Inside View

A ranking government official in a position to weigh a lot of top-drawer information that the U.S. gets, made these private assumptions last week that bear on current U.S. policy-planning:

P: The Russians are not planning a war at any definite date, or even a war at all. Militarily, they are cutting back on most types of bombers and building up their nuclear-missile punch. They have a sizable number of intermediate-range missiles on hand, are beginning to have a potential in ICBMs, but probably cannot reach the U.S. heartland from present Siberian bases.

P: The Russians are making a big push in defensive ground-to-air missiles; most Soviet industrial and nuclear sites are well protected, but (like everyone else) the Russians are troubled by a defense gap against low level attacks, and their missiles cannot yet reach above 60,000 ft., where the U-2 normally flew.

P: The idea of Russian bases in Cuba is "bunk--comic-opera stuff." The Kremlin is too smart for that since such bases would be indefensible. Communists in Latin America are concealing direct ties to Moscow, hammering at the U.S. as "the colossus of the North" through nationalist, anti-imperialist propaganda themes laid down by the 21st Communist Party Congress at Moscow in early 1959.

P: Not having the strength to penetrate all of Africa, Soviet and Chinese agents are trying to establish a beachhead in Guinea. Ethiopia and Morocco are also being probed. Peking may possibly have a long-range plan in the next two decades to export some 5,000,000 Chinese to Latin America, Cuba and North Africa as a prelude to a global revolutionary thrust.

P: The Chinese are probably in the research and development stage of an A-bomb program. They may be able to produce a bomb within five years--faster with Soviet help.

P: Khrushchev needs a breathing spell at home. If he publicly changes his policy of "coexistence," criticized by Peking, East Germany and domestic hardliners, it will be a signal that he is finished.

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