The mission of the Center for the Study of Intelligence, the publisher of this monograph, is to promote a broader understanding and more open discussion of the intelligence profession. This includes conducting research; writing intelligence history; reviewing historically valuable CIA records for declassification; coordinating Intelligence Community declassification review; supporting the teaching of intelligence; sponsoring conferences; and publishing the journal Studies in Intelligence as well as books, monographs, and a newsletter on intelligence issues.

This monograph by Douglas MacEachin is a unique contribution to the growing literature on intelligence analysis, and the Center is pleased to make it available. All of the sources he cites were either originally unclassified or have been declassified during the last few years.

Readers will also be interested in knowing that a much larger body of once highly sensitive intelligence analysis on the USSR has also been released to the National Archives. More than 450 National Intelligence Estimates on the USSR, the Communist bloc, and international communism have been sanitized and made available. Most were declassified in 1993 and 1994, and another 59 that assess Soviet conventional military capabilities were made available earlier this year. Other estimates on Soviet military, civil defense, and space exploration efforts are in declassification review.

Furthermore, the Center plans to embark on a new systematic declassification review, consistent with the provisions of Executive Order 12958. Significant analysis on the USSR that was completed by CIA's Intelligence Directorate from the Agency's inception in September 1947 through the collapse of the USSR in August 1991 will be reviewed for declassification. We cannot project how long this effort will take, but it will remain one of the Center's highest declassification review priorities.

With such a comprehensive body of records in the public domain, historians and other scholars will be able better to judge how well intelligence analysts-both in CIA and elsewhere in the Intelligence Community-performed over the years in understanding the USSR and supporting policy officials in administrations from Harry Truman to George Bush.