“In an age of bullies, we cannot afford to be a sissy.” – William J. Donovan.
Midway through the Second World War, a message reached Washington from an OSS theater abroad. Its tone was weary, not unusual for the time. The assessment staff later described it as “about average.”
The message read: “recruiting too many men, civilian or military, who have intelligence and sometimes the necessary mechanical training but who lack common sense … we have had at least eight men, who for various quirks in their make-up, have to be pulled from the field … One was definitely a psychiatric case.”
General William “Wild Bill” Donovan had built the Office of Strategic Services at a breathtaking speed. Recruiters filled open billets with whoever seemed bright, brave, or fluent enough. No one could say with any degree of certainty how a specific candidate would behave hiding alone in a farmhouse with the Gestapo searching outside. A candidate who interviewed well in Washington might crack after a few months operating behind enemy lines without seeing another American.
The costs were steep. Every failure came at a high price – training, a compromised mission, or even a blown network. Worse yet were the “bad actors and free talkers” whose indiscretions could kill. The OSS needed a way to find its own breaking point before the enemy did.
Station S
The answer took shape on a quiet country estate in Fairfax County, Virginia, code-named Station S. In the early winter of 1943, Harvard psychologist Henry Murray brought a team of psychologists and psychiatrists to Station S, where they put recruits through a three-and-a-half-day ordeal designed to reveal the whole person.
Candidates arrived in identical Army fatigues, stripped of rank and name tapes. Each received a pseudonym and had to concoct a legend – a cover story they were expected to maintain under questioning. The anonymity served security, and the fatigues removed the props – titles, tailored suits, or uniforms – behind which someone might hide.
What followed resembled a training school more so than a medical examination room. Groups had to move themselves and their gear across a “brook” with just a few boards and some rope. In the Construction test, a candidate directed two “helpers” to build a wooden frame; the helpers were staff members secretly instructed to be lazy, insulting, and obstructive. In the Stress interview, a candidate had minutes to build an alibi before interrogators tore it apart under a bright light. Afterward, a “friendly” Post-Stress interviewer invited the candidate to relax, and to let slip what they should have kept secret.
Between exercises came batteries of paper tests, a lengthy personal interview, and constant observation at meals and during the evening’s carefully constructed social activities. Staff rated each candidate on variables – motivation, effective intelligence, emotional stability, social intelligence, leadership, and, above all, security. A final staff conference reconciled the various reports into a single judgment: fit or unfit.
The Book
By August 1945, the OSS had assessed more than 5,000 recruits, and field units in Ceylon, India, and China had adopted their methods for local agents working through interpreters. When the war finally ended, the staff did something incredibly rare: they sat down to judge their own work.
Drafted between September 1945 and January 1946 – and revised again over the following year – Assessment of Men is notable for its candor. The authors admit that they rarely had adequate job descriptions, that recruits were often assigned entirely different missions once they reached theater. Field appraisals often arrived late; the first 137 reports from Europe came back ten months after Station S opened. Even so, the staff counted every field failure as a fault in the assessment process.
From that reckoning came the book’s central argument for an “organic” approach – a person cannot be fully understood as a sum of isolated test scores. Multiple observers, watching varied situations over several days, had to integrate their observations into a portrait of how one personality would meet one environment. The staff found the interview the most influential single source and emotional stability, which they framed as the “governance of undesirable emotions,” a central variable. An otherwise gifted candidate who broke down under duress could jeopardize an entire mission.
The staff also document their own drift. Early classes impressed the staff so much that ratings tended to be inflated. Later evaluations ran lower as their frame of reference began to shift – any scale without a steady anchor will wander. Ultimately, the book was less a manual than an honest field report on the fine art of assessing human beings.
Why It Still Matters
In 1985 – forty years after the staff began drafting the book – CIA Director William Casey forwarded a copy to his personnel director with a somewhat dry note: “Attached for whatever it is worth.”
It was worth a great deal.
Assessment of Men became a central component of the modern assessment center, adopted by AT&T in the 1950s and used since by corporations, police departments, and governments worldwide. Special operations selection courses still echo its foundational logic: put candidates under intense pressure and watch what they do and how they respond.
Five lessons endure for leaders today:
1. Define the job before you judge the person.
The OSS’s greatest challenge to overcome was vague requirements. Selection is only as good as the understanding of the role and the environment in which it will be performed.
2. Watch behavior, not credentials.
Situational exercises exposed what résumés and polished interviews concealed. How someone responds to a sabotaging teammate reveals more than a list of achievements.
3. Use many methods and several sets of eyes.
No single test or rater was reliable in isolation. Judgment improved when diverse observers weighed various forms of evidence together.
4. Test for steadiness, not just talent.
Brilliance without emotional control or discretion was a proven liability. Character under pressure deserves as much weight as skill.
5. Close the loop.
The staff measured predictions against field performance and freely admitted their errors and drift. A talent system that never checks its results is only guessing at outcomes.
Eighty years later, the tools have changed, but the challenge has not. Organizations still send people into uncertain environments with too little insight into how they will persevere under stress. Station S proved the breaking point can be predicted, but only if we are willing to look.
