Sherman Kent Research Articles

Military intelligence issues in declassified articles of the CIA’s professional journal Studies in Intelligence (1955-1989)

The CIA began publishing the journal “Studies in Intelligence” in the mid-1950s. This journal contains both classified and unclassified materials, with the latter being available to the public. Its initiator, Sherman Kent, the director of the analysis office within the CIA, aimed to support an “intelligence literature”. The journal, which is still published today, covers various topics in the field of intelligence. One of its main areas of focus is militaryintelligence, where it has helped pave the way for modern practices still in use.

Intelligence analysis as cryptic hermeneutics

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to show the extent to which scholars have not fully explored the hermeneutical dimension of Sherman Kent’s methodology and its practical implications for intelligence analysis. However, a critical analysis of Kent’s ‘positivist’ epistemology is necessary to understand some major intelligence failures made by the CIA during the Cold War. Drawing on the historic examples of Guatemala (1953–1954) and the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), this article advocates introducing a critical discourse analysis approach along with an evidence-based reasoning methodology for the study and practice of intelligence analysis.

The soviet school system in Central Intelligence Agency estimates at the initial stage of the Cold War

The paper is devoted to the analysis by the Central Intelligence Agency of the USSR school system. The US was in dire need of information about its new adversary. The situation was aggravated by the closed nature of the Soviet state and the absence of a long continuous tradition of intelligence activities of American intelligence. The president and other government bodies wanted to have comprehensive knowledge of any processes and phenomena in the world. US intelligence should have been able to solve this problem. In this regard, the first stage of the Cold War for the CIA was largely due to an analysis of official and semi-official sources, as well as the development of various strategies. In order to find out about various areas of the life in the USSR, analysts extracted information from Soviet scientific literature, press, radio, legislation and interrogations of former German prisoners. The National Assessment Bureau, led by William Langer and Sherman Kent, compiled reports on Soviet military capabilities, industry, agriculture, the political system, etc. The Soviet school system was considered by American intelligence specialists in the framework of the military and economic potential of the enemy, as well as the strategy of psychological warfare. The paper analyzes the reports concerning the educational system in the USSR in the aspect of school education, its strengths and weaknesses. The results allow us to conclude that the information about the Soviet school system contributed to the formation of the foreign policy and domestic policy of the United States.

Assessing and Communicating Uncertainty Effectively in a Rapidly Changing World

Command and policy decision-making alike depend on timely and accurate intelligence. As Sherman Kent had noted in the 1950s and 60s, intelligence assessments are seldom cold, hard facts but rather judgments made by experts under conditions of uncertainty. Since Kent, history has taught us that misjudging and miscommunicating uncertainties threaten prospects for operational and strategic successes. Nevertheless, NATO and its members' intelligence communities have persisted in using inadequate methods for assessing and communicating uncertainty, which rely on vague linguistic probabilities (e.g., “likely” or “unlikely”). Here, drawing on recent scientific evidence including from NATO SAS-114 and other research, I describe the principal reasons why the intelligence community should change course and consider using numeric probabilities for estimates that support important decisions. This is arguably more important now than ever since changes in the global security environment, which augment the importance of non-munitions targeting, call for characterization of deep uncertainties related to second- and higher-order effects.

You Can't Yell Loud Enough: Intelligence and Warning

Intelligence and Surprise Attack: Failure and Success from Pearl Harbor to 9/11 and Beyond. By Erik J. Dahl Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2013. 277 pp., paperback (ISBN-13: 978-1-58901-998-0). The history of US intelligence is, in many ways, a history of intelligence failures. The attack on Pearl Harbor shocked the nation's embryonic intelligence structures into life. The failure to predict the Chinese intervention in the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Tet Offensive, among many more, was formative in the history of the CIA and American Intelligence Community (IC) in general. The disaster of 9/11 is but the most recent in a long line of intelligence failures which—with their inevitable inquests, investigations, and congressionally imposed reforms—have shaped the US IC into its current form and driven the growth of the formal academic study of intelligence. From the 1940s onwards, books by authors such as Sherman Kent, Roberta Wohlstetter, Amy Zegart, and David Betts have pushed a series of conflicting arguments about the causes of intelligence failure (Kent 1949; Wohlstetter 1962; Zegart 1999; Betts 2007). Some, such as the “father” of intelligence studies, Kent, argued early on that by good social science methodology intelligence failure could be avoided. Wohlstetter argued that intelligence failure is ultimately inevitable because of the intrinsically impossible task of predicting an opponent's behavior. Zegart has argued that the inflexibility of the US government bureaucracy renders intelligence failure almost certain—intelligence failure is not natural, it occurs because of bad government, and only that renders it …

What is Being Published in Intelligence? A Study of Two Scholarly Journals

The academic discipline of Intelligence studies is a rather young field, especially when compared to other disciplines in the social sciences, humanities, and others. Sherman Kent first called atte...

Evaluating Intelligence: Answering Questions Asked and Not

Evaluating intelligence is tricky. Really tricky. 1 Sherman Kent, one of the foremost early thinkers regarding the analytic process in the U.S. national security Intelligence Community wrote in 197...

Washington's view of the Sino‐Soviet split, 1961–63: From puzzled prudence to bold experimentation

The intelligence community figured importantly in the Kennedy administration's handling of the Sino‐Soviet split. Moving in tandem with a hardening policy perception about the reality of the split, intelligence analysts gave confidence to administration officials as the latter sought to come to grips with momentous shifts in strategic international alignments. Three stages are discernible. While scoring a success in charting the Sino‐Soviet rupture, Kennedy's intelligence advisers initially shied away from ascribing permanence to the rift. Divisions of opinion, bureaucratic caution, cognitive inertia, and Sherman Kent's orthodox views about the advisory role of intelligence combined to produce this reticence. During 1962, the advent of China watchers to government contributed to greater conviction that the split was irreversible. The Sino‐Indian Border War and the Cuban Missile Crisis culminated official Washington's tendency to both view the split a fait accompli and regard Moscow as less menacing than Beijing. A key figure in shaping this approach was Ray Cline, the CIA's Deputy Director for Intelligence.

Raising the intelligence stakes: Corporate information warfare and strategic surprise

In war as in business, surprise can be a powerful strategic weapon. This article draws parallels between military and business planning, and explores the role of strategic intelligence in achieving and preempting surprise in the commercial marketplace. Sherman Kent (1949) defined strategic intelligence as the “kind of knowledge a state must possess regarding other states in order to assure itself that its causes will not suffer nor its undertakings fail because its statesmen and soldiers plan and act in ignorance.” With one or two word changes (business/organization for state; executives/managers for statesmen/soldiers), this definition could apply equally well to the world of business. In highly competitive global markets, ignorance of other players' actions or of developments in the wider business environment can prove costly. The chances of achieving, and/or being subjected to, strategic surprise have increased correlatively with the growth of networked, multinational organizations and electronic commerce. In an age of information warfare, strategic surprise has become virtually synonymous with technological surprise, thereby putting a premium on high-grade intelligence and threat assessment. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Sharing Secrets with Stalin: How the Allies Traded Intelligence, 1941-1945.

Author Bradley Smith reveals the surprisingly rich exchange of wartime intelligence between the Anglo-American allies and the Soviet Union, as well as the procedures and politics that made such an exchange possible. Between the late 1930s and 1945, allied intelligence organisations expanded at an enormous rate in order to acquire the secret information their governments needed to win the war. But, as Smith demonstrates, the demand for intelligence far outpaced the ability of any one ally to produce it. For that reason, Washington, London and Moscow were compelled to share some of their most sensitive secrets. Historians have long known about the close Anglo-American intelligence collaboration, but until now the Soviet connection has been largely unexplored. Smith contends that Cold War animosities helped keep this story from a public that might have found it hard to believe that such cooperation was ever possible. In fact, official denials - from such illustrious Cold Warriors as Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell and the CIA's Sherman Kent - continued well into the late 1980s. Smith argues that, contrary to the official story, Soviet-American intelligence exchanges were both extensive and successful. He shows that East and West were not as hostile to each other during the war or as determined to march right off into the Cold War as many have suggested. Among other things, he provides convincing evidence that the US Army gave the Soviets its highest-grade ULTRA intelligence in August 1945 to speed up the Soviet advances in the Far East. Based on interviews and research in Anglo-American archives and despite limited access to tenaciously guarded Soviet documents, Smith's book persuasively demonstrates how reluctant and suspicious allies, driven by the harsh realities of total war, finally set aside their ideological differences to work closely with people they neither trusted not particularly liked.

The Loi des patentes of 1844

As historians shift their emphasis political to social and economic questions, they risk losing valuable information embedded in old-fashioned sources. In the case of France's July Monarchy, for example, historians working from below have given little time to parliamentary politics. And yet, the restricted franchise notwithstanding, the French deputies were responsible for much social and economic legislation that deserves attention. One example is the Loi des patentes of 1844. Careful study of that legislation, and of the circumstances surrounding it, discloses significant information about the political, social, and economic history of nineteenthcentury France. It adds to our knowledge of, and questions accepted assumptions about, the extent and nature of bourgeois control under the July Monarchy. It also reveals much about the growth of French industry, commerce, and professions, and about the attitudes of the French elite to modernization. Sherman Kent first called attention to this relatively obscure law over forty years ago. He argued that the tax structure of the constitutional monarchy of 1815-48 ensured that the landowners paid higher taxes than the businessman, whether one those taxes on capital invested or income, and thus dominated the electorate. Furthermore, according to Kent the conservative government that came to power in 1840 revised the patente four years later in a way that further reduced the number of voters the business class on the electoral rolls. opposition, he writes, estimated that the new law reduced the electorate by 2,085 voters in Paris alone.' The underlying assumption of this argument, an assump-

The Election of 1827 in France. By Sherman Kent. Cambridge, Mass., 1976. Pp. 225. £8.50. - 1830 in France. Edited by John M. Merriman. New Viewpoints, Franklin Watts, 1975 [1976]. Pp. 232.

The Election of 1827 in France. By Sherman Kent. Cambridge, Mass., 1976. Pp. 225. £8.50. - 1830 in France. Edited by John M. Merriman. New Viewpoints, Franklin Watts, 1975 [1976]. Pp. 232.

The Election of 1827 in France. Sherman Kent

<i>The Election of 1827 in France</i>. Sherman Kent

Book Reviews

Book Reviews

Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy

Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy Get access Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy. 2nd ed. By Sherman Kent. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books. 1965. 226 pp. Index. 42s. 6d. International Affairs, Volume 43, Issue 1, January 1967, Page 203, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/43.1.203a Published: 01 January 1967

Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy by Sherman Kent

Book Review| October 01 1949 Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy by Sherman Kent Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy. By Kent, Sherman. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949. Pp. xiii, 226. $3.00. Theodore Ropp Theodore Ropp Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google South Atlantic Quarterly (1949) 48 (4): 631–632. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-48-4-631 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Theodore Ropp; Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy by Sherman Kent. South Atlantic Quarterly 1 October 1949; 48 (4): 631–632. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-48-4-631 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsSouth Atlantic Quarterly Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 1949 by Duke University Press1949 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy, by Sherman Kent

Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy, <i>by Sherman Kent</i>

Writing History. By Sherman Kent. (New York: F. S. Crofts and Sons, 1941. ix + 136 pp. Bibliographical note, appendix, index. $1.00.)

Writing History. By Sherman Kent. (New York: F. S. Crofts and Sons, 1941. ix + 136 pp. Bibliographical note, appendix, index. $1.00.)

&lt;italic&gt;Electoral Procedure under Louis Philippe.&lt;/italic&gt; By &lt;sc&gt;Sherman Kent&lt;/sc&gt;, Assistant Professor of History in Yale University. [Yale Historical Publications.] (New Haven: Yale University Press. 1937. Pp. viii, 264. $2.50.)

Electoral Procedure under Louis Philippe. By Sherman Kent, Assistant Professor of History in Yale University. [Yale Historical Publications.] (New Haven: Yale University Press. 1937. Pp. viii, 264. $2.50.) Electoral Procedure under Louis Philippe. By Kent Sherman, Assistant Professor of History in Yale University. [Yale Historical Publications.] (New Haven: Yale University Press. 1937. Pp. viii, 264. $2.50.) Edgar Packard Dean Edgar Packard Dean Council on Foreign Relations Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 44, Issue 1, October 1938, Pages 112–115, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/44.1.112 Published: 01 October 1938

Foreign and Comparative Government Sherman Kent's Electoral Procedure under Louis Philippe (Yale University Press, pp. 264, $2.50).

Foreign and Comparative Government Sherman Kent's Electoral Procedure under Louis Philippe (Yale University Press, pp. 264, $2.50).