Difference between revisions of "Harry Dexter White"

Revision as of 21:50, August 12, 2007

Harry Dexter White

Harry Dexter White (October 9, 1892 – August 16, 1948) was an American economist and senior U.S. Department of Treasury official. He was the first head of the International Monetary Fund, played an important role in formation of the World Bank and was a Soviet secret agent. Unlike other Comintern operatives such as Alger Hiss or the Julius Rosenberg, White died before he could be brought to trial. Consequently, Harry Dexter White's case has not been publicly scrutinized as closely as the Hiss and Rosenberg cases, yet in some respects, White's subversion of US foreign policy may have been even more damaging.

Early life

The son of Lithuanian immigrants, White was born in Boston, Massachusetts. As a young man, he served in the U.S. Army, fighting in France during World War I.

After leaving the military, he began his education at Columbia University, then transferred to Stanford where he earned a degree in economics. He received a doctorate degree in economics from Harvard University in 1932. White also studied Russian with the intent of gaining a fellowship to study economic planning in Russia. White took up a teaching post at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. He moved to Washington, D.C. in 1933.

New Dealer

In 1934, Jacob Viner, a professor at the University of Chicago working at the U.S. Treasury Department, wrote to White offering him a job in the US Treasury. In his early years White concentrated on the relationship that gold and silver had to currency management. He also became an expert on Japanese and Chinese monetary policy. As early as 1935 White agreed to pass on Treasury documents for Whitaker Chambers to photograph and return.

In the latter half of the thirties met with John Maynard Keynes and other leading economists. After Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau gave White the responsibility to "take supervision over and assume full responsibility for Treasury's participation in all economic and financial matters...in connection with the operation of the Army and Navy and the civilian affairs in the foreign areas in which our armed forces are operating or are likely to operate."

Philosophically, White was a Keynesian New Dealer. As a dedicated Rooseveltian internationalist his energies were directed at continuing the Grand Alliance and maintaining peace through a liberal trade regime. He believed that powerful multilateral institutions could avoid the mistakes of Versailles and prevent another worldwide depression.

After the war, White was closely involved with setting up what were called the Bretton Woods institutions - the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. These institutions were intended to prevent some of the economic problems that occurred after the First World War.

In December 1941, after the Pearl Harbor, White was appointed assistant to Henry Morgenthau, the Treasury secretary, to act as liaison between the Treasury and the State Department on all matters having a bearing on foreign relations and "responsibility for the management and operation of the Exchange Stabilization Fund without a change in its procedures."

One of his most valuable assets was his ability to place in the Treasury Department individuals the Silvermaster ring wanted to have assigned in the department. Among them were Lud Ullman, William Henry Taylor, and Sonia Gold.

Policy subversion

The accusations against White revolve around four incidents with which White was involved.

• White was the real author of the Morgenthau plan to "turn Germany into a potato field," which when leaked, united non-Nazis with Nazis, stiffened resistance, and prolonged the war.
• White used his position in the Treasury Department to develop a hostile U.S. policy toward Japan. The reason was to distract Japan from their plans to attack the Soviet Union and draw the U.S. into the war as an ally with the Soviet Union. White was the author of an extreme ultimatum that Japan could not comply with in the days just prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
• White delayed financial support mandated by law to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Chinese government causing the triumph of Mao Tse-Tung's Communist Chinese government.
• White was instrumental in handing over the Allied Military mark printing plates to the Soviets. This caused a $250,000,000 deficit in the occupational government budget paid out by the U.S. Treasury. This in effect amounted to the US taxpayer paying the salaries of Soviet occupation troops at a time when US/Soviet relations were deteriorating precisely because of the presence and behavior of Soviet occupation forces in Eastern Europe.

White's accusers claim all this was done at the behest of Soviet intelligence to the detriment of U.S. policy and national security.

Operation Snow

With the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and the truce with Japan after the Battle of Khalkhin-Gol, Stalin had non-aggression agreements with the major powers on his borders. Stalin initiated negotiations with Hitler about joining the Tripartite Pact of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Japan. ^[1] Still, Moscow was uneasy about its security. Moscow's intelligence services took an active role in attempting to deflect the Japanese away from the Soviet Union. First was their spymaster in Tokyo, Richard Sorge. Sorge was attached to the German Embassy in Tokyo. His assistant was Hotsumi Ozaki, an adviser to Japanese Premier Fumimaro Konoe and spokesman for the South Manchurian Railroad. Mr. Ozaki was aided by Kimkazu Saionji, Secretary of the Japanese Council of the Institute of Pacific Relations.^[2][3]

In August, 1941, Prime Minister Konoe, realizing the situation with the United States was getting worse, made a proposal to meet with President Roosevelt at Honolulu. US Ambassador Grew in Jaoan was so deeply impressed with the sincerity of Konoe's plea that he immediately sent a dispatch to US Secretary of State Cordell Hull and urged, "with all the force at his command, for the sake of avoiding the obviously growing possibility of an utterly futile war between Japan and the United States, that this Japanese proposal not be turned aside without very prayerful consideration.... The opportunity is here presented... for an act of the highest statesmanship... with the possible overcoming thereby of apparently insurmountable obstacles to peace hereafter in the Pacific." ^[4]

On August 26, Japanese Ambassador Nomura in Washington received an urgent message which expressed an almost frantic desire to arrange a meeting between the leaders of the two countries. The instruction stated: "Now the international as well as our internal situation is strained in the extreme and we have reached the point where we will pin our last hope on an interview between the Premier and the President." ^[5]

Since the end of 1940 Ambassador Grew stressed US and Japanese differences "could and would be solved if the proposed meeting between Prince Konoe and the President should take place." ^[6] When Ambassador Grew urged President Roosevelt to make a speech at the earliest possible moment in order that the Japanese public would gain knowledge of our true intentions, his "recommendation was not carried out." "Why?" Grew asked: "History will wish to know." In his opinion this gesture "might well have turned the whole trend in Japan at this critical time." ^[7] Following the outbreak of war Grew asked the Secretary why Konoe's important proposal had not been accepted. Grew "wondered whether Mr. Hull had been given and had read all of the dispatches from Tokyo." ^[8]

Post war

Washington Evening Star May 4, 1946 announcement of White's appointment to head the IMF. President Truman said, "I am confident that in your new position you will add distinction to your already distinguished career with Treasury." The appointment came after the White House had been alerted to White's espionage activity.

On December 4, 1945, the FBI transmitted to President Truman to a report entitled "Soviet Espionage in the United States." The report summarized White's espionage activities. Copies of the report were sent to Attorney General Thomas Clark too. The evidence indicated a substantial spy ring operating within the Government and involving White. Six weeks later President Truman, on Jan. 23, 1946, publicly announced his nomination of Harry Dexter White for appointment to the International Monetary Fund.

On July 31st 1948, Elizabeth Bentley told the House Committee on Un-American Activities that White had been involved in espionage activities on behalf of the Russia during World War II.⁽¹⁾ Bentley said White's colleagues passed information to her from him.

Whittaker Chambers subsequently testified on August 3rd of his association with White in the Communist underground secret apparatus up to 1938.⁽²⁾ FBI laboratories established a highly confidential handwritten memorandum provided to Chambers in 1938 was White's handwriting. Bentley said his colleagues had passed information to her from him and accused White of providing stolen U.S. currency plates to the Soviet Union. The plates were used to print unlimited amounts of occupation currency in the eastern zone of postwar Germany precipitating the Berlin Crisis.

On August 14th 1948, Harry Dexter White appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee to defend his reputation. White, though recovering from a series of heart attacks, stoutly proclaimed his lifelong commitment to the principles of democracy and the ideals of Roosevelt's New Deal. He died of a heart attack three days later.

In a memorandum dated 15 October 1950 White was conclusively identified in the Venona papers as a Soviet agent code named "Jurist". Venona cyphers quote him as saying he was willing for any self-sacrifice on behalf of the MGB, but was afraid that his activities, if exposed, might lead to a political scandal and have an effect on the 1944 Presidential election. In 1953 J. Edgar Hoover convinced Attorney General Brownell that White was a spy. White's bronze bust was ignominiously removed to the IMF's basement.

Morganthau Diary

Senator William Jenner's Interlocking Subversion in Government Departments Investigation by the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee looked extensively into the problem of unauthorized, uncontrolled and often dangerous power exercised by non-elected officials, specifically Harry Dexter White. Part of its report looked into the implementation of Roosevelt administration policy in China and was published as the Morgenthau Diary.⁽⁴⁾ The Report stated,

"The concentration of Communist sympathizers in the Treasury Department, and particularly the Division of Monetary Research, is now a matter of record. White was the first director of that division; those who succeeded him in the directorship were Frank Coe and Harold Glasser. Also attached to the Division of Monetary Research were William Ludwig Ullman, Irving Kaplan, and Victor Perlo. White, Coe, Glasser, Kaplan, and Perlo were all identified as participants in the Communist conspiracy…". ⁽⁵⁾

In 1953, Senator Joseph McCarthy and Attorney General Herbert Brownell, Jr. alleged that Truman had known White was a Soviet spy when he appointed him to the IMF.⁽⁶⁾However, this has now been refuted by declassified documents through the Freedom of Information Act which attest President Truman and the White House had not known of the existence of the Venona project.⁽⁷⁾ Long after his death, the Justice Department publicly disclosed the existence of conclusive evidence confirming White had indeed been involved in espionage activities. White's family however, still protests his innocence.

The 1997 bipartisan Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy, chaired by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, states in its findings,

The complicity of Alger Hiss of the State Department seems settled. As does that of Harry Dexter White of the Treasury Department.⁽⁸⁾

References

1. ↑ Nazi-Soviet Relations 1939-1941 VI. The U. S. S. R. and the Three Power Pact, September 25-November 26, 1940 : Documents from the Archives of The German Foreign Office. Edited by Raymond James Sontag and James Stuart Beddie. United States Department of State. Publication 3023. U. S. Government Printing Office. 1948.
2. ↑ Testimony of Major General Charles A. Willoughby, August 9, 1951, Institute of Pacific Relations, Hearings, Part 2, pp. 363-364; p. 505.
3. ↑ Jerrold and Leona Schecter, Sacred Secrets: How Soviet Intelligence Operations Changed American History, Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 2002, pg. 12, 36-39.
4. ↑ Ambassador Grew to Secretary Hull, Tokyo, August 18, l94l. Japan:1931-1941, II, p. 565.
5. ↑ Far Eastern Military Tribunal (Manuscript). The Japan Foreign Office to Ambassador Nomura. August 26, l941. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part 12, p. 20.
6. ↑ Joseph C. Grew, Turbulent Era: A Diplomatic Record of Forty Years, 1904-1945 (Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1952), II, 1264.
7. ↑ Joseph C. Grew, Turbulent Era: A Diplomatic Record of Forty Years, 1904-1945 (Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1952), II, 1343.
8. ↑ Joseph C. Grew, Turbulent Era: A Diplomatic Record of Forty Years, 1904-1945 (Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1952), II, 1330.

• Note (1): Elizabeth Bentely Deposition, FBI Silvermaster file, p.27
• Note (2): Testimony of Whittaker Chambers before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (August 3, 1948)
• Note (3): Posthumous FBI Memorandum conclusively identifies Harry Dexter White as KGB Agent Jurist (1950)
• Note (4): Guide to the Records of the U.S. Senate at the National Archives, Records of the Morgenthau Diary Study, 1953-65
• Note (5): United States Government Printing Office, Report on the Morgenthau Diaries prepared by the Subcommittee of the Senate Committee of the Judiciary appointed to investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and other Internal Security Laws, Introduction, by Dr. Anthony Kubek, Professor of History at Dallas University, November 1967, two volumes, v.i., pg. 80.
• Note (6): Time Magazine, The White Case Record, Nov. 30, 1953
• Note (7): Chairman's Forward, Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy (1997)
• Note (8):Moynihan Commssion on Government Secrecy, Appendix A, 7. The Cold War (1997)

External links

• Biography of White by the IMF
• FBI Venona file pg.17
• FBI Silvermaster file, p.27
• “Underground Espionage Organization (NKVD) in Agencies of the United States Government.”, FBI Silvermaster file, Vol. 23, pgs. 55 - 239 pdf, February 21, 1946. Soviet representatives’ pgs. 240 - 251 pdf. Comphrehensive index pgs. 252 -272 pdf.
• FBI Silvermaster file, Vol. 54, pgs. 124 - 127 pdf. Conversations between Harry Dexter White and Charles Kramer, White and Lee Pressman, White and Henry Morgenthau.
• Time Magazine, The White Case Record, Nov. 30, 1953