CIA DIRECTOR RELEASES TWO MORE COLLECTIONS OF COLD WAR DOCUMENTS -- SCHOLARS GAIN ACCESS TO MORE FORMER SECRETS

• Document Type: FOIA
• Keywords: PRESS RELEASE
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 0005617863
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: June 24, 2015
• Document Release Date: February 16, 2011
• Case Number: F-2010-01786
• Publication Date: September 30, 1993

APPROVED FOR RELEASES]
DATE: 31-Jan-2011
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
30 September 1993
CIA DIRECTOR RELEASES TWO MORE COLLECTIONS OF COLD WAR
DOCUMENTS -- SCHOLARS GAIN ACCESS TO MORE FORMER SECRETS
CIA HEADQUARTERS (LANGLEY, VA) -- Director of Central
Intelligence R. James Woolsey has announced the Intelligence
Community is releasing two major collections of Cold War
records. The documents will be available to the public
beginning October 4, at the National Archives Military
Reference Branch.* Last month the CIA released 125,000 pages
from its-newly declassified collection of papers relating to
the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
The first of the two new collections contains
approximately 300 declassified intelligence estimates on the
Soviet Union and other countries prepared by the Intelligence
Community between 1947 and 1961.
The second collection includes 500 articles and 450 book
.reviews from the CIA's classified quarterly journal, Studies
in Intelligence. Among these are articles on the Cold War as
well as on intelligence history. Most of these 950 items
originally were classified.
Readers of the first collection will learn that in 1950
the Inte-11-igence Community was-asked by policy makers "the
date at which the USSR might be prepared to engage in general
war." On November 15, the Community responded: "From the
point of view of military forces and economic potential, the
Soviet Union is. in a position to conduct a general war now
... but intelligence is lacking to present a valid prediction
as to whether or when the USSR would actually resort
deliberately to a general war."
In a National Intelligence Estimate (or NIE) published
November 6, 1956, the Intelligence Community predicted
correctly that the Soviet Union would not intervene in the
Suez Crisis then engaging Britain, France, Israel and Egypt.
In a NIE published August 8, 1961, the Community wrote that
the trends started by the Sino-Soviet split would, if they
persist, "considerably diminish the effectiveness of the
communist movement as a whole ... and give the West
opportunities for maneuver and influence."
 But the Intelligence Community was not accurate on every
prediction. An estimate published on June 19, 1950, six days
before the start. of the Korean conflict, said that the North
Koreans "have a capability for attaining limited objectives
in short-term military operations against South Korea,
including the capture of Seoul," but failed to predict that
war was imminent.
The collection of items from Studies in Intelligence
provides a variety of insights into the practitioners' views
of their craft. It includes an article written in 1978 on
the use of World War II aerial photography to detect. evidence
of the Holocaust. Using photographic interpretation
techniques that the CIA developed after World War II ended,
the authors reinterpret aerial photographs taken in 1944 of
the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination complex to show that the
clear purpose of the complex was the extermination of large
numbers of people.
Two-articles published in Studies in intelligence in the
summer of 1982 describe the development of the Lockheed SR-71
Blackbird high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft. One of them
was written by Clarence L. Johnson, the brilliant Lockheed
engineer who supervised the "Skunkworks" where the SR-71 was
built in record time.
Another article, from the winter 1988 edition of Studies
in intelligence, provides details on a disinformation
campaign started by the USSR in 1983 charging the U.S. with
responsibility for creating and spreading the AIDS virus.
The article includes pictures showing this Soviet
disinformation and describing the U.S. counterattack.