CIA declassifies trove of Cold War-era intelligence memos

AUSTIN, Texas -- As the U.S. and Russia reached the brink of nuclear war in 1962, President John F. Kennedy received top-secret intelligence from the CIA that a new warhead launcher was spotted in Cuba.

Amid those grave concerns, the memo ends on a different note. A U.S. agent in Moscow describes "packed houses and enthusiastic applause" during a run of Russian performances by the New York City Ballet.

That report, given to Kennedy a day before the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis, is among roughly 19,000 pages of newly declassified CIA documents from the Cold War released Wednesday. Stamped "For the President's Eyes Only" on some pages, the dossiers were delivered daily by the spy agency to the White House.

Known as the President's Daily Brief -- President Barack Obama is the first to swipe through his on a tablet -- they are tightly guarded rundowns of CIA intelligence from around the globe. For the first time, some of the oldest briefs being made public, starting with those written in the 1960s for presidents Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

Conspiracy theorists mining for signs of nefarious CIA plots are likely to be disappointed. Many of the briefs remain partially redacted, and what isn't won't rewrite textbooks.

Instead, historians say, the memos reveal the real-time intelligence that shaped pivotal decisions made in the Oval Office after the Bay of Pigs and through Vietnam.