OSCAR G. IDEN (1891-1983)

“To all but his intimate friends Oscar, otherwise known as ‘Captain,’ exhibits a shadow of reserve, but beneath the surface is a great fund of good-fellowship.” 

— Georgetown Yearbook, 1922

Oscar Glenn Iden, a 1924 graduate of the School of Foreign Service, was a career public servant, a lifelong student of public affairs, and a generous friend of Georgetown University and its Institute for the Study of Diplomacy. He and his late wife Cecilia endowed this series of lectures which began in 1976. 

Oscar Iden was born in 1891, spent most of his childhood in Nebraska, and launched his long career in public service at an unusually early age. Exaggerating his fourteen years by two, he joined the United States Navy in 1905. He sailed for a year with President Theodore Roosevelt’s “Great White Fleet,” which “showed the flag” around the world from 1907 to 1909. 

Leaving the Navy in 1908, Oscar Iden began his civil service career as a Treasury guard. He joined the Income Tax Division of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in 1914 and would remain with the IRS throughout his long professional career. He was commissioned in the Army of the United States in June 1917 and served until August 1919 as a captain on the staff of the Commanding General at Camp Lee, Virginia. Thereafter he served a further 28 years in the Income Tax Unit of the IRS. Drawing upon his training as both a CPA and a lawyer, Oscar Iden specialized in investigative and legal work on income tax evasion. He was in charge of major investigations in the United States, Cuba, and Europe and is said to have recovered substantial sums for the U.S. Treasury from European havens.

Shortly after his retirement from the IRS in 1948, he was recruited for a special mission by Senator Hung Butler, the Nebraska Republican Chairman of the Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs. For six months, Mr. Iden conducted an undercover investigation of the economic and political situation in the Territory of Hawaii, in connection with the statehood bill later defeated in 1950.

While fully engaged in his IRS career, Oscar Iden earned degrees from several Washington area universities. At Georgetown, he earned a Certificate in Foreign Service in 1922 and a Bachelor of Foreign Service in 1924. He then went on to earn a Master of Political Science from American University in 1928 and a Bachelor of Laws from National University (later merged with George Washington University) in 1931. Later that year he was admitted to the District of Columbia bar. An avid reader and lifelong student, he pursued further graduate studies—in accountancy, statistics and psychology—at George Washington University and Columbus University (now a part of Catholic University Law School). 

Oscar and Cecilia Iden, who married in 1915, traveled extensively throughout their sixty-six years together. On December 17, 1983 at the age of 92, Oscar Iden died, two years after his wife. Their great good will and generosity will long continue to benefit the present and future generations at Georgetown University.