18-04-2010, 09:43 AM
From the old minutes of the Grand Chessboard:
US intelligence agency, the CIA, had a very good picture of the Soviet
build up of forces before the invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968
and warned the then president Lyndon Johnson it was about to happen.
That is the message from around 500 archive documents relating to the
Warsaw Pact clampdown collected and released by the agency at a recent
seminar in Austin, Texas. The papers show that the CIA warned of the
build up of forces on August 2, saying an invasion could happen two
weeks later. On August 20, the CIA noted that Soviet leaders had cut
short their holidays for an emergency meeting. They said this was
likely connected to an invasion. President Johnson rejected that
interpretation. The Warsaw Pact forces rolled in that night to stamp
out the liberalising moves by Czechoslovak authorities in the previous
months. Some previous interpretations suggested the West was surprised
by the Soviet-led invasion.
US intelligence agency, the CIA, had a very good picture of the Soviet
build up of forces before the invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968
and warned the then president Lyndon Johnson it was about to happen.
That is the message from around 500 archive documents relating to the
Warsaw Pact clampdown collected and released by the agency at a recent
seminar in Austin, Texas. The papers show that the CIA warned of the
build up of forces on August 2, saying an invasion could happen two
weeks later. On August 20, the CIA noted that Soviet leaders had cut
short their holidays for an emergency meeting. They said this was
likely connected to an invasion. President Johnson rejected that
interpretation. The Warsaw Pact forces rolled in that night to stamp
out the liberalising moves by Czechoslovak authorities in the previous
months. Some previous interpretations suggested the West was surprised
by the Soviet-led invasion.