Demise of the Soviet Union

(Originally published on June 28, 2022)

In America there are two, competing narratives about the 1991 demise of the Soviet Union. In the first, Ronald Reagan became President in 1981 wanting to confront an assertive Soviet Union, hit upon the strategy of using an arms race to drive the Soviet economy to the breaking point, focused on that strategy as his top priority, and proved victorious. The second narrative downplays Reagan strategy and emphasizes Mikhail Gorbachev. He became General Secretary in 1985 recognizing that the centrally planned Soviet economy was failing, tried to institute needed reforms, and was overtaken by internal political turmoil. The demise completely surprised the American CIA.

Honestly, both of these narratives are true. Had Reagan not pressed it, the Soviet economy probably would have muddled through pretty well. Had Gorbachev not been as enlightened -- had he been more like Vladimir Putin -- the Soviet economy probably would have muddled through but less well. The CIA was surprised by the actual demise as were all American leaders and, for that matter, all Soviet leaders.

Nonetheless, the demise of the Soviet Union was a breathtaking success for American Intelligence. Using our simple assessment tool of (+) for getting it right, (-) for getting it wrong, and (o) for a neutral performance, the analysts get a (+), the collectors get a (+), and leadership gets a (+). Let me explain why.

Leadership

Following our 1975 defeat in Vietnam, America was a mess. In his “Malaise Speech” of July 1979, President Carter told us that we suffered from a “crisis of confidence” and that we should stop “worshiping self-indulgence and consumption.” In November, Iranian radicals took over the US Embassy in Teheran and seized 52 American hostages. In December, a seemingly unstoppable Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, murdered the Afghan president, and installed a puppet regime. In April 1980, a US military operation to rescue the Embassy hostages in Iran ended in unmitigated disaster. As a result of this mess, Ronald Reagan won the 1980 presidential election in a landslide, 489 to 49 electoral votes.

It is noteworthy in light of recent events how Reagan began his first inaugural speech. “This orderly transfer of authority as called for in the Constitution routinely takes place, as it has for almost two centuries, and few of us stop to think how unique we really are. In the eyes of many in the world, this every-four-year ceremony we accept as normal is nothing less than a miracle.”

Reagan went on to focus his inaugural speech almost entirely on domestic affairs. In foreign affairs, he knew the Soviet Union to be an “Evil Empire” but was unsure of how to confront it.

To help figure this out, Reagan named 67-year-old William J. Casey as the Director of the CIA. A devout Catholic and Knight of Malta, Casey was a man of powerful intellect and wide-ranging curiosity. A hard-charging, manipulative Wall Street lawyer, he liked to stretch the limits of the law. His supporters thought he was ideal for the CIA.

The CIA Director is responsible for delivering the intelligence facts. Policymakers like the Secretaries of State and of Defense are responsible for weighing the pros and cons of what to do about those facts. Reagan, however, wanted Casey’s input on everything related to the Soviet Union so made Casey a member of his cabinet with the prerogative to weigh in on policy choices. This made Casey and his CIA a secret powerhouse.

The Analysts

In July 1981, Casey hired Harry Rowen as Chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Rowen was a renowned defense policy thinker from California who knew Reagan from his time as governor. Rowen briefed the President on the fact that the Soviet Union spent 4 times as much of their GNP on defense as the US just to keep up. If for every 1% of GNP increase in US defense spending the Soviets had to increase theirs 4%, then it was possible for the US to bankrupt the Soviet economy by engaging in an arms race. Reagan responded, “Well Harry, then let’s do it.” I know this because a friend of mine was in the room and witnessed the exchange.

In the fall of 1981, the powerful head of the CIA’s Office of Economic Research, Maurice Ernst, visited European capitals to brief them on preliminary Reagan Administration thinking about the Soviet Union. I was 29, working at the US Embassy in Paris, and was assigned as Ernst’s escort officer. In meetings at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I witnessed Ernst walk through a similar brief: it was possible for the US to bankrupt the Soviet economy by engaging in an arms race.

The French Foreign Ministry officials were instinctively inclined to reject any American ideas. Despite the ingrained opposition of their minds, however, Ernst won their hearts because he had grown up in Paris and spoke beautiful French. Having voted for Carter in the 1980 elections, however, I was terrified that the proposal could provoke World War III.

On 20 May 1982, Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 32 making this effort to bankrupt the Soviet economy US policy. You can read online this once Top Secret but now declassified eight-page memorandum. It states as our objective, “To foster restraint in Soviet military spending, discourage Soviet adventurism, and weaken the Soviet alliance system by forcing the USSR to bear the brunt of its economic shortcomings.” It also provided a timeline for doing this, “The decade of the eighties will likely pose the greatest challenge to our survival and well-being since World War II and our response could result in a fundamentally different East-West relationship by the end of this decade.”

CIA analysts played a key role in developing President Reagan’s successful strategy. For this, they merit a (+).

Reagan’s Strategic Gamble

During his first term in office, Reagan fundamentally changed America’s strategy toward the Soviet Union. Since the nuclear fright of the Cuban Missile Crisis, American policy had been to encourage stable relations with the Soviets. This emphasis on stability had led American strategic thinkers to the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). MAD proponents insisted that the best defense against nuclear attack was to assure that both sides had the ability to annihilate the other. If America and the Soviet Union were mutually assured of destruction in a nuclear war, then neither country would start one.

The quest for strategic stability and the MAD concept were used by American strategists in the 1960s and the early-1970s as an excuse, consumed with Vietnam as we were, for allowing the Soviets to reach nuclear parity with America. Unfortunately, the Soviets saw no need to slow down their strategic weapons program once they reached parity. Quite the contrary, Soviet strategic thinkers were aiming at nuclear dominance, not mutually assured destruction.

Reagan clearly saw Soviet behavior for what it was. Stability on Soviet terms was unacceptable to him. He understood that Moscow’s heavy investments in strategic weapons programs were driving the Soviet economy to the breaking point. So Reagan decided to drive the Soviets over the edge.

On 23 March 1983, Reagan repudiated MAD and announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), also known as Star Wars. He made the argument that the best way to eliminate the risk of nuclear war was to render nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete.” He asked, “What if we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?”

In announcing SDI, Reagan knew he was opening a new area of strategic competition between America and the Soviet Union in which the Soviets could not compete. The Soviet economy was already taxed to the breaking point. Moreover, SDI exploited America’s widening lead in advanced technology, particularly advanced computer technology.

The Collectors

President Reagan’s strategic gamble was based on the finest intelligence America ever had on the Soviet Union. American listening posts ringed the Soviet Union, recording every internal communication they could. American spy satellites photographed all Soviet military activity. Disillusioned KGB officers flocked to the CIA and FBI to work as American spies burrowed inside the corrupt Soviet security agency. Most important of all, the CIA had GTVANQUISH and GTTAW.

GTVANQUISH was the code name for Adolf Tolkachev, a top Russian weapons engineer. Tolkachev was perhaps the most important spy the CIA ever had. Until 1985, Tolkachev provided volumes of technical information that revealed the vulnerabilities of Soviet advanced weapons systems. This information would have assured dominant American air superiority in case of war with the Soviet Union.

Despite the mortal danger to himself, Tolkachev declined to use classic tradecraft methods like dead drops. He insisted on face-to-face meetings because they enabled him to pass the maximum amount of information in the shortest period of time. Tolkachev’s goal was to hasten the demise of the corrupt Soviet regime, which he despised.

GTTAW was the codename for a technical operation which qualifies as a real-life Mission Impossible. Under pervasive KGB surveillance, CIA officers used sleight-of-hand magic to tap a top-secret, underground, communications cable which connected the Soviet nuclear weapons complex to the Soviet Ministry of Defense.

Once a month for several years, a CIA officer would take a stroll in Moscow accompanied by 20-25 KGB surveillants. At some point during the stroll, the CIA officer would lose the KGB surveillance team without the team realizing that they had lost the CIA officer. Then, he or she would proceed to the cable location, remove a manhole cover, climb down the manhole, and replace one recording tape with another on the top-secret cable.

Just imagine. We got every communication between the Soviet Ministry of Defense and their nuclear weapons complex for years!

The genius who catalyzed these and other amazing spy operations against the Soviet Union was another devout Catholic and Knight of Malta, Burton Gerber, who subsequently became a noted public speaker on the ethics of espionage.

The collectors played a crucial role in the execution of President Reagan’s successful strategy. For this, they merit a (+).

The Endgame

In 1985, two traitors within the CIA -- Aldrich Ames and Edward Lee Howard -- gave the KGB the names of all our spies in the Soviet Union as well as the GTTAW technical operation. GTTAW was shut down and all of our spies, including Tolkachev, were executed.

Mikhail Gorbachev had just become General Secretary on 11 March 1985, however. When he learned that the CIA had recruited a dozen spies inside the KGB, Gorbachev understood that Soviet communism had lost its ideological appeal even for KGB officers sworn to serve as “the Sword and the Shield of the Soviet Communist Party.” When he learned about the comprehensive intelligence on Soviet weapons systems provided by GTTAW and Adolf Tolkachev, Gorbachev had to assume that Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative might actually work.

Stunned, Gorbachev had to face the reality that the Soviet Union was in real trouble. To buy time, he met Reagan in Geneva on 20 November 1985 and began to negotiate real reductions in nuclear weapons.

Assessments of Casey

Reagan won re-election in 1984 by an even greater landslide, 525 to 13 electoral votes. The Democratic candidate, former Vice President Walter Mondale, was a personal friend of my father so I could not bring myself to vote against him. At the same time, I could not vote against Reagan who was doing such an incredible job against the Soviet Union. Hence, I didn’t vote for the only time in my life.

Bill Casey made serious mistakes during the second term, particularly on Iran and Nicaragua. You should read about them in The Spy Masters by Chris Whipple, pp 109-135. Casey had a seizure in his office in December 1986 and he died of a brain tumor the following May. In his memoirs, former Secretary of State George Schultz is harsh in his assessment of Casey. There is some validity to Schultz’s critique.

But I am assessing Casey’s leadership in the demise of the Soviet Union. In that context, I think of Teddy Roosevelt’s famous speech, The Man in the Arena. “Credit belongs to the man who … spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, at least fails while daring greatly."

Bill Casey helped Ronald Reagan destroy the “Evil Empire” which was the Soviet Union. For this, he merits a (+).