A series of reports recently have noted an apparent change in policy that makes articles in the government publication Studies in Intelligence, published by the Central Intelligence Agency’s Center for the Study of Intelligence available only in print. Articles freely available in the printed version of the journal have not been posted on the web site of the journal.
In Excessive secrecy hurting CIA studies, Shaun Waterman reports “Web publication of ‘Studies in Intelligence’ itself appears to have ceased as well, at least for the time being — no articles from the last three issues of the journal are on the agency’s Web site, although hard copies are available from the U.S. Government Printing Office.” (Washington Times, Apr. 27, 2006)
Steven Aftergood reports that “the editor of the somewhat respected CIA journal Studies in Intelligence has resigned, and so has the chairman of its Editorial Board.” (CIA Expands Operational File Secrecy, Secrecy News, April 19, 2006.)
And Max Holland, in a substantial article on the state of the intelligence community, goes into more detail (Lessons Not Learned, Washington Spectator, April 15, 2006.
The problem erupted in the fall of 2005, when Studies published an excerpt from a post-mortem on the intelligence community’s failure to assess accurately Iraq’s WMD capabilities.
Seven months later, the offending issue still has not been posted on-line, even though unclassified articles in Studies are normally put up within weeks of publication.
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