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Washington Post
November 4, 2002
William T. Lee Dies at 76; Intelligence Analyst, Author
By Louie Estrada
Washington Post Staff Writer
William T. Lee, 76, an intelligence analyst who figured prominently in a debate over the assessment of the Soviet economy and the size, scope and cost of its military during the Cold War, died of cancer Oct. 30 at his home in Alexandria.
The dispute within the U.S. intelligence community and among defense policymakers centered on the methodology used to calculate how much the Soviet Politburo was spending on its military and the impact of those expenditures on its economy.
Mr. Lee and other analysts contended that the CIA, for whom he worked in the 1950s and early 1960s, consistently underestimated the military's share of the gross national product for many years before the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989.
Mr. Lee began his career as a Soviet economic and military affairs analyst at the CIA in 1951. He then was a senior analyst at the Stanford Research Institute from 1964 to 1972.
With the latter organization, which at the time was a university-affiliated think tank with ties to Army nuclear missile programs, he helped produce intelligence reports forecasting Soviet and Chinese conventional and strategic weapons programs for the office of the secretary of defense.
For much of the 1970s, he was an independent consultant to private research organizations on contract to government agencies. He joined the Defense Intelligence Agency in 1979 and was a member of the government's Senior Executive Service when he retired in 1992.
"Lee was a cantankerous yet thoroughly focused analyst," said Derek Leebaert, a Georgetown University professor and author of "The Fifty-Year Wound: The True Price of America's Cold War Victory." "His objective was not to prove the essential wickedness or aggressiveness of the Soviet system, but . . . just [to report] what was happening in both the Soviet Union's military and its economy."
Mr. Lee was born in Pass Christian, Miss., and was an Air Force veteran. He was a history and economics graduate of the University of Washington and did graduate work in Russian and Chinese studies at Columbia University.
Over the course of his career, he pored over a labyrinth of information from newspapers, journals, academic texts, smuggled documents and classified materials. In the 1990s, his research included official papers from Moscow and private diaries and memoirs of former Soviet officials.
He wrote six books, including "The ABM Treaty Charade: A Study in Elite Illusion and Delusion," "CIA Estimates of Soviet Military Expenditures: Errors and Waste," "Soviet Military Policy Since World War II" and "Soviet Defense Expenditures in an Era of SALT."
He lectured extensively, traveling throughout Europe, Asia and South America.
His awards included the Army Distinguished Civilian Service Medal and the Meritorious Service Medal from the DIA.
His marriage to Dixie Lee ended in divorce.
He leaves no immediate survivors.
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