Langer, Former Intelligence Expert in C.I.A., Returns to Old Post--Teaching History

Another professor with a "checkered career" has returned to the fold. William L. Langer '15, Coolidge Professor of History, is back to teaching after spending a year in Washington as assistant director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The C.I.A. is headed by General Walter Bedell Smith, former Chief to Staff to Eisenhower.

"I went down there very suddenly in November of 1950," Langer said yesterday, "to organize the office of national estimate in the C.I.A." His job was one of "co-ordination"--coordinating the various estimates from our different intelligence agencies.

In 1941-42, Langer was a member of the board of analysts, Office of Coordinator of Information. As a civilian, he next became chief of the Research and Analysis Branch, O.S.S. (Office of Strategic Services), which "involved using all the intelligence coming into the government to work out specific policy in government or military plans."

October, 1945 found him a special assistant to the Secretary of State for intelligence.

Langer said the difference between his work for the O.S.S. and C.I.A. was that in the latter "I wasn't so much concerned with research--rather to pull together the results of all the various agencies."

Author of more than a dozen volumes, his latest, "The Challenge to Imperialism," was published by Harper Brothers about two weeks ago. It is the first volume of his history of American foreign policy from 1937 to Pearl Harbor.

Langer, who has been a professor here since 1927, is now teaching History 132b.