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, 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.
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.