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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filled the gap. In 1963, the Scientific Intelligence Brief was instituted so that the Office could have once again a mechanism for quick publication.

It was prepared at the request of the DDI. In August 1964 the name of the publication was again changed, this time to the Scientific and Technical Intelligence Report (Brief) at the request of the DD/S&T who felt that the OSI categories of reporting had proliferated beyond reasonable bounds. During 1965 and 1966, the OSI divisions began to use the STIR (Brief) as an alternate publication mechanism to the SID to publish short articles that were neither current nor of overriding importance. In that the publication tabulations made during this period did not truly distinguish the STIR (Briefs) and the depth STIRs, such tabulations were a means to show impressive divisional production. In addition, the STIR (Briefs) offered an easy means of publication in that they were not subject to Intelligence Board review. By early 1967, more stringent requirements were placed on the use of the STIR (Brief) mechanism, i.e., IB review and a topic related to a national crisis. Only a very limited number of STIR (Briefs) were published in 1968.

TOP SECRET

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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.