MATERIAL FROM LIONEL OLMER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP85M00364R001903730001-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Sequence Number: 1
• Content Type: MEMO

Approved For Release 2007/12/17: CIA-RDP85M00364RO01903730001-1
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Central Intelligence Agency
01 AUG 1983
The Honorable Lionel H. Olmer
Under Secretary for International Trade
United States Department of Commerce
Washington, D. C. 20230
Dear Lionel,
DDI- 37 V
I appreciate your recent correspondence on the results of the Soviet
review panel that you chaired for the PFIAB. I have read the panel's report
and found it to be an impressive job--balanced, thorough, and to the point.
Let me assure you that the recommendations you developed will be carefully
considered as we assess our work-on the Soviet economy and, especially, as we
make decisions regarding the allocation of additional analytical resources to
that area.
The study by that you forwarded was reviewed earlier in
summary form by members of our economics staff. The full statement of both
methods and findings will allow us to give it a more thorough assessment. It
is an ambitious analytical effort, in that it deals with a measurement problem
that is at once both crucial to our understanding of Soviet economic growth
and without any conclusive solution. The possibility of bias in our measures
of Soviet growth is a constant concern and we have tried to deal with it in
various ways. Our recent paper on Soviet GNP, published by the Joint Economic
Committee of Congress, contains several tests we conducted to size the
problem. work introduces another approach which we will look
at carefully, although the preliminary reactions of my staff suggest that the
use of US and German analogs may introduce as many new analytical problems as
the ones it is trying to solve.
Let me add that I personally appreciate the efforts that you devoted over
the past months to ensuring that the study conducted for the PFIAB was as
objective and thorough as possible. Our work on the Soviet economy will be
better for it.
Sincerely,
/s/ William J. Casey
William J. Casey
Director of Central Intelligence
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