Intelligence in the Cold War: What Difference did it Make?

Michael Herman, Gwilym Hughes, Michael Herman, Gwilym Hughes

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415659659
• eBook ISBN: 9781317979937
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

Intelligence was a major part of the Cold War, waged by both sides with an almost warlike intensity. Yet the question 'What difference did it all make?' remains unanswered. Did it help to contain the Cold War, or fuel it and keep it going? Did it make it hotter or colder? Did these large intelligence bureaucracies tell truth to power, or give their governments what they expected to hear?

These questions have not previously been addressed systematically, and seven writers tackle them here on Cold War aspects that include intelligence as warning, threat assessment, assessing military balances, Third World activities, and providing reassurance. Their conclusions are as relevant to understanding what governments can expect from their big, secret organizations today as they are to those of historians analysing the Cold War motivations of East and West. This book is valuable not only for intelligence, international relations and Cold War specialists but also for all those concerned with intelligence's modern cost-effectiveness and accountability.

This book was published as a special issue of Intelligence and National Security.

Intelligence in the Cold War

GWILYM HUGHES

The papers included in this volume address the part played by intelligence in the Cold War. They have been developed from a workshop held by the Oxford Intelligence Group at Nuffield College, Oxford, in 2009. Despite the growing historiography of the Cold War, marked by the publication of the Cambridge History of the Cold War in 2010,¹ we note that very little is understood about the contribution intelligence made to the management of the Cold War and to its outcome. There is a lack of evidence to connect the production of intelligence with the framing or the changing of government policy on either side. But this situation is changing and this collection brings together some of the latest work in this area and also highlights the need for further investigation.

The Second World War produced large and sophisticated intelligence agencies and a prize – nuclear weapon technology, which the Soviet Union sought to obtain, not least by use of its own intelligence resources. It was noted at the Oxford workshop that this intelligence effort had shown results as early as March 1942 when the work of the Maud Committee was revealed to Stalin by Beria, probably as the result of espionage by John Cairncross.² The task for scholars is not to prove the importance of intelligence in the ensuing Cold War. As Christopher Andrew has noted, the ‘many studies of policy-making in East and West which fail to take intelligence into account are at best incomplete, at worst distorted.’³ Rather, the challenge is to examine the effect or influence that intelligence really had on the way governments on both sides formulated their policies and their opinions of their adversaries, and on the public attitudes which supported them. In other words, to show how intelligence mattered.

This challenge was first posed at a conference on ‘Intelligence in the Cold War’ arranged by the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies in Oslo in August 2000 by Olav Riste and Lars Christian Jensen, and this was followed five years later by another conference on the subject by the same institute, again with Professor Riste in the lead.⁴ But otherwise this aspect of Cold War history has not attracted much further attention, and it was therefore the subject of the Oxford Intelligence Group’s annual workshop at Nuffield College in June 2009. The Nuffield workshop sought to bring together the results of recent intelligence research and address three questions:

Did intelligence on either side tell truth to power, or something else?

Did governments listen? To what extent was government policy on either side intelligence-driven?

What were the overall effects of this East–West ‘intelligence war’? Did it make the Cold War hotter or colder?

In the first of the responses to these questions, Len Scott in his study of the ‘Able Archer’ crisis of 1983, explores what seems to be an important Western example of intelligence bringing an unexpected truth to power; as well as shedding new light on what was arguably the most dangerous phase of the Cold War since the Cuban missile crisis. Scott suggests that this was also a time when British intelligence gained new insights into how the Soviet leadership perceived threats emanating from the West. But Scott brings out just how puzzling the episode remains, ‘a matter of adjudication, research and debate’. In a similar vein the paper by John Prados concentrates on Western intelligence assessments of military capability and points out the problems that even this apparently most concrete of intelligence production raises for the historian who tries to make judgments about it. Nevertheless, Prados makes several telling points about the nature of trying to ‘tell truth to power’ in the context of the Soviet missile programmes and reveals that the willingness to listen on the part of various American administrations was an equal factor in this complex equation.

In the first of his articles Michael Herman considers the intelligence’s psychological effects. Both sides feared the other’s espionage and the covert action that went with it, and there were not unreasonable Soviet fears of the West’s intrusive technical collection operations, especially the overflights up to 1960. On the other hand reconnaissance satellites provided some reassurance that the Cold War could be managed – not least due to the American revelation of its exploitation to the other side. Intelligence’s verification capabilities for strategic arms control was stabilising for both sides and provided results that became part of the public debate on the arms race despite Russian and, to a lesser degree, Western preference for secrecy.

These papers also illustrate ways in which the Cold War operated institutionally within governments. Pete Davies describes the 20 year struggle to forge an integrated UK Defence Intelligence Staff from the single-Service Intelligence Directorates. Their fierce opposition to integration is positioned by Davies in the context of the rearguard action mounted by the Services as they resisted the formation of a unified Ministry of Defence and is a timely reminder that attempts to assess the effectiveness of intelligence cannot afford to ignore the truth that agencies are not immune from the urges of self-preservation. This has and does impact on the nature of their product and how it is received.

As Herman has pointed out, it is exceptionally difficult to penetrate the other side’s intentions in the intelligence war; two papers in this collection extend our focus beyond Whitehall and Washington. The piece by Julie Fedor looks at the intriguing conspiracy theories of the Soviet old guard about the aggressive nature of the West’s intelligence efforts to bring down the Soviet regime and how this is still being harnessed to support the resurgence of Russian nationalism as an anti-Western movement. Shlomo Shpiro’s article examines KGB human intelligence operations in Israel, providing a timely reminder of the wide geographical extent of the Cold War’s intelligence operations. Shpiro’s detailed analysis of repeated Soviet attempts, sometimes successful, to penetrate Israel’s security services in the context of a post-war ferment of communism, Bolshevism and Zionism provides a necessary balance to discussions of the nature of the ‘intelligence war’.

Finally, we end with a further paper from Michael Herman which points to the quantitative predominance of military intelligence, much of it preparing for the ‘hot’ war that never came. Western intelligence initially exaggerated Soviet military capabilities and plans, with important consequences for governments’ policies, but there were considerable improvements later. Yet on Soviet intentions Western intelligence remained weak; governments’ directions were set by other influences. The same was probably true on the Soviet side; although the KGB knew it would get a better hearing by presenting Western intentions in the worst possible light and reinforcing hard line Soviet preconceptions.

These, then, are the responses to the questions we set ourselves at the beginning. We do not suggest that the workshop reached a consensus, so this introduction is not a summary of the workshop’s ‘conclusions’. The contributions presented here cannot be said to support any particular Cold War interpretation. But by bringing intelligence onto the stage in this way we can at least begin to redress the deficiencies of ignoring it without making exaggerated claims for the part it played. However, these papers lend some support to the view that misperception was an element in the causation and conduct of the Cold War. In its assessment of Soviet military capabilities Western intelligence made important mistakes and in its aggressive early stages its intrusive activities reinforced the ‘adversary images’ of the other side. But in aggregate the West’s intelligence effort gave an accuracy of detail which helped maintain the confidence of its governments that the Cold War could be managed without disaster. This would have been impossible had the size and professionalism of the intelligence services remained at their pre-1939 levels. Yet on neither side did intelligence create or change the core judgments of the other’s intentions. There was more misperception than either side imagined. At times intelligence lost rigour in its prime task (at least in the Western tradition) of seeing the world essentially through the target’s eyes and, just as important, judging whether this vision was changing. Paradoxically, it was on those occasions when secret intelligence acquired by one side was deliberately revealed to the other (and, indirectly and partially, to the public) that the scale of misperception was reduced.

¹M.P. Leffler and O.A. Westad (eds.), The Cambridge History of the Cold War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2010).

²Cairncross was Private Secretary to Lord Hankey in 1940–41. Hankey was Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and had oversight of the work of the intelligence services. For discussion of the copious amounts of cabinet papers transmitted to the Soviets by Cairncross see Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive (London: Penguin 2000) pp.119–20.

³Christopher Andrew, ‘Intelligence in the Cold War’ in M.P. Leffler and O.A. Westad (eds.) The Cambridge History of the Cold War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2010) p.417.

⁴Michael Herman, J. Kenneth McDonald and Vojtech Mastny, Did Intelligence Matter in the Cold War? (Oslo: Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies 2006).

Intelligence and the Risk of Nuclear War: Able Archer-83 Revisited

LEN SCOTT

ABSTRACT The study of the Cold War has undergone a significant transformation in recent years, with new critical perspectives, sources and debates. The nuclear history of the Cold War has begun to yield new insights on fundamental questions about the stability and dynamics of the confrontation. Recent evidence about the events of 1983 provides an opportunity to explore the risk of nuclear war and the role of misperception in Soviet–American relations during the ‘Second Cold War’. Central to this is the study of intelligence. This article examines episodes in the autumn of 1983, notably the Able Archer ‘crisis’ of November 1983. Attention focuses on aspects of Soviet, American and British intelligence. Political and diplomatic consequences are also considered. A principal aim is to emphasize that we are at an early stage in researching and understanding events, and that a number of assumptions about the crisis require further exploration. Broader lessons about the role of intelligence in the Cold War are nevertheless explored and provisional conclusions reached about the performances of intelligence agencies and communities.

1983 was the annus horrendus of the ‘Second Cold War’. The events of November 1983, and in particular the NATO command-post exercise, Able Archer-83, have been identified as a particular focus of anxiety. In his memoir, Robert Gates, then Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), describes it as ‘one of the potentially most dangerous episodes of the Cold War’.¹ Able Archer-83 is now firmly established in various literatures – historical and theoretical – as a moment of risk and peril in the Cold War.² According to the presumably widely-accessed account in Wikipedia:

The realistic nature of the 1983 exercise, coupled with deteriorating relations between the United States and the Soviet Union and the anticipated arrival of Pershing II nuclear missiles in Europe, led some members of the Soviet Politburo to believe that Able Archer 83 was a ruse of war, obscuring preparations for a genuine nuclear first strike. In response, the Soviets readied their nuclear forces and placed air units in East Germany and Poland on alert. This relatively obscure incident is considered by many historians to be the closest the world has come to nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The threat of nuclear war abruptly ended with the conclusion of the Able Archer 83 exercise on 11 November.³ Some cautionary notes have been sounded.⁴

But there is now a firmly established view that in November 1983, we may have been on the precipice of catastrophe. And as Robert Gates has commented: ‘the most terrifying thing about the Able Archer crisis is that we may have been at the brink of nuclear war and not even known about it.’⁵

Yet the argument that the risk of nuclear war was serious rests on limited and patchy evidence about Soviet perceptions and behaviour. This article surveys current understanding of, and debates about, the events in question, the context in which they occurred, and the risks they may have generated.⁶

Attention focuses on various aspects of Soviet, American and British intelligence. Political and diplomatic consequences, and relations between political leaders and intelligence communities, are considered.

A Year of Living Dangerously

The autumn of 1983 was widely seen at the time as one of the bleakest periods of what became known as ‘the Second Cold War’. By deed and word, the superpowers locked themselves into confrontation. Ronald Reagan had come to power in 1981 having mounted a fundamental critique of detente and arms control. And he was determined both to strengthen America’s strategic nuclear forces and actively combat Soviet advances in the Third World. In March 1983, having just recently described the Soviet Union as an ‘evil empire’, Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), designed to explore the feasibility of defences against strategic ballistic missiles.⁷ Among several perplexing aspects of SDI was the effect on the Soviets. Moscow behaved as though SDI was a reality rather than the aspiration of a president unencumbered by understanding of its implications for foreign policy, strategy, or relations with allies (or indeed understanding of the technological obstacles).⁸ Whether SDI would ever become a reality was doubted more in NATO capitals, than, it seems, in Moscow.

A more immediate concern for the Soviets in the autumn of 1983 was the imminent arrival of American nuclear missiles in Europe, and in particular, the Pershing II medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM). In December 1979, NATO decide...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Intelligence in the Cold War
• 2. Intelligence and the Risk of Nuclear War: Able Archer-83 Revisited
• 3. Certainties, Doubts, and Imponderables: Levels of Analysis in the Military Balance
• 4. Intelligence as Threats and Reassurance
• 5. Estimating Soviet Power: The Creation of Britain’s Defence Intelligence Staff 1960–65
• 6. Chekists Look Back on the Cold War: The Polemical Literature
• 7. KGB Human Intelligence Operations in Israel 1948–73
• 8. What Difference Did It Make?
• Index