Sherman Kent, was a Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

 history professor who, during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 and through 17 years of Cold War

Cold War

The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

-era service in the Central Intelligence Agency

Central Intelligence Agency

The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...

, pioneered many of the methods of intelligence analysis

Intelligence analysis

Intelligence analysis is the process of taking known information about situations and entities of strategic, operational, or tactical importance, characterizing the known, and, with appropriate statements of probability, the future actions in those situations and by those entities...

. He is often described as "the father of intelligence analysis".

Kent was a graduate of The Thacher School

The Thacher School

The Thacher School is a co-educational independent boarding school located on 425 acres of hillside overlooking the Ojai Valley in Ojai, California, United States. Founded in 1889 as a boys' school, it is now the oldest co-ed boarding school in California. Girls were first admitted in 1977. The...

 and Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

 where he studied European history

History of Europe

History of Europe describes the history of humans inhabiting the European continent since it was first populated in prehistoric times to present, with the first human settlement between 45,000 and 25,000 BC.-Overview:...

 with the intention of spending his career as an academic. After graduating he did spend several years teaching and doing research but joined the Office of Strategic Services

Office of Strategic Services

The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...

 (OSS) with the outbreak of the war in Europe.

Sherman Kent first served within the Research and Analysis Branch of the OSS as Chief of the Europe-Africa Division. In this capacity, he oversaw much of the process which would now be considered intelligence preparation of the battlespace in support of planning for Operation Torch

Operation Torch

Operation Torch was the British-American invasion of French North Africa in World War II during the North African Campaign, started on 8 November 1942....

, the 1942 Allied invasion of North Africa. (An irreverent wit, Kent once proposed for the heraldic emblem of the often-zany OSS, "A horse's ass rampant on a Boston Social Register").

After a post-war stint at the National War College

National War College

The National War College of the United States is a school in the National Defense University. It is housed in Roosevelt Hall on Fort Lesley J. McNair, Washington, D.C., the third-oldest Army post still active. It was officially established on July 1, 1946, as an upgraded replacement for the...

, he returned to Yale for three years, during which time he penned his classic work, Strategic Intelligence. In November 1950,
during the crisis that followed the Chinese Communist incursion in the Korean War

Korean War

The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...

, which prompted a build-up and reorganization of the American Intelligence Community, he was called to Washington, DC

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

, to assist Harvard historian William L. Langer

William L. Langer

William Leonard Langer was the chair of the history department at Harvard University and the World War II volunteer head of the Research and Analysis branch of the Office of Strategic Services...

, with whom he had worked in OSS, to form a new CIA Office of National Estimates (ONE). He succeeded Langer as chief of ONE in 1952, serving in that position for the next fifteen years under four Directors of Central Intelligence

Director of Central Intelligence

The Office of United States Director of Central Intelligence was the head of the United States Central Intelligence Agency, the principal intelligence advisor to the President and the National Security Council, and the coordinator of intelligence activities among and between the various United...

 in four presidential administrations.

ONE was "a small organization, consisting of a Board of National Estimates of between five and twelve senior experts, a professional staff of 25-30 regional and functional specialists, and a support staff." . Until it was dissolved, six years after Kent's retirement, in a Watergate

Watergate scandal

The Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement...

-era CIA reorganization, ONE prepared more than 1500 speculative National Intelligence Estimate

National Intelligence Estimate

National Intelligence Estimates are United States federal government documents that are the authoritative assessment of the Director of National Intelligence on intelligence related to a particular national security issue...

s for the President and top foreign policy-makers.

Kent led ONE through years of challenge and crisis, including McCarthy-era accusations against one of Kent's young aides, future presidential advisor William Bundy

William Bundy

William Putnam "Bill" Bundy was a member of the CIA and foreign affairs advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. He had a key role in planning the Vietnam War. After leaving government service he became a historian.-Early years:Raised in Boston, Massachusetts he came from a...

, and "predictive failures" during the Cuban Missile Crisis

Cuban Missile Crisis

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation among the Soviet Union, Cuba and the United States in October 1962, during the Cold War...

 and other Cold War "flaps".

Kent's unique and enduring role within the US intelligence community was to formalize analytical "tradecraft" and methodologies, while encouraging creation of a "literature of intelligence" to provide a formal mechanism for the transfer of knowledge and experiences between generations of analysts.

Sherman Kent retired from the CIA in 1967, and died in 1986.

In 2000, CIA established a school in Kent's name dedicated to the pursuit of professionalism in the art and science of intelligence analysis

Intelligence analysis

Intelligence analysis is the process of taking known information about situations and entities of strategic, operational, or tactical importance, characterizing the known, and, with appropriate statements of probability, the future actions in those situations and by those entities...

.

Publications

• "Electoral Procedure Under Louis Philippe" (Yale Univ.Press, 1937)
• "Writing History" (NY, 1941; 1967)
• "Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy" (Princeton Univ. Press, 1949; 1966)
• "Words of Estimative Probability" (CIA, 1964)
• "The Law and Custom of the National Intelligence Estimate" (CIA, 1965)
• "The Making of an NIE" (CIA, 1967)
• "The Theory of Intelligence" (CIA 1968)
• "A Boy and a Pig, But Mostly Horses" (NY, 1974) ("Recounts the adventures of three boys during the summer they spend working on a Nevada ranch in the 1920’s")
• "Election of 1827 in France" (Harvard Univ.Press, 1975)
• "Reminiscences of a Varied Life" (San Rafael, CA, 1991)

Biographic Sources

• Harold P. Ford, "A Tribute to Sherman Kent" in Studies in Intelligence (CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1980)
• Steury, Donald Paul, ed. "Sherman Kent and the Board of National Estimates: Collected Essays" (CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1994)

External links

• Sherman Genealogy Including Families of Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk, England By Thomas Townsend Sherman
• Hoar-Baldwin-Foster-Sherman family of Massachusetts at Political Graveyard
• A Tribute to Sherman Kent CIA
• Sherman Kent and the Board of National Estimates CIA
• Sherman Kent Photo CIA
• Valediction CIA
• Use Probes of Sept. 11 to Learn, Not Blame Elaine Kamarck
• The Need for an Intelligence Literature CIA
• CIA at Yale University Doug Henwood, Grand Street, Spring 1988
• The Sherman Kent Center for Intelligence Analysis

See also

• Studies in Intelligence
  Studies in Intelligence
  Studies in Intelligence is a quarterly journal on intelligence that is published by the Center for the Study of Intelligence, a group within the United States Central Intelligence Agency...