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 (right) and
Vyacheslav Molotov (left) 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.
Beaverbrook-Harriman mission 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. The most important result of the Beaverbrook-Harriman mission to Moscow was the conclusion agreed upon between Churchill and Roosevelt that the Soviet Union would not collapse by the end of 1941. Additional conditions of the agreement were that even if the Soviet Union was defeated in 1942, keeping Soviet Russia fighting would impose major losses on the Wehrmacht, which would only benefit the United States and the United Kingdom. Harriman has been subsequently criticized for not imposing preconditions on American aid to the Soviet Union, but the American historian,
Gerhard Weinberg, has defended him on this point, arguing that in 1941, it was Germany—not the Soviet Union—that represented the main danger to the United States. In a speech in 1972, Harriman stated: "Today people tend to forget that, in 1941, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill had one prime objective: to destroy Hitler's forces, and win the war in a way that would be least costly in terms of human lives. For over a year, the British alone had borne the brunt of Nazi attacks; for their own self-preservation, they wanted to keep Russia as a fighting ally. Roosevelt had yet another consideration in mind. In those early days of the war, he was fearful that we would eventually be drawn into the conflict, yet he still hoped that our participation could be limited to air and naval forces, with a minimum of ground troops. We are all, to a considerable extent, the product of our experience: Roosevelt had a particular horror of the trench warfare of World War I and he wanted above all to prevent that fate from again befalling American fighting men. He hoped that, with our support, the Red Army would be able to keep the Axis forces engaged. The strength of the British divisions coupled with our own air and sea power might then make it unnecessary for the United States to commit major ground forces on the European continent". The Beaverbrook-Harriman mission promised that the United States and Great Britain would supply the Soviet Union every month with 500 tanks and 400 airplanes, plus tin, copper, and zinc. However, the promised supplies had to be sent via the perilous "
Murmansk run" through the Arctic Ocean, and only a tiny fraction of what was promised had in fact arrived by December 1941. In 1941, a team of officers, led by General
Albert Coady Wedemeyer on behalf of General Marshall, drew up the Victory Program, whose premise was that the Soviet Union would be defeated that year, and that to defeat Germany would require the United States to raise by the summer of 1943 a force of 215 divisions comprising 8.7 million men. The Harriman-Beaverbrook mission, whose more optimistic appraisal of Soviet fighting power ran contrary to the more pessimistic assessment, challenged one of the basic assumptions of the Victory Program. The Victory Program, with its call for a 215-division army plus men for the Army Air Corps, the Navy and the Marines would require massive amounts of equipment, leading to what was known as the Feasibility Dispute within different departments of the government. To build the necessary weapons for such a massive force would require the government essentially to end all civilian production in the U.S., a measure estimated to cause a 60% reduction in living standards.
Moscow Conference In August 1942, Harriman accompanied Churchill to the
Moscow Conference to explain to Stalin why the western allies were carrying out operations in North Africa instead of opening the promised second front in France. The meeting was a difficult one with Stalin openly accusing Churchill to his face of lying to him and suggesting that the British would not open a second front in Europe because of cowardice, sarcastically saying that the recent defeats suffered by the British 8th Army in North Africa showed how brave the British were against the Wehrmacht. Harriman had spent much time after the meeting at the Kremlin reminding Churchill that the Allies needed the Soviet Union and to try not to take Stalin's remarks too personally, saying the fate of the world was hanging in balance. Churchill rejected this suggestion, sending a telegram to Roosevelt full of hurt feelings saying: "I do not underrate the use that enemy propaganda would make of a meeting between the heads of Soviet Russia and the United States at this juncture with the British Commonwealth and Empire excluded. It would be serious and vexatious, and many would be bewildered and alarmed thereby."
Four Power declaration Harriman was appointed as
United States Ambassador to the
Soviet Union in October 1943. Harriman concluded that Stalin was "better informed than Roosevelt, more realistic than Churchill, in some ways the most effective of the war leaders. At the same time he was, of course, a murderous tyrant." Harriman was also reluctant to part with his mistress,
Pamela Churchill, the wife of
Randolph Churchill. Although Harriman was one of the richest men in the United States, running a vast business empire comprising investments in railroads, aviation, banks, utilities, shipbuilding, oil production, steel manufacturing, and resorts, this in fact endeared him to the Soviets who believed he represented American capitalist ruling class. The main American demands at the
Moscow Conference were to have a new international organization replace the League of Nations to be called the
United Nations; to have Soviet Union to agree to adhere to the "unconditional surrender" formula adopted at the Casablanca conference (a major point given that the Soviets sometimes hinted that they were willing to sign a separate peace with Germany); and for the "Big Three" powers whom it was assumed would dominate the post-war world to be a "Big Four" as the Americans wanted China to stand alongside the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain as one of the world's dominant powers. The question of what Germany's borders were to be after the war was left unresolved, through everybody at the conference agreed that Germany was going to lose territory with the only question being just how much. Finally, in regards to the
Reich, it was agreed that war crimes trials were to take place after the war with lesser war criminals to be tried in the nations where they had committed their crimes while the leaders of Germany were to be tried by a special court consisting of judges from the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union.
Relations with Poland and China At the
Tehran Conference in late 1943 Harriman was tasked with placating a suspicious Churchill while Roosevelt attempted to gain the confidence of Stalin. The conference highlighted the divisions between the United States and Britain about the postwar world. Churchill was intent on maintaining Britain's empire and carving the postwar world into
spheres of influence while the United States upheld the principles of self-determination as laid out in the Atlantic Charter. Harriman mistrusted the Soviet leader's motives and intentions and opposed the spheres approach as it would give Stalin a free hand in eastern Europe. At Tehran, Roosevelt told Stalin that as a "practical man" who was planning to run for a fourth term in 1944 that he had to think of Polish-American voters, but that he agreed that the Soviets could keep the part of Poland they had annexed in 1939, provided that this was kept a secret until the 1944 election. Harriman felt that this was a mistake, as he regarded Roosevelt's statement that the Polish government had to accept the loss of some of its territory as virtually agreeing to allow the Soviets to impose any government they wanted on Poland because it was unlikely that the Polish government-in-exile would agree with the annexation. The way in which Molotov phrased his account implied to Harriman that in the future the Soviets might be more receptive to such peace offers, which Harriman regarded as an attempt at blackmail. Since all of the available evidence suggested that the Soviets had in fact committed the Katyn Forest massacre in April 1940, Harriman later stated that he tried to avoid the subject, telling a Senate hearing "No, I do not recall the subject came up". Starting in February 1944, Harriman pressed Stalin to open U.S-Soviet staff talks to prepare for when the Soviet Union would enter the war against Japan, only to be told this was "premature" as Stalin stated it would require at least four infantry divisions to invade Manchuria, which would not be possible given that the Soviets were fully involved in the war against Germany. For the rest of 1944, Harriman pressed Molotov to bring the head of the Soviet Far Eastern Air Force to Moscow to open staff talks with the U.S. military mission about establishing American air bases in either the Vladivostok area or in Kamchatka to allow American aircraft to bomb Japan. In connection with this, Harriman met Stalin on June 10, 1944, to get from him a rather generalized statement declaring his support for Generalissimo
Chiang Kai-shek as China's only leader and a promise that he would use his influence with
Mao Zedong to pressure him to recognize Chiang. In August 1944, Harriman sought permission for American aircraft flying supplies to the
Armia Krajowa rebels fighting in the
Warsaw Uprising to land at the Poltava airbase as otherwise the American aircraft would have no fuel to make it home. On August 16, 1944, the Assistant Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Andrei Vyshinsky, told Harriman that "the Soviet government cannot of course object to English or American aircraft dropping arms in the region of Warsaw since this is an American or British affair. But they decidedly object to American or British aircraft, after dropping arms in the region of Warsaw, landing on Soviet territory, since the Soviet government does not wish to associate themselves either directly or indirectly with the adventure in Warsaw."
Negotiations preceding the bombing of Japan In the summer of 1944, Stalin promised Harriman that the Americans would be allowed to use air bases in the Soviet Far East to bomb Japan, but only if the Americans supplied the Soviet Air Force with hundreds of four engine bombers. In September 1944, Stalin expressed much pique to Harriman that the recent Anglo-American communique issued at the Quebec Conference did not mention the Soviet Union, leading him to state sarcastically "if the United States and Great Britain desired to bring the Japanese to their knees without Russian participation, the Russians were ready to do this." On December 14, 1944, Stalin spelled out to Harriman what these political conditions were, namely that the Soviet Union be allowed to lease the Chinese Eastern Railroad and the ports on the
Liaotung peninsula and for China to recognize the independence of Outer Mongolia. In a thinly veiled threat, Stalin boasted to Harriman that the flat open plains of Manchuria and northern China were the perfect country for Soviet combined arms operations, expressing much confidence that the Red Army would have no difficulty defeating the
Kwantung Army and that all of northern China would be under Soviet control once the Soviets declared war on Japan.
Yalta Conference Harriman also attended the
Yalta Conference, where he encouraged taking a stronger line with the Soviet Union—especially on questions of Poland. The American delegation at the Yalta conference stayed at the luxurious
Livadia Palace overlooking the Black Sea, and Harriman was given a room of his own to stay, a sign of presidential favor as most of the American delegation had to sleep five men to a room owing to a surplus of delegates and a lack of space in the Livadia Palace. The Livadia palace had been built in 1910–11 as a summer residence for the Emperor Nicholas II and his family, and was designed to house only 61 people, hence the presence of a 215-strong American delegation literally overwhelmed its facilities. On February 8, 1945, Roosevelt, Harriman and
Charles "Chip" Bohlen who served as the interpreter met Stalin, Molotov and the translator Vladimir Pavlov to discuss the Soviet entry into the war against Japan. During the meeting, it was agreed that the
Kuriles islands and the southern half of
Sakhalin island were to be annexed by the Soviets. Without consulting Chiang, Roosevelt agreed to the Soviet demands for a role in managing the port of Dairen and to own the Chinese Eastern Railroad, through with the regard to the former he felt that Dairen should be internationalized. Roosevelt stated that he could not inform the Chinese at present because whatever was said to them "was known to the whole world in twenty-four hours", but he would tell them when the time was right; much to Harriman's mirth, Stalin promised he could "guarantee the security of the Supreme Soviet!" Once Molotov presented a draft note to Harriman about the future of Manchuria, Harriman complained that the Soviet draft stated the Soviet Union would lease both
Dairen and
Port Arthur and manage not only the Chinese Eastern Railroad, but the South Manchuria Railroad as well. Harriman objected, stating that Roosevelt wanted the ports on the Liaotung peninsula to be internationalized, not leased by the Soviet Union and for the Manchurian railroads to be run jointly by a Sino-Soviet commission instead of being owned by the Soviet Union. The final draft called for the internationalization of Dairen with a leading role reserved for the Soviet Union; the Soviets to have a naval base at Port Arthur; a Sino-Soviet commission to run the railroads of Manchuria; and China to recognize Outer Mongolia. On February 10, 1944, Harriman informed Stalin that Roosevelt had agreed to the British call for the "Big Four" to become the "Big Five" by including France. Specifically, the Americans were backing the British call to recognize France as one of the great powers of the post-war world and to allow the French to have an occupation zone in Germany. On February 11, 1945, the conference ended and the following day Harriman saw Roosevelt, his friend since childhood, for the last time, as he boarded a C-54 airplane at Saki airfield to take him to
Egypt. On April 12, 1945, Roosevelt died.
Deterioration of Soviet-American relationship after the war At the Yalta conference, it was agreed that American prisoners captured by the Germans and liberated by the Soviets were to be immediately repatriated to American forces. The fact that the Soviets made many difficulties about fulfilling this promise such as not allowing American officers into Poland to contact American prisoners of war there led to frequent clashes between Harriman and Molotov, and contributed much to Harriman's increasing negative feelings about the Soviet Union. After Roosevelt's death, Harriman attended
the final "Big Three" conference at Potsdam. Although the new president, Harry Truman, was receptive to Harriman's anti-Soviet hard line advice, the new secretary of state,
James Byrnes, managed to sideline him. While in Berlin, he noted the tight security imposed by Soviet military authorities and the beginnings of a program of reparations by which the Soviets were stripping out German industry.
Statesman of foreign and domestic affairs (left) and Harriman encouraging aid to Russia 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. 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. During a visit to New Delhi to meet the Indian prime minister Nehru, Harriman met an exiled Lao Prince
Souvanna Phouma, who favored neutrality for his nation in the Cold War. At the time, there was a civil war in Laos between the Communist Pathet Lao and the anti-Communist Special Forces, and Harriman concluded based on his talks in New Delhi that the best outcome would be neutrality for Laos and that Souvanna Phouma was not a Communist dupe as the CIA claimed. Shortly after his return to the United States, the Pathet Lao won a victory on the Plain of Jars on March 9, 1961, and all of Laos seemed to be brink of taken over by the Pathet Lao. Kennedy seriously considered American intervention in Laos, but he soon learned that Laos was logistically difficult for the American forces to reach and more importantly to be supplied once they had arrived. Furthermore, Laos bordered China and Kennedy was informed that if the United States sent troops to fight in Laos, so too would the Chinese sent troops to Laos to fight them. As Kennedy pondered what to do about Laos, Khrushchev in Moscow told the American ambassador,
Llewellyn Thompson, that he was wanted to see an international conference to settle the Lao civil war, an offer Kennedy promptly accepted. Harriman was visiting Turkey with the Secretary of State,
Dean Rusk, when he suddenly received a call from Kennedy telling him to go to Laos at once for an assessment of the situation. Harriman relished his job as a diplomatic trouble-shooter who was accustomed to working on his own and embraced the assignment, though he complained that he was not dressed for the tropics as he rushed off to Laos. On his way to Vientiane, he stopped in Saigon to meet the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Lemnitzer, who agreed with Harriman's plans to send troops to Laos to improve the American bargaining position. However, on April 24, 1961, the Pathet Lao unilaterally declared a ceasefire, and Harriman headed to Geneva to head the American delegation to discuss the neutralization of Laos. Rusk headed the American delegation at the Geneva conference, but after a week he returned to Washington and left Harriman in charge. Harriman felt at 126 strong that the American delegation was too large, and believed that too much time would be wasted in meetings. Harriman appointed
William Sullivan as his deputy and ordered him to reduce the size of the delegation. When Sullivan suggested cutting the delegation by a third, Harriman shouted "That's not enough. I want it cut by half". When Rusk objected that Sullivan as a Class 3 officer was not senior enough to serve as Harriman's deputy, the latter replied: "Nobody will know, nobody will care, what his rank is". When the Chinese foreign minister
Chen Yi indicated a willingness to meet privately with Harriman, Rusk refused, saying the Republicans would attack the Democrat Kennedy as "soft on Communism" if it emerged that an American diplomat had a met Chinese diplomat. An infuriated Harriman responded that in World War II Roosevelt had let him meet anyone whom it was necessary for him to meet, and charged that Rusk was too rigid to serve as secretary of state. The Chinese delegation accused the United States of supporting Phoumi, leading Harriman to accuse the Chinese of supporting the Pathet Lao. A Soviet diplomat named
Georgy Pushkin told Harriman privately the next day: "You did the Chinese a great injustice". When Harriman inquired how, Pushkin replied: "They're not helping the Pathet Lao. All the arms and ammunition are coming from us". With that remark, Harriman came to understand that the Soviets wanted Laos to be neutral out of the fear that a Communist Laos would be in the Chinese sphere of influence, an insight that did much to improve his bargaining power. Harriman, who at this stage still thought that Southeast Asia was relatively unimportant for the United States, endorsed a call by Undersecretary of State
Chester Bowles to make all of Southeast Asia neutral. This plan Rusk stoutly opposed. In November 1961, Kennedy promoted Harriman to the role of assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs. William Sullivan replaced Harriman as the head of the American delegation in Geneva. Harriman favored the neutralist Prince Souvanna Phouma as the next leader of Laos and urged Kennedy to drop American support for right-wing Prince
Phoumi Nosavan. In a memo in 1962 to
Carl Rowan of the U.S. Information Agency entitled "Burn this!", Harriman stated his views about how Kennedy's administration was responding to journalistic coverage of Indochina, saying that the media would treat a greater role by U.S. advisers as "our participation in this war - a new war under President Kennedy - the Democratic War Party, so skillfully avoided by the Republican President Eisenhower. The press do not belong in these aircraft, but can be kept fully informed by briefings in Saigon by our military or embassy". During a visit to Vientiane, Harriman pressed Phoumi Nosavan to accept Souvanna Phouma as prime minister and a lesser cabinet post in his a government headed by him. Harriman was in notably cranky mood and
Michael Forrestal, who translated Harriman's remarks into French for Lao leaders, found himself substituting less offensive words for some of Harriman's ruder words. Harriman's original remark to Phoumi Nosavan that he was stupidly self-destructive was one of his kinder statements. Shortly afterwards, on May 6, 1962, Phoumi Nosavan led his men into a notable defeat at Nam Tha. Phoumi Nosavan claimed to have been defeated by a North Vietnamese division, but an American general, Reuben Tucker, reported to Kennedy that there were no North Vietnamese at Nam Tha and that Phoumi "couldn't lead a squad around a corner". General Tucker's reports confirmed to Kennedy Harriman's assessment of Phoumi as a weak leader. Harriman together with
Roger Hilsman called for a show of force to prove that the United States was unwilling to accept a Communist Laos after Phoumi's defeat. Kennedy decide to move the 7th Fleet into the Gulf of Siam to signal the possibility of American intervention in Laos, which Harriman decided was too mild a statement and urged Kennedy not to move the fleet, least it be seen as a weakness by the Communists. On June 11, 1962, Prince Souvanna Phouma announced the formation of a coalition government to end the civil war in Laos and declared that henceforward his nation would be neutral in the Cold War. Harriman predicted to Kennedy too that the North Vietnamese would keep using the Ho Chi Minh Trail running through Laos, but would accept Souvanna's government. In July 1962 while visiting Geneva, a Burmese diplomat offered Harriman a chance to a meet a North Vietnamese cabinet minister,
Ung Van Khiem. Harriman knew that Rusk would not grant permission, so he instead phoned Kennedy and obtained his permission. At the meeting with Khiem, Harriman began by remembering Roosevelt's support for Vietnamese independence, saying that if Roosevelt had not died in 1945, America would have pressured the French to grant independence to Vietnam after the war. Khiem replied that he had warm memories of American aid to the Viet Minh in World War II, and said he was surprised that the United States had supported France in an attempt to take back its lost colony after 1945. Khiem accused the United States of acting in bad faith by encouraging
President Diem of South Vietnam to cancel the elections that were supposed to unify Vietnam in 1956, and of showing further bad faith by supporting the Saigon regime in its war against the Viet Cong guerrillas. Harriman told Khiem that North Vietnam should stop supporting the Viet Cong and then Vietnam would have peace. Khiem was very disillusioned by the fact that Harriman believed North Vietnam and South Vietnam to be different countries with little in common. Khiem's translator thought that he was missing an opportunity, as Harriman seemed to hint if the Laos accords were respected, then Kennedy might change his policies towards South Vietnam. The meeting ended inconclusively with Harriman saying that North Vietnam should cease its support for the Viet Cong while Khiem stated that the partition of Vietnam was unnatural and that his government was the real Vietnam. In the Cuban Missile crisis, Harriman urged firmness in pressing for the removal of the Soviet missiles from Cuba. Nevertheless, he also advised Kennedy to give Khrushchev a dignified way to back down. The Laos settlement, together with Harriman's counsel in the Cuban Missile Crisis, greatly raised his prestige with Kennedy. Knowing that he had the president's approval, Harriman took to such churlish antics such as turning off his hearing aid whenever a speaker at a National Security Council meetings started to bore him. At one meeting, Harriman cursed the "goddamned generals" who wanted to fight a war first in Laos, and now in South Vietnam, and then, turning to General
Earle Wheeler who was sitting opposite him, said "Oh, excuse me, Wheeler" without any embarrassment. The National Security Adviser
McGeorge Bundy called Harriman "the crocodile" because he was usually quiet before bursting into fury. Harriman became rather enthusiastic about the appellation, and therefore had his desk decorated with miniature silver, bass and crystal crocodiles. Harriman's image was that of a crusty and autocratic elder statesman whose brusqueness and bad temper were legendary in Washington, but whose counsel was greatly valued by Kennedy who appreciated him for his sound judgement on international affairs. When Michael Forrestal joined the National Security Council, Kennedy half-jokingly told him: "You will be my emissary to that special sovereignty, Averell Harriman". In February 1963, when the embassy in Saigon blamed the negative reporting on South Vietnam's government on biased journalists, Harriman advised
Frederick Nolting, the American ambassador in Saigon, to stop treating journalists like his enemies.
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. [https://www.politicalgraveyard.com/ 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 more 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. Harriman did not attend the second meeting, which weakened the case for a coup. Still uncertain about what to do, Kennedy opened a third meeting the next day. Before the meeting, Forrestal told him that he was concerned about the claim that he acted unethically in changing the instructions, leading Harriman to say "quit being a goddamned fool". At the third meeting, Harriman made a vigorous case for a coup and insulted nearly everyone who was opposed to the coup. Harriman told Taylor to his face that he had been wrong on every issue since World War II and was also wrong on this issue. When the Marine General Victor "Brute" Krulak spoke against a coup, Harriman mocked him for his short stature and his nickname of "Brute". When the former ambassador to South Vietnam, Frederick Nolting, spoke of Diem as a friend and an honorable man, Harriman snapped "No one cares what you think". Finally, Harriman's rudeness got to such a point that Kennedy asked him to please be civil to others in the room or leave. The meeting ended with Kennedy seemingly come around to supporting a coup as Harriman argued that if South Vietnam would be lost to Communism if the Ngo brothers stayed. Seeking support to change Kennedy's mind, Taylor cabled General Paul D. Harkins, the commander of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, to tell him to advise Kennedy that Diem was the only effective leader South Vietnam had. At the next meeting on August 27, Taylor read out Harkin's cable and stated that Harkins had only agreed to support a coup because he thought it was policy in Washington. The cable seemed to have some effect on Kennedy as Taylor maintained that Harkins and the other American advisers were all for Diem as the only leader capable of defeating the Viet Cong. Harriman, who was more polite at this meeting, told Kennedy: "Mr. President, I was very puzzled by the cable from General Harkins until I read the outgoing from General Taylor". Once it was pointed out that Taylor had asked Harkins to back him up by offering an assessment that supported his views, Kennedy smiled and said afterwards: "Averell Harriman is one sharp cookie". The American author Joseph Trento has accused Harriman of being responsible for the coup. In an interview with Trento, Colonel William Corson, USMC, by 1963 has alleged that Harriman was running "Vietnam without consulting the president or the attorney general". Corson said Kenny O'Donnell, JFK's appointments secretary, was convinced that the National Security Advisor,
McGeorge Bundy, followed the orders of Harriman rather than the president. Corson also claimed that O'Donnell was particularly concerned about
Michael Forrestal, a young White House staffer who handled liaison on Vietnam with Harriman. Special Operations Army officer,
John Michael Dunn, was sent to Vietnam in his stead. He followed the orders of Harriman and Forrestal rather than the CIA. In his speech, Harriman denounced the Vietnam War as immoral and stated that President
Richard Nixon "is going to have to pay attention." 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==