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THE MIND OF THE ADMINISTRATION A CONTINUING SERIES ON THE THINKERS WHO HAVE SHAPED THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S VIEW OF THE WORLD. Sam Tanenhaus, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, is writing a biography of William F. Buckley.;THE HARD-LINER HARVARD HISTORIAN RICHARD PIPES SHAPED THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION'S AGGRESSIVE APPROACH TO THE SOVIET UNION. HIS SUPPORT FOR CONFRONTATION OVER CONTAINMENT PREFIGURED THE BUSH FOREIGN POLICY OF TODAY. The Boston Globe November 2, 2003, Sunday
IDEAS; Pg. G1
By Sam Tanenhaus
Still, the debate persists, as much because of the panel's methods as its findings. While some Team B reports (for instance, Wolfowitz's on intermediate-range missiles) were closely reasoned, others drew on what Pipes himself calls "soft evidence" such as Soviet "theoretical writings that showed they didn't share the MAD doctrine." (That is, the doctrine of "mutually assured destruction," the premise that both sides would avoid a first nuclear strike for fear of unleashing armageddon. At times, Team B performed logical somersaults that eerily foreshadowed Bush administration statements on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. Just because superweapons like a "non-acoustic anti-submarine system" couldn't be found, Pipes's report argued, that didn't mean the Soviets couldn't build one, even if they appeared to lack the technical know-how.
Books in Review;An Indispensable Historian The American Spectator February 2004
Pipes believed that the Sovietologists who dominated Soviet studies were no better than the British appeasers of the 1930s. This conviction lead to his growing political involvementofirst with Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a leading critic of the Nixon-Kissinger policy of dEtente; then with the conservative Stanford Research Institute; and then as the chairman of "Team B," a group of scholars created in 1976 at the behest of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Members of PFIAB had grown increasingly uneasy about the CIA's complacent evaluation of the Soviet Union's massive nuclear buildup of the 1970s, and Team B was tasked with developing an alternative analysis.
Pipes and his fellow team members concluded that the CIAothough highly well-informed about the quantity and quality of Soviet weapons--understood next to nothing of Soviet intentions. CIA analysts took it for granted that Soviet strategists, like their American counterparts, regarded nuclear weapons as defensive tools designed to deter a potential attack. But Pipes, with his knowledge of the Soviet mindset and the Leninist political tradition, demonstrated that Soviet strategists believed that a nuclear war could be fought and won, and were in the process of creating a nuclear force-structure with an offensive, war-winning capacity. U.S. complacency in the face of these offensive Soviet deployments, Pipes warned, risked "potentially catastrophic consequences."
Team B's conclusionsoconfirmed nine years later by Soviet authorities during the final, glasnost phase of Soviet historyowere widely ridiculed by the usual liberal critics, but they deeply influenced Ronald Reagan's critique of dEtente. And when Reagan was elected president in 1980, Pipes was asked to join the National Security Council as the head of its East European and Soviet desk.
Yes, He Has Lived National Review November 24, 2003, Monday Books, Arts & Manners; Volume LV, No. 22 By JAY NORDLINGER Vixi: Memoirs of a Non-Belonger, by Richard Pipes (Yale, 264 pp., $30)
For half a century, Richard Pipes has been one of the world's foremost scholars of Russia, and a man of political and policy influence as well: In the 1970s, he headed "Team B," the group directed to challenge the CIA's assumptions about the Soviet Union (which were wrong). And in the early 1980s, he served on the National Security Council staff of President Reagan. From the time of his birth in Cieszyn, Poland, to now, when he has assumed emeritus status at Harvard, Pipes has lived a rich, meaningful life. Fortunately, he has the ability to recount it, richly and meaningfully.
Robert Novak Slate Magazine October 2, 2003, Thursday Chris Suellentrop
The notion that the CIA perpetually understates the strength of America's enemies is a central neoconservative article of faith. (And it's a notion that's been disputed by Fareed Zakaria, among others. In the June 16 Newsweek,Zakaria wrote: For decades some conservatives, including many who now wield great influence, have had a tendency to vastly exaggerate the threat posed by tyrannical regimes.) It dates to at least the 1970s, when Richard Pipes led Team B, a group of outside experts thatconcluded that the CIA was understating the military might of the Soviet Union.
In the article, "Rumsfeld" is mentioned once ("The CIA strongly disagreed with Team B's assessments, calling Rumsfeld's position a 'complete fiction' and [...]"), but there's nothing in the article which explains what role Rumsfeld had with Team B. What was his role? If he is to be mentioned, I think the text should clarify that. -- Majic 12:25, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
I typed in "team b" and rumfeld and here is what I found:
In the 1970s, when President Richard Nixon's policy of detente was under attack by some former military officials and conservative policy intellectuals, Ford administration officials Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were among those challenging as too soft the CIA's estimate of Moscow's military power.
Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted to create a "Team B," which would have access to the CIA's data on the Soviets and issue its own conclusions. Cheney, as White House chief of staff, and Rumsfeld, as secretary of Defense, championed Team B, whose members included the young defense strategist Paul Wolfowitz, who a quarter-century later would be one of the chief architects of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. [1]
Nixon left amid scandal and Ford came in, and Ford's Secretary of Defense (Donald Rumsfeld) and Chief of Staff (Dick Cheney) believed it was intolerable that Americans might no longer be bound by fear. Without fear, how could Americans be manipulated?
Rumsfeld and Cheney began a concerted effort - first secretly and then openly - to undermine Nixon's treaty for peace and to rebuild the state of fear and, thus, reinstate the Cold War.
And these two men - 1974 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Ford Chief of Staff Dick Cheney - did this by claiming that the Soviets had secret weapons of mass destruction that the president didn't know about, that the CIA didn't know about, that nobody but them knew about. And, they said, because of those weapons, the US must redirect billions of dollars away from domestic programs and instead give the money to defense contractors for whom these two men would one day work.
"The Soviet Union has been busy," Defense Secretary Rumsfeld explained to America in 1976. "They’ve been busy in terms of their level of effort; they’ve been busy in terms of the actual weapons they ’ve been producing; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding production rates; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding their institutional capability to produce additional weapons at additional rates; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding their capability to increasingly improve the sophistication of those weapons. Year after year after year, they’ve been demonstrating that they have steadiness of purpose. They’re purposeful about what they’re doing."
The CIA strongly disagreed, calling Rumsfeld's position a "complete fiction" and pointing out that the Soviet Union was disintegrating from within, could barely afford to feed their own people, and would collapse within a decade or two if simply left alone.
But Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted Americans to believe there was something nefarious going on, something we should be very afraid of. To this end, they convinced President Ford to appoint a commission including their old friend Paul Wolfowitz to prove that the Soviets were up to no good. [2]
Many of the very same people who deliberately created the misimpression about Iraq to goad the American people into supporting a war had already executed a run-through of the same strategy in the 1970s. Back then, establishment hardliners associated with the now defunct “Committee on the Present Danger” heaped scorn upon the professional intelligence services for their alleged underestimation of Soviet military capabilities. They succeeded in convincing then-CIA Director, George H.W. Bush, to appoint a now infamous "Team B" to go through the same material and come up with an answer that would justify a vast increase in U.S. defense spending. With the powerful political patronage of then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, its members, including Paul Wolfowitz, came up with astronomical numbers for alleged Soviet military spending and capabilities. As Newsweek’s Farred Zakaria, a moderately conservative war supporter, has observed, “In retrospect, Team B’s conclusions were wildly off the mark.” It argued, for instance, that back in 1976, the Soviets enjoyed "a large and expanding Gross National Product." It credited them with double the number Backfire bombers the nation could actually produce. It turns out that even the CIA’s much pilloried estimates for Soviet military capabilities were far too generous. Sounding very much as if he were talking about Iraqi WMD capabilities 30 years later, Rumsfeld claimed, “No doubt exists about the capabilities of the Soviet armed forces.” Think Again: Team 'B' [3] Travb 00:24, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
This article is pretty well sourced, but completely one-sided. It seems to be a little sloppy in places in terms of quotes used, connections drawn etc. There are a couple instances of scare quotes and pejorative labels. heqs 05:19, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
I have removed the POV tag. I hope that my edits are seen to have improved the article. heqs 10:50, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Typically, criticism and after-analysis would get its own section, rather than mashing together Team B's findings with its critics. Given the way this particular issue unfolded over the years, the article may be appropriately styled.
I will add a criticism section--good idea.
i really liked your changes. Good job. It is a more balanced article now. I added back three sentences, two of which explain who these people are. But all of the other changes I kept.
Signed: Travb ( talk) 09:22, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Team B was a competitive analysis exercise created by American conservatives in the 1970s to counter a group of CIA intelligence officials known as Team A.
I am not sure if Team A was made up of CIA intelligence officials. I don't have access to the book Killing Detente, which talks about this subject ad nauseam right now, and a cursory glance at some of the articles I posted don't come up with much with "team a" so I can't confirm it. Travb ( talk) 09:32, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Is there really no counterpoint to Pipes view on Soviet nuclear intentions? If there isn't then the article seems to be somewhat unbalanced to team B's detriment. If there is then perhaps we need to point this out more in the article. WolfKeeper 02:23, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
The report is apparently declassified and presumably public domain, being funded by the government. I googled, but couldn't find it. Anyone know if it's online anywhere? WolfKeeper 20:44, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
This is just ricoculous:
The, ahem, “RightWeb” sources need a serious re-evaluation based on the fact that we can now have access to the report. The report (p 35-37) actually argued that despite the NIE’s assessment that the Soviet Navy was not aggressively developing more accurate ASW detection tools and would not be able to deploy new more advanced ASW capabilities in the next 10 years, the evidence in the NIE suggested that they had significantly ramped up ASW R&D, including non acoustic methods (which according to these sources, they were developing non-acoustic detection methods [4], [5]). This section in the report had nothing to do with the development of submarines, just ASW technologies which naturally would include sub based, surface and airborne ASW equipment. Also, the deployment of new ASW equipment would not effect the detectability of Soviet submarines, as the above passage states, but it would effect the detectability of US subs.
In light of the accessibility of the full report, this article could use a lot more work. Torturous Devastating Cudgel 20:48, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
Anyone argue that the Rightweb sources can stay? Considering how bad they look and how they completely distorted this material. I would like to remove them all, and replace them with some non-hysterical commentary. Torturous Devastating Cudgel 01:42, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
Another quick example of Rightweb's truthiness:
The leak of the report took place after Carter's election:
To avoid charges of partisanship, they delayed going public with the “Committee on the Present Danger” until just after Jimmy Carter’s November 1976 election to presidency.
"The classified B Team report, submitted on December 2, contained the same controversial message. Within a few weeks the main conclusions of the report had been leaked to the press.
Hoping to appeal to conservatives in both parties, the CPD waited until the week after the 1976 election of Carter to go public.
That’s why highly partisan sources, from sites like Rightweb, are generally discouraged. They usually abide by the "make it up, and hope no one notices" rule. Torturous Devastating Cudgel 18:09, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
Why use RightWeb as a source? RightWeb is a better source of information than most websites, because it uses other sources to verify its information, and lists them at the bottom of each page. Anarchangel ( talk) 20:50, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
As I dig a bit deeper into this material, I find that many of the conclusions of the report, like the NIE's lowballing Soviet spending [6] and Soviet thoughts on MAD/ intents [7] have, in hindsight, merit. Would it be a violation or WP:NOR or WP:SYNT to include this information in this article? The information would not be added to make the case one way or the other, but presented to the reader as a follow up. Torturous Devastating Cudgel 02:13, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
not using sonor would mean a submarine was.... pretty undetectable. should we now undo all of Torturous Devastating Cudgel's edits because of his biased error? Dedwolfen aug13 1:55pm
"Using active sonar is somewhat hazardous however, since it does not allow the sonar to identify the target, and any vessel around the emitting sonar will detect the emission. Having heard the signal, it is easy to identify the type of sonar (usually with its frequency) and its position (with the sound wave's energy). Moreover, active sonar, similar to radar, allows the user to detect objects at a certain range but also enables other platforms to detect the active sonar at a far greater range." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonar#Warfare
whoever put those in why not use the summaries in the actual report? i am going to change those to the ones in the actual report. they more acurately reflect the silliness of the report. the summaries in the article seem a little "doctored". anyway the article ones are original research i think, a strategic improvement... that down plays some of the more ridiculous claims. Dedwolfen aug 13th 2:51pm
the links to the 'relevant' articles were only to the report itself. the summaries in the report were about the same length as your summaries. you were making massive understatements about the material. the ASW section to you meant the report said the 'probability of advanced Soviet ASW research was greater than zero'? that to me seems fanciful. (i am also tickled to find that someone was douche enough to put it back). i will quote the report summary:
"given the extensive commitment of resources and the incomplete appreciation in the U.S. of the full implications of many of the technologies involved, the absence of a deployed system by this time is difficult to understand. The implication could be that the soviets have, in fact, deployed some operational non acoustic systems and will deploy more in the next few years."
the report discussed the probability of DEPLOYED SYSTEMS. it's just curious why you would opt to mischaracterize when there were summaries actually in the report. Dedwolfen NOV 1 4:51pm —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.246.176.253 ( talk) 22:16, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
This article is sliding into serious POV. Anything that seems to even vaguely disagree with the report is being removed, on what are (IMO) POV grounds; I'm particularly concerned with the summary, I keep returning here and finding that it doesn't reflect the article, and IMO the article doesn't reflect the body of comments that exist on this exercise.
To some extent it doesn't even matter if somebody (notable POV) makes an entirely wrong comment on the report somewhere (either pro or con), if it's notable it needs to go here.
NPOV is NOT the absence of POV it is the collection of (notable) POV. WolfKeeper 14:51, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
Gee. A whole mile? How is this supposed to locate submarines in an entire ocean with many *millions* of square miles? How is this technology ever going to reach tens or hundreds of miles? How could you even begin to deploy sensors every mile or so? And IRC these sensors are miles of wire being dragged behind an aircraft, I don't think you can even drop them in the ocean because they require forward motion to detect the magnetic field. And don't forget, submarines are capable of countermeasures to it, just like they are capable of countermeasures to sonic detection, I bet the detection range goes way down with suitable countermeasures. And as I say, magnetism is an inverse fourth power on distance, so if you double the sensitivity of the detector, range only goes up by just 20%. With sonar, in some cases doubling the sensitivity simply doubles the range. This bit of the report is just garbage, and that's just a bit I happen to know at all well. WolfKeeper 18:22, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
As far as the whole report being a “hack job”, that’s your opinion, and you are certainly entitled to it, but if you would like to make that the dominant POV in the article, I would suggest you present sources better informed and credentialed than Thom Hartmann to make that. Some sources certainly do support your POV that the authors were just looking form more money and political influence, others would suggest that in the overall picture, Team B was a valuable exercise, although not without its flaws, and was accurate on many technical issues and most importantly, getting Soviet strategic ambitions right, which was the aim of the panel.
This article currently uncritically lays out the report, contains a couple of grudging criticisms at the end followed by an uncritical (and to be honest extremely dubious) claim by the group's author that only one point in the entire report mattered at all. As in really? What's the rest of the report there for then? Why did they waste our and their time with writing it then if it was all irrelevant? WolfKeeper 18:22, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
You keep removing ALL mention of criticism from the summary, and you claim that all critics except a very few are non notable, and that one or two minor errors completely invalidate all points made by any other critics, whereas none of the egregious errors, gross exaggerations and outright falsehoods in the report are worth worrying about. WolfKeeper 18:22, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
The lead has to be a summary of the article. The article contains summary of the criticism; the lead must contain criticisms also. WolfKeeper 16:42, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
If you can't follow basic rules of the wikipedia, then your edits cannot stand. NPOV is not a debatable point here. WolfKeeper 16:43, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
The 'non-existent references' are probably due to the mass deletion of references that have occurred. But you must explain what you consider to be a copyvio. I am unable to find one. WolfKeeper 23:17, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Its findings were leaked to the press shortly after Jimmy Carter's 1976 presidential election win in an attempt to appeal to conservatives in both parties and not appear partisan. [1] [2]
or
Its findings were leaked to the press in an unsuccessful attempt at an October surprise to derail Jimmy Carter's 1976 presidential bid. [3]
Travb ( talk) 23:48, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
TravB, you need to stop posting another author's work as though it were wiki-original (copyvio). Whoever else added the fake references, as in the pon-ref which never linked to anything, needs to stop. No one should be attributing content to "Right-web" or other obviously unreliable sources. Perspicacite 03:02, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
I've had CSBot look at both the previous and current revisions and it found no copyright violations (ferreting those out is CSBot's primary function). It is not infallible, since it can only compare (obviously) to online sources, but unless one is provided, there is no indication that any copyright violation is taking place. (Paraphrasing contents from another source may or may not be plagiarism, but it certainly is not copyright violation which requires that prose be copied substantially).
Further reversions using copyright violation as a reason should provide the source of the material copied mostly verbatim, or might be reasonably viewed as disruptive.
In addition, the edit dispute also seem to shift points of view rather strongly, regardless of the invoked reason for the edit. Everyone here should take a moment to assess whether they are striving to remain neutral.
Regardless of allegations of copyright violation, www.irc-online.org appears to be a reliable source per the guidelines (it is edited, published in print and has notable contributors). Reliable source, however, does not mean neutral, and it's important that no undue weight be given to any one source— especially when its neutrality is disputed.
Hope this helps. — Coren (talk) 03:23, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
See: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Copyvio I think several uninvolved editors summed it up. I notice this editor uses copyvio to push his version of pages often. Travb ( talk) 22:40, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Can anyone source John Connally's participation in Team B? Perspicacite 03:29, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
thanks for the suggestion, I revised the membership section. As per page 6 of the Team B report. Travb ( talk) 23:14, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Please refrain from deleting large sections of referenced material which does not match your own POV. Sigh, unfortunatetly, this is not the first time I have witnessed this.
I would appreciate this same courteousy with my own referenced edits. If you disagree with the policy assesments of these experts, the easy option is to remove these assessments you simply dont like, the harder route is to actually find contrary sources which contradict these assesments. I welcome the later, and look forward to your addition excellent sources, such as the team b document.
Please explain where in wikipolicy that policy experts cannot be quoted in articles.
I appreciate your additions to the article, quotes from the actual team b document, which I have not removed, and which I would defend if someone attempted to delete, as I did with your referenced additions to Phillip Agees before. Travb ( talk) 22:25, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
Regarding:
You mean what you are trying to delete, this material was added long before you began to borderline vandalize this page TDC.
This is factual assessments of how wrong the report was by experts. Since when does wikipedia refuse to allow experts to review the reports and how factually legitimate the reports are?
By "the side", you mean deleted from the article, by your edits, the offical Team B report should be quoted, but the factual accuracy of the report should not be questioned -- sounds rather Orwellian to me. Travb ( talk) 22:30, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
As per TDC:
From transcipt
VO: But a world without fear was not what the neoconservatives needed to pursue their project. They now set out to destroy Henry Kissinger’s vision. What gave them their opportunity was the growing collapse of American political power, both abroad and at home. The defeat in Vietnam, and the resignation of President Nixon over Watergate, led to a crisis of confidence in America’s political class. And the neoconservatives seized their moment. They allied themselves with two right-wingers in the new administration of Gerald Ford. One was Donald Rumsfeld, the new Secretary of Defense. The other was Dick Cheney, the President’s Chief of Staff. Rumsfeld began to make speeches alleging that the Soviets were ignoring Kissinger’s treaties and secretly building up their weapons, with the intention of attacking America.
DONALD RUMSFELD, US Secretary of Defense, Speaking in 1976: The Soviet Union has been busy. They’ve been busy in terms of their level of effort; they’ve been busy in terms of the actual weapons they’ve been producing; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding production rates; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding their institutional capability to produce additional weapons at additional rates; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding their capability to increasingly improve the sophistication of those weapons. Year after year after year, they’ve been demonstrating that they have steadiness of purpose. They’re purposeful about what they’re doing. Now, your question is, what ought one to be doing about that? VO: The CIA, and other agencies who watched the Soviet Union continuously for any sign of threat, said that this was a complete fiction. There was no truth to Rumsfeld’s allegations. But Rumsfeld used his position to persuade President Ford to set up an independent inquiry. He said it would prove that there was a hidden threat to America. And the inquiry would be run by a group of neoconservatives, one of whom was Paul Wolfowitz. The aim was to change the way America saw the Soviet Union. MELVIN GOODMAN, Head of Office of Soviet Affairs CIA, 1976-87: And Rumsfeld won that very intense, intense political battle that was waged in Washington in 1975 and 1976. Now, as part of that battle, Rumsfeld and others, people such as Paul Wolfowitz, wanted to get into the CIA. And their mission was to create a much more severe view of the Soviet Union, Soviet intentions, Soviet views about fighting and winning a nuclear war. VO: The neoconservatives chose, as the inquiry chairman, a well-known critic and historian of the Soviet Union called Richard Pipes. Pipes was convinced that whatever the Soviets said publicly, secretly they still intended to attack and conquer America. This was their hidden mindset. The inquiry was called Team B, and the other leading member was Paul Wolfowitz. |
You know TDC, for 2 years I have seen you continuously delete well referenced material over and over and over again. Well referenced material whose only error is this material does not meet your own POV. There are two editors, POV warriors, just like yourself, Rjensen and Ultramarine, who do the same thing, but at least those two add a lot of solid research to wikipedia.
I am going to go to the village pump and see if there is any policy about this behavior. I see it as destructive immature vandalism, like a group of kids slashing tires or breaking car windows, because it simply makes everyone worse off.
You know little, if anything about Team B, TDC, and yet you delete well referenced material, again and again, like a common vandal.
I knew it was complete bullshit when you said Rumsfeld had nothing to do with Team B, and looking at the reference, which it appears you never did, a two minute process, I remembered the was the architect behind Team B. You should not be deleting large portions of the article if you do not know fundamental aspects of Team B.
I personally think you should not be editing this, or any other article on wikipedia if you continue to delete large portions of referenced text. Travb ( talk) 08:55, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
TDC, your the only one here who removed large portions of referenced text which doesn't meet your own POV--that is the substantial "reversion" I made.
I have kept all of your exellent additions intact, I would ask the same respect.
Your "bias source" argument is typical and predictable. I await your mea culpa.
In the 1970s, when President Richard Nixon's policy of detente was under attack by some former military officials and conservative policy intellectuals, Ford administration officials Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were among those challenging as too soft the CIA's estimate of Moscow's military power.
Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted to create a "Team B," which would have access to the CIA's data on the Soviets and issue its own conclusions. Cheney, as White House chief of staff, and Rumsfeld, as secretary of Defense, championed Team B, whose members included the young defense strategist Paul Wolfowitz, who a quarter-century later would be one of the chief architects of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. [4] The new CIA director [Bush] was prompted to authorize an alternative unit outside the CIA to challenge the agency's intelligence on Soviet intentions. Bush was more compliant in the political winds than his predecessor. Consisting of a host of conservatives, the unit was called Team B. A young aide from the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Paul Wolfowitz, was selected to represent Rumsfeld's interest and served as coauthor of Team B's report. The report was single-minded in its conclusion about the Soviet buildup and cleansed of contrary intelligence. It was fundamentally a political tool in the struggle for control of the Republican Party, intended to destroy détente and aimed particularly at Kissinger. Both Ford and Kissinger took pains to dismiss Team B and its effort. (Later, Team B's report was revealed to be wildly off the mark about the scope and capability of the Soviet military.) [5] }}
|
Travb ( talk) 08:03, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Some additional info that might be helpful here; Rumsfeld is identified as a "major player in the original 1976 Team B exercise" by Gordon R. Mitchell, "Team B Intelligence Coups," Quarterly Journal of Speech 92:2 (May 2006) p. 151. Also, the following from Jason Vest, "Darth Rumsfeld," The American Prospect 12:4 (Feb 26, 2001) p. 20 is quite useful:
“ | Despite Kissinger's condemnation of Team B's assessment, Rumsfeld was effusive in promoting it as a credible study--and thereby undermining arms control efforts for the next four years. Two days before Jimmy Carter's inauguration, Rumsfeld fired parting shots at Kissinger and other disarmament advocates, saying that "no doubt exists about the capabilities of the Soviet armed forces" and that those capabilities "indicate a tendency toward war fighting ... rather than the more modish Western models of deterrence through mutual vulnerability." Team B's efforts not only were effective in undermining the incoming Carter administration's disarmament efforts but also laid the foundation for the unnecessary explosion of the defense budget in the Reagan years. And it was during those years that virtually all of Rumsfeld's compatriots were elevated to positions of power in the executive branch. | ” |
The Sept 15th {{totally disputed}} tag [12] I will keep the tag up for another three days or so. I can move the tag down to the criticism section, if everyone agrees.
No one has argued the factual accuracy of anything in this article. I think we can add a neutrality tag. Travb ( talk) 09:18, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
Seems like the 9/15/2007 "totally disputed" tag has served it's purpose, apparently there are no more factual disputes, removing tag. riverguy42 aka WNDL42 ( talk) 20:48, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
i recommend axing the summaries as a) they are longer than the actual report b) they are wildly innacurate misrepresentation of the sources. c) the 'context' that is offered is unsourced fabrication. i put up the SHORTER summaries that were in the actual report but those were removed for some curious reason... Dedwolfen
Torturous Devastating Cudgel 18:53, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
I am worried about the summaries as well. They seem to have been written with a view to deflecting criticism rather than to actually summarize what the report said. I don't know for sure of course because they are not properly cited -- the citation just says "Team B Report" and a page number, but where is the actual report? It is apparently declassified but I don't see a link to it here nor do I find it easily on google -- does anyone here have a link to it? I think we'd be better off excising the summaries under section two of the report and simply having the paragraph above them. csloat ( talk) 20:27, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
No sourcing for such a claim has been made, and as per Wikipedia:Categorization of people, such a categorization should rest on self-identification. In fact, Team B was formed when the movement commonly mislabelled neoconservative was still in its embryonic stage. RayAYang ( talk) 22:28, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
I have noticed that a user named Commodore Sloat is constantly editing the articles, related to the supposed "neocons". I did a cursory check of Commodore Sloat's edits, and it appears the vast majority of them serve to promote his personal viewpoint on the matter, rather then providing facts and other valuable information. Given the persistence of Commodore Sloat's editing, the articles tend to get contaminated with a very distinctive viewpoint. This goes against the fundamental principle of Wikipedia - Neutrality...not to mention that Wikipedia is being [mis]used to promolgate certain political views. Keverich1 ( talk) 01:02, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
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I've added the largely under reported story of biopreparat and the intended desire to overtake Washington in nuclear superiority.
I'd like better refs for the biopreparat paragraph, than the BBC/who are by no means neutral or scholars but for right now, they'll suffice.
Boundarylayer ( talk) 04:20, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
No part of the Team B report discussed Biological weapons, and I don't remember bomb yields being a major issue. Team B was still wrong in every respect. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.122.48.173 ( talk) 08:00, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
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THE MIND OF THE ADMINISTRATION A CONTINUING SERIES ON THE THINKERS WHO HAVE SHAPED THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S VIEW OF THE WORLD. Sam Tanenhaus, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, is writing a biography of William F. Buckley.;THE HARD-LINER HARVARD HISTORIAN RICHARD PIPES SHAPED THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION'S AGGRESSIVE APPROACH TO THE SOVIET UNION. HIS SUPPORT FOR CONFRONTATION OVER CONTAINMENT PREFIGURED THE BUSH FOREIGN POLICY OF TODAY. The Boston Globe November 2, 2003, Sunday
IDEAS; Pg. G1
By Sam Tanenhaus
Still, the debate persists, as much because of the panel's methods as its findings. While some Team B reports (for instance, Wolfowitz's on intermediate-range missiles) were closely reasoned, others drew on what Pipes himself calls "soft evidence" such as Soviet "theoretical writings that showed they didn't share the MAD doctrine." (That is, the doctrine of "mutually assured destruction," the premise that both sides would avoid a first nuclear strike for fear of unleashing armageddon. At times, Team B performed logical somersaults that eerily foreshadowed Bush administration statements on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. Just because superweapons like a "non-acoustic anti-submarine system" couldn't be found, Pipes's report argued, that didn't mean the Soviets couldn't build one, even if they appeared to lack the technical know-how.
Books in Review;An Indispensable Historian The American Spectator February 2004
Pipes believed that the Sovietologists who dominated Soviet studies were no better than the British appeasers of the 1930s. This conviction lead to his growing political involvementofirst with Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a leading critic of the Nixon-Kissinger policy of dEtente; then with the conservative Stanford Research Institute; and then as the chairman of "Team B," a group of scholars created in 1976 at the behest of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Members of PFIAB had grown increasingly uneasy about the CIA's complacent evaluation of the Soviet Union's massive nuclear buildup of the 1970s, and Team B was tasked with developing an alternative analysis.
Pipes and his fellow team members concluded that the CIAothough highly well-informed about the quantity and quality of Soviet weapons--understood next to nothing of Soviet intentions. CIA analysts took it for granted that Soviet strategists, like their American counterparts, regarded nuclear weapons as defensive tools designed to deter a potential attack. But Pipes, with his knowledge of the Soviet mindset and the Leninist political tradition, demonstrated that Soviet strategists believed that a nuclear war could be fought and won, and were in the process of creating a nuclear force-structure with an offensive, war-winning capacity. U.S. complacency in the face of these offensive Soviet deployments, Pipes warned, risked "potentially catastrophic consequences."
Team B's conclusionsoconfirmed nine years later by Soviet authorities during the final, glasnost phase of Soviet historyowere widely ridiculed by the usual liberal critics, but they deeply influenced Ronald Reagan's critique of dEtente. And when Reagan was elected president in 1980, Pipes was asked to join the National Security Council as the head of its East European and Soviet desk.
Yes, He Has Lived National Review November 24, 2003, Monday Books, Arts & Manners; Volume LV, No. 22 By JAY NORDLINGER Vixi: Memoirs of a Non-Belonger, by Richard Pipes (Yale, 264 pp., $30)
For half a century, Richard Pipes has been one of the world's foremost scholars of Russia, and a man of political and policy influence as well: In the 1970s, he headed "Team B," the group directed to challenge the CIA's assumptions about the Soviet Union (which were wrong). And in the early 1980s, he served on the National Security Council staff of President Reagan. From the time of his birth in Cieszyn, Poland, to now, when he has assumed emeritus status at Harvard, Pipes has lived a rich, meaningful life. Fortunately, he has the ability to recount it, richly and meaningfully.
Robert Novak Slate Magazine October 2, 2003, Thursday Chris Suellentrop
The notion that the CIA perpetually understates the strength of America's enemies is a central neoconservative article of faith. (And it's a notion that's been disputed by Fareed Zakaria, among others. In the June 16 Newsweek,Zakaria wrote: For decades some conservatives, including many who now wield great influence, have had a tendency to vastly exaggerate the threat posed by tyrannical regimes.) It dates to at least the 1970s, when Richard Pipes led Team B, a group of outside experts thatconcluded that the CIA was understating the military might of the Soviet Union.
In the article, "Rumsfeld" is mentioned once ("The CIA strongly disagreed with Team B's assessments, calling Rumsfeld's position a 'complete fiction' and [...]"), but there's nothing in the article which explains what role Rumsfeld had with Team B. What was his role? If he is to be mentioned, I think the text should clarify that. -- Majic 12:25, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
I typed in "team b" and rumfeld and here is what I found:
In the 1970s, when President Richard Nixon's policy of detente was under attack by some former military officials and conservative policy intellectuals, Ford administration officials Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were among those challenging as too soft the CIA's estimate of Moscow's military power.
Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted to create a "Team B," which would have access to the CIA's data on the Soviets and issue its own conclusions. Cheney, as White House chief of staff, and Rumsfeld, as secretary of Defense, championed Team B, whose members included the young defense strategist Paul Wolfowitz, who a quarter-century later would be one of the chief architects of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. [1]
Nixon left amid scandal and Ford came in, and Ford's Secretary of Defense (Donald Rumsfeld) and Chief of Staff (Dick Cheney) believed it was intolerable that Americans might no longer be bound by fear. Without fear, how could Americans be manipulated?
Rumsfeld and Cheney began a concerted effort - first secretly and then openly - to undermine Nixon's treaty for peace and to rebuild the state of fear and, thus, reinstate the Cold War.
And these two men - 1974 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Ford Chief of Staff Dick Cheney - did this by claiming that the Soviets had secret weapons of mass destruction that the president didn't know about, that the CIA didn't know about, that nobody but them knew about. And, they said, because of those weapons, the US must redirect billions of dollars away from domestic programs and instead give the money to defense contractors for whom these two men would one day work.
"The Soviet Union has been busy," Defense Secretary Rumsfeld explained to America in 1976. "They’ve been busy in terms of their level of effort; they’ve been busy in terms of the actual weapons they ’ve been producing; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding production rates; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding their institutional capability to produce additional weapons at additional rates; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding their capability to increasingly improve the sophistication of those weapons. Year after year after year, they’ve been demonstrating that they have steadiness of purpose. They’re purposeful about what they’re doing."
The CIA strongly disagreed, calling Rumsfeld's position a "complete fiction" and pointing out that the Soviet Union was disintegrating from within, could barely afford to feed their own people, and would collapse within a decade or two if simply left alone.
But Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted Americans to believe there was something nefarious going on, something we should be very afraid of. To this end, they convinced President Ford to appoint a commission including their old friend Paul Wolfowitz to prove that the Soviets were up to no good. [2]
Many of the very same people who deliberately created the misimpression about Iraq to goad the American people into supporting a war had already executed a run-through of the same strategy in the 1970s. Back then, establishment hardliners associated with the now defunct “Committee on the Present Danger” heaped scorn upon the professional intelligence services for their alleged underestimation of Soviet military capabilities. They succeeded in convincing then-CIA Director, George H.W. Bush, to appoint a now infamous "Team B" to go through the same material and come up with an answer that would justify a vast increase in U.S. defense spending. With the powerful political patronage of then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, its members, including Paul Wolfowitz, came up with astronomical numbers for alleged Soviet military spending and capabilities. As Newsweek’s Farred Zakaria, a moderately conservative war supporter, has observed, “In retrospect, Team B’s conclusions were wildly off the mark.” It argued, for instance, that back in 1976, the Soviets enjoyed "a large and expanding Gross National Product." It credited them with double the number Backfire bombers the nation could actually produce. It turns out that even the CIA’s much pilloried estimates for Soviet military capabilities were far too generous. Sounding very much as if he were talking about Iraqi WMD capabilities 30 years later, Rumsfeld claimed, “No doubt exists about the capabilities of the Soviet armed forces.” Think Again: Team 'B' [3] Travb 00:24, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
This article is pretty well sourced, but completely one-sided. It seems to be a little sloppy in places in terms of quotes used, connections drawn etc. There are a couple instances of scare quotes and pejorative labels. heqs 05:19, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
I have removed the POV tag. I hope that my edits are seen to have improved the article. heqs 10:50, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Typically, criticism and after-analysis would get its own section, rather than mashing together Team B's findings with its critics. Given the way this particular issue unfolded over the years, the article may be appropriately styled.
I will add a criticism section--good idea.
i really liked your changes. Good job. It is a more balanced article now. I added back three sentences, two of which explain who these people are. But all of the other changes I kept.
Signed: Travb ( talk) 09:22, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Team B was a competitive analysis exercise created by American conservatives in the 1970s to counter a group of CIA intelligence officials known as Team A.
I am not sure if Team A was made up of CIA intelligence officials. I don't have access to the book Killing Detente, which talks about this subject ad nauseam right now, and a cursory glance at some of the articles I posted don't come up with much with "team a" so I can't confirm it. Travb ( talk) 09:32, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Is there really no counterpoint to Pipes view on Soviet nuclear intentions? If there isn't then the article seems to be somewhat unbalanced to team B's detriment. If there is then perhaps we need to point this out more in the article. WolfKeeper 02:23, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
The report is apparently declassified and presumably public domain, being funded by the government. I googled, but couldn't find it. Anyone know if it's online anywhere? WolfKeeper 20:44, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
This is just ricoculous:
The, ahem, “RightWeb” sources need a serious re-evaluation based on the fact that we can now have access to the report. The report (p 35-37) actually argued that despite the NIE’s assessment that the Soviet Navy was not aggressively developing more accurate ASW detection tools and would not be able to deploy new more advanced ASW capabilities in the next 10 years, the evidence in the NIE suggested that they had significantly ramped up ASW R&D, including non acoustic methods (which according to these sources, they were developing non-acoustic detection methods [4], [5]). This section in the report had nothing to do with the development of submarines, just ASW technologies which naturally would include sub based, surface and airborne ASW equipment. Also, the deployment of new ASW equipment would not effect the detectability of Soviet submarines, as the above passage states, but it would effect the detectability of US subs.
In light of the accessibility of the full report, this article could use a lot more work. Torturous Devastating Cudgel 20:48, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
Anyone argue that the Rightweb sources can stay? Considering how bad they look and how they completely distorted this material. I would like to remove them all, and replace them with some non-hysterical commentary. Torturous Devastating Cudgel 01:42, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
Another quick example of Rightweb's truthiness:
The leak of the report took place after Carter's election:
To avoid charges of partisanship, they delayed going public with the “Committee on the Present Danger” until just after Jimmy Carter’s November 1976 election to presidency.
"The classified B Team report, submitted on December 2, contained the same controversial message. Within a few weeks the main conclusions of the report had been leaked to the press.
Hoping to appeal to conservatives in both parties, the CPD waited until the week after the 1976 election of Carter to go public.
That’s why highly partisan sources, from sites like Rightweb, are generally discouraged. They usually abide by the "make it up, and hope no one notices" rule. Torturous Devastating Cudgel 18:09, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
Why use RightWeb as a source? RightWeb is a better source of information than most websites, because it uses other sources to verify its information, and lists them at the bottom of each page. Anarchangel ( talk) 20:50, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
As I dig a bit deeper into this material, I find that many of the conclusions of the report, like the NIE's lowballing Soviet spending [6] and Soviet thoughts on MAD/ intents [7] have, in hindsight, merit. Would it be a violation or WP:NOR or WP:SYNT to include this information in this article? The information would not be added to make the case one way or the other, but presented to the reader as a follow up. Torturous Devastating Cudgel 02:13, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
not using sonor would mean a submarine was.... pretty undetectable. should we now undo all of Torturous Devastating Cudgel's edits because of his biased error? Dedwolfen aug13 1:55pm
"Using active sonar is somewhat hazardous however, since it does not allow the sonar to identify the target, and any vessel around the emitting sonar will detect the emission. Having heard the signal, it is easy to identify the type of sonar (usually with its frequency) and its position (with the sound wave's energy). Moreover, active sonar, similar to radar, allows the user to detect objects at a certain range but also enables other platforms to detect the active sonar at a far greater range." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonar#Warfare
whoever put those in why not use the summaries in the actual report? i am going to change those to the ones in the actual report. they more acurately reflect the silliness of the report. the summaries in the article seem a little "doctored". anyway the article ones are original research i think, a strategic improvement... that down plays some of the more ridiculous claims. Dedwolfen aug 13th 2:51pm
the links to the 'relevant' articles were only to the report itself. the summaries in the report were about the same length as your summaries. you were making massive understatements about the material. the ASW section to you meant the report said the 'probability of advanced Soviet ASW research was greater than zero'? that to me seems fanciful. (i am also tickled to find that someone was douche enough to put it back). i will quote the report summary:
"given the extensive commitment of resources and the incomplete appreciation in the U.S. of the full implications of many of the technologies involved, the absence of a deployed system by this time is difficult to understand. The implication could be that the soviets have, in fact, deployed some operational non acoustic systems and will deploy more in the next few years."
the report discussed the probability of DEPLOYED SYSTEMS. it's just curious why you would opt to mischaracterize when there were summaries actually in the report. Dedwolfen NOV 1 4:51pm —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.246.176.253 ( talk) 22:16, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
This article is sliding into serious POV. Anything that seems to even vaguely disagree with the report is being removed, on what are (IMO) POV grounds; I'm particularly concerned with the summary, I keep returning here and finding that it doesn't reflect the article, and IMO the article doesn't reflect the body of comments that exist on this exercise.
To some extent it doesn't even matter if somebody (notable POV) makes an entirely wrong comment on the report somewhere (either pro or con), if it's notable it needs to go here.
NPOV is NOT the absence of POV it is the collection of (notable) POV. WolfKeeper 14:51, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
Gee. A whole mile? How is this supposed to locate submarines in an entire ocean with many *millions* of square miles? How is this technology ever going to reach tens or hundreds of miles? How could you even begin to deploy sensors every mile or so? And IRC these sensors are miles of wire being dragged behind an aircraft, I don't think you can even drop them in the ocean because they require forward motion to detect the magnetic field. And don't forget, submarines are capable of countermeasures to it, just like they are capable of countermeasures to sonic detection, I bet the detection range goes way down with suitable countermeasures. And as I say, magnetism is an inverse fourth power on distance, so if you double the sensitivity of the detector, range only goes up by just 20%. With sonar, in some cases doubling the sensitivity simply doubles the range. This bit of the report is just garbage, and that's just a bit I happen to know at all well. WolfKeeper 18:22, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
As far as the whole report being a “hack job”, that’s your opinion, and you are certainly entitled to it, but if you would like to make that the dominant POV in the article, I would suggest you present sources better informed and credentialed than Thom Hartmann to make that. Some sources certainly do support your POV that the authors were just looking form more money and political influence, others would suggest that in the overall picture, Team B was a valuable exercise, although not without its flaws, and was accurate on many technical issues and most importantly, getting Soviet strategic ambitions right, which was the aim of the panel.
This article currently uncritically lays out the report, contains a couple of grudging criticisms at the end followed by an uncritical (and to be honest extremely dubious) claim by the group's author that only one point in the entire report mattered at all. As in really? What's the rest of the report there for then? Why did they waste our and their time with writing it then if it was all irrelevant? WolfKeeper 18:22, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
You keep removing ALL mention of criticism from the summary, and you claim that all critics except a very few are non notable, and that one or two minor errors completely invalidate all points made by any other critics, whereas none of the egregious errors, gross exaggerations and outright falsehoods in the report are worth worrying about. WolfKeeper 18:22, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
The lead has to be a summary of the article. The article contains summary of the criticism; the lead must contain criticisms also. WolfKeeper 16:42, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
If you can't follow basic rules of the wikipedia, then your edits cannot stand. NPOV is not a debatable point here. WolfKeeper 16:43, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
The 'non-existent references' are probably due to the mass deletion of references that have occurred. But you must explain what you consider to be a copyvio. I am unable to find one. WolfKeeper 23:17, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Its findings were leaked to the press shortly after Jimmy Carter's 1976 presidential election win in an attempt to appeal to conservatives in both parties and not appear partisan. [1] [2]
or
Its findings were leaked to the press in an unsuccessful attempt at an October surprise to derail Jimmy Carter's 1976 presidential bid. [3]
Travb ( talk) 23:48, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
TravB, you need to stop posting another author's work as though it were wiki-original (copyvio). Whoever else added the fake references, as in the pon-ref which never linked to anything, needs to stop. No one should be attributing content to "Right-web" or other obviously unreliable sources. Perspicacite 03:02, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
I've had CSBot look at both the previous and current revisions and it found no copyright violations (ferreting those out is CSBot's primary function). It is not infallible, since it can only compare (obviously) to online sources, but unless one is provided, there is no indication that any copyright violation is taking place. (Paraphrasing contents from another source may or may not be plagiarism, but it certainly is not copyright violation which requires that prose be copied substantially).
Further reversions using copyright violation as a reason should provide the source of the material copied mostly verbatim, or might be reasonably viewed as disruptive.
In addition, the edit dispute also seem to shift points of view rather strongly, regardless of the invoked reason for the edit. Everyone here should take a moment to assess whether they are striving to remain neutral.
Regardless of allegations of copyright violation, www.irc-online.org appears to be a reliable source per the guidelines (it is edited, published in print and has notable contributors). Reliable source, however, does not mean neutral, and it's important that no undue weight be given to any one source— especially when its neutrality is disputed.
Hope this helps. — Coren (talk) 03:23, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
See: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Copyvio I think several uninvolved editors summed it up. I notice this editor uses copyvio to push his version of pages often. Travb ( talk) 22:40, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Can anyone source John Connally's participation in Team B? Perspicacite 03:29, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
thanks for the suggestion, I revised the membership section. As per page 6 of the Team B report. Travb ( talk) 23:14, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Please refrain from deleting large sections of referenced material which does not match your own POV. Sigh, unfortunatetly, this is not the first time I have witnessed this.
I would appreciate this same courteousy with my own referenced edits. If you disagree with the policy assesments of these experts, the easy option is to remove these assessments you simply dont like, the harder route is to actually find contrary sources which contradict these assesments. I welcome the later, and look forward to your addition excellent sources, such as the team b document.
Please explain where in wikipolicy that policy experts cannot be quoted in articles.
I appreciate your additions to the article, quotes from the actual team b document, which I have not removed, and which I would defend if someone attempted to delete, as I did with your referenced additions to Phillip Agees before. Travb ( talk) 22:25, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
Regarding:
You mean what you are trying to delete, this material was added long before you began to borderline vandalize this page TDC.
This is factual assessments of how wrong the report was by experts. Since when does wikipedia refuse to allow experts to review the reports and how factually legitimate the reports are?
By "the side", you mean deleted from the article, by your edits, the offical Team B report should be quoted, but the factual accuracy of the report should not be questioned -- sounds rather Orwellian to me. Travb ( talk) 22:30, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
As per TDC:
From transcipt
VO: But a world without fear was not what the neoconservatives needed to pursue their project. They now set out to destroy Henry Kissinger’s vision. What gave them their opportunity was the growing collapse of American political power, both abroad and at home. The defeat in Vietnam, and the resignation of President Nixon over Watergate, led to a crisis of confidence in America’s political class. And the neoconservatives seized their moment. They allied themselves with two right-wingers in the new administration of Gerald Ford. One was Donald Rumsfeld, the new Secretary of Defense. The other was Dick Cheney, the President’s Chief of Staff. Rumsfeld began to make speeches alleging that the Soviets were ignoring Kissinger’s treaties and secretly building up their weapons, with the intention of attacking America.
DONALD RUMSFELD, US Secretary of Defense, Speaking in 1976: The Soviet Union has been busy. They’ve been busy in terms of their level of effort; they’ve been busy in terms of the actual weapons they’ve been producing; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding production rates; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding their institutional capability to produce additional weapons at additional rates; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding their capability to increasingly improve the sophistication of those weapons. Year after year after year, they’ve been demonstrating that they have steadiness of purpose. They’re purposeful about what they’re doing. Now, your question is, what ought one to be doing about that? VO: The CIA, and other agencies who watched the Soviet Union continuously for any sign of threat, said that this was a complete fiction. There was no truth to Rumsfeld’s allegations. But Rumsfeld used his position to persuade President Ford to set up an independent inquiry. He said it would prove that there was a hidden threat to America. And the inquiry would be run by a group of neoconservatives, one of whom was Paul Wolfowitz. The aim was to change the way America saw the Soviet Union. MELVIN GOODMAN, Head of Office of Soviet Affairs CIA, 1976-87: And Rumsfeld won that very intense, intense political battle that was waged in Washington in 1975 and 1976. Now, as part of that battle, Rumsfeld and others, people such as Paul Wolfowitz, wanted to get into the CIA. And their mission was to create a much more severe view of the Soviet Union, Soviet intentions, Soviet views about fighting and winning a nuclear war. VO: The neoconservatives chose, as the inquiry chairman, a well-known critic and historian of the Soviet Union called Richard Pipes. Pipes was convinced that whatever the Soviets said publicly, secretly they still intended to attack and conquer America. This was their hidden mindset. The inquiry was called Team B, and the other leading member was Paul Wolfowitz. |
You know TDC, for 2 years I have seen you continuously delete well referenced material over and over and over again. Well referenced material whose only error is this material does not meet your own POV. There are two editors, POV warriors, just like yourself, Rjensen and Ultramarine, who do the same thing, but at least those two add a lot of solid research to wikipedia.
I am going to go to the village pump and see if there is any policy about this behavior. I see it as destructive immature vandalism, like a group of kids slashing tires or breaking car windows, because it simply makes everyone worse off.
You know little, if anything about Team B, TDC, and yet you delete well referenced material, again and again, like a common vandal.
I knew it was complete bullshit when you said Rumsfeld had nothing to do with Team B, and looking at the reference, which it appears you never did, a two minute process, I remembered the was the architect behind Team B. You should not be deleting large portions of the article if you do not know fundamental aspects of Team B.
I personally think you should not be editing this, or any other article on wikipedia if you continue to delete large portions of referenced text. Travb ( talk) 08:55, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
TDC, your the only one here who removed large portions of referenced text which doesn't meet your own POV--that is the substantial "reversion" I made.
I have kept all of your exellent additions intact, I would ask the same respect.
Your "bias source" argument is typical and predictable. I await your mea culpa.
In the 1970s, when President Richard Nixon's policy of detente was under attack by some former military officials and conservative policy intellectuals, Ford administration officials Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were among those challenging as too soft the CIA's estimate of Moscow's military power.
Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted to create a "Team B," which would have access to the CIA's data on the Soviets and issue its own conclusions. Cheney, as White House chief of staff, and Rumsfeld, as secretary of Defense, championed Team B, whose members included the young defense strategist Paul Wolfowitz, who a quarter-century later would be one of the chief architects of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. [4] The new CIA director [Bush] was prompted to authorize an alternative unit outside the CIA to challenge the agency's intelligence on Soviet intentions. Bush was more compliant in the political winds than his predecessor. Consisting of a host of conservatives, the unit was called Team B. A young aide from the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Paul Wolfowitz, was selected to represent Rumsfeld's interest and served as coauthor of Team B's report. The report was single-minded in its conclusion about the Soviet buildup and cleansed of contrary intelligence. It was fundamentally a political tool in the struggle for control of the Republican Party, intended to destroy détente and aimed particularly at Kissinger. Both Ford and Kissinger took pains to dismiss Team B and its effort. (Later, Team B's report was revealed to be wildly off the mark about the scope and capability of the Soviet military.) [5] }}
|
Travb ( talk) 08:03, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Some additional info that might be helpful here; Rumsfeld is identified as a "major player in the original 1976 Team B exercise" by Gordon R. Mitchell, "Team B Intelligence Coups," Quarterly Journal of Speech 92:2 (May 2006) p. 151. Also, the following from Jason Vest, "Darth Rumsfeld," The American Prospect 12:4 (Feb 26, 2001) p. 20 is quite useful:
“ | Despite Kissinger's condemnation of Team B's assessment, Rumsfeld was effusive in promoting it as a credible study--and thereby undermining arms control efforts for the next four years. Two days before Jimmy Carter's inauguration, Rumsfeld fired parting shots at Kissinger and other disarmament advocates, saying that "no doubt exists about the capabilities of the Soviet armed forces" and that those capabilities "indicate a tendency toward war fighting ... rather than the more modish Western models of deterrence through mutual vulnerability." Team B's efforts not only were effective in undermining the incoming Carter administration's disarmament efforts but also laid the foundation for the unnecessary explosion of the defense budget in the Reagan years. And it was during those years that virtually all of Rumsfeld's compatriots were elevated to positions of power in the executive branch. | ” |
The Sept 15th {{totally disputed}} tag [12] I will keep the tag up for another three days or so. I can move the tag down to the criticism section, if everyone agrees.
No one has argued the factual accuracy of anything in this article. I think we can add a neutrality tag. Travb ( talk) 09:18, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
Seems like the 9/15/2007 "totally disputed" tag has served it's purpose, apparently there are no more factual disputes, removing tag. riverguy42 aka WNDL42 ( talk) 20:48, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
i recommend axing the summaries as a) they are longer than the actual report b) they are wildly innacurate misrepresentation of the sources. c) the 'context' that is offered is unsourced fabrication. i put up the SHORTER summaries that were in the actual report but those were removed for some curious reason... Dedwolfen
Torturous Devastating Cudgel 18:53, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
I am worried about the summaries as well. They seem to have been written with a view to deflecting criticism rather than to actually summarize what the report said. I don't know for sure of course because they are not properly cited -- the citation just says "Team B Report" and a page number, but where is the actual report? It is apparently declassified but I don't see a link to it here nor do I find it easily on google -- does anyone here have a link to it? I think we'd be better off excising the summaries under section two of the report and simply having the paragraph above them. csloat ( talk) 20:27, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
No sourcing for such a claim has been made, and as per Wikipedia:Categorization of people, such a categorization should rest on self-identification. In fact, Team B was formed when the movement commonly mislabelled neoconservative was still in its embryonic stage. RayAYang ( talk) 22:28, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
I have noticed that a user named Commodore Sloat is constantly editing the articles, related to the supposed "neocons". I did a cursory check of Commodore Sloat's edits, and it appears the vast majority of them serve to promote his personal viewpoint on the matter, rather then providing facts and other valuable information. Given the persistence of Commodore Sloat's editing, the articles tend to get contaminated with a very distinctive viewpoint. This goes against the fundamental principle of Wikipedia - Neutrality...not to mention that Wikipedia is being [mis]used to promolgate certain political views. Keverich1 ( talk) 01:02, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
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Cheers.— cyberbot II Talk to my owner:Online 11:29, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
I've added the largely under reported story of biopreparat and the intended desire to overtake Washington in nuclear superiority.
I'd like better refs for the biopreparat paragraph, than the BBC/who are by no means neutral or scholars but for right now, they'll suffice.
Boundarylayer ( talk) 04:20, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
No part of the Team B report discussed Biological weapons, and I don't remember bomb yields being a major issue. Team B was still wrong in every respect. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.122.48.173 ( talk) 08:00, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
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