cspan's cities tour brings you to springfield, missouri on january 6th and 7th. we're exploring the littehistor route 66. on saturday, author jeremy neely talks about the conflict occurring along the kansas/missouri border in the struggle over his slavery. >> in 1858 john brown, having left kansas comes back to the territory and begins a series of raids into western missouri. during which his men will liberate enslaved people from missouri and help them escape to freedom. in the course of this, they'll kill a number of slaveholders. and so the legend or the notoriety of john brown really grows as part of this struggle that people locally understand is really the beginning of the civil war.

>> sunday january 7th at 2:00 p.m. on american history tv, we visit the nra national sporting arms museum. >> theodore roosevelt was probably our shootingest president. he was a very avid hunter. fifrs thing he did when he left office was organize and go on a very large hunting safari to africa. now, this particular rifle was prepared specifically for roosevelt. it has the presidential seal engraved on the breach. roosevelt was famous for the bull moose party and there is a bull moose engraved on the side plate of this gun. >> watch cspan cities' tour of springfield, missouri, january 6th and 7th. working with our cable affiliates as we explore america.

next up, a panel of cia analyst and navy historians discuss declassified cold war documents on the soviet navy. co-hosted by the central intelligence agency, the national museum of the u.s. navy and the naval historical foundation, the hour-long events was titled red navy revealed. soviet navy, intelligence and analysis during the cold war. well, good morning, everyone. thanks for coming out to the national press club. the world's oldest and largest organization of professional journalists. i'm a retired u.s. navy captain, member of the headliner committee here at the national press club. on behalf of the board of directors, i want to welcome you and our audience on cspan and other media. thank you very much. we have a special program for you today, and first i want to introduce claire stasen.

she wanted tod say a word and then we'll get into the statements and qs and as. >> thank you, kevin. can you hear me? i know you want to hear from everyone else sitting here at the panel, not me. so i'll only take a minute of your time. we are delighted to be able to work with the cia to bring you this, we think, exciting briefing this morning. i also want to thank kevin and the national press club for hosting us this morning. for those of you who don't know, the naval historical foundation, we're a non-profit membership organization. we focus on preserving and commemorating naval heritage. we use naval history to help educate the american people on the importance of our navy, sea power, and the maritime domain. we're located at the washington navy yard, very historic. and we work closely with the naval history and heritage command. our board and our members, three of whom are -- four of whom are

sitting here today, david, kevin and norman are here. our board and members are just a wealth of knowledge on naval history and providing historical context into activities that are happening today. we hope that you will use us as a resource. as you're doing your research and writing articles. that's it. we want to say thank you for coming and enjoy the briefing. >> great, thank you very much, claire. so let me just go through our list of speakers today. dr. david rosenburg with the institute of defense analysis and a retired u.s. navy captain. welcome. celia mansfield from the central intelligence agency, historical programs coordinator. welcome. norman pullmar, naval and intelligence historian and a wealth of knowledge about all things navy and marine corp. rear admiral thomas brooks, u.s.

navy, retired former director of naval intelligence. welcome aboard. and eugene sullivan, retired cia senior officer. everyone, thank you very much for being here today. david -- sorry we'll start with celia. tell us about the report and the documents that are going to be released. then we'll go q&a after everybody has a chance to say a couple of words. when you stand up, raise your hand, identify your name and your media source or who you're with and make it a really precise question if you could. thank you very much. >> good morning and welcome. i have some remarks that i've already prepared. so just in the way of a reminder later on today from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., we have a symposium at the naval yard. and that will be a two hour session in which we'll give a

little bit more detail on the documents. i want to first thank our navy colleagues and our panelists. it's been wonderful working with everyone. and it's been a real learning experience for myself. let me start by saying that i have the absolute best job, not only do i get to tell the central intelligence agency stories i also with a talented and diverse workforce. including the expert reviewers and researchers who are critical to making this collection and others like it available to the public. it is great privilege to be here today to discuss the results of their hard work. as the historical programs coordinator, i manage the review and release of classified cia documents in the department of state's foreign relations of the united states and the discretionary release of historically significant documents, which included the

release of the president's daily briefs. our goal is to declassify what we can while protecting what we must. with this in mind, we strive to increase government transparency with academia, historians and the public. when possible, we seek to correct the historical record on what cia has been involved with in the past. for today's events, we have produced a booklet which many of you have picked up on your way in. it just provides an overview of the history of the soviet navy and the u.s. navy's posture during this time. as well as a catalog and the catalog is in the back of the booklet, describing the documents recently released for today's events. the documents can be found on our cia.gov website under historical collections. since this is about history, let's go back some 2,500 years ago. almost 2,500 years ago, the chinese military theorists

stressed the important of intelligence in his book, the art of war. he noted that to win 100 battles is not skill. he stressed to subdue the enemy without fighting is indeed the true acme of skill. the cold war was won without a shot being fired between the superpowers and a nuclear holocaust was averted. this current collection of documents is our story of the soviet navy in the cold war. with previously released collections in this series, focused more broadly on the warsaw pact and soviet military strategic issues. the documents provide a fascinating peak into the soviet navy during a critical time of its development resulting analysis at that time served on national security policy issues well. documents include intelligence assessments, intelligence memoranda and research reports, as well as the clandestinely acquired reporting from behind

the iron curtain use todd to de these analytic products. the analytic products were written by a coterie of scientists. these products were prepared for our policymakers and intelligence community partners. there are 82 documents, they're newly released and it amounts to about 2000 pages. much of our analysis of strategic thinking, and for this collection, specifically the cold war soviet naval with its evolving strategy and development of its nuclear submarine force was derived from a special collection of soviet military thought articles and related classified soviet and warsaw pact documents written by their military leaders and strategists. these documents greatly

influenced our analysis in how the united states viewed the soviet union. they were obtained from many lieutenant couralonels you've hd about. consider that my place during this troubled times is on the frontline, i must remain on this frontline in order to be your eyes and ears. god grant that only my modest efforts be useful in the fight for our high ideals for mankind. please believe me that your soldiers shall take a worthy position amongst his comrades who fight for justice. those words were written by a highly placed soviet intelligence officer. he was president kennedy's most secure source during the berlin crisis in 1961 and '62, as well as during the cuban missile crisis in 1962.

he provided, together with imagery from the u-2 overflights, critical intelligence on the soviet missile readiness that president kennedy needed to go eyeball to eyeball with krushev. he served from 1953 to the late 1950s and reported on soviet military organization, policy doctrine, strategy and tactics. finally, a colonel that served from 1972 from his immigration to the united states in november of 1981 reporting on soviet actions. i wanted to talk a little bit about from an analysts' point of view what these documents mean. if you could give me a couple minutes to talk about that. so access to how the navy debated key issues about their own naval theories and

practices, as well as their view of u.s. naval strength made the difference between knowing facts and more importantly, understanding and fwgaining the intuitive edge. al the analysts will know things, however collected intelligence that helps us understand things contributes to making accurate analytic projections. understanding provides a context that allows the stitching together of disparate pieces of information and sorting to the chaff to identify a more accurate picture of the situation. for example, we might have a picture that shows an increase in the number of ships. understanding the why allows us to predict intentions for that increase in ship numbers. the detail and the acquired military thought articles and the other soviet military strategist think pieces in this collection were critical to the analysts' understanding of why. another important aspect of analysis, and you'll probably

pick up on some of the discussion today as we go through some of the questions, is that the intelligence community debates and had some debates in these early years on the interpretation of the intelligence on certain issues. community debates are healthy means to arrive at the understanding that an lialysts k their adversaries intentions. in closing, i'd like to thank john and joe byrd who are responsible for this collection. they spent about a decade doing a lot of the pulling together of the documents and doing a lot of the research to allow this collection as well as two other collections that have already been released. unfortunately, john byrd sadly passed away a couple months ago. and we are deeply great for to both john and joan for all their hard work on the project and their dedication. thank you. >> thank you very much, celia.

david? >> good morning. my name is david rosenburg. i do work at the institute for defense analysis, but i am representing myself and the naval historical foundation. i taught at the novel college, temple university and most recently the u.s. naval academy. i've been doing history for more than five decades, starting back in the 1960s. i have been in many of the archives, and also as a navy intelligence officer, have been behind the scenes. i'm providing you with some interesting comments on this. i wish i had an aircraft carrier model here, but unfortunately i'm talking about documents. let me provide a little bit of insight on how to understand what cia has released. the first thing i want to do is congratulate cia and thank them. what cia has been doing over the last few decades has been remarkable in terms of releasing both finished intelligence and in the materials that you've

seen here, but also in the other collections, of getting open human intelligence derived documents that were provided by agents behind the iron curtain. and the thing is, that when you put this together with material that was released under mandatory declassification review or freedom of information act requests, which cia processed and the intelligence community processed, you get a remarkable picture of the other side of the story. and this is very, very important. because very rarely this soon thereafter are you able to, in fact, get that kind of picture. the other thing i need to thank cia on with an asterisk is the fact they have put all of these online. this collection has been available since earlier this summer online. but in addition, if you look in the back of this lovely booklet, what you will find is a list of

other documents related to it that have also been declassified. it's a very, very fine collection that includes the first and subsequent national intelligence estimates on the soviet navy and so forth. the asterisk, however, is that cia has on their research tool, previous to this year, or i think late last year, it was only available at the national archives. it's now available online at the cia freedom of information act website. this is remarkable. the problem is, it has one of the worst search engines i have ever dealt with, in which if you type in even the most precise search tools you will get something like up to in one case 1,500, you know, following webpages that you could search. celia has noted this was a pain and didn't mind me saying this,

but i thought i would note this publicly. what do we have here that's on the website? we actually have a collection of material that effect covers if you'll pardon the use of the phrase, waterfront, on understanding a good bit of the soviet navy. we have individual 1950s and '60s intelligence drierived documents. some of which are repetitive on what the koernl provided. what is new in a number of cases of the late 1960s and early 1970s, formally classified formal intelligence assessments of the soviet navy. particularly understanding its anticarrier role, submarine and whole series of other points that had not previously been released. this fills a huge gap in materials of things to understand. there are also and this will be

a focus of the decision this afternoon, a series of cia assessments on the role of the soviet navy in ber dikting sea line of commune cases in the event of world war 3. if you want to think about it as it's been called, the third battle of the atlantic. would this have occurred? would the soviet union with this vast collection of submarines, okay, come out and attempt to do what the germans had attempted to do in two world wars? that's an important, very important issue. and is a way we can focus some of the discussion. in addition, there's some remarkable material coming out of cia collection of military thought. pardon my accent, but i was told this is the right way to say it. so far, so good. that was the general staff classified journal that was

provided provided. remarkable material. also, the warsaw pack journal. this was the way that much of the military questions were in fact debated and strategy was talked about. finally, we have essentially nine documents that represent the 13 chapters of the combat regular litions of the soviet n that in fact were published in 1986. human derived, but important if you want to delve into the mind set of how soviet and naval officers are going to think. then we have two book link studies. one a study with a number of redr redaxs then on the trial of soviet disasters. now as i said, you have to be, have to look at this and that's the value again of this booklet. is this going to go online? there will be hyper links in the back. >> tlg on the website with the document, we did a short summary

paragraph, so it will be a pdf under the -- >> what the beauty of this is, you can go to the website, you can find this now and then in addition, you can at least copy and paste into the search engine the title and that would be the way to find some of these documents. the documents that were released fill holes of stuff that the kia has been releases over time. that i think john and joan byrd made the decision they needed to fill in. so this is actually a celebration of that act, but also of everything that's come before it. because if you really want to understand this, you have to understand and look at the other documents. particularly something that i do want to mention and that is is the issue of the national intelligence estimate on the soviet navy.

this has been out for some time. that's the estimate that was a game changing assessment of the soviet navy. that while not part of this, you can see things leading up to it. i want to at least note the importance from the key judgments that i think is very, very critical. because it represented such a departure. for american admirals on one hand and to understand the soviet navy and how this worked. and that was this quote. within the soviet's overall wartime strategy, the primary initial tasks of the navy remain to deploy and provide protection of ballistic missile submarines in preparation for and conduct of strategic and theatre nuclear strikes and to defend the ussr from strikes by enemy ballistic missile submarines and aircraft carriers. this is something that's very, very different than the united states navy would contemplate.

it was something that took a while to get the united states' navy's leadership to understand. it was worried about sloppy interdiction and the fact was how did this work. final point i want to note is that you need to understand that the way the united states went about collecting information on the soviet ewyuunion was all so. there were all sorts of things that in fact contributed to these formal intelligence assessments. this includes the technical collection that was undertaken by satellites. overhead imagery, but also electronic intelligence as well as signals and communications intelligence. there were a range of other sources that contributed to this. the united states navy itself redid the way it did intelligence, capitalizing on what it did in the second world war. and in the early '70s, created the ocean surveillance system

that provided tailored information to fleet commanders. on the doingins of the soviet navy. all of this was a remarkable essentially system of systems that brought us a lot of very important information and so if you want to understand this, the good news is realize that there's a very, very large iceberg behind what you're reading there. and with that, kevin. >> terrific. i think we'll open it to q a&a now. raise your hand. sorry. absolutely. please go ahead. go ahead. >> make a statement. sorry. move this over a little bit. >> as the only press club member on the panel. >> kevin, of course, sorry. he's an officer. i'm just a member for 60 years or whatever. these documents are one fascinating. some i've had the privilege of seeing relating to work i've had in the past.

a large number i had not. so i consider myself a consumer of all of this. having made a dozen trips to the soviet union and russia, and having discussed some of the issues in here in these papers with senior officers as well as submarine designers, i've written several books on, a couple of books on russian submarines. let me say these are eye opening documents. the problem is as dave rosenberg just pointed out, prior to 1982, a lot of our perceptions of what the soviets would do, how they would do it, turned out to be pretty bad. pretty bad. this evening, i will speak about the slok, sea lines of communication interdiction. how the us navy in the first roughly 30 years of the cold war, the primary wartime missions were one nuclear strike

against the soviet union with aircraft carrier, poe lair is, that was the number one mission. nuclear strike against the soviet union. the number one was protecting the atlantic sea lanes because we knew the germans had tried in world war i to cut off europe from the united states. had tried again in world war ii with with submarines and had failed. but with the numbers of submarines the soviets were producing in one year, 60, 70, s submarines, they could probably do it. so we spent a lot of time, effort and resources in the concept of protecting the atlantic convoys which it turns out the soviets were in tnot planning to go after. that was a secondary tertiary mission for them. i'll close by sayi ining that t

evening, i'm going into more detail on that with the document, but also, i must take issue with some of my panel members. i often take issue with organizations as some have seen me on tv, read my books and articles. the cia is totally wrong, incorrect, just unbelievably bad. during the cold war, lots of shots were fired and several score americans and several score russians were killed. i'll be happy to go into details afterwards. thank you. >> you'd like to make a statement, too. going down there. i'd like to amplify on one point that the references have been made to disagreements that sometimes exist in the intelligence community and this panel and is going to focus on the issue of interjenkins. i'd like to point out one paper,

the 1978 paper by jerry sparks at the office of strategic research on soviet naval strategy and operations. as an onanalyst for the past 27 wreers, i've had a experience of writing a paper and not knowing what happened to it. i launch them. i don't know what they landed. but jerry sparks' paper produced virtual fire storm of opposition from the admirals and by name, admiral shapiro, wickland, holloway way. a lot of opposition in the navy to jerry's message. so what you see in these release papers are not only the finished products, you see a lot of how the sausage is made. because there was a lot of debate. a lot of anger within the community in discussing this issue and you may say well why would the office of strategic

research care what the admirals felt? we didn't work for the admirals, but in fact, we did. because our director of central intelligence at the time w was stanfield turner. you see not only the fipished products, you get an insight into the arguments about what the finished product would look like. you get fascinating e ining mat. for example, admiral turner having a meeting with secretary of des, harold brown, talking about the sloks. brown says i love that paper. turning says, i wasn't too crazy about it myself. so there's a lot of stuff here that really points to the difficulty sometimes of getting the message out. and i feel that they do in the long run really mark a recognition for the excellent

work of jerry sparks as the author. and even more so, for john byrd, who was jerry's branch manager at the time and kind of the first line advocate and comb combatant in sometimes what was a nasty exchange of views within the intelligence community, but truth prevailed. for the scholar, it's a great trove of evidence to see how the system, how the intelligence community system works, not simply the final products. >> and admiral brooks want to make a quick comment before we go to q&a. >> yeah. i would like to repeat what has been said before. congratulating cia on this huge project of getting all these documents released and previous documents to this as well. i would also just like to leave a thought with the audience. as you go through this and read

this, you have to stop and think that there still are some things that can only be collected by human beings from human beings. no satellite, no antenna could have collected the information that's compiled in the back of this document. the value of the world's oldest form of intelligence remains. >> we'll open it to questions. you right in the back. >> member of the press club.

we hear a lot today about putin's navy and his admirals. prowling the black sea. the baltic threatening the countries there. prowling the black sea from the base in the crimea, prowling the medicine terror yan ran from a base in syria. what has putin and his admirals learned from the period that you were discussing? where do we stand today with the new russian threat and how to counter it and for the benefit of the audio, whoever answers, reintroduce yourself. >> you want to start with that one? >> no. >> i'll take that one. >> today the soviet navy has an interesting dichotomy. they have one aircraft carrier, much smaller than our ships.

the one carrier they have is in the yard for two, three, possibly four years to be b rebuilt and modernized. they probably cannot add another carrier for another seven, eight, nine, possibly ten years. surface ship construction of destroyers and cruisers has come to almost a complete stop because these were shipped powered by gas turbine engines. the main factory that produced them was in ukraine. and ukraine will not sell gas turbines to russia for their ships. by the same token, they're building lots of small corvettes that their gas turbines can power, and diesels. these small corvettes and fr frigates from their viewpoint, have terrific weapons system. one of their frigates and one corvette in the caspian sea launched missiles 900 miles into

syria. so it's the surface navy and small ships with increasingly potent capabilities. the major threat, i still believe, is on the submarine side. where they are building very slowly, very advanced submari s submarines. missile submarines, ballistic missile for the strategic role and what we would call an air navy torpedo attack and cruise missile submarines. when the soviet union disintegrated, half the surface shipyards were lost. they were in other countries, primarily ukraine, but other countries. all five of the submarine building yards, now they're, they've chaked the order of them. all five remained in the, in russia and most of the come poebts suppliers remained in russia. so where as their surface ship navy has made a contribution in syria the carrier briefly,

surface ships and submarines firing missiles, in my opinion, the area that's going to be, i just like using this word, it's a very journalistic term and i'm a journalist, the threat is going to be from under sea, the submarine side. this is where their emphasis is today. >> can you reintroduce yourself. we can't see the little blue sign in front of you. >> i'm sorry. norm an pullmar. this is naval and intelligence historian. >> let me follow up. i'm not in a position to talk about current affairs given that the work i do on current affairs has nothing to do with this or if it does, i can't tell you about it. so i will note as follows that there is a interesting question as we look at and interpret how russia is going about its use of its navy. an important lesson to remember is that which is symbolized by

that startling statement in the national intelligence estimate from 1982. namely, that things that the us navy thought that the soviet union was going to do for 30 some odd years were things that they vft in fact were shown through the accumulation of the significant amount of very valuable evidence they weren't going to do and so the issue is to talk about what norman noted. the russians are building r very, very capable submarines. they are advanced and given the things i have heard from norman given his relationship with some of the things i've heard from submarine designers, they are rather remarkable systems. but the question is how with will they be used? in wartime? and i think we could venture one thing and that is that it is not likely that russians would in fact be using their submarines the north atlantic sea lines of

communication. the question is how would they use them and where and i can at least venture one thing, which is available when you look at it in these documents that's also important to look at. the russians pioneered the use of antiship cruise missiles. going back to the 1950s. and that if you want to start with understanding the history and the utility of the russian navy for the future, start with the antiship cruise missile. >> sir, you have a question? oh. >> thank you. my name is jeffrey with the tv network. item goi i'm going back a little bit in history. i wonder if mr. stansfield can e elaborate on a statement. because i'd love to take that statement and reverse engineer and to see how that works out with the available documents.

i'll leave you in a statement was the first to blink during the cuban missile crisis. now the publicly available documents state that the united states also withdrew quietly. it's nuclear missiles pointed at the soviet union at the time from turkey. is that viable statement? >> i, i'm not the expert on the cuban missile crisis, so i can't comment on that. there is however and i believe that david mentioned there is an analytic document from 1964 that gives a lot of analytic detail on what we knew at the time so it's a very in depth study and probably the definitive study

a i've seen and it's released and part of this collection. so i would commend that to you to take a look at. i'm not sure, maybe somebody else can talk to the turkey issue. if that was brought up. >> there was a excellent book published called operation anendaire, the russian code name for sending troops and missiles to cuba. it's an excellent book written, co-authored, the first half written by an american general who was involved. the second half written by a soviet general who was involved. and i think you'll find if not specifics, at least indications that will answer your question. there's also a book by a guy named gresham and pullmar called defcon 2, which was the only time i think the only time in

the cold war we went to defcon 2 level, which was everything but war, but efg was primed to start attacking. but the operation anendaire is probably the best published resource on that. >> missiles were moved from turkey, either during or shortly after the crisis. >> the missiles, i think there were only one or two missiles operational in turkey at that time. only one or two missiles. and they were removed after the crisis. not during, but after. but i'm pretty sure and the book goes into this as i recall, there were maybe two of a plan, i forgot 16, 24, that was the order of magnitude of missiles that were being installed. it was 16 or 24 as i recall, but only one or two were operational at the time of the crisis.

>> just very briefly. what norman said is true. i think there were more missiles that were in fact operational because this was a decision made by the eisenhower information back in the 1950s as part of the stockpile to provide these missiles in tur rkey and italy. these remain a point of controversy because of difficulty on the part of the u.s. government and department of energy to admit even though they've been out for year, even though they were in turkey with nuclear weapons on them. they continue to redakt some of the mag on these, but there's enough information on air force history. the key point was the jupiters in turkey were pretty horrible weapons that could be disabled by a rifle bullet and they were in range of highways. and the fact is kennedy had ordered their removal because of their vulnerability. the fact was that in the end, there was a, a kind of secret

quid proquo that they would remove the missiles, but they were leaving any way and didn't happen during the missile crisis, but they were in fact discussed in a private set of negotiations. between robert kennedy and ambassador, new ambassador about all of this. so it was back channel diplomacy that made the difference and had nothing to do however with the blockade, which was another key part of this. >> great. do we have other questions? sir, way in the back. >> hi. greg meierry with national public radio. to anyone on the panel, could you tell us more about what the us navy was doing to prepare in the decades when they believed the soviets might try to block sea lanes then after that realization came about, what changed or what was done differently afterwards.

>> i'll make a couple of comments on that. the missions of the us navy during that time frame, 1960s, 1970s in particular as pertinent to these documents. we viewed our missions as number one, fielding and the force strategic to turns as we characterized it. sea control, power projection and presence and support of diplomacy. that was roughly how we categorized our missions. the sea control mission, a very large subset envisioned getting a convoys through to western europe to reenforce nato. and before and particularly after the dwing of the war. again b, having in mind and remember the admirals r who were planning, those were all world

war two admirals. the class in 1941. they all had fought many submariners. many of them saw that despite what the soviet attention might be to introduce sea line communications, the soviet had a huge number of sub mama arennd those in the audience who served in the military, from the naval academy on from the naval colleges, you were taught considering the enemy, you consider capabilities first. intentions are very, very much secretary. you can change intentions quickly. can't change capabilities quickly. and a good example as a young

law student at the time was do you remember that of course i did not remember because i was 5 years old when this happened. five hours after pearl harbor happened, secretary knox sent a message to the fleet saying commence unrestricted submarine warfare, something that was taboo. we had denounced it. we said it was criminal. we would never execute unrestricted submarine warfare. four or five hours after pearl harbor, we executed it. to the surprise of the japanese, i suppose, but also to the surprise of a lot of naval officers. because we're not trained for that. that was not our -- but our intentions changed quickly. when you look at the investment the navy was making those years, the force and carrier force obviously was far and away the

despite the fact sea control was listed as our number two mission. the money was being spent on power projection. we were two or three carriers off vietnam at any given time. a lot of money was spent on asw and submarine war far. mainly using world war ii ships. and in the 1970s as those ships were wearing out, it became necessary to try to replace the aswc control. we had things such as the sea control ship which never show saw the light of day and a mix of ships. the navy's continued to train considerably in asw and incest, but not really invest in the espn program or the carrier w

warfare. if there's anything more specific i can address, let me know. >> just a footnote to what admiral brooks just said, soviets built 236 submarines of what we call the u.s. calls the whisky class or nato calls the whisky class. 236, when we saw four shipyards producing these as i say, 60 some a year, 70 some a year, we knew that had tok the mission of those submarines to interdict the sea lanes. interestingly, the soviets never considered the whisky class as ocean going submarines. they built them with with the idea of coastal defense against our aircraft carriers and amphibious landings. they, you know, we k lolooked a

them as submarines capable of going to sea, so they tried to do what the germans had tried. part of the reason we thought that way is after the war, world war ii, the british and the americans, armies and navies literally hired or got hundreds, not hundreds scores of generals and admirals to write about fighting the soviets. i have an example back there in my bag iffin pants to see it, of how it was for the germans to fight the soviets. we were then influenced, our thinking was influenced by these papers and book that is the german admirals and few case, captains and koernls wrote and of course, they all having fought a battle of the atlantic, said it's unquestion bable the soviets will do is tame thing. which is fascinating to me as a naval and intelligence historian, it says, it's swrus fascinating to me that the

largest class of submarines built since world war ii, the 236 whiskys, were intended for coastal defense, not for long range operations. >> i've got a -- >> adding eugene sullivan retired cia analyst. if you look at the papers that are published about soviet slok interdiction, they cover both intentions and capability. the intentions thing says the soviets didn't intend to do it, but it's accompanied by a careful assessment of suppose they did decide to do it and the papers generally, at least that the agency found, they were not capable of doing it. because when you looked at the numbers and factors in things like endurance, like torpedo loads, the ability to dif wrennuate targets, the findings of the papers, they were not

capable of doing it because of the ss prbns then it was doubt . but again, the papers are the way to look at this problem. see what the arguments are. see what the counterarguments are. but they're all available for extensive looking into. just a quick follow up. can you give concrete examples of how they might have changed thinking? deployments? >> let me address a couple of issues that did take place in the us navy during this time. antisubmarine warfare became a point of serious concern. and in fact, something from 1957 on, it became a high priority for them, who created an

executive. but more importantly, this is something that as things were developing in new london connecticut, that was the rise of the american submarines. with very large sonars. understanding where finding that the creation of submarines as antisubmarine weapons became. this was something the us navy in effect made a significant priority for its submarine force. i'm sure you have read the book or sceeen the movie, the hunt f red october. the fact is the capability to do that, the us navy worked very, very hard at with the goal of building 100 nuclear attack

submarines that we achieved 90 something in the 1980s that were going to be as former commander of the pacific fleet called it the capital ships of world war 3. for everything else, you would be using carriers and surface ships, but these would be the care quler ships if you needed to get into it. in addition, the navy built a remarkable system built on national intelligence capabilities to track the soviet navy from home mortars into deployments and to find ways of figuring out where they were and what they were doing. at the risk of providing a plug on this, there is available one book called the admiral's advantage. written by christopher fort and directed by myself, this was a navy project that in fact so we don don't, we've never gotten any money, it was published in 2005

with forward by john at the time in 2014 and it is the cutting edge of declassification that talked about how we tracked the soviet navy. without that, you're not going to be able to vector those submarines in to go find what you're looking for so that was a big part of this. >> may i fake make a few comments about other side. one of the problems in asw, they tid things with submarines that we didn't think could be done or we couldn't do. for example, the world's fastest submarines were soviet, and not american. the one of the kind papa class was the world's fastest, 44.7 knots. soviets planned to build 40.

their alpha class which they built seven of. six operational, one just a troublesome boat, could do 42, 41, 42 knots. they have built submarines that could go to 1,000 meters, 3,000 feet. based on published material, that's three times as deep as air submarines go and much deeper than any weapons can go. their goal according to russian publications is 2,000 meters. over 6,000 feet. ooempb 1,000 feet. or 6,000.

their attack submarines today have less than half the crew numbers of ours. they're the only one that built escape pods or capsules for the crew. they've just done a number of things that we have said couldn't be done or just surprised us because with we didn't think they would do it just wanted to bput in a plug mt other side. sfwl want to make a comment? >> just to wrap up the question as you asked. the discussion of sloks is an illustrative issue on the larger issue of how do we go about finally fully understanding the missions of the soviet navy. and dave's book goes into that and it was a number sources, some of which were sources, some were seeking source, some were overhead imagery sources, a combination of many, many things. but some high level intelligence to us in the 1970s.

that enabled us i think by the end of the 1970s to pretty well understand soviet mission. and they were some dimensions of those missions quite frankly surprised ut and the reasus and reason is we didn't think that way. one of the major soviet navy missions was to protect their ssbn force to provide huge numbers of forces to protect their ssbns. we don't do that. our entire process would get lost out there in the vast expansion of the ocean and isn't threatened by anything. so they had very, very different problems before they got the long range missiles. even after they did, we didn't

appreciate that until after the evaluation of all of this intelligence that became available. in the 1970s. may have time for one last question. >> go ahead. >> it's kind of double barrelled. i wanted to ask for those hoff us who may not be able to athend afternoon's session, if you'll say a word about the incidents in which you say there was an exchange of fire. you said it's not so as the cia put it, there was never any shots fired in anger. and follow up. >> quickly. everyone here knows of gary powers being shot down. but the soviets also shot down eight, ten, 12, i don't recall the exact number, a dozen u.s. recongress any sans aircraft. first one, a navy patrol bomber,

lost i think 12 crew man. there were a couple of shooting incidents in germany where americans were killed. at least one russian badger reconnaissance aircraft crashed while flying low over a u.s. carrier. she did a turn. didn't quite make it. one of the wing tips hit the water. they lost 12, not 12, eight people in that aircraft as i recall. in vietnam, there were russians who were killed. technical advisers, if you will, and i believe we know of at least two or i've seen refere e references to two russian pilots who were killed in vietnam. so people were killed during the cold war on both sides. and shots were fired. and as i say, probably a dozen u.s. and russian recog sans aircraft was lost.

one of the missiles that were fired as i recall did hit a russian fighter and it was trying to intercept the you tube flown by gary powers. that aircraft was lost with its pilot. so there were real shots fired and real casualties on both sides. >> and on a slightly different patt matter, you mentioned vietnam and i wanted to ask what the documents show about u.s. conclusions about soviet access or soviet use of cameron bay in vietnam starting in 1980. and the importance of cameron bay. as a launch pad for possible future u.s. operations in east asia and the pacific. if not a lawn f point, but a -- >> i don't believe that this collection of documents covers that aspect at all.

this was a very, 82 documents, i don't think that was a part of the package as i remember. >> i don't recall anything about that. >> it's mention b ebbed in the latest estimates discusses this in terms of peacetime activities and 111584 and also the later intelligence information mem n memoranda and portions that were declassified do mention it, but nothing in great detail. with respect to the future, it's the future. >> well i want to thank you on behalf of the national press club for coming out today and being part of this important meeting and i think our panelists will be around for a little bit if you have some follow on questions. thank you again for being here at the national press club.

american history tv on cspan 3. this week in prime time, starting at 8:00 p.m. eastern. tonight, u.s. army special forces detachments stationed in berlin, germany during the cold war. >> two teams would remain in the city to give the germans a hard time. destroy critical targets like radio stations and power plants. while the other guys would cross over the walls to hit these targets. rail yards. >> wednesday night. black voter se precious in the 1940s. >> during the debate, lewis lud low said what a travesty. negroes by the multipied thousands to the firing line to die and fight for freedom while telling them they shall have no part of parcel in freedom at home. >> thursday night, president jackson's political struggle to challenge and cripple the power

ful bank of the united states. >> by 1829, he would have been president all of three monlts, he was writing friend that is the only thing that can prevent our lib erties to be crushed by the bank and its influence would be to kill the bank itself. >> and friday night, an interview with john mccain on the vietnam war's impact on his life. and the country. >> i don't hold a grudge against the north vietnamese. i don't like them. there are some that i would never want to see again. but at the same time, i was part of a conflict, okay? and i thought they were some of the meanest people i've ever met in my life and i never want to see again. but there were several that were good people and that were kind to me. that's why it was much usier for me to support along with

president clinton and others, the normalization within our two countries, to heal the wounds of war. >> watch american history tv. this week in prime time. on cspan 3. appearing in his beverly hills home library, academy award winning actor and world war ii bomber pilot, james stewart, using models, animation and film to describe how the u.s. air force and jets were used as a deterrent in the korld war. he also describes his world war ii service was promoted to brigadier general in the u.s. air force reserve in 1959 and flew a 1966 vietnam bombing mission. ♪