"The CIA's objectivity on the Soviet Union ended abruptly in 1981, when Casey became the DCI [director of central intelligence] - and the first one to be a member of the president's Cabinet. Gates became Casey's deputy director for intelligence in 1982 and chaired the National Intelligence Council," wrote former CIA senior analyst Melvyn Goodman. [See Foreign Policy magazine, summer 1997.]
Analysts Under Fire
Under Gates, CIA intelligence analysts found themselves the victims of bureaucratic pummeling. According to several former CIA analysts whom I interviewed, analysts faced job threats; some were berated or even had their analytical papers thrown in their faces; some were subjected to allegations of psychiatric unfitness.
The Gates leadership team proved itself responsive to White House demands, giving serious attention to right-wing press reports from around the world. The Reagan administration, for instance, wanted evidence to support right-wing media claims that pinned European terrorism on the Soviets. The CIA analysts, however, knew the charges were bogus partly because they were based on "black" or false propaganda that the CIA's operations division had been planting in the European media.
The attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981 was viewed as another opportunity to make propaganda points against what Reagan called the "evil empire." Though the attack had been carried out by a neo-fascist extremist from Turkey, conservative U.S. writers and journalists began to promote allegations of a secret KGB role. In this case, CIA analysts knew the charges were false because of the CIA's penetration of East Bloc intelligence services.
But responding to White House pressure in 1985, Gates closeted a special team to push through an administration-desired paper linking the KGB to the attack. Though the analysts opposed what they believed to be a dishonest intelligence report, they couldn't stop the paper from leaving CIA and being circulated around Washington.
As the CIA's traditions of analytical objectivity continued to erode in the 1980s, analysts who raised unwelcome questions in politically sensitive areas found their jobs on the line.
For instance, analysts were pressured to back off an assessment that Pakistan was violating nuclear proliferation safeguards with the goal of building an atomic bomb. At the time, Pakistan was assisting the Reagan administration's covert operation in Afghanistan, which was considered a higher priority than stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. In Afghanistan, the CIA's operations division and the Pakistani intelligence service were helping Islamic fundamentalists, including Osama bin Laden, battle Soviet troops.
One analyst involved in the Pakistan nuclear-bomb assessment told me that the CIA higher-ups applied almost the opposite standards that were used two decades later in alleging an Iraqi nuclear program. In the Pakistani case, the Reagan administration blocked warnings about a Pakistani bomb "until the last bolt was turned" while more recently on Iraq, speculative worst-case scenarios were applied, the analyst said.
One consequence of giving Pakistan a pass on proliferation was that Pakistan did succeed in developing nuclear weapons, which have contributed to an escalating arms race with India in South Asia. It also has created the potential for Islamic extremists to gain control of the Bomb by taking power in Pakistan.
Missing the Fall
The politicization of intelligence in the 1980s had other effects. Under pressure always to exaggerate the Soviet threat, analysts had no incentive to point out the truth, which was that the Soviet Union was a decaying, corrupt and inefficient regime tottering on the brink of collapse. To justify soaring military budgets and interventions in Third World conflicts, the Reagan administration wanted the Soviets always to be depicted as 10 feet tall.
Ironically, this systematic distortion of the CIA's Soviet intelligence assessments turned out to be a political win-win for Reagan and his supporters.
Not only did Congress appropriate hundreds of billions of dollars for military projects favored by the conservatives, the U.S. news media largely gave Reagan the credit when the Soviet Union "suddenly" collapsed in 1991. The CIA did take some lumps for "missing" one of the most significant political events of the century, but Reagan's success in "winning the Cold War" is now enshrined as conventional wisdom.
The accepted version of events goes this way: the Soviets were on the ascendance before Reagan took office, but thanks to Reagan's strategic missile defense program and his support for right-wing insurgencies, such as arming contra rebels in Nicaragua and Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan, the Soviet Union fell apart.
A more realistic assessment would point out that the Soviets had been in decline for decades, largely from the devastation caused by World War II and the effective containment strategies followed by presidents from Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower to Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. The rapid development of technology in the West and the lure of Western consumer goods accelerated this Soviet collapse.
Analysts Under Fire
Under Gates, CIA intelligence analysts found themselves the victims of bureaucratic pummeling. According to several former CIA analysts whom I interviewed, analysts faced job threats; some were berated or even had their analytical papers thrown in their faces; some were subjected to allegations of psychiatric unfitness.
The Gates leadership team proved itself responsive to White House demands, giving serious attention to right-wing press reports from around the world. The Reagan administration, for instance, wanted evidence to support right-wing media claims that pinned European terrorism on the Soviets. The CIA analysts, however, knew the charges were bogus partly because they were based on "black" or false propaganda that the CIA's operations division had been planting in the European media.
But responding to White House pressure in 1985, Gates closeted a special team to push through an administration-desired paper linking the KGB to the attack. Though the analysts opposed what they believed to be a dishonest intelligence report, they couldn't stop the paper from leaving CIA and being circulated around Washington.
As the CIA's traditions of analytical objectivity continued to erode in the 1980s, analysts who raised unwelcome questions in politically sensitive areas found their jobs on the line.
For instance, analysts were pressured to back off an assessment that Pakistan was violating nuclear proliferation safeguards with the goal of building an atomic bomb. At the time, Pakistan was assisting the Reagan administration's covert operation in Afghanistan, which was considered a higher priority than stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. In Afghanistan, the CIA's operations division and the Pakistani intelligence service were helping Islamic fundamentalists, including Osama bin Laden, battle Soviet troops.
One analyst involved in the Pakistan nuclear-bomb assessment told me that the CIA higher-ups applied almost the opposite standards that were used two decades later in alleging an Iraqi nuclear program. In the Pakistani case, the Reagan administration blocked warnings about a Pakistani bomb "until the last bolt was turned" while more recently on Iraq, speculative worst-case scenarios were applied, the analyst said.
One consequence of giving Pakistan a pass on proliferation was that Pakistan did succeed in developing nuclear weapons, which have contributed to an escalating arms race with India in South Asia. It also has created the potential for Islamic extremists to gain control of the Bomb by taking power in Pakistan.
Missing the Fall
The politicization of intelligence in the 1980s had other effects. Under pressure always to exaggerate the Soviet threat, analysts had no incentive to point out the truth, which was that the Soviet Union was a decaying, corrupt and inefficient regime tottering on the brink of collapse. To justify soaring military budgets and interventions in Third World conflicts, the Reagan administration wanted the Soviets always to be depicted as 10 feet tall.
Ironically, this systematic distortion of the CIA's Soviet intelligence assessments turned out to be a political win-win for Reagan and his supporters.
Not only did Congress appropriate hundreds of billions of dollars for military projects favored by the conservatives, the U.S. news media largely gave Reagan the credit when the Soviet Union "suddenly" collapsed in 1991. The CIA did take some lumps for "missing" one of the most significant political events of the century, but Reagan's success in "winning the Cold War" is now enshrined as conventional wisdom.
The accepted version of events goes this way: the Soviets were on the ascendance before Reagan took office, but thanks to Reagan's strategic missile defense program and his support for right-wing insurgencies, such as arming contra rebels in Nicaragua and Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan, the Soviet Union fell apart.
A more realistic assessment would point out that the Soviets had been in decline for decades, largely from the devastation caused by World War II and the effective containment strategies followed by presidents from Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower to Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. The rapid development of technology in the West and the lure of Western consumer goods accelerated this Soviet collapse.
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