HERE'S TO BETTER SOVIET INTELLIGENCE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000100170002-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 23, 2010
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: February 20, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT I
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/23: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100170002-2
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE 11-5
LOS ANGELES TINE'S
20 February 1981+
Here's to Better Soviet Intelligence
By ERNEST CONINE
ership after the death of Leonid I. Brezhnev The late Llewelyn Tho
Yuri V. Andropov, the ex-secret police
chief who led the Soviet Union for 15
months, has gone to whatever reward
awaits Kremlin politicians in the hereafter.
But one question that lives after him is
pertinent to the outside world's dealings
with his successor: How could a man who
was so clued into Soviet intelligence make
such gross blunders in his assessment of
political reality in the outside world?
Exhibit A was the clumsy. heavy-handed
attempt to interfere in the West German
elections in March, 1983. The Soviets openly
uaYoyli, WLJCLI dlll-
in late 1982. Expert observers dared hope bassador to Moscow
once said th
th
,
at
ere
that here at last was a Soviet leader whose probably wasn't a secret in the Western
experience would enable him to make more.; world that was really safe from Soviet
sophisticated judgments than the primitives intelligence-but that he nonetheless
who preceded him. doubted that Soviet decision-makers really
No one rises to be the head man in the understood what went in Washington and
Soviet Union, of course, without paying his other Western capitals.
dues in the school of brass-knuckle politics. In any event, -neither of the above
Andropov began as a Volga boatman explanations is very comforting as we begin
(literally), and went on to make his mark as the process of, dealing with Andropov's
a young Communist Party commissar in successor, Konstantin U. Chernenko.
territory seized from Finland in the winter. If the full Politburo was responsible for
war of 1939-40. the gross miscalculations of the A
d
n
ropov
supported the out-of-office Social Demo- After the war he underwent intensive period, virtually the same Politburo is still in
crats while loudly warning that incumbent ideological training in Moscow, then went to business-with presumably the same pro-
Chancellor Helmut Kohl and his ruling Budapest in 1953 as a counselor in the Soviet pensity for mistakes in judgment-now that
Christian Democrats were leading the Ger-
man people to the "nuclear gallows."
Kohl confounded the Russians by winning
a decisive victory.
The Kremlin was in the process of
committing the same sort of blunder with
regard to the American presidential elec-
tions when Andropov died.
For months now Soviet officials have told
visiting journalists and scholars that Ronald
s a
es.
ut it
Reagan is a monster, that the Kremlin could 1 of the Soviet empire. A decade later he is easy to imagine cases in which mistaken
not and would not deal with him, and that I became chairman of the KGB secret police. judgments in a time of crisis could have
U.S.-Soviet relations stood to remain in a He held that job almost 15 years-a period dangerous consequences for us all
,
dangerous state as long as he was President. marked by a crackdown-on Soviet dissidents Let's hope that Chernenko proves to have
It was quite clear that the Kremlin under and the mounting of a massive campaign of a better grip on reality than the man who
Andropov wanted to help . elect a new! industrial espionage in the West . dies freshly buried beside the Kremlin wall
American President who would be more to Optimists pointed out, however, that
their liking. Any high-school civics teacher Andenpov had tolerated the evolution in Ernest Conine is a Times editorial writer.
could have told the Russians that such a! Hungary of the most far-reaching economic
tactic would almost surely backfire. - reforms in the Soviet Bloc. And as head of
The Andropov government was incredi- the KGB he obviously was exposed to reams
bly ham-handed, too, in its handling of the, of information about the West. It seemed to
arms-control issue. follow that be might be more knowledge-
The Soviets were the early beneficiaries able and flexible than previous Soviet
of some careless rhetoric that left many leaders in dealing with the world outside the
Europeans persuaded that Reagan was a closed society of the Soviet Union.
reckless cowboy who was not really inter- ---Why didn't things work out as erected?
ested in curbing nuclear weapons. But the One possible explanation is that-Andro
Russians threw away the advantage. Pov. because of his illness, never. really
By abruptly walking out of the Euro- called the shots anyway, that the mistakes
missile talks, by refusing to set a date for'j in judgment cited above were made by the
renewal of the strategic arms reduction Politburo as a body.
talks (START) and by conducting a trans- A more likely explanation, however, is
parent fright campaign, they made it very that the former KGB boss was never the
!difficult for anybody in Europe to believe sophisticate that wishful thinkers inside and
that the U.S. President was the main outside the Soviet Union hoped him to be. .
obstacle to agreement Intelligence agency chiefs do not neces-
Meanw)z Moscow was unwilling to let sarily get reliable information; their minions
well enough alone in the West German anti- have a tendency to tell them what they
nuclear movement. Soviet-controlled want to hear. Andropov may have collected
"Marxist-Leninists" have tried so blatantly Western literature and :music, as some
to assert control, preventing any criticism of people said, but he had little direct expert-
Soviet missile deployment in the process, ence with Westerners. Most of what he
that moderate elements are being alienated.. knew about the outside world was filtered
This is hardly what most people expected through a large bureaucracy. .
when Andropov took over the Soviet lead-
embassy. He was ambassador to Hungary Andropov is gone.
when the 1956 uprising was brutally If faulty intelligence was the culprit,
crushed by Soviet troops. In the words of a 'there is no reason to believe that Chernen-
former Hungarian official, it was Andropov ' ko-who lacks Andropov's long record of
who "decided who and how many people direct experience with the intelligence bu-
should be executed." reaucracy-will be any more capable of
He must have done his job well, for in 1957 - rising above bad information.
he was promoted to be the Soviet Commu- Obviously, Soviet blunders may rebound
nist Party's watchdog over other Commu- in some instances to the temporary advan-
nist governments-a sort of super proconsul tage of the United States and it
lli
B
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/23: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100170002-2