Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency report, dated 1 June 1984 and marked unclassified for official use only, reviews how Soviet leaders and media treated President Reagan from November 1980 through May 1984. It finds that Moscow twice moderated its rhetoric to test prospects for better relations, and that attacks became the most abusive in two decades after the South Korean airliner shootdown. The report compiles authoritative Soviet statements and midlevel and routine media commentary as a baseline for analysts.
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120. More than that, there is reason to believe that those who organized this provocation deliberately desired a further aggravation of the international situation striving to smear the Soviet Union, to sow hostility towards it and to cast aspersions on the Soviet peace-loving policy. 121. This is illustrated also by the impudent, slanderous statement in respect to the Soviet Union that was made instantly by President Reagan of the United States. 122. USSR Government statement on Korean airliner incident (Pravda, 7 Sep 83) 123. The assertion of the U.S. President that Soviet pilots knew that it was a civilian aircraft are absolutely not in keeping with reality. . . 124. It is the sovereign right of every state to protect its borders. . . . So the U.S. President makes himself out as an ignoramus saying, as he did in his address on 5 September, that the Soviet Union "arbitrarily proclaims" its borders in the airspace [sic]. 125. But the point here, of course, is not the ignorance of one U.S. official or another. The point is a deliberate preplanned action in an area that is strategically important to the Soviet Union. The instigators of that action could not help realizing what its outcome could be, but went ahead with a major intelligence operation with the use, as is now becoming clear, of a civilian plane, deliberately exposing its passengers to mortal danger. . . . 126. This conclusion is confirmed by all subsequent actions of the U.S Administration. Its leaders, including the U.S. President, launched a malicious and hostile anti-Soviet campaign over a very short time, clearly using a prearranged script. Its essence has been revealed in its most concentrated form in the televised speech of U.S. President R. Reagan on 5 September--to try to blacken the image of the Soviet Union and discredit its social system, to provoke a feeling of hatred toward the Soviet people, to present the aims of the USSR foreign policy in a distorted perspective, and to distract attention from its peace initiatives. 127. The entire responsibility for this tragedy rests wholly and fully with the leaders of the United States of America. 128. Ogarkov, article (Izvestiya, 23 Sep 83) 129. The struggle for peace in our times has acquired special
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 56 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.