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Institutional
Affiliations
Harvard
University: Frank B. Baird, Jr. Professor of History Emeritus
(1997-current) (2); Baird Professor of History (1958-1996) (4);
Instructor and Lecturer in History and Literature (1950-1958) (4)
Harvard
University Russian Research Center: Director (1968-1973) (1)
Committee
on the Present Danger: Member of Executive Committee (3)
Council
on Foreign Relations: Member (1)
American Committee for Peace in Chechnya:
Member
Government
Service
National
Security Council: Director of East European and Soviet Affairs
(1981-1982) (1)
U.S. Department
of State: Member of Reagan Transition Team (1980) (1)
Team B
Strategic Obectives Panel (1976) (1)
U.S. Air
Force: Officer (4)
Corporate
Connections/Business Interests
Benador
Associates: Member of Public Relations, Media and International
Speakers Bureau (1)
Education
Cornell
University: Degree not specified (4)
Harvard
University: Ph.D. in history (4)
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Highlights
& Quotes
Richard
Pipes, a historian of Russia and Communism at Harvard University, was a key anti-Soviet
crusader in the 1970s and 1980s. He served as a consultant to Sen.
Henry "Scoop" Jackson (aka "the senator from Boeing")
in the early 1970s, was a member of the Committee on the Present
Danger, and chaired the Team B Strategic Objectives Panel, a controversial
effort in the mid-1970s to reinterpret CIA intelligence on the Soviet
threat.
Although
no longer a key rightwing player, Richard has successfully passed
his hardline mantle on to his son, Daniel
Pipes, a controversial neocon commentator on Middle East affairs.
In 2003, when George W. Bush chose Daniel to serve on the board
of the U.S. Institute of Peace, the ensuing barrage of criticism
prompted the president to bypass Congress and make Pipes a recess
appointment to the institute.
In
her book Killing Détente: The Right Attacks the CIA (1998),
Anne Cahn writes: "The man finally selected to serve as chairman
of the Team B Strategic Objectives Panel was Richard Pipes, a Polish
immigrant and professor of Russian history at Harvard University.
Pipes had consistently labeled the Soviets an aggressive imperialistic
power bent on world domination. He had been 'discovered' by Richard
Perle, who convinced his boss, Senator Henry Jackson, to hire
Pipes as a consultant." (5)
Pipes
also played an instrumental role in selecting other Team B participants,
including Paul
Wolfowitz. In an interview with Cahn, Pipes said, "I picked
Paul Wolfowitz [who at the time was working as special assistant
for the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, or SALT] because Richard
Perle recommended him so highly."
As
part of the Team B exercise, Pipes and his esteemed team of outside
experts--which also included William
Van Cleave (and counted on the support of John
S. Foster and Donald
Rumsfeld in oppostion to realpolitikers like Henry Kissinger,
who saw the exercise as being hazardous to U.S.-Russian relations
(7))--were charged by then-CIA head George H.W. Bush with assessing
National Intelligence Estimates regarding Soviet strategic capabilities
and intentions. Although the purported purpose of the exercise was
to come up with an unbiased analysis of the Soviet threat, according
to Cahn "the Team B experiment was concocted by conservative
cold warriors determined to bury détente and the SALT process.
Panel members were all hard-liners. The experiment was leaked to
the press in an unsuccessful attempt at an 'October surprise.' But
most important, the Team B reports became the intellectual foundation
of 'the window of vulnerability' and of the massive arms buildup
that began toward the end of the Carter administration and accelerated
under President Reagan." (6)
Pipes
is the author of several books, including The Russian Revolution,
Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime, and Property and Freedom. In
1992, Pipes served as an expert witness in the Russian Constitutional
Court's trial against the Communist Party.
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