“The most important JIC estimates involved the military capabilities and future intentions of the USSR,” says Valero. Those intelligence estimates determined that the Soviets were ideologically hostile to the West and would continue to seek global domination, an attitude they had managed to skillfully conceal during the war. In September 1945, the JIC advised the Joint Chiefs that the Soviet Union would postpone “open conflict” with the West in the immediate future but only so it could rebuild its military arsenal and by 1952 be back at fighting strength. After this date, said the JIC, the
...more
