W. Averell Harriman

W. Averell Harriman (1891 to 1986) was a son of the railroad financier E. H. Harriman, a member of Skull and Bones at Yale University in the class of 1913, chairman of the Union Pacific Railroad from 1932 to 1946, and a partner in Brown Brothers Harriman from its formation. He ran Lend-Lease aid from London, served as ambassador to the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom, as United States Secretary of Commerce, as director of mutual security and as governor of New York, and held senior State Department posts under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

Family and Yale

Harriman was born in New York on November 15, 1891, attended Groton School and received his B.A. from Yale in 1913.¹² His mother, Mary Averell Harriman, was the civic activist whose letters to him run into the 1930s in his papers, and the Library of Congress records his membership of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission from 1915 to 1954.¹³ The Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor was established in October 1910 by Mrs. E. H. Harriman, who according to a report of the New York Times provided funds for the office and its annual running expenses, her contributions over eight years amounting to more than 500,000 dollars; the report adds the "additional assistance of John D. Rockefeller and others." The Cold Spring Harbor image archive lists the donation as 10,000 dollars in 1910 and holds Charles Davenport's letter to Mrs. E. H. Harriman about the first training class, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington accepted the office from her as a gift.⁴⁵

Antony C. Sutton places Harriman among the initiates of Skull and Bones in 1913 and writes that "Like other initiates Harriman has carefully expunged membership from the public record."⁶ Ron Rosenbaum listed him among the members of the society in an article in Esquire in September 1977, together with McGeorge Bundy, Henry L. Stimson, Henry Luce and Potter Stewart.⁷ Jacques Leslie wrote in Salon in March 2000 that Harriman was among the members named by students of his era.⁸

Sutton writes that E. H. Harriman bought into the Union Pacific after the crash of 1893, and that the railroad's general counsel, Judge Robert Scott Lovett, was the father of Robert A. Lovett, who "with the two Harriman boys, Roland and Averell, was initiated into The Order." Sutton gives the years as 1913 for Averell, 1917 for E. Roland Harriman and 1918 for Lovett.⁹

Union Pacific and Illinois Central

The Library of Congress chronology lists Harriman as vice president of the Union Pacific from 1915 to 1917, director of the Illinois Central Railroad from 1915 to 1946, chairman of the Illinois Central executive committee from 1931 to 1942, and chairman of the board of the Union Pacific from 1932 to 1946.¹ His brother E. Roland Harriman succeeded him as chairman of the board of the Union Pacific in 1946 and held the post until January 30, 1969, according to the company's annual report for 1968; the same report states that Roland Harriman was elected a director in 1920.¹⁰ On November 2, 1950, Harry S. Truman announced at a news conference that Roland Harriman, "a brother of Averell Harriman, Special Assistant to me," would become president of the American Red Cross on December 1, 1950.¹¹ A report of December 1930 describes Judge Lovett as the "now chairman" of E. H. Harriman's Union Pacific.¹² Sutton's chronology adds that in 1917 Harriman became a director of the Guaranty Trust Company, and states that the Harriman family's holding of about one third of Guaranty stock was put into a J. P. Morgan and Company voting trust in 1912, when Mrs. Edward Harriman sold 8,000 of the 20,000 outstanding shares to Morgan.¹³¹⁴ The finding aid states that Harriman "took charge of the Union Pacific Railroad" in the early 1930s and was credited with reviving the line during the worst years of the Depression.³

Shipping and the Hamburg-American Line

The Library of Congress lists Harriman as chairman of the board of the Merchant Shipbuilding Corporation from 1917 to 1925.¹ On August 16, 1920 the chairman of the United States Shipping Board, William S. Benson, announced co-operative working agreements between the American Ship and Commerce Corporation of New York and the Hamburg-American Line of Germany, to run for 20 years. Each party was to supply equal tonnage to services between the United States and Germany, each was to act as the other's agent in its home country, and the American corporation was to supply passenger ships not exceeding 40,000 gross tons within a year. Benson said: "There is no German money in the American end of the business nor is there any agreement for German investment in any American companies."¹⁵ A report of 1930 states that in 1920 Harriman "set out to make the U. S. great upon the sea, formed an alliance with Hamburg-American Line," and was "Thwarted in the fulfillment of this."¹²

The Harriman papers contain incoming and outgoing cable files with the Hamburg-American Line for 1920 to 1926 and with Wilhelm Cuno for 1920 to 1931, a file on the sale of the United American Lines steamers to the Hamburg-American Line in 1926, and a Hamburg-American Line subject file for 1933 to 1937.¹⁶

W. A. Harriman and Company

The Library of Congress lists Harriman as chairman of the board of W. A. Harriman and Company from 1920 to 1931; a report of December 1930 states that he and his brother formed the firm in 1919. The same report says the firm "was one of the first to enter Europe after the War, made many a loan in Germany," was active in Polish financing, financed Silesian zinc mines with the Anaconda group, and in 1929 backed the Aviation Corporation together with Lehman Brothers.¹¹² Sutton's chronology lists 1920 as the year the firm was established with Roland Harriman as vice president.¹³

The Georgian manganese concession

The Soviet government concluded a concession contract with the American company "Harriman ('The Georgian Manganese' Stock Company)" dated June 12, 1925, relating to property nationalized by the Georgian Soviet decrees; the Soviet side cited it in 1936 as an example of a concession made by the Union government for property nationalized by a constituent republic.¹⁷ The Hoover Institution holds an agreement of 1925 between the Tchitouri Manganese Exporting Society (Tchemo) and W. A. Harriman and Company, and the Harriman papers list a Tchemo agreement and a syndicate agreement of June 12, 1925, an assignment from W. A. Harriman and Company of July 18, 1925, property of voting trustees of August 10, 1925, and an ore-shipment contract of November 1925.¹⁸¹⁹ Sutton gives the date of the concession agreement as July 12, 1925, states that four million dollars was spent on mechanizing the mines and on a loading elevator at Poti, and writes that the chairman of the Georgian Manganese Company was Matthew C. Brush, whom he calls the Order's "front man." Sutton's chronology dates the formation of the company to 1923.¹³²⁰

A report of March 1926 ranked the manganese rights obtained by the Harriman interests second among the concessions granted to foreigners, after the Volga timber concessions given to the former German chancellor Joseph Wirth. A report of July 1927 states that the Soviets had reconfirmed the concession and that the British had been using their offices to thwart it.²¹²² The Library of Congress lists a trip to the USSR in 1926 and the investment as running 1925 to 1928; its files include Harriman's correspondence while in the USSR for 1926 and 1927, his resignation in 1928, a termination agreement of August 21 to 28, 1928, and Soviet notes from 1928 to 1943.¹¹⁹ The Soviet Bureau of Foreign Concessions announced in July 1928 the "amicable termination" of the 22-year concession after three years, with the 3,500,000 dollars spent by the concessionaires to be treated as a loan repaid by the Soviet government.²³ Sutton wrote that the Soviets expropriated the concessions of the 1920s, including Harriman's, usually without reimbursement, and that Harriman took three million dollars in Soviet bonds as compensation. Sutton quotes a statement of Harriman to John B. Stetson Jr. of the State Department: "Mr. Harriman said that they expect to drop about three million dollars which they would charge off to experience."²⁴

A second Soviet-related business, the Russian Finance and Construction Corporation, is documented in the Harriman papers for 1921 to 1952, including its consolidation with the Georgia Manganese Company in 1927 and an agreement with the Soviet government in 1928. A folder in the same files is titled "Reynders, John V. W. re J. Henry Schroder Banking Corp. acquisition of Thyssen stock, 1940."²⁵ The Georgian National Archives hold a photograph of Harriman in Poti dated about 1920 to 1921, and the description attached to the image states that "Harriman's company held the concession for the Chiatura manganese mines during this period."²⁶ Sutton writes that Harriman participated in Ruskombank, the first Soviet commercial bank, whose first vice president for foreign operations was Max May of Guaranty Trust Company.²⁷

Brown Brothers Harriman

On December 22, 1930 the merger of Brown Brothers and Company and the Harriman firms was reported as completed "last week"; the report counts 16 partners in the new firm of Brown Bros., Harriman and Company, eleven of them Yale graduates, and notes that partner Ellery Sedgwick James was a classmate of the Harriman partners Edward Roland Noel Harriman, Prescott Bush and Knight Woolley, and that Robert A. Lovett was the son of Judge Lovett.¹² The firm's own history states that the merger was first discussed among six partners in November 1930, that twelve of 17 partners had graduated from Yale, and that in 1931 an emergency infusion of 10 million dollars from Averell and Roland Harriman averted collapse after Germany declared a standstill on debt payments to foreign creditors.²⁸ A finding aid for the firm's records gives 1931 as the year Brown Brothers merged with the Harriman interests.²⁹ The printed circular announcing the union, dated January 2, 1931, states that "effective January 1, 1931" the businesses of Brown Brothers & Co., Harriman Brothers & Co. and W. A. Harriman & Co., Inc. were united in Brown Brothers Harriman & Co.³⁰ The firm's partner table gives October 30, 1926 as the date Averell and Roland Harriman became partners of the Harriman bank (organized on St. Patrick's Day 1927 under the name W. A. Harriman & Co. and renamed Harriman Brothers & Co.), and January 1, 1931 to October 31, 1946 as his term as general partner of the merged firm, with limited partner status afterward.³⁰ The firm's history records that he chaired the Department of Commerce Business Advisory Council from 1937 to 1939 and served with the N.R.A., the National Defense Advisory Commission and the Office of Production Management before going to Great Britain for lend-lease.³⁰ Zachary Karabell wrote that the merger was announced on December 12, 1930, and that Harriman "was flush with the millions provided by his father's fortune" but "his business was struggling as well."³¹ The Library of Congress lists Harriman as a partner from 1931 to 1946, and holds a cable file of Brown Brothers Harriman for 1931.¹¹⁶ The report describes Brown Brothers as formed in 1825 by Alexander Brown, with an associate house, Brown, Shipley and Company, in which Montagu Norman had been a partner before becoming head of the Bank of England. Sutton's chronology gives 1933 for the merger and lists the Brown Brothers Harriman partners who were members of the society, including Averell Harriman (class of 1913) and Roland Harriman (class of 1917).¹³

Union Banking Corporation

A Treasury Department memorandum of August 18, 1941, from Mr. May to J. W. Pehle, subject "Union Banking Corporation," states that the corporation, incorporated August 4, 1924, was wholly owned by the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart of Rotterdam, that the investigation "produced no evidence as to the ownership of this Dutch bank," and that its president, Cornelis Lievense, believed Baron Heinrich Thyssen might own a substantial interest. It records gold purchases of over eight million dollars in 1931 to 1933, of which 3,085,000 dollars was delivered to the Federal Reserve Bank on June 15, 1934, and states that "In the fall of 1938, during the Munich crisis, Union Banking Corporation held two million dollars in currency in a safe deposit box in New York, but this sum was subsequently deposited in the company's account with Brown Brothers, Harriman."³²

On October 20, 1942 the Alien Property Custodian, Leo T. Crowley, signed Vesting Order Number 248, vesting the 4,000 shares of Union Banking Corporation, published in the Federal Register on November 7, 1942. The registered owners were E. Roland Harriman with 3,991 shares, Cornelius Lievense with 4, and Harold D. Pennington, Ray Morris, Prescott S. Bush, H. J. Kouwenhoven and Johann G. Groeninger with one share each. The order states that the shares were held for the benefit of the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart, which it describes as owned or controlled by members of the Thyssen family. W. Averell Harriman is not among the registered owners.³³ Sutton writes that "the Harrimans had a financial interest in" the corporation, that Roland was a director, and that Averell Harriman, Roland Harriman, E. S. James and Knight Woolley were "through the Union Bank (in which they held a major interest) prime financial backers of Hitler"; he lists eight directors in 1932: E. Roland Harriman, H. J. Kouwenhoven, Knight Woolley, Cornelius Lievense, Ellery Sedgwick James, Johann Groninger, J. L. Guinter and Prescott Sheldon Bush.³⁴ A Council on Foreign Relations table of November 1951 lists Brown Brothers Harriman officers who were members as E. Roland Harriman, Ray Morris, Knight Woolley and Thomas McCance.³⁵

Today, Newsweek and the Business Advisory Council

The Library of Congress lists Harriman as co-founder with Vincent Astor of the weekly Today in 1933, merged with Newsweek in 1937, and as chairman of the Business Advisory Council from 1937 to 1939; he held the position of Administrator and special assistant at the National Recovery Administration in 1934 and 1935 and founded the Sun Valley ski resort in Idaho in 1935 and 1936.¹ On September 11, 1933 Astor and Harriman announced a weekly, Today, to be edited by Raymond Moley.³⁶ On March 17, 1961 Philip Graham sent Alfred Friendly to Rome to secure a pledge from Harriman, "an early Newsweek backer," to sell his 13 percent holding in Newsweek to the Washington Post.³⁷

Lend-Lease and the Moscow embassy

Harriman became Franklin D. Roosevelt's special representative to Great Britain with the rank of ambassador in March 1941, serving until September 1943, and chaired the President's special mission to the USSR.¹³ On August 6, 1941 the Secretary of State sent Winant, the ambassador in the United Kingdom, a telegram marked "Personal from Harriman" relaying a conversation with Brendan Bracken, the British Minister of Information, about American belief that Britain was using Lend-Lease materials to foster and retain its commercial exports.³⁸

He was ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1943 to 1946.¹ A telegram of February 10, 1944 from Moscow reports a conversation with Anastas Mikoyan about the Persian route and the decorations proposed for the American officers who supervised it.³⁹ On February 13, 1944 he wrote to Harry Hopkins that he did not intend to object to a supplementary agreement to the Third Protocol and that the Department had indicated legal difficulties in arranging a reconstruction credit under the Johnson Act.⁴⁰ Sutton quotes a report of June 30, 1944 from Harriman in Moscow to the State Department in which Stalin is said to have stated that about two-thirds of all the large industrial enterprises in the Soviet Union had been built with United States help or technical assistance.⁴¹ On February 10, 1944 the Acting Secretary of State had sent Harriman the replies approved by the President to three questions asked by the Polish government.⁴²

Sutton reproduces an account of a dinner party in 1971 at which, he writes, the journalist Edward Weintal told Harriman: "You told Roosevelt that you were convinced that the Soviets did not want to introduce a Communist government into Poland." Sutton states that Weintal cited a State Department telegram of February 12, 1944 from Harriman to Roosevelt, that Harriman shouted "If you print anything like that in your book, I'll break your jaw," and that a Washington Post reporter noted the details in a column by Maxine Cheshire of March 17, 1971.⁴³

Ambassador to the United Kingdom and Secretary of Commerce

The State Department records that Harriman resigned as ambassador to the Soviet Union in February 1946 and assumed his duties as ambassador in the United Kingdom in April 1946.⁴⁴ On April 22, 1948 President Truman accepted his resignation as United States Secretary of Commerce, effective that day, so that he could take up the administration of the European Recovery Program.⁴⁵ The Library of Congress lists the commerce post as 1946 to 1948, and states that Truman named him ambassador to the Court of St. James's before recalling him to Washington to become secretary of commerce.¹³ Harry Kern and the historian Howard Schonberger wrote that Kern and Harriman, as Secretary of Commerce, helped to turn American occupation policy in Japan away from democratic reform.⁴⁶

The Marshall Plan

In May 1948 Truman sent Harriman to Paris as Special Representative in Europe to carry out the European Recovery Program, and he returned to the United States in mid-1950 to become the president's special assistant.³ Lincoln Gordon worked under Harriman on the Marshall Plan mission in London. Vernon Walters served as Harriman's aide at Marshall Plan headquarters in Paris.⁴⁷ Robert R. Mullen recalled that he and E. Howard Hunt both worked for the Marshall Plan in Paris from 1948 to 1950, when Dorothy Hunt was employed by Harriman.⁴⁸ The Library of Congress files for the period also record his mediation in the British-Iranian oil crisis of 1951 and the Korean War controversy over the dismissal of General Douglas MacArthur.³

Mutual Security and the Council on Foreign Relations

The volume of Foreign Relations of the United States for 1951 records that the International Security Affairs Committee was to be abolished and that Harriman had been nominated as Director for Mutual Security on October 11, 1951; the Library of Congress lists him as director of the Mutual Security Agency from 1951 to 1953 and chairman of the North Atlantic Commission on Defense Plans in 1951 and 1952.¹⁴⁹ On December 12, 1950 Hamilton Fish Armstrong sent Harriman, then at the White House, a statement of a Council study group on aid to Europe, noting in the covering letter that Allen Dulles had spoken to Harriman about it that morning.⁵⁰ The Council's officers for 1952 to 1953 included Harriman among the directors, and he is listed among the individual donors of 10,000 dollars or more.⁵¹⁵²

Governor of New York

Harriman was governor of New York from 1955 to 1958; the Library of Congress lists the term as 1955 to 1959 and notes that the papers of the governorship are held at Syracuse University.¹⁵³ Mary Lasker recalled in her Columbia oral history that Harriman asked for suggestions for a commissioner of mental hygiene soon after the election, and that Lester Markel of the New York Times telephoned to ask whether she knew Paul Hoch, then in charge of research at the institute; Hoch's appointment was announced in July 1955.⁵⁴ The Columbia oral history of Grayson Kirk, held by the Eisenhower Library, covers Harriman's donation of the Arden House estate to Columbia University.⁵⁵

Kennedy administration and Vietnam

By September 1962 Harriman was Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, and by August 1963 Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.⁵⁶⁵⁷ On August 24, 1963 the State Department sent telegram 243 to Henry Cabot Lodge in Saigon, stating that the "US Government cannot tolerate situation in which power lies in Nhu's hands" and instructing the country team to "make detailed plans as to how we might bring about Diem's replacement if this should become necessary." The telegram was signed by George Ball.⁵⁸ A memorandum for the record by Victor Krulak of the same day records the account of Michael Forrestal that "Hilsman and Governor Harriman" had converted a proposed course of action into an instruction to Lodge, that it had been sent to the President for approval, and that it was not something on which Defense clearance was desired.⁵⁹ Maxwell Taylor said in 1981 that the telegram had been drafted by Harriman, Roger Hilsman and Forrestal and dispatched "without the concurrence of the Defense Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or the CIA," and called it an "end run" in his memoirs; Hilsman maintained that the President and representatives of the agencies concerned had cleared it.⁶⁰

On October 7, 1963 Harriman attended a White House meeting on Brazil with Kennedy, Robert McNamara, Edwin Martin and Lincoln Gordon, at which Kennedy asked whether the United States might find it desirable to intervene militarily.⁶¹ On June 19, 1963 he attended the meeting at which Kennedy approved a sabotage program against Cuba, one of the programs later grouped as Operation Mongoose, with John McCone and McGeorge Bundy present.⁶²

Laos

Harriman headed the American delegation to the Geneva conference on Laos in 1961 and 1962; the Library of Congress lists him as deputy representative to the conference.¹⁶³ A memorandum of his conversation with the North Vietnamese foreign minister at Geneva on July 22, 1962 records that he said the United States intended to carry out the Laos agreements "in the letter and in the spirit," including the removal of its military personnel from Laos.⁶⁴ The State Department editorial note states that "On July 23, Secretary Rusk signed for the United States the Declaration on the Neutrality of Laos."⁶⁵

Paris peace talks

In October 1968 Harriman and Cyrus Vance led the American side in the Paris talks on Vietnam. A telegram from the Paris embassy dated October 9, 1968 is headed "From Harriman and Vance" and reports a meeting in which Le Duc Tho, Xuan Thuy and Lau joined the Americans during a tea break.⁶⁶

Marriages and papers

The Library of Congress lists Harriman's marriages as 1915 to Kathleen Lanier Lawrence (divorced 1929), 1930 to Marie Norton Whitney (died 1970) and 1971 to Pamela Harriman, formerly Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward. Sutton notes that Pamela Hayward had been married to Randolph Churchill.¹¹³

The W. Averell Harriman Papers in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division run to 346,760 items in 1,041 containers, with series for the Georgian Manganese Company and the Russian Finance and Construction Corporation, and a Classified, Top Secret, Restricted Data and Sensitive Compartmented Information series for 1946 to 1980.³ FRUS volume III for 1961 to 1963 records that its documents were drawn from the papers while still in the possession of the late ambassador, and other volumes cite the Chronology File for May to August 1962.³⁰⁶⁴