a disproportionate amount of time was being devoted
to NIS production on countries that were not scien-
tifically important or to countries which were
already receiving coverage through other and more
current publication media. In March 1958, the Office
indicated to the Assistant Director/Basic Intelligence
that the Office had been concerned for some time with
the growing expense in manpower and money of provid-
ing adequate intelligence contributions to the NIS.
At that time it was stated that "OSI must give low
relative priority to this (NIS) effort .... Many of
the countries with which the NIS is now concerned
are of little or no interest to us from a scientific
intelligence point of view .... Despite our efforts
we have achieved neither an accurate nor a particularly
useful product." No change was made in OSI's respon-
sibilities to the NIS program at that time, but the
general Office attitude continued until the establish-
ment of the General Survey in FY-1963.
In late 1962 USIB requested an evaluation of
the entire NIS program. This evaluation was conducted
in CIA by the Coordination Staff of the DCI under the
leadership of [redacted] It was found
that the NIS program had evolved into a highly formalized,
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