Established in 1975 within the CIA as a focal point for internal research and study. In 1992, under the direction of Robert M. Gates, the Director of Central Intelligence, the center was reorganized to include the CIA's history staff (first formed in 1951).
Subsequently, the center began publishing previously classified documents related to the Cold War, the first being CIA Documents on the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962, published 30 years after that historic event. Additional volumes of historic CIA documents followed. The second volume was Selected Estimates on the Soviet Union, 1950-1959, published in 1993.
The third volume in the series, The CIA under Harry Truman, was produced in conjunction with a CIA conference that took place in March 1994, near Washington, D.C., held jointly with the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library. This and later conferences were unclassified, being intended for historians and scholars in the intelligence field.
The Center has also become responsible for the journal Studies in Intelligence, an excellent (now unclassified) collection of "articles on the historical, operational, doctrinal, and theoretical aspects of intelligence."
