Central Intelligence Agency Quotes
The Soviet Union will not produce an atomic bomb for at least another 4 years
3 days later, President Truman, announced that the Russians had successfully developed an atomic weapon. This quotation gives us another example where the Central Intelligence Agency failed to predict and/or warn America about a crucial event. Others included the North Korean invasion of South Korea, the Arab Spring, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the fall of the Berlin wall, and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Central Intelligence Agency, Intelligence Report, September 20, 1950
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Both President Truman and Genera MacArthur, in command in Korea, received this report and several confirmation reports in the subsequent days. On October 30, 1950, 100,000 Chinese troops attacked across the border almost driving MacArthur’s forces into the sea. The Chinese then pushed Allied forces all the way back to the 38th parallel—the divide between North and South Korea. This is yet another stunning example of the major international security events where the Central Intelligence Agency was in the dark and misadvised the administration. See {634967} for another quotation on this Central Intelligence Agency weakness.
Only three days later the Russians detonated their first atomic device.
The alternative deterrent was to maintain an army of over 2 million men overseas in both Europe and Asia, and the cost was much greater than the then perceived cost of nuclear weapons. At the time no one figured the cost of coping with the radioactive material and waste as well as the cleanup of nuclear bomb factories like Hanford. These costs were still not known byt the 21st century.
The article showed how a nuclear bomb worked. The Government attempted to suppress the publication by getting a Federal court injunction. Day and others claimed the article was based on public sources. It was. The U. S. Court of Appeals lifted the injunction and the article was published.
This was one of the great blunders of the Central Intelligence Agency in American History. As the Central Intelligence Agency was writing this report the Russians were landing missile components in Cuba. Within days the Cuban Missile Crisis would erupt. The Central Intelligence Agency also missed the Communist Takeover in China, the fall of the Berlin wall, the implosion of the Soviet Union, the Hungarian Revolution, the Iran Revolution, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and the Arab Spring just to list a few of the most dramatic events about which they failed to have any information in advance. At the same time they claimed that there were nuclear weapons in Iraq leading to the Iraq war and claimed the Soviets were on a track to have a better military and stronger economy—see {635791}.
This was the first Russian atomic explosion.
This prediction was sadly terribly accurate. Nuclear terrorism is a realistic threat at the millennium. Pannekoek was one of the first to predict it.
The Scientific Project that developed the Atomic Bomb
- Born:
- Nationality: American
- Profession: Intelligence; Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the United States federal government, tasked with gathering, processing and analyzing national security information from around the world, primarily through the use of human intelligence (HUMINT). As one of the principal members of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC), the CIA reports to the Director of National Intelligence and is primarily focused on providing intelligence for the President and Cabinet. Unlike the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which is a domestic security service, CIA has no law enforcement function and is mainly focused on overseas intelligence gathering, with only limited domestic collection.
