U.S. Experts Saw Coup--and Its Failure--Coming : Intelligence: Gorbachev’s actions invited right-wing backlash, but it was bungled early on, they say.

A week before the Soviet coup, U.S. intelligence officials warned the White House of “a real possibility” that hard-liners in the KGB or the Soviet military might act to block the scheduled signing of the new Union Treaty, senior government officials said Wednesday. But they conceded that they knew too little about potential coup plans to enable President Bush to act.

The treaty, which would reduce Moscow’s centralized control and strengthen powers of the Soviet Union’s 15 republics, is anathema to conservatives. And U.S. analysts monitoring Soviet troop movements concluded as long as six months to a year ago that right-wing officials had begun making plans for a coup, the officials said.

As soon as it became clear Sunday night that the right-wingers had made their move--two days before Gorbachev was to sign the treaty--it was obvious the coup was doomed to failure, they said. In fact, in their warning to the White House, intelligence officials had predicted that any military action might succeed in the short run but would ultimately fail.

So confident were U.S. analysts that the coup would fail that a group of American specialists in the intelligence field, huddling to analyze the power grab as it developed during the first 24 hours, unanimously agreed that it was “a half-assed coup” and would soon collapse, a senior government official said Wednesday.

“From the beginning, it was a faulty coup. They were bungling and afraid to do what it was necessary to do,” the official told a reporter. “You could do a better coup.”

One result of the bungled coup, however, is that Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, even though reinstated as head of state, “could be irrelevant” to what happens next, analysts said. Even before Gorbachev returned to Moscow early today, they predicted that his role would be limited to that of a figurehead.

“He lost by being peripheral to what happened. No one really came to Gorbachev’s assistance as leader of the country,” one U.S. official said. Instead, opposition to the coup was based on “the illegality of the principle” of usurping power and widespread fear that if Gorbachev could be “rolled up,” then other democratically elected leaders could be, too.

So diminished is Gorbachev likely to be, these analysts said, that he probably will not run for the presidency of the Soviet Union if elections are held, as proposed, after the adoption of a new national constitution. Such balloting would constitute the first free national elections ever held in the Soviet Union.

Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin and a handful of other figures, mainly mayors and leaders of republics such as the Ukraine and Kazakhstan, are already emerging as the country’s real powers, the analysts said.

In the aftermath of the coup, analysts also predicted that:

* Major constraints on Soviet cooperation with the West, such as the military’s disaffection with Gorbachev’s support for Bush’s strategy during the Persian Gulf War, will now be greatly weakened or removed, although “a benign” Soviet Union cannot be assumed in every case.

* Some Soviet officials at the “highest levels” will be disciplined for their roles in the coup, but “show trials” of plotters are unlikely because they might resemble the proceedings that were part of the Stalinist purges of the 1930s and could unsettle the country again.

* The coup’s abrupt end opened the way for faster democratic reforms, but it will not now “create Jeffersonian democracy--or maybe ever.”

* The Communist Party is “dead” and will no longer be a political force, although most of the country’s bureaucrats are still current or former party members.

* Gorbachev is likely to abandon the party and move more aggressively to the left now that right-wing officials have been swept aside.

The U.S. officials said a key element in the coup’s failure was the refusal of many Soviet military officers to carry out orders from the coup leaders. One official said the U.S. State Department received a credible report that a deputy chief of staff of the Soviet armed forces had been placed under house arrest because he would not aid the coup attempt.

“There are a lot of people who have been removed from their positions for refusing orders, including some generals,” the official said. “There are more heroes in this story than we know about at this point.”

Military units in the Baltic states were ordered to arrest local independence leaders but deliberately failed to do so, he said. And in Leningrad, the country’s second-largest city and birthplace of the Russian Revolution, Soviet army commanders ignored orders to move their troops into the city center.

Intelligence analysts believe that if there was a single mastermind of the coup “who said ‘Let’s go now,’ ” it was Vladimir A. Kryuchkov, the tough old-line Communist who heads the KGB, the secret police.

It was Kryuchkov, they pointed out, who assured Yeltsin during the coup that the military would not storm the Russian Parliament building, the base from which Yeltsin rallied opposition to the coup. And it was the KGB chief who invited Yeltsin to visit Gorbachev when the ousted Soviet president was under house arrest in the Crimea--an invitation that, Yeltsin said, “I refused, of course.”

Dismissing the leadership abilities of several of the other coup leaders, one analyst referred to Defense Minister Dmitri T. Yazov as “no intellect,” called Prime Minister Valentin S. Pavlov “too erratic” and described Gennady I. Yanayev, the vice president who took over as acting president when the plotters seized power, as “a nebbish who will follow instructions.”

Although the coup was not masterminded by the KGB alone, the secret police was the principal force behind it, a senior analyst said, and the results show that the internal or domestic component of the KGB “is in big trouble.”

“They don’t have the fear factor they once had, and they don’t know where they’re going,” he said.

When Yeltsin supporters begin looking for coup supporters to punish, they are likely to exempt the KGB’s First Directorate because it deals with foreign intelligence. But the Second Directorate, which deals with counterintelligence, and the Third Directorate, which is responsible for military intelligence, may be “swept” for supporters, sympathizers, plotters and executors of the coup.

A vice president of the Russian Federation reported early today that the KGB leader has been arrested and will stand trial.

Analysts predicted that the external KGB, which deals with foreign targets and is made up of tougher, more cynical but more experienced and better educated agents, will remain strong. But it will have to redefine its mission and probably operate with fewer resources.

The KGB, far from being monolithic, is a fragmented organization, as its lack of cohesion during the coup demonstrated. Each republic has its own KGB force, and the individual forces are no longer always responsive to central authority. The KGB commander in Leningrad, for instance, reportedly declared his support for the city’s progressive mayor, Anatoly A. Sobchak, a coup opponent, during the attempted takeover.

Gorbachev or other officials seeking to punish coup participants or supporters probably will be “very careful” about the way they treat the military, analysts said. He predicted they won’t “go in and stomp, and will not want to turn the military around with purges. . . . If they went after the army as something to be ravaged and sacked, you might create a problem you don’t want.”

Those military leaders who resisted orders or carried them out only halfheartedly “will be all right,” a senior government official said.

For at least the past two years, U.S. analysts have had doubts about the loyalty of lower and mid-level military officers to the senior leadership.

Times staff writer John M. Broder also contributed to this report.

NOVEL IDEAS: Authors have had Gorbachev in peril uncounted times. E1