Dino Brugioni Collection

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Dino Brugioni (b. 1921) is the former Chief of Information at the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC). He flew a number of reconnaissance missions during World War II over North Africa, Italy and Germany, for which he received the Purple Heart and many other citations. After the war, Brugioni received BA and MA degrees in Foreign Affairs from George Washington University. In 1948, he joined the CIA and became an expert in Soviet industries. In 1955 Brugioni was selected as a member of the newly formed NPIC that would interpret Lockheed U-2, Lockheed SR-71 (Blackbird), and satellite photography. During Brugioni's 35 year career, he helped establish imagery intelligence as an national asset to solve intelligence problems. Brugioni's aerial reconnaissance work played a major role in discerning the US/USSR bomber and missile camps during the Cold War, and provided evidence for the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War and the Yom Kippur War. After retirement, he encouraged the use of declassified photographic intelligence for historical research. Brugioni was one of the first historians to present photographic evidence of Auschwitz in the 1970s when he located film footage from a reconnaissance aircraft photographing a bombing run on a nearby Farben factory. Brugioni is also an authority on contrived or altered photography. He has written numerous books and articles on his field and received numerous citation and recommendations for his role in reconnaissance.

Identifier

NASM.2012.0004

Creator

Brugioni , Dino

Date

bulk 1950s-2000s

Provenance

Dino Brugioni, Gift, 2011

Extent

27 Cubic feet ((30 boxes))

Archival Repository

National Air and Space Museum Archives

Scope and Contents

This collection consists of 27 cubic feet of material relating to aerial reconnaissance, including the following types: aerial photography collected by Brugioni; lectures and interviews by Brugioni (on videotape); articles written by Brugioni; and the published secondary sources he collected to write those articles. The collection consists of five series. Series 1 consists of the binders created by Brugioni for his aerial reconnaissance research; Series 2 and 3 consists of subject folders relating to aerial reconnaissance; Series 4 consists of 700 scanned images of original photographs retained by Brugioni as well as copies of the following two reports: "The Holocaust Revisited: A Retrospective Analysis of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Extermination Complex," by Dino Brugioni and Robert Poirer, 1979 and "The Tighe Report," 1986; the last series consists of the videotaped lectures and interviews.

Rights

Material is subject to Smithsonian Terms of Use. Should you wish to use NASM material in any medium, please submit an Application for Permission to Reproduce NASM Material, available at Permissions Requests

Restrictions

No restrictions on access.

Citation

Dino Brugioni Collection, NASM.2012.0004, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution.

Topics

Aerial photography
Aerial reconnaissance
Military intelligence
Cold War
Auschwitz (Concentration camp)
Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962.

Type

Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Photographic prints
Lectures
Interviews
Articles

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