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 GLM-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…

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# Annex VIII

# OSI Publications

## I. Introduction

When the Office of Scientific Intelligence was established on 1 January 1949 under CIA General Order 13, it was decreed that the Office be "the primary intelligence evaluation, analysis and production component of CIA with exclusive responsibility for the production and presentation of national scientific intelligence." During 1949, the state of scientific intelligence within the entire intelligence community came under heavy fire from two high level committees. The Eberstadt Committee found that "responsibility for intelligence evaluations in such fields as BW and CW, electronics, aerodynamics, and guided missiles is spread amongst various agencies ... Medical intelligence is virtually non-existent ... estimates of foreign potentialities made by various agencies are inadequate and contradictory." At about the same time, the Dulles Committee found that there was "no procedure for arriving at authoritative intelligence estimates in the scientific field with the possible exception of atomic energy matters." It further found a lack of broad brush interdisciplinary studies which could have been done by CIA in contrast to the parochial studies prepared by the services.

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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 GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 243 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.