28 November 1967
 DCI BRIEFING
 FOR THE NATIONAL
 SECURITY COUNCIL
 SOVIET DEFENSE SPENDING AND ECONOMIC POLICY
 I. The military and economic analysts at CIA who
 deal with Soviet military and space expenditures
 face two major problems.
 A. First, because the Soviets conceal a good
 share of their total military spending, our
 analysts must match the explicitly announced
 Soviet figures against all the evidence we
 have, on all known military and space programs,
 working out the actual costs in detail, In
 this way, we arrive at our own ruble figure
 for total Soviet expenditures--announced and
 concealed.
 B. Second, in order to permit meaningful comparisons
 by our own standards, the analysts
 calculate what the Soviet programs would cost
 in dollars in the United States. This is
 necessary because of the unrealistic official
 exchange rate, and because of the inherent
 differences in the two economies.
 -1-
 
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