STUDIES IN INTELLIGENCE VOL. 12, NO 1. WINTER 1968

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP83-01034R000300170004-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 11
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 26, 2014
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: December 21, 1953
• Content Type: SINT

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With this issue the Studies bids an offi-
cial farewell to Sherman Kent, who some-
what quixotically founded the journal in
1955 and has been its prime sustainer for a
dozen years. The infusions of his vigor
and polymath good judgment have been so
much the wellspring of its life that it has
reason to tremble a little at this severance.
Yet he has borne himself the wise father,
encouraging spontaneity and initiative,
nudging here and checking there but foster-
ing the independent child; and he has thus
brought it to a stature that can stand the
shock. It can take comfort, too, that he
will not be altogether out of its reach for fatherly advice.
end of an era, but the era's works go on.
Succeeding Chairman Kent on the Studies editorial board, as on his
more history-making Board of National Estimates, is Abbot E. Smith,
long his deputy on the latter.
This is the
VALEDICTION
Sherman Kent
?(
My colleagues on the Board of Editors have asked that I mark my
retirement from the Board with a backward glance at the beginnings
of the Studies in Intelligence and a drawing of some sort of balance
sheet. What follows is, I trust, a minimally autobiographical, but
never,theless wholly personal appraisal of the journal's accomplishments
and disappointments.
First?about its establishment:
When the National War College convened in January 1947 after
tmas recess, Bernard Brodie gave the morning lecture. His
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topic was the Grand Strategy. To the surprise of everyone, and the
disquiet of some, his presentation was not about strategy but about
how few Americans had interested themselves in the study of it.
Citing the case of economics, he noted that a hundred and fifty years
of study had produced from scratch a large library of highly enlighten-
ing literature. What had our military produced in the way of a
literature regarding strategy, the heart of their profession? He
answered this question by referring to Alfred Mahan, whose contribu-
tion to this literature was unique in both senses of the word: out-
standing and lonesome. The speech came to a climax when Mr.
Brodie identified a couple of strategic decisions of World War II
which he held in low esteem and indicated that they might not have
been made if Americans had devoted more time to thinking and
writing about strategy. The moral was pointed and purposefully so:
strategy is your business, why don't you systematize your thinking
about it and perpetuate your reflections in a professional literature?
Sunday Before Christmas
One of the reasons I so vividly remember Mr. Brodie's remarks was
that I realized at the time that everything he was saying about strategy
could be said with equal force about intelligence. I had just com-
pleted almost five years in the business and was poised to begin work
on my book Strategic Intelligence. In the next few months all that I
had suspected regarding the absence of a literature of intelligence I
was pretty well able to prove. Calling upon the library resources of
the National War College and its able reference librarians, I believe
that I read practically every printed document which our military had
issued on the subject of intelligence and a number of typed student
articles from the services' war colleges. There was nothing from the
pen of a civilian intelligence practitioner. The collection was no
better than I had anticipated, and going through it was a pretty shat-
tering experience for an intelligence buff. Clearly the profession ought
to put the talent of a lot of its devotees to the creation of literature
of the tra.de.
I did nothing much about the matter except for occasional broodings
until one Sunday in December 1953. I had the morning duty in
Mr. Dulles's office and after reading the cables I still had time on
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my hands. It was then that I wrote the memorandum that follows.
The cover sheet of transmittal looked like this:
21 December 1953
MEMORANDUM FOR MR. BAIRD'
The attached arises from:
(1) My general interest in the -Life
(2) A sense of disquiet at the realization that Intelligence is a non-
cumulative discipline.
(3) A sense of outrage at the infantile imprecision of the language of
intelligence?I give you the NSCID's for a starter..
(4) A desire to give Uncle Matt a Christmas gift.
At the bottom of the copy I have is written, in Matt Baird's hand:
To OTR Staff and Division Chiefs
re parag. 4?I like to share my Christmas cheer; comments will be acceptable
in return!
MB
Here is the memorandum itself:
SUBJECT: How a major flaw in the intelligence business (its lack of a
serious systematic literature) might be corrected..
1. Intelligence work in the US has become an important professional dis-
cipline.
2. It has developed theory, doctrine, a vocabulary, and a multitude of
techniques.
3. Unlike most other important professional disciplines, it has not developed
a literature worthy of the name.
4. Without a literature intelligence has little or no formal institutional memory.
What institutional memory it does possess exists in (a) fragments of
thousands of memoranda primarily devoted to discrete intelligence opera-
tions, not to the theory and practice of the calling, and in (b) the living
memories of people engaged in intelligence work.
What kind of a way is this to run a railroad? Where would the
sciences and social sciences be, if their students had not systematically
contributed to their literatures?
A literature is the best guarantee that the findings of a discipline
will be cumulative.
A disaster to our unlettered intelligence service such as occurred with
the budgetary cut-backs of 1946-7, or as might occur with an A-bomb
on Washington, could put US intelligence back to the stone age where
it so long dwelled.
Matthew Baird, then CIA Director of Training
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5. How do you produce a literature?
Some answers.
a. You pay for it. That is, you offer a livelihood to the man who wants
to write a book or an article during the time he requites to do the job.
b. You make sure that the man who wants to write a book or article has
something to say and a reasonable command of the art of verbal
expression.
c. You subsidize his publications. That is, you print at your own expense
what your critics and editors think will-advance the discipline.
d. You circulate his publications and encourage comment thereon. You
may wish to publish the best written comment
6. How would I go about the above?
Some answers.
a. I would establish on a modest scale an 'Institute for Advanced Study of
Intelligence." -
b. I would have a Board of Admissions who would both (1) pass on the
suitability of applicants and (2) actually invite likely candidates who
did not apply.
c. I would have no one eligible for admission who had not had a sub-
stantial and varied experience in intelligence work and who was not
capable of systematic thoughtful research, analysis, and writing.
Further I would accept no one who did not have a well-thought-out
project.
d. The project would have to be in the field of intelligence work, overt
and clandestine; not in the substantive findings of intelligence. Ap-
propriate sample projects might be:
(1) Strengths and weaknesses of intelligence dissemination tech-
niques.
(2) An examination of the "third agency" rule.
(3) The theory of indicators.
(4) The intelligence service of country X.
Inadmissible projects would be:
(1) The Red Army
(2) The Trieste situation
(3) The Outlook in Liberia, etc.
e. I would have no faculty as such. I would have a director who would
arrange for occasional meetings with outsiders and who would see to
it that the students spent a few hours per week together in seminars
at which the students would present papers and discuss them.
f. The greatest part of the student's time would be his own to pursue his
project through any means whatever with a view to publishing some-
thing at the end of his fellowship.
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g. I would establish a journal?probably a quarterly?which would be
devoted to intelligence theory and doctrine, and the techniques of the
discipline. I would have an editor who fully understood the limits of
- his mandate. The journal could be Top Secret; its component articles
could be of any classification or unclassified. The editor would provide
for the separate publication of "reprints" for separate circulation where
appropriate.
h. Along with the journal I would establish an "Intelligence Series" for
longer works.
7. Some dimensions.
a. As a starter I would have no more than 10 or 12 students.
b. They would receive their regular in-grade pay if they came from the
government; they would receive appropriate compensation if drawn
in from the outside. All would, of course, be fully cleared.
c. They would be expected to be "in residence" at least 50 percent of the
time; that is, at work in study or seminar rooms on the school premises.
d. Although my major interest is in positive intelligence, I would always
aim to have a few security intelligence students around.
e. The duration of the fellowships would normally be one year. If I
found a Mahan of intelligence I would keep him as long as he would
stay.
There are hundreds of details beyond this rough outline. If the idea were
accpted, they could be easily worked out
What my school must never be is an intelligence equivalent of the higher
service schools. If you feel the need of a model, study Institute for Advanced
Study at Princeton?the Einstein schooL
The Start
True to his penciled promise, Mr. Baird did discuss the memorandum
with his principal lieutenants in the Office of Training. I can only
surmise, for I was not present, that the founding of an Einstein school
for research in intelligence method, doctrine, and history was put
on a back burner and that my suggestion for the establishment of a
journal was fetched up front over moderate heat. There followed,
for example, a weekend conference at a country retreat sometime dur-
ing 1954 and a good bit of general conversation about a journal?
who should finance it, edit it, supervise it, and so on.
Some time later I was asked to set forth orally my thoughts about
the journal before an Agency gathering with the understanding that
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the speech would be recorded and transcribed. This procedure was
Mr. Baird's artful way of inducing me to produce, in writing, the first
article of the new journal. When it appeared in print in September
1935 it bore the title "The Need for an Intelligence Literature: Articles
by Sherman Kent and the Editors." My contribution was no more
than an Engfished version of the oral presentation, which in turn was
an elaboration of the thoughts touched upon in the first five paragraphs
of my Christmas memo to Matt Baird.
- Before the appearance of the first number of the quarterly proper,
there were two other unperiodic issues with a couple of articles each,
the first including Abbot Smith's disquisition on the matter of capa-
bilities in intelligence publications.
The main articles in the
last issue in slender format dea t with 'economic intelligence.
At the initiative of one of Matt Baird's able officers, James Lowe, the
journal became a quarterly with the Fall issue of 1957, and starting
in 1958 under the editorship of it has come out four
times a year ever since.
Now for the balance sheet: what is there about the journal that we
can regard with pride and happiness and what with regret?
Pluses
Let me begin with the good ones: our second five years of quarterly
existence has produced a larger number of contributions and a
larger number of good ones than did our first five. In recent times
there have often been many more pages of highly commendable
manuscript than the editors wished to commit to a single number.
It is not exactly that we are being lost in a blizzard of contributions,
but compared to the bleak years of the fifties, we feel that we are
doing very well indeed.
As to the quality, we should have to do no more than to
call the reader's attention to the list of winners of the annual $500
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priZe 2 and advise him to reflect again on what whacking good articles
they were and what a very substantial contribution to the lore of our
profession they made. That the Board has on two occasions been
unable to distinguish between the two or even three best essays and has
accordingly split the award is explicit testimony, at least, cf the Board's
awareness that it has just passed through a bumper crop year.
That the Studies has in fact contributed to a richer understanding
of the bones and viscera of the intelligence calling is beyond argu-
ment. We have run dozens of articles on intelligence history, the
range of which can be sampled in those of Arthur Darling on the
early years of CIA, the half dozen on the early struggle between the
Russian revolutionaries and the Tsar's Okhrana, and William Harris's
two on the March 1948 Berlin crisis, in which intellicence played a
pivotal role. None of these articles required a high security classifi-
cation and all of them could have been disseminated widely as long
memos. But who would have sponsored them, reproduced and cir-
culated them if there had been no Studies to serve as a vehicle?
The contribution of the journal to an appreciation of some of the
aspects of intelligence theory and doctrine has been highly significant.
I cite as outstanding examples the succession of articles by
aliatigaalla Clyde C. Wooten, and Julie D. Kerlin clarifying the
proper role of economic intelligence in defense planning, the many
articles that discuss problems of estimative intelligence,3 and the view
from the summit in Richard Helms's "Intelligence in American Society."
'196
196,1?Albert D. Wheelon and Sidney N. Graybeal (co-a.uthors)
1962?F. M. Begoum
1963?(1) Paul R. Storm
(2) Lt. Col. William Haltness
1964-4 1) Andrew J. Twiddy
(2) Theodore H. Tenniswood
(3) Thaxter L. Goodell
1965?John Whitman
1966?James Burke
1967?Henry S. Lowenhaupt
'These are compiled conveniently under one cover in t1-_e new publication cited
on p. 74 of this issue. But already this is outdated by Ja:k Z:otnick's "A Theorem
for Prediction" in the last issue of the Studies, Willard Matthias's "How Three
Estimates Went Wrong" in this, and Keith Clark's "Notes an Estimating," Stinuner
1957,
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T e point is that as one looks back through a cumulative index
(which one should do5) he cannot escape the belief that the intelli-
gence profession is indeed more professional and more durable
now that it has the beginnings, at least, of this tangible institutional
memory.
Another cheering aspect is inherent in the widening spectrum of
contributors. There is not a major component of CIA which has not
by now produced at least one author and an interesting article.
'Furthermore we have had a good number of contributions from intelli-
gence officers not associated with the Agency in any way. One of our
prize winners, Colonel Hartness, four years back, was such a man.
Lastly, we have had a heart-warming reaction from our consumers.
The members of the Board are pretty well convinced that our fan
mail represents a genuine appreciation on the part of scores, perhaps
even hundreds, of readers scattered all over Washington, indeed all
over the world. As old intelligence officers, we are naturally suspicious
of a warm consumer reaction, for well we know how rare it is that
a consumer receiving a piece of substantive intelligence will ever
give anything except a "thank you." To be sure, some of the thanks
are a good bit less fervent than others. But what we have found
particularly pleasant have been the requests from men running small
intelligence units in large and small domestic and overseas commands
asking permission to incorporate this or that article into one of their
publications destined to circulate among their own people.
Probably atfr nicest fan letter was one which Admiral B. E. Moore,
then of the Cinclant headquarters, wrote to Admiral D. L. McDonald,
the CNO, saying how he had come across our publication and sug-
'See also his article in the current issue.
'See the compilation at the end of this issue.
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gesting that the CNO ask that it be sent to a good number of flag
officers serving with major components of the Fleet. As a result we put
some 40 or 50 additional addressees on our distribution list.
A rinci al cause behind these good things has been our editor,
whom we know to be the best in the business.
When you read these words you must realize that he has been over-
come by the Board's exercise of force ma cure, and that the ara raph
is appearing in print despite his efforts to kill it.
combines his great skill as a critic with a rare talent for writing, a
world of patience, and a great ability to help authors 'help them-
selves. The journal's successes owe more to him than any other
single person.
Minuses
And now for my regrets. The first has to do with the classification
of the quarterly. The Secret stamp on the outside and what it means
is obvious to all. The most melancholy implication is that it must
? be given what we call Class A storage, something none of us has
in his home. Accordingly, one has had to read the journal on business
premises and perhaps in business hours. This means that it has been
competing for attention with urgent professional matters.
When I bespoke my hope for lots of unclassified articles in my first
essay, I was clearly whistling Dixie. What the Board swiftly came
to realize was that unclassified articles by people outside the govern-
ment or the intelligence community were by definition going to be
a great rarity?principally because we were not going to advertise
that we had a vehicle to publish such writings. Even if we had
successfully solicited, we would probably have had to reject most
offerings on the grounds of quality or lack of sophistication. There
are after all very few outsiders who have been able to keep abreast
of the extraordinary developments of the profession from the vantage
point of private life. And not many have chosen to do purely historical
pieces or notes of reminiscence.
On the other hand, the very fact that an insider wrote such and
such and tha the Board thought it important enough to publish was
oftentimes the prima facie reason to put some sort of classification
stamp to it. hi actual fact, the Board has upon many occasions
felt impelled to question sensitive topics discussed by an author and
even to do a bit of sanitizing to get the contribution by as Secret.
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All this is the long way of saying that, regrettable as is the Secret
classification, it is the very best that can be done. NN'e are convinced
that there is no way by which our publication can be made into some-
thing which our readers can take home to read in the evening and
which, at the same time, \till have a content worthy of their attention.
One reader wrote us a communication suggesting a common-sense
method by which copies of the Studies could be kept out of the safe
for an hour or so after close of business for people who wanted to
stay after work to read them. We thought he had something and
passed the idea along, but nothing came of -it.
A second and last regret. No matter that, as noted above, the
quantity of contributions has increased and the quality improved, there
are by no means enough people in our vast community writing articles
and submitting them. The Board of Editors, at each of its weekend
meetings, spends several hours on Saturday night discussing subjects
which would make interesting articles and trying to figure out who
would be the best author to undertake them. Between meetings of
the Board, members put in a good amount of time dunning their
colleagues and acquaintances for an article of this or that specification.
I should imagine that we receive in finished form one article for about
every ten we ask for. Some of the articles which have finally appeared
have required almost as much suasion or browbeating on the part
of a Board member as they did effort on the part of the composer.
On the other hand, the number of high-quality walk-ins has been low.
There are several reasons why this is so. To start with, the ideal
author or authors for such and such a piece are as a rule overextended
with the primary tasks of their job descriptions and cannot take on an
additional duty. Nor do their supervisors by and large feel able to
lighten their professional burdens for the two or three weeks which
they would have to have to do the article in question.
Not infrequently the right author could be given time, but just does
not want to take it. Maybe he has a quite understandable desire?to
this writer, at least?to avoid the pain of literary composition at all
costs. Maybe also the man or woman whose job keeps driving them
down into the present and forcing them to look into the murk of
the future an be pardoned for an indifferent concern about that which
is over and done with. And many of the articles which we feel should
be written are essentially historical in nature. Some of these have
an added built-in repulsiveness. For example, who is naturally in-
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dined to go back over the history of an intelligence blooper? The
fact that such a backward glance could be of immense professional
importance does little to alleviate its essential unattractiveness.
Though the so-called missile gap debate owed but little to the
shortcomings of intelligence, getting an article going on the subject has
so far been impossible. One reason?not the ruling one?has been
a reluctance on the part of knowledgeable analysts to return to the
agonies of our early estimating on the Soviet ICBM force and relive
those days of groping around in the uncertainties of Soviet ability to
build the missiles and the magnitude of the force which the Soviets
would probably wish to de lo
Whatever the difficulties and however overcome, the Studies in
Intelligence venture has been eminently worth while. The Board's
celebration of its tenth anniversary a year ago presaged, I trust, not
so much a ceremony of self-congratulation for a decade of past per- -
formance as an earnest of still other decades of good and useful work
to cone.
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