Intelligence Assessment and Policymaking: A Decision Point in the Kennedy Administration; A Staff Paper
Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1984. First Printing [Stated]. Trade paperback. viii, 53, [3] pages. Footnotes. Tabular data. Source Documents. Tables. Raymond Leonard "Ray" Garthoff (born March 26, 1929) is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a specialist on arms control, intelligence, the Cold War, NATO, and the former Soviet Union. He is a former U.S. Ambassador to Bulgaria, and has advised the U.S. State Department on treaties. In 1948, he received his B.A. from Princeton University. In 1949, he received his M.A. from Yale. From 1950 to 1957, he was a Soviet analyst for RAND Corporation. In 1951, he received his Ph.D. from Yale. From 1957 to 1961, he was a CIA Office of National Estimates (ONE) analyst. In the early 1960s, he was a special assistant in the State Department. Beginning in 1969, he was involved in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, as executive secretary of the U.S. delegation. In September 1970, he became a deputy director of the State Department's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs. As he later described it, he was "the regular Department representative on the verification panel working group, as it was called, the main working group for the SALT [I] preparations." In the 1970s, he was a senior Foreign Service inspector. From 1980 to 1994, he was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of numerous scholarly papers, books, and has been featured in PBS documentaries. He is well known for his disagreement with Team B's and Richard Pipes's 1976 characterization of Soviet nuclear doctrine. President John F. Kennedy requested a special high level review by a committee of senior intelligence, foreign policy, and defense officials to evaluate the implications of the new intelligence estimates of Soviet strategic military capabilities. The top secret "Report on Implications for U.S. Foreign and Defense Policy of Recent Intelligence Estimates has recently been declassified when the present work was prepared. It is analyzed and the full declassified text is reproduced in this staff report. The 1962 report dealt with a situation in the world and in American Soviet strategic relations very different from the present situation. Yet, as the author notes, there are important parallels. Taking both the similarities and differences into account, he presents a retrospective evaluation of the 1962 report that makes instructive reading today. The author, Raymond L. Garthoff, a senior fellow in the Brookings Foreign Policy Studies program since his retirement from government service in 1979, was well qualified to evaluate the 1962 report, having been executive secretary of the special committee that prepared it. He also served in the Office of National Estimates, where he made intelligence estimates of Soviet foreign policy and strategy for several years before joining the Department of State in 1961. Thus ha has been both a producer and a consumer of intelligence estimates and is able to bring this experience to bear in analyzing the relationship between intelligence and policymaking. Condition: Very good.
Keywords: Intelligence Estimates, Policymaking, Cold War, Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, National Security Council, Soviet Capabilities, Missile Gap, NIE 11-8-62
ISBN: 0815730454
[Book #83299]
Price: $75.00