Video On Demand

Book Launch: Truth to Power

July 16, 2019 • 12:00 – 1:00 pm EDT

The History and Future of the U.S. National Intelligence Council

The CSIS Transnational Threats Project cordially invites you to a book launch event for Robert Hutchings and Gregory Treverton's newly released Truth to Power: A History of the U.S. National Intelligence Council (Oxford University Press). Seth G. Jones, director of the Transnational Threats Project, will moderate a discussion of the book's themes and the history of the National Intelligence Council, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year.

A limited number of copies of Truth to Power will be sold at the event.
 
Moderated by

Seth Jones
Harold Brown Chair
Director, Transnational Threats Project
Senior Adviser, International Security Program 

With
Amb. Robert Hutchings
Walt and Elspeth Rostow Chair in National Security and Professor of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin
Former Chairman, U.S. National Intelligence Council

Gregory F. Treverton
Senior Adviser, Transnational Threats Project
Former Chairman, U.S. National Intelligence Council


Truth to Power, the first-ever history of the U.S. National Intelligence Council (NIC), is told through the reflections of its eight Chairs in the period from the end of the Cold War until 2017. Co-editors Robert Hutchings and Gregory Treverton add a substantial introduction placing the NIC in its historical context going all the way back to the Board of National Estimates in the 1940s, as well as a concluding chapter that highlights key themes and judgments.

This historic mission of this remarkable but little-known organization, now forty years old, is strategic intelligence assessment in service of senior American foreign policymakers. Its signature inside products, National Intelligence Estimates, are now accompanied by the NIC's every-four-years Global Trends. Unclassified, Global Trends has become a noted NIC brand, its release awaited by officials, academics and private sector managers around the world.

Truth to Power tracks the NIC's role in providing strategic analysis on every major foreign policy issue confronting the United States during this consequential period. Chapters provide insider insights on the Balkan wars of the 1990s, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, the nuclear weapons programs in Iran and North Korea, upheaval in the Middle East including the rise and fall of the Islamic State, the rise of China, and the Russia's turn toward aggression under Vladimir Putin. The book also assesses the NIC's newly expanded role in direct support to meetings of the National Security Council as well as its longstanding role in producing longer-range strategic intelligence.

This event was made possible through support from CSIS.

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Seth G. Jones
President, Defense and Security Department; Harold Brown Chair