Older employees may recall that when the Headquarters Building was being constructed, guard dogs stalked the corridors by night to sniff out trespassers. Practically no one is aware, however, of the collection of strange fauna in a corner of a sub-basement, the location of which must remain secret. This collection, known as the Bestiary of Intelligence Writing, consists of specimen samples of cliches and misused or overused word combinations that CiA editors have encountered frequently over the years.

While the Committee of Secret Correspondence was meeting secretly in Philadelphia with agents of France, Arthur Lee was meeting in London with Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, the successful author of The Barber of Seville (and later The Marriage of Figaro)-who was a French agent. Lee's inflated reports of patriot strength, which either he fabricated for Beaumarchais' benefit or were provided by Lee's regular correspondent, Sam Adams, won the Frenchman to the American cause. Beaumarchais repeatedly urged the French Court to give immediate assistance to the Americans, and on February 29,...

Analysts used subsource development and document exploitation to crosscheck detainee testimony, leverage detainees in debriefs, and to fill gaps in information. For example, analysts interviewing Huwaysh gained insights into his personality from subsources, while translated technical and procurement-related documents were critical to verifying the accuracy of his testimony. Likewise, we confronted Vice President Taha Yasin Ramadan Al Jizrawi with a captured document indicating his major role in allocating oil contracts and he divulged details on corruption stemming from the UN's OFF program....

A half-century has passed since Sherman Kent lamented the lack of an "intelligence literature" and decided to do something about it a bold step, even for as nimble a bureaucracy as the CIA was alleged to be. Today, looking back upon the more than 1,200 article-length contributions that com-prise five decades of Studies in Intelligence, we see that Kent indeed established something enduring. Somewhere along the way, Studies went from being Kent's revolutionary idea to becoming an institution. And yet, Studies continues to be revolutionary in its insistence on remaining an unofficial...

Though much has been written about the Civil War itself, little has been written about the spy war that went on within. The chronicling of Civil War intelligence activities challenges historians because of the lack of records, the lack of access to records, and the questionable truth of other records. Judah P. Benjamin, the Confederacy's Secretary of State, burned all the intelligence records he could find as federal troops entered Richmond. Union intelligence records were kept sealed in the National Archives until 1953. A few individuals involved in intelligence gathering burned their...

This Intelligence Report develops in broad outline the course of the "Cultural Revolution" in Communist China during 1967. It is written from the point of view that Mao either initiated or approved policies which shifted the direction and intensity of the "Cultural Revolution" during the year, and that he ordered the sharp reversal of policy from revolutionary action to moderation following the high level of economic disorder and violence of August. Mao was not forced, this work argues, to reverse his revolutionary policy by pressure from a "moderate" faction, nor did the period of moderation...

As became abundantly clear during a conference sponsored by CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence (CSI) in Charlottesville, Virginia, on 10 and 11 September 2003, the challenges that face the US Intelligence Community in the aftermath of the terrorist attack on the United States two years earlier are perceived by members of that community as being far more complex, demanding, and consequential than any they have heretofore encountered. That conference brought together an experienced group of national security specialists from the intelligence and policy communities to discuss...

Contains a study of the CIA's relationship with Congress. It encompasses the period from the creation of the Agency until 2004, the era of the DCIs, the Directors of Central Intelligence. Includes black and white photographs, an index, and a bibliography.