Read Online The World Was Going Our Way by Christopher Andrew - Free Book Online
Authors: Christopher Andrew
Tags: Espionage, History, Military, 20th Century, Biographies & Memoirs, Europe, Ireland, World, Intelligence & Espionage, Russia, True Accounts, Modern (16th-21st Centuries)
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the insistent demands of political correctness, foreign intelligence reports do more to reinforce than to correct the regime’s misconceptions. Though the politicization of intelligence sometimes degrades assessment even within democratic systems, it is actually built into the structure of all authoritarian regimes. Soviet intelligence reports throughout the Stalin era, and for some years after, usually consisted only of selective compilations of relevant information on particular topics with little attempt at interpretation or analysis for fear that it might contradict the views of the political leadership. Though intelligence analysis improved under Andropov, it remained seriously undeveloped by Western standards. Leonov, who was dismayed to be appointed in 1971 as deputy head of the FCD assessment section, Service 1, estimates that it had only 10 per cent of the importance occupied by the Directorate of Intelligence (Analysis) in the CIA. Its prestige was correspondingly low. A general air of depression hung over Service 1, which was usually regarded as ‘a punishment posting’. To be transferred there from an operational section, as happened to Leonov, was ‘equivalent to moving from a guards regiment in the capital to the garrison in a provincial backwater’. 72
In 1973 Leonov was promoted to head Service 1 and was soon able to resist the traditional pressure to accept rejects from operational departments. Freedom of debate, he claims, came to his department much earlier than to foreign intelligence as a whole, let alone to the rest of the KGB. 73 That debate, however, was coloured by Leonov’s conspiracy theories about the United States which were still in evidence during the final years of the Soviet Union. 74 There was also little change in the standards of political correctness required in intelligence reports to the Soviet leadership:
All the filtration stages . . . were concerned with making sure that alarming, critical information did not come to the attention of the bosses. [Such information] was provided in a sweetened, smoothed form, with all the thorns removed in advance. 75
Vadim Kirpichenko, who later rose to become first deputy head of foreign intelligence, recalls that during the Brezhnev era, pessimistic intelligence was kept from him on the grounds that it would ‘upset Leonid Il yich’ . 76
When Soviet policy in the Third World suffered setbacks which could not be concealed, analysts knew they were on safe ground if they blamed imperialist machinations, particularly those of the United States, rather than failures of the Soviet system. As one FCD officer admitted at the end of the Cold War, ‘In order to please our superiors, we sent in falsified and biased information, acting on the principle “Blame everything on the Americans, and everything will be OK”.’ 77 Within the Centre it was possible during the Andropov era to express much franker opinions about Third World problems - for example, about Soviet prospects in Egypt after the death of Nasser or economic collapse in Allende’s Chile 78 - than were communicated to the political leadership. From the moment that the KGB leadership had taken up a position, however, FCD dissidents kept their heads down. When, for example, Andropov concluded that the first Reagan administration had plans for a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union, none of the probably numerous sceptics in KGB residencies around the world dared to breathe a word of open dissent. 79
Despite the sanitized nature of the Centre’s reports to the political leadership, however, its optimism about the Third World was genuine. By the mid-1970s, the KGB was confident that it was winning the Cold War in the Third World against a demoralized and increasingly discredited ‘Main Adversary’. As Henry Kissinger later acknowledged:
It is doubtful that Castro would have intervened in Angola, or the Soviet Union
In 1973 Leonov was promoted to head Service 1 and was soon able to resist the traditional pressure to accept rejects from operational departments. Freedom of debate, he claims, came to his department much earlier than to foreign intelligence as a whole, let alone to the rest of the KGB. 73 That debate, however, was coloured by Leonov’s conspiracy theories about the United States which were still in evidence during the final years of the Soviet Union. 74 There was also little change in the standards of political correctness required in intelligence reports to the Soviet leadership:
All the filtration stages . . . were concerned with making sure that alarming, critical information did not come to the attention of the bosses. [Such information] was provided in a sweetened, smoothed form, with all the thorns removed in advance. 75
Vadim Kirpichenko, who later rose to become first deputy head of foreign intelligence, recalls that during the Brezhnev era, pessimistic intelligence was kept from him on the grounds that it would ‘upset Leonid Il yich’ . 76
When Soviet policy in the Third World suffered setbacks which could not be concealed, analysts knew they were on safe ground if they blamed imperialist machinations, particularly those of the United States, rather than failures of the Soviet system. As one FCD officer admitted at the end of the Cold War, ‘In order to please our superiors, we sent in falsified and biased information, acting on the principle “Blame everything on the Americans, and everything will be OK”.’ 77 Within the Centre it was possible during the Andropov era to express much franker opinions about Third World problems - for example, about Soviet prospects in Egypt after the death of Nasser or economic collapse in Allende’s Chile 78 - than were communicated to the political leadership. From the moment that the KGB leadership had taken up a position, however, FCD dissidents kept their heads down. When, for example, Andropov concluded that the first Reagan administration had plans for a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union, none of the probably numerous sceptics in KGB residencies around the world dared to breathe a word of open dissent. 79
Despite the sanitized nature of the Centre’s reports to the political leadership, however, its optimism about the Third World was genuine. By the mid-1970s, the KGB was confident that it was winning the Cold War in the Third World against a demoralized and increasingly discredited ‘Main Adversary’. As Henry Kissinger later acknowledged:
It is doubtful that Castro would have intervened in Angola, or the Soviet Union
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