i do not think intelligence is meant to be primarily in the prediction business. we like to forecast and assessed. when i was at the nic, i took comfort in saying that it was true, that predictions of continuity beat any weather forecaster. it is one be sunny and telegrams, if it rains, you say it is going terrain until it turned sunny. -- to rein until it turns sunday. they cannot predict the future, so how can we predict something as complicated as the fall of the soviet union? we did not resume the soviet union was going to fall but we have a policy pursued called containment which said that if we kept some pressure on them, eventually the question arises, could we have done better at understanding what was going if not predicting what was going to

happen? i would like to pursue that. questions that get asked and not asked. third, stories. and maybe if i have time, capabilities. puzzles, first, are the things we have an answer to that we just don't know. we spent billions of dollars on intelligence systems to try to ferret out those puzzle lancers. how many missiles does the soviet union have, how accurate? impressive proposal solving. mysteries are different. they have no answer. they are contingent, they depend not least on what we do as a matter of policy. they typically have some history

and theory. for instance, what russia's inflation rate is going to be this year is a mystery. nobody knows the answer. it depends. at least we have some sense of what it depends on, because we know what creates inflation and how economies work. so we have some basis on to know what to look for. the soviet union was a hard mystery. we knew that the economy mattered a lot. i will come back in a minute to stories. the small sample size of those empires that have fallen, and we could not get much guidance about the soviet union from other places. questions the, questions that are not asked are not likely to be answered by intelligence.

example, i was in a white house that was in the 1970's, not the reagan white house. , a demographer, had all these statistics that should not been right. things were going in a direction for the soviet union that rich countries should not go. life expectancy for mail's going down and not up and all sorts of pretty clear warning signs of a sick society. and people were leaving their and telling you that toasters or more likely to explode and then to toast the bread. shoddy russian consumer goods. we were not asking could this be the sign of a deeply sick society, an early warning? we were really focused on their military potential, invasion of

afghanistan, we were not asking that question. not asking the question, we did not get much of an answer. imagine if an analyst had approached mr. reagan early in his term and said, i don't think you have to worry about the invasion of a tennis fan and military power or expansion into the third world. what you ought to be worried about facing the prospect this place will collapse may be within a dozen years, my guess is that mr. reagan would -- that analyst would probably have found himself or herself counting submarines in the aleutians. [laughter] i have come through my years as a consumer banking that intelligence is really about telling stories and adjusting

stories. , then don't have a story information is just a factoid. when the story gets too fixed, we call that a mindset. it often leads to intelligence failures. but we did not have a story for understanding of those demographics or exploding toasters. instead we had restored a said we know and soviet defense is a thing apart. other people said we had a story that the soviets can just make their people suffer a little more when push comes to shove, and spent more on military measures and expansion. the closest i have found someone who predicted the fall of the soviet union was a british columnist in 1977, bernard

levin. he got the story right mostly for the wrong reasons. his reasons were stereotyping about culture and ideology. he said the soviet union when it falls is not point to fall from the bottom, it is going to fall from the top. it will be taken apart by those who have a diagnosis of the system. he thought that the russians could not be bothered to vote on their own, that it would take someone from the top. he thought the motivation would be a lost for freedom. in fact it was gorbachev finally understanding just how bad the soviet economy was. but at least he had a story. he did not say, when is this going to happen? he said let's pick the 200th anniversary of the french revolution, so he said 1989.

as many of my predecessors have said, i have looked at the analysis of the soviet union in this period. on hold it was not bad, it was pretty good. -- on the whole. someone said the soviet problem continues to be that of a less developed country with remarkably little progress toward a more moderate modern power. even those days we referred to the soviet union as upper volta with nuclear weapons. we mostly focused on the nuclear weapons part. we found it difficult to put the economic and the social political hav's together. -- have's.

it was a particularly hard task in the soviet union. this is the irony of the story, i think that went he was talking about not being able to understand gorbachev's economic plan, he was right. doug was right that they needed to be studied, but they made no sense. they were mostly pain, but no gain. once the analysts all that and saw the story, several senior people like bob gates, like one of his successors, bill odom, they looked at this and this cannot be right. they said what gorbachev is doing will lead to the end of the soviet union. story, butthe they could not believe the story could be right. indeed the story did not have to be right but for gorbachev who

had a good diagnosis of the system and absolutely no idea what to do about it, the soviet union might have bumbled along a few more years and still might be today. very hard to make a prediction particularly when one depended ultimately on the actions and ineptitudes of one particular soviet leader. just a word about the capabilities, the challenge of putting economic, social, foreign policy, and politics together is a real challenge. where did that today we have lost a lot of that capacity to do strategic analysis, that his analysis that puts a particular issue in a wider context with other issues and perhaps a time. we have been through a very tactical time including the cia, fighting wars, supporting fighters. those are mostly puzzle-solving exercises and not a mystery-

framing exercises. i had the opportunity to walk around various agencies a few years ago and asked about the state of analysis restate of analysis in various intelligence community's. they said that we used to analysis and now we mostly due reporting. there are so many more issues out there and so many more consumers. it seems to me the challenge of doing more strategic analysis that put the pieces together in helpful ways is more and more important. let me conclude with my own favorite story about the end of the soviet union, which is also a good story about the cia. soon after the end, i was in moscow with a delegation. it was by far the most fun i've ever had in moscow. i had been there as an official. if you don't speak russian, in the old days the line between hospitality and imprisonment was

pretty blurry. [laughter] it was wonderful to be there when everything was open. a pack of cigarettes would get you in trouble, out of trouble, across town. it was wonderful. i never expected to have this happen again and did not expect to have it happen and. we were at a gathering of so soviet officials and an intelligence man came over and said he had not been out of the soviet union in 20 years, spoke impeccable american english. the soviets did do language very well for all they did wrong. a former director of central intelligence was in the delegation and the soviets said him. introduyou introduce me to bill. so i did. he said, bill, i want to thank

you for the pressure that led to a change in the soviet union. it will not happen again, but it was nice to have it happen once. [applause] >> david holloway. >> i feel very honored to be here. i did not work in the reagan administration. i have never worked for an intelligence agency. moreover, i come from stanford. i have been at stanford long enough to remember when this library might have been at stanford and not in simi valley. it is with a sense of deep regret that i have to make that point. [laughter] i plan to talk about a specific issue that arises in the documents, in the collection we have been given. this has to do with an incident sometimes known as the war scare

in moscow in november 1983. to do with the impact the report of this scare on president reagan's attitude toward the soviet union and the kind of policy that he wanted to pursue towards moscow. there are really two questions. war , whawas there really a scare in moscow in the sense that the soviet leaders believed nuclear attacks from the united states and nato was possible in the short term? the second question is, what impact did reporting on this have on the reagan administration and in particular the president's approach to the soviet union? the first question, was there a scare is highly controversial.

in the collection we have, there are documents that give different answers to the question. the issue is basically this, as many of you will recall, 1983 was the year of great tension. i want to go between the u.s. and the soviet union. i will not going to the background of cultures, but andropov's, general secretary a party at the time, made a comment in september of 1983 that if anyone ever had any illusions about the possibility of an evolution for the veteran, those illusions are completely dispelled now. in the early part of november, but in the second and the 11th, nato conducted an annual command post exercise named able archer, which was to practice procedures for releasing nuclear weapons in

the event of a war. soviet intelligence monitoring this very closely, as would be its practice. on november 8 or november 9 in the middle of the exercise kgb residences abroad received an urgent telegram mistakenly reporting an alert at u.s. bases and implying that the alert might not be the beginning of a countdown to nuclear war. according to one report, the staff of the general of stol ordered some soviet missile forces and other measures were taken to enhance the readiness of soviet air forces in central europe. oleg, a kgb agent in london who

had been acting as a double agent, on the fifth of november, informed his case officer at mi6, the secret intelligence agency, that the telegram had come into london from moscow's center warning that once the preliminary decision had been taken to go ahead with a first strike, nuclear missiles were likely to be launched within a week or 10 days. the kgb was to watch for signs of preparation of such an attack. this information was passed through mrs. margaret thatcher and jeffrey howe, who was then foreign secretary, writes in his memoirs that the message left us in no doubt of the extraordinary but genuine russian fear of real-life nuclear strike. in the collection of documents we have been given there is a

memorandum of the 30th of december prepared by the intelligence director of the cia and title "soviets thinking on the possibility of armed confrontation with the united states." the memorandum concludes, "moscow does not appear to anticipate a near-term military confrontation with the u.s. soviet leaders wre very worried about the long-term trends in american policy, fbi, the deployment of intermediate range nuclear forces in europe, the development of the trident 2 missile and submarine." so they were afraid of how things might turn out in five or 10 years, but not afraid about what might happen if in a matter of weeks. -- iwhat might happen in a

matter of weeks. the question was did the soviet leaders anticipate a near-term confrontation with the u.s.? but we don't have the documents that pose the question. we have the memorandum answer the question by saying the soviet leaders don't expect an attack. of that memorandum did not settle things. there was a special national intelligence estimates on five months later on the implications of recent soviet military and political activities. but this reached the same conclusion. "we strongly believe soviet leaders do not conceive a dedenim in danger of imminent conflict with the united states." in this context it is interesting to note that bob gates in his memoirs -- and he was deputy director of intelligence at the time -- is much more equivocal about soviet

thinking, because in the same paragraph he writes, "there is a good chance with all of the other events in 1983 that the soviet leaders really felt a nato attack was at least possible and that they took a number of measures to enhance their military readiness short of mobilization. the soviet leaders may not have believed a nato attack was imminent, but they did seem to believe the situation was dangerous." in a study in the collection on the dvd's that the cia -- that was done for the cia in the late 1990's by ben fisher, an interesting study of the whole crisis, he comes to the conclusion that in the late 1983, the soviet leaders and in particular yuri andropov, that ronald reagan might launched weapons against the soviet

union. and there's commentary on a later study by's foreign intelligence board, in the late- 1980s, that criticized the earlier cia estimates for being dangerously relaxed, in other words dangerously relaxed about the dangers that really existed at the time. i find this very puzzling. i don't think there was a war scare in moscow. people i've ever spoken with -- maybe i've spoken with the wrong people in moscow and -- have assured me that was the case. deep anxiety about how the relationship was developing for all the reasons we know today, back in technology and economic stability. the cia evidence and the cia study is equivocal on whether

there was a war scare. this is important for two reasons. if we actually think that in november 1983 when the soviet union had over 10,000 nuclear warheads on strategic missiles and thousands of nuclear warheads deployed in central europe, soviet leaders thought in that context that nuclear deterrence would not work, we have to rethink what we understand by nuclear weapons. there was no doubt at that time that they could retaliat ane in devastating ways if the u.s. and nato had attacked. some things that would cast doubt, if the real worry was long-term trends that the u.s. might escape from the relationship of mutual deterrence, then that is more understandable anxiety in

the way we have thought about the strategic relationship. the final point i want to make s that in ronald reagan's direct for november 18, which is a little time after this able artur nato exercise, he writes, "george shultz and i had a talk maybe about setting up a little in-house group of experts on the soviet union to help us in setting up some channels. i feel the soviets are so defensive-minded, so paranoid about being attacked, that without being in any way soft on them, we ought to tell them that no one here has any intention of doing anything like? . what the have they gotten anyone would want?" [laughter] this strikes me as classics ronald reagan prose.

some people have said he must give written this in response to being told about the alarm over the exercise in moscow about the war scare. i don't think that is necessarily the case. tensions were very high. it could be just a response to the more general situation. this is, i don't thinks a conversion on the road to damascus. already in 1983 he had been seeking ways to build a channels to the soviet leadership to discuss how to deal with difficulties and move forward to a better relationship. but i think what is very striking to my mind is that his response to reports, however they came or whatever their substance, about fear and paranoia in moscow was to seek

to provide reassurance as the basis for moving forward. it is a critical turning a in his policy towards the soviet union and ultimately paid off in the greatest way when he formed his relationship with mchale gorbachev. -- it is a critical turning point. thank you. -- mikhail gorbachev. [applause] >> now to our final speaker, annelise anderson. >> thank you. together a fascinating collection of documents. sorry. i was just saying how fascinating this collection of documents is that has been put together by the cia where you can see what kind of integration reagan and his administration were getting and on the other hand the national security documents, where you

can see what he actually decided and how he used the intelligence, and the national director of that came out of this. the national security council documents show ronald reagan in action. he shared 300 to five of these meetings, plus probably another 20 that are not recorded and there were minutes taken of these of what everybody said. you can see the conflict between george shultz and weinberger in these documents. a great many of them have been released and the library is releasing more them. my husband first got access to them, martin anderson, and read them in the vaults in this

library and read all 300 and all those which contain minutes. what we know about reagan that we might not be able to learn through reading the cia documents about information he received. here are the basic points. reagan's views on the soviet union and his strategy for dealing with them are reflected very early in his own writings. they were really rather and well established when he took office. second, reagan made all the decisions. this is pretty clear from reading the nsc documents. it is the most striking conclusion that comes from reading through all of them,

and from reading his personal diary, which has been available since 2007. third, i think i probably disagree little with other members, not everybody, but with some speakers, is that reagan's decision and the actions that had aministration taook profound effect on what the soviets did. so this was not all big and the cake -- all baked in the cke. it wa-- cake. it was not the soviet union was going to collapse any way. in terms of reagan's strategy i want to read something from the in 1963.that the rohe wrote we are talking even before he

gave the speech to barry goldwater. it sums up his strategy. "the only sure way to avoid war is to surrender without fighting. the other way is based on the belief supported so far by all the evidence that in an all-out race, our system is stronger, and eventually the enemy gives {as a hopeless cause. then a noble nation, leaving in a piece extends the hand of friendship, says there's room in the world for both of us." that is 1963. that describes what he accomplished, basically. the exit. -- that's it. when he left the governorship in 1975 until he ran for president in 1980, he did 1024

radio commentaries, each of them three minutes. he wrote 686 of them himself. they are here in the reagan library as part of his personal papers, because they are written while he is not an office. a temporary aberration that will one day disappear from the eric's, because it is contradictory to human nature, is what he wrote. he had a great deal of confidence in the united states and its people. he said in his 1980 campaign, he basically said the same thing that he said in 1963. so it was not just a onetime thing. he said, and " i don't think the

soviets want war. the soviets want peace and victory. iney seek a superiority nuclear strength that in the event of confrontation will leave us with the choice of surrender or die. if we have the will and determination " to build a deterrent capability, we can have real peace, because we will never be faced with such an ultimatum. the men in the kremlin could in the face of such a determination decide that true arms limitation makes sense." of course reagan told in 1983 that he wanted to be remembered as the president who took away a dreadful fear of nuclear holocaust that was hanging over the world that we will cope with every morning. -- woke up with every

morning. as a decision maker, in his first nsc meeting, which is one of the documents that is in this collection, he says to all his assembled advisers who are members of the national security council, "i will use the nsc structured to obtain your guidance, but i will make the decisions." he was very conscious of its prerogatives as a decision maker. when he fired alexander haig, as first secretary of state, and replaced him with george shultz, he wrote in his diary, "because alexander haig had given a television speech about how he

and ronald reagan disagree on policy and reagan writes in his diary, "the only disagreement was whether i made decisions in politics or the secretary of state didn't." [laughter] he was very jealous of his decision making authority. he tolerates extensive disagreement among his members of his administration and he says i'm going with george on this one, i think bill casey has this right, and so on. so he disagrees -- he recognizes that they disagree and he wants to hear these different views, they come from different places , and there are huge differences, and he tolerates that. ok? he is obviously capable of firing people. he keeps all of them in spite of their disagreements. two of his decisions are

especially important. one of them is the decision when he decides that he wants to follow the zero-zero pass on intermediate nuclear weapons in europe and if the soviets did not take their missiles out that are aimed at cities in western europe, that he would put pershing missiles and cruise missiles in western europe to be aimed at moscow and kiev and other cities in the soviet union. he is very determined about that and worked very hard on that. there's a document in the cia collection that shows they provided information how best to work with allies on achieving this objective, but reagan is absolutely determined on that. in november of 1983 we started introducing the pershing and

cruise missiles in europe. the agreement to remove them was not signed until gorbachev agreed to the imf treating and that was signed in december 1987. the nsc minutes also showed that many decisions that reagan made about soviet aboutto western technology, hard currency, and general economic help that they could get from the west. if you go back to the 1963 speech, again, this policy is foreshadowed there. he says this in 1963, "if we truly believe that our way of life is best, are the russians not more likely to recognize that fact and modify their stance? is, if we let their

comic come unhinged so the contrast is apparent? should not throw the whole bird and uncovered putting a satellite on their slave masters who are having trouble feeding themselves?" i find in the cia documents a little bit of conflict or uncertainty about whether or not the military is really increasing their military resources. certainly, we need to have a lot of troops. they were also clearly -- the record shows -- increasing their nuclear warheads at about 2000 per year. the number of nuclear weapons and warrants increased steadily especially intercontinental ballistic missiles but also bombers, missiles carried on

through the end of 1986. it continued a couple years after gorbachev went into office. at that time, the turning point when the soviets had more nuclear warheads than the united states, occurred in 1978 in the middle of the carter administration. during ronald reagan, the number of u.s. nuclear warheads stayed virtually the same. the number of soviet warheads increased until they had 45,000 to our 2300 or something like. and agreed ont to ev what they want to accomplish in the "start" treaty as well as imf even though reagan refused to give in on certain things, they did negotiate on these

things later. the number of soviet weapons started to drop by 1000 or 2000 per year. and the number in the united states dropped dramatically. and so, reagan is the first president to actually persuade the soviet union to reduce their nuclear weapons and there was a dramatic reduction down to about 12,000 for the soviets and 5000 for the united states by 2010 are so. and so, in 1988 when gorbachev meets with reagan the last time and he goes to the un and he announces the reduction in conventional forces especially those in eastern europe and basically the cold war is over at that point, reagan never crowed about winning the cold war. he did not say the u.s. won the

cold war. what he says is, the cold war is over and freedom won as we always knew it would. thank you. [applause] copperwood >> i want to thank the speaker's in being diligent in getting us on time. we have another 50 or 20 minutes for questions and answers. i assume there are few questions out there. if if you would raise your hands of someone could get a microphone to you. \ i see one in the back. the gentleman. someone be used to the punch. we will get you next. -- someone beat you to the punch. >> on the basis in ronald

reagan's time when it was difficult to predict outcomes of events that dealt with large crowds like the berlin wall and the amendments square -- tiena nmen square, if we fast for now to what the admiral says to present day, should we use computer modeling to analyze outcomes and predict success, for instance, in a chess game of computer can predict windows or draw -- win, lose, or draw? should the president be getting computer model forecasts with regard to intelligence? >> i will take a shot at this. but i want to break the deal with this one as well. this is a question often face.

my personal view on this is spikes i am much more of the view that there are all sorts of factors that come into play. let me give you an example with the arab spring. if you were watching what happened in cairo and thought it was going to be the model, i would then ask you to please explain to me why we saw what happened in libya and what is unfolding right now in syria? it did not exactly stick to the model. this in turn gets you into a variety of factors that have to do with the nature of society, the demography, sectarian divide, leadership, past experiences, and willingness to use force to suppress and kill their own people, which clearly the military who worked for mubarak were not prepared to do. we are seeing a very different side of things in syria. i would be a little wary about trying to computerized assessments of how leaders and

political elites would respond to a large crowds. >> in general, it seems to me -- peter's cautions are well-taken, but what strikes me when i did this work looking at the various agencies, there is surprisingly little use of dematha and technology now in most intelligence analysis -- method and technology. there is data that is available, not definitive, but if you are trying to see patterns, and cover old patterns, remember hypotheses you have forgotten, making much more use of methods and computers is important, but it does not give you the answer. it is a richer set of tools. there's a whole family of tools for trying to put together subjective judgments in a

systematic way that may work. recently, a look at forecasting across the intelligence agencies found that mostly and they did not use methods. and in many cases they did not even know there were message out there useful in forecasting. the single most prevalent methods they found is one that we know is not good. that is bringing together a group of experts, hammering out a consensus view. you are much better off asking them to vote separately. i think we can make much more use of and technology -- of method and technology. >> i should've stated this at the outset, it depends on what the nature of the question is. if it is an issue about a political decision making, i would stick with my spirit. if it is a more technical base, a good example, might be the large use of computers that goes

into crunching data for people that do terrorism analysis. i will not get into much detail, but there's a tremendous amount of data crunching that goes on in terms of the hunt for relationships and patterns and networks that would be hard to do the job without it. >> a question over here? a dental and in the back, too. if you could raise your hand so someone could get a microphone to you. -- a gentleman in the back. >> i would like to thank the panel for fascinating symposia. my first question, more specifically towards the panel itself and the second is for professor david holloway. the first question, i had the opportunity to have 30 seconds of discussion with the admiral, but i am hoping that my question will be elaborated

upon. that is, there existed a trio and that trio was president reagan, john paul ii, and edward teller. anecdotally and analytically, that trio interactive and clotted and intrigue on certain levels to plan or lease to lay out some of the groundwork for the ultimate faulll of the sovit union. but clearly john paul ii, because of his warm relationship with president reagan, played an absolutely pivotal role. teller may have played a role in convincing reagan that sdi was worth pursuing. john paul ii provided the

catalyst that brought together iflidarity in poland, ut ibut you look a timing of his visits and the nature of his visits to poland, it looks as though there was a very close collaboration between president reagan and the late pope. for profs and david holloway, the soviet union showed remarkable for site in anticipating the possibility that the united states would launch a nuclear weapons program. that goes back to 1939. their foresight was very long standing. they had the option of pursuing german or american developments, but earlier this afternoon the

gentleman modestly referred to the penetration of maybe 13 agents into the manhattan project. i say modest because the penetration was probably more widespread and certainly existed in the u.k. for the second question, if you might elaborate on the the astonishing aspects of the kgb. thank you very much. >> take the question, david, first. >> let me address the second question. if you are looking for an example of a highly successful -- or one of the most

successful intelligence operations in the 20th century on the scientific and technical side, clearly the soviet espionage in the manhattan project ranks very high. we now have a great number of the documents that were passed over to the soviet union by a number of people. we also have, which is even more interesting to me, is the assessment written of the intelligence received by the physicist in charge of the soviets' project. there are some blips in the story. one initially thought this was just information.

i will try not to get started on this interesting story. the first information really arrived late in 1941, really significant information. the russians had done some very good work on nuclear fission before the german invasion. and that work stopped, because the condition of the country. the question was then winter renewed this? it was renewed at the end of 1942 or early 1943 on a very small basis. could we see whether something could be done? even by august 1945 when the bombs were dropped on hiroshima it was still essentially a lab project, not a big industrial projects of the kind the manhattan project was. the manhattan project employed

120,000 people at its peak during the war. it is two weeks after hiroshima, stalin signed the decree creating a special committee on the atomic bomb which turns it into a crash program. there was certainly in the 1990's a dispute between the physics community and the intelligence community in russia, where the kgb people were saying this is not useful, it was we who built the bomb. soviet bomb is a copy of the bomb dropped on nagasaki, the first plutonium bomb. i do think that john paul ii

played an absolutely critical role and poland played a critical role in the ending of the soviet union. i recently read the politburo minutes from a meeting in december 1981, a few days before martial law was imposed in poland by the general. there's a very interesting discussion, and drop off and members of the politburo, and they say we are not sure that he's going to do what we want them to do. andropov and members of the politburo. most people thought if he does not act, the soviet union will intervene. many people justified his actions in terms of saying it he had not acted, the soviet union would have sent in forces.

but from the discussion, there's no disagreement. they could change their minds, of course, but it is still very revealing that the movement in poland, which got enormous help from the election of pope, and i think we have. thank the holy ghost in the end for what happened, which was it was. extremely was >> thank you, david. we have a question in the back. >> this is directed to you. for the past 25 years we have had a national obsession with transparency. that has been fine for legal, legislative, and financial matters. but when it comes to the military and intelligence services, how do you feel that affects our national security?

>> greg? >> it is a big effect, enormous. i just work recently on the use of social networking with the various intelligence agencies. a wave that will wash over intelligence. transparency will increase, no doubt about that. you can already be located and searched. so it is going to make lots of traditional ways we have done intelligence a lot harder. traditional covers will become virtually impossible, if not already. it is going to have a big effect. it is making all sorts of places, including some potential adversaries, more transparent. the autocratic regimes in the arab spring faced draconian choices about cutting themselves off from the internet so they could stop communications among protesters. it is hard at this stage

distinguish the good from the bad, but it is with us for a short and will only get worse and will certainly have a big impact on the way the intelligence has traditionally done much of its business. >> any other questions? >> yes, with the mention of the arab spring, about two weeks ago or three weeks ago in sugarland, texas, pamela gellar was scheduled to speak of the hilton hotel. with pressure from care and the muslim brotherhood, that was canceled. the militants is a high-profile american corp., international interests. i wonder what you feel the ramifications might be. >> i am not sure this is an intelligence question for any of us to comment on. if i can add one footnote on a

point that greg made. it is the issue about intelligence warning. for me, it is a matter of timing. somebody wrote a paper in 1979 said -- and i always thought these were really serious issues. the birth rate in russia is actually declining. the number of russians will go from 140 million to 110 million. if you think about the geopolitical and social consequences of that, how do get a work force or army. do you report the workforce from central asia? if you think about the ethnic problems the russians have already with people from the caucuses mountains.

if you say there's a problem coming in 30 years, it's probably going to bring the trees down, you will probably not get a resounding, "that's great." -- it's probably going to bring the country down. when you get to the tactical warning, we are here, we are very close, and these are the terrible decisions the leaders faced. for most of us it was the real bell. to say it could happen, it is essentially over.

it's one of the major triggers for the decision to go ahead with a coup. >> i cannot agree more. a warning that is too far out is probably not helpful. the answer does not get listened to and the question is not asked. the challenges to keep trying to push what is very short-term horizons, keep trying to pushback out and help them see current decisions in the future. it is a real challenge. all of us that have had experience on either side is if you are policymaker, that looks interesting, i will read that when i have time, and there's never a time. trying to do that in a form that , affects what a policy maker thinks that he or she needs to do today is a real challenge.

>> that is sharpened by the shamelessness of the world we are in these days. that in principle should make for much tighter relations between intelligence and policy? in a joint exploration of what this world looks like aunt how we advance american interest. -- what this world looks like and how we advance american interests. >> to have time for another question? >> [inaudible] >> i think i can speak on behalf of the entire intelligence community. many of us are watching china

very closely. i don't think we have to ring a bell. >> [inaudible] >> the intelligence community's function is to provide information, identify trends. at the end of the day the policymakers have to be the ones to drive the decision process. we are not there to recommend or be advocates. we have to ask the right questions. i believe we are asking the right questions. policymakers have to decide how they want to act upon those messages. tohink we're getting close the end. i want to hand it over to duke. [applause] >> well, i would like to thank everyone who participated today.

i think it was an extraordinary opportunity. if it was a great day for information to be shared if, for the national archives to be able to work with the central intelligence agency to release these documents. once again, i would like to give everybody a round of applause. [applause] >> coming up live on c-span in a few moments, washington journal. tonight on c-span at 10:00 p.m. eastern, our series on presidential candidates who cost but had a lasting impact on american politics. adlai stevenson, tonight. illinois governor who loss to eisenhower in 1952 and 1956. -- lsot to. >> the role of libertarians' this morningon