Alan De Voe Tompkins – Chief Warrant Officer, United States Army

From a contemporary press report

Alan DeVoe Tompkins, 61, an Army Reserve Chief Warrant Officer who wrote the book on open source intelligence for American agencies involved in non-covert data-gathering, died of cancer April 4, 1999, at the Hospice of Northern Virginia.

CWO Tompkins worked for International Business Machines Corp. as a systems engineer sporadically from 1961 until 1984, when he turned his attention to full-time work at the Pentagon for the New Haven, Connecticut, reserve unit.

Three days before his death, he retired from his Army work. He had been assigned to the Pentagon from the 3423rd Military Intelligence Detachment, headquartered in New Haven, and had lived in Arlington for the past 25 years.

CWO Tompkins, a native of Indianapolis, was a graduate of Yale University. He received two master's degrees, one in computer science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the other in Russian studies from Yale.

In the early 1990s, he wrote an Army document, “Open Source Intelligence Resources for the Intelligence Professional.” Open source intelligence is the non-cloak-and-dagger aspect of fact-collecting.

He was a member of the Reserve Officers Association, the Military Intelligence Corps Association, the Warrant Officers Association and Adventure Cycling Association. He had received awards from the intelligence community.

His marriage to Kathleen Tompkins of Waitsfield, Vermont, ended in divorce.

Survivors include his wife, Susan S. Tompkins of Arlington, four children from his first marriage, Nancy Tompkins of San Francisco, Edward Tompkins of Seattle, Deborah Sheehan of Marshfield, Maine, and Charles Tompkins of Waitsfield, Vermont; his father; and five grandchildren.


TOMPKINS, ALAN DEVOE

  • CW4   US ARMY
  • VETERAN SERVICE DATES: 08/15/1958 – 04/02/1999
  • DATE OF BIRTH: 01/06/1938
  • DATE OF DEATH: 04/04/1999
  • DATE OF INTERMENT: 05/17/1999
    BURIED AT: SECTION 6-K  ROW 12  SITE 1

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