In the CIA Kitchen
LEE, WILLIAM T.
In the CIA Kitchen by William T. Lee The Central Intelligence Agency is marking its 50th anniversary, and it has a new director, George J. Tenet. Last week, Tenet announced his staff, a crew of...
...The agency—much embattled, and with good reason—needs all the help it can get...
...Those estimates come in a few basic models: straight, erroneous, and cooked to order...
...No one can say how much is smuggled out...
...The Clinton administration declared a state of emergency in 1994 over the threat of nuclear proliferation, but even so it is dead set against shielding the country from ballistic missiles...
...A few skilled people with the money to shop the market would not require 15 years to hit a major city with such missiles...
...The administration points to the 1972 ABM Treaty, despite its total violation by the Soviet Union for three decades—the Soviets deployed two generations of nationwide ballistic-missile defenses with some 10,000 to 12,000 missiles...
...As William R. Graham, an ex-science adviser to President Reagan, has pointed out before Congress, most of these technologies are now taught in graduate schools...
...Assumptions were set up to lead to a desired conclusion...
...You cook an estimate by making assumptions and ignoring contrary evidence so as to reach a desired conclusion...
...As for the five years of flight-testing, only 27 months elapsed between the initial launch and the operational status of the first Soviet ICBM...
...It goes on to say that an unauthorized Russian missile launch "is a remote possibility," but one that "would appear to be technically feasible"—a truly alarming prospect...
...When the Soviet empire collapsed, Russia, the former republics, and other nations were invited to join the MTCR in an attempt to curb worldwide missile proliferation...
...According to U.N...
...But in its zeal to validate the estimate, the Gates panel commits a few sins of its own...
...Was the CIA's behavior all the result of human frailty, or did it have something to do with the agency's own characterization of its corporate culture—"We may not always be right, but we are never wrong...
...That is why I can say, given the evidence available, that the National Intelligence Estimate for 1995 was probably cooked—though plain incompetence cannot be ruled out...
...The CIA possesses ample evidence that the agency simply refuses to accept...
...As of 1993, some 30 nuclear warheads had been reported missing from Russian stockpiles...
...Soviet secrets were almost invariably safe from the CIA—and from academics and the media—if they were placed on newsstands and in bookstores...
...And one of those governments, Russia's, does not exactly inspire confidence...
...It was an inexcusable performance by an increasingly inexcusable agency...
...On balance, the weight of the evidence indicates that 1995's National Intelligence Estimate was adroitly cooked to order...
...We never knew how many missiles Iraq had, nor were we able to find a single mobile SCUD launcher before it launched, and all that in a country not noted for its tropical-rain-forest cover...
...At least 17 pounds of outgoing uranium have been seized by Russian and East European authorities...
...It took the Soviets only five years to go from the SCUD missile (with a range of 150 miles) to their first ICBM, and seven years to attain their first ICBM with storable liquid fuel—and that was 40 years ago...
...While stoutly denying that the estimate was cooked, the panel's report paints a picture of haste and incompetence at least as damning as the earlier GAO report...
...Put together (a) what the Chinese and North Koreans are selling, (b) a few hungry Russian scientists and engineers, and (c) the money and political will of bellicose enemies, and the 1995 estimate quickly goes up in smoke...
...But plenty has been known about such "doctrine and purpose" since at least 1960 and the revelations of Col...
...But the Gates panel said not a word about it...
...Alternatively, has the CIA operated for decades with a hidden agenda...
...The estimate's assumptions were exceedingly fragile, according to the General Accounting Office...
...It is not a proper treaty—just a collection of declarations by governments...
...The Gates panel further contended that "policy makers can have high confidence" that foreign development of missiles and weapons of mass destruction "will be reported promptly...
...The United States almost certainly does not know how many such Russians have already emigrated or anything about their specific skills and destinations...
...The Soviet Union had large stocks of ballistic missiles of all types that were neither accounted for nor destroyed under the START and INF treaties...
...Many (probably most) of them are engaged in activities such as prostitution, weapons-smuggling, drug-smuggling, and money-laundering...
...Up to one half of the Russian economy is controlled by "firms" created by the old KGB in the last days of the empire and staffed by them now...
...Oleg Penkovsky, plus Marshal V. Sokolovsky's 1962 book Soviet Military Strategy...
...William T. Lee served both the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency, and now writes and lectures widely on Cold War history...
...The 1995 estimate was just what the administration needed to justify its policy: No threat, no need to deploy anti-missile defenses, just hedge your bets with R&D and wait and see whether a threat emerges...
...Says the Gates report, "An Estimate with conclusions which may be unwelcome to a policy requester— or which alters previous judgements—provides unusually comprehensive analysis, clearly states the reasons for any change in previous judgements, explores alternative scenarios, and is candid about uncertainties and shortcomings in evidence...
...Under current rules, Russia and Ukraine may export long-range ballistic missiles as "space boosters," which can deliver nuclear weapons to full ICBM ranges...
...A few skilled people working for a determined, nefarious regime can make a critical difference in the time required to assimilate and extrapolate the essential technologies into longer-range systems...
...The Russian Federal Security Service admits that it cannot keep track of them all...
...For example, proof that the Soviets violated the ABM Treaty by deploying two generations of defenses has been languishing in CIA files for years...
...Legal economic activity, meanwhile, has declined drastically at the expense, not only of ordinary citizens, but also of scientists and engineers, who can market their skills to rogue nations...
...The full extent of Iraq's chemical- and biological-weapons programs may not be known even now...
...In fact, the CIA has a long history of failing to report major developments promptly or, worse, of misleading policymakers on the basics, as in Iraq...
...The Russians have admitted to inheriting a stockpile of 45,000 to 60,000 nuclear warheads, but the Soviet government produced enough plutonium and enriched uranium to make many more than that...
...A number of Russian missile and nuclear experts are known to be working in India, Iran, Iraq, and Libya...
...Subsequent models generally required less than two years of flight-testing...
...inspectors and Iraqi defectors, the first test of an Iraqi nuclear device was scheduled for sometime between three and 18 months after the beginning of the Gulf War in 1991...
...Fourth, the development of an ICBM would require five years of flight-testing...
...Thus, "In the days of the Soviet Union, strategic force estimates for years tended to avoid questions of doctrine and purpose, in no small part because there were no clear answers, and the issues were so violently disputed...
...That estimate concluded that no other country than the "declared powers"—Britain, France, Russia, and China—could pose a ballistic-missile threat to the United States for the next 15 years...
...The MTCR was created in 1987 in an attempt to curb worldwide missile proliferation...
...It should take a particularly hard look at its intelligence estimates...
...Second, no country would sell an ICBM to another...
...The CIA's own pieties concerning such estimates were violated...
...Former Soviet ambassador to the United States Anatoly Dobrynin published some of this documentation in 1995...
...SCUD and longer-range missiles are for sale on the open market...
...Estimates of illegal exports from Russia since 1991 run as high as $200 billion...
...In response, the administration selected a panel, headed by former CIA director Robert Gates, to undertake a review...
...The new kleptocrats employ numerous bodyguards and small private armies...
...How about the 1995 estimate's claim that the United States can rest easy about ballistic missiles for the next 15 years or so...
...They were as follows: First, the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) would sharply limit the transfer of technologies...
...Third, those countries already possessing the means to build ICBMs would not do so...
...The job was rushed...
...Members of the House National Security Committee—including its chairman, Floyd Spence—found the intelligence estimate unconvincing and perceived it to be at odds with previous estimates...
...When the last Congress, in December 1995, tried to mandate deployment of a minimal ABM system to protect against rogue attacks, President Clinton issued a veto...
...Last week, Tenet announced his staff, a crew of veterans...
Vol. 2 • August 1997 • No. 46
