President Nixon and the Role of Intelligence in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War

This collection highlights the causes and consequences of US Intelligence Community’s (IC) failure to foresee the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War, also known as the October War or the Yom Kippur War. A coalition of Arab nations led by Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel on October 6, the day of Yom Kippur. Prior to October 6, the CIA concluded that the Arabs would not attack, so the offensive surprised US policymakers as well as Israel. Directorate of Intelligence (DI) analysts believed that Arab military inferiority would militate against an attack on Israel. DI analysis did not explore the possibility that leaders might go to war--even at the risk of losing--to pursue political objectives. According to an internal postmortem, Agency analysis was impaired by preconceptions about Arab military capabilities, information overload, rational actor modeling and groupthink.

View the OPA Press Release and Collection Booklet

Documents in this Collection

Documents in PDF format require the Adobe Acrobat Reader®

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d839447a
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-10-08A.pdf442.77 KB

Document Number: 51112a4b993247d4d8394536
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-10-16B-CIA.pdf198.81 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d839448a
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-11-23B-CM.pdf321.67 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d83944a8
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-06-07A.pdf1.69 MB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d8394479
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-05-17.pdf409.03 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d839446d
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1974-02-25.pdf136.67 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d83944a3
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-10-18B.pdf784.04 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d8394498
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-10-09-CM.pdf181.82 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d839445d
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-10-29B.pdf240.07 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d839446e
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-10-31B-CM.pdf206.97 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d83944a0
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-10-07B.pdf449.81 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d8394497
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-10-24F.pdf70.56 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d8394481
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-10-22.pdf418.66 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d8394468
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1974-05-03.pdf58.35 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d839449d
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-08-24.pdf105.61 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d839448d
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-05-26.pdf65.03 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d8394495
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-05-02.pdf62.5 KB

Document Number: 51112a4b993247d4d8394550
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-05-02.pdf62.5 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d839449f
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-05-07-CM.pdf71.62 KB

Pages