Webster’s Assessment Of Soviet Prospects Warrants An Independent Review

The Center for Security Policy today urged President Bush to empanel an independent team of experts to examine the assumptions and conclusions of the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment of the Soviet Union’s current and future prospects.

This assessment was briefed yesterday to the House Armed Services Committee by the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, William H. Webster. According to the Washington Post, Judge Webster told Congress that "it is highly unlikely that there ever will be a reversal of the collapsing military threat from Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces in Europe, even if Soviet reformer Mikhail Gorbachev is ousted from power and replaced by a repressive hardliner. (Emphasis added.)"

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., the Center’s director, said, "This extraordinary contention evidently is a cornerstone in the Bush Administration’s strategy toward the Soviet Union. It explains why the Administration is not unduly troubled about entering into unverifiable arms reduction agreements with Moscow. It also suggests why the Bush Administration is so ready to provide the Soviet Union with large-scale economic assistance; why it is poised to permit a new type of dangerous, untied lending in the form of Soviet bond sales in the United States; why it is prepared to expand through U.S. investment strategically significant Soviet exports of energy resources; and why it is so ready to allow the sale to the USSR of militarily relevant high technology."

Gaffney added, "If the intelligence community’s judgment is wrong, however, the risks of such initiatives for U.S. and Western security are nearly incalculable. Defense Secretary Richard Cheney evidently believes this judgment may be wrong; so does the Center for Security Policy."

Given the enormous stakes involved in basing U.S. security policy on Judge Webster’s premise, the Center believes that President Bush should immediately seek an independent review of the classified and unclassified data. Such a review could be similar to that conducted when Mr. Bush was, himself, the Director of Central Intelligence in the mid-1970s under the rubric of "Team B." Team B determined that the intelligence community had seriously underestimated actual Soviet military capabilities and programs.

Gaffney concluded, "Before Congress eviscerates President Bush’s defense budget on the grounds that Judge Webster believes the Soviet threat is markedly and irreversibly declining, and before the Administration moves too much farther down the path toward wholesale detente with the USSR, the president owes it to himself and to the country to secure a ‘second opinion.’