Bureau of Intelligence and Research

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The United States Intelligence Board, 28 April 1965

The Bureau of Intelligence and Research (or INR) is a small bureau in the U.S. State Department tasked with analyzing information for the State Department. Originally founded as the Research and Analysis Branch of the Office of Strategic Services [1] and transferred to the State Department at the end of World War II [2], it currently has only 165 analysts (as of 2004), and is around one tenth of the size of the Central Intelligence Agency's analytical arm. Most of INR's analysts are seasoned (some have been on their accounts for 15 years), many come from academia, and are regarded as experts in their fields.

In July 2004, the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence issued a scathing report on prewar intelligence on Iraq. INR was spared the poor performance review that most other intelligence agencies received, and the panel specifically endorsed the dissent that INR inserted into the National Intelligence Estimate of 2002. The bureau is being studied as a positive example, as Congress debates how to best reform U.S. intelligence agencies in the wake of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In May 2004 the National Security Archive released a secretive 1969 report on the Vietnam War commissioned by the White House and executed by the INR, then led by Thomas Hughes. Highly critical of the current strategy in Vietnam and highly revealing of the political atmosphere in the White House itself, this declassified document has recently highlighted parallels between the situation in Vietnam at the time and the current war in Iraq.