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Writing Wrongs

A newly declassified trove of U.S. intelligence documents about the Soviet Union has left more than a few analysts with borscht on their faces. Consider these excerpts from a dissent by then National Security Advisor General William Odom to a November 1987 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on "Whither Gorbachev: Soviet Policy and Politics in the ...

By Katherine Yester

November 19, 2009, 3:44 PM

A newly declassified trove of U.S. intelligence documents about the Soviet Union has left more than a few analysts with borscht on their faces. Consider these excerpts from a dissent by then National Security Advisor General William Odom to a November 1987 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on "Whither Gorbachev: Soviet Policy and Politics in the 1990s": "Gorbachev's economic and social reforms seem to be the 'means' for a de facto party and state purge, the traditional vehicle for restoring the party's vitality... Moreover, the Gorbachev reforms, as they can be inferred from laws and decrees, are hardly 'bold' in comparison with reforms and policy actions during the Khrushchev years. They do not, therefore, as the [estimate] asserts, 'have the potential to produce the most significant changes in Soviet policies and institutions since Stalin's forced regimentation of the country in the late 1920s.'"

A newly declassified trove of U.S. intelligence documents about the Soviet Union has left more than a few analysts with borscht on their faces. Consider these excerpts from a dissent by then National Security Advisor General William Odom to a November 1987 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on "Whither Gorbachev: Soviet Policy and Politics in the 1990s": "Gorbachev’s economic and social reforms seem to be the ‘means’ for a de facto party and state purge, the traditional vehicle for restoring the party’s vitality… Moreover, the Gorbachev reforms, as they can be inferred from laws and decrees, are hardly ‘bold’ in comparison with reforms and policy actions during the Khrushchev years. They do not, therefore, as the [estimate] asserts, ‘have the potential to produce the most significant changes in Soviet policies and institutions since Stalin’s forced regimentation of the country in the late 1920s.’"

Now the director of national security studies at the Hudson Institute, General Odom admitted that he "was just flat wrong" about Gorbachev’s intentions in pursuing reform. But he argued that his views on the destructive impact of systemic change on the Soviet Union were correct, citing an article he published in the journal Problems of Communism about the same time as the nie. As Odom said in his article, "Is Gorbachev bent upon a fundamental change in the system? If he is, the chances that he can control it are small, virtually nil. In a fragmented polity, a half-way house between a centrally planned and a market economy does not seem to be a real option." Never mind that Odom’s NIE dissent was about as "secret" as his Problems of Communism article. As he put it, "I never took National Intelligence Estimates all that seriously.”