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: 51112a4a993247d4d839447f
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-05-16.pdf49.65 KB

Document Number: 51112a4b993247d4d839452f
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-10-14.pdf789.72 KB

Document Number: 51112a4b993247d4d83944f1
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-11-02B-SR.pdf379.78 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d83944e3
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-11-05A.pdf201.91 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d83944c1
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-11-05B.pdf340.4 KB

Document Number: 51112a4b993247d4d83944ee
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-11-07-SR.pdf262.33 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d83944d3
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-10-08A-SR.pdf296.43 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d83944e6
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-11-09A-SR.pdf310.78 KB

Document Number: 51112a4b993247d4d83944eb
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-11-09B-SR.pdf357.6 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d83944d8
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-11-09C.pdf29.93 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d83944ac
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-11-12A.pdf143.72 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d83944e2
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-11-12B.pdf325.39 KB

Document Number: 51112a4b993247d4d83944f8
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-11-13-SR.pdf521.88 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d83944c5
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-10-08B-SR.pdf261.39 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d83944e4
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-11-15-SR.pdf689.61 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d83944c8
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-11-16.pdf291 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d83944b4
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-11-17-SR.pdf115.22 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d83944bb
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-11-18.pdf135.47 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d83944c3
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-11-19-SR.pdf250.1 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d83944ea
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-10-09A.pdf2.33 MB

Pages