In a
discussion with Paul Jay of the Real
News, Daniel Ellsberg revealed that the US
discovered - through a top-secret operation -that the USSR had only
four(!) ICBMs back in 1961. This meant that the Soviets were very far
from becoming a serious threat for the West. However, the false
picture of the 'Soviet threat' remained powerful in order to permit
the US to justify its frenzy nuclear armament race.
Ellsberg
explains:
The
estimate of 40 to 60 [Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles] -
which was pretty much in 1962 at the time of the missile crisis based
on a lot of satellite photography - was much lower than was estimated
earlier, from ‘58, ‘59, ‘60.
The Air
Force had a higher estimate. Even the CIA official estimate in 1961
was well over 100. The State Department estimated like 160. The Air
Force was much higher than that. And in August of 1961, the then
commander of Strategic Air Command, Thomas Power, believed that there
were then 1000 Soviet ICBMs. This was the time when the estimate was
much lower, between 120 and 160. But 1000 is what he believed.
The
intelligence communities, perceived and projected the image of
Stalin’s Russia and then his successors as Hitler with nuclear
weapons, and that they would bend every effort to achieve the ability
to destroy us, or at least to blackmail us into submission. And since
they had achieved ICBMs launching faster than we had - that was
almost the one point on which we didn’t lead the arms race - it was
assumed that they would move ahead quickly, build a lot of ICBMs so
they would have this capability against our bomber bases before we
had ICBMs.
Just
after the estimate of the 1000 in August [1961], in September we
finally got full coverage of the ICBM possible sites in Russia with
our satellites, which were a very secret program, which my colleagues
at Rand were not privy to at Top Secret level. It was higher than Top
Secret.
People
made a security lapse, in a way. I was there, and saw a new estimate.
And was told in a security breach, in a way, which was almost
unprecedented. People told me something that I didn’t have the
clearance for. And I couldn’t share it with Rand, because we would
all have lost our access had I spread this around. The news was this:
that what the Soviets had at that time was four ICBMs. Not 40,
not 160, not 1000, but 4.
That
remained, by the way, relatively unknown to the public very late in
the game. Even Richard Rhodes’ excellent book - his second book on
the nuclear program, on the H-bomb - many years later was still
saying that what they [Soviets] had then was not what had been
predicted, but only 40. But that’s ten times more than they
actually had. They had essentially nothing. They had not sought a
first strike force at all, which they could have had with their
original missiles, inefficient and large and clumsy as they were.
It
should have led to a whole reconsideration of the framework here,
because it wasn’t just that they couldn’t afford to. They clearly
hadn’t felt that was high priority to have that capability. The
notion that they were aching to take over Western Europe at the
earliest possibility, or to destroy the US as their main rival, was
clearly something wrong with it. And it was actually wrong.
We now
know that Khrushchev, in this respect, was like Gorbachev. He wanted
to cut down spending on the military all together, and nuclear
weapons in general. And yes, he almost certainly would have done
that. Actually they proposed things like that, but didn’t take that
seriously at all. We needed the missiles. We wanted the missiles, in
part for political economic reasons in 1961.
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