Robert Sharon Allen (July 14, 1900 — February 23, 1981) was an American journalist, Washington bureau chief for The Christian Science Monitor, and military officer.

Robert Sharon Allen was born on July 14, 1900, in Latonia, Kentucky, to Harry and Lizzie (Elizabeth) Greenberg.

[3] Allen joined the army, lying about his age in order to do so,[4] and served in the cavalry during the Pancho Villa Expedition of 1916–17 and in France during World War I.

He joined the Ku Klux Klan in order to write an exposé about them,[4] and was studying in Munich at the time of Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch (1923).

[6] According to John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev in their 2009 book Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America,[4][7] this was legal for Allen to do, being prior to the passage of the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act, and his motivation is unknown.

Associated Press reported: "Under pressure from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy" in 1962, CIA director John McCone "agreed to tap the telephones of columnists Robert S. Allen and Paul Scott in an effort to identify their sources for classified information which was appearing in their columns," says a memo[13] a decade later to the agency's director.