What makes our courses so interesting is the incredibly high caliber of our teaching staff.  They have a wide variety of background and life experiences which make them a unique resource which we shamelessly exploit. They teach for the enjoyment and at no cost to Senior colege.  We thank them all and thought it might be nice to give you an idea of the experience of one of our regular instructors:

Dick Topping (as told to Lance Blackshaw)

Want to know what’s behind the current antics of Vladimir Putin, his close associates and the collection of Russian oligarchs as they continue to meddle in the Ukraine?  Then the ‘go to person’ just might be Dick Topping, a Maine resident since 1995, former analyst at the Soviet/Russian desk in the CIA, and an engaging, highly regarded instructor at the Senior College at Belfast.

 Dick joined the CIA in 1965 and spent his first 15 years focusing on Soviet internal affairs, drafting daily reports and white papers on USSR domestic politics, and providing intelligencebriefings on a variety of topics.  He felt he had the ‘best job’ in the CIA watching the evolution of Soviet politics on a range of national security matters – major personnel changes, defense programs, the work of Soviet intelligence and security services, and the making of Moscow’s foreign policy – and the maneuvering for control of the Soviet Communist Party itself.

 How did an individual who initially wanted to be a Navy fighter pilot find a home in the CIA? Well, color blindness and a need for corrective lenses put a damper on those ambitions. However, when Dick was a junior at Lehigh University, his history and literature interests led him to enroll in a Soviet foreign policy course nicknamed “I Hate Stalin”.  The course was taught by a professor who proved to be a fraternity brother of Dick’s future father-in-law.  Dick had yet to even meet his future wife, Mary Ann, but this course led him to take multiple hours of independent study in Russian affairs and language during his senior year…laying the foundation for his future career, which he characterizes as that of an “accidental analyst”

 Following graduation, Dick served in the Army to take advantage of an opportunity to receive further Russian language training. Coupling a strong language aptitude with six hours per day of immersion studies at the Army Language School in Monterey, CA, he became fluent in Russian at the end of one year.   Next stop, Berlin, to monitor Soviet military activities during the 1961 – 1962 “Berlin Crisis.”  Discharged from the Army in August 1962, Dick enrolled in the Russian Institute at Columbia University, where he earned a Master’s degree prior to joining the CIA.

 There was an early period when Dick’s hubris, as he wryly put it, led him to believe he was one of the most well-informed experts in America regarding Soviet affairs, working on the cutting edge of history. However, this became tempered over time by the realization of how much he and other intelligence officers really didn’t know. One tidbit:  he and many of his colleagues could readily discern the nature of a source (U.S. citizens, clandestine agents, professors, etc.) from the size and type of paper on which the report had been printed.

 When queried about his career highlights in the CIA, Dick noted his service at Helsinki in late 1970 as a junior level advisor at the historic SALT negotiations, where as he puts it, as a ‘back bencher’ he tried to help U.S. representatives see how their proposals on very complex issues might be viewed by Soviet officials operating from a different perspective.  A case in point:  while the U.S. side was pre-occupied with the ICBM threat, the Russians were very wary of any delivery system that could put a nuclear weapon on a target within the USSR. 

 The Helsinki experience also had a few lighter moments – such as the lengthy conversation that Dick had with his KGB counterpart one evening about the relative merits of scotch vs. vodka.  As one of the few Russian linguists with the U.S. delegation, on another evening Dick had to translate an exchange between the senior U.S. and Soviet military representatives – choosing his words carefully to avoid a diplomatic incident regarding tennis vs. chess! 

 In late 1980, Dick’s analytical work at the CIA shifted from Soviet internal affairs to assignments relevant to Soviet international politics.  This enabled him to develop further expertise with respect to events occurring on the world stage, the players steering and reacting to those events, and the strengths, foibles and limitations of global intelligence operations. Thankfully, he has been willing to share his intimate knowledge of these matters, and the issues driving them, with Senior College learners.

 For the past six years, Dick has taught the following courses at Senior College: National Security and U.S. Intelligence (2008); Russia Today: Understanding the Riddle, Wrapped in a Mystery, Inside an Enigma (2009), National Security Under the Obama Administration (2010); Rise and Fall of the Berlin Wall (2011); Russian Prospects (2012); and Security Challenges for President Obama’s Second Term (2013).  What’s potentially up next?  Putin and the Russian Resurgence.  Then, perhaps next year, Influence of All Forms of Media on WorldAffairs.  Not to be missed!