Pforzheimer, Walter

Walter L. Pforzheimer, lawyer, intelligence officer, and book collector. Pforzheimer was born in Port Chester, New York, in 1914, and graduated from Yale College (1935) and Yale Law School (1938). Pforzheimer began his intelligence career in the United States Army, 1942-1945, in the Office of Strategic Services and as an Army Air Force intelligence officer. He was one of the founders of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1946, and as a CIA legislative counsel and liaison to Congress assisted in drafting the 1947 National Security Act. In 1956, he founded the CIA's Historical Intelligence Collection, which he curated until his retirement in 1974. In retirement, he continued to work for the CIA and taught at the Defense Intelligence College. Pforzheimer died in Washington, D.C., in 2003.

Pforzheimer came from a family of book collectors: his father, also named Walter Pforzheimer (1883-1955), collected French armorial bindings and assembled a virtually complete collection of Molière; his uncle Carl H. Pforzheimer (1879-1957) collected Percy Bysshe Shelley and his circle. Pforzheimer inherited and augmented his father's collections, and assembled his own collection of American novelist Frank Richard Stockton. In addition to curating the CIA's Historical Intelligence Collection, Pforzheimer built a personal collection of books and manuscripts documenting the history of military intelligence. Elected to the Yale Library Associates board of trustees in 1936, Pforzheimer was a life-long trustee and donor to the Yale Libraries. He donated his book and manuscript collections of Molière, French armorial bindings, Frank Richard Stockton, and military intelligence to the Beinecke Library in 2001.

Sources:

Peake, Hayden B. "Walter Pforzheimer -- Lawyer, Intelligence Officer, Bibliophile." In: In the Name of Intelligence: Essays in Honor of Walter Pforzheimer (Washington: NIBC Press, c1994).

"Walter L. Pforzheimer, CIA's First Curator, Dies at 88." Washington Post (2003 February 12).

From the guide to the Walter L. Pforzheimer papers, circa 1548-circa 2001, 1940-1995, (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library)