98. Memorandum From the Deputy Director for Operations, Central Intelligence Agency (George) to President Reagan, Vice President Bush, Secretary of State Shultz, Secretary of Defense Weinberger, and the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (McFarlane)1
SUBJECT
- Discussions by Soviet Officials of the SDI and Other Arms Control Issues
Introduction
1. This information, [2½ lines not declassified]. The report covers two presentations on the arms control issues, one made by Geneva arms [Page 397] control talks negotiator Yuliy A. Kvitsinskiy at KGB headquarters and another by Soviet officials at the Soviet embassy in London. [less than 1 line not declassified]
Kvitsinskiy’s Assessment of the Geneva Arms Negotiations
2. On 21 May 1985, Yuliy A. Kvitsinskiy, the chief Soviet negotiator for SDI, addressed 800 senior KGB officers at their Moscow headquarters on the Geneva arms control negotiations. Kvitsinskiy surprised many of his audience by the harshness of his accusations against the United States for their alleged failure to engage in serious negotiations. Although Kvitsinskiy’s words were sharp, he spoke without emotion. He seemed to want to show that he was realistic in his assessment of the Americans as being sophisticated and cunning adversaries.
3. Kvitsinskiy said that the SDI remained the central problem in the negotiations. If agreement could be reached on SDI, it would not be difficult to deal with strategic arms and INF. Kvitsinskiy gave his audience the impression that not only was there a rough equivalence in Soviet and American nuclear arsenals, but each also had a massive overkill capability. As both sides were due to replace some of their older systems, it was realistic to think in terms of deep cuts. Kvitsinskiy also gave the impression that the Soviet leadership recognized that INF deployment would continue, but did not think that it would be an irreversible process. Because the Soviet Union had so many SS20’s, it should be possible to negotiate an accord. For the time being, the Soviets would keep this card in their pocket.
4. Despite these possibilities, Kvitsinskiy’s tentative conclusion was that, for the time being, the United States was not interested in achieving real progress in the negotiations. The United States, he pointed out, was not just working on the development of its SDI program, but it also needed another one to three years to complete work on other new weapons systems—MX, Midgetman, Trident II (D5), more accurate cruise missiles, and the stealth bomber. There was, therefore, little hope of achieving progress during the rest of the Reagan Administration’s term of office. His successor might be more disposed to negotiate.
5. After Kvitsinskiy’s 45 minute talk, there was a 20 minute question period. Kvitsinskiy was asked why the Soviet Union should, given his assessment, continue to take part in the negotiations. He replied that the Soviet leadership believed that it was important to continue to explore the possibilities of a settlement and at the same time expose the fact that the United States was simply using the negotiations as a facade behind which it wished to prepare to negotiate from a position of strength. For these reasons the Soviet Union would stay at Geneva.
6. Another member of the audience asked for Kvitsinskiy’s impressions of his American counterparts. He said that they were extremely [Page 398] polite and highly civilized. By these devices they sought to conceal their true objectives which were, as he had said, to enable the United States to negotiate from a position of strength. He added that on one occasion his counterpart had dropped the mask of politeness. The American negotiator had said “he hated the Soviet Union and if he was in power he would eliminate us. But he had been sent to negotiate with us and as a man loyal to the President he was simply following his instructions.”
GRU Officer’s Briefing on SDI
7. [1½ lines not declassified] spoke to diplomatic staff about SDI and its implications for the Soviet Union. [name not declassified] presentation was based on guidance from GRU headquarters, supplemented by work done by his own staff. It was a typical military briefing complete with slides and viewfoils to illustrate the main points.
8. [name not declassified] emphasized the following points:
A. Although the SDI system was very complicated, it was not unrealistic to think that the US would be able to implement it, sooner or later.
B. The main problems which the Americans faced in developing SDI were creating enough energy, and storing it, for space based lasers to be effective. These technical problems meant that it was particularly important for the Americans to increase the accuracy of the systems so as to minimize the energy required to destroy Soviet missiles.
C. It was possible that SDI would eventually be able to intercept 90 percent of the Soviet Union’s strategic missiles.
9. Although [name not declassified] had pointed to difficulties that Americans would have in developing SDI, he was pessimistic about the Soviet ability to match the United States. It was an illusion, he said, to believe that Soviet nuclear powered ballistic missile submarines could hope to get under the SDI umbrella by launching their missiles from close to the US coast. SDI would be a three-tiered system, and the third tier would still be able to intercept missiles launched in this way.
10. [less than 1 line not declassified] although it would probably be possible in due course for SDI related systems to protect Western Europe from Soviet SS20 missiles, much important European territory would remain vulnerable to the SS22’s.
11. After [name not declassified] briefing, and a certain amount of discussion, the Soviet ambassador, Viktor I. Popov, told the audience that [name not declassified] had proved that the SDI was a serious threat to the Soviet Union. Every effort was to be made, therefore, to gather information about the development of the SDI program and the views of different groups within the US and Western Europe on it. Particular [Page 399] attention was to be paid to differences of opinion between the US and Western Europe.
12. From what [name not declassified] and the ambassador had said, and the guidance which the embassy had received from the Soviet Foreign Ministry, the diplomatic staff knew that they were to make the following points to their contacts:
A. SDI represented a dangerous leap forward in the arms race in general, but especially in the nuclear arms race. SDI could disarm the Soviet Union of its strategic nuclear forces, thus leaving it without a real deterrent.
B. SDI represented an aggressive act by the United States, aimed at creating conditions in which the US could blackmail the Soviet Union and even possibly eliminate it.
C. SDI makes the threat of a nuclear war more likely.
D. The American intention to press ahead with SDI research and development and their refusal to talk seriously in Geneva were a violation of the Shultz-Gromyko accord of 8 January 1985.
E. SDI is a violation of the ABM treaty.
F. The Soviet Union would be forced to match American developments related to SDI or, more likely, find ways of rendering the US system ineffective.
G. Western Europeans had to realize that the SDI could only protect the US, not Western Europe. This meant that the US would be prepared to wage a nuclear war against the Soviet Union, knowing that Western Europe would be destroyed in retaliation even if SDI gave the Americans considerable protection. For this reason there was a fundamental conflict of interests between the US and Western Europe concerning SDI.
13. The ambassador ended by insisting that minutes of all conversations with British and foreign contacts had to include what had been said to them about the Soviet position and their response.
14. This report is being made available to the chief US arms control negotiators in Geneva.
- Source: Reagan Library, Kenneth deGraffenreid Files, NSPG-Soviet SDI Briefing for the President—1985; NLR–139–18–56–2–5. Secret. A routing slip indicates Poindexter received the memorandum on September 26 and McFarlane on September 27. An attached note reads: “Meeting: NSPG—Soviet SDI Briefing for the President, Briefer: Larry Gershwin, Time/Date: 2:00 p.m., Monday, October 7, Location: Situation Room.” Reagan wrote in his diary on October 7: “We had an NSPG meeting to have a briefing on the Soviet Unions progress in defensive weapons against nuclear missiles. They are raising h—-l about our research & they’ve been at it for 20 yrs. & we’re just starting.” (Brinkley, ed., The Reagan Diaries, vol. I: January 1981–October 1985, p. 503) Preparatory documents and memoranda on the October 7 NSPG meeting are scheduled for publication in Foreign Relations, 1981–1988, vol. XLIV, Part 1, National Security Policy, 1985–1988. The briefing materials and PowerPoint presentation for the October 7 meeting are in Reagan Library, Kenneth deGraffenreid Files, NSPG Meeting/Minutes—10/07/ 1985 (Draft); NLR–139–18–57–1–5.↩
- An unknown hand signed for George above this typed signature.↩