This article is offered as a contribution to reflections on CIA’s history 75 years since its creation in September 1947, which had been directed by the National Security Act of 26 July 1947. CIA’s community functions defined in that act and its analytical organizations have evolved substantially since then, but the core missions of intelligence analysis have remained, notwithstanding changes over the years.
The article is an adaptation of the preface to a declassified document collection Dr. Kuhns edited in 1997, Assessing the Soviet Threat: The Early Cold War Years (available at https://cia.gov/resources/csi/books-monographs/assessing-the-soviet-threat/.
The intelligence documents cited in this essay can all be found there.
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