The October 1990 NIE 15-90 judged that Yugoslavia's breakup would be violent and that the conflict might spill over into adjacent regions.
Notes on verification
Confirmed by declassified NIE 15-90 document itself, a peer-reviewed journal analysis (Treverton & Miles), and State Department historical records. The exact 'spill over' phrasing is a secondary scholarly characterization rather than verbatim original text, but the substance is well corroborated.
Sources
- CIA Support to Policymakers: Unheeded Warning of War - CSI (cia.gov)
- https://history.state.gov/milestones/1989-1992/breakup-yugoslavia (history.state.gov)
- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02684527.2016.1259814 (tandfonline.com)