Naval Intelligence History Project Update: Shifting into New Phase for Document Declassification/Oral Histories and Focusing on Chapter Drafts

This fall, the Naval Intelligence History Project (NHP) team will shift into a new phase for two of the supporting efforts (declassification of documents and conducting oral histories) while also beginning the main effort of drafting the chapters.

The Senior Review Team (Nelson Litsinger, Bob Allen, Vivian Zumstein and Mark Greer) will finish processing the few relevant boxes we found at the NARA Suitland (WNRC), and they are now pulling and copying key documents for either declassification at the Navy Yard (DRMD) or obtaining the approval for the release of unclassified or FOUO documents by ONI. We have one banker’s box of classified materials with DRMD with a second and third coming later this month. We selected the documents based on their relevance to the chapters and will highlight the materials on the shared drive when we clear DRMD and ONI.

The Oral History Team (Stephanie Leung, Deb Del Vecchio and Mo Fox) is gearing up for three interviews this month (Marcia Barkell, Paul Lasko, and Rick Porterfield) and probably a similar number for next month. As a follow-on to the insightful panel discussion on the reconstitution of CNO-IP in September 2001 held as a part of the NIP Virtual Speaker Series on 09 September, Stephanie is pulling together a panel discussion on the first female officers and enlisted in Naval Intelligence in the 1970s and early 1980s. To help us with this effort, we have three asks: 

1. Please provide ideas for other panels that would be beneficial to this project.
2. Help us edit the oral history transcripts. Our ability to process more oral histories is directly dependent on get some additional help in cleaning up the initial AI-generated transcripts. It takes about 8-10 hours to review, expand, and process each 3-4 hour interview, so we would really appreciate the help.
3.  Help with actual oral interviews. As we start interviewing people with more recent career histories, we have found it is useful to have a second interviewer present to provide backup support and redirect questions in real time. In particular, getting authors involved would be helpful. We are set for this month but as we move into October and November, we will ask for interview support for particular subjects. We plan to go directly to the author we think would be best positioned to help out.

Finally, we have one chapter in with Dr. Rosenberg’s SME team and we are expecting a couple of more this fall. The flywheel is starting to crank up!  We appreciate everyone’s support for this important project in documenting the history of our profession.