en.wikipedia.org
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 a perceived missile gap. Many conservatives then began a concerted attack on the CIA's annual assessment of the Soviet threat.[7][4]
U.S. and USSR/Russian nuclear weapons stockpiles, 1945-2006U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld began to make speeches arguing that the Soviets were ignoring Secretary of State Henry Kissingers treaties and secretly building up their weapons, with the intention of attacking the United States. The CIA and other agencies who watched the Soviet Union strongly disagreed with Rumsfeld, calling Rumsfeld's position a "complete fiction" and claiming that the Soviet Union was disintegrating from within, could barely afford to feed its own people, and would collapse within a decade or two if simply left alone. Rumsfeld used his position to persuade President Ford to set up an independent inquiry. Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz wanted to create a much more severe view of the Soviet Union, Soviet intentions, Soviet views about fighting and winning a nuclear war.[8][9][10]
The organization chosen by the Ford administration to challenge the CIA's analysis was the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB).
In 1975, PFIAB members asked CIA Director 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."[11] Colby was removed from his position in the Halloween Massacre; Ford has stated that he, himself, made the decision alone,[12] but the historiography of the "Halloween Massacre" appears to support the allegations that Rumsfeld had successfully lobbied for this.[13]
When George H. W. Bush became the Director of Central Intelligence in 1976 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.[4]
According to Fred Kaplan, "In retrospect, the Team B report (which has since been declassified) turns out to have been wrong on nearly every point.[27] Team B came to the conclusion in their report[28] that the Soviets had or could develop an entirely new anti-submarine detection system that used a system that did not depend on sound and was, thus, undetectable by contemporary Western technology, even though no evidence existed for it or its deployment, other than money spent on research, and when the western experts believed that such a system would be impossible. 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 and claimed that the Russian air defense system worked perfectly. Some members were even considering promoting a first strike policy against the U.S.S.R.[11][29][8]
Sound familiar?
These people don't even believe the bullshit they're peddling. Just in it for the no bid contracts and election victories.
