Documents / FOIA release

(EST Pub Date) the Office of Scientific Intelligence, 1949-68- (Volume Three, Annexes Viii, Ix, and X)

Central Intelligence Agency · 1972-06-01 · 243 pages · text by OCR

This is Volume Three of the CIA Directorate of Science and Technology Historical Series on the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI), 1949 to 1968, written by Karl H. Weber in June 1972 and approved for release in 2008. It holds three annexes, on OSI publications, OSI's external assistance and contracting program, and OSI's interaction with the National Security Agency. The released text covers production planning, review boards, current intelligence periodicals and future threat forecasting. It does not discuss UFOs.

  • p. 12 # TOP SECRET By 1955, an OSI Research and Production Plan was in an advanced stage of…
  • p. 19 …Bloc capabilities in the scientific and technological frontier areas where unique advances of military or economic…
  • p. 22 …lead to new types of advanced weapons or otherwise affect the balance of power, was evident…
  • p. 34 …They now serve a 2-4 month period rather than the earlier 4-6 month period…
  • p. 47 …Chinese development of advanced weapons, much more space has been given in the Scientific Intelligence Digest…
  • p. 51 …of the Soviet satellite program had been reported and evaluated well in advance of the launching.
  • p. 86 …that the hope of emerging nations to attain advanced status hinged largely on the development of…
  • p. 141 …As scientific intelligence has become more involved in advanced technical detail, the use of consultants to…
  • p. 181 …funds too far in advance. XI. Administrative Problems By FY 1957, the OSI external support program…
  • p. 187 …systematically to information on the USSR to determine whether future advances in specific fields were probable…
deeply entrenched intelligence effort which produced a high quality stylized product in considerable volume, but which required carefully controlled and time-consuming administrative procedures as well as an ever increasing production capability to maintain its timeliness. Among the general recommendations of the were that the NIS be redirected toward providing basic-type intelligence for strategic and high-level operational planning and for the development of foreign policy rather than attempting to meet lower level requirements. This, in turn, led to a specific recommendation that was to affect strongly OSI's role in the NIS program, namely the elimination of the Chapter VII. The recommendation to USIB read, "It appears that coverage of this subject (Scientific), over and above that in Section 17 of Chapter I, can be better accomplished on a more current basis by departmental or interdepartmental intelligence with respect to the Sino-Soviet Bloc; for other areas there appears little usefulness in Chapter VII coverage which, in any case, is presently limited to only 16 countries outside the Bloc." These revisions, which were approved in principle by had a considerable effect on OSI's role in the NIS.

Not linked to a story yet.

About this file

FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 243 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.