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Revealed – The Gorbachev File by the NSA – TOP SECRET

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(L to R) Vice President George H. W. Bush, President Ronald Reagan and President Mikhail Gorbachev during the Governor’s Island summit, December 1988. (Credit: Ronald Reagan Presidential Library)

Marking the 85thbirthday of former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the National Security Archive at George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org) today posted a series of previously classified British and American documents containing Western assessments of Gorbachev starting before he took office in March 1985, and continuing through the end of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The documents show that conservative British politicians were ahead of the curve predicting great things for rising Soviet star Gorbachev in 1984 and 1985, but the CIA soon caught on, describing the new Soviet leader only three months into his tenure as “the new broom,” while Ronald Reagan greeted Gorbachev’s ascension with an immediate invitation for a summit. The documents posted today include positive early assessments by Margaret Thatcher and MP John Browne, CIA intelligence reports that bookend Gorbachev’s tenure from 1985 to 1991, the first letters exchanged by Reagan and Gorbachev, the American versions of key conversations with Gorbachev at the Geneva, Reykjavik and Malta summits, German chancellor Helmut Kohl’s credit to Gorbachev in 1989 for the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, and the U.S. transcript of the G-7 summit in 1990 that turned down Gorbachev’s request for financial aid.

The Archive gathered the Gorbachev documentation for two books, the Link-Kuehl-Award-winning “Masterpieces of History”: The Peaceful End of the Cold War in Europe 1989 (Central European University Press, 2010), and the forthcoming Last Superpower Summits: Gorbachev, Reagan and Bush (CEU Press, 2016). The sources include the Margaret Thatcher Foundation, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library, and Freedom of Information and Mandatory Declassification Review requests to the CIA and the State Department.

Leading today’s Gorbachev briefing book is British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s “discovery” of Gorbachev in December 1984 during his trip to Britain as head of a Soviet parliamentary delegation. In contrast to his elderly and infirm predecessors who slowly read dry notes prepared for them, Gorbachev launched into animated free discussion and left an indelible impression on Lady Thatcher. The Prime Minister, charmed by the Soviet leader, quickly shared her impressions with her closest ally and friend, Ronald Reagan. She commented famously, “I like Mr. Gorbachev. We can do business together.”


Alexander Yakovlev, Mikhail Gorbachev, Eduard Shevardnadze walking in the Kremlin, 1989 (personal archive of Anatoly Chernyaev)

Soon after Gorbachev became the Soviet General Secretary, a Conservative member of the British parliament, John Browne, who observed Gorbachev during his visit to Britain and then followed information on Gorbachev’s every early step, compared him to “Kennedy in the Kremlin” in terms of his charisma. By June 1985, the CIA told senior U.S. officials in a classified assessment that Gorbachev was “the new broom” that was attempting to clean up the years of debris that accumulated in the Soviet Union during the era of stagnation.

But Reagan had to see for himself. For four years before Gorbachev, as the American president complained in his diary, he had been trying to meet with a Soviet leader face to face, but “they keep dying on me.” In his first letter to Gorbachev, which Vice President George H.W. Bush carried to Moscow for the funeral of Gorbachev’s predecessor, Reagan invited Gorbachev to meet. Gorbachev and Reagan became pen-pals who wrote long letters – sometimes personally dictated, even handwritten – explaining their positions on arms control, strategic defenses, and the need for nuclear abolition.

Their first meeting took place in Geneva in November 1985, where in an informal atmosphere of “fireside chats” they began realizing that the other was not a warmonger but a human being with a very similar dream—to rid the world of nuclear weapons. That dream came very close to a breakthrough during Gorbachev and Reagan’s summit in Reykjavik; but Reagan’s stubborn insistence on SDI and Gorbachev’s stubborn unwillingness to take Reagan at his word on technology sharing prevented them from reaching their common goal.

Through a series of unprecedented superpower summits, Gorbachev made Reagan and Bush understand that the Soviet leader was serious about transforming his country not to threaten others, but to help its own citizens live fuller and happier lives, and to be fully integrated into the “family of nations.” Gorbachev also learned from his foreign counterparts, establishing a kind of peer group with France’s Mitterrand, Germany’s Kohl, Britain’s Thatcher, and Spain’s Gonzalez, which developed his reformist positions further and further. By the time George H.W. Bush as president finally met Gorbachev in Malta, the Soviet Union was having free elections, freedom of speech was blossoming, velvet revolutions had brought reformers to power in Eastern Europe, and the Berlin Wall had fallen to cheers of citizens but severe anxieties in other world capitals.

German Chancellor Helmut Kohl wrote in his letter to Bush at the end of November 1989: “Regarding the reform process in Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, the CSSR [Czechoslovakia], and not least the GDR [East Germany], we have General Secretary Gorbachev’s policies to thank. His perestroika has let loose, made easier, or accelerated these reforms. He pushed governments unwilling to make reforms toward openness and toward acceptance of the people’s wishes; and he accepted developments that in some instances far surpassed the Soviet Union’s own standards.”

In 1989, the dream of what Gorbachev called “the common European home” was in the air and Gorbachev was the most popular politician in the world. When he was faced with discontent and opposition in his country, he refused to use force, like his Chinese neighbors did at Tiananmen Square. And yet, the West consistently applied harsher standards to Gorbachev’s Soviet Union than to China, resulting in feet dragging on financial aid, credits, and trade. As Francois Mitterrand pointed out during the G-7 summit in Houston in 1990: “the argument put forth for helping China is just the reverse when we are dealing with the USSR. We are too timid […] regarding aid to the USSR. […].”

What Gorbachev started in March 1985 made his country and the world better. In cooperation with Reagan and Bush, he ended the Cold War, pulled Soviet troops out of Afghanistan, helped resolve local conflicts around the globe, and gave Russia the hope and the opportunity to develop as a normal democratic country. As with many great reformers, he did not achieve everything he was striving for – he certainly never intended for the Soviet Union to collapse – but his glasnost, his non-violence, and his “new thinking” for an interdependent world created a legacy that few statesmen or women can match. Happy birthday, Mikhail Sergeyevich!

READ THE DOCUMENTS

Document-01
Memorandum of Conversation between Mikhail Gorbachev and Margaret Thatcher. December 16, 1984, Chequers.
1984-12-16
This face-to-face encounter between British Prime Minister and the leader of a Soviet parliamentary delegation produced a conversation that both Thatcher and Gorbachev would refer to many times in the future. Gorbachev engaged Thatcher on all the issues that she raised, did not duck hard questions, but did not appear combative. He spoke about the low point then evident in East-West relations and the need to stop the arms race before it was too late. He especially expressed himself strongly against the Strategic Defense Initiative promoted by the Reagan administration. Soon after this conversation Thatcher flew to Washington to share her enthusiastic assessment with Gorbachev with Reagan and encourage him to engage the Soviet leader in trying to lower the East-West tensions. She told her friend and ally what she had told the BBC, “I like Mr. Gorbachev. We can do business together” – and described him to Reagan as an “unusual Russian…. [m]uch less constrained, more charming,” and not defensive in the usual Soviet way about human rights.
Document-02
Letter from Reagan to Gorbachev. March 11, 1985
1985-03-11
Vice President George H.W. Bush hand delivered this first letter from President Reagan to the new leader of the Soviet Union, after the state funeral for Konstantin Chernenko in March 1985 (“you die, I fly” as Bush memorably remarked about his job as the ceremonial U.S. mourner for world leaders). The letter contains two especially noteworthy passages, one inviting Mikhail Gorbachev to come to Washington for a summit, and the second expressing Reagan’s hope that arms control negotiations “provide us with a genuine chance to make progress toward our common ultimate goal of eliminating nuclear weapons.” Reagan is reaching for a pen-pal, just as he did as early as 1981, when he hand-wrote a heartfelt letter during his recovery from an assassination attempt, to then-General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev suggesting face-to-face meetings and referring to the existential danger of nuclear weapons – only to get a formalistic reply. Subsequent letters between Reagan and the whole series of Soviet leaders (“they keep dying on me,” Reagan complained) contain extensive language on many of the themes – such as the ultimate threat of nuclear annihilation – that would come up over and over again when Reagan finally found a partner on the Soviet side in Gorbachev. Even Chernenko had received a hand-written add-on by Reagan appreciating Soviet losses in World War II and crediting Moscow with a consequent aversion to war.
Document-03
Gorbachev Letter to Reagan, March 24, 1985
1985-03-24
This lengthy first letter from the new Soviet General Secretary to the U.S. President displays Gorbachev’s characteristic verbal style with an emphasis on persuasion. The Soviet leader eagerly takes on the new mode of communication proposed by Reagan in his March 11 letter, and plunges into a voluminous and wide-ranging correspondence between the two leaders – often quite formal and stiff, occasionally very personal and expressive, and always designed for effect, such as when Reagan would laboriously copy out by hand his official texts. Here Gorbachev emphasizes the need to improve relations between the two countries on the basis of peaceful competition and respect for each other’s economic and social choices. He notes the responsibility of the two superpowers for world peace, and their common interest “not to let things come to the outbreak of nuclear war, which would inevitably have catastrophic consequences for both sides.” Underscoring the importance of building trust, the Soviet leader accepts Reagan’s invitation in the March 11 letter to visit at the highest level and proposes that such a visit should “not necessarily be concluded by signing some major documents.” Rather, “it should be a meeting to search for mutual understanding.”
Document-04
Reagan Letter to Gorbachev. April 30, 1985
1985-04-30
Perhaps as a reflection of the internal debates in Washington (and even in Reagan’s own head), it would take more than a month for the administration to produce a detailed response to Gorbachev’s March 24 letter. The first two pages rehash the issues around the tragic killing of American Major Arthur Nicholson by a Soviet guard, before moving to the sore subject of Afghanistan. Reagan vows, “I am prepared to work with you to move the region toward peace, if you desire”; at the same time, U.S. and Saudi aid to the mujahedin fighting the Soviets was rapidly expanding. Reagan objects to Gorbachev’s unilateral April 7 announcement of a moratorium on deployment of intermediate-range missiles in Europe, since the Soviet deployment was largely complete while NATO’s was still underway. The heart of the letter addresses Gorbachev’s objections to SDI, and Reagan mentions that he was struck by Gorbachev’s characterization of SDI as having “an offensive purpose for an attack on the Soviet Union. I can assure you that you are profoundly mistaken on this point.” Interestingly, the Reagan letter tries to reassure Gorbachev by citing the necessity of “some years of further research” and “further years” before deployment (Reagan could not have suspected decades rather than years). This back-and-forth on SDI would be a constant in the two leaders’ correspondence and conversations at the summits to come, but the consistency of Reagan’s position on this (in contrast to that of Pentagon advocates of “space dominance”), not only to Gorbachev but to Thatcher and to his own staff, suggests some room for Gorbachev to take up the President on his assurances – which never happened.
Document-05
“Mr. Gorbachev-a Kennedy in the Kremlin?” By John Browne (Member of Parliament from Winchester, England). Impressions of the Man, His Style and his Likely Impact Upon East West Relations. May 20, 1985.
1985-05-20
British MP John Browne, member of the Conservative party, was part of the Receiving Committee for Gorbachev’s visit to London in December 1984 and spend considerable time with him during his trips (including to the Lenin museum). This long essay, sent to President Reagan, and summarized for him by his National Security Adviser, describes Gorbachev as an unusual Soviet politician-“intelligent, alert and inquisitive.” Browne notes “that Gorbachev’s charisma was so striking that, if permitted by the Communist Party system, Mr. and Mrs. Gorbachev could well become the Soviet equivalent of the Jack and Jacqueline Kennedy team.” On the basis of his observations in 1984 and after Gorbachev was elected General Secretary, Browne concludes that politicians of Western democracies are likely to face an increasingly sophisticated political challenge from Mr. Gorbachev both at home and abroad.
Document-06
Letter from Gorbachev to Reagan. June 10, 1985
1985-06-10
In this long and wide-ranging response to Reagan’s letter of April 30, the Soviet leader makes a real push for improvement of relations on numerous issues. The date June 10 is significant because on this day in Washington Reagan finally took the action (deactivating a Poseidon submarine) necessary to keep the U.S. in compliance with the unratified (but observed by both sides) SALT II treaty. Here Gorbachev raises the issue of equality and reciprocity in U.S.-Soviet relations, noting that it is the Soviet Union that is “surrounded by American military bases stuffed also by nuclear weapons, rather than the U.S. – by Soviet bases.” He suggests that all previous important treaties between the United States and the Soviet Union were possible on the assumption of parity, and that Reagan’s recent focus on SDI threatens to destabilize the strategic balance – yet again demonstrating Gorbachev’s deep apprehension about Reagan’s position on strategic defenses. The Soviet leader believes that the development of ABM systems would lead to a radical destabilization of the situation and the militarization of space. At the heart of the Soviet visceral rejection of SDI is the image of “attack space weapons capable of performing purely offensive missions.” Gorbachev proposes energizing negotiations on conventional weapons in Europe, chemical weapons, the nuclear test ban, and regional issues, especially Afghanistan. He calls for a moratorium on nuclear tests “as soon as possible” – the Soviets would end up doing this unilaterally, never understanding that the issue is a non-starter in Reagan’s eyes. Here, the Soviet leader also welcomes horizontal exchanges between government ministers and even members of legislatures. However, Gorbachev’s position on human rights remains quite rigid-“we do not intend and will not conduct any negotiations relating to human rights in the Soviet Union.” That would change.
Document-07
Dinner Hosted by the Gorbachevs in Geneva. November 19, 1985.
1985-11-19
In their first face-to-face meeting at Geneva, which both of them anticipated eagerly, Reagan and Gorbachev both spoke about the mistrust and suspicions of the past and of the need to begin a new stage in U.S.-Soviet relations. Gorbachev described his view of the international situation to Reagan, stressing the need to end the arms race. Reagan expressed his concern with Soviet activity in the third world–helping the socialist revolutions in the developing countries. They both spoke about their aversion to nuclear weapons. During this first dinner of the Geneva summit, Gorbachev used a quote from the Bible that there was a time to throw stones and a time to gather stones which have been cast in the past to indicate that now the President and he should move to resolve their practical disagreements in the last day of meetings remaining. In response, Reagan remarked that “if the people of the world were to find out that there was some alien life form that was going to attack the Earth approaching on Halley’s Comet, then that knowledge would unite all peoples of the world.” The aliens had landed, in Reagan’s view, in the form of nuclear weapons; and Gorbachev would remember this phrase, quoting it directly in his famous “new thinking” speech at the 27th Party Congress in February 1986.
Document-08
Last Session of the Reykjavik Summit. October 12, 1986.
1986-10-12
The last session at Reykjavik is the one that inspires Gorbachev’s comment in his memoirs about “Shakespearean passions.” The transcript shows lots of confusion between just proposals on reducing ballistic missiles versus those reducing all nuclear weapons, but finally Reagan says, as he always wanted, nuclear abolition. “We can do that. Let’s eliminate them,” says Gorbachev, and Secretary of State George Shultz reinforces, “Let’s do it.” But then they circle back around to SDI and the ABM Treaty issue, and Gorbachev insists on the word “laboratory” as in testing confined there, and Reagan, already hostile to the ABM Treaty, keeps seeing that as giving up SDI. Gorbachev says he cannot go back to Moscow to say he let testing go on outside the lab, which could lead to a functioning system in the future. The transcript shows Reagan asking Gorbachev for agreement as a personal favor, and Gorbachev saying well if that was about agriculture, maybe, but this is fundamental national security. Finally at around 6:30 p.m. Reagan closes his briefing book and stands up. The American and the Russian transcripts differ on the last words, the Russian version has more detail [see the forthcoming book, Last Superpower Summits], but the sense is the same. Their faces reflect the disappointment, Gorbachev had helped Reagan to say nyet, but Gorbachev probably lost more from the failure.
Document-09
Letter to Reagan from Thatcher About Her Meetings with Gorbachev in Moscow. April 1, 1987
1987-04-01
Again, Margaret Thatcher informs her ally Reagan about her conversations with Gorbachev. The cover note from National Security Advisor Carlucci (prepared by NSC staffer Fritz Ermarth) states that “she has been greatly impressed by Gorbachev personally.” Thatcher describes Gorbachev as “fully in charge,” “determined to press ahead with his internal reform,” and “talk[ing] about his aims with almost messianic fervor.” She believes in the seriousness of his reformist thinking and wants to support him. However, they differ on one most crucial issue, which actually unites Gorbachev and Reagan-nuclear abolition. Thatcher writes, “[h]is aim is patently the denuclearization of Europe. I left him with no doubt that I would never accept that.”
Document-10
Letter to Bush from Chancellor Helmut Kohl. November 28, 1989.
1989-11-28
This remarkable letter arrives at the White House at the very moment when Kohl is presenting his “10 points” speech to the Bundestag about future German unification, much to the surprise of the White House, the Kremlin, and even Kohl’s own coalition partners in Germany (such as his foreign minister). Here, just weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German leader encourages Bush to engage with Gorbachev across the board and to contribute to peaceful change in Europe. Kohl points that Gorbachev “wants to continue his policies resolutely, consistently and dynamically, but is meeting internal resistance and is dependent on external support.” He hopes Bush’s upcoming meeting with Gorbachev in Malta will “give strong stimulus to the arms control negotiations.” Kohl also reminds Bush that “regarding the reform process in Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, the CSSR [Czechoslovakia], and not least the GDR [East Germany], we have General Secretary Gorbachev’s policies to thank. His perestroika has let loose, made easier, or accelerated these reforms. He pushed governments unwilling to make reforms toward openness and toward acceptance of the people’s wishes; and he accepted developments that in some instances far surpassed the Soviet Union’s own standards.”
Document-11
Malta First Expanded Bilateral with George Bush. December 2, 1989.
1989-12-02
Being rocked by the waves on the Soviet ship Maxim Gorky, President Bush greets his Russian counterpart for the first time as President. A lot has changed in the world since they last saw each other on Governor’s Island in December 1988-elections had been held in the Soviet Union and in Poland, where a non-communist government came to power, and the Iron Curtain fell together with the Berlin Wall. After Bush’s initial presentation from notes, Gorbachev remarks almost bemusedly that now he sees the American administration has made up its mind (finally) what to do, and that includes “specific steps” or at least “plans for such steps” to support perestroika, not to doubt it. Gorbachev compliments Bush for not sharing the old Cold War thinking that “The only thing the U.S. needs to do is to keep its baskets ready to gather the fruit” from the changes in Eastern Europe and the USSR. Bush responds, “I have been called cautious or timid. I am cautious, but not timid. But I have conducted myself in ways not to complicate your life. That’s why I have not jumped up and down on the Berlin Wall.” Gorbachev says, “Yes, we have seen that, and appreciate that.” The Soviet leader goes on to welcome Bush’s economic and trade points as a “signal of a new U.S. policy” that U.S. business was waiting for. Gorbachev responds positively to each of Bush’s overtures on arms control, chemical weapons, conventional forces, next summits and so forth, but pushes back on Bush’s Cuba and Central America obsessions.
Document-12
First Main Plenary of the G-7 Summit in Houston. July 10, 1990.
1990-07-10
The bulk of discussion at this first session of the summit of the industrialized nations is devoted to the issue of how the club of the rich countries should react to the events unfolding in the Soviet Union and how much aid and investment could be directed to the support of perestroika. The summit is taking place at the time when Gorbachev is engaged in an increasingly desperate search for scenarios for radical economic reform, and fast political democratization, but he needs external financial support and integration into global financial institutions in order to succeed – or even to survive, as the events of August 1991 would show. Just before this 1990 G-7, Gorbachev wrote in a letter to George Bush that he needs “long-term credit assistance, attraction of foreign capital, transfer of managerial experience and personnel training” to create a competitive economy. Yet, the U.S. president throws only a bone or two, like “step up the pace of our negotiations with the Soviets on the Tsarist and Kerensky debts [!] to the U.S. government” (instead of forgiving or at least restructuring the debt), and “expand our existing technical cooperation.” Bush concludes his speech by stating flatly “It is impossible for the U.S. to loan money to the USSR at this time. I know, however, that others won’t agree.” The leaders who do not agree are Helmut Kohl (in the middle of providing billions of deutschmarks to the USSR to lubricate German unification) and Francois Mitterrand. The latter decries the double standards being applied to the Soviet Union and China, even after the Tiananmen massacre. Mitterrand criticizes the proposed political declaration of the G-7 as “timid” and “hesitant,” imposing “harsh political conditions as a preliminary to extending aid.” He believes the EC countries are in favor of contributing aid to the USSR but that other members, like the U.S. and Japan, have effectively vetoed such assistance.
Document-13
CIA Memorandum, The Gorbachev Succession. April 1991.
1991-04-00
On April 10, 1991, the National Security Council staff asked the CIA for an analysis of the Gorbachev succession, who the main actors would be, and the likely scenarios. The assessment opens quite drastically: “The Gorbachev era is effectively over.” The scenarios offered have an eerie resemblance to the actual coup that would come in August 1991. This might be the most prescient of all the CIA analyses of the perestroika years. The report finds that Gorbachev is likely to be replaced either by the reformers or the hard-liners, with the latter being more likely. The authors point out that “there is no love between Gorbachev and his current allies and they could well move to try to dump him.” They then list possible conspirators for such a move– Vice President Yanaev, KGB Chief Kryuchkov, and Defense Minister Yazov, among others, all of whom whom participate in the August coup. The report predicts that the “traditionalists” are likely to find a “legal veneer” for removing Gorbachev: “most likely they would present Gorbachev with an ultimatum to comply or face arrest or death.” If he agreed, Yanaev would step in as president, the conspirators would declare a state of emergency and install “some kind of a National Salvation Committee.” However, the memo concludes that “time is working against the traditionalists.” This turned out to be both prescient and correct – the August coup followed the process outlined in this document and the plot foundered because the security forces themselves were fractured and the democratic movements were gaining strength. But indeed, the coup, the resurgence of Boris Yeltsin as leader of the Russian republic, and the secession of Russia from the Soviet Union during the fall of 1991 did mark the end of the Gorbachev era.

 

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The National Security Archive – The United States, China, and the Bomb

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Washington, D.C. – The National Security Archive has initiated a special project on the Chinese nuclear weapons program and U.S. policy toward it. The purpose is to discover how the U.S. government monitored the Chinese nuclear program and ascertain what it knew (or believed that it knew) and thought about that program from the late 1950s to the present. Besides investigating U.S. thinking about, and intelligence collection on, the Chinese nuclear program as such, the Archive’s staff is exploring its broader foreign policy significance, especially the impact on China’s relations with its neighbors and the regional proliferation of nuclear weapons capabilities. Through archival research and systematic declassification requests, the Archive is working to collect key U.S. documents on important developments in Chinese nuclear history, including weapons, delivery systems, and strategic thinking. To put the nuclear issue in the broader context of the changing relations between the United States and China, the Archive is also trying to secure the declassification of key U. S. policy papers that elucidate changes in the relationship.

In particular, the Archive’s project is exploring Washington’s thinking about the Chinese nuclear weapons program in the context of U.S. nuclear proliferation policy. The Archive is probing Washington’s initial effort to brake the development of the Chinese advanced weapons program by encouraging allies and others to abstain from the shipment of products that could have direct or indirect military applications. Moreover, the Archive is seeking the declassification of materials that shed light on an important concern since the late 1980s, China’s alleged role as a contributor to the proliferation of nuclear capabilities in South Asia and elsewhere. To the extent possible, the Archive will try to document the U.S. government’s knowledge of, and policy toward, China’s role as a nuclear proliferator and its efforts to balance proliferation concerns with a policy of cooperation with Beijing.

In the spring of 1996, the Archive began a series of Freedom of Information and mandatory review requests to the CIA, State Department, Defense Department, National Archives, and other agencies to prompt the release of relevant documents. Although this will take time, the State Department’s own systematic declassification review of central files from the 1960s has already made available some very useful material. Moreover, previous declassification requests by the Archive are beginning to generate significant material. This makes it possible for the Archive to display, on our Web site, some newly released documents on U.S. policy toward the Chinese nuclear weapons program.

The documents that follow are from 1964 when U.S. government officials recognized that China would soon acquire a nuclear weapons capability. As this material indicates, the degree of apprehension varied, with some officials truly worried that a nuclear armed China would constitute a formidable threat to the security of China’s neighbors as well as the United States. Others, however, believed that Beijing’s orientation was fundamentally cautious and defensive and that the political and psychological implications would be more immediately consequential than any military threat. Although China’s attitude toward U.S.-Soviet nonproliferation efforts was hostile, as far as can be determined, no one anticipated a development of later decades: the PRC’s apparent role as a purveyor of nuclear weapons and delivery systems technologies.

* * *

This briefing book was prepared by William Burr, the Archive’s analyst for the China nuclear weapons project and for a related project on U.S. nuclear weapons policies and programs. Currently a member of Dipomatic History‘s editorial board, he has published articles there and in the Bulletin of the Cold War International History Project. He previously directed the Archive’s project on the Berlin Crisis, 1958-1962 (published by Chadwyck-Healey in 1992).

The National Security Archive thanks the W. Alton Jones Foundation for the generous financial support that made this project possible. Anthony Wai, Duke University, and Matthew Shabatt, Stanford University, provided invaluable research assistance for this project.

THE DOCUMENTS

Document 1: “Implications of a Chinese Communist Nuclear Capability”, by Robert H. Johnson, State Department Policy Planning Staff, with forwarding memorandum to President Johnson by Policy Planning Council director Walt W. Rostow, 17 April 1964.

Source: U.S. National Archives, Record Group 59, Department of State Records, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1964-1966, file DEF 12-1 Chicom.

Robert Johnson (now associated with the National Planning Association) was one of the Department’s leading China experts. Between 1962 and 1964, he directed a number of studies on the Chinese nuclear program and its ramifications, not only for the United States but also for China’s neighbors in East and South Asia. This document is a summary of a longer study which remains classified but is undergoing declassification review. In this paper Johnson minimized the immediate military threat of a nuclear China, suggesting instead that Chinese leaders were more interested in a nuclear capability’s deterrent effect and were unlikely to engage in high-risk activities. Consistent with his relatively moderate interpretation, Johnson ruled out preemptive action against Chinese nuclear facilities except in “response to major ChiCom aggression.” Johnson explored the issue of preemption in another study: “The Bases for Direct Action Against Chinese Communist Nuclear Facilities,” also April 1964. That study is unavailable but is discussed in document 5.

Document 2: Special National Intelligence Estimate, “The Chances of an Imminent Communist Chinese Nuclear Explosion” 26 August 1964.

Source: Lyndon B. Johnson Library

The timing of a Chinese atomic test was a controversial subject during the summer and fall of 1964. As this document shows, CIA officials believed that the Chinese would not test a weapon until “sometime after the end of 1964.” State Department China specialist Allen Whiting, an official at the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, thought otherwise. Like his colleagues he was unaware that the Chinese had an operating gaseous diffusion plant which was producing weapons-grade material. Yet, he made more than the CIA of the fact that the Chinese had already constructed a 325 foot test tower at Lop Nur. Whiting was certain that the Chinese would not have taken the trouble to construct a tower unless a test was impending, although CIA technical experts were dubious. As other intelligence information becomes available, Whiting estimated a test on 1 October. (Interview with Whiting by William Burr, 13 December 1996).

Document 3: Memorandum for the Record, McGeorge Bundy, 15 September 1964

Source: Lyndon B. Johnson Library.

This report of a meeting between President Johnson’s top advisers discloses the administration’s basic approach toward the first Chinese nuclear test but nevertheless raises questions that have yet to be settled. Although it is evident that the administration had provisionally ruled out a preemptive strike, it is unclear whether Secretary of State Rusk ever had any substantive discussions of the Chinese nuclear issue with Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin during the weeks after this meeting.

Until recently, paragraph 3 of this document was entirely excised but a successful appeal by the National Security Archive led the National Archives to release all but the date of the proposed “Chinat” overflight, presumably by a U-2. The date of the overflight is unknown although a number took place in late 1964 and early 1965 to monitor Chinese nuclear weapons facilities.

Document 4: “China As a Nuclear Power (Some Thoughts Prior to the Chinese Test)”, 7 October 1964

Source: FOIA request to State Department

This document was prepared by the Office of International Security Affairs at the Department of Defense, possibly by, or under the supervision of Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Henry S. Rowen, who drafted other papers on the Chinese nuclear program during this period. It probably typified the “worst case” scenarios developed by those who believed that a nuclear China would become such a serious threat that it would be necessary to attack Chinese nuclear weapons facilities as a counter-proliferation measure.

Document 5: State Department Telegram No. 2025 to U.S. Embassy Paris, 9 October 1964

Source: U.S. National Archives, Record Group 59, Department of State Records, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1964-1966, file DEF 12-1 Chicom

This document provides one example of Washington’s efforts to get “hard” information on the PRC’s atomic test not long before it occurred on 16 October. In early September, several weeks before the State Department sent this cable, Allen Whiting saw a CIA report on a meeting earlier in the year between Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai and President of Mali Modibo Keita, when Zhou was visiting West Africa. Zhou told Keita that China would be testing an atomic device in October and asked him to give political support to the test when it occurred. Whiting was sure that Zhou’s statement should be taken seriously and on the basis of this and other information he convinced Secretary of State Rusk to announce, on 29 September, that a test would soon occur. (Interview with Whiting). The CIA report is unavailable but this telegram suggests that Zhou’s statement or similar comments by PRC officials to friendly governments may have leaked to the press.

Document 6: “Destruction of Chinese Nuclear Weapons Capabilities”, by G.W. Rathjens, U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, 14 December 1964.

Source: FOIA request to State Department

George Rathjens, the author of this document, was an ACDA official serving on an interagency group, directed by White House staffer Spurgeon Keeny, that assisted the President’s Task Force on the Spread of Nuclear Weapons, better known as the Gilpatric Committee after its chairman, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric. Whether Rathjens prepared it as his own initiative or at the Committee’s request is unclear, but it may have been the latter because the Committee considered the possibility of recommending an attack on Chinese nuclear weapons facilities as part of a program to check nuclear proliferation. In this document, Rathjens summarized Roben Johnson’s still classified study of the costs and benefits of various types of attacks on the Chinese nuclear weapons complex. Apparently one of the possibilities, an “air drop of GRC [Government of the Republic of China] sabotage team” received serious consideration earlier in the year.

Taking a more bullish view of the benefits of attacking Chinese nuclear facilities, Rathjens took issue with Johnson’s conclusion that the “significance of a [Chicom nuclear] capability is not such as to justify the undertaking of actions which would involve great political costs or high military risks.” However confident Rathjens may have been that a successful attack could discourage imitators and check nuclear proliferation, that recommendation did not go into the final report, which has recently been declassified in full.

Before ACDA declassified this document in its entirety, a lightly excised version was available at the Johnson Library. Shane Maddock of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy’s History Department, published the excised version with stimulating commentary in the April 1996 issue of the SHAFR Newsletter.

Document 7: “As Explosive as a Nuclear Weapon”: The Gilpatric Report on Nuclear Proliferation, January 1965

Source: Freedom of Information Act request to State Department

Sections excised from previous releases are outlined in red.

Note: Since the Archive published this document, the Department of State has released Foreign Relations of the United States, Arms Control and Disarmament, 1964-1968, Volume XI, which includes the full text of the Gilpatric Report along with valuable background material.

Here the Archive publishes, for the first time, the complete text of the “Gilpatric Report”, the earliest major U.S. government-sponsored policy review of the spread of nuclear weapons. Largely motivated by concern over the first Chinese atomic test in October 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson asked Wall Street lawyer and former Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric to lead a special task force in investigating, and making policy recommendations on, the spread of nuclear weapons. Owing to his extensive connections in high-level corporate and governmental circles, Gilpatric was able to recruit a group of unusually senior former government officials, including DCI Allen Dulles, U. S. High Commissioner to Germany John J. McCloy, White House Science Adviser George Kistiakowsky, and SACEUR Alfred Gruenther. Johnson announced the formation of the committee on 1 November 1964. The committee completed its report in early 1965 and presented it to President Johnson on 21 January 1965.

The report came at a time when senior Johnson administration officials had important disagreements over nuclear proliferation policy. Johnson and Secretary of State Dean Rusk were already heavily committed to a Multilateral Force [MLF] designed to give the Germans and other European allies the feeling of sharing control over NATO nuclear weapons decisions while diverting them from developing independent nuclear capabilities. This complicated negotiations with Moscow which saw the MLF as incompatible with a nonproliferation treaty; nevertheless, Johnson and Rusk gave the MLF priority on the grounds that it would secure West Germany’s non-nuclear status1. Further, some senior officials thought that nuclear proliferation was inevitable and, among the right countries, potentially desirable. Thus, during a November 1964 meeting, Rusk stated that he was not convinced that “the U.S. should oppose other countries obtaining nuclear weapons.” Not only could he “conceive of situations where the Japanese or the Indians might desirably have their own nuclear weapons”, Rusk asked “should it always be the U.S. which would have to use nuclear weapons against Red China?” Robert McNamara thought otherwise: it was “unlikely that the Indians or the Japanese would ever have a suitable nuclear deterrent2.

The Gilpatric Committee tried to resolve the debate by taking an unhesitatingly strong position against nuclear proliferation, recommending that the United States “greatly intensify” its efforts to halt the spread of nuclear weapons. Besides calling for an international treaty on “non-dissemination and non-acquisition of nuclear weapons”, the report included a range of suggestions for inhibiting proliferation in specific countries in Europe, the Near East, and Asia. The latter generally involved a carrot and stick approach: inducements to discourage independent nuclear programs but a more assertive policy if inducements failed. For example, with respect to Israel, Washington would continue to offer “assurances” against Egyptian-Syrian attack; however, “make clear to Israel that those assurances would be withdrawn if she develops a nuclear weapons capability.” With respect to the MLF controversy, the report questioned Johnson administration policy by suggesting the “urgent exploration of alternatives” to permanently inhibit German nuclear weapons potential.

Spurgeon Keeny, the Committee’s staff director, believes that the report “got to LBJ that the Establishment was really worried about nuclear proliferation and that steps could be taken to do something about it”3. Yet, however Johnson may have thought about the report’s line of argument and recommendations, his immediate response appears to have been skeptical because it challenged the Administration’s emphasis on the MLF as a means to manage the German nuclear problem. Unquestionably, this contributed heavily to his decision to bar circulation of the report except at the cabinet level. Dean Rusk fully agreed, according to Glenn Seaborg’s account of a briefing for Johnson, Rusk opined that the report was “as explosive as a nuclear weapon.” Like Johnson, Rusk worried about leaks; moreover, he opposed the report’s message on Germany as well as other countries that it singled out. Uncontrolled revelations about the report would have quickly complicated U.S. relations with France, Germany, and lsrael, among others4.

One important section of the report, on possible initiatives toward the Soviet Union and their relationship to nonproliferation goals, has been declassified for some time. In it (beginning on p. 16), the Committee called for a verified fissile material cutoff (although production of tritium permitted) and strategic arms control agreements. By recommending a strategic delivery vehicle freeze (misspelled “free” in text), significant reductions in strategic force levels, and a moratorium on ABM and ICBM construction, the report presaged (and went beyond) the SALT I agreement of 1972. Elsewhere (p. 8) the Committee called for U.S. efforts to work with the Soviets in building support for a comprehensive nuclear test ban. For the Committee, U.S.-Soviet cooperation in those areas were essential because they would help create an “atmosphere conducive to wide acceptance of restraints on nuclear proliferation.”

Participants and close observers have offered conflicting analyses of the report’s impact. Some, such as Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Glenn Seaborg, downplay its significance noting that other political developments had more influence on Johnson administration policy. Others, such as Keeny and Raymond Garthoff (who represented the State Department on the Committee’s interagency staff) believe that even if the Gilpatric report did not quickly lead to tangible policy changes, it educated the President as well as its members on the significance of the nuclear proliferation issue. Keeny further argues that the report helped prepare Johnson to give strong support to a nonproliferation treaty in 1966 after the MLF approach to the German nuclear problem had lost momentum5.

No doubt owing to classification problems, the literature on the Gilpatric Committee and the early history of U.S. non- proliferation policy is sparse6. With the report fully declassified and other related information becoming available, it should now be possible for historians and social scientists to assess the Gilpatric Committee’s contribution to Lyndon Johnson’s nuclear proliferation policy. Whatever the Gilpatric report’s immediate impact may have been, the future turned out very differently than its critics anticipated. The slowing of nuclear proliferation has proven to be possible and a major goal of the Gilpatric committee–a nearly universal nonproliferation regime–came to pass. To the extent, however, that important measures supported by the Committee have yet to be acted upon–e.g., a fissile materials production cut off–or ratified, e.g., the CTBT–the report stands in harsh judgement of current international efforts to curb nuclear proliferation.

NOTES

1. For a useful overview of the MLF-NPT interrelationships, see George Bunn, Arms Control By Committee, Managing Negotiations with the Russians (Stanford University Press, 1992), 64-72.
2. Presumably, Rusk thought it better that Asians use nuclear weapons against each other rather than Euro-Americans using them against Asians. Quotations from memorandum of conversation by Herbert Scoville, ACDA, “Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons- Course of Action for UNGA – Discussed by the Committee of Principals”, 23 November 1964, National Archives, Record Group 359, White House Office of Science and Technology, FOIA Release to National Security Archive.
3. Telephone conversation with Spurgeon Keeny, 24 March 1997.
4. Glenn Seaborg with Benjamin S. Loeb, Stemming the Tide: Arms Control in the Johnson Years (Lexington, MA: 1987), 143-145. This is the only generally available account of Johnson’s meeting with the committee. Neither Dean Rusk’s nor Lyndon Johnson’s memoirs mention the report.
5. Seaborg, Stemming the Tide, 148-149, although he provides a dissent from Keeny. Herbert York, Making Weapons, Talking Peace: A Physicists odyssey from Hiroshima to Geneva (New York, 1987), also downplays the report’s significance. Telephone conversation with Keeny, 24 March 1997; conversation with Raymond Garthoff, 28 March 1997. George Bunn, Arms Control by Committee, 75-81, is useful on the negotiations but does not mention the report.
6. George Perkovich’s “India’s Ambiguous Bomb” (forthcoming Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia), explores the impact of the Gilpatric report on Johnson’s policy, among other subjects.

For further reading:

Willis C. Armstrong et al., “The Hazards of Single-Outcome Forecasting,” in H. Bradford Westerfield, Inside ClA ‘s Private World: Declassified Articles from the Agency’s Internal Journal, 1955-1992 (New Haven, 1995), 238-254

Gordon H. Chang, Friends and Enemies: The United States, China, and the Soviet Union, 1948-1972 (Stanford, 1990)

Rosemary Foot, The Practice of Power, U.S. Relations with China Since 1949 (Oxford, 1995)

John Wilson Lewis and Xue Litai, China Builds The Bomb (Stanford, 1988)

Chris Pocock, Dragon Lady: The History of the U-2 Spyplane (Airlife, England, 1989), especially ch. 6, “Parting the Bamboo Curtain”

The Shevardnadze File by The National Security Archive

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Eduard Shevardnadze. (photographer unknown)

 

Compiled and edited by Svetlana Savranskaya and Thomas Blanton

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202/994-7000 or nsarchiv@gwu.edu

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“Masterpieces of History:” The Peaceful End of the Cold War in Europe, 1989
A National Security Archive Cold War Reader
By Svetlana Savranskaya, Thomas Blanton and Vladislav Zubok

Eduard Shevardnadze, Foreign Minister Under Gorbachev, Dies at 86
By Douglas Martin, New York Times, July 7, 2014

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Eduard Shevardnadze (seated second from right, next to George Shultz) listens to conversation between President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev at Geneva, November 20, 1985. (Source: Ronald Reagan Presidential Library)

Washington, DC, July 24, 2014 – Former Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze, who passed away on July 7, brought a new diplomatic style and candor to bear in changing U.S.-Soviet relations in the late 1980s and ending the Cold War, according to Soviet and U.S. declassified documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org).

The posting includes the 1985 Politburo minutes of Shevardnadze’s surprise selection as foreign minister, contrasted with the behind-the-scenes account from senior Central Committee official Anatoly Chernyaev in his diary. The e-book also includes the transcripts of Shevardnadze’s remarkable first conversations with his American counterparts, George Shultz (in the Reagan administration) and James Baker (in the George H.W. Bush administration); other memcons featuring Shevardnadze’s leading role in summit meetings between Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and American presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and Shevardnadze’s last conversation with Bush before the end of the Soviet Union in 1991.


President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze in the Oval Office, September 23, 1988. (photographer unknown)

Shevardnadze’s rise to leadership of the Foreign Ministry in 1985, only months after Gorbachev became general secretary, was a “bolt from the blue,” in Chernyaev’s words. Shevardnadze’s talks with Shultz brought a whole new tone to U.S.-Soviet discourse, while the Soviet minister’s growing friendship with Baker, including 1989’s fly-fishing outing in Wyoming, led to actual partnership between the former Cold War adversaries by the time of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. But the memcons also reflect Shevardnadze’s frustration with American “pauses” and missed opportunities for dramatic arms reductions across the board, and for earlier domestic political transformation in the Soviet Union.

The National Security Archive obtained the Shevardnadze documents through Freedom of Information Act requests to the Reagan and Bush presidential libraries and to the U.S. State Department, and through generous donations from Anatoly Chernyaev. Additional material comes from the files of the Gorbachev Foundation, the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History, and the former Communist Party (SED) archives in Germany.


General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze at a meeting of European leaders, November 21, 1990. (photographer unknown)

Two key aides to Shevardnadze played leading roles in developing the new Soviet foreign policy during the 1980s, and deserve mention for helping scholars afterwards understand the end of the Cold War. Experienced diplomat Sergei Tarasenko had already served in the Soviet embassy in Washington and provided Shevardnadze with expert advice on relations with the U.S., including in most of the U.S.-Soviet meetings transcribed here. Tarasenko also participated in the seminal 1998 Musgrove discussion published in the award-winning book, Masterpieces of History: The Peaceful End of the Cold War in Europe, 1989 (Budapest/New York: Central European University Press, 2010). Teimuraz Stepanov-Mamaladze served as Shevardnadze’s chief of staff, having come with him from Georgia to the Foreign Ministry, and subsequently donated his invaluable diaries and notes of the period to the Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford University.

 

THE DOCUMENTS

DOCUMENT 1: Excerpt of Official Minutes of the Politburo CC CPSU Session, June 29, 1985

Source: Russian State Archive of Contemporary History (RGANI), Fond 89. Translated by Svetlana Savranskaya.

Perhaps the most audacious personnel change made by Gorbachev came very early, only four months into his leadership, when longtime Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko (known to the Americans as “Mr. Nyet”) retired upwards to the job of chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet — the titular head of state— as part of the deal that earlier had featured Gromyko advocating for Gorbachev’s election as general secretary. Gromyko understood that his successor would be his carefully-groomed deputy, Georgi Kornienko — so there was shock-and-awe throughout the Central Committee and the Foreign Ministry when Gorbachev instead proposed as foreign minister the ambitious first secretary of the Georgian Communist Party, Eduard Shevardnadze. During the Politburo session on June 29, 1985, Gorbachev stepped down from his position as chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, which he held together with his position as general secretary (Leonid Brezhnev had merged the two jobs in 1977). By kicking Gromyko upstairs, Gorbachev opened a key position-Minister of Foreign Affairs — where he wanted to place his close ally, whom he already knew shared his reformist thinking on both international and domestic policy. This official record of the Politburo session shows Gorbachev nominating Shevardnadze, ostensibly after discussing several alternative candidates with Gromyko and jointly coming to the conclusion that Shevardnadze was the best choice. All Politburo members express their full support for Gorbachev’s candidate— testament to the power of the general secretary.

 


Secretary of State James Baker and Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze fly-fishing in Wyoming, September 24, 1989. (photographer unknown)

DOCUMENT 2: Diary of Anatoly Chernyaev, July 1, 1985

Source: Diary of Anatoly S Chernyaev, donated to the National Security Archive.

Translated by Anna Melyakova.

Anatoly Chernyaev, who at the time was first deputy head of the International Department of the Central Committee (CC CPSU), describes in his diary the nominations of Gromyko and Shevardnadze as they were announced at the CC CPSU Plenum. The Plenum had to approve the nominations that the Supreme Soviet would confirm the next day. Shevardnadze’s nomination was like a “bolt from the blue,” Chernyaev writes. The diary relates how Boris Ponomarev, head of the International Department, told Chernyaev what had actually happened at the Politburo, an account that differs substantially from the official minutes (see Document 1). According to Ponomarev, the Shevardnadze nomination was a total surprise to other Politburo members, and Gromyko and Ponomarev tried to protest by suggesting career diplomat Yuli Vorontsov as a candidate, but Gorbachev disregarded their protest completely. Chernyaev concludes that Gorbachev’s nomination of Shevardnadze is “very indicative of the end of Gromyko’s monopoly and the power of the MFA’s staff over foreign policy.”

 

DOCUMENT 3: Record of Conversation between George Shultz and Eduard Shevardnadze in Helsinki, July 31, 1985

Source: Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Department of State.

This U.S. State Department memcon records the meeting with the U.S. secretary of state during Shevardnadze’s first foreign trip in office — to Helsinki for a meeting of CSCE foreign ministers on the tenth anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act. In this first meeting with George Shultz, the Soviet foreign minister mainly reads from his notes, giving the American a tour d’horizon of the Soviet positions on arms control. However, his tone is strikingly different from previous meetings when Andrei Gromyko had represented the Soviet side. Even on questions of human rights, Shevardnadze reacts not with “indignation or rage” (as Shultz comments in his memoirs) but asks Shultz jokingly, “When I come to the United States, should I talk about unemployment and blacks?” In the second part of the conversation, where Shultz and Shevardnadze are accompanied only by translators, Shevardnadze urges his counterpart to move fast on arms control, indicating that the Soviets are willing to reassess their positions — “there is no time now to postpone solutions.” He ends the conversation with the statement: “you have experience but we have the truth,” a remark that would win him some positive points from the Politburo.

 

DOCUMENT 4: Minutes of Politburo discussion of Shultz-Shevardnadze talks in Vienna, November 13, 1986

Source: Archive of the Gorbachev Foundation. Translated by Svetlana Savranskaya.

Shevardnadze was an active participant at the historic summit between Gorbachev and Reagan in Reykjavik in October 1986, where the two leaders almost agreed to abolish nuclear weapons. Just after the summit, the Soviets, trying to build on the momentum of Reykjavik, tried to offer the U.S. side concessions on laboratory testing for the missile defense program so close to Reagan’s heart – a change in position that might have made a difference at Reykjavik. But it was too late. Enmeshed in the growing Iran-contra scandal and under attack from allies like Margaret Thatcher for nuclear heresy, the Reagan administration had already retreated from the Reykjavik positions. Here the Politburo reviews the results of the November Shevardnadze-Shultz talks in Geneva, where Shultz refused even to discuss Shevardnadze’s new proposals concerning what testing would be allowed and not allowed under the ABM treaty. Shultz’s position notwithstanding, Gorbachev emphasizes the need to press the U.S. to move forward on the basis of Reykjavik. He stresses that “we have not yet truly understood what Reykjavik means,” referring to its significance as a new level of disarmament dialogue and reduction of the sense of nuclear threat.

 

DOCUMENT 5: Record of Shultz-Shevardnadze Conversation in Moscow, April 21, 1988

Source: FOIA request to the Department of State.

This State Department memorandum of conversation records the third set of negotiations between the U.S. secretary of state and the Soviet foreign minister leading up to the 1988 Moscow summit (February in Moscow, March in Washington, now April back in Moscow). Shevardnadze presses for progress on the START treaty aimed at reducing nuclear weapons, but Shultz responds that still-unresolved issues like sea-launched cruise missiles (SLCMs) would not “reach full closure during the next month,” so agreement would be unlikely for the summit. Arguments over these nuclear-armed cruise missiles would hold up START negotiations for years, pushed by the parochial interests of the U.S. Navy rather than a consideration of the national interest, but by 1991 their lack of strategic value would lead to President George H. W. Bush’s unilateral decision to withdraw all tactical nuclear weapons from U.S. ships.

The bulk of the discussion here concerns human rights issues, including an interesting exchange about the Vienna follow-up meeting on the Helsinki Final Act. Shultz raises his “disappointment with the performance of the Soviet delegation” at Vienna, which “was not prepared to go as far in its statements as what the Soviet leadership was saying in Moscow.” Shevardnadze responds, “We have a hard delegation” in Vienna; we tell them one thing, “They do something different.”

 

DOCUMENT 6: Minutes of the Politburo discussion of Mikhail Gorbachev’s United Nations speech, December 27-28, 1988

Source: RGANI. Published in “Istochnik” 5-6, 1993. Translated by Vladislav Zubok.

The December 27-28 Politburo meeting was the first following Gorbachev’s return from the United States after his historic announcement at the United Nations of massive unilateral Soviet withdrawals of forces from Eastern Europe. Observers in the United States ranging from Sen. Daniel Moynihan to Gen. Andrew Goodpaster hailed the speech as marking the end of the Cold War; but incoming Bush administration “hawks” such as Brent Scowcroft did not agree (as Gorbachev would only find out later, with the 1989 “pause”). Part of the context here in the Politburo for Gorbachev’s lengthy monologues and Shevardnadze’s proposals for a “businesslike” withdrawal of Soviet troops from Eastern Europe is the growing bewilderment of certain military and KGB leaders who were not fully informed in advance about the scale and tempo of Gorbachev’s announced unilateral arms cuts.

Still, there is no trace of real opposition to the new course. The Soviet party leader has learned a lesson from the military’s lack of a strong reaction to previous discussions of “sufficiency” as a national security strategy, and he is now ramming change down their throats. Ever obedient, Defense Minister Dmitri Yazov states, “everyone reacted with understanding,” even after Shevardnadze’s aggressive attacks against the military for retrograde thinking, for directly contradicting the U.N. speech, and for proposing only “admissible” openness rather than true glasnost. Ironically, however, when Shevardnadze and Ligachev suggest announcing the size of Soviet reductions “publicly,” it is Gorbachev who objects: if the Soviet people and party learn how huge Soviet defense expenditures really are, it will undermine the propaganda effect of his U.N. speech.

 

DOCUMENT 7: Record of Conversation between Erich Honecker and Eduard Shevardnadze, June 9, 1989

Source: Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR-Bundesarchiv, SED, ZK, JIV2/2A/3225. Translated by Christiaan Hetzner.

This is one of many documents that became available in the Communist party archives of the former East Germany (GDR) after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the unification of Germany. Less than a week after Solidarity had swept the Polish elections, to the dismay of the Polish Communists, the hard-line GDR leader Erick Honecker is rapidly becoming a dinosaur on the verge of extinction. At this moment in mid-1989, only Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania surpasses Honecker in his resistance to Gorbachev’s perestroika and the new thinking in Moscow represented in this meeting by Shevardnadze. Honecker has even banned some of the new Soviet publications from distribution in the GDR. The conversation reveals Honecker’s deep ideological concerns, and his understanding of the geostrategic realities in Central Europe. He reminds Shevardnadze that “socialism cannot be lost in Poland” because through Poland run the communications lines between the Soviet Union and the Soviet troops in the GDR facing NATO’s divisions.

This same consideration led Honecker and his predecessor, Walter Ulbricht, to urge Soviet military intervention to suppress previous East European uprisings such as the Prague Spring in 1968 or the strikes in Poland in 1980-1981. But here Honecker is most dismayed by Gorbachev’s upcoming trip to West Germany (FRG), which threatens Honecker’s own political “balancing act,” which in turn depends on poor relations between the Soviets and the West Germans. Shevardnadze has an impossible mission here, to assuage the East German leader’s concerns about all the changes taking place in Poland, Hungary and inside the Soviet Union. Shevardnadze’s opening words — “our friends in the GDR need not worry” — sound more than ironic today. In fact, Shevardnadze does not believe in Honecker’s concept of East German “socialism,” and in only a few months, the Moscow leadership would signal to Honecker’s colleagues it was time for him to go.

 

DOCUMENT 8: Memorandum of Conversation between George Bush and Eduard Shevardnadze in Washington, September 21, 1989

Source: FOIA request to the George H.W. Bush presidential library.

This meeting in Washington marks the start of Shevardnadze’s trip to the United States that will culminate with his fly-fishing expeditions with James Baker in Wyoming, where the two men established a close personal connection. This was also Shevardnadze’s first meeting with George H.W. Bush as president of the United States. He tells Bush about the progress of domestic perestroika and democratization in the Soviet Union, the work on economic reform, and the new tenor of U.S.-Soviet relations. However, Shevardnadze laments that the desired progress toward a 50% reduction in strategic nuclear weapons is not on the horizon, and he urges his U.S. counterparts to pick up the pace. He also enumerates other Soviet arms control proposals, including banning fissionable materials and eliminating short-range nuclear weapons.

 

DOCUMENT 9: Memorandum of Conversation between George Bush and Eduard Shevardnadze in Washington, April 6, 1990

Source: FOIA request to the George H.W. Bush presidential library.

Shevardnadze is in Washington for this meeting, working out arrangements for the long-planned summit meeting between Bush and Gorbachev that will take place at the end of May. The Lithuania crisis has created a rift in U.S.-Soviet relations, “lost momentum” in Bush’s phrase, as the independence demands of Lithuanian nationalists build on the long-standing American position of non-recognition of Soviet incorporation of the Baltics, as well as domestic U.S. political pressures from émigré groups. Gorbachev’s own lack of understanding for Baltic nationalism has produced an inconsistent Soviet policy alternating between crackdowns, threats of an embargo, and attempts at dialogue. Shevardnadze tries to explain to the Americans why the Soviets needed “Presidential authority” to deal with the problems between ethnic groups in Lithuania, not to mention Soviet claims to ownership of the factories there. But when Bush says the Soviets have backtracked on arms control agreements (such as how to count air-launched cruise missiles, or ACLMs), Shevardnadze is quick to point out how the Americans have reneged on their on-site inspection pledges.

Perhaps most remarkably, Shevardnadze describes the Soviet argument for a nuclear test ban as based on domestic political pressures from mass demonstrations (such as in Kazakhstan against the Semipalatinsk test range). The Soviet foreign minister also makes a plea for partnership in international financial institutions such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, saying the Soviets are “not looking for your help.” This would change within a year. On the American side, the conversation reveals a clear expression of Bush’s vision when he reports he is often asked, “Who is the enemy?” Bush’s answer: “unpredictability.” And perhaps it is just diplo-speak, but it is all the same music to Shevardnadze’s ears, when the American president combines his own “Europe whole and free” phrase with Gorbachev’s “common European home” and remarks that the latter idea is “very close to our own.”

 

DOCUMENT 10: Memorandum of Conversation between George Bush and Eduard Shevardnadze in Washington, May 6, 1991

Source: FOIA request to the George H.W. Bush presidential library.

This is Shevardnadze’s last meeting with President Bush, and he appears only in his unofficial capacity as president of the Moscow-based Foreign Policy Association. Shevardnadze resigned as foreign minister in December 1990, warning against the coming dictatorship, and protesting Gorbachev’s turn toward the hard-liners. But here Shevardnadze comes to Washington asking for support for the embattled reform still underway in the Soviet Union. He describes the dismal situation in his country, pointing specifically to economic instability, the nationalities crisis, and the rising conservative opposition. He regrets delays on every important issue, especially the Union treaty that would precipitate the hard-line coup in August 1991: “if we had offered this treaty in 1987 or even 1988, all would have signed it.” But most of all, the former foreign minister is “concerned, indeed frightened, by the pause in our relations.” He urges Bush not to delay the planned Moscow summit (it would ultimately happen at the very end of July) and to keep engaging with Gorbachev. In effect, progress in U.S.-Soviet relations has become the only strong card Gorbachev has left to play in the context of his domestic crises.

Bush and Shevardnadze talk about Gorbachev’s relationship with Russian leader Boris Yeltsin and wonder why they cannot find a way to work together. Shevardnadze appeals to Bush to move fast on reductions in conventional forces (CFE) and in nuclear weapons (START) because “demilitarization is the best way to help the Soviet Union.” For Bush, however, completing these two treaties remains a precondition for even holding the 1991 summit. Shevardnadze’s plea for farm credits is especially poignant; a year earlier, he sought economic partnership, but now he says, “We must let people [in the Soviet Union] feel something tangible. I know it is hard, but if it is possible, give the credits.” Prophetically, Shevardnadze remarks, “Even if we can’t maintain a single Soviet Union, reform will continue.”

The National Security Archive – NSA Retaining “Useless” and Highly Personal Information of Ordinary Internet Users, Spying …

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Snowden did get the FISA data, contrary to Keith Alexander's insistence to the contrary. Photo: EPA

Ordinary internet activity accounts for the overwhelming majority of communications collected and maintained by the National Security Agency (NSA). A recent report by The Washington Post, based on communications leaked by former contractor Edward Snowden, revealed that nine out of 10 communications collected belonged to average American and non-American internet users who were not the targets of investigations. Much of the highly personal communications –including baby pictures and revealing webcam photos– provide little intelligence value and are described as useless, yet are retained under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments. The Post’s findings clearly contradict former NSA head Keith Alexander’s assertions that there was no way Snowden could “touch the FISA data,” and give credence to the argument that “the NSA has been proven incapable of safeguarding” the intelligence it collects, irrespective of its value.

In one 2005 document, intelligence community personnel are instructed how to properly format internal memos to justify FISA surveillance. In the place where the target’s real name would go, the memo offers a fake name as a placeholder: “Mohammed Raghead.”

Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain’s latest Intercept expose reveals that the NSA, along with the FBI, covertly monitors the communications of prominent, upstanding Muslim-Americans under provisions of the FISA intended to target terrorists and foreign spies, ostensibly solely because of their religion. The FISA provision that seemingly codifies the surveillance requires that “the Justice Department must convince a judge with the top-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that there is probable cause to believe that American targets are not only agents of an international terrorist organization or other foreign power, but also ‘are or may be’ engaged in or abetting espionage, sabotage, or terrorism.” In practice, however, the agencies monitored the emails of Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil rights organization in the country, Asim Ghafoor, a prominent attorney who has represented clients in terrorism-related cases, and other civically inclined American Muslims.

Why did the CIA take a chance on a BND employee naive enough to volunteer to spy for Russia via email?

White House officials are questioning why President Obama was left in the dark about the CIA’s German intelligence informant and his recent arrest, a somewhat baffling omission in the wake of revelations the NSA monitored the private communications of Chancellor Merkel and the resulting state of US-German relations. “A central question, one American official said, is how high the information about the agent went in the C.I.A.’s command — whether it was bottled up at the level of the station chief in Berlin or transmitted to senior officials, including the director, John O. Brennan, who is responsible for briefing the White House.” Of further interest is why the CIA made use of the German intelligence official in the first place, who not only walked into the agency’s Berlin office in 2012 and offered to spy, but also volunteered his spying services to Russia via email.

The internal affairs division of Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) is being investigated again, this time for mishandling the personal information of the agency’s 60,000 employees. Under investigation are defunct CBP programs that shared employees’ Social Security numbers with the FBI and that “automatically scanned the Social Security numbers of all the agency’s employees in a Treasury Department financial records database.” Both programs were part of the agency’s response to the Obama administration’s Insider Threat initiative.

Cause of Action’s latest “FOIA Follies” provides some insight on what qualifies for a (b)(5) “withhold because you want to” FOIA exemption at the IRS, and reinforces Archive FOIA Coordinator Nate Jones’ arguments of how the FOIA Improvement Act of 2014 would address this overused exemption and help ordinary requesters. Cause of Action submitted a FOIA request to the IRS seeking records related to any requests from the President for individual or business tax returns in 2012, after which the IRS released 790 heavily redacted pages. Cause of Action filed suit in 2013 challenging the IRS’ use of exemption (b)(5) to withhold large portions of the records, prompting the IRS to “reconsider” some of its withholdings. The newly-released portions of documents reveal the agency was using the (b)(5) exemption to withhold mundane information contrary to Attorney General Holder’s 2009 guidance that “an agency should not withhold information simply because it may do so legally.”

"Allegations of Torture in Brazil."

The Brazilian military regime employed a “sophisticated and elaborate psychophysical duress system” to “intimidate and terrify” suspected leftist militants in the early 1970s, according to a State Department report dated in April 1973 and made public last week. Peter Kornbluh, who directs the National Security Archive’s Brazil Documentation Project, called the document “one of the most detailed reports on torture techniques ever declassified by the U.S. government.” This document, and 42 others, were given to Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff by Vice President Joe Biden and were made available for use by the Brazilian Truth Commission, which is in the final phase of a two-year investigation of human rights atrocities during the military dictatorship which lasted from 1964 to 1985.

The Pentagon and the Justice Department are going after the money made by former Navy Seal Matt Bissonnette from his book on the raid to capture Osama bin Laden, No Easy Day, for failing to submit the book for pre-publication review to avoid disclosing any top secret information about the raid. It’s worth noting that while the government goes after Bissonnette for releasing his book without pre-publication review, both the CIA and DOD provided unprecedented access to Hollywood filmmakers Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal for their bin Laden raid blockbuster, Zero Dark Thirty, while simultaneously refusing to release the same information to FOIA requesters

A partially redacted 29-page report recently found low morale at the US government’s Office of Cuba Broadcasting, which is responsible for Radio and TV Marti. “Some of the reasons cited for low morale included the lack of transparency in decision-making, the inability to offer suggestions, and the lack of effective communication. Others were concerned about raising any issues to the inspection team because of fear of retaliation by management.”

 

Inside the biological weapons factory at Stepnogorsk, Kazakhstan, where the Soviet Union was prepared to make tons of anthrax if the orders came from Moscow [Photo courtesy Andy Weber]

Finally this week, our #tbt document picks concern Eduard Shevardnadze, the ex-Georgian president and Soviet foreign minster who recently died at the age of 86. The documents themselves comes from a 2010 Archive posting on high-level Soviet officials debates during the final years of the Cold War about covering-up the illicit Soviet biological weapons program in the face of protests from the United States and Great Britain. The documents show that Eduard Shevardnadze, along with defense minister Dmitri Yazov, and the Politburo member overseeing the military-industrial complex, Lev Zaikov, were aware of the concealment and were actively involved in discussing it in the years when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was advancing his glasnost reforms and attempting to slow the nuclear arms race. Check out the documents here.

Happy FOIA-ing!

The National Security Archive – U.S. Satellite Imagery

The use of overhead platforms to observe events on the earth can be traced to the French Revolution, when France organized a company of aerostiers, or balloonists, in April 1794. The United States employed balloons during the Civil War, although little intelligence of value was obtained. In January 1911, the San Diego waterfront became the first target of cameras carried aboard an airplane. Later that year the U.S. Army Signal Corps put aerial photography into the curriculum at its flight training school. Between 1913 and 1915 visual and photographic reconnaissance missions were flown by the U.S. Army in the Philippines and along the Mexican border.1

During World War II the United States made extensive use of airplane photography using remodeled bombers. After the war, with the emergence of a hostile relationship with the Soviet Union, the United States began conducting photographic missions along the Soviet periphery. The aircraft cameras, however, could only capture images of territory within a few miles of the flight path.

On some missions aircraft actually flew into Soviet airspace, but even those missions did not provide the necessary coverage of the vast Soviet interior. As a result, beginning in the early 1950s the United States began seriously exploring more advanced methods for obtaining images of targets throughout the Soviet Union. The result was the development, production, and employment of a variety of spacecraft and aircraft (particularly the U-2 and A-12/SR-71) that permitted the U.S. intelligence community to closely monitor developments in the Soviet Union and other nations through overhead imagery.

The capabilities of spacecraft and aircraft have evolved from being limited to black-and-white visible-light photography to being able to produce images using different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. As a result, imagery can often be obtained under circumstances (darkness, cloud cover) where standard visible-light photography is not feasible. In addition, employment of different portions of the electromagnetic spectrum, individually or simultaneously, expands the information that can be produced concerning a target.

Photographic equipment can be film-based or electro-optical. A conventional camera captures a scene on film by recording the varying light levels reflected from all of the separate objects in the scene. In contrast, an electro-optical camera converts the varying light levels into electrical signals. A numerical value is assigned to each of the signals, which are called picture elements, or pixels. At a ground receiving station, a picture can then be constructed from the digital signal transmitted from the spacecraft (often via a relay satellite).2

In addition to the visible-light portion of the electro-magnetic spectrum, the near-infrared portion of the spectrum, which is invisible to the human eye, can be employed to produce images. At the same time, near-infrared, like, visible-light imagery, depends on objects reflecting solar radiation rather than on their emission of radiation. As a result, such imagery can only be produced in daylight and in the absence of substantial cloud cover.3

Thermal infrared imagery, obtained from the mid- and far-infrared portions of the electromagnetic spectrum, provides imagery purely by detecting the heat emitted by objects. Thus, a thermal infrared system can detect buried structures, such as missile silos or underground construction, as a result of the heat they generate. Since thermal infrared imagery does not require visible light, it can be obtained under conditions of darkness–if the sky is free of cloud cover.4

Imagery can be obtained during day or night in the presence of cloud cover by employing an imaging radar (an acronym for radio detection and ranging). Radar imagery is produced by bouncing radio waves off an area or an object and using the reflected returns to produce an image of the target. Since radio waves are not attenuated by the water vapor in the atmosphere, they are able to penetrate cloud cover.5

However imagery is obtained, it requires processing and interpretation to convert it into intelligence data. Computers can be employed to improve the quantity and quality of the information extracted. Obviously, digital electro-optical imagery arrives in a form that facilitates such operations. But even analog imagery obtained by a conventional camera can be converted into digital signals. In any case, a computer disassembles a picture into millions of electronic Morse code pulses and then uses mathematical formulas to manipulate the color contrast and intensity of each spot. Each image can be reassembled in various ways to highlight special features and objects that were hidden in the original image.6

Such processing allows:

  • building multicolored single images out of several pictures taken in different bands of the spectrum;
  • making the patterns more obvious;
  • restoring the shapes of objects by adjusting for the angle of view and lens distortion;
  • changing the amount of contrast between objects and backgrounds;
  • sharpening out-of-focus images;
  • restoring ground details largely obscured by clouds;
  • conducting electronic optical subtraction, in which earlier pictures are subtracted from later ones, making unchanged buildings in a scene disappear while new objects, such as missile silos under construction, remain;
  • enhancing shadows; and
  • suppressing glint.7

Such processing plays a crucial role in easing the burden on photogrammetrists and imagery interpreters. Photogrammetrists are responsible for determining the size and dimensions of objects from overhead photographs, using, along with other data, the shadows cast by the objects. Photo interpreters are trained to provide information about the nature of the objects in the photographs–based on information as to what type of crates carry MiG-29s, for instance, or what an IRBM site or fiber optics factory looks like from 150 miles in space.

Click on any of the following images to view a larger version of the photo.

CORONA, ARGON, and LANYARD

In its May 2, 1946 report, Preliminary Design for an Experimental World Circling Spaceship, the Douglas Aircraft Corporation examined the potential value of satellites for scientific and military purposes. Possible military uses included missile guidance, weapons delivery, weather reconnaissance, communications, attack assessment, and “observation.”8

A little less than nine years later, on March 16, 1955, the Air Force issued General Operational Requirement No. 80, officially establishing a high-level requirement for an advanced reconnaissance satellite. The document defined the Air Force objective to be the provision of continuous surveillance of “preselected areas of the earth” in order “to determine the status of a potential enemy’s warmaking capability.”9

Over the next five years the U.S. reconnaissance satellite program evolved in a variety of ways. The success of the Soviet Union’s Sputnik I and II satellites in the fall of 1957 provided a spur to all U.S. space programs – as any success could be used in the propaganda war with the Soviet Union. In the case of U.S. reconnaissance programs, Sputnik provided a second incentive. The clear implications of the Sputnik launches for Soviet ICBM development increased the pressure on discovering the extent of Soviet capabilities – something that the sporadic U-2 flights could only do in a limited fashion.10

The Air Force program was first designated the Advanced Reconnaissance System (ARS), then SENTRY, and finally SAMOS. Management responsibility for SAMOS was transferred from the Air Force to the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), established on February 7, 1958, and then back to the Air Force in late 1959.11

Concern about the the length of time it would take to achieve the primary objective of the SAMOS program – a satellite that could scan its exposed film and return the imagery electronically – led to President Dwight Eisenhower’s approval, also on February 7, 1958, of a CIA program to develop a reconnaissance satellite. The CIA program, designated CORONA, focused on development of a satellite that would physically return its images in a canister – an objective which had been a subsidiary portion of the SAMOS program.12

While all the various versions of the SAMOS program would be canceled in the early 1960s, CORONA would become a mainstay of the U.S. space reconnaissance program for over a decade. It would take over a year, starting in 1959, and 14 launches before an operational CORONA spacecraft was placed in orbit. Nine of the first twelve launches carried a camera that was intended to photograph areas of the Soviet Union and other nations. All the flights ended in failure for one reason or another. The thirteenth mission, a diagnostic flight without camera equipment, was the first success – in that a canister was returned from space and recovered at sea.13

Then on August 18, a CORONA was placed into orbit, orbited  the Earth for a day, and returned its canister to earth, where it was snatched out the air by a specially equipped aircraft on August 19. The camera carried on that flight would be retroactively designated the KH-1 (KH for KEYHOLE) and was cable of producing images with resolution in the area of 25-40 feet – a far cry from what would be standard in only a few years. It did yield, however, more images of the Soviet Union in its single day of operation than did the entire U-2 program.14

The next successful CORONA mission would be conducted on December 7, 1960. This time a more advanced camera system, the KH-2, would be on board. From that time, through the end of the CORONA program in 1972, there would be a succession of new camera systems – the KH-3, KH-4, KH-4A, and KH-4B – which produced higher-resolution images than their predecessors, ultimately resulting in a system that could yield images with approximately 5-6′ resolution. In addition, two smaller programs – ARGON (for mapping) and LANYARD (motivated by a specific target in the Soviet Union) – operated during the years 1962-1964 and 1963 respectively. All together there were 145 missions, which yielded over 800,000 images of the Soviet Union and other areas of the world.15

Those images dramatically improved U.S. knowledge of Soviet and other nations capabilities and activities. Perhaps its major accomplishment occurred within 18 months of the first successful CORONA mission. Accumulated photography allowed the U.S. intelligence community to dispel the fear of missile gap, with earlier estimates of a Soviet ICBM force numbering in the hundreds by mid-1962 becoming, in September 1961, an estimate of between 25 and 50. By June 1964 CORONA satellites had photographed all 25 Soviet ICBM complexes. CORONA imagery also allowed the U.S. to catalog Soviet air defense and anti-ballistic missile sites, nuclear weapons related facilities, submarine bases, IRBM sites, airbases – as well as Chinese, East European, and other nations military facilities. It also allowed assessment of military conflicts – such as the 1967 Six-Day War – and monitoring of Soviet arms control compliance.16

In February 1995, President Clinton signed an executive order that declassified those images. 17


[Source: CIA/National Reconnaissance Office]

A KH-4A image of Dolon airfield, which was a major Soviet  long-range aviation facility located in what is now the  Republic of Kazakhstan. The image shows two regiments of  Tupolev (Tu-16) Bear bombers. The main runway is 13,200 feet  long.

The KH-4A camera system was first introduced in August 1963. Resolution ranged from 9 to 25 feet.

[Source: CIA/National Reconnaissance Office]

A KH-4B image of the Moscow, with an insert of the Kremlin. In the enlargement of the Kremlin, individual vehicles can be identified as trucks or cars, and the line of people waiting to enter Lenin’s Tomb in Red Square can be seen. According to the CIA, the photograph “illustrates some of the best resolution imagery acquired by the KH-4B  camera system.”

The KH-4B was first introduced in September 1967 and generally produced images with 6 foot resolution.

[Source: CIA/National Reconnaissance Office via Federation of American Scientists]

A KH-4B of image, taken on February 11, 1969 of a Taiwanese nuclear facility. The United States intelligence community, relying on CORONA and other forms of intelligence, has closely monitored the nuclear facilities of both adversaries such as the Soviet Union and the PRC and those of friendly nations such as Taiwan and Israel.

The Next Generations

The primary objective of the CORONA program was to provide “area surveillance” coverage of the Soviet Union, China and other parts of the world. Thus, CORONA yielded single photographs which  covered thousands of square miles of territory – allowing analysts to both examine images of known targets and to search for previously undetected installations or activities that would be of interest to the U.S. intelligence community.

The GAMBIT program provided an important complement to CORONA. Initiated in 1960, it yielded the first “close-look” or “spotting” satellite. The emphasis of GAMBIT operations, which commenced in 1963 and continued through part of 1984, was to produce high-resolution imagery on specific targets (rather than general areas). Such resolution would allow the production of more detailed intelligence, particularly technical intelligence on foreign weapons systems. The first GAMBIT camera, the KH-7, could produce photos with about 18 inch resolution, while the second and last model, the KH-8 was capable of producing photographs with under 6 inch resolution.18

While the Air Force concentrated on the high-resolution systems, the CIA (after numerous bureaucratic battles) was assigned responsibility for the next generation area surveillance program. That program, which came to be designated HEXAGON, resulted in satellites carrying the KH-9 camera system – capable of producing images covering even more territory than the CORONA satellites, with a resolution of 1-2 feet. Eighteen HEXAGON satellites would be launched into orbit between 1971 and 1984, when the program terminated.19

In late 1976, a new capability was added when the satellite carrying the KH-11 optical system was placed into orbit. Unlike its predecessors, the KH-11, also known by the program code names KENNAN and CRYSTAL, did not return film canisters to be recovered and interpreted. Rather, the light captured by its optical system was transformed into electronic signals and relayed (through a relay satellite in a higher orbit) back to a ground station, where the signals were recorded on tape and converted into an image. As a result, the U.S. could obtain satellite images of a site or activity virtually simultaneously with a satellite passing overhead.20

The 1980s saw a number of inadvertent or unauthorized disclosures of U.S. satellite imagery. In 1980, as a result of the fiasco at Desert One, where U.S. forces landed in preparation for an attempt to rescue U.S. hostages held in Iran, KH-11 imagery of possible evacuation sites in Tehran was left behind. In 1981, Aviation Week & Space Technology published a leaked (and degraded) KH-11 photo of a Soviet bomber at Ramenskoye Airfield.

In 1984, two images of Soviet aircraft, taken by a KH-8 or KH-9 satellite, were inadvertently published in Congressional hearings. That same year, an employee of the Naval Intelligence Support Center provided Jane’s Defence Weekly with several images taken by a KH-11 satellite of a Soviet naval shipbuilding facility.21


[KH-11 Photograph]

This 1984 computer enhanced KH-11 photo, taken at an  oblique angle was leaked, along with two others, to Jane’s  Defence Weekly by naval intelligence analyst, Samuel Loring  Morison. The image shows the general layout of the Nikolaiev  444 shipyard in the Black Sea. Under construction is a Kiev- class aircraft carrier (shown in the left side of the photo),  then known as the Kharkov, along with an amphibious landing  ship.
Morison was brought to trial, convicted, and sent to prison in a controversial case.

[MiG-29] [SU-27]

These satellite photographs, showing a MiG-29 FULCRUM and SU- 27 FLANKER, were shown to the House Appropriations Committee during 1984 budget hearings. They were then published,  apparently by mistake, in the sanitized version of the  hearings released to the public. During the 1985 trial of  Samuel Loring Morison, government prosecutors would  acknowledge the photographs were satellite images, produced by  a system other than the KH-11.

Current Systems

The United States is presently operating at least two satellite imaging systems. One is an advanced version of the KH-11, three of which have been launched, the first in 1992.

The advanced KH-11 satellites have a higher orbit than that exhibited by their predecessors–operating with perigees of about 150 miles and apogees of about 600 miles. In addition, they also have some additional capabilities. They contain an infrared imagery capability, including a thermal infrared imagery capability, thus permitting imagery during darkness. In addition, the satellites carry the Improved CRYSTAL Metric System (ICMS), which places the necessary markings on returned imagery to permit its full exploitation for mapping purposes. Additionally, the Advanced KH-11 can carry more fuel than the original model, perhaps 10,000 to 15,000 pounds. This permits a longer lifetime for the new model–possibly up to eight years.22

A second component of the U.S. space imaging fleet, are satellites developed and deployed under a program first known as INDIGO, then as LACROSSE, and most recently as VEGA. Rather than employing an electro-optical system they carry an imaging radar.  The satellites closed a major gap in U.S. capabilities by allowing the U.S. intelligence community to obtain imagery even when targets are covered by clouds.23

The first VEGA was launched on December 2, 1988 from the space shuttle orbiter Atlantis (and deorbited in July 1997). A second was orbited in March 1991, from Vandenberg AFB on a Titan IV, and a third in October 1997. The satellites have operated in orbits of approximately 400 miles and at inclinations of 57 and 68 degrees respectively.24

When conceived, the primary purpose envisioned for the satellite was monitoring Soviet and Warsaw Pact armor. Recent VEGA missions included providing imagery for bomb damage assessments of the consequences of Navy Tomahawk missile attacks on Iraqi air defense installations in September 1996, monitoring Iraqi weapons storage sites, and tracking Iraqi troop movements such as the dispersal of the Republican Guard when the Guard was threatened with U.S. attack in early 1998. VEGA has a resolution of 3-5 feet, with its resolution reportedly being sufficient to allow discrimination between tanks and armored personnel carriers and identification of bomb craters of 6-10 feet in diameter.25

The LACROSSE/VEGA satellite that was launched in October 1997 may be the first of a new generation of radar imagery satellites. The new generation will apparently have greater resolution, and constellation size may be increased from 2 to 3.26

[Source: Dept. of Defense]

An advanced KH-11 photograph of the Shifa Pharmaceutical Plant, Sudan. This degraded photo, of approximately 1-meter resolution, was officially released after the U.S. attack on the plant in August 1998 in retaliation for attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa. The U.S. alleged, at least partially on the basis of soil samples, that the plant was involved in the production of chemical weapons.


[Source: Dept. of Defense]

A degraded advanced KH-11 photograph of the Zhawar Kili Base Camp (West), Afghanistan, which housed training facilities for Osama Bin Laden’s terrorist organization.

The photograph was used by Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen and General Henry H. Shelton, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to brief reporters on the U.S. cruise missile attack on the facility.


[Source: Dept. of Defense]

One of over twenty degraded advanced KH-11 photos,  released by the Department of Defense in December 1998 during Operation Desert Fox. The higher resolution, and classified, version of the image was used by imagery interpreters at the National Imagery and Mapping Agency to assess the damage caused by U.S. airstrikes.


[Source: Dept. of Defense]

A degraded advanced KH-11 photo of Al Sahra Airfield, Iraq, used by Vice Adm. Scott A. Fry, USN, Director, J-3 and Rear Admiral Thomas R. Wilson, USN, Joint Staff intelligence director in a Pentagon press briefing on December 18, 1998.


[Source: Dept. of Defense]

The arrows in this degraded advanced KH-11 image, used in a Pentagon press briefing on December 19, 1998, show two areas where the Secretariat Presidential was damaged due to Operation Desert Fox airstrikes.


[Source: Dept. of Defense]

Pre-strike assessment photograph of the Belgrade Army Garrison and headquarters, Serbia.


[Source: Dept. of Defense]

Post-strike damage assessment photograph of the Belgrade Army Garrison and Headquarters, Serbia, attacked during Operation Allied Force.

Commercial Imagery

The U.S. intelligence community has also used imagery, including multispectral imagery, produced by two commercial systems –LANDSAT and SPOT. The LANDSAT program began in 1969 as an experimental National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) program, the Earth Resources Technology Satellite (ERTS).  Currently there are two operating LANDSAT satellites–LANDSAT 4 and LANDSAT 5–launched in 1982 and 1984.27

LANDSATs 4 and 5 operate in 420 mile sun-synchronous orbits and each carries a Thematic Mapper (TM), an upgraded version of the Multispectral Scanner (MSS) on earlier LANDSATs. A typical LANDSAT images is 111 by 102 miles, providing significant broad area coverage. However, the resolution of the images is approximately 98 feet–making them useful for only the coarsest intelligence tasks.

SPOT, an acronym for Le Systeme Pour l’Observation de la Terre, is operated by the French national space agency. SPOT 1 was launched in 1986, followed by three additional satellites at approximately four year intervals. SPOT satellites operate in about 500-mile orbits, and carry two sensor systems. The satellites can return black and white (panchromatic) images with 33 foot resolution and multispectral images with 67 foot resolution. The images are of higher-resolution than LANDSAT’s but cover less territory– approximately 36 miles by 36 miles.28

U.S. intelligence community use of commercial imagery will expand dramatically in the coming years if the new generation of commercial imaging satellites lives up to expectations–which include images with 1-meter resolution. Such imagery and the reduced cost of attaining it when purchased commercially will permit the U.S. intelligence community to fill part of its needs via such commercial systems.

Among the commercial satellites that are expected to produce high resolution imagery are the Ikonos satellites to be launched by Space Imaging Eosat (which also operates the LANDSAT satellites). The first of the satellites, scheduled to be launched in the summer of 1999 from Vandenberg AFB, is designed to generate 1-meter panchromatic and 4-meter multispectral images. A similar satellite is scheduled for launch in September 1998.29

Also promising to provide 1-meter panchromatic imagery and 4-meter multispectral imagery are the satellites to be developed by EarthWatch and Orbital Sciences. EarthWatch’s 1-meter resolution Quickbird satellite is scheduled for launch in late 1998 or 1999. Orbital Science’s OrbView-3 satellite is to be launched in 1999. It is expected to have a 3-5 year lifetime and produce images covering 5×5 mile segments with 1-meter resolution.30


[Source: Space Imaging]

An overhead photograph of Mountain View, California that that has been digitally scanned to represent the one-meter  imagery that the Ikonos satellites are expected to provide.

Notes

1. William Burrows, Deep Black: Space Espionage and National Security (New York, N.Y.: Random House, 1986), pp. 28, 32.
2. Farouk el-Baz, “EO Imaging Will Replace Film in Reconnaissance,” Defense Systems Review (October 1983): 48-52.
3. Richard D. Hudson Jr. and Jacqueline W. Hudson, “The Military Applications of Remote Sensing by Infrared,” Proceedings of the IEEE 63, 1 (1975): 104-28.
4. Ibid.; Bruce G. Blair and Garry D. Brewer, “Verifying SALT,” in William Potter (ed.), Verification and SALT: The Challenge of Strategic Deception (Boulder, Co.: Westview, 1980), pp. 7-48.
5. Homer Jensen, L.C. Graham, Leonard J. Porcello, and Emmet N. Leith, “Side-looking Airborne Radar,” Scientific American, October 1977, pp. 84-95.
6. Paul Bennett, Strategic Surveillance (Cambridge, Ma.: Union of Concerned Scientists, 1979), p. 5.
7. Richard A. Scribner, Theodore J. Ralston, and William D. Mertz, The Verification Challenge: Problems and Promise of Strategic Nuclear Arms Verification (Boston: Birkhauser, 1985), p. 70; John F. Ebersole and James C. Wyant, “Real-Time Optical Subtraction of Photographic Imagery for Difference Detection,” Applied Optics, 15, 4 (1976): 871-76.
8. Robert L. Perry, Origins of the USAF Space Program, 1945-1956 (Washington, D.C.: Air Force Systems Command, June 1962), p. 30.
9. Ibid., pp. 42-43.
10. On the impact of Sputnik, see Robert A. Divine, The Sputnik Challenge: Eisenhower’s Response to the Soviet Satellite (New York: Oxford, 1993).
11. Jeffrey T. Richelson, America’s Secret Eyes in Space: The U.S. KEYHOLE Spy Satellite Program (New York: Harper & Row, 1990), pp. 26-30.
12. Kenneth E. Greer, “Corona,” Studies in Intelligence, Supplement, 17 (Spring 1973): 1-37, reprinted in Kevin C. Ruffner (ed.), CORONA: America’s First Satellite Program (Washington, D.C.: CIA, 1995).
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.; Robert A. McDonald, “CORONA: Success for Space Reconnaissance, A Look into the Cold War, and a Revolution in Intelligence,” Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing 61,6
(June 1995): 689-720.
15. McDonald, “CORONA: Success for Space Reconnaissance …”.
16. Robert A. McDonald, “Corona’s Imagery: A Revolution in Intelligence and Buckets of Gold for National Security,” in Robert A. McDonald (ed)., CORONA: Between the Sun and the Earth – The First NRO Reconnaissance Eye in Space (Baltimore: American Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, 1997), pp. 211-220; Greer, “CORONA”; Frank J. Madden, The CORONA Camera System, Itek’s Contribution to World Stability (Lexington, Mass.: Itek, May 1997), p. 6.
17. Executive Order 12951, Release of Imagery Acquired by Space-Based National Intelligence Reconnaissance Systems, February 24, 1995.
18. Richelson, America’s Secret Eyes in Space, pp. 77-78, 359-60.
19. Ibid., pp. 105-21, 361-62.
20. Ibid., pp. 123-143, 362.
21. Burrows, Deep Black, photo section.
22. Richelson, America’s Secret Eyes in Space, p. 231; Craig Covault, “Advanced KH-11 Broadens U.S. Recon Capability,” Aviation Week & Space Technology, January 6, 1997, pp. 24-25.
23. Bob Woodward, VEIL: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), p. 221.
24. Jeffrey T. Richelson, The U.S. Intelligence Community 4th ed. (Boulder, Co.: Westview, 1999), p. 155.
25. Ibid.
26. David Fulghum and Craig Covault, “U.S. Set to Launch Upgraded Lacrosse,” Aviation Week & Space Technology September 20, 1996, p.34;
27. Bob Preston, Plowshares and Power: The Military Use of Civil Space (Washington, D.C.: NDU Press, 1994), pp. 55-56; Richelson, The U.S. Intelligence Community, p. 159.
28. Richelson, The U.S. Intelligence Community, p. 159.
29. Joseph C. Anselmo, “Space Imaging Readies 1-Meter Satellite,”
Aviation Week & Space Technology,  May 19, 1997, p. 26; “Ikonos 1 Undergoes Tests as Launch Nears,” Space News, May 11-17, 1998, p. 19; “Commercial Developments,” Aviation Week & Space Technology, June 29, 1998, p. 17.
30. Richelson, The U.S. Intelligence Community, pp. 160-61.

Revealed – Committee on National Security Systems Gap Analysis Between the FICAM and U.S. Secret Networks

CNSS-GapAnalysisFICAMCommittee on National Security Systems

42 pages
For Official Use Only
May 23, 2012

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CNSS-GapAnalysisFICAM

Over the past ten years, the Federal Government has made concerted advances in the development and implementation of Identity, Credential, and Access Management (ICAM). This progress includes capabilities designed to promote interoperability, assured information sharing, and efficiencies of scale across all agencies within the Federal Government. Recently, several high-visibility events have focused attention on classified networks with a renewed emphasis on information protection within the information sharing paradigm. Organizations must strive to ensure responsible sharing and safeguarding of classified information by employing advanced capabilities that enable a common level of assurance in information handling and sharing while ensuring the interoperability required to satisfy mission requirements.

us-secret-networks

In response to these and other drivers, the National Security Systems (NSS)’s Identity and Access Management (IdAM) Working Group, the Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO) Council / ICAM Subcommittee (ICAMSC), and the National Security Staff / Information Sharing and Access (ISA) Interagency Policy Committee (IPC)’s Assured Secret Network Interoperability (ASNI) Working Group collaborated to evaluate the applicability of the Federal ICAM Roadmap and Implementation Plan (FICAM) to U.S. Secret networks and identify obstacles to the future interoperability of the Federal Secret Fabric. This document is based on analysis of the ICAM capabilities of six predominant Secret networks in use within the Federal Government:

Department of Defense (DoD) Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet)
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Network (FBINet)
Department of Energy-National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE-NNSA) Enterprise Secure Network (ESN) Note: This analysis focuses on the DOE-NNSA ESN. Other networks at DOE were not included in this data.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Homeland Secure Data Network (HSDN)
Department of Justice (DOJ) Justice Consolidated Office Network – Secret (JCON-S)
Department of State (DOS) ClassNet

This document represents a snapshot of the state of governance, policies, and implementation status of Secret networks as of December 12, 2011. There were several key findings as a result of this analysis:

FICAM is applicable to Secret networks with some changes in the technical implementation to account for the unique requirements of classified networks
The agencies evaluated have different levels of maturity in the implementation and realization of the FICAM vision, but all agencies recognize the need to move toward that vision
Lack of authoritative policy and governance structures has led to divergent ICAM implementation approaches among many agencies
Most agencies lack a common technical approach to ICAM implementation illustrated by the following:
Currently, there is no common and interoperable credential employed on Secret networks
There is no common way to capture, compile, and evaluate identity or resource attributes on Secret networks
There is no common end-to-end approach (people, process, technology) to interoperability and information sharing between agencies – information sharing successes are mostly limited to mission-specific systems to meet specific mission needs
There are ICAM requirements unique to classified networks that are not currently addressed in FICAM (i.e., physical protection of end points, cross-domain data transfer, etc.)
In partnership with the Secret network community, additional work is needed to identify a viable roadmap and implementation plan for FICAM on Secret networks including provisions for:
Developing Implementation Best Practices
Incorporating Security and Privacy Needs within the ICAM Enterprise Architecture
Aligning ICAM Architectures from multiple organizations, enclaves, and security domains

Together, the CNSS, ICAMSC, and the Program Manager for the Information Sharing Environment (PM-ISE) will continue to work to identify solutions to these obstacles and forge a path for implementation of robust and interoperable ICAM capabilities on the Federal Secret Fabric.

The CNSS, Information Security & Identity Management Committee (ISIMC), ICAMSC, and ASNI Working Group reviewed and approve the release of this document.