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: 51112a4b993247d4d8394516
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-12-19.pdf241.99 KB

Document Number: 51112a4b993247d4d839453c
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-11-28D.pdf316.35 KB

Document Number: 51112a4b993247d4d839455d
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-11-07-CIA.pdf601.37 KB

Document Number: 51112a4b993247d4d839454e
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-12-12-CIA.pdf328.65 KB

Document Number: 51112a4b993247d4d839455f
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-12-28-CIA.pdf339.83 KB

Document Number: 51112a4b993247d4d839451b
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-10-31B-CIA.pdf657.09 KB

Document Number: 51112a4b993247d4d8394541
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-11-21.pdf274.83 KB

Document Number: 51112a4b993247d4d8394557
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-11-14-CIA.pdf507.6 KB

Document Number: 51112a4b993247d4d8394523
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-12-05-CIA.pdf373.45 KB

Document Number: 51112a4b993247d4d839450c
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-10-17B-CIA.pdf350.75 KB

Document Number: 51112a4b993247d4d839452e
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-10-11-CIA.pdf524.99 KB

Document Number: 51112a4b993247d4d8394514
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-10-25G.pdf624.16 KB

Document Number: 51112a4b993247d4d839456c
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-04-18.pdf313 KB

Document Number: 51112a4b993247d4d8394542
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-06-27.pdf189.1 KB

Document Number: 51112a4b993247d4d839452d
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-05-16-CIA.pdf54.33 KB

Document Number: 51112a4b993247d4d8394511
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-05-09.pdf52.62 KB

Document Number: 51112a4b993247d4d8394568
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-02-28.pdf367.92 KB

Document Number: 51112a4b993247d4d8394564
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-04-25.pdf62.56 KB

Document Number: 51112a4b993247d4d839451a
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-05-31.pdf108.66 KB

Document Number: 51112a4b993247d4d8394531
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-07-25.pdf323.21 KB

Pages