What did the declassified documents reveal?

The Central Intelligence Agency declassified an intelligence report on the role of the Red Guards and Revolutionary Rebels during Mao Tse‑tung’s Cultural Revolution. The document was originally produced in December 1968, and it was approved for public release in May 2007. It is notable because it offers a contemporary U.S. analysis of the mass political movements that reshaped China in the mid‑1960s. The report was released through a Freedom of Information Act request. The declassification was authorized under Executive Order one two nine five eight, section three point three, paragraph b, paragraph one. The Black Vault posted the full text on May twenty‑second, two thousand seven, and the original archival PDF is available at archive.org. The document begins with a memorandum to recipients, stating that Mao Tse‑tung’s “great proletarian cultural revolution” can best be understood as the aging dictator’s reaction to real and imagined opposition within the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese society at large. To cleanse the party and to imbue it and the nation with a new revolutionary fervor, Mao initiated a massive purge which convulsed China for more than two years. The shock troops of this purge were the Red Guards, publicly surfaced at a Peking mass rally on eighteen August 1966, and the Revolutionary Rebels, who swung into action later in the year as reinforcements for the youthful fanatics. These groups, from whose ranks some new party and government cadres were to be selected, were themselves expected to be purified in the course of the artificial revolution. A revitalized nation of one mind and intuitively responsive to Mao’s will has not emerged from the violence and turmoil of the purge. What has emerged is a China populated by many of the instruments of authoritarian control, with a younger generation motivated in many instances not by Mao’s thought and visions of self‑sacrifice, but by considerations of political self‑advancement and material well‑being. The brief report provides the major findings of a larger study of the origins, activities, and purposes of the Red Guards and Revolutionary Rebels, and of how those groups related to the broader phenomenon of the Cultural Revolution. The more detailed study, bearing the same title but published separately as POLO XXXIII, carried a higher classification. Both reports were produced solely by the Special Research Staff. The research analyst in charge was Dennis J. Doolin, and the chief of the Directorate of Intelligence Special Research Staff was John Kerry King. In August 1966, Mao Tse‑tung unleashed his Red Guard blitzkrieg against the Party apparatus throughout China. Egged on by Madame Mao and her Cultural Revolution Group lieutenants, the young students were given carte blanche to purge “anti‑Party and anti‑socialist bourgeois authorities” and to “drag out” and “struggle” any provincial Party leader who “stands in the way of the great cultural revolution.” Assured that all of their…

Why was this case declassified?

This material entered the public record through the U.S. declassification and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) process. The originating source document is linked on this page so the citation chain is auditable.

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency Declassified An Intelligence Report On The Role

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The Central Intelligence Agency declassified an intelligence report on the role of the Red Guards and Revolutionary Rebels during Mao Tse‑tung’s Cultural Revolution. The document was originally produced in December 1968, and it was approved for public release in May 2007.

Date: AUG 7 · 2026
Release: Declassified · U.S. public record (FOIA)
Source document: View the primary source document

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What was CIA The Central Intelligence Agency Declassified An Intelligence Report On The Role about?: The Central Intelligence Agency declassified an intelligence report on the role of the Red Guards and Revolutionary Rebels during Mao Tse‑tung’s Cultural Revolution. The document was originally produced in December 1968, and it was approved for public release in May 2007.
Why was this case declassified?: This material entered the public record through the U.S. declassification and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) process. Storyflo narrates it directly from the public release.

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