Deception

...In 1988, it produced 162 million tons, which was twice as much steel as the United States produced...

...Nothing happened...

...Fascinating though Deception is, no answer to that question can be found there...

...tide will appear in the same publica- validity has already led the United Soviet economic reports furnished to DEFICIT tion cheerfully arguing that there can States to lift restrictions on the avail- the CIA . . . by Soviet controlled be no going back on perestroika and ability of highly sophisticated com- sources...

...Around the world a feeling of "pro"- and "anti"-perestroika forces...

...These claims may be sincere, of —Michael Harrington, author course...

...they have an antiballistic missile defense system around Moscow as well as the phased-array radar system at Krasnoyarsk...

...Both their economy is a hopeless basket case: Stalin and Richard Nixon...

...More recently, the Iranians, badly in need of arms, approached the United States with a story that fell on very receptive ears: the struggle for the succession to Khomeini was on in Tehran between the pragmatists and the zealots...

...The sale of arms will help the former and ensure that Iran will stay out of the Soviet orbit...

...ard on Visa shadowy, nasty, "right-wing"—to use addition, whenever anything occurs 1988, it was three quarters that of the University of the bizarre new nomenclature—Krem- that seems to portend the collapse of United States," Epstein goes on...

...T o be fair to the Soviets, there is 1 nothing so terrible about getting your adversaries to think those things about you that you want them to think...

...And this is by no means im- been "won" by our side and that Corn- future studies of the New elements have to be—indeed are going possible...

...For instance, in 1985, even after Vitaly Yurchenko returned to his KGB command in Moscow, the CIA continued to insist that he had been a genuine defector, going so far as to leak stories to the media that the Russian had been "executed" upon his return to Moscow...

...25.00 cle will appear in Pravda or Izvestia tiative to prove that it is going well For instance, over the last twelve talking in menacing tones of "bour- "beyond containment...

...Because [they] know which missile sites under construction must be continuously monitored by the United States, they can determine the angle at which the satellite's telescope is pointed, and the range of its camera on each pass...

...46 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1989...

...intelligence-gathering...

...Right...

...they cannot photograph at night or through clouds...

...To come to this conclusion . . . CIA executives had to override, in a single coup, virtually all the criteria that the CIA had developed for establishing the bona fides of double agents...

...to the political demise of "our" man it produced 12 million barrels a day, or THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1989 45 50 percent more than the United States...

...Ironically—and this is the central theme of Epstein's book—all too often these turned out to be conduits for whatever disinformation the Soviets wanted to have put out...

...Nor is it just a matter of heavy industry, which provides the hardware for the tanks and artillery pieces with which the Soviets can threaten their neighbors, if they so choose...

...Or at least this used to be the case...

...19.95 which it has access, but rather on the sense of the word and claims of its own leadership that it is fascinating even when I George Szamuely no longer a threat...

...months or so, an increasing number geois" elements who have sneaked their Suppose, however, that the writer of of conservative writers have been arguway into the upper echelons of the par- the two articles were one and the same ing exultantly that the "Cold War" has "The starting point for all ty, even the Politburo itself...

...The unwillingness to confront the possibility of deception creates a serious gap in America's defenses...

...The main evidence of this . . . con- THE But on the eve of the meeting an ar- In the meantime, belief in their listed of statements of Soviet officials...

...Fear of the alleged enormous German air superiority in turn led to the understandable desire among the British and the French to appease Hitler...

...The revelation that these had long been infiltrated and manipulated by the Communists served only to legitimize in the eyes of the West the puppet regimes that Stalin had imposed on Eastern Europe...

...Before the heady days of glasnost—in Russian, literally meaning publicity—knowledge of what was really going on in the Soviet Union, which would provide a factual basis for Western policy toward it, came via the intelligence agencies and the expensive satellite technology orbiting the giant Eurasian landmass...

...The point is "Evil Empire" thesis believe that such man—will with one voice intone "I told that the Kremlin has managed to per- a reversal of fortunes has taken place...

...The rest is history...

...In doing either, they play on some prevailing preconceptions about them in order to get what they want...

...We do not know...

...But is there any way we can tell that what we know about the Soviet Union we really do know...

...States have always done this...

...and holdovers from the "years of stagna- sales, to begin the process in Europe private briefings to Western journalists, PUBLIC tion...

...munist party of the Soviet Union turn, alarmed at the perception that it we, for obvious reasons, far prefer to Conference or Congress or Central is falling behind "public opinion" as believe in the existence of a benign Social Science and Committee Plenum or whatever big well as losing the public relations war rather than malign Soviet Union, but Moral Obligation showdown is next on the party social in "Europe," might seize on this occa- that Moscow knows only too well our ALAN WOLFE calendar, it is more than likely an arti- sion to come up with a major new ini- particular preference...

...Epstein recounts how Hitler used British Air Intelligence to leak Luftwaffe secrets showing German air capability to be far stronger than it really was...

...In 1948 . . . [it] produced only 25 million tons of steel, which was only one quarter as much as the United States produced...

...It presently has in orbit radars, powered by nuclear reactors, which appear capable of spotting the signatures of U.S...

...Common sense should tell one how bizarre this is...

...But this takes gloom will descend...

...The Bush Administration, in enough to realize that not only would KEEPER...

...Needlessto say, nothing of the sort had happened...

...This extraordinarily uncritical attitude has in the last decade or so led to enormous reliance on information derived from satellite technology...

...Yet belief in the veracity of whatever comes out of the Soviet Union has, according to Epstein, increased and not decreased over the years...

...Arms control negotiations have furthermore enabled the Soviets to learn a great deal about U.S...

...and they have a predictable orbit which can be tracked by computers the moment they are launched...

...In recent years, the Soviets have deployed two mobile intercontinental missile systems while the U.S...

...In 1988, ment...

...A nd this brings one to Angleton's dictum which Epstein's book is largely an elaboration on: "Intelligence cannot be easily separated from its twin, deception, if the sources and methods of collecting it from an adversary are anticipated by him...

...Either way, we should be self-critical WHOSE ome time just before the next Corn- lin figure...

...Nor are they uniquely devious in this regard...

...today Gorbachev's position appears to be no stronger than his was...

...their SDI program is further advanced than ours...

...For one thing, the Soviet Union is an enormous country...

...New from O r as Edward Jay Epstein puts it in his brilliant new book Deception: California "The erasure of the image of a Soviet threat is . . . based not on how many barrels of oil the Soviet Union produces, nor on the size of its armed forces, nor on its capacity to lift "One of the most DECEPTION: THE INVISIBLE WAR nuclear reactors into space, nor on the important books in years, BETWEEN THE KGB AND THE CIA increasing number of foreign bases to disturbing in the best Edward Jay Epstein/Simon and Schuster/335 pp...

...At times Epstein seems to argue for nothing more than re-introducing a rather more critical, more Angletonian frame of mind into the portals of Langley...

...Yet even a casual perusal of Gorbachev's demands on missile cuts, Lady in the Federal Republic of Ger- Soviet economic statistics will put a or on computer purchases, or on his many, public opinion holds the United damper on the festivities...

...surveillance . . . —just as a politician uses a photo opportunity—to put in the path of the satellite lenses what they want to be photographed...

...Can such readers) must be destroyed once and bachevites and the Ligachevites or the things really be...

...Much the same happened after the Second World War with the CIA-financed clandestine groups fighting Soviet rule in Eastern Europe...

...They might also be part of a of The Other America strategy for winning without fighting...

...The Soviet Union has similarly moved ahead of the United States in the space race—at least in its capacity to lift tons of equipment into orbit...

...on the talk shows it may not...

...you so" and go on to predict that with- suade the West that, first, it has a stake Indeed, as Epstein points out, from in a matter of days Washington will be in the survival of Mikhail Gorbachev, 1985 on the Soviets have gone to enor- A wide-ranging dealing with a shadowy, nasty leader in and, second, that the success of peres- mous trouble to promote the idea that "solution" to the deficit...

...the Kremlin—a cross between Joseph troika is a vital interest of ours...

...The former control the availability and hence the release of information...

...The resulting image JOSEPH WHITE AND hitting editorial warning the Bush Ad- bloc into international organizations of an ossified, faltering, and hapless AARON WILDAVSKY ministration that this time it had got such as the IMF and GATT...

...As it turned out, the "conspiracy" was organized by the Soviet secret police as a way, first, of extracting hard currency out of the West, but more important, of destroying the influential anti-Soviet emigre groups abroad by luring back and killing some of their leaders and also by discrediting them for having allowed themselves to be so easily manipulated...

...True, Great Powers do RIGHT for all...

...And, he adds, disagreed with it...

...In Communist rule, Western governments, 1948, the Soviet Union produced only California Press George Szamuely is a former associate far from being pleased, fret, frown, 500,000 barrels a day, one tenth as BERKELEY 94720 editor of the Times Literary Supple- and worry whether this might not lead much oil as the United States...

...Around the world there will be of denuclearizing the continent and academics, and VIPs by [Georgi] Arbaan audible sigh of relief, and the New withdrawing American forces, and toy's Institute for the Study of the INTEREST York Times will come out with a hard- to contemplate admitting the Soviet United States...

...In 1948 IMF membership application, next States to be a greater threat to its Soviet industrial production was one At bookstores or order toll-free - 822 - 800 1 -isa & time it will indeed be dealing with that security than the Soviet Union...

...a drumbeat of stories in the AND THE calling for the removal of the last of the puters to Moscow, to subsidize wheat Soviet press supporting this theme...

...Moreover, satellites cannot detect what goes on indoors...

...submarines...

...The problem is that in this sort of game closed societies are at a distinct advantage to open ones...

...Then the Soviets will have munism is now in irrevocable crisis...

...Thus the perestroika that President Bush for one wants to see "succeed...

...At other times, however, it sounds as if we would be better off without any intelligence agencies, since the information they often gather from clandestine—and therefore from quite possibly KGBmanipulated—sources is that much more likely to be believed and acted upon than if it came from the editorial pages of Pravda...

...The Soviet deception planners deal with U.S...

...in MasterC6657...

...Whenever national interests demand it the Soviets feign weakness or, on the contrary, great strength...

...In the 1920s the intelligence agencies were informed of the existence of a gigantic underground conspiracy within the Soviet Union to overthrow Bolshevik rule—the so-called Trust...

...The one field in which the Soviets have fallen seriously behind the West is computer technology...

...T he Soviet Union, of course, has 1 from its very inception used disinformation as a way of shaping the West's policy toward it...

...Presumably, at this very moment they are doing everything in their power—by fair means or foul—to rectify just this...

...To know everything that is going on, hundreds of satellites are needed and not just a handful...

...These person...

...More and decades, if not centuries—not a few The Transformation of and the op-ed pages the figures who more gory revelations about Stalin's years...

...are debatable propositions...

...Or rise, ebb, and fall...

...the British and French waited until the following spring when a rearmed Germany launched its Western offensive...

...to be—removed, the piece will con- forced important concessions out of Only a few years ago, however, many of —James L. Guth, tinue, and the culture within which their chief adversary at very little ex- the same people were claiming that the Furman University such malignant forms of life nourish pense to themselves...

...On the other hand, for the time American Conservatism have been emblematic of the glasnost crimes or the institutionalized in- being it might suit the Russians very JEROME L. HIMMELSTEIN years—Cohen and Reddaway, Sestano- competence of the Brezhnev years will nicely to have former subscribers to the $25.00 vich and Hyland, Hewett and Gold- not answer the question...

...has deployed none...

...What has remained unchanged over the years is the message coming out of Moscow: the concessions had to be made to Stalin so as to strengthen his hand against the fanatics in the Politburo...

...In fifth that of the United States...

...Deception quotes the legendary counter-intelligence chief of the CIA, James Jesus Angleton: "When disinformation becomes the art of the state . . . nations use their intelligence services to paint, brush stroke by brush stroke, a picture that will provoke its adversaries to make the wrong judgments...

...It may of course balance of power in the world had (always pile on the biological meta- be true that there is an enormous power shifted—dare one say?—irrevocably in TO THE phors to put the fear of God into the struggle taking place between the Gor- favor of the Soviet Union...

...And in Soviet economy had great appeal in the $45.00 off lightly but that if it did not meet much of Western Europe, particu- West...

...A little later, on the other hand, in 1939-40, his policy having failed with the British and French declaration of war on Germany, the Fahrer used the British Secret Service to put about the idea that his position was perilously weak and that a number of disaffected generals were plotting to overthrow him, but that should the Western powers initiate military actions against Germany in the meantime, the officers would have to rally to him...