Ruminations on intelligence and open sources
In 2018, I made a blog post about the different archive locations where articles from CIA's internal 'Studies in Intelligence' journal can be found. Published since 1955, the declassified articles provide a wealth of material for the intelligence studies community, as well as interesting perspectives for security and foreign policy researchers. You can find some … Continue reading ‘Studies in Intelligence’ article index
Quick post about a document that might be of interest to my fellow researchers. In the course research for an article, I came across the chapters for a CIA internal history titled "Organizational History of the CIA, 1950-1953". From the Chapter X PDF file, we can learn that this history is part of the DCI … Continue reading Organizational History of the CIA, 1950-1953
In November 2018, I discovered parts of a 1960 Soviet report translation titled "Combat Against Enemy Nuclear Artillery, Free Rockets, and Guided Missiles in Offensive and Defensive Operations of an Army" in CIA's online archive. The main problem addressed by the report is the destruction of US/NATO theater nuclear weapons. The report was written by … Continue reading Newly released IRONBARK (Penkovsky) materials
This is a blog post in Finnish about human intelligence. Tiedustelulajien kirjossa henkilötiedustelu (human intelligence, HUMINT) on lienee värikkäimpiä mielikuvia herättävä, sekä toisaalta populaarikulttuurin värittämänä väärinymmärretyin. Tässä blogissa avataan kyseistä tiedustelulajia tiedustelun tutkijan näkövinkkelistä. Henkilötiedustelu nimensä mukaisesti keskittyy tiedonhankintaan henkilölähteistä. Henkilötiedustelu soveltuu erityisesti sellaisiin tiedustelutelukysymyksiin vastaamiseen, joihin ei muilla tiedustelukeinoilla ole mahdollista vastata. Tällaisia voivat … Continue reading Henkilötiedustelusta
While doing archive research, I came across translations of lectures from Soviet General Staff Academy, or Voroshilov Academy as it was also known in the Soviet days. I had tucked away the documents in a notebook, and tweeted about some of them. https://twitter.com/vpkivimaki/status/820629224717488128 After getting my hands on the "CIA Analysis of Warsaw Pact Forces" … Continue reading Soviet General Staff Academy Lectures 1968-1985
(Update January 10th, 2021: CIA's recent website update broke all the links, so I've created a new copy of the sheet with all the links fixed.) In July of 2017, I released the first index to translations from secret Soviet military journals that the CIA had acquired and translated during the Cold War. During that … Continue reading Index of CIA’s Soviet military journal translations (Christmas 2018 Update)
In an earlier post on the National Intelligence Dailies, I made passing reference to a 1975 document called "A Guide to the National Intelligence Community's Production Organizations and Their Products". For digging into archives now, the document actually provides a handy roadmap to products that should be available - both in the CIA archives as … Continue reading Guide to products of US national intelligence in 1975
Just a brief update as a sign of life here at the blog. I've been neglecting the blog due a number of other things demanding attention. As one item, I have an article coming up in the print version of Jane's Intelligence Review on the CIA archives as a resource. (Digital version is also available … Continue reading Greetings from ISA 2018
Nearly 350 documents containing issues (or parts) of CIA's "Terrorism Review", from 1982 to 2001.
The very brief history of covert action in colonial times by William Colby.
Open INT 