Final_Judgment

[360] Final Judgment 457
to the Bush family. In 1962 Cherne, along with Prescott Bush Sr. and
Prescott Bush, Jr.—father and brother of the future CIA director—as well as
yet another future CIA director, William Casey, founded the National
Strategy Information Center which effectively functioned as a distribution
center for CIA-approved "information" sent to some 300 newspapers
internationally. 921
However, as we noted in Appendix One of Final Judgment, the newly
established and ostensibly "independent" group—B-Team—headed by
Harvard professor Richard Pipes, a devout supporter of Israel, became an
outpost of Israeli influence. And, of course, not surprisingly—considering
his familial attachment to B-Team sponsor Leo Cherne—then CIA Director
George Bush became a promoter of the B-Team's findings.
PAISLEY vs THE B-TEAM
It was John Paisley, recently retired from the CIA, who was assigned to
provide liaison and guidance between the CIA's in-house A-Team and the B-
Team. However, Paisley was not enthralled with the efforts of the B-Team.
According to Meade Rowington, a former U.S. counterintelligence analyst:
"It soon became clear to Paisley that these cosmopolitan intellectuals were
simply trying to discredit the CIA's recommendations and replace them with
the alarmist view of Soviet intentions favored by Israeli estimators." 922
As a consequence, during the next two years, Paisley launched his own
internal intelligence community campaign against the Israeli attempt to
manipulate U.S. policy-making. He also started talking to Washington
newsmen and congressional investigators, exposing what he saw happening.
According to one of Paisley's friends, "He met with physicists and other
scientists who knew Israel was wildly exaggerating Soviet military
capabilities and war plans. But he was privately told, time and again, that
nothing could be done about it." 923
By early 1978 the B-Team had finished its review of the CIA's
procedures and programs and issued a lengthy report that was harshly critical
of almost every finding U.S. intelligence had made in previous years about
Soviet military power and its intended uses.
ISRAELI DISINFORMATION
The Israeli-influenced B-Team report said that the Soviets were secretly
developing a so-called "first-strike" capability, because Soviet strategic
doctrine assumed that such a sneak attack would make them the winners of a
nuclear exchange with the United States. The B-Team dismissed the
estimates of analysts such as Paisley and others who held that Moscow was
unlikely to start a nuclear conflict unless attacked. In the end, of course, the
B-Team findings prevailed and the direct consequence was that there was a
virtual revival of the arms race and a massive new infusion of U.S. military
and other aid to Israel during the 1980. 924