W. Averell Harriman

Early life and education

William Averell Harriman was born in New York City, the son of railroad baron Edward Henry Harriman and Mary Williamson Averell. He was the brother of E. Roland Harriman and Mary Harriman Rumsey. Harriman was a close friend of Hall Roosevelt, the brother of Eleanor Roosevelt.

During the summer of 1899, Harriman's father organized the Harriman Alaska Expedition, a philanthropic-scientific survey of coastal Alaska and Russia that attracted 25 of the leading scientific, naturalist, and artist luminaries of the day, including John Muir, John Burroughs, George Bird Grinnell, C. Hart Merriam, Grove Karl Gilbert, and Edward Curtis, along with 100 family members and staff, aboard the steamship George Elder. This gave young Harriman his first introduction to Russia, a nation on which he spent much attention in his later life in public service.

Harriman attended Groton School in Massachusetts before going on to Yale, where he joined the Skull and Bones society and Psi Upsilon. He graduated in 1913. After graduating, he inherited one of the largest fortunes in America - his father had died in 1909 - and became Yale's youngest Crew coach.

Career

Business affairs

Using money from his father, he established the W.A. Harriman & Co banking business in 1922. His brother Roland joined the business in 1927 and the name was changed to Harriman Brothers & Company. In 1931 it merged with Brown Bros. & Co. to create the highly successful Wall Street firm Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. Notable employees included George Herbert Walker and his son-in-law Prescott Bush.

Harriman's main properties included Brown Brothers & Harriman & Co, the Union Pacific Railroad, the Merchant Shipbuilding Corporation, and venture capital investments that included the Polaroid Corporation. Harriman's associated properties included the Southern Pacific Railroad (including the Central Pacific Railroad), the Illinois Central Railroad, Wells Fargo & Co., the Pacific Mail Steamship Co., American Ship & Commerce, Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Aktiengesellschaft (HAPAG), the American Hawaiian Steamship Co., United American Lines, the Guaranty Trust Company, and the Union Banking Corporation. He served as Chairman of The Business Council, then known as the Business Advisory Council for the United States Department of Commerce, in 1937 and 1939.

Politics

Harriman's older sister, Mary Rumsey, encouraged Averell to leave his finance job and work with her and their friends, the Roosevelts, to advance the goals of the New Deal. Averell joined the NRA National Recovery Administration, a federal effort to revitalize the American economy via price controls, marking the beginning of his political career.

Thoroughbred racing

Following the death of August Belmont Jr., in 1924, Harriman, George Walker, and Joseph E. Widener purchased much of Belmont's thoroughbred breeding stock. Harriman raced under the nom de course of Arden Farm. Among his horses, Chance Play won the 1927 Jockey Club Gold Cup. He also raced in partnership with Walker under the name Log Cabin Stable before buying him out. U.S. Racing Hall of Fame inductee Louis Feustel, trainer of Man o' War, trained the Log Cabin horses until 1926. Of the partnership's successful runners purchased from the August Belmont estate, Ladkin is best remembered for defeating the European star Epinard in the International Special.

War seizures controversy

Harriman's banking business was the main Wall Street connection for German companies and the varied U.S. financial interests of Fritz Thyssen, who was a financial backer of the Nazi Party until 1938. The Trading With the Enemy Act (enacted on October 6, 1917) classified any business transactions for profit with enemy nations as illegal, and any funds or assets involved were subject to seizure by the U.S. government. The declaration of war on the U.S. by Hitler led to a U.S. government order on October 20, 1942, to seize German interests in the U.S., which included Harriman's operations in New York City.

The Harriman business interests seized under the act in October and November 1942 included:

Union Banking Corporation (UBC) (from Thyssen and Brown Brothers Harriman)

Holland-American Trading Corporation (from Harriman)

Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation (from Harriman)

Silesian-American Corporation (this company was partially owned by a German entity; during the war, the Germans tried to take full control of Silesian-American. In response to that, the American government seized German-owned minority shares in the company, leaving the U.S. partners to carry on the portion of the business in the United States.)

The assets were held by the government for the duration of the war, then returned afterward; UBC was dissolved in 1951. Compensation for wartime losses in Poland was based on prewar assets. Harriman, who owned vast coal reserves in Poland, was handsomely compensated for them through an agreement between the American and Polish governments. Poles who had owned little but their homes received negligible sums.

World War I diplomacy

During the war he was active in publicizing the "Rape of Belgium" in the US. In 1916, President Wilson entrusted him with organizing the American intervention in the war ("Operation Harriman"). In this capacity he supported the organizers of the February Revolution in Russia.

World War II diplomacy

By virtue of his previous experience as a fixer in organizing the American intervention in the First World War, at the outbreak of World War II Harriman became Roosevelt's personal envoy to Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin, with the aim of establishing a direct link with the leaders of the countries enemy of Nazi Germany. He was the first - since 1940 - to speak of genocide underway in German concentration camps and of gas chambers.

Beginning in the spring of 1941, Harriman served President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a special envoy to Europe and helped coordinate the Lend-Lease program. Roosevelt, in appointing him, referred to Harriman as his "defense expediter." Harriman arrived in London in March 1941, and was quickly absorbed into the close circle of counselors and intimates cultivated by the British prime Minister Winston Churchill. Less than a week later, he was dining with the prime minister at 10 Downing Street when a major bombardment by the Luftwaffe began, and he joined Churchill on the roof to watch the bombs fall.

Less than a month after his arrival in London, during another bomber raid, Harriman began a romantic affair with Pamela Digby Churchill, who was married to Churchill's son Randolph. Their marriage was in tatters. a result of his steady drinking problems and his gambling addiction. Pamela was 21 years old and Harriman was 50.

As part of his official duties, Harriman was expected to supply Roosevelt with regular reports on Churchill's actions and character. Harriman believed that the U.S. would inevitably be drawn into the conflict, in spite of the isolationist sentiment at home. In August 1941, Harriman was present at the Atlantic Conference meeting between FDR and Winston Churchill in Placentia Bay, which yielded the Atlantic Charter. The joint agreement would establish American and British goals for the period following the end of World War II—before the U.S. was involved in that war—in the form of a common declaration of principles that were eventually endorsed by all of the Allies. Harriman was subsequently dispatched to Moscow to negotiate the terms of the Lend-Lease agreement with the Soviet Union in September 1941, together with the Canadian publishing millionaire Lord Beaverbrook, who represented the United Kingdom.

Harriman tended to follow Beaverbrook's argument that since Germany had committed three million men to the invasion of the Soviet Union—so that the Soviets were doing the bulk of the fighting against the Third Reich—it was in the best interests of the Western powers to do everything to assist the Soviet Union. The decision to aid the Soviet Union was taken against the advice of the U.S. ambassador in Moscow, Laurence Steinhardt, who from the moment that Operation Barbarossa started on June 22, 1941, had been sending cables predicting the Soviet Union would be rapidly defeated, and that any American aid would thus be wasted. Likewise, General George Marshall was advising President Roosevelt that it was inevitable that Germany would crush the Soviet Union, and predicted that the Wehrmacht would reach Lake Baikal by the end of 1941.

Statesman of foreign and domestic affairs

Harriman served as ambassador to the Soviet Union until January 1946. When he returned to the United States, he worked hard to get George Kennan's Long Telegram into wide distribution. Kennan's analysis, which generally accorded with Harriman's, became the cornerstone of Truman's Cold War strategy of containment. From April to October 1946, he was ambassador to Britain, but he was soon appointed to become United States Secretary of Commerce under President Harry S. Truman to replace Henry A. Wallace, a critic of Truman's foreign policies. In 1948, he was put in charge of the Marshall Plan. In Paris, he became friendly with the CIA agent Irving Brown, who organised anti-communist unions and organisations. Harriman was then sent to Tehran in July 1951 to mediate between Iran and Britain in the wake of the Iranian nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.

In 1949, the Defense Secretary James Forrestal committed suicide and afterwards Harriman and his wife Marie virtually adopted Forrestal's son Michael. Harriman paid tuition for Michael Forrestal when he attended Harvard Law School and made him make connections with New York's elite when he went into work at a law firm. Michael Forrestal served as a protege of Harriman's and later followed him into the Kennedy administration.

Despite the failure of his presidential ambitions, Harriman became a widely respected elder statesman of the party. Harriman's long friend Truman believed that the United States, which was a Protestant majority country, would never elect a Catholic president, which led him to oppose Senator John F. Kennedy in the 1960 Democratic primaries. Under Truman's influence, Harriman had been slow to endorse Kennedy, only doing so after it became clear that Kennedy was going to win the Democratic nomination. After Kennedy won the 1960 election, Harriman pressed hard for a position in the new Kennedy administration, which Kennedy younger brother and right-hand man Robert Kennedy opposed, saying that Harriman was too old and a latecomer to the Kennedy camp. However, after a luncheon, where Harriman recalled his service with Roosevelt and Truman, the elder Kennedy decided that Harriman's knowledge and experience might serve his administration well. Kennedy did make a condition: he told Harriman's adopted son, Michael Forrestal: "Averell's hearing is atrocious. If we're going to give him a job, he has to have a hearing aid, and I want you to see that he does".

In January 1961, he was appointed Ambassador at Large in the Kennedy administration, a position he held until November, when he became Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs. In 1961, at the suggestion of Ambassador Charles W. Yost Harriman represented President Kennedy at the funeral of King Mohammed V of Morocco. During this period he advocated U.S. support of a neutral government in Laos and helped to negotiate the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963.

Presidential campaigns and governor of New York

In the 1954 race to succeed Republican Thomas E. Dewey as Governor of New York, the Democratic Harriman defeated Dewey's protege, U.S. Senator Irving M. Ives, by 11,125 votes. He served as governor for one term until Republican Nelson Rockefeller unseated him in 1958. As governor, he increased personal taxes by 11% and legalized bingo, he also authorized the state's jobless pay plan. His tenure was dominated by his presidential ambitions. Harriman was a candidate for the Democratic Presidential Nomination in 1952, and again in 1956 when he was endorsed by Truman but lost (both times) to Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson.

In 1958 Harriman was embarrassed by revelations from the Senate's McClellan Committee on organized crime. Mollie Baker, ex-wife of Teamsters official Barney Baker who was involved with organized crime, testified before the committee that Baker had been chairman of the Harriman-for-President labor committee in 1952, worked for Harriman in his campaign against Estes Kefauver, at one point frequently talked with him on the phone, and possessed a signed photograph from Harriman signed "To my dearest friend Barney". Harriman called a press conference to dismiss the allegations and Baker attacked his ex-wife for trying to destroy "a man I honor and love".

His defeat by Rockefeller (a rising star in Republican politics) came despite broad general successes for the Democratic Party in November 1958 elections. The election was high-profile, and had been dubbed the "battle of the millionaires" (with Rockefeller being a wealthy scion of the Rockefeller family). Harriman's 1958 defeat all but assured that he would not be a politically viable contender for his party's 1960 presidential nomination.

Accusation of spying for the Soviet Union

In December 1961, Anatoliy Golitsyn defected from the Soviet Union and accused Harriman of being a Soviet spy; his claims were dismissed by the CIA and Harriman remained in his position until April 1963, when he became Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. He retained that position during the transition to the Johnson administration until March 1965 when he again became Ambassador at Large. He held that position for the remainder of Johnson's presidency. Harriman headed the U.S. delegation to the preliminary peace talks in Paris between the United States and North Vietnam (1968–69).

Vietnamese coup d'état

President-elect Kennedy appointed Harriman as ambassador-at-large, to operate "with the full confidence of the president and an intimate knowledge of all aspects of United States policy. By the summer of 1963, South Vietnam was in crisis with massive demonstrations being orchestrated by the Buddhist clergy against the regime of President Ngo Dinh Diem. In August 1963, the Central Intelligence Agency reported to Kennedy that there were at least three different plots being organized within the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) against Diem. On August 21, 1963, the South Vietnamese Special Forces, which were not part of the ARVN, raided Buddhist pagodas all over South Vietnam, most notably the Xa Loi pagoda in Saigon, the most sacred pagoda in South Vietnam. The raids and the killing of Buddhist monks had raised the temperature in South Vietnam to boiling point. Several ARVN generals complained to the CIA that the press release saying the raids were the work of the ARVN was false, and charged that Diem was not an effective leader, saying that Diem's younger brother and right-hand man Ngô Đình Nhu together with his abrasive wife Madame Nhu were in control. Roger Hilsman, the assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern Affairs, had become convinced that the Diem regime was a liability and the United States needed a new government in Saigon to win the war. Harriman supported Hilsman.

On August 24, 1963, on a weekend when Kennedy, Rusk and the Defense Secretary Robert McNamara were all out of Washington, Hilsman with the support of Harriman and Forrestal sent out two cables. The first cable was a press release that announced the raids on the Buddhist pagodas were the work of the Special Forces, not the ARVN. The second cable instructed Henry Cabot Lodge Jr, the American ambassador in Saigon, to support a coup if Diem did not exile his younger brother and his sister-in-law whom both Hilsman and Harriman thought were the source of the crisis. Lodge asked for a change in wording, to say his instructions authorize him to tell the rebellious ARVN generals "we are prepared to have Diem without the Nhus, but it is in effect up to them whether to keep them". The undersecretary of state, George Ball, consulted with Forrestal and agreed to the change, which in effect authorized a coup. The National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy felt he had delegated too much to Forrestal who seemed to him to be closer to Harriman than to himself.

On August 25, 1963, several members of the cabinet such as Rusk and McNamara who were against a coup were accusing Hilsman and Harriman of attempting to do an end-run around them by sending out a cable supporting a coup when they were not present in Washington. At a meeting called by Kennedy that day to discuss the dispute, the president stated that they had not crossed the Rubicon and it would still possible to change the policy. Harriman argued that before the pagoda raids, it was impossible to know the true state of South Vietnamese public opinion, but the massive demonstrations with millions protesting in the streets showed the Diem regime was deeply unpopular. Kennedy seemed indecisive as McNamara together with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Maxwell Taylor, spoke for retaining Diem while Hisman and Harriman argued that the Ngo brothers could not be separated, and to get rid of Nhu, whom Kennedy conceded was a trouble-maker, would also mean getting rid of his older brother. Kennedy agreed to another meeting that same day. Before the meeting, Harriman asked about the mood of the National Security Council, and if it was possible that Kennedy might change his mind.

Ambassador-at-Large

When Johnson ordered "working groups" set up to advise on Vietnam in the fall of 1964, Harriman was one of the "doves", though a quiet one. In 1965, Harriman visited Moscow to press the Soviet Union to end its support of North Vietnam, meeting the Premier Alexei Kosygin. The meeting went badly with Kosygin asking: "Speaking in human terms, between ourselves, really believe there was a real legal government in South Vietnam. You just cannot believe this. Yet the United States for this so-called government, sheds the blood of its own soldiers and kills defenseless Vietnamese". Harriman accused North Vietnam of being the aggressor, leading Kosygin to say the South Vietnamese would fight with bamboo sticks against their government. Harriman took the criticism of his country personally and launched a lengthy denunciation of North Vietnam. Kosygin merely laughed and said: "You don't believe what you are saying". Harriman replied that the honor of the United States was at stake, he had the word of President Johnson that the United States would fight on until victory, and asked Kosygin to start negotiating peace.

In turn, Kosygin stated that he did not the legal authority to negotiate on behalf of North Vietnam, and mocked Harriman for saying the United States was helping the ordinary people of South Vietnam, saying: "This is a monstrous statement. You are killing South Vietnamese. History will never forgive the United States for this crime. This will always be a blot on the United States". Perhaps realizing that the discussion was going nowhere, Kosygin changed the subject by saying that American policies in Vietnam were alienating Asians all over the world and seemingly proving Mao Zedong's claim that another world war was inevitable. Harriman insisted on going back to the subject of Soviet support for North Vietnam, Kosygin snapped in fury saying that the regime in Saigon was so corrupt that the Soviet Union could buy their allegiance tomorrow if it wanted, and accused the United States of supporting a hopelessly corrupt government. Kosygin stated that he knew Ho Chi Minh, whom he called an honorable man, and told Harriman that if the Americans wanted peace, then should open talks with North Vietnam.

Reflecting an earlier simmering feud, Harriman was appalled when Johnson's newly appointed National Security Adviser, W.W. Rostow, told him that he did not expect the bombing of North Vietnam to continue to such point that it finally caused a nuclear showdown between the Soviet Union and the United States, saying that only from extreme situations do lasting settlements emerge. In February 1967, Harriman was involved in peace negotiations in London involving his deputy Chester Cooper, the British Prime Minister Harold Wilson and a visiting Kosygin who hinted that he was carrying a peace offer from Hanoi. Kosygin asked for a 48-hour-long bombing pause as a sign of good faith in the negotiations, which Rostow persuaded Johnson to reject. Harriman had Cooper draft a letter to Johnson protesting the failure of Operation Sunflower.

Peace-making, Paris 1968–69

On May 3, 1968, the North Vietnamese suggested taking up the offer of French president Charles de Gaulle to have Paris as the negotiating site, an offer that Johnson accepted. Harriman, who found Rusk overtly bureaucratic and cautious, complained bitterly that in World War II, Roosevelt had allowed him to do practically anything he liked when representing the United States. Rusk told Harriman that when he arrived in Paris he was to read out a statement drafted by him and do no more, leading Harriman to speak fondly of Roosevelt who told him to explain American policies to Churchill and Stalin with "no further guidance". In a sign of his opposition to the peace talks, Rusk refused to allow Harriman to fly to Paris on a State Department plane, telling since he was a billionaire that he could afford his own flight. The Defense Secretary, Clark Clifford, thought it was undignified for the American delegation to be arriving in Paris on commercial planes, and arranged for Harriman and the rest of the delegation to fly on a Defense Department plane. On May 13, 1968, the first session of the Paris peace talks that would go on until 1973 opened. As the peace talks moved slowly, Johnson seriously considered the advice of Rostow and Rusk to start bombing North Vietnam north of the 20th parallel. Alarmed, Harriman sent Vance to Washington on May 28 to tell Johnson that the Vietnamese would break off the talks if the Americans bombed north of the 20th parallel.

Once in Paris, Harriman quickly learned that the nominal head of the North Vietnamese delegation, Xuan Thuy, had no power, and the real leader of the North Vietnamese delegation was Lê Đức Thọ, a member of the Politburo. Tho had spent almost his entire youth in French prisons and was known as "the Hammer" on the account of his severity. Rather than talk to Xuan at the Majestic Hotel, Harriman wanted to meet Tho in private at various "safe houses" rented by the CIA in the suburbs of Paris. Meeting Tho proved to be difficult as Harriman and Vance had to prove that they were not carrying handguns with the intention of assassinating him. It was not until June 26, 1968, that Vance was finally able to meet the elusive Tho in a house in the suburb of Sceaux. During the meeting, Vance noticed that undercover French spies were observing them dressed as repairmen pretending to fix a fire hydrant.

The next day, an irate Harriman called the French foreign minister, Maurice Couve de Murville, to tell him: "You get those damned goons away". Harriman warned that if French intelligence continued to shadow him and the rest of the American delegation, he would call a press conference to say it was impossible to negotiate in Paris owing to the activities of French spies and he would go home. In July 1968, Harriman reported to Johnson that a lull in fighting indicated the North Vietnamese were serious about negotiating peace, but Rusk in a press conference stated that he believed the lull proved the North Vietnamese were negotiating in bad faith and he believed that the North Vietnamese were about to launch another offensive. In private, Harriman accused Rusk of undermining him. In August 1968, Kissinger contacted Harriman, writing him a note saying he was disgusted with the Republican Party for nominating Richard Nixon as their candidate. Kissinger wrote: "My dear Averell...I am through with Republican politics. The party is hopeless and unfit to govern". In September 1968, Kissinger went to Paris to serve as a consultant for the American delegation, and unknown to Harriman began to leak information about the peace talks to the Nixon campaign.

Later years

On October 15, 1969, Harriman was a featured speaker at the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam protest march in New York. In his speech, Harriman denounced the Vietnam War as immoral and stated that President Richard Nixon "is going to have to pay attention."

Harriman received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, with Distinction, in 1969 and West Point's Sylvanus Thayer Award in 1975. Furthermore, in 1983 he received the Freedom Medal. In 1973 he was interviewed in the now famous TV documentary series, The World at War, where he gives a recollection of his experiences as Roosevelt's personal representative in Britain along with his views on Cold War politics; in particular Poland and the Warsaw Pact; along with the exchanges he witnessed between Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin. In one such recollection, he describes Stalin as "utterly cruel".

Harriman was appointed senior member of the US Delegation to the United Nations General Assembly's Special Session on Disarmament in 1978. He was also a member of the American Academy of Diplomacy Charter, Club of Rome, Council on Foreign Relations, Knights of Pythias, Skull and Bones society, Psi Upsilon fraternity, and the Jupiter Island club.

Personal life

Harriman's 1915 first marriage, two years after graduating from Yale, was to Kitty Lanier Lawrence. The daughter of Francis C. Lawrance Jr., Kitty was the great-granddaughter of James Lanier, a co-founder of Winslow, Lanier & Co., and the granddaughter of Charles D. Lanier (1837–1926), a close friend of J.P. Morgan Before their divorce in 1929, and her death in 1936, Harriman and Lawrence had two daughters together:

Mary Averell Harriman (January 1917 – 1996), who married Shirley C. Fisk

Kathleen Lanier Harriman (December 1917 – 2011), who married Stanley Grafton Mortimer Jr. (1913–1999), who had previously been married to socialite Babe Paley (1915–1978)

About a year after his divorce from Lawrence, Harriman married Marie Norton Whitney (1903–1970), who had left her husband, Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, to marry him. On their honeymoon in Europe, they purchased oil paintings by Van Gogh, Degas, Cézanne, Picasso, and Renoir. She and her husband later donated many of the works she bought and collected, including those of the artist Walt Kuhn, to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. They remained married until her death on September 26, 1970, at George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C. With Marie, Harriman helped raise the future bandleader Peter Duchin, the orphaned son of bandleader Eddy Duchin and socialite Marjorie Oelrichs.

In 1971, Harriman reconnected with his former lover, Pamela Beryl Digby Churchill Hayward (1920–1997), at a dinner party at the home of Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham. Pamela was by this time the widow of Broadway producer Leland Hayward. Harriman and Pamela married in New York City eight weeks later, and remained married until his death. Harriman died on July 26, 1986, in Yorktown Heights, New York, at the age of 94. In 1993, Pamela became the 58th United States Ambassador to France. Averell and Pamela Harriman are buried at the Arden Farm Graveyard in Arden, New York.

Legacy and honors

The Harriman Hall at Stony Brook University was named in his honor.

The W. Averell Harriman State Office Building Campus in Albany, New York, also carries his name.

Harriman State Park (Idaho)

For the state park in New York named after his parents, see Harriman State Park (New York).

Harriman State Park is a state park in eastern Idaho, United States. It is located on an 11,000-acre (45 km2) wildlife refuge in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and is home to an abundance of elk, moose, sandhill cranes, trumpeter swans, and the occasional black or grizzly bear. Two-thirds of the trumpeter swans that winter in the contiguous United States spend the season in Harriman State Park. The land was deeded to Idaho for free in 1977 by Roland and W. Averell Harriman, whose insistence that the state have a professional park managing service helped prompt the creation of the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation in 1965. The park opened to the public in 1982. It is located in Fremont County, 3 miles (4.8 km) south of Island Park, Idaho. Henry's Fork, a fly-fishing stream, winds through the meadows of Harriman State Park. In winter, many of its roads and trails are groomed for cross country skiing.

Summary of career

Vice President, Union Pacific Railroad Co., 1915–17

Director, Illinois Central Railroad Co., 1915–46

Member, Palisades Interstate Park Commission, 1915–54

Chairman, Merchant Shipbuilding Corp.,1917–25

Chairman, W. A. Harriman & Company, 1920–31

Partner, Soviet Georgian Manganese Concessions, 1925–28

Chairman, executive committee, Illinois Central Railroad, 1931–42

Senior partner, Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., 1931–46

Chairman, Union Pacific Railroad, 1932–46

Co-founder, Today magazine with Vincent Astor, 1935–37 (merged with Newsweek in 1937)

Administrator and Special Assistant, National Recovery Administration, 1934–35

Founder, Sun Valley Ski Resort, Idaho, 1936

Chairman, Business Advisory Council, 1937–39

Chief, Materials Branch & Production Division, Office of Production Management, 1941

U.S. Ambassador & Special Representative to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1941–43

Chairman, Ambassador & Special Representative of the U.S. President's Special Mission to the USSR, 1941–43

Publications

"Leadership in World Affairs." Foreign Affairs, Vol. 32, No. 4, July 1954, pp. 525–540. doi:10.2307/20031052