Capable of flying three times faster than the speed of sound, the exact speed limit and operational ceiling of
Lockheed's recently retired SR-71 "spy plane" remain classified (Wide World Photos).
Spies in trench coats. Lightning-fast reconnaissance planes. Super-secret photo satellites. International eavesdropping.
All make up an enormous multi-billion dollar bureaucracy that collects intelligence and carries out covert operations for the United States. The U.S. Intelligence Community reveals the bureaucratic reality often missing in the dramatic fables of best-selling
spy novels. Here, previously inaccessible organizations and function manuals, unit histories, and internal directives provide researchers with the most comprehensive structural portrait of the U.S. espionage establishment ever published.
The U.S. Intelligence Community collection contains over 15,000 pages of documents--many only recently declassified--from key
intelligence organizations. The majority of these documents are heretofore unpublished materials acquired through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The Archive painstakingly cataloged, indexed and arranged these documents by organization and intelligence activity.
It details the evolution of the U.S. intelligence community and the structure, activities and distribution of tasks among the twenty-five intelligence organizations that comprise the community. It looks at the bureaucratic reality underlying the most secret operations of the U.S. government, and highlights the complexity of the intelligence apparatus in the U.S. and the involvement of a diverse number of agencies in intelligence programs. It offers a greater understanding of the regulations, directives and manuals that have guided the organization and functions of the U.S. intelligence community, as well as the directives and committees employed to coordinate this complicated system. Of additional interest is the inclusion of the assessment of the intelligence community's performance by various outside commissions.
Organizational manuals present detailed information regarding the structure of the agencies, their divisions and subdivisions.
Specific agency regulations give a clear picture of the role each agency plays in intelligence gathering and the activities assigned to each. Histories contain background information concerning an agency's origins, structure and operations and provide a
direction for further research. Directives divide responsibilities among different agencies and create mechanisms for coordinating intelligence activities.
Researchers can use manuals and histories provided in this collection to discover information not available elsewhere. For example, the Central Intelligence Agency considers classified the titles of National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) and information on the subcommittees of the National Foreign Intelligence Board. However, researchers will find these titles and information in U.S. military intelligence histories and regulations that have been declassified and released by intelligence elements within the Department of Defense.
The materials in the collection shed light upon issues important to U.S. foreign and defense policy. Evidence of U.S.
espionage and counterintelligence activities abroad, international intelligence agreements and discussions of China's initiative to
build
"the bomb" are found among these documents.
Through these documents researchers will become aware of the surprising number of agencies involved in intelligence work. Intelligence on Latin America has been collected and analyzed by the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the Army Intelligence and Threat Analysis Center, and the Southern Command (J-2) (Intelligence Directorate). Foreign space programs have been studied and documented by the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Air Force Foreign Technology Division, the Army Missile and Space Intelligence Center, and the Naval Technical Intelligence Center. Scholars will need these primary materials for background and direction in seeking out appropriate agencies to further their own FOIA requests.
The Archive prepares extensive, printed finding aids for the collection. The Guide contains an events chronology, glossaries of key
individuals, acronyms and technical terms, a bibliography of relevant secondary sources and a document catalog. Organized by intelligence agency and intelligence activity, the catalog facilitates browsing through the document collection and allows researchers to preview key details within documents before perusing the microfiche. The Index contains a rich contextual
cross-reference to subjects and names. The detail provided in each allows researchers to
pinpoint relevant documents in their particular area of study.
Documents in the Collection Include:
Key Intelligence Organizations Include:
National Security Archive Project Staff
Gary Sick
Adjunct Professor of Middle East Politics
Columbia University
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