Nowhere in CIA were opposing views on Sino-Soviet relations more sharply exchanged, however, than those between a small special group of senior analysts chosen by the DCI explicitly for their knowledge of Communist theory and Soviet affairs, and a few heretics from OCI, ONE, and other offices. In one such meeting in 1960, the exchanges back and forth across the table took the following form.
The senior experts on Communism:
"You guys who think there's a lot of growing Sino-Soviet discord simply have 19th-century minds."
The heretics:
"What do you mean by that?"
"You think the matter between the Soviet Union and China is one largely of clashing national interests."
"Exactly."
"Well, you're wrong. You don't appreciate the fact that in Communist theory a differentiation is made between what are considered antagonistic contradictions and nonantagonistic contradictions. What we have in the present Sino-Soviet case are non-antagonistic contradictions. That's why you guys with 19th-century minds are wrong."
"Well, at least that's better than having 13th-century minds." 60
As we all subsequently learned, in 1969 these supposedly nonantagonistic contradictions came to include firefights and loss of life along China's borders with the USSR. 61
For some years beyond 1963, a few CIA officers still held that Sino-Soviet discord was a fraud, deliberately orchestrated by Moscow and Beijing to deceive the West. Most of those officers were members of CIA's Counterintelligence Staff, whose chief, James Angleton, had been convinced of such a view by a Soviet defector, Anatoly Golitzyn. That view nonetheless remained a minority interpretation within the Agency.