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Whistleblower at the CIA. Melvin A. Goodman
Читать онлайн.Название Whistleblower at the CIA
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isbn 9780872867314
Автор произведения Melvin A. Goodman
Жанр Биографии и Мемуары
Издательство Ingram
The intelligence community had dropped the ball, and the CIA contributed to an unnecessary flap. The National Security Agency failed to have good archival records that would have established that the brigade had been in Cuba prior to the missile crisis, had no connection with Cuban combat units, and never should have been labeled a “combat” unit. The CIA, led by National Intelligence Officer Horelick, was too quick to accommodate the importuning of Brzezinski by issuing warning notices that added fuel to an unnecessary fire regarding Soviet intentions prior to a summit meeting and the signing of a strategic arms agreement.
The brigade did not compromise, let alone violate, the Soviet-American understandings about Soviet activities in Cuba. As with the unnecessary missile alert six years earlier during the October War, when Kissinger misused sensitive intelligence, the Soviets were left to scratch their heads and try to determine U.S. reasons and motivations for an unnecessary flap that brought détente to a halt. The CIA was created to provide the institutional memory on these occasions when new and inexperienced administrations lack a political background.
The media contributed to the crisis atmosphere, which is typical in these situations. Time magazine carried an article on “The Storm over Cuba” with a photograph captioned “Soviet-Built Intelligence Station in Cuba.” The station was described as an “advanced electronic monitoring complex east of Havana,” but it was a complex that had been built by an American company, ITT, before Castro took power in 1959. Flawed CIA intelligence on Cuba and Iran in 1979 undermined confidence in President Carter, which contributed to his election defeat in 1980. Presently, the mainstream media are playing up the notion of a renewed Cold War, which is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy
Even though the Carter administration and the CIA were wrong about the combat brigade, Brzezinski remained stubbornly critical of “backing down” to Moscow, and it was the one time in his stewardship as national security advisor that he considered resigning. He angered the president by arguing that the Kremlin would find weakness in U.S. reaction and therefore would miscalculate in the future, citing the relationship between Khrushchev and Kennedy that contributed to the Cuban missile crisis. Brzezinski took no responsibility for the mishandling of the issue, and blamed the State Department for “inexcusably precipitating the crisis with premature briefings” to the senators. His stewardship for U.S. national security policy did more harm than good during the Carter era.
THE CIA’S DISPUTE WITH THE WHITE HOUSE ON AFGHANISTAN
Policy and intelligence communities can have different explanations for crucial events. I was in the middle of such a dispute in the winter of 1979–1980, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and the Carter administration wanted to justify a strong response to Moscow’s use of force. The debate began in the intelligence community in the first months of 1979, when I was the first analyst to draft an assessment that argued the Soviets would use force to prevent the Afghan civil war from spilling over to their Muslim republics. I wrote a warning memorandum to that effect that was circulated throughout the policy community in March and April, receiving special attention in the Pentagon, where Doug MacEachin—a former colleague—was serving a rotational tour as a warnings officer.
When the Soviet invasion did take place in December, there were factions, led by Secretary of State Vance and National Security Advisor Brzezinski, that found Soviet actions morally and politically unacceptable. President Carter led the U.S. reaction to Moscow’s actions, which he repeatedly characterized as the “greatest threat to peace since the Second World War.” Brzezinski, who typically took a conspiratorial view of Soviet decision-making, was out in front of the December invasion, having put in place covert support against Soviet interests in Afghanistan months before the actual invasion. The CIA’s clandestine operatives were aware of this at the time; intelligence analysts weren’t.
As author of the first piece of premonitory intelligence, in March 1979, that anticipated the Soviet use of force, and as branch chief for Soviet–Third World policy, I was selected to go to Brussels in January 1980 to brief the NATO delegations on the reasons for the Soviet invasion and the likely short- and long-term outcomes. The U.S. delegation was unhappy with my presentation, because it didn’t argue the Brzezinski line that the Soviet move was a harbinger of more aggressive actions throughout the region, the first step in the Soviet desire to move to the Indian Ocean. This was the position of Secretary Vance, and the U.S. delegation to NATO wanted confirmation of his position in order to get the European delegations to support forceful actions. The recent U.S. overreaction to Russian policy toward Ukraine suggests that history may be repeating itself.
I had no prior guidance from either an intelligence or policy perspective prior to my briefing trip to NATO. I was accompanied by a military analyst who provided a nuts-and-bolts assessment of Soviet military operations in Afghanistan, while I was given carte blanche to discuss all political aspects of Soviet decision-making, particularly their reasons for resorting to military force. I was rather relaxed about the briefing trip, but my military counterpart was extremely nervous about protecting the sensitive intelligence information he carried in a CIA-supplied aluminum suitcase that never left his side. I had been given a similar aluminum suitcase for my assignment in Vienna in 1971, but I refused to use it because of its obvious, practically ostentatious appearance.
My intelligence presentation was radically different from the views of Vance and Brzezinski. As a result, I was not invited back to Brussels for additional briefings to NATO, although I led background briefings to members of the Washington press corps, who traveled to CIA headquarters on a regular basis. I was told by Karen House of the Wall Street Journal and many others that the CIA briefings were the best of any policy or intelligence agency. Intelligence analysts have a decided advantage in these briefing sessions, because, unlike policy analysts, they can simply tell it like it is without a policy axe to grind. It was difficult to be a contrarian in the intelligence community; it was virtually impossible in the policy community.
Intelligence analysts had an easier assignment than policymakers because they did not have to exaggerate the Soviet invasion’s impact on Soviet-American relations, which in my analysis was a separate, albeit related, issue. Vance and Brzezinski considered the Soviet invasion a threat to the balance of power, which in my analysis was not a primary motive of Moscow’s actions. The key difference between Vance and Brzezinski was over whether the Soviets could be made to withdraw. Vance was stubbornly optimistic that Moscow would withdraw; Brzezinski didn’t agree and, as an anti-Soviet ideologue, was far more interested in providing enticement for the Soviets to increase their presence in Afghanistan in order to bring détente to a halt.
Unlike Kissinger and earlier Vance, Brzezinski was never deferential to the idea of keeping détente alive. Brzezinski considered this an important opportunity for the United States to draw the Soviet Union into greater conflict on its borders. I didn’t know about Brzezinski’s views at the time, and, because of the bureaucratic wall at the CIA between intelligence analysis and operations, I didn’t know about the aggressive covert steps that had been taken by CIA operatives in Afghanistan. I eventually learned that Brzezinski believed that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was the “most direct case of Soviet military aggression since 1945,” requiring a “broad strategic response.”3 He was appalled when Secretary of State Vance and his Soviet advisor, Marshall Shulman, favored taking the initiative to improve relations with the Kremlin. Brzezinski and Shulman were academic rivals at Columbia University and policy rivals in the Carter administration. When I was on the faculty of the National War College, I made sure that Shulman delivered an annual lecture to the class on Soviet-American relations. The fact that he wheeled in annually on his Harley-Davidson was a huge hit with his military audience.
My analysis of the situation had nothing to do with détente or covert action. In early 1979