November 1976: Team B Chief Says Facts Don’t Matter, Understanding Soviet ‘Mindset’ Does Matter

The neoconservatives of the “Team B” intelligence analysis team (see Early 1976) are unconcerned with the heavy criticism being leveled at their findings about the Soviet threat (see November 1976). Richard Pipes, the head of Team B, says that just because their facts are all wrong, their conclusions from those erroneous “facts” are still correct. Those errors are “just details,” he says. “The important thing was reading the Soviet mindset,” he asserts. “We were saying they don’t want war, but if they do have war, they will resort immediately to nuclear weapons.” Regardless of the errors, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will hail the findings (see Late November 1976). [Unger, 2007, pp. 57]