THE CIA REFERENCE SYSTEM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP84-00951R000400080001-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 128
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 26, 2004
• Sequence Number: 1
• Content Type: REPORT

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T h e C I A
R e f e r e n c e
S y s t e m
*NSC - No Objection to Declassification/Release *
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THE CIA REFERENCE SYSTEM
Volume I
CONTENTS
I. EARLY FUNCTIONAL HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT TO 1953
A. The Liaison Function
B. The Reference Function
C. Liaison and Reference Merged
II.1 OCD STABILIZES -- 1953
III. EARLY ORGANIZATIONAL HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT TO 1953
A. The Liaison Elements
B. The Reference Elements
C. The OCD Elements
1. Liaison Division
2. Machine Division
3. The Library
4. Biographic Register
5. Industrial Register
6. Graphics Register
7. Special Register
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It is axiomatic that an intelligence agency,
in order to function, must have a reference system.
Intelligence
~/or information must be collected,
disseminate~I or stored for retrieval from specialized
files.
It is, therefore, not surprising that collection,
dissemination and reference were among the first
functions activated within the Central Intelligence
Group in early 1946. From that early beginning,
there developed within the Central Intelligence Agency
an unsurpassed reference system which, for more than
25 years, has provided vitally necessary information
to the Agency's production and operational offices.
The reference system began as the Office of Collection
and Dissemination, later was renamed the Office of
Central Reference and, in 1967, became the Central
Reference Service. This publication, The CIA Reference
System, traces the development of the activity from
its origin in 1946 to ";the present.
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'The first,,hstorical account of the Agency's
reference system is contained in "Development of a
Reference Center," Chapter V of Organizational History
of Central Intelligence Agency, 1950-1953. The chapter
was written in 1957 by
and, for the most part, concerns itself with
the broad functional development of the system rather
than the working-level organizational growth.
The CIA Reference System attempts a more
exhaustive review of the development of the reference
center and its component units, utilizing the valuable
historical information in the earlier history. To
insure inclusion of all pertinent historical data in
Volume I of this work, therefore, the contents of the
Chapter I to trace the functional development of the
system's two historical activities: liaison (collection
and dissemination) and reference. Chapter II describes
the early maturity of the Office of Collection and
Dissemination in 1953. Chapter III returns to 1946
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and, following the same pattern established in
Chapter I (liaison and reference), traces the
organizational history and development of the
system through 1953.
A yet-unpublished volume of this history will
cover the later development of the Agency's reference
system from 1954 forward.
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I. Early Functional History and Development to 1953
A. The Liaison Function
Throughout their histories, the Office of
Collection and dissemination and its forebears
had actually;'performed two basic functions:
f. ... L.../_et_., >4_=L /L.,L'P 7.,c.+" t i._liaison and reference. The~''functions:'had come
into beingJtogether'las part of,, earliest planning
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for the Central Intelligence Group (CIG), and were
considered vital to the proposed development of the
new central intelligence concept.
Operating in tandem from the time of their
inception, the liaison activities (requirements,
collection and dissemination) in effect sustained
the reference function which was embodied in the
original Reference Center.;
The latter was envisioned as a focal point
where the intelligence officer would find "all"
of the pertinent information bearing on a given
problem.
The liaison function, on the other hand,
represented the beginning of the requirements-
collection-dissemination-reference cycle.
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Thus ,f in January 1946 when CIG was directed to
"correlate and evaluate intelligence related to
national security" and to assure appropriate
dissemination,(-- two of the princip44 actions required
to execute this directive were embodied in the liaison
function - i.e., collection and dissemination. In
other words, someone had to determine what information
was needed by the intelligence producers, that it
n
would be collected for them and, finally, that it
;1
would reach them.
Against this background, two independent units,
the Office of Collection and the Office of Dissemination,
were established in July 1946, both directly under the
Director of Central Intelligence but operating "within the
cognizance" of the Interdepartmental Coordination and
Planning Staff (ICAPS). The former acted for the Director
in "collecting" foreign intelligence and establishing
coordination with the other collection agencies to
"determine the means and methods most appropriate" for
obtaining such information to support the production of
national intelligence by the Office of Research and
Pres. Ltr. of 22 Jan.'L.6, pars 3A; Natl.Security Act,Sec.102(d)3
and (e); and NSCID-1, paras 7,10,11.
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Evaluation (ORE).* Similarly empowered as the DCI's
agent, the Office of Dissemination was responsible
for disseminating the "evaluated strategic and
national policy intelligence" produced by ORE.
(Responsibility for disseminating the flow of incoming
intelligence documents from the other intelligence
agencies was assigned later.)
At first neither Office was involved in
"collection" and "dissemination" in the sense in
which the terms are traditionally understood in
the profession - i.e., actual(;' collection of informa-
tion in the field and deciding to whom the intelligence
should or should not be disseminated. Rather, the
"collection" activity had to do with broad planning
and coordination within the US intelligence collection
apparatus; while "dissemination" was similarly
concerned with broad decisions reached on an inter-
r
.agency basis regarding permissible distribution of
evaluated national intelligence. In short, liaison
activities were treated as unique types of interagency
* Renamed the Office of Reports and Estimates in
October 1946.
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coordination, an activity supervised in general by
ICAPS.
For whatever reason, the two Offices failed to
survive two months. Presumably management almost
immediately recognized as artificial the adminis-
trative barrier separating the two closely al\]igned
functions. At any rate, on 10 September 1946 they
were combined into a single Office of Collection and
(Ctr r)
Dissemination, working directly under the DCI for
Reports and Estimates on the one hand and for ICAPS
t/the non-CIG agencies on the other.
The mission was generally the same although, in
retrospect, it appears to have been slightly more
~Y 4,
realistic./The Requirements Branch was responsible
for determining what each agency wanted to know; the
Collection Branch assigned field collection respon-
sibility; and the Dissemination Branch assured proper
distribution of ORE-produced intelligence.
Under the circumstances prevailing at that time,
however,'OCD could, at best, only limp along. Like
the other CIG components, it was still seriously
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undermanned and just as seriously lacking in the
experience required to . effectively; perform the
proposed centralized service. For instance, the
question of central control -even guidance.. of
requirements and collection was far from int.ra-
agency, let alone inter-agency) accord,.
Even in dissemination the staff-hungry office had
to have help disseminating ORE's production. To
further complicate matters, the Office had been
assigned the additional responsibility of
"reading" and distributing all incoming intel-
ligence documents received from the other agencies
By mid-1947, however, OCD was fairly well into
its developmental period and was putting together
a callow but reasonably effective liaison operation.
Intense recruitment and training programs were
beginning to alleviate its staffing problem',and'all
three branches (Requirements, Collection and
Dissemination) were hard-pressed to keep up with
the rapidly mounting volume of business.
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/cf,/
In January itof the same year (1947) ,fits sister
prganization, the Reference Center, had been formed
Lnd was experiencing the isame administrative and
}
pperational problems common to all new (and first-
~f-its-kind) organizations ((discussed below).
Of the two parallel operations,/OCD's six
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onths of seniority \hadgivenlit a slight jump on
the Reference Center},\and although Fi'ts' seemed well on
the road toward carrying out its assigned mission,
he consolidated office was fast approaching
another reorganization - one which, however,
would be the last organizational upheaval for
almost two decades.*
* In 1967 the functionally arranged Office of Central
Reference (OCD's new name from 1955) was drastically
reorganized into the area-oriented Central Reference
Service (CRS) .
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B. The Reference Function
Development of OCD's liaison function, however,
was only part of the story.\ Fori,while the require-
ments, collection and dissemination machine was being
assembled and put into operation, management was
simultaneously foregoin4'.a companion piece that was
equally important to the new central intelligence
concept--a central reference system.
.1 jN
As noted previously,,, the 1946 Presidential
Directive to CIG to "correlate and evaluate intel-
ligence related to national security" and to assure
appropriate dissemination, had resulted` ultimately
in the formation of OCD, the new Agency's liaison arm
for requirements, collection and dissemination.
But the Office of Collection and Dissemination,.'
as organized in September of 1946, did not represent,
ii
even in theory, a complete answer to the problem it
was designed to solve. In addition to the information
collected through the mechanism of OCD, there already
existed large stores of information in the files of
other Government agencies. All this somehow hadto
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be brought together and made accessible to the
estimates officer. Thus, the original CIG planners
in early 1946; envisioned the creation of a reference
center 1_ a "total library" where, for the first
time, an officer could find in a single place all
information bearing on any given problem, and not
have to consult any other source.~`'The CIG planners
rightfully considered the creation of such a reference
center ,an essentially vital part of the~mission
S
They also recognized the problem that faced them in
determining the nature of the beast to be developed-
i.e., either a system that guaranteed access to the
files of participating agencies; or a common library
where, in fact, all national security intelligence
would be depositied; or a comp se arrangement
according to which required intelligence would be
released at the holder's discretion. In other words,
would it be an interagency effort operated for the
benefit of all concerned or a CIG-oriented system
developed within the context of "correlation and
evaluation of national security intelligence /by ORE7"?
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At the policy level, early signs indicated a
preference for the latter.
Such policy matters notwithstanding, the
practical planners* who were designing the reference
canter were faced with a task for which there was no
precedent or experience upon which they could draw.
The problems were formidable and the solutions had
to be created, not borrowed. For a library of such
hitherto unknown complexity, for example, the
~problem-of systemizing the mass of information
for specialized control was, in itself, almost
overwhelming.
The problems of designing the central reference
facility remained with the organization's architects
until the close of 1946 when they adopted what they
hoped would be a workable solution. They had decided
that the required degree of specialization was too
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unusual for library terms and would necessitate se-T,--
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autonomous satellite librarinj: for graphic I cn e ryr.
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(an ORE senior officer and
later Executive, OCD) and (O/.D~/
!Adviser for Organizational Management) were
primarily responsible for planning the reference
center.
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industrial installations and biographics. In
addition, there would be a traditional library for
all other material. Probably the most important
part of the over-all solution, however, was the
decision in favor of unlimited use of business
machines wherever applicable in the operations of
the new reference center.
On 1 January 1947, the CIA Library, then known
as the Intelligence Document Division, was organized.
The Central Index (later the Machine Techniques
Branch and then the Machine Division) came into being
on 17 March,-,/the Foreign Industrial Register in June,
.and the Graphics Register in July. Actual formation
of the Biographic Register was delayed until unique
interagency problems could be solved.* r PP ,
In March the planners submitted their b:Lueprintt,
for a reference center to ICAPS. They were approved
with modifications in June.
The modifications, however, were important
because, among other things, they changed a funda-
mental principle upon which the original proposals
* The Contact Control Register was also originally
placed in the reference center but was transferred
to the Office of Operations in August 1948. 12 ZP3
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had been based and reflected continued policy-
4
level preference for a CIG-oriented service
organization.
According to the March proposals, the basic
duty of the new organization's chief would be to
establish "central reference activities for CIG
and the member agencies."* The ICAPS version
as approved in June,!,- however, directed him to
,-Establish the central reference activities for CIG*
and maintain appropriate liaison, administrative
and policy-making activities."
It was obvious that the approving authorities
wanted an independent reference center whose prime
(but not exclusive) function was to serve CIG, a
concept which would subsequently prevail.
* Italics\ours.r
9 j
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Actually the central reference "mission"
that was approved by ICAPS in June 1947 was to
remain basically unchanged for both the Office
of Collection and Dissemination and the Office
of Central Reference* throughout their
histories.
Specifically, the statement of mission
authorized the Reference Center (RC)
To be the repository for all
intelligence and intelligence in-
formation to be permanently filed
by CIG; to maintain records of all
available intelligence sources,
intelligence information and
intelligence; to provide a reference
* OCD's new name, adopted August 1955 as being
more descriptive of the Office mission.
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library for CIG; and to establish, in
coordination with OCD, procedures for
utilization of its materials and
catalogs by other agencies. -'`
Operations of the Center were closely coordinated
with and, in fact, "fed" by those of OCD. As
indicated above, the latter functioned indepen-
dently under the director "and the cognizance of
ICAPS" while the Reference Center was attached to
the Office of Reports and Es,tjmates (ORE) "for
)'A e
administrative support.""? `y, RC-ORE organiza-
tional arrangement lasted barely three months.
In September the Center was transferred to the CIA
Executive for Administration and Management (A&M)
for various reasons. First, subordination of a
reference unit to a particular production office
tended to inordinately channel the reference efforts
into that particular form of production. ~~ction. More
important, however, was the fact bf life] that ORE
had its own problems and considered administrative
support to the Reference Center incidental to its
own function. There were frequent conflicts between
satisfying RC and ORE support requirements and when
ir,
'- 1~._ e
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such conflicts occurred, the Center almost invariably
received second priority. The Center's plans were
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ambitious, including expensive machines and people
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to operate them, and management was pressuring the
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~1947lstaff.of 172 people for speedy development of
the basically sound plan of operation. Second
priorities,~then,particularly in budgetary matters,
slowed that development and justified the Center's
transfer to A&M in September.
For eight months after the Center's transfer,
it continued to operate in closeparallel'with OCD,
receiving the intelligence collected by the latter
office and performing the final function of the
collection - dissemination - reference cycle.
By early 1948,\however,jflaws in the over-all
system had become evident.
k In 1946, CIG planners had decided that the
liaison functions of requirements, collection and
dissemination were sufficiently important to require
a separate office whereLthei functions could be
concentrated upon exclusively. Although plausible
in theory, the scheme did not work out in practice
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because the arrangement isolated OCD's liaison
function from both the people who generated
requirements (production), and the reference
people who knew what was already available. Thus,
liaison tended to operate in a vacuum and its staff
became increasingly divorced from the realities of
both production and reference. Further, their
contacts with other offices had become formalized
and ritualisi`tc, creating too much paperwork, delay,
and inefficiency.
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The two-year-old fledgling needed corrective
;medicinev:and the Director obliged. In May 1948
General orders merged the functions of the Reference
Center and OCD into a new Office of Collection and
Dissemination* and confirmed Dr. James M. Andrews
as the Assistant Director.
0
* Along with the Reference Center, A&M's Central
Records Division, Services Branch, was also
merged into the new OCD. Of the services
involved, however, the messenger and courier
service and management of the Agency's adminis-
trative records and archives were transferred
back to A&M's successor (Deputy Director for
Administration) in December 1950, while OCD
retained Top Secret Control and "custody"of
registered documents." ?. . _/
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Dr. Andrews, an enthusiastic advocate of
the use of business machines (Electrical Accounting
Machines or EAM) for the indexing and retrieval
of information, had been brought in from Harvard
University in January 1948 to head up the Reference
Center.
In the new Office of Collection and Dissemination,
the liaison function of OCD ~,(old)was {now jreconstituted
as the Liaison Division. The remainder of the office --
with the exception of administrative support staffs --
was entirely comprised ofthey Reference Center elements
which remained unchanged: The CIA LibraryJ'pnd(the
Machine Division; the Liaison Divisionland the
Biographic, Industrial and Graphics Registers.*
The arrangement was new but the mission remained
unchanged: providing liaison and reference service
first and foremost to Agency customers and, secondly,
to other departments.
* Immediately following the consolidation, the
Machine Techniques Branch was renamed the
Machine Division and the Liaison Branch became
the Liaison Division.
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C. Liaison and Reference Merged
The consolidation of liaison and reference
was especially important in the development of the
collection-dissemination-reference function in
CIA. In effect, it recognized the distinction
between the theoretical and practical realities
of the three activities. That is,j,major decisions
regarding allowable dissemination, allocation of
field collection responsibilities,and the extent
of reference service responsibility, rightly
belonged to the higher levels of policy-making
and`was:not to be confused with the practical,
day-to-day routines. Rather, the latter should
be solely concerned with making paper move
from one point to another assuring that analysts'
collection requirements were properly coordinated
and that they received the information they needed.
Two years' experience had also shown that collection
and dissemination (i.e., distribution) were routine
activities which should not operate as a separate
organizational entity but were inseparably bound up
with reference. To wit, the "collection" man was
!
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supposed to know what the analyst needed and where
it could be obtained.' The "reference"IpeopleT, on
the other hand, knew what was already available
and"need not therefore be collected. rTThus=OCD's
July 1948 "Statement of Functions" was far more
realistic than preceding charters and the organ-
' Y,i.'j_.
izational set-up more workable. Further, the
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mission statement clearly indicated that OCD would
.? V .. j. ? _ t.. ,? - ..'~. .{gip ti.,Zf
become more a facility for CIA alone than a truly
centralized file where the intelligence officer
could find all the necessary information without
having to check other sources.
~~~ ?Lc zTyr17't.t-~/ ! l?s~~,7~uu2carz~~.~C> {f,.rr +. Y`