MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605640001-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 8, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: March 1, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605640001-3
COMMON CAUSE
March/April 1985
Sw
After 25
,years of
fighting
theRussians,"
a former
icer
concludes
that our
real
strength
lies in
goods not
guns.
arry Rositzke knows that
if be hadn 'I spent 2.5 nears
as an officer in the CIA. he
might now be branded a
'pnnko" or a product of
"Soviet disinformation.
But with impeccable cre-
dentials as the first CIA officer to run
espnnlage operations against the Soviet
Union, Rositzke speaks his mind with-
out fear. In 1970 Rositzke retired to his
.farm in Middleburg, Va. to read, to
think and to write. His most recent
book is Managing Moscow: Guns or
Goods?
"After 2j years of 'fighting the Rus-
sians' in the CIA, and 10 years on a
Virginia billion watching detente slide
into confrontation, " Rosirzke writes,
"it is my conviction that the long-term
Soviet threat to the Anieri can interest is
not military but political anal economic. '
As Rositzke sees it, the U.S. mistaken-
ly continues "to stick to the outworn
formula of buying oursecurity and our
interests abroad with guns-and more
guns. We respond manfully to the So-
viet military threat with more and bet-
ter missiles, with a rapid deployment
force, with Pershing missiles to Western
Europe... .A nd yet, with all our muscle,
we are unable to diminish the threat of
Soviet power. We have been reduced,
from Afghanistan on. to punishing the
Russians for their actions. A ndpunish-
ment, we have learned, does not deter. "
His solution: a forward American
economic strategy.. It's time for the U.S.
to use its economic clout to stoo the Rus-
sian advance in the developing world.
By fully using our technology, our pro-
ductive capacity, our grain and the
American dollar to advance our secu-
rity anal prosperity, Rositzke believes we
would be using the one weapon in which
we are farsuperi or to the Soviet Union.
CC: You have adegreefromHa7vardin
German linguistics and you aught at
Harvard, the University of O a and
the University of Rochester. So ho did
an academic like you get involve
intelligence operations?
ROSITLKE: I got started during World
War II. I was handling all the agent re-
ports from Western Europe, France and
the lowlands before D-Day and that got
me immediately into the business of
seeing that secret agents could contri-
bute. Some of these people contributed
greatly in terms of reporting the move-
ment of German divisions to the beach-
heads before and after the invasion. I
think probably the real reason I stayed
Florence Graves is editor of Com-
mon Cause Magazine.
Contim--eri
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on [after the war and joined the CIA]
was because I became fascinated by the
Russians.
CC: So you've been with the CIA since it
was started in 1947?
ROSITZKE: Yes, I was the first chief of the
Soviet Operations Division. Our main
job in 1948 was to find out what was
going on inside of Russia because every-
one from the president on down was
concerned about a Soviet military move
from Eastern to Western Europe. Be-
cause the Soviet Union is totally cut off
from the world (our embassy people
couldn't even walk outside the embassy
until 1953 when Stalin died), there was
only one way to find out what was
going on and that was to [parachute in]
agents who were trained and. equipped
with radio sets to report back.
CC: But in the later years following the
war, didn't you also try to place agents
within the Soviet government?
ROSITZKE: That's probably one of the
most difficult operating jobs in the
world. I don't think there's any ques-
tion [about it], there's no great mole in
Moscow.
CC: By "mole, "you mean...
ROSITZKE: Upper level member of the
Secretariat of the Central Committee of
the Politburo-any more than there is a
Soviet mole in the White House or in the
National Security Council.
CC: How many CIA agents do we have
in the Soviet Union?
ROSITZKE: That's a highly classified
point. Are you working for the KGB?
CC: So how does the U. S. government get
most of its information about the Soviet
Union?
ROSITZKE: The main thing that kept
Washington informed between 1956
and 1960 was the U2 flights. Since then,
the overhead satellite photography and
electronic surveillance provide [infor-
mation about] absolutely everything
visible or hearable. And as you know,
that's pretty crucial because that's the
only way you can verify arms agree-
ments in a second. Electronic observers
can pick up a Soviet pilot talking to his
base. They can pick up all long distance
calls, any of the radio transmissions.
They can pick up anything. They aren't,
however, much good [at detecting] mili-
tary research handled under a roof.
CC: You mean we don't have at least
half the Soviet Union bugged?
ROSITZKE: ' The KGB [domestic opera-
tion is] 200 times as large-oh, more
than that-as the FBI. And it has very
good control of the law and behavior of
its citizens. It's a security service that
practically guarantees you aren't going
to have a [U.S.] agent [there]. The United
States is a very easy area to operate in
because we are a different kind of
society. The Russians have over 300
KGB guys in New York who can
operate with total freedom. The FBI
tries to follow as many of them as pos-
sible. But if you want to follow a man for
24 hours, it takes eight people.
CC: Obviously, as a former CIA officer,
you have learned a lot about the Soviet
Union and its people. What do you
think is our biggest misunderstanding.
about the Soviet people?
ROSITZKE: They are people; they are
married; they have children. A lot of
them live in villages because, after all,
almost everyone in the Soviet Union is
either a peasant, the son of a peasant or
the grandson of a peasant.
I [also] think-and this is strictly my
personal impression-that Americans
have an idea that everyone in the Soviet
Union is a communist, which of course
they are not. The Communist Party is a
fairly elite organization, and you damn
well better be good before they let you
into it. Second, [Americans seem to be-
lieve] that Soviets are slaves who go
around in perpetual fear, which is non-
sense. [Americans seem to believe] that
the average Russian wants "freedom,"
when the average Russian has never had
freedom and doesn't know what it
really means and very often is suspi-
cious of it. Because if you are bred into a
society of rules and regulations and sud-
denly wake up one morning and you
can do anything you want to, that's a
threat.
CC: But are they also part of what Presi-
dent Reagan has called an "evil em-
pire?"
ROSITZKE: Well, even Reagan never said
that.
CC: He referred to the government as
evil.
ROSITZKE: So are we talking about a
couple of thousand people in Moscow
or are we talking about 262 million peo-
ple living in a vast territory of different
languages? They are two different
things. [Yet even] the [government]
bureaucrats, high bureaucrats, are
trained in a fairly narrow way. Most
know very little about the outside
world but are terribly concerned about
the security of their country, about the
efficiency of their country. This idea of
considering them all minor Satans, as
though they were in the clutch of the
devil, is primarily the product of the
American imagination. Not [all] Ameri-
cans, but two people. John Foster
Dulles was the first one to promote this
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whole thing of what I call a moral and
religious crusade. And President Reagan
came in and, in somewhat simpler lan-
guage, did the same thing.
CC: Isn't American policy based on the
premise that the Soviet Union wants to
bury us and if given a chance, they will
put their troops on U.S. soil and make
us communists?
ROSITZKE: It's such a ludicrous, stupid
affair. In 35 years they have never sent
their troops outside their border areas.
CC: What aboutAfghanistan?
ROSITZKE: I said, "outside their border
areas." Afghanistan is along their bor-
der. In all my years in government-this
is something so simple, it really has to be
made clear-in all my years in govern-
ment and since, I have never seen an in-
telligence estimate that shows how it
would be profitable to Soviet interests
to invade Western Europe or to attack
the United States. There is no rationale
for it. They are mainly concerned with
becoming stronger to withstand the
take care of [hot spots such as the Per-
sian Gulf area... while negotiating with
the Soviets to reduce our strategic mis-
siles]. In other words, I think we are
spending half a trillion dollars to no
good end. That to me is the tragedy of
my generation. I think we are off on one
of the most wasteful episodes in Ameri-
can society, all because of a feeling in
the gut. We are suckers for a paranoid
approach to the Russians. I'm not saying
they are not a threat in the long run. I
happen to think they are mainly a poli-
tical and economic threat.
CC: You say in your book that we have
been fighting the Russians on their
strongest front-military power-and
that we have failed to fight them on
their weakest front-economic power.
Are you saying they outsmarted us?
Was this theirplan all along?
3
thing else-and gain further anchors
and points of support in Africa and
Southeast Asia, Indonesia and South
America, they can thereby curtail more
and more of the power of the United
States and in the long run decrease its
capability of being a threat to the Soviet
Union. In other words, it's not much
boom boom because they know as well
as we that if there is much boom boom,
we're both through-so let's not be
nonsensical about it.
You know, they have worked
awfully hard for 60 to 70 years to build a
society. It's not terribly good yet, but
they certainly aren't going to take a
gamble on dropping some missiles
across the Arctic or taking their tanks into
Western Europe when this could lead to
the destruction of their society. That's
what I meant when I said they are
human. They are very pragmatic
people.
CC: If building more bombs and mis-
siles isn't the answer, what is? What
should we be doing?
ROSffLKE: We should reduce the alliance
between Moscow's foreign allies by ec-
onomic and political means. And that
has plenty of sentiment on Capitol Hill,
too. We could get Cuba and Castro "on
our side" with a year of decent diplo-
macy and, of course, trading back and
forth. We could probably even get
American threat which is obviously
greater than the Soviet threat is to us.
For 35 years we have had bases all
around the Soviet Union. We encircled
the Soviet Union because we were
afraid they were going to expand their
i power by military means.
No one has ever suggested that the
Russians somehow or other will try to
take over the U.S. They would need five
million troops-they don't even have
that many. Do they have a couple of
million English speakers to take the
place of the FBI? It's all so ridiculous.
CC: Then why are we so afraid of them?
ROS1TZKE: Because we have a leader
who has a real deep emotional fear and
hatred of the Russians, of communism.
It's that little thing in the American sto-
mach that says, "this is the devil.''
Reagan's honest; he really believes all
this. But then all you have to do is look
at [the others]-Eisenhower, Kennedy,
Johnson, certainly Nixon. Although
Nixon was an anti-communist in the
gut, he realized it wouldn't make any
sense to just keep on spouting anti-
communist rhetoric when the Soviets
were getting stronger. [He knew] we
really had to get together to reduce the
threat on both sides.
CC: So if you were president of the
United States, what would you be
doing? Would you be building the MX
missile?
ROSffZKE: I wouldn't build the MX mis-
sile, and I certainly wouldn't get into the
star wars business. The rationale for that
is really rather childish. I would see to it
that our armed forces were ready to
Cuban troops out of Africa a hell of a lot
more efficiently than by saying we
won't talk to you until you get your,
troops out of Africa.
When it comes to the [East] European
bloc, there isn't any question they will
always remain under the military super-
iority of the Soviet Union just as Nicara-
gua is. But we can assist those peoples'
degree of prosperity, which by defini-
tion gives them a certain degree of inde-
pendence from Moscow's dictates. Hun-
gary is the best example [of this kind of
policy].
We know that we cannot maintain
our [own] prosperity without selling a
great many goods abroad. We need a
really forward looking policy; we need
to start looking at crucial possible mar-
kets. I happen to consider Indonesia a
rather crucial part of Asia. Brazil is really
the crux country in Latin America.
Angola, Nigeria [are also important]. We
need to start taking positive, forward
steps toward developing friendly and
economic relations with them ...so that
we have an increasingly friendly envi-
ronment for U.S. interests on every con-
tinent. That's the future. We want to
have the world profit us? Good, let's do
something about it. 0
ROSITLKE: No! We "dumbed" ourselves!
No, they are not very smart. They are
going about their business in a simple
way. Every year they are producing
more goods; they are getting a more se-
cure society and military; and they have
been prospering. [At the same time] we
have been sacrificing a great deal of our
wealth, brains and so forth on our own
battlefield. I'm a strong believer in
deterrence [each side having enough
weapons to deter the other from attack-
ing], but I think that's enough. Next,
[you reduce weapons on both sides]
and then get to work on the work of the
world.
CC: What is the Soviets' objective if it
isn't to take over the world?
ROS!TZKE: In the long run if the Russians
can increase their power and influence-
this is through diplomacy and eveiy-
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605640001-3