France Is Prepared to Supply Advanced Air Defense Infrastructure to Georgia
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On June 15, during the Paris Air Show in Le Bourget, where important deals for arms supplies are often agreed, Georgia signed its first ever large contract with France on supplies of defense military equipment (Civil Georgia, June 16).
The description of the equipment is quite unclear, since no one, with the exception of a narrow circle of officials, knows exactly what equipment France will supply to Georgia and at what price. The Georgian Ministry of Defense only unveiled a short video and photo from the event with some important details. Georgia’s Defense Minister Tinatin Khidasheli and the CEO of ThalesRaytheonSystems for French operations, Jérôme Bendell, together signed the agreement (Civil Georgia, June 16).
So far, the French government itself has not signed the deal, causing some uncertainty about Paris’s official willingness to allow actual supplies of military equipment to Georgia; but the agreement is still an important sign. ThalesRaytheonSystems (TRS) is a joint venture of the French defense electronics group Thales and US arms maker Raytheon. The company produces a range of ground-based surveillance radars, air defense command-and-control systems, as well as cyber capabilities.
According to unofficial sources, the document signed on June 15 in Le Bourget envisages supplies of radars and other air tracking infrastructure, but not weaponry for striking at air targets. It is noteworthy that the photograph published by the ministry of defense depicts a small replica of what appears to be a TRS-produced GM 200 medium-range multi-missions radar (Civil Georgia, June 16). Minister of Defense Khidasheli told journalists, after signing the agreement, that she would return to Paris again after several weeks to sign another contract. The defense minister thereby signaled that surveillance radars are only part of the infrastructure and equipment that Georgia intends to purchase in France. Khidasheli declined to answer whether the next contract would be signed with the same company or with some other French arms manufacturer. “Information about such types of weapons procurements need to be a top state secret” to prevent the Russian government from learning their details, Khidasheli told reporters from Paris (Civil Georgia, June 16).
Under this well-intentioned pretext of secrecy, the main and most crucial question has remained unanswered: Will the second contract, which will be ready for signing “after several weeks,” allow Georgia to access systems that are not only capable of airspace surveillance, but also of shooting down hostile aerial targets? “Supplying French radars to Georgia is nothing special. Almost immediately after the five-day war with Russia [in August 2008], France supplied dual-purpose radars—that is, ones that can be used for both civilian and military purposes—to our country,” Irakly Aladashvili, the editor-in-chief of the military-analytic journal Arsenali, told Jamestown (Author’s interview, May 20).
After his controversial resignation from government, former Georgian minister of defense Irakly Alasania, who initiated negotiations with French arms manufacturers last summer, stated that the agreement he reached would have been ready to be signed by the end of October 2014. According to Alasania, the proposed contract envisaged the acquisition of “anti-aircraft and anti-missile defense systems.” Alasania said that those systems would have “provided the country with complete security, including protection from Russian short-range SS-26 ‘Iskander’ missiles” (see EDM, April 9, 2015). So at the time, at least, both anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems were being considered. However, the new minister of defense, Tinatin Khidasheli, in her comments before and after signing the June 2015 contract, never mentioned an anti-missile component. She spoke only of anti-aircraft defenses. Meanwhile, Alasania’s mentions of the Iskander missile was not on accident. Russians used it in combat for the first time on August 12, 2008. An Iskander missile armed with a cluster munition exploded at the central square of Gori, a city 29 kilometers from South Ossetia, killing dozens of civilians, including a Dutch cameraman (Interpressnews.ge, August 9, 2010).
It is unclear from Khidasheli’s comments whether the new Georgian contracts with French arms manufacturers will provide Georgia with a missile defense capability. “When the [procurement] is finalized and this [weapons system] is delivered to Georgia, we will have a capacity for the first time that will guarantee our air defense,” she said. “We can say that our air space will be maximally protected. Georgia is buying a type of weapon in use by the leading NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization]-member states and is regarded to be one of the most advanced types of air defense infrastructure,” the Georgian defense minister noted (Civil Georgia, June 16).
The Georgian opposition is skeptical about the “Le Bourget deal,” suspecting that the supplied arms will not be quite as potent as the government claims. Therefore, representatives from several parliamentary factions demanded the creation of a so-called “trust group.” According to the law, the ministry of defense is obliged to unveil all details of a defense contract to the members of a parliamentary “trust group” (Interpressnews.ge, June 23).
The financial side of the agreement is also being kept secret. According to Jamestown’s sources, French manufacturers agreed to provide supplies to Georgia immediately, under the conditions of an installment payment plan within the next several years.
The political content of the agreement remains the most important part of the contract, given how zealously Moscow follows military cooperation processes between the post-Soviet states and NATO members. It is hard to imagine that Paris did not take into consideration Moscow’s possible reaction to arms supplies to Georgia. Analyst Nika Imnaishvili argued: “Ukraine influenced many processes and made possible things that were considered impossible before” (Author’s interview, June 25).
Since the August 2008 war, which ended with a ceasefire negotiated by then–French president Nicolas Sarkozy, France has considered itself in a certain way responsible for the future of Georgia’s statehood. Neither Paris nor Berlin are prepared to provide Georgia with a Membership Action Plan (MAP), which would prepare the way for the country to eventually join the North Atlantic Alliance. Thus, French authorities have tried to “compensate” for their refusal on NATO membership by increasing bilateral military cooperation with Georgia. The process started while Mikheil Saakashvili still headed the country. The former Georgian president recently said that after Paris’s refusal to provide Tbilisi with a MAP, he convinced Sarkozy to supply four Eurocopter AS332 Super Puma military transport helicopters, widely considered among the best in their class, on highly favorable terms with an installment payment period of 25 years (Intermedia, June 24). However, the first such high-profile weapons system is yet to arrive in Georgia.
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A Russian publication has alleged that the “Stop Feeding the Caucasus!” slogan, which is popular among ethnic Russians, was invented by Vladimir Putin’s enemies to undermine his authority and ultimately destroy him politically. This is an unusual attempt to construct a collective identity of all citizens of Russia. The “enemies of Putin” are designated as the common enemy of both the Russian government and the North Caucasians. Russian experts close to the Kremlin have habitually accused Russian liberals of betraying the nation’s interests. This time the claim is not only about the liberals, but also about parts of the Russian government. “It is noteworthy that at the time of the appearance and proliferation of the slogan ‘Stop Feeding the Caucasus!’ Vladimir Putin was in the most vulnerable position,” said journalist Timur Yusupov. “At the time he only occupied the second most important position in the government, as prime minister, and could easily have been removed from all levers of government.” According to the writer, the proponents of the slogan practically wanted to rid Russia of the North Caucasus, but Vladimir Putin managed to “disarm” them through a “great power” (velikoderzhavnaya) mobilization of Russian society around the return of Crimea and the protection of the western borders of Russia from the “Ukrainian fascists” (Onkavkaz.com, June 23).
Despite the claim about “Putin’s enemies,” ethnic-Russian opposition to the North Caucasians may be quite deep-seated. The website Goodbyekavkaz.org allows its visitors to vote for the separation of the North Caucasus from Russia. The secession of the North Caucasus is presented as a way of ridding Russia of an economically backward and dangerous place. The message portrays North Caucasians as tending to indulge in terrorism and Russia as needing to spend its wealth on keeping the North Caucasus economy afloat. So far, about 9,500 people have voted for the secession of the North Caucasus and 2,500 against it.
President Putin’s response to the growing Russian nationalism was double-pronged. On the one hand, he wrote in his much-cited January 2012 newspaper article in defense of the North Caucasus: “When some people start to yell today: ‘Stop feeding the Caucasus’—tomorrow they will inevitably follow up with calls: ‘Stop feeding Siberia, the Far East, the Urals, the Volga region, Moscow.’ ” On the other hand, in the same article, the Russian president elevated ethnic Russians in a variety of ways. Putin wrote, for example: “The Russian people are state-forming [gosudarstvoobrazuyushchy]—by the very fact of Russia’s existence. The great mission of [ethnic] Russians is to unite, bind civilization” (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, January 23, 2012). Moscow has tried to retain a version of Soviet-style internationalism, which played down differences between ethnic groups, but in practice provided extra benefits to Russians and Russian culture.
The latest revelations by the violent Russian nationalists suggest the Russian government’s attitude toward ethnic minorities may have been not only double-pronged, but also with a touch of double-dealing. The ongoing trial involving Russian nationalists Evgenia Khasis, Ilya Goryachev and Nikita Tikhonov is underreported in the Russian media despite the truly sensational evidence and allegations that have been made in its proceedings. The group is accused of killing ten people, including Russian civil rights activists and ethnic minority activists. All of the killings took place in the period from 2008 to 2010. The nationalists on trial have repeatedly alleged that they had connections to the Russian presidential administration, including the deputy head of the administration, Vladislav Surkov (BBC–Russian service, June 25).
Despite these astounding revelations, the court does not seem to be interested in investigating the government’s role in the activities of the Russian nationalists. The Russian media is also remarkably reticent about them. The confessions of another well-known Russian nationalist, Dmitry Dyomushkin also indicate that the government had dealings with the nationalist organizations (YouTube, April 27). The emergent picture seems to be that the government had a complex relationship with Russian nationalist groups until the latter started to act independently and the government then decided to crack down on them.
The Russian government’s gamble in Ukraine seems to have dampened the government’s appetite for forging contacts with the Russian nationalists and blaming the North Caucasians for all of Russia’s problems. As journalist Yusupov noted: “In the situation when Caucasians readily went to Donbas to die for the sake of protecting the Russian population of those areas of Ukraine, it became impossible to advance the idea of separating the North Caucasus from Russia in the public media space.” The writer also noted that this was likely a short-term solution for the safety of the North Caucasians; and after war in Ukraine, they would again be targeted (Onkavkaz.com, June 23).
Moscow may find it increasingly difficult to regulate Russian nationalism down the road. After Crimea’s annexation, the Russian government has to take care of a new territory predominantly populated by ethnic Russians. It appears that Kyiv does not want to subsidize Russia-controlled areas in eastern Ukraine, thereby putting Moscow in the position of being responsible for the well-being of ethnic Russians who are not Russian citizens. In the hierarchy of ethnic groups of Russia, the North Caucasians are likely to fall even further, as Crimea and eastern Ukraine will almost certainly be more important to Moscow than the North Caucasus in the short and medium term.
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Hollywood and the CIA by fredslibrary
Title: Hollywood and the CIA
Author: Oliver Boyd-Barrett
Boyd-Barrett, Oliver (2011), David Herrera, and Jim Baumann. Hollywood and the CIA: Cinema, Defense, and Subversion. New York: Routledge
LCCN: 2010040761
Date Posted: June 1, 2015
Subjects
- United States. Central Intelligence Agency–In motion pictures.
- Espionage in motion pictures.
- Motion pictures–Political aspects–United States.
- International relations in motion pictures.
- Politics in motion pictures.
Reviewed by Hayden B. Peake[1]
In 1979, CIA officer Antonio Mendez headed the team that, with that with the help of the Canadian embassy in Tehran, rescued six State Department officers trying to avoid joining other “guests” of the Ayatollah in the just-seized US embassy there. In the foreword to this book, academic Toby Miller refers to Mendez’s article—published previously in Studies in Intelligence[2]—about that operation as follows. “the CIA preens in public about using Hollywood expertise, collusion, and cover to undertake its ugly neologism, ‘exfiltration,’ of people from Iran.” (p. ix)[3] This expression of academic freedom, if not a demonstration of objectivity, assumes a relationship between “the world’s most powerful intelligence agency (the CIA) and its most powerful anti-intelligence agency (Hollywood).” (p. xi) The authors of Hollywood and the CIA report the results of their investigation into the nature of this presumed relationship, or as they characterize it, the “representations in (mainly) Hollywood film [sic] of the Central Intelligence Agency.” (p. 1)
Chapter one establishes the authors’ view of the CIA as an agency that has “cost, at a conservative estimate … hundreds of thousands of lives.” (p. 2) It goes on to enumerate the CIA’s operational failures, including excessive outsourcing, 9/11, and the Ames case, among others. In this way they create an image for what they acknowledge is “the iconic power of the CIA” (p. 2) that they look for in the films examined in the study. The chapter also includes a lengthy discussion of the considerable literature that comments on espionage in the movies. A final section describes their methodology and the basis for “randomly” selecting the 134 movies used in the study. (p. 23) The films are described in five chapters covering five decades, from the 1960s to the 2000s. Some films selected don’t mention the CIA, but this does not bother the authors, who assert that “the relative absence of the CIA does not exclude the possibility of an unseen, even unspoken, background presence of the agency on the lives of the on-screen characters and situations,” (p. 22)
The criteria for judging a film are specified in the appendix. They are both arbitrary and subjective, for example, “rate the competency of the CIA’s portrayal in the film” and “does the CIA exhibit coercive power on non-US citizens in the film?” (pp. 183-85) The discussion of the ratings by the various raters tends to be long, complicated, and very subjective, and hardly profound. When the authors conclude that there is a trend since the 1960s toward representing the CIA as “ambivalent/neutral” or even “black” (p. 182), one is left wondering, so what?
Hollywood and the CIA is an intriguing title, and it discusses some fine films that in most cases mention the CIA. But the only relationship the narrative offers, and that it does implicitly, is the public’s fascination with the genre-a fact any moviegoer knew long before this study appeared.
[1] Hayden Peake, in Intelligencer (19, 1, 2012, pp. 112-113). Hayden Peake is the curator of the CIA Historical Intelligence Collection. He is a frequent contributor to AFIO’s journal and other publications. Most of his reviews were previously released in the unclassified edition of CIA’s Studies in Intelligence.
[2] Antonio Mendez, “A Classic Case of Deception,” Studies in Intelligence (Winter 1999-2000): 1-16 (at https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/winter99-00/art1.html).
[3] “Exfiltration” has become a military term, and was not invented by Hollywood (FLW).
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Title: Spies, Wiretaps, and Secret Operations
Author: Glenn P. Hastedt
Glenn P. Hastedt (2011). Spies, Wiretaps, and Secret Operations: An Encyclopedia of American Espionage. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO
LCCN: 2010021639
Subjects
- Espionage–United States–Encyclopedias.
- Espionage, American–Encyclopedias.
- Intelligence service–United States–Encyclopedias.
- Spies–United States–Encyclopedias.
- Wiretapping–United States–Encyclopedias.
- Secret service–United States–Encyclopedias.
Notes
- In two volumes, V. 1 (A-J), V. 2 (K-Z)
Date Posted: June 2, 2015
Reviewed by Hayden B. Peake[1]
Sherman Kent was a Yale professor, an OSS veteran, and a senior CIA analyst when he wrote an article in the first issue of Studies in Intelligence, discussing the attributes the intelligence profession possessed and one that it did not. As Kent phrased it, “What we lack is a literature.”[2] Since then, with a single exception, genuine progress toward remedying that deficiency has been made in every category of the profession. The exception are reference works that seek to provide definitions of essential terms and succinct-summaries of personalities, events, and cases. There have been many contributions that seek to lay claim to filling this gap.[3] Though their quality varies, all have failed. In general, they all possess a single disqualifying characteristic-failure to check their facts with readily available sources. The present volumes are colossal examples of this failure. More than 600 factual errors of various types appear among the approximately 700 entries.
Numerous examples illustrate the problem. Lona and Morris Cohen were not “couriers for the Rosenberg-Greenglass-Fuchs nuclear spy ring.” In fact; there was no Rosenberg-Greenglass-Puchs spy ring; Fuchs was handled separately. (p. 1) Philby was never “declared persona non grata.” (p. 19) Herbert Yardley did not create “the American intelligence network during WWI.” (p. 32) Henry Stimson did not form the “Signal Intelligence Service,” (p. 33) the Army did that. The Germans did not rely exclusively “on the Enigma machine” during WWII. (p. 35) “Testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee …” did not lead “to the arrest and conviction of Harry Gold, David Greenglass, Ethel Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg;” (p. 80) Venona accomplished that feat. Philby was not a “double agent” (p. 80) or a KGB general (p. 614). George Blake was never in the Special Operations Executive, Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force, or the Foreign Office and was not recruited by the KGB in 1950. (p. 93) Anthony Blunt did not recruit Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, John Cairncross, and Guy Burgessp. 98) No “Polish mechanic working in a German cipher factory” constructed a mock-up of the Enigma machine in France that was “subsequently smuggled out of Poland by British agents.” (p. 307) The evidence supplied by GRU defector Igor Gouzenko did not lead “MI5 to the espionage activities … of Klaus Fuchs”; Venona did that. (p. 341) Edward Lee Howard defected to the Soviet Union in 1985, not 1986. (p. 378) Oliver North was a lieutenant colonel, not a colonel, and he was never attached to the “NSA staff.” (p. 404)
Sadly, many errors could have been avoided had contributors only checked the references cited at the end of each entry; in some cases running a spelling checker would have done the trick.
There are also a number of curiosities. Despite the title, the encyclopedia contains entries for SMERSH, MI5, MI6, Mata Hari, Mossad, and Nigel West, but nothing in the entries links them to American espionage. And then some important cases are omitted. For example, nothing is said of Kendall Myers and his wife, who spied for Cuba. Some terminology is out of date, for example, although the CIA’s Directorate of Operations (DO) became the National Clandestine Service several years ago, only “DO” is used. And the term “conduction of intelligence” suggests the need for a copy editor. Lastly, the reference to Philby as “the hired man” rather than the “third man” is typical of the many other careless errors found.
There is no excuse for an encyclopedia-a basic reference work-to be so unhampered by scholarship or quality control. No other profession would tolerate it, nor should ours. For these reasons and its $180 price, caveat lector!
[1] Hayden Peake, in Intelligencer (19, 1, 2012, pp. ). Hayden Peake is the curator of the CIA Historical Intelligence Collection. He is a frequent contributor to AFIO’s journal and other publications. Most of his reviews were previously released in the unclassified edition of CIA’s Studies in Intelligence.
[2] Sherman Kent, “The Need for an Intelligence Literature,” Studies In Intelligence (1, 1955, p. 3)
[3] 6. See for example the Historical Dictionary series published by Scarecrow Press.
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Title: Challenges in Intelligence Analysis
Author: Timothy Walton
Timothy Walton (2010). Challenges in Intelligence Analysis: Lessons from 1300 BCE to the Present. New York: Cambridge University Press
LCCN: 2010028670
Subjects
- Intelligence service–History.
- Intelligence service–Methodology.
- Military intelligence–History.
- Espionage–History.
- Business intelligence–History.
Date Posted: June 15, 2015
Reviewed by Hayden B. Peake[1]
Former CIA analyst Timothy Walton begins his book with a discussion of the basic elements and tools of intelligence analysis, which in the end supports decision making. For example, after identifying various factors an analyst must be careful to consider—uncertainty, deception, surprise, estimates of the accuracy of judgments—he describes some of the important techniques that can be applied. These include the time-line or chronology, competitive hypotheses, and various matrix models. Finally; he stresses the value of presenting the decision maker with options when no single result is directly on point.
To illustrate how analysis has functioned in the past, he provides 40 historical “lessons” from biblical times to the present. While the reader might legitimately expect the lessons to demonstrate the techniques Walton presented in the introductory chapters, that is not what the lessons do. Instead, they are historical summaries that set the stage for analyses. For example, his account of Moses sending spies into Canaan only summarizes the conflicting reports he received and the resultant disagreement among the leaders. There is nothing about fact checking or other analyses that might have led to conclusions they might have reached. Likewise, in his discussion of Hitler’s surprise attack on the Soviet Union, Walton mentions Stalin’s requirements for intelligence and the indicators that an attack was imminent, but he does not analyze why Stalin steadfastly refused to believe them. In the case of the run-up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, Walton provides a good summary of what happened and then acknowledges it as “the most famous and consequential example of failure in intelligence analysis.” (p. 95) But he fails to describe the analyses performed by those involved that allowed for the surprise.
A similar approach applies in the case of the atomic bomb spies. He tells how the FBI learned of the espionage through defectors and the VENONA messages; but he neglects to comment on how the Bureau approached the difficult analytical problems the decrypts posed. The case also points to a major weakness of the book. None of the facts presented are sourced, and this leads to careless errors. Thus Walton writes: “shortly before Gouzenko’s defection [5 September 1945] Elizabeth Bentley had volunteered information to the FBI field office in New Haven.” (p. 116) In fact, Bentley went to the Bureau office in New York on 7 November 1945. In another instance, Walton claims that Gouzenko mentioned Harry Gold, Klaus Fuchs’s courier, but he did not. And Gold was not, as the book claims, the one who identified Fuchs; it was the other way around.[2]
In sum, while Challenqes in Intelligence Analysis illustrates historical cases in which analysis was no doubt performed, the details of that analysis—how it was done; what one really needs to know—are omit-ted. The reader is left to resolve that.
[1] Hayden Peake, in Intelligencer (19, 1, 2012, pp. 113-114). Hayden Peake is the curator of the CIA Historical Intelligence Collection. He is a frequent contributor to AFIO’s journal and other publications. Most of his reviews were previously released in the unclassified edition of CIA’s Studies in Intelligence.
[2] Amy Knight (2005). How The Cold War Began: The Igor Gcuzenko Affair and the Hunt For Soviet Spies. New York: Carroll & Graf [LCCN: 2007296305]; Allen Hornblum (2010). The Invisible Harry Gold: The Man Who Gave the Soviets the Atom Bomb. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press
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The Kremlin’s Geordie Spy by fredslibrary
Title: The Kremlin’s Geordie Spy
Author: Vin Arthey
Arthey, Vin (2010). The Kremlin’s Geordie Spy: The Man They Swapped for Gary Powers. New York: Biteback
OCLC: 897645773
| Subjects |
Date Posted: June 23, 2015
Reviewed by Hayden B. Peake[1]
The first edition of this book was published under the title, Like Father Like Son: A Dynasty of Spies. It told the life story of KGB illegal Col. Vilyam “Willie” Fisher, aka: “Col. Rudolf Abel, KGB.”[2] The new title may puzzle American readers, but it makes immediate sense to a Brit. A Geordie is the common nickname for those from the Tyneside region of North East England, the region in which Willie Fisher was born on 18 April 1902, in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Author Vin Arthey explains Fisher’s connections to the USSR—his father had been active in revolutionary activities in Russia and in 1901 fled to the UK, where he was involved in clandestine shipping of arms and literature back to Russia. The family returned to the Soviet Union when the younger Fisher was 17. He subsequently served in the Red Army as a radioman. In 1927 he joined the NKVD. His first overseas assignment was to England in 1935. There he worked for Alexander Orlov and Arnold Deutsch of Cambridge Five fame. Dismissed from the service during the Great Purge of1938, Fisher was recalled in September, when there was a need for trained radio operators. After WW II, he was trained as an illegal and in 1948 was sent to the United States, where the Soviet networks were in disarray thanks to defectors and the VENONA decrypts.
Arthey reviews Fisher’s many assignments, including the handling of Soviet agents Morris and Leona Cohen and atom spy Theodore “Ted” Hall. Fisher used a number of codenames-the best known was EMIL Goldfus—and his cover was as a commercial artist. Things began to go bad with the arrival of his future replacement, Reino Hayhanen, who proved to be an irresponsible drunk. Fisher had him recalled, but on the way home Hayhanen defected to the CIA in Paris and revealed that he knew a KGB illegal in New York. When the FBI arrested Fisher he gave his name as Col. Rudolf Abel, a prearranged signal to the KGB that he was in trouble. (The real Col. Abel was dead.) Fisher was serving a 30-year sentence when he was traded for U-2 pilot Gary Powers. Fisher returned to limited duty for a while but soon retired. He never revealed what he did in England or the United States. He died on 15 November 1971 at age 59.
While there are no major changes in this edition, a number of corrections have been made and new details added. These include Fisher’s date of birth, the name of his imprisoned brother—Ivan not Boris—and spelling errors. There is also some new material on Fisher’s trial, the negotiation that led to his return to the Soviet Union, and “the Forbidden City”—the location of the KGB headquarters in Potsdam.
The Kremlin’s Geordie Spy is the only biography of Willie Fisher in English that includes details of his KGB career. Arthey examined new materials from Russia, Britain, and the United States to piece together Fisher’s extraordinary career. The result is a welcome contribution to the intelligence literature.
[1] Hayden Peake, in Intelligencer (19, 1, 2012, p. 115 ). Hayden Peake is the curator of the CIA Historical Intelligence Collection. He is a frequent contributor to AFIO’s journal and other publications. Most of his reviews were previously released in the unclassified edition of CIA’s Studies in Intelligence.
[2] Arthey, Vin (2004) Like Father Like Son: A Dynasty of Spies. London: St. Ermin’s Press
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How The Cold War Ended by fredslibrary
Title: How The Cold War Ended
Author: John Prados
Prados, John (2011). How The Cold War Ended: Debating and Doing History. Washington, DC: Potomac Books
LCCN: 2010029048
Subjects
- Cold War.
- Cold War–Historiography.
- World politics–1945-1989.
- World politics–1945-1989–Historiography.
- United States–Foreign relations–Soviet Union.
- Soviet Union–Foreign relations–United States.
Date Posted: June 29, 2015
Reviewed by Hayden B. Peake[1]
During the many years Professor Hollis Todd[2] taught optics, statistics, and photographic theory at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, he argued with force that there was no summary measure, no single factor, that could explain or account for a complex phenomenon—be it technical or historical. Author John Prados, the director of the National Security Archive and author of several books on the Vietnam War, applies this principle in his discussion of how the Cold War ended. The revolt by the peoples of the Soviet Bloc nations, he suggests, may have been a deciding cause, but it also immediately raises the question: why did they revolt when they did? Were economic, political, diplomatic, or intelligence forces involved, and, if so, how did they interact to influence the outcome?
In How The Cold War Ended, Prados concentrates on the period from 1979 to 1991 in examining the key events of the time with a view to identifying their roles in the outcome. He considers Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev and the forces they tried to control, and the explanations offered by other historians on their contributions. Throughout the study, Prados implies that questions remain to be answered in order to understand what really took place so that the present can be managed without making the same mistakes.
After a review of just what the Cold War was, Prados devotes the succeeding five chapters “to one or a few threads of multiple causality and [he] layers that new understanding onto the basic story.” (p. xvii) These threads include the players, programs and plots, institutions and operators, popular movements, national pride, culture and economics, and what he terms the “shadow Cold War”—the role of intelligence. A short section at the end of each chapter discusses what he calls “doing” history. In these, he analyzes the events presented in the chapter, using various criteria to show how the questions asked and the analytical techniques applied can influence the conclusions reached.
The chapter on the shadow Cold War considers the contributions and impact of Soviet intelligence, US Defense Department intelligence, and CIA analysis and operations—i.e., espionage and covert action. Prados acknowledges that CIA analysts “managed to track the broad outlines of Soviet decline pretty well.” But when it came to “predicting revolutionary change .. .in the final analysis the CIA did not quite manage to do it.” (p. 178) As to the effect of KGB activity, Prados concludes it “was not capable of turning the course of the Cold War.” (p. 167) CIA espionage, Prados concedes, made some positive contributions, but “did not win the Cold War.” (p. 168) Perhaps the most controversial judgment he renders concerns covert action: “In Afghanistan, the Soviet decision to change direction preceded the advent of the CIA’s newly rearmed Afghan rebels,” (p. 161) Just how Prados knows this is unclear.
A summary chapter at the end of How The Cold War Ended makes clear how difficult it is to attach significance to individual parts of complex historical events. This is a very thoughtful and provocative book that does not pretend to be the last word on the topic. The final question he asks and answers is “Who won the Cold War?” “In the last analysis, no one won the Cold War, or perhaps everyone did.” (p. 190)
[1] Hayden Peake, in Intelligencer (19, 1, 2012, pp. ). Hayden Peake is the curator of the CIA Historical Intelligence Collection. He is a frequent contributor to AFIO’s journal and other publications. Most of his reviews were previously released in the unclassified edition of CIA’s Studies in Intelligence.
[2] I (Fred L. Wilson) did not know Hollis well, but we were colleagues at RIT, in different colleges.
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Lauren Goodrich: Hello, my name is Lauren Goodrich and I'm the senior Eurasia analyst here at Stratfor. I'm joined by Jay Ogilvy, who is Stratfor contributor and also the foreman of our editorial board. Jay, you wrote a fascinating article for Stratfor in which you described how the American media has really gotten Russia wrong. This is something that myself and Stratfor have promoted for quite a long time, that America just doesn't 'get' Russia
Jay Ogilvy: We're still coming to Russia from the old Cold War narrative. And it's not just the politics, I mean whenever Hollywood needs like a really bad villain, it's likely to be a Russian. And this is sad because, as de Tocqueville pointed out so long ago, looking to the future, the United States and Russia are two of the globe's great superpowers. If we're not getting along, if we're not understanding one another, it's just bad for all of us.
Lauren: Yes, it's interesting that a few months ago the latest Gallup poll that was released showed that, for the first time in twenty years, Russia is now considered by most Americans as the number one enemy of the Untied State, ahead of Iran, ahead of North Korea, a lot of the stereotypical 'batties' out there.
Jay: Yeah. And I'm not the Russia expert you are, and I feel privileged to be in the room with you. I've been involved in citizen diplomacy with Russia for 35 years, now, first visit in '83 again in '85, 2001, 2006, and so back and forth, back and forth, but also hosting a series of very high-level Russian to annual meetings in California year after year after year. We call it 'Track II' diplomacy, Track I being the official government relationship, but Track II, getting psychologists together with psychologists, philosophers with philosophers, and talking shop and discovering that we are all human beings and want some of the same things. And so to me, personally, it's very sad that this misunderstanding is happening. To make one clear point on this, that I want to ask you about what your opinion on this is: I'm so intrigued with how much support there is for Vladimir Putin inside Russia and how Americans cannot understand that.
Lauren: They think that Putin is a dictator, instead of actually having a popular support on the ground, and what we've seen over the past year is that Putin's popularity has just grown, even as the hardships are taking place inside of Russia economically, financially, and with this growing 'new Cold War' with the West, Putin is as popular as ever. His popularity rose from 85 percent to 89 percent, which is astonishing for any leader of any country. And it's because Putin has made good for 15 years on his social contract with the people. He told the people he would keep the economy relatively stable, he would get it back into Russian hands, instead of in foreign hands or in oligarch hands, that people would get a steady paycheck, that there would be grocery stores and food on the shelves, all of these small social contracts Putin has really come through, and until he starts failing on those social contracts, his popularity is going to remain.
Jay: Even despite the fact there was a piece, I think in the Guardian on June 7, that pointed out that we think the sanctions are hurting people in Russia. Well, this article got very close to the ground talking about all you hear people talking about is cheese. Where are we going to get our Camembert, our Gorgonzola. But they can do without it, they'll just take the Russian substitutes that are not as good, but they'll live through that.
Lauren: And we're also seeing the Russian people kind of embrace these sanctions, in which there was a case in St. Petersburg where you had people running into the grocery stores buying foreign cheese and then dumping it into the sea in order to show that they supported Putin putting food bans on European food in countersanctions.
Jay: And I'm not here to say Putin's a great hero or that they have been without faults in eastern Ukraine. They're doing things they should not be doing. But I just feel that the Stratfor analysis, largely developed by you, has been very helpful in showing the degree to which we punched first.
Lauren: The way that the American media has put it out there is that Russia is being the aggressor, and instead we're seeing Russia be very reactive instead. NATO starts to build up, then Russia starts to build up. The United States helps support the revolution that took place in Ukraine this past year, Russia then takes Crimea and goes into eastern Ukraine. So it really is a reaction to what is taking place out of the United States and out of NATO.
Jay: I just hope, with work like yours and correctives to the dominant American narrative, we can turn this thing around and create a better earth through peace than confrontation.
Lauren: Well also just in understanding how our actions are causing reactions out of Russia. Very interesting. Thank you so much, Jay. For more on this, please turn to Stratfor.com.
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Five former senior Iran advisers to President Obama have written an open letter expressing concern that the nuclear accord pending “may fall short of meeting the administration’s own standard of a ‘good’ agreement” and laying out a series of minimum requirements of Iran. Among them is former White House adviser Dennis B. Ross, former CIA Director David Petraeus, Robert Einhorn, a former State Department proliferation expert, Gary Samore, Obama’s former chief adviser on nuclear policy, and Gen. James Cartwright, a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Among Republicans, the most notable signatory is Stephen Hadley, Mr. Bush’s national security adviser in his second term.
The letter was published Thursday as Secretary of State John Kerry headed for Vienna to attend the last week of negotiations for a final nuclear accord with Iran.
Russian President Vladimir Putin phoned U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday, their first call since February, to discuss Iran nuclear talks, "the increasingly dangerous situation in Syria" and the need to counter Islamic State militants, the White House said in a statement.
"The leaders discussed the increasingly dangerous situation in Syria, and underscored the importance of continued P5+1 unity in ongoing negotiations to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon," the White House said.
Obama also told Putin that Russia needs to live to up to the terms of a ceasefire deal with Ukraine, "including the removal of all Russian troops and equipment from Ukrainian territory."
"The leaders discussed the increasingly dangerous situation in Syria, and underscored the importance of continued P5+1 unity in ongoing negotiations to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon," the White House said.
Obama also told Putin that Russia needs to live to up to the terms of a ceasefire deal with Ukraine, "including the removal of all Russian troops and equipment from Ukrainian territory."
Friday, June 26, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) demonstrated the broad scope of its brutal reach by perpetrating terrorist attacks on three continents – Europe, Africa and Asia, in one day, the second Friday of the Muslim festival of Ramadan. The deadliest occurred at two hotel beaches in the popular Tunisian resort town of Sousse, where gunmen killed at least 27 holidaymakers, many of them foreign tourists - mostly British and German. One gunman was killed. It followed the atrocity at a US-owned French gas factory near Grenoble.
Some American sources have revealed a quiet initiative by Vice President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Colin Khal to have the deadline for a final nuclear accord moved from next Tuesday to July 9. The administration doesn't want to give the Congress 60 days to review the deal and thereby further delay its implementation. If it is submitted by July 9, Congress will have to vote its approval or disapproval before leaving town for its August recess. If the deal comes in after July 9, the vote as well as the subsequent potential veto and veto override attempts would be delayed until September.
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When Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Sunday, June 28: “We are seeing a clear retreat from the red lines that the world powers set recently and publicly,” he meant three major US concessions approved in the days leading up to a nuclear deal with Iran: debkafile discloses The US no longer holds Iran accountable for past clandestine nuclear weapons tests; has empowered Tehran to permit or bar international inspections; and set out unconditional sanctions relief in three tight stages. Obama’s pledge to “snap back” sanctions for violations is history.
Russian President Vladimir Putin told Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem in Moscow Monday that Russia's "policy to support Syria, the Syrian leadership and the Syrian people remains unchanged." He called on all Middle East nations to join forces to fight ISIS militants.
June 30, 2015, 10:09 AM (IDT)
Turkish and Jordanian armies were reported on June 30 to be getting ready to cross into Syria and set up security buffer zones – to fight ISIS, oppose the Assad regime and stem the never-ending flow of refugees. It is not clear if they are coordinated. Turkey has prepared 18,000 troops for the operation. Its air force is to impose a no-fly zone against Syrian flights. The Jordanian army is also on the ready to go in and said to be seeking Israel’s air force participation for air cover and a parallel no-fly zone in the south.
June 30, 2015, 10:43 AM (IDT)
Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohamed Javad Zarif was on his way from Tehran to Vienna Tuesday, June 30, accompanied by two government heavyweights: Ali Akhbar Salehi, Chairman of the Nuclear Energy Commission, and Hossein Feredydoon, senior adviser to President Hassan Rouhani.debkafile: Israel fears that this high-powered Iranian representation portends a “surprise” signing of the comprehensive nuclear deal with the world powers on or close to the deadline day, after word of delays was deliberately spread to head off objections..
Daily Beast |
Richard Matt Was an FBI Snitch
Daily Beast Friends of Matt's, lawyers who worked on the case and Matt himself all say the prison escapee had became an informant for the FBI as it investigated the alleged murder-for-hire plot. When reached for comment on this article, the FBI would neither ... |
The thousands of satellites and vehicles in orbit present possible targets for attacks.
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Turkey Uneasy as U.S. Support of Syrian Kurds Growsby By TIM ARANGO and ERIC SCHMITT
Ankara is said to be weighing options like setting up a buffer zone within Syria in an effort to contain the ambitions of the Kurds.- Get link
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