Office of the Historian
No. 820

761.00/11–1351

Memorandum by the Deputy Special Assistant for Intelligence (Howe) to the Director of the Office of Intelligence Research (Evans)

secret
[Washington,] November 13, 1951.

There is continuing discussion of Bohlen’s interpretation of Beria’s speech1 in which he believes that there may be real elements of weakness and that an air of nervousness and uncertainty pervades the speech. In the discussions at the Secretary’s meeting this morning2 I pointed out, and it was accepted, that Intelligence recognizes that this might very well be behind the speech but that it was speculative and visceral and therefore Intelligence itself could not put it forward as the conclusion which they would reach with respect to the speech.

However, because there seems to be some currency in the Bohlen view, the question was raised on what the impact was or might be upon our various allies and other elements of the Free World, of a [Page 1671] view or position taken by the US that this speech did represent uncertainty and perhaps weakness. Nitze quite rightly pointed out that the reaction would be different if the interpretation of the assumed weakness was with respect to (a) our possible actions, or (b) Soviet-planned actions and the probable reactions thereto.

You realize that this does not address itself to whether the speech itself does reflect weakness, but rather what the effect would be if the US, directly or indirectly, promoted the idea that it represented uncertainty or weakness.

I pointed out to the Secretary’s Meeting that we could try a hand at an estimate of the various reactions to this proposition, but that I was not at all hopeful that anything concrete enough or significant enough could be developed to assist in action or decision. Will you promptly take this up with Mose and the Estimates Group3 to try and formulate if at all possible a proposition which would merit a quick estimate which had some chance of being useful.4

Fisher Howe
  1. The reference is presumably to Beriya’s speech of November 6 to the Moscow Soviet commemorating the 34th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. For an extract from the speech, see Folliot, Documents on International Affairs, 1951, pp. 294–304.↩
  2. No record has been found of the Secretary of State’s daily meeting of November 13 with top officers of the Department of State.↩
  3. Officers in the Department of State concerned with preparation of National Intelligence Estimates.↩

  4. The source text bears the following unascribable handwritten notation:

    “Do you want to take this up with Mose [Harvey]? I think compared to other work in hand this is too fluffy to justify interrupting NIEs.”

    ↩