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Huntington D. Sheldon

U.S. intelligence officer (1903–1987)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 23, 2026
Entity authorityQ5945320
Source-derived summary

Huntington Denton "Ting" Sheldon (February 14, 1903 – May 19, 1987) was an American who 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.

Personal life

His first wife was Magda Merck, youngest daughter of George Merck, the founder of Merck & Co. They were married on April 12, 1928, and had three children, Huntington, Audrey, and Peter. The marriage ended in divorce in November 1936. He was later the husband of science-fiction writer Alice B. Sheldon (alias James Tiptree Jr.), 12 years his junior. In 1987, she shot and killed Sheldon and then herself in what was either a murder-suicide or, based on her personal writings, a suicide pact.

Education

As an undergraduate, he earned a bachelor's degree from Yale University and was a member of Scroll and Key.

References

Further reading

"Mrs.

Editorial summary

“Huntington D. Sheldon” enters the record as u.S. intelligence officer (1903–1987). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Huntington, Sheldon and intelligence can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1903, 1987, 1951, 1961—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1903-02-14. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Huntington, Sheldon and intelligence.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Huntington D. Sheldon” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Huntington, Sheldon and intelligence provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5945320. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1903, 1987, 1951 and 1961.

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Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Huntington D. Sheldon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.