CIA releases new Sputnik documents

[Update Oct. 4: The CIA has released the Sputnik documents. You can find them on the CIA’s website here.]

The CIA plans to release a new batch of secret documents about the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik, which made history when it blasted into space 60 years ago Wednesday, Code and Dagger has learned.

An article published in the most recent edition of the CIA’s latest unclassified “Studies in Intelligence” journal indicates the new documents, scheduled to be published on the CIA’s website Wednesday, are intended to reveal more about the intelligence community’s assessment of Russia’s space plans in the 1950s and bolster the argument, as the article says, that there was no “intelligence failure” ahead of the first artificial satellite put into space.

“That Sputnik’s ascent surprised the U.S. public and press is now common knowledge, but not everyone in the United States was surprised.”

Read the whole story from Code and Dagger.

Featured image courtesy of NASA