Gorbachev’s Prospects Are Dimmer Than Year Ago, CIA Chief Says

Retiring CIA Director William H. Webster said Saturday that Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s chances of survival are clearly “dimmer than they were a year ago” and that growing instability in the Soviet Union has become a national security threat to the United States.

In an interview with Cable News Network, Webster also said the Bush Administration was disappointed that leaders of Iraq’s ruling Arab Baath Socialist Party did not overthrow Saddam Hussein after twin uprisings by Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq and Kurdish guerrillas in the north. The CIA predicted at the time that Hussein would be successful in crushing the rebellions, Webster said.

“We accurately forecast that Saddam Hussein would be able to control both insurrections, one at a time, by moving troops from the south to the north,” Webster said on CNN’s “Newsmaker Saturday.”

“What we have seen that is discouraging in some respects is that the Baathists and Sunni groups, who had the closest access to him and were in the best position to effect his removal, rallied behind him rather than see the insurgencies succeed,” Webster said. Hussein’s own associates were more capable of overthrowing the Iraqi leader than any other group, he said.

Webster acknowledged, however, that the CIA did not anticipate that hundreds of thousands of Kurds would flee to Turkey after the collapse of their uprising.

The CIA director, who announced plans last week to retire, said the United States had “important human intelligence” during the Gulf War, apparently meaning agents inside the Iraqi regime. But he refused to elaborate.

On Gorbachev, Webster said: “His prospects are considerably dimmer than we viewed them a year ago.

“His general approach--with his preference for solving (problems) through Communist or centrist-type solutions and avoiding the hard choices for a market economy and privatization--have simply not worked for him. And now he is confronted with survivor-type problems from within his own country,” he said.

“There is a great deal of instability currently in the Soviet Union--a great deal of struggle from below for autonomy among the republics, a collapsed economy and a number of other problems,” Webster said. “ . . . This type of instability is of national security concern to our country.”