We celebrate the life and mourn the loss of Alan Sokolski of Silver Spring, Maryland, who passed away on March 3 at the age of 93. His wife of nearly 60 years, the late Carol Stitt Sokolski, whom he met at Cornell, predeceased him in 2016. Their younger daughter, Lauren Sokolski, died four years later. He is survived by their elder daughter, Lynn Sokolski, her spouse, Bentley R. Noland, and their daughter, Samantha Noland, his only grandchild.
A graduate of Cornell University’s School of Mechanical Engineering (’52; BME ’53), he earned an MBA and a PhD in economics from Columbia University (59; ’62). His dissertation, The Establishment of Manufacturing in Nigeria, was published in 1965 by Frederick A. Praeger. His military education included The National War College at Fort McNair, Washington, D.C. from which he received the resident-course diploma, earned concurrently while he was the Central Intelligence Agency’s member of the faculty (1976-77).
Dr. Sokolski commissioned a second lieutenant in 1953 as an AFROTC graduate, served a two-year active-duty tour (’54-’56), mostly in France. He retired from the Air Force Reserve (’83) in the rank of colonel (0-6). Before entering federal government service, he had been employed in professional positions with Western Union, Hazeltine Electronics, Foster Wheeler and Pfizer. Beginning in 1962, he occupied a variety of positions in the executive branch, first as an economist with the Federal Reserve Board, and next with the Agency of International Development in Lagos, Nigeria. Then from 1965 until 2020, he was continuously associated with the intelligence community; five years with the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (’65-’70), 28.5 years with the CIA (’70-’98), four and-a-half years with the National Reconnaissance Office (’98-’03) and 17 additional years as an independent contractor with the CIA.
During his active-duty years with the CIA he occupied positions of ever-increasing responsibility from branch chief to assistant national intelligence officer, and most notably as the founding and long-serving chairman of the intelligence community-wide DCI’s Foreign Denial and Deception Analysis Committee that inter alia was responsible for all the nation’s major intelligence espionage damage assessments of the 1980s. Dr. Sokolski was a member of the Agency’s Senior Intelligence Service, and the recipient of the Agency’s seal medallion, its Career Intelligence Medal and its Intelligence Medal of Merit, as well as the Intelligence Community’s National Intelligence Medal of Achievement and its highest honor, the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal.
He and Carol loved traveling. They visited all 50 states and more than 60 countries on all continents, and they shared a love of theater, literature, ballet, opera, classical music, film and art. In his second retirement, Dr. Sokolski, inter alia, enjoyed year-round courses offered by Johns Hopkins’ Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.
Services entrusted to Sagel Bloomfield Danzansky Goldberg Funeral Care.
or the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.