It may now sound ridiculous, but Nikita Khrushchev once told America "we will bury you" and Washington believed him. For years the intelligence community thought the U.S.S.R. was on the verge of overtaking the U.S. as the world's largest economy before the Soviets unexpectedly collapsed. Daniel Patrick Moynihan's book, Secrecy: the American Experience, tries to explain how such a tremendous intelligence misjudgment could take place.
The Gaither report ... was forwarded to the president just weeks after the ... launching of Sputnik. ... The conclusions were stark to the point of startling ... 'The GNP of the USSR is now more than 1/3 that of the US and is increasing half again as fast' ... The intelligence community accepted and 'improved the assessment of the Gaither commission. ... [The] report remained Top Secret until 1973. But of course it had leaked well before then ... to ... the New York Times.
The illusion lasted so long because it was founded on a secret report that gave it credibility. Once the narrative had been established, it remained fundamentally unchallenged until nearly the end of the Cold War. "Sovietologists ... trained to rely on the same general assumptions and data, had engaged in 'group think' ... [until] in 1985, Rowen circulated a paper to senior officials in the Reagan administration ... that actual Soviet economic growth was close to zero."
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