National OSINT Day Proclamation

OSINT Foundation

The OSINT Foundation, the professional association of U.S. Intelligence Community open-source intelligence (OSINT) practitioners, celebrates the third National OSINT Day, February 26, 2025.

National OSINT Day recognizes the contributions made to the national security of the United States by OSINT practitioners and the OSINT discipline. The date commemorates the formal establishment of the Foreign Broadcast Monitoring Service (FBMS) by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on February 26, 1941. FBMS became the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service in July 1942, and subsequently the Foreign Broadcast Information Service in November 1946.[1] In addition to broadcast media, early OSINT practitioners also exploited print media in support of the war effort via the Interdepartmental Committee for the Acquisition of Foreign Publications (IDC) of the Library of Congress, which was proposed by Major General William “Wild Bill” Donovan, Director of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) on December 22, 1941.[2]  The IDC, in partnership with the OSS, was instrumental not only in exploiting hardcopy publicly available information, but also helped restore looted works to affected nations, and greatly expanded the international holdings of the Library of Congress and academic libraries across the nation.

Today’s OSINT practitioners carry on the proud work of the earliest pioneers by acquiring, exploiting, and analyzing publicly available information to answer critical intelligence questions on complex and rapidly-evolving national security threats.

Barbara Alexander, President of the OSINT Foundation remarked, “In recognition of 84 years of continuous vigilance in defense of the nation, we are honored to proclaim February 26, 2025 as National OSINT Day. We salute the professionals across the Intelligence Community who are committed to the highest standards of tradecraft excellence, constantly seek to enhance the quality, accuracy, timeliness, and relevance of the information collected and OSINT produced, and provide unbiased, objective information while continually respecting privacy, civil liberties, and human rights obligations. The growing recognition of the discipline’s criticality to our Nation’s security reminds us all that OSINT practitioners are on the front lines as they gather the ‘INT of First Resort.”