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]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]] MEETING IN MINNEAPOLIS [[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[
The Soviets get advice on how to bamboozle the West
From John Rees's eyewitness report (1983)
On May 24th, 1983, a "US-USSR Bilateral Exchange Conference"
took place in Minneapolis. It was sponsored by the Institute of Policy
Studies (IPS), Washington, the Institute of the USA and Canada (Mos-
cow), and the USSR-USA Society (Minneapolis).
The IPS is a highly influential Washington think tank founded in
1963 by Marcus Raskin and Richard Barnet (both present at the meet-
ing). Some of Barnet's statements are exhibited in the Buffoons'
Quarters. The IPS is often described as "left-leaning;" actually, it
is somewhat to the right of the late Yosif Visarionovich Stalin.
The Institute of the USA and Canada is directed by Georgi A.
Arbatov, one of the 11 members of the Soviet Politbureau [of the
Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union], the
seat of Soviet power second only to its chairman. The Institute has
several intelligence functions -- not only in the Western sense of
gathering information, but also in the Soviet sense of "active mea-
sures," "disinformation," and "influence operations." (See THE DECEP-
TION GAME, Ballantine paperback, 1981, by J. Bitmann, one of the
highest intelligence officers ever to have defected to the West.)
The unofficial, but unmistakable leader of the Soviet delegation
was General Mikhail A. Milsteyn, a veteran officer of central military
intelligence (GRU). He was always addressed and referred to as "Pro-
fessor" Milsteyn, and smiled in embarrassment when the Rev. William
Sloan Coffin of the Riverside Church, New York, speaking in Russian,
addressed him as "tovarishch genyeral" (Comrade General).
If you find some of the quotations below incredible, please take
a look in the perations Room; on floor <03> you will find the way
all the "discussions" were taped by an eyewitness reporter.
There are many shockers in the obsequious accolades heaped by US
citizens on the Soviet "peace" policy, but perhaps the most shocking
was the case of Mrs. Randall Forsberg, director of the Institute for
Defense and Disarmament Studies and leader of the Nuclear Weapons
Freeze Campaign.
She suggested to the Soviets that they use a ploy or "meaningless
gesture" (her actual words) to deceive the West and to trick it into
delaying the deploymet of US missiled in Europe. The ruse is to dis-
mantle obsolete Soviet missiles and freeze (not remove!) the medium-
range missiles from the Far East (in range of the western US), so as
to give the appearance of reasons with which to pressure the US into
delaying the deployment of Euromissiles until after the 1984 elections
in the US and Europe.
It would not do "anything to hurt Soviet security" to destroy 250
of their obsolete SS-4's and SS-5's, she claimed, and advised the
Soviets:
"These were retained as bargaining chips. They have no military
function. It doesn't hurt the Soviet Union to give them away. This is
a good time to bargain. Timing is very mportant. We need to delay the
deployment of the new missiles by a year -- until November 1984, when
we will elect a new government. Then you can decide what to do perma-
nently depending on what the new government is like."
Yes, Mrs. Forsberg is American, and when she says "you" she means
the Soviets, and by "we" she means the US. But if you still have any
doubts, she repeated the point in a second speech, this time also men-
tioning the SS-20's threatening the Western US from the Far East.
"If the Soviet Union would cease any new deployments of SS-20s in
the Far East, so that SS-20 have been frozen worldwide -- not because
it's balanced, not because it's logical, but because politically it's
a very powerful statement to say 'medium range missiles are no longer
being made in the Soviet Union' -- and if the Soviet Union were to
dismantle some of the 250 old SS-4s and -5s which have been kept around
as bargaining chips, and undertake these steps, or begin, announce
them by the end of September, and actually implement them before the
1st of December, in combination with the efforts of the peace groups
in the US and Europe and the political leadership of Western Europe, I
believe sufficient pressure can be brought to bear on the Conservative
Reagan, Thatcher and Kohl governments -- sufficient division in their
societies would clearly be articulated -- that in fact they would be
forced to delay the deployment and to try to come up with some kind of
face-saving maneuver in the arms control negotiations."
So much for Forsberg, now for some other Americans.
Paul Moore, Episcopal Bishop of New York, said "The only true and
lasting security of the world lies in a just, international economy:
Jesus Christ, the prophets of the Old Testament and Karl Marx would
agree on this." On the central point of trust, he had this to tell the
Soviets:
"Trust begins with forgiveness. I ask forgiveness as an American.
I ask forgiveness for our nation's interference in the affairs of
other countries, for our exploitation of other lands for economic
gain, for unwarranted ward like Vietnam, for withholding our largesse
from the poor of the world..."
Talk of human rights irritated and embarrassed the Soviets, but
here, too, the American peaceniks soothed them: The Rev. William Sloan
Coffin: "We have to say that human rights -- nothing must interfere with
this central [disarmament] issue, because unless we solve the issue of
the arms race, we won't be able to solve anything else... I think that
the people who are discriminated against in this country that the
Mayor [of Minneapolis Donald Fraser] talked about -- women and blacks
and poor folk and the unemployed -- will do much better when the level
of nuclear arms is lower... And the dissidents in the Societ Union
will also far better when the Soviet Government feels less threatened.
So my own feeling is that those who want to support the human rights
issue may be making a mistake."
Forsberg: "I'm not sure that I've ever heard a discussion of
human rights. I Think that there tends to be a list of accusations
from the West of violations of inalienable human rights in the East.
And as a result, the conversation takes on a pointed and unpleasant
and one-sided form."
Finally, a statement of the official leader of the Soviet delega-
tion, Nikolai Blokhin: "If Americans had done the same as Sakharov,
their punishment would be harsh fines and imprisonment, not a generous
pension and nice apartment in his own lovely native city of Gorky."
The statement drew not one whisper of an objection by the "American"
delegation -- such as Paul Warnke, Carter's disarmament negotiator;
David Brower, President of the Friends of the Earth and Director of
the Sierra Club; Hamilton Fish, publisher of "The Nation;" Prof.
Richard Falk of Princeton Univ., Prof George Rathjens, M.I.T.*
For more extracts and reports of this meeting, see John Rees'
eyewitness report in the "Review of the News," 15 June 1983, pp.31-40.
* * *
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