Eran Lerman is a former Israeli intelligence officer. He served as a member of the Israeli delegation to ACRS. 

Paul Redmond (CIA) and Henryk Jasik (UOP) continue discussions on the intelligence apparatuses in their respective countries and the potential for US-Poland intelligence cooperation, particularly in the area of counterterrorism.

The CIA's National Intelligence Daily for 7 January 1989 covers developments in Nicaragua, Venezuela, Panama, Libya, Lebanon, Jordan, Taiwan, the Soviet Union, and Armenia. Certain portions of the document are redacted due to b(1) and b(3) exemptions.

For years, U.S. intelligence agencies did not take seriously Muammar Gaddafi’s efforts to develop a Libyan nuclear capability and this report provides early evidence of the perspective that the Libyan program “did not know what it was doing.” According to the CIA, the program’s “serious deficiencies,” including “poor leadership” and lack of both “coherent planning” and trained personnel made it “highly unlikely the Libyans will achieve a nuclear weapons capability within the next 10 years.” The Libyan effort was in such a “rudimentary stage” that they were trying to acquire any technology that would be relevant to producing plutonium or enriched uranium.

With proliferation becoming a “greater threat to US interests over the next five years,” intelligence analysts believed that the “disruptive aspect of the proliferation phenomenon will constitute the greater threat to the United States.” While the estimators saw “low potential” for terrorist acquisition of nuclear weapons, the likelihood of terrorist/extortionist hoaxes was on the upswing. Significant portions of the NIE are excised, especially the estimate of Israel’s nuclear arsenal and its impact in the Middle East. Nevertheless, much information remains on the countries of greatest concern: Iraq and Libya in the Near East, India and Pakistan in South Asia, Brazil and Argentina in Latin America, and the Republic of South Africa, as well as those of lesser concern: Iran, Egypt, Taiwan and the two Koreas.

American response to East German protests, plans of action toward the Soviet Union, question of defectors from socialist countries, implementation of passive and active resistance in socialist countries.