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ESTIMATIVE PRODUCTS
ON VIETNAM
1948-1975 |
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This
collection of declassified estimative products is the
first such release by the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) of documents exclusively on the Vietnam war and
is one of the largest such releases to date. Of the
174 documents that comprise the collection, 38 appear
at least in part on this site as selected
Vietnam NIEs, and all are on a companion compact
disk in their entirety. The intent is to add to
the scholarship of the period and to make the documents
more readily accessible to the general public.
All
but 18 of the documents were produced by the Office
of National Estimates (ONE), which was established in
November 1950 for the sole purpose of producing such
"national intelligence" assessments. ONE was replaced
in 1973 by the National Intelligence Officer (NIO) system,
which remains an integral part of today's National Intelligence
Council (NIC). Fourteen documents in the collection
published between 1973 and 1975 were produced by the
NIO system, and four documents published before December
1950 were produced by ONE's predecessor organization,
the Office of Reports and Estimates (ORE).
The
documents fall into two broad categories: 1) formal
products of the national intelligence estimative process,
and 2) memoranda put out unilaterally by ONE. The most
important difference in the two categories is that the
products of the formal process—
mostly
National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) or Special National
Intelligence Estimates (SNIEs)—
were
coordinated with the constituent agencies of what is
now known as the Intelligence Community while the ONE
memoranda for the most part were not. Importantly, however,
both the formal products and substantive ONE memoranda
in the collection were written for and disseminated
to the highest levels of policymaking, including in
many cases the President. Few of the ONE memoranda have
been declassified before, and many of the NIEs and SNIEs
published between the late 1960s and 1975 have not been
previously released.
Purchase
a Hardcopy of “Estimative
Products on Vietnam, 1948-1975”
(including the companion CD). GPO
stock number 041-015-00242-2
Visit
the Freedom
Of Information Act (FOIA) Web site - Vietnam Collection
for the full text of the 174 declassified Vietnam NIEs.
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