HARRY ROSITZKE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000201380005-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 27, 2008
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: September 6, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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RADIO TV REPORTS, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 [phone]
FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF
PROGRAM Fred Thomas in the Morning STATION WRC-TV
DATE September 6, 1984 6:00 A.M. CITY Washington, D.C.
SUBJECT Harry Rositzke
FRED THOMAS: In April 1970, my first guest retired to a
farm in Middleburg, Virginia after 25 years with the Central
Intelligence Agency. His field of expertise, Soviet operations.
Meet Harry Rositzke, a graduate of Union College, with a Harvard
University Ph.D. in Germanic linguistics. He has taught at three
universities, including Harvard. During World War II he served
with the Office of Strategic Service in the European Theater. He
became one of the first people to report for duty with the CIA.
He became Chief of Soviet Operations for the agency. He is the
author of several books, all dealing with the Soviet Union and
the CIA. His latest is Managing Moscow: Guns or Goods?. It is
hailed as an expert analysis of the true nature of the long-term
Soviet threat.
Good morning, sir. A pleasure to meet you.
HARRY ROSITZKE: Nice to see you.
THOMAS: You mean to tell me all this bugaboo about the
Soviet Union is not real?
ROSITZKE: Well, it depends on the nature of the
bugaboo. For 25 years we've decided it was a military threat.
And yet the Soviets have never yet sent a regiment of their
troops into any place in the Third World in order to forward
their ends. We have followed what we call a policy of military
containment. For 25 years we've spent trillions and many lives,
as you know. And yet during this period the Soviets have made a
fairly steady expansion of their power and influence. In India,
for example, in Syria, in the Yemens, in Central Africa, and in
Cuba. In other words, all our armaments have not been able to
slow up what I consider their political and economic offensive.
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THOMAS: There was a period of what we call the cold war
in this country. Was it real or imagined?
ROSITZE: It was a real cold war. Both sides were at
each other's throats. Both sides suspected each other. Both
sides spent a lot of time on propaganda, on the one hand, and
building up weaponry, on the other. The fact still remains that
in spite of that, and in spite of our armaments, the Russians
have made progress at achieving their ends, which is to expand
their influence outside the Soviet Union.
THOMAS: But prior to them making that kind of progress,
you feel that this country has given them too much deference over
the years, too much of a -- being too concerned about a threat,
when there was really no threat at all, no military threat.
ROSITZKE: Exactly. But the point is, I think, if you
look at the record, we have run scared of the Russians for 35
years, with one exception, the early years of the '70s, when
President Nixon decided they were going to be around a long time,
we wanted to be around a long time, and he went there and started
talking to them.
,In all these years, we have never taken a serious
gesture abroad, a serious foreign policy decision except in
reaction to Moscow. In other words, Moscow has dictated most of
our actions for the last 30 years.
THOMAS: You talked to a KGB officer at one point, and
one of the things you point out in your book is that we give the
Soviets too much credence for intelligence. I mean in being
highly sophisticated in a lot of the things they do. But
basically they're very simple and their approach is very prag-
matic.
ROSITZKE: I would say they're businessmen at their
business in the intelligence field. They're businessmen in terms
of being political leaders trying to get more connections abroad,
that they are a very cautious people, that they are very per-
sistent, and that they will do everything they can to forward
their interests and maintain what has been an enormous propaganda
campaign against capitalism and against our country.
THOMAS: In the past 25 years, which President do you
think has been more realistic in his approach to assessing the
Soviet Union?
ROSITZKE: Well, President Kennedy started being
realistic in his early years. President Johnson sought to build
some bridges, but his time was taken up by Vietnam. And so I
would say, actually, Nixon, to a certain extent Ford and Carter,
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tried to be sane, tried to be level-headed.
THOMAS: But you didn't think that Nixon was afraid of
the Soviet Union, did you?
ROSITZKE: Nixon was not afraid to go and sup with the
devil and say, "All right. What kind of arrangements can we make
so we don't blow each other up?"
THOMAS: Ronald Reagan?
ROSITZKE: And Ronald Reagan has gone back to the '50s,
where John Foster Dulles led a kind of moral religious crusade
against the Soviet Union, refused to talk to them, you couldn't
believe a word they said, and they'd collapse pretty soon anyway.
I think that is fairly close to what President Reagan has in
mind.
THOMAS: What did your intelligence and your agents in
the Soviet Union tell you or give you the impression about the
Soviets? Are they a people that we can live with in peace?
ROSITZKE: Well, of course, the whole issue is how do
the leaderships get along. And it's a perfectly clear fact, I
think, that the Russians are as eager to avoid an all-out war as
we are, and therefore they're willing to come to terms on matters
of mutual interest. That's what President Nixon did.
Beyond that, they are not going to cave in to our
demands. They're not going to change their system because we
don't like their system. And the odds are, in the long run, they
will change slightly, but only under their own control.
So, they can be talked to. And I think it's clearer and
clearer that negotiations on a variety of things is the only way
ahead for our working together.
THOMAS: One final question. Are you concerned about
Mr. Reagan's policy in dealing with the Soviets now?
ROSITZKE: Well, I feel strongly that if he relies
totally on the military, the military containment policy he's
inherited, I don't think he's going to get anywhere. I'm a
little concerned, as a lot of people are, about his brandishing,
sort of, nuclear weapons, of insisting, really, to a certain
extent, that the Soviets are planning to destroy us militarily,
which I happen to think is completely wrong.
THOMAS: We've just had a smattering of Managing Moscow:
Guns or Goods?.
Thank you very much, sir. Very interesting book.
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