Team B

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Team B was part of a competitive analysis exercise initiated by U.S. government officials in the 1970s to analyze intelligence on the Soviet Union. Team B was a group of "outside experts" who would counter a group of established CIA intelligence officials known as Team A.^[1] Team B argued that the National Intelligence Estimate on the Soviet Union, generated yearly by the CIA, underestimated Soviet military power and misinterpreted Soviet strategic intentions. Its findings were leaked to the press in an unsuccessful attempt at an October surprise to derail Jimmy Carter's 1976 presidential bid.^[2] The Team B reports became the intellectual foundation for the idea of "the window of vulnerability" and of the massive arms buildup that began toward the end of the Carter administration and accelerated under President Reagan.^[3]

Team B was approved by the Director of Central Intelligence George H. W. Bush. A team of 16 "outside experts" were to take an independent look at highly classified data used by the intelligence community to assess Soviet strategic forces in the yearly National Intelligence Estimates.^[3][4]

There were three teams:

• One studied Soviet low-altitude air defense capabilities,
• One examined Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) accuracy, and
• One investigated Soviet strategic policy and objectives.

It is the third team, chaired by Harvard professor Richard Pipes, that ultimately received considerable publicity and is most commonly referred to as Team B.^[3]

Contents 1 Creation 2 Assessments 3 Criticism 4 Notes and references 5 Further reading

[edit] Creation

In 1974, Albert Wohlstetter, a professor at the University of Chicago, accused the CIA of systematically underestimating Soviet missile deployment, in his 1974 Foreign Policy article entitled "Is There a Strategic Arms Race?" Wohlstetter concluded that the United States was allowing the Soviet Union to achieve military superiority by not closing the missile gap. Many conservatives then began a concerted attack on the CIA's annual assessment of the Soviet threat.^[2][3]

The organization chosen in the administration to challenge the CIA's analysis was the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB). PFIAB's Team B was headed by:

• Richard Pipes, a Harvard historian and specialist in Russian history.
• Paul Nitze, who also helped to create the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), the objectives of which were to raise awareness about the Soviets' alleged nuclear dominance and to pressure the American leadership to close the gap.^[5]

Team B's members included:

• Clare Booth Luce
• John Connally
• Daniel O. Graham
• Edward Teller
• Thomas Wolf
• Paul Wolfowitz
• William Van Cleave ^[6]

In 1975, PFIAB members asked director of the CIA William Colby to approve the initiative of producing comparative assessments of the Soviet threat. Colby refused, stating it was hard "to envisage how an ad hoc independent group of analysts could prepare a more thorough, comprehensive assessment of Soviet strategic capabilities than could the intelligence community."^[5]

In 1976, when George H. W. Bush became the new director of central intelligence, the PFIAB renewed its request for competitive threat assessments. Although his top analysts argued against such an undertaking, Bush checked with the White House, obtained a go-ahead, and by May 26 signed off on the experiment.^[3]

[edit] Assessments

Team B came to the conclusion that the Soviets had developed new weapons of mass destruction such as a nuclear-armed submarine fleet that used a sonar system that didn't depend on sound and was, thus, undetectable by contemporary Western technology. When the CIA argued that the economic chaos in the Soviet Union was hindering their ability to produce an air defense system, Team B countered by arguing that the Soviet Union was trying to deceive the American public when in fact their air defense system worked perfectly. Some members were even considering promoting a first strike policy against the U.S.S.R.^[5][7][8]

Team B also concluded that the Soviet Union did not adhere to the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction, but rather believed it could win a nuclear war outright. Pipes --in his Commentary article--argued that CIA suffered from "mirror-imaging (i.e., from assuming that the other side had to--and did--think and evaluate exactly the same way ); Pipes further wrote that Team B showed Soviet thinking to be based on winning a nuclear war (i.e., not avoiding such war due to MAD (mutual assured destruction), because, he wrote, the Soviets were building MIRV'd nuclear missiles of high yield and high accuracy---appropriate for attacking hardened missile silos, but not needed for such large and vulnerable 'hostage' sites as cities. This was shocking to many at the time,^[1] but Pipes argues that later, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, was proven to be at least partially true.^[9]

Donald Rumsfeld began to make speeches arguing that the Soviets were ignoring Kissinger’s treaties and secretly building up their weapons, with the intention of attacking America. The CIA strongly disagreed with Team B's assessments, calling Rumsfeld's position a "complete fiction" and pointing out that the Soviet Union was disintegrating from within, could barely afford to feed their own people, and would collapse within a decade or two if simply left alone.^[8] A top CIA analyst called it "a kangaroo court of outside critics all picked from one point of view."^[4]

[edit] Criticism

According to Dr. Anne Cahn (Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, 1977-1980), Team B's analysis of weapons systems was later proven to be false. "I would say that all of it was fantasy... if you go through most of Team B's specific allegations about weapons systems, and you just examine them one by one, they were all wrong."^[10] The CIA director at the time, George H. W. Bush, concluded that the Team B approach set "in motion a process that lends itself to manipulation for purposes other than estimative accuracy."^[8][11]

Paul Warnke, an official at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency at the time of the Team B wrote:

“

Whatever might be said for evaluation of strategic capabilities by a group of outside experts, the impracticality of achieving useful results by ‘independent' analysis of strategic objectives should have been self-evident. Moreover, the futility of the Team B enterprise was assured by the selection of the panel's members. Rather than including a diversity of views ... the Strategic Objectives Panel was composed entirely of individuals who made careers of viewing the Soviet menace with alarm.[12]

”

Time Magazine editor Strobe Talbott stated in 1990 that:

“

Bush allowed a panel of outsiders, deliberately stacked with hard-liners, to second-guess the agency's findings. Not surprisingly, the result was a depiction of Soviet intentions and capabilities that seemed extreme at the time and looks ludicrous in retrospect.[13]

”

Richard Pipes has offered analysis to the contrary,^[1] and in 2003 said:

“

We dealt with one problem only: What is the Soviet strategy for nuclear weapons? Team B was appointed to look at the evidence and to see if we could conclude that the actual Soviet strategy is different from ours. It's now demonstrated totally, completely, that it was.[9]

”

Also in 2003, Edward Jay Epstein offered that Team B had been a useful exercise in competitive analysis.^[14]

[edit] Notes and references

1. ^ ^{a b c} Pipes, Richard (1986). "Team B: The Reality Behind the Myth". Commentary Magazine 82 (4). 
2. ^ ^{a b} Barry, Tom (February 12, 2004). "Remembering Team B". International Relations Center. 
3. ^ ^{a b c d e} Cahn, Anne Hessing (April 1993). "Team B: The trillion-dollar experiment". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 49 (03): 22, 24-27. 
4. ^ ^{a b} Tanenhaus, Sam (November 2, 2003). "The Mind Of The Administration A Continuing Series On The Thinkers Who Have Shaped The Bush Administration's View Of The World". The Boston Globe.  "At times, Team B performed logical somersaults that eerily foreshadowed Bush administration statements on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. Just because superweapons like a "non-acoustic anti-submarine system" couldn't be found, Pipes's report argued, that didn't mean the Soviets couldn't build one, "even if they appeared to lack the technical know-how."
5. ^ ^{a b c} (May 1, 2005) "Anatomy of a Neo-Conservative White House". Canadian Dimension 39 (03): 46. 
6. ^ [1]
7. ^ Stone, Devin (March 16, 2005). "Americans must be wary of war on terror". University Wire, Virginia Tech. 
8. ^ ^{a b c} The Power of Nightmares, Part 1 - Baby It's Cold Outside
9. ^ ^{a b} Tanenhaus, Sam (November 11, 2003). The Hard Liner. The Boston Globe. Retrieved on June 9, 2006.
10. ^ Thom Hartmann (December 7, 2004). Hyping Terror For Fun, Profit - And Power (HTML). Commondreams.org. Retrieved on April 23, 2006.
11. ^ Goodman, Melvin A. (November 19, 2004). "Righting the CIA". The Baltimore Sun. 
12. ^ See Barry (above), Warnke, Paul C. (January/February 1999). "The B Team: Paul C. Warnke reviews Killing Detente: The Right Attacks the CIA: Cahn, Anne Hessing". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 55 (01): 70. 
13. ^ Talbott, Strobe (Oct. 14, 1991). "America Abroad The Case Against Gates". Time Magazine. 
14. ^ Edward Jay Epstein (2003). Did Team B do more than "second guess" the CIA professionals?. Question of the Day. Retrieved on June 9, 2006.

[edit] Further reading

• Cahn, Anne H. (September, 1998). Killing Detente: The Right Attacks the CIA. Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0-271-01791-0.  3 Reviews Excerpts of the book Excerpt two
• Gervasi, Tom (October, 1986). The Myth of Soviet Military Supremacy. W W Norton & Co Inc. ISBN 0-393-01776-1.  2 Reviews
• Godson, Roy (1980). Intelligence Requirements for the 1980s: Analysis and Estimates. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 0-87855-827-6. 
• Korb, Lawrence J. (August 18, 2004). "It's Time to Bench 'Team B'". Center for American Progress. 
• Goodman, Melvin A. (July 23, 2003). "As a CIA analyst, I've seen distortions of intelligence before". The Progressive. 
• Husain, Khurram (November/December 2003). "Neocons: The men behind the curtain". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 59 (06): 62-71. 
• Prados, John (1982). The Soviet estimate: U.S. intelligence analysis & Russian military strength. Dial Press. ISBN 0-385-27211-1.  The problems of accurately gauging the extent of the Soviet nuclear buildup in the 1960s and the politics of the fictitious "missile gap". 2 reviews