Huntington D. Sheldon
| Huntington Denton "Ting" Sheldon | |
|---|---|
| Born |
February 14, 1903 Greenwich, Connecticut |
| Died | May 19, 1987 (aged 84) McLean, Virginia |
| Education |
Eton College Yale University |
| Occupation | Wall Street Banker US Military Aviator US Intelligence Official |
| Spouse(s) | Magda Merck (1928–1936) Frederica Frelinghuysen (1938–1941?) Alice B. Sheldon (1945–1987) |
| Children | Huntington Sheldon Audrey Sheldon Peter Sheldon |
Huntington Denton "Ting" Sheldon (February 14, 1903 – May 19, 1987) served as the Director of the Office of Current Intelligence of the US Central Intelligence Agency from 1951 to 1961, serving under Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy. Sheldon was the second Director of the OCI, and developed it into a major Office. Sheldon briefed all three Presidents; the President's Intelligence Check List, which became the President's Daily Brief, was developed by Richard Lehman under his direction. His first wife was Magda Merck, youngest daughter of George Merck, the founder of Merck & Co. (Anonymous 1928). They were married on April 12, 1928, and had three children, Huntington, Audrey, and Peter. The marriage ended in divorce in November 1936 (Anonymous 1936). He was later the husband of science-fiction writer Alice B. Sheldon (James Tiptree, Jr.).
As an undergraduate, he earned a bachelor's degree from Yale University and was a member of Scroll and Key.
I would like to talk a bit about [Huntington D.] "Ting" Sheldon, because he was a great man. He had been in Air Force intelligence in England during the war and then went off into private life again, where he was not a great success. He came back in 1951 or 1952 to be the second D/OCI, and he really was the man who built the place. He built an empire while he was at it, because OCI had its own security, its own courier service, its own print shop, and a lot of other things that were all justified by the fact that communications intelligence needed special handling. And so he really had a self-contained operation.
This enabled him over the few years after that to build a powerful organization, and he was completely ruthless in how he did it. People he didn't like were brushed aside one way or another, so that he built a core of people who were basically what he wanted for his shop, which were versatile generalists. He didn't mind having people around who were specialists, but his interests were in the generalists, because in his mind they were a core of people who could do anything. Knight McMahan, his deputy, [tried] to sort of cushion him, because he was not the easiest man in the world.
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