LBJ Presidential Library & Museum—Central Intelligence Agency
April 16, 2010 • The LBJ Library
10th Floor Atrium
12:30 pm – 5:00 pm CST
- 12:30 Welcome
Mark Updegrove, Director, LBJ Library - 12:30-12:50 Opening Remarks
Admiral Bobby Inman, Former Deputy Director, CIA - 12:50-1:00 Introduction of Keynote Speaker
Mark Updegrove, Director, LBJ Library - 1:00-1:45 Keynote Address
Strategic Warning and the Role of Intelligence
Ambassador Robert Hutchings, Dean, LBJ School of Public Affairs - 1:45 Break
- 2:00-3:15 Panel Discussion #1
The Soviet Invasion from an Intelligence Analyst Perspective
Panel chair: Donald Steury, CIA Historian
Panel members (former analysts):- John Bird
- Doug MacEachin
- Tom Troy
- 3:15 Break
- 3:30-4:45 Panel Discussion #2
Strategic Warning in the Post-Soviet Environment
Panel chair: Donald Steury
Panel members:- Mark Kramer, Director, Cold War Studies Project, Harvard
- Peter Clement, Deputy Director of Intelligence, CIA
- Mike Absher, Scowcroft Institute, Texas A&M
- 4:45-5:00 Historical Collections Program at CIA
Joseph Lambert, Director of Information Management Services, CIA - 5:00 Reception
As part of this event, the CIA's Historical Collections Division, working with the LBJ Library, has put together more than 500 formerly classified documents and other historical material highlighting the role intelligence played in informing U.S. policy regarding the Soviet-Czechoslovak crisis that took place over forty years ago. A DVD containing the documents will be provided to all attendees, and the collection will be made available to the public on the CIA Web site.
To highlight the document release, the symposium will feature scholarly discussion on the intelligence support provided to the Johnson Administration and on the lessons that can be drawn from the 1968 invasion for strategic warning and the role of intelligence in today's world.
Speaker Biographies:
Ambassador Robert L. Hutchings
Dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin
Former chairman of the National Intelligence Council
Hutchings is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy and received his doctor's degree in government from the University of Virginia. He was assistant dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton from 1997-2003 before becoming chairman of the National Intelligence Council in Washington, D.C. from 2003-2005. Hutchings' combined academic and diplomatic career has included service as fellow and director of International Studies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, director for European Affairs with the National Security Council and special adviser to the Secretary of State, with the rank of ambassador.
While chairing the National Intelligence Council, he directed the yearlong "NIC 2020" project resulting in a report called "Mapping the Global Future" that examined the forces that will shape world affairs to the year 2020. His most recent research springs from that project and aims at developing a global policy agenda based on a series of structured strategic dialogues over the past two years with leaders in China, Russia, India, Brazil, South Africa and a dozen other key countries around the world.
Hutchings is a director of the Atlantic Council of the United States and of the Foundation for a Civil Society and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the British-North American Committee. A recipient of the National Intelligence Medal and the U.S. State Department Superior Honor Award, he also was awarded the Order of Merit with Commander's Cross of the Republic of Poland for his contributions to Polish freedom.
Admiral Bobby Inman
Lyndon B. Johnson Centennial Chair in National Policy
Former Deputy Director, CIA
Admiral Bobby R. Inman, USN Ret., graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1950, and from the National War College in 1972. He became an adjunct professor at the University of Texas at Austin in 1987. He was appointed as a tenured professor holding the Lyndon B. Johnson Centennial Chair in National Policy in August 2001. He served as Interim Dean of the LBJ School of Public Affairs from 1 January to 31 December 2005 and was appointed in January 2009 to serve as Interim Dean a second time. Admiral Inman served in the U.S. Navy from November 1951 to July 1982, when he retired with the permanent rank of Admiral. While on active duty he served as Director of the National Security Agency and Deputy Director of Central Intelligence.
After retirement from the Navy, he was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation MCC in Austin, Texas for four years and Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Westmark Systems, Inc., a privately owned electronics industry holding company for three years. Admiral Inman also served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas from 1987 through 1990.
Admiral Inman's primary activity since 1990 has been investing in start-up technology companies, where he is a Managing Director of Gefinor Ventures and Limestone Ventures. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Massey Energy Company and of several privately held companies. He serves as a Trustee of the American Assembly and the California Institute of Technology. He is an elected Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.
Peter Clement
Deputy Director for Intelligence for Analytic Programs
Peter Clement was appointed Deputy Director for Intelligence for Analytic Programs in January 2005. Mr. Clement joined the Agency in 1977 and spent much of his first 25 years focused on the Soviet Union—in analytic and management positions, including Director of the Office of Russia-Eurasian Analysis and as CIA's Russia Issue Manager from 1997-2003. Mr. Clement later was a PDB briefer for Vice President Cheney and NSC Adviser Rice, and subsequently served as the DCI's Representative to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations before assuming his current duties.
Mr. Clement holds a Ph. D. in Russian history and an M.A. in European history, both from Michigan State University; and a B.A. in liberal arts from SUNY-Oswego. He has been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations since 2001. Mr. Clement taught Russian history and politics for over ten years as an adjunct professor at local universities, and has published some ten journal articles and book chapters on Russia, Central Asia, and the Cuban missile crisis.
Kenneth Michael Absher
Fellow, Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs, Bush School of Government, Texas A & M University
Mr. Kenneth Michael Absher was born in Wichita, Kansas, and raised in San Antonio, Texas. He received a B.A. in Philosophy from Princeton University in 1957. In December 1961, Mr. Absher moved to Washington D.C., to begin his career with the Central Intelligence Agency. He retired from CIA on July 31, 1993, as a member of the Senior Intelligence Service. He served over 31 years in the Directorate of Operations, now known as the National Clandestine Service. Mr. Absher was Chief of Station in two different field assignments, and chief of base in two others. He had four tours in CIA headquarters managing foreign intelligence operations.
During his career, Mr. Absher served in Western Europe, the Caribbean and Indochina. He provided direct intelligence support to the US handling of major Cold War events such as the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis; the Vietnam War; the 1983 military and rescue operation in Grenada; and the break-up of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. Since his retirement from the CIA, Mr. Absher has taught at the University of Texas at San Antonio, and from 1997 to 2002 at the National Defense Intelligence College in Washington, D.C.
He was a consultant to the President's Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the United States Intelligence Community the Aspin/Brown Commission, which published its appraisal of US Intelligence in March 1996. He was a consultant to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and contributed to its staff study "IC 21: Intelligence Community in the 21st Century" published in April 1996. Mr. Absher currently serves on the Board of Directors of the World Affairs Council of San Antonio; and on the board of the National Defense Intelligence College Foundation in Washington, D.C.
Mark Kramer
Director, Cold War History Project, Harvard University
Mark Kramer is the director of the Harvard Cold War Studies program and a senior fellow of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University. He has taught international relations and comparative politics at Harvard, Yale, and Brown Universities and was formerly an Academy Scholar in Harvard’s Academy of International and Area Studies as well as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. He has worked extensively in newly opened archives in Russia, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia and also in the archives of several Western countries.
Professor Kramer’s publications include, The Crisis in Czechoslovakia, 1968: The Prague Spring and the Soviet Invasion (Columbia UP); Soldier and State in Poland: Civil-Military Relations and Institutional Change After Communism (Rowman & Littlefield); The Collapse of the Soviet Union (MIT Press); and Crisis in the Communist World, 1956: The Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact, and Upheavals in Poland and Hungary (Cambridge UP).
In addition, he has written nearly 200 articles on a variety of topics, including the demise of the Soviet Union, the Prague Spring and the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia, Sino-Soviet relations, the Soviet and post-Soviet armed forces, the Russian-Chechen war, the structures of Soviet and post-Soviet foreign policy making, nuclear proliferation, NATO and East European security, post-Communist economic reform in East-Central Europe, social policy in East-Central Europe, civil-military relations in East-Central Europe, and the global arms trade.