
economic, social, political and foreign policy fronts.

Prior to the start of U-2 spy flights over Soviet territory in the mid-1950s
and later the use of satellites to monitor the Soviet military, the CIA had
little factual basis on which to judge war dangers.

``We have no reliable inside intelligence on thinking in the Kremlin,'' a
top-secret 1953 report stated. In the event of a surprise attack, there would
be no hope of obtaining detailed information on Soviet intentions. By the
1970s, however, the CIA was confidently advising the White House that the
Soviet leadership was not planning a ``bolt out of the blue'' attack on the
United States or Europe.

Some critics accuse the CIA of having failed to foresee the downfall of the
Soviet Union, and there remains an unresolved debate over whether Reagan's
large military buildup in the early 1980s - and his emphasis on ``Star Wars''
- pushed the U.S.S.R. over the economic brink and hastened its demise.

The Nov. 1, 1987, report on possible Soviet responses to President Reagan's
Strategic Defense Initiative echoes some elements of today's debate between
Washington and Moscow over missile defense. For example, it predicted Moscow
would play on fears of U.S. allies in Europe that a U.S. missile defense
system would weaken the American commitment to defending Europe.

``Such political efforts offer by far the cheapest - yet potentially very
effective - means of countering SDI,'' the report said.

Although the missile defense system contemplated by the Bush administration
is a less ambitious approach than Reagan's - and not designed specifically to
counter a missile threat from Russia - the Kremlin remains a strong opponent.
And it has sought to enlist European support for its view.

The 1987 report said ``Star Wars'' presented the Soviets with a dilemma. If
they devoted the tens of billions of dollars a year required to catch up to
the United States on missile defense, they would be forced to scale back
industrial modernization, which they needed to ensure long-term economic
stability. The alternative: postpone a major response to ``Star Wars'' and
risk eroding national security.

``The prospect of near-term resource trade-offs provides the Soviets a strong
incentive to use arms control to try to stop or delay U.S. development and
especially deployment'' of missile defenses, the report said.

As it turned out, the Soviets did not mount a large-scale program to counter
or match ``Star Wars.'' Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev tried to get
Reagan to agree at an October 1986 summit in Iceland to scrap the program in
exchange for an eliminating all ballistic missiles, but Reagan refused.

There is still debate over how much Moscow feared the potential of Reagan's
missile defense initiative.

In 1983 the Reagan administration developed a secret plan to deceive the
Soviet Union into thinking the United States was making more technological
progress on missile defense than it really was. In revealing the secret plan
a decade later, the Pentagon said it had failed to execute it because of
technical glitches.

``Star Wars'' was never deployed, although research continues on means of
protecting the United States against attack by long-range missiles.

On the Net:
http://www.cia.gov

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