Bureau of Intelligence and Research



The Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) is an intelligence bureau in the U.S. State Department tasked with analyzing information. Originally founded as the Research and Analysis Branch of the Office of Strategic Services (1942-1945), it was transferred to the State Department at the end of World War II. The Bureau of Intelligence and Research is part of the United States Intelligence Community, of which there are 16 branches. The current number of employees and its budget is classified. The Bureau is headed by the Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research.

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 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.

In June 2009, the FBI arrested former INR employee Walter Kendall Myers on charges of serving as an illegal agent of the Cuban government for nearly 30 years and conspiring to provide classified U.S. information to the Cuban government. Myers’ arrest was the culmination of a 3-year joint FBI/Department of State Diplomatic Security investigation. Myers worked in the INR from 2000 until October 2007.

On October 23, 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Philip S. Goldberg to be the Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research; his nomination was confirmed by the Senate on February 9, 2010.