World: The Limits of Intelligence: Why No One Knew

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The maneuvers were tailored as a mask for aggression. Yet at no time did U.S. intelligence analysts from the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency or the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research advise the President that an invasion would definitely occur. They could not. The decision to strike lay locked inside the minds of a handful of Soviet leaders. As one State De partment official observed: "They are a government that knows how to keep its mouth shut better than ours does." U.S. intelligence experts now believe that the Soviet leadership reached its irrevocable decision on Tuesday, just a few hours before the first Russian tanks rumbled into Czechoslovakia, commanded by Soviet General Ivan Yakubovsky.

The swiftness and secrecy that spooked the spooks also jolted the Pentagon into the unhappy awareness that its defense plans for Western Europe were outmoded. For more than a decade, they have hinged on the premise that wary eyes focused on a cumbersome Soviet military machine would furnish at least two weeks' warning of any warlike thrust—time essential to activate the U.S. Army's Big Lift of troops to Europe and to mobilize NATO forces. Any westward-aimed Soviet buildup would certainly have produced a massive and almost simultaneous response. Nonetheless, top U.S. strategists could not conceal their respect for the shattering speed and efficiency of the Soviet takeover when it finally came about. "There should have been some little in dication," lamented one senior Pentagon planner. One tip-off might have been a report that Soviet tanks were switching from blank shells used for maneuvers to live ammunition. "We got no word of it."