Ray S Cline

Mr. Cline was born in 1918 in Anderson Township, Ill., and reared in Terre Haute, Ind. He received a scholarship in 1935 to attend Harvard University and earned two undergraduate degrees and a doctorate before joining the fledgling C.I.A. in 1949. He was an archetype of the young men who joined the agency in its infancy: high school football captain, Harvard man, wartime operative in the Office of Strategic Services, the nation's chief intelligence agency in World War II. His C.I.A. career included service in covert operations overseas, notably as a station chief in Taiwan from 1958 to 1962 -- his official title was chief, United States Naval Auxiliary Communications Center -- and as chief of station in Bonn from 1966 to 1969. He believed passionately in the cause of the Chinese Nationalists, and in retirement served as head of the Taiwan Committee for a Free China. Mr. Cline left the C.I.A. in 1969 and served as the State Department's chief of intelligence analysis. He gave up Government work in 1973, becoming an executive director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown University. Mr. Cline is survived by his wife of 54 years, Marjorie Wilson, and by two daughters, Sibyl MacKenzie and Judith Fontaine, both of Arlington.