The Center for the Study of Intelligence (CSI) of the Central
Intelligence Agency and the George W. Bush Center for Presidential
Studies at Texas A&M University co-sponsored a conference on
"US Intelligence and the End of the Cold War" on the Texas A&M
University campus at College Station from 18 to 20 November 1999.
As a contribution to the conference, CSI prepared a compendium of
newly declassified US intelligence documents covering the years
1989-1991. This period encompassed events in the USSR and Eastern
Europe that transformed the postwar world and much of the 20th
century's geopolitical landscape. It was a time when the tempo of
history accelerated so rapidly that, as one historian put it,
events seemed to be moving beyond human control, if not human
comprehension. Benjamin B. Fischer of CIA's History Staff selected,
edited, and wrote the preface to the National Intelligence
Estimates and other intelligence assessments included in this
companion volume. In conjunction with the conference, the
Intelligence Community will release to the National Archives and
Records Administration (NARA) the records reprinted in this
compendium and those listed in the Appendix. The declassification
and release of these documents marks a new stage in the CIA's
commitment to openness. The Agency has only rarely declassified and
made available to the public and to scholars Cold War records of
such recent vintage. The new release complements and supplements
the previous declassification of more than 550 National
Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) and Special National Intelligence
Estimates (SNIEs) on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe from 1946
to 1985. CIA continues to review and declassify
finishedintelligence on these countries. These records are
available at NARA's Archives II facility in College Park, Maryland,
in Records Group 263 (Central Intelligence Agency Records). Two of
the documents reprinted in this volume originated with CIA's Office
of Soviet Analysis (SOVA). Both have been cited in accounts of
US-Soviet relations during the Bush administration and have been
discussed elsewhere. The complete texts appear here for the first
time. Mr. Fischer tried to identify and release the most important
analysis available for this period. His selection is comprehensive.
Some of the documents, especially those on military-strategic
subjects, were only partially declassified, since they contain data
from still-sensitive sources and methods. Readers should
understand, however, that even the portions reprinted here contain
information that until recently was highly classified. We want to
note, in addition, that we have selected only estimates and
assessments prepared during the Bush administration. We realize
that, in some cases, estimates and other forms of finished
intelligence issued before 1989 may have addressed some of the same
issues and even reached some of the same conclusions as those that
came later, but our focus is exclusively on what was written during
1989-1991. Mr. Fischer and I would like to thank all those
responsible for making this compendium and the conference possible.
Above all, we would like to thank former President George Bush and
his staff for enthusiastically endorsing the conference and
Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet for his support
and cooperation. We also would like to thank CIA's Executive
Director, David W. Carey, for his assistancein releasing the
documents. Closer to home, we want to thank CIA's Office of
Information Management, headed by Edmund Cohen, and in particular
James Oliver, chief of the Historical Review Program, Howard
Stoertz, John Vogel, and James Noren. We also would like to thank
readers who took the time to examine this volume in draft and to
make comments, and Michael Warner, Deputy Chief of the History
Staff, who worked closely with us on this project. Gerald K. Haines
Chief Historian September 1999
General
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