Possibly a Serious Possibility

Sherman Kent was rattled. It was March 1951 and Kent, a CIA analyst, had found himself in a troubling conversation about some recent intelligence. A few days earlier, Kent's team had released a report titled ‘Probability of an Invasion of Yugoslavia in 1951’, which concluded that Soviet aggression against Yugoslavia ‘should be considered a serious possibility’. Kent thought the phrase was clear. But when he ran into the chairman of the Policy Planning Staff, he realised his message hadn’t landed as intended. ‘By the way, what did you mean by “serious possibility”?’ the chairman asked. ‘I told him that my personal estimate was on the dark side, namely that the odds were around 65 to 35 in favor of an attack’, Kent would later recall. The chairman was taken aback. He—and others—had read the phrase as meaning something much less likely. Things got worse when Kent talked to his colleagues on the Board of National Estimates. Some interpreted the phrase as meaning a probability as high ... Read full article.