THE NEW RED MENACE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403580001-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 12, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: March 15, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000403580001-4
WASHINGTON POST
15 March 1987
The New Red Menace
Does the Pentagon H%pe the Soviet Military Threat?
f By Michael Krepon
T HERE IS growing evidence
of the Reagan administra-
tion's misuse of intelligence
to portray the Soviet military threat
in ways that undermine existing
arms-control agreements and ex-
pedite the Strategic Defense Initi-
ative. Secretary of Defense Caspar
Weinberger and his deputy, Richard
Perle, have taken the lead in this
effort, supported by the Pentagon's
Defense Intelligence Agency. The
Central Intelligence Agency's pro-
fessional analysts, in contrast, have
refused to bend to the prevailing
political winds.
Intelligence disputes within the
Reagan administration have be-
come deeply politicized in the area
of monitoring nuclear-weapons
tests and analyzing Soviet compli-
ance with arms-control agreements.
The most significant area of dis-
agreement, however, lies in esti-
mating Soviet strategic-defense
efforts. Here, Pentagon officials
assert that the Kremlin is deploying
a territorial defense prohibited by
the Anti-Ballistic-Missile Treaty,
while the CIA estimates the prob-
ability of their doing so at 10 per-
cent or less.
Exaggerating the Soviet military
threat is a time-honored phenom-
enon in American politics, especial-
ly around budget time. What makes
the current situation so disturbing
is the extent of, and underlying pur-
pose behind, the misuse of intelli-
gence. At stake is not just modest
increases in the Pentagon's budget,
but fundamental policy decisions on
U.S. nuclear strategy and the fate
of existing and future strategic
arms-control agreements.
Consider two current examples
of disputed intelligence about the
Soviets:
? Nuclear weapons testing. Wein-
berger's most recent annual report
to the Congress argued that the
American test program shouldn't be
curtailed in part because the Sovi-
ets had made gains over the United
States during the past year in basic
Michael Krrpon is a Senior
Associate at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace
and author of 'Strategic Stalemate.'
Nuclear Weapons and Arms
Control in American Politics"
technologies associated with nucle-
ar warheads. That's quite a claim,
given the fact that during the past
year. the Kremlin observed a mor-
atorium on nuclear tests-the best
way to test these technologies-
while the United States tested 15
times.
There is also a raging dispute
about measuring nuclear tests. This
dispute underlies the administra-
tion's argument that the 1974
Threshold Test Ban Treaty should
be ratified only if the Kremlin ac-
cepts on-site measurements to pre-
vent it from testing warheads with
yields significantly higher than the
treaty's 150-kiloton limit.
The ostensible reason for on-site
measurements is that seismic mon-
itoring techniques leave a "factor of
two" uncertainty in the yields of
Soviet underground tests. This
means that an underground blast of
150 kilotons could conceivably have
an acutal yield around 300 kilotons.
Many non-governmental experts,
however, believe that current seis-
mic evaluation methods could lower
this uncertainty factor to 1.5; they
also doubt that the administration's
preferred measurement technique,
known as CORRTEX, will lower the
uncertainty factor to 1.3, as adver-
tised. Secret CIA documents leaked
to the press lend credence to these
claims, as agency analysts consider
CORRTEX to be deficient and tech-
nically unsound. "Frankly," the
agency concluded, "if the Soviets
said 'yes' to our initial proposals,
we would be in trouble."
To further bolster their position
against test limitations, Pentagon
officials have succeeded in branding
the Kremlin a "likely" violator of the
Threshold Test Ban Treaty's 150-
kiloton limit on underground test-
ing. This conclusion is not sup-
ported by the CIA or by the nucle-
ar-weapons laboratories. As Dr.
Siegfried S. Hecker, director of the
Los Alamos National Laboratory,
recently testified, ". . . the only
conclusion possible is that reflected
in the old Scotch verdict: Guilt not
proven."
^ Soviet strategic defense. The most
serious misrepresentation of cur-
rent intelligence, however, is in the
area of Soviet strategic-defense
efforts, where the Reagan admin-
istration asserts that the Soviets
"may be preparing an ABM defense
of its national territory." This con-
clusion is a bureaucratic compro-
mise to bridge a dispute between
the Office of the Secretary of De-
fense, which asserts the Soviets are
already in the process of construct-
ing such a defense, and the CIA,
which believes the probability of
their doing so is low and getting
lower.
Weinberger goes even further.
He now argues that the Russians
"have in place the components for a
national antiballistic-missile sys-
tem." The components that require
the longest time to build-some-
times five years or more-are large
phased-array radars, or LPARS,
which are used for battle-manage-
ment and early warning.
So how many modern battle man-
agement radars are the Soviets
building? Exactly one-at the Mos-
cow ABM site permitted by the
treaty. All the rest under construc-
tion, including the Soviet radar im-
properly sited in its interior, are
designed primarily to perform early
warning of missile attacks.
The construction of these huge
new radars is just one of several
pieces of evidence Pentagon officials
cite to support their claim that the
Kremlim is preparing to break out of
the ABM Treaty. Another is the So-
viet potential for deploying smaller,
rapidly deployable radars as part of a
new "ABM-X-3" system. A sketch
representing the ABM-X-3 threat
appeared in the 1984 edition of "So-
viet Military Power." The CIA
doubts that such a system exists.
Many questions remain about So-
viet compliance practices and stra-
tegic-defense efforts that require
close scrutiny. Perhaps, as the DIA
believes, the Kremlin has secretly
produced and stockpiled rapidly
transportable radars, is about to de-
ploy newer radars and has success-
fully tested SAMs in a way that pro-
vides confidence in their use against
strategic missiles. Perhaps they have
deliberately tested warheads over
the 150-kiloton threshhold.
It is impossible to prove conclu-
sively that they haven't. But the ev-
idence suggesting that they have is
slim. Misrepres ntation of this intel-
ligence does a disservice to the pres-
ident and clouds the difficult strategy
and policy choices the nation now
faces.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000403580001-4