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 president ial 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. Cohosted by the Central Intelligence agency, the National Museum of the u. S. Navy and the naval historical foundation, the hourlong 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 worlds oldest and Largest Organization of professional journalists. Im 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 well 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 ill 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 dont know, the naval historical foundation, were a nonprofit 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. Were 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 youre doing your research and writing articles. Thats 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 well start with celia. Tell us about the report and the documents that are going to be released. Then well 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 youre with and make it a really precise question if you could. Thank you very much. Good morning and welcome. I have some remarks that ive 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 well give a little bit more detail on the documents. I want to first thank our Navy Colleagues and our panelists. Its been wonderful working with everyone. And its 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 IntelligenceAgency 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 states 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 todays 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. Navys 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 todays events. The documents can be found on our cia. Gov website under historical collections. Since this is about history, lets 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, theyre 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 youve 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 kennedys 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 u2 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 youll 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, id 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. Ive 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. Im providing you with some interesting comments on this. I wish i had an Aircraft Carrier model here, but unfortunately im 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 youve 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. Its 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. Its 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 didnt mind me saying this, but i thought i would note this publicly. What do we have here thats on the website . We actually have a collection of material that effect covers if youll 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 its 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 . Thats an important, very important issue. And is a way we can focus some of the discussion. In addition, theres 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 thats 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 thats 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. Thats 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 soviets 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 thats very, very different than the United States navy would contemplate. It was something that took a while to get the United States navys 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