William George Hyland (1933–2008) was a leading U.S. foreign policy expert and Sovietologist. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, he was raised there and in Wisconsin. He earned a B.A. in History from Washington University in St. Louis, where he was a member of the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity, followed by an M.A. in History from the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 1954. After serving in the U.S. Army's 2nd Armored Division in West Germany from 1950 to 1953, Hyland joined the Central Intelligence Agency in the mid-1950s, working on the Berlin and Soviet desks as a Kremlinologist. He briefed CIA Director Allen Dulles, authored a 1960 memorandum predicting Nikita Khrushchev's response to the U-2 incident, and published 'The Fall of Khrushchev' in 1968 while still at the CIA. Hyland joined the National Security Council in 1969 as deputy to Helmut Sonnenfeldt, participating in the Nixon-Kissinger Moscow summit. He served as Director of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research from January 21, 1974, to November 24, 1975, and as Deputy National Security Advisor from November 3, 1975, to January 20, 1977, under President Gerald Ford. Post-government, he worked at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (affiliated with Georgetown University) and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, edited Foreign Affairs magazine from 1983 to 1992, and served on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board during George H.W. Bush's presidency. Hyland authored several books, including 'Mortal Rivals: Superpower Relations from Nixon to Reagan' (1987), 'The Cold War Is Over' (1990), and later works on American songwriters like 'George Gershwin: A New Biography' (2003). He resided in Vienna, Virginia, at the time of his death from an aortic aneurysm on March 25, 2008, at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, Virginia.