Researching William Kintner

Kintner was born in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania to Joseph and Florence Kintner, the eighth of nine children. He was appointed to the United States Military Academy in 1936, and was commissioned a second lieutenant upon graduating in 1940. A career Army officer, he landed at Omaha Beach for Operation Overlord during the invasion of Normandy in 1944. He served during the Korean War as an infantry battalion commander during the Battle of Pork Chop Hill. He retired from the U.S. Army as a colonel in 1961, having earned the Bronze Star Medal and Legion of Merit, both with oak leaf clusters.

While in the service, he earned an M.A. and Ph.D. from Georgetown University in 1948. His doctoral dissertation, a study of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was published in 1950 as The Front is Everywhere. Upon retiring from the Army, he taught political science at the University of Pennsylvania, where he remained as professor until 1985. He was deputy director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute until 1969, when he became director. In 1973, President Gerald Ford appointed him U.S. Ambassador to Thailand, a post in which he served from 1973 to 1975. After his diplomatic stint, he returned to Philadelphia in 1975 to serve as president as FPRI and as editor of its journal, Orbis. In that capacity he initiated a joint project with Soviet Institute for the Study of the United States in Canada which permitted the yearly exchange of top non-governmental scholars despite strained cold war diplomatic relations.

In 1986, President Ronald Reagan appointed him to the board of directors of the United States Institute for Peace.

Kintner was a prolific author, writing on foreign policy, arms control, and strategic planning until his death in 1997 of cancer at the age of 81. He is interred at Bryn Athyn Cemetery in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania.