On November 13, the National Security Archive (NSA) (last discussed in the October 6, 2000 Scout Report) announced the release of over "16,000 secret US records on the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, and Washington's role in the violent overthrow of the Allende government and the advent of the military regime to power." Totalling more than 50,000 pages, the records include numerous controversial...

This text gives an intelligence history of the last years of the Soviet Empire. In November, the Center for the Study of Intelligence (CIS) prepared this compendium for a conference on the end of the cold war held at the Texas A&M University campus. The text offers an historical narrative of the US perspective on the rapidly developing events in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union during this...

In March 2001 the Central Intelligence Agency announced this important online release of intelligence documents. It is a compilation of declassified documents which collectively offer a retrospective on the CIA's analytical role during the Cold War. These are grouped in five chapters, each of which is prefaced by some brief comments.

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) has placed online the full text of the Intelligence Authorization Act for FY 2001, which was reported out by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on May 4, 2000, and the accompanying report. Both offer insights into the proposed future of the intelligence community, especially the National Security Agency (NSA) and its relations with Congress and...

On the Central Intelligence Agency's site, this 1999 unclassified report to Congress offers an overview of the Intelligence Community's (IC) activities in the past year. It discusses efforts to promote cooperation across the IC, strategic priorities, regional highlights, transnational issues, counterintelligence work, and future strategies. An alternative and easier to read version is available at...

This release on George Washington University's (GWU) National Security Archive site includes documents related to CIA projects in science and technology. The 44 documents are wide ranging, covering the years 1951-2000 and a broad span of projects from satellite reconnaissance systems to the failed "Acoustic Kitty" project, in which a cat was surgically altered to "become a mobile, eavesdropping...

This special report from The New York Times on the Web offers conclusive evidence of the United States's involvement in the Iranian military coup d'etat of 1953 that brought the Shah to power. The jewel in the crown here is a mysteriously obtained copy of a still-classified CIA document detailing the "inner workings" of a US plot to overthrow the elected prime minister of Iran and install the...

After spending 36 years locked in a safe in the CIA director's office, this highly critical report of the CIA's handling of the Bay of Pigs Invasion was made public on February 22, 1998, after a two year Freedom of Information Act effort by The National Security Archive at George Washington University (discussed in the September 20, 1996 Scout Report). The top secret report, officially known as ...