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: 51112a4a993247d4d8394487
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-11-30-B.pdf121.95 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d839445b
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1996-01-01.pdf814.68 KB

Document Number: 51112a4b993247d4d8394561
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-10-19E.pdf656.04 KB

Document Number: 51112a4b993247d4d839452a
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-10-13A-CIA.pdf754.73 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d8394440
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-09-29.pdf102.37 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d8394432
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-10-24.pdf202.63 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d8394442
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-10-09.pdf181.82 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d83943f2
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-11-10.pdf210.89 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d8394452
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-11-21A.pdf76.77 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d8394402
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-11-12.pdf227.88 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d8394412
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-11-03.pdf271.7 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d83943f3
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-12-20.pdf43.24 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d8394453
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-10-16.pdf261.71 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d8394423
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-12-03.pdf356 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d8394444
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-11-14.pdf122.7 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d83943f4
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-11-20.pdf117.24 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d8394424
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-12-17.pdf92.38 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d8394435
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-11-15.pdf193.46 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d8394405
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-11-16B.pdf163.29 KB

Document Number: 51112a4a993247d4d8394415
AttachmentSize
PDF icon 1973-11-01.pdf176.19 KB

Pages