Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, General: Economic and Political Matters, Volume I, Part 2

Carlton Savage files, lot 71 D 293, “Department of State”

The Deputy Under Secretary of State for Administration (Peurifoy) to the Chairman of the Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Investigating Department of State Employee Loyalty (Tydings)¹

[Washington,] April 17, 1950.

My Dear Senator Tydings: Following Senator McCarthy’s statement on March 21 that a top Russian espionage agent, whom he privately identified, as Mr. Owen Lattimore, was an employee or consultant of the State Department, I submitted to your Subcommittee a brief statement of Mr. Lattimore’s connections with this Department, as revealed by a careful check of our personnel records. Since Mr. Lattimore has been publicly identified and since there has been considerable public discussion concerning his relationship with the Department, it is now appropriate to give in greater detail the instances of connections between Mr. Lattimore and the Department. Without any intention of reflecting on Mr. Lattimore and for the purpose of setting the record straight, I believe I should state that Mr. Lattimore does not have a desk in the Department of State nor access to its files, and is neither an employee nor a top adviser of the Department. These are the facts:

On October 15, 1945, Mr. Owen Lattimore was appointed as an economic adviser to the United States Reparations Mission to Japan. He served with the Mission until February 12, 1946. While on this assignment he was paid out of the Department’s International Conferences funds.

Mr. Lattimore was one of 28 persons to lecture on a program known as “Meet the Public”, which was given at the Department’s Foreign Service Institute. He gave one lecture on June 5, 1946. This program was initiated by the Department’s Office of Public Affairs and was designed to bring before departmental personnel the viewpoints of various persons who were working on, or interested in, foreign affairs. In this capacity, Mr. Lattimore was not an employee of the Department and received no remuneration. The following were the speakers on this program:

• Senator J. William Fulbright
• Mr. Ernest K. Lindley, Chief of the Washington Bureau of Newsweek
• Senator Warren Austin
• Dr. Arthur Compton, Chancellor of Washington University, St. Louis
• Mr. Charles Bolte, Chairman of the American Veterans’ Committee
• Congressman Jerry Voorhis
• Professor Owen Lattimore, Director of the Walter Hines Page School of International Relations, Johns Hopkins University
• Professor Frederick L. Schuman, Williams College
• Mr. Herbert Elliston, Editor of the Washington Post
• Mr. Eugene Meyer, President of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
• Dr. Jacob Viner, Professor of Economics, Princeton University
• Dr. Harold Lasswell, Professor of Law, Yale University
• Mr. Wallace Deuel, Editor of the Chicago News
• Senator Wayne Morse
• Mr. Thomas K. Finletter, Vice Chairman of Americans United for World Government, Inc.
• Mr. James M. Landis, Chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board
• Mrs. Vera Micheles Dean, Editor and Research Director of the Foreign Policy Association
• Mr. Kermit Eby, Director of Education and Research, Congress of Industrial Organizations
• Mr. Hamilton Owens, Editor of the Baltimore Sun (and Sun papers)
• Professor Frank Tannenbaum, Columbia University
• Mr. Gardner Murphy, American Psychological Association
• Rev. Edmund A. Walsh, Vice President of Georgetown University and Regent of the School of Foreign Service
• Mr. David Lawrence, Editor of the U.S. News and of the World Report
• Mr. Robert Watt, International Representative of the American Federation of Labor
• Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt
• Dr. Dexter Perkins, Professor of Latin American Affairs, University of Rochester
• Congressman Mike Mansfield
• Dr. James P. Baxter, President of Williams College

On October 6, 7, and 8, 1949, Mr. Lattimore, following preliminary correspondence with the Department of State, was one of a group of 25 private individuals participating in a round-table discussion arranged by the Office of Public Affairs for the purpose of exchanging views on United States foreign policy toward China. As a member of this group, Mr. Lattimore was not an employee of the Department and received no compensation but was reimbursed for expenses. This round-table discussion followed a solicitation of written views on the same topic from a larger group in response to which the written views of thirty-one private individuals were received and analyzed. Some of the members, including Mr. Lattimore, were in both groups. Both the written views received and the transcript of the round-table discussions were made available as some of the background material for consideration by Mr. Raymond B. Fosdick, Mr. Everett Case, and Ambassador Jessup, who had been requested by the Secretary to review United States policy toward the Far East. The thirty-one who expressed views initially in writing were:

• Former Consul General Joseph W. Ballantine, now at Brookings Institution
• Professor Hugh Borton, Columbia University
• Former President Isaiah Bowman, Johns Hopkins University
• Dr. A. J. Brumbaugh, American Council on Education, Washington
• Former Ambassador William Bullitt
• Former Under Secretary Castle
• Former Consul John A. Embry
• Professor Rupert Emerson, Harvard University
• Dr. Charles B. Fahs, New York City
• Professor John K. Fairbank, Harvard University
• Dr. Huntington Gilchrist, New York City
• Professor Carrington Goodrich, Columbia University
• Former Under Secretary Grew
• Colonel Robert A. Griffin, Former Deputy Administrator, ECA, China
• Former Ambassador Stanley K. Hornbeck
• Roger Lapham, former Administrator, ECA, China
• Professor Kenneth S. Latourette, Yale University
• Professor Owen Lattimore, Johns Hopkins University
• Oliver C. Lockhart, Export-Import Bank of Washington
• Walter H. Mallory, Council on Foreign Relations
• Professor Wallace Moore, Occidental College, Los Angeles
• Professor Edwin O. Reischauer, Harvard University
• C. A. Richards, Economic Cooperation Administration
• Former Minister Walter S. Robertson, Richmond, Virginia
• Dr. Lawrence K. Rosinger, New York City
• Mr. James Rowe, Washington
• Mrs. Virginia Thompson (Adloff), New York City
• Professor Amry Vandenbosch, University of Kentucky
• Professor Karl A. Wittfogel, Columbia University
• Professor Mary Wright, Stanford University
• Admiral Yarnell

The twenty-five who attended the round-table discussions were:

• Joseph W. Ballantine, the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C.
• Bernard Brodie, Department of International Relations, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
• Claude A. Buss, Director of Studies, Army War College, Washington, D.C.
• Kenneth Colegrove, Department of Political Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois
• Arthur G. Coons, President, Occidental College, Los Angeles, California
• John W. Decker, International Missionary Council, New York, New York
• John K. Fairbank, Committee on International and Regional Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
• William R. Herod, President, International General Electric Company, New York, New York
• Arthur N. Holcombe, Department of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
• Benjamin H. Kizer, Graves, Kizer, and Graves, Spokane, Washington
• Owen Lattimore, Director, Walter Hines Page School of International Relations, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland
• Ernest B. MacNaughton, Chairman of the Board, First National Bank, Portland, Oregon
• George C. Marshall, President, American Red Cross, Washington, D.C.
• J. Morden Murphy, Assistant Vice President, Bankers Trust Company, New York, New York
• Nathaniel Peffer, Department of Public Law and Government, Columbia University, New York, New York
• Harold S. Quigley, Department of Political Science, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota
• Edwin O. Reischauer, Department of Far Eastern Languages, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
• William S. Robertson, President, American and Foreign Power Company, New York, New York
• John D. Rockefeller III, President, Rockefeller Brothers’ Fund, New York, New York
• Lawrence K. Rosinger, American Institute of Pacific Relations, New York, New York
• Eugene Staley, Executive Director, World Affairs Council of Northern California, San Francisco, California
• Harold Stassen, President, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Phillips Talbot, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
• George E. Taylor, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington
• Harold M. Vinacke, Department of Political Science, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio

[The following were invited to the Round-Table October 6, 7, and 8, 1949 but did not attend:

• W. Langbourne Bond, Pan American Airways, Washington, D.C.
• Monroe E. Deutsch, Provost, University of California
• Anne O’Hare McCormick, New York Times
• Maurice T. Moore, Chairman of the Board of Time, Inc.
• Michael Ross, Director, Department of International Affairs, CIO
• J. E. Wallace Sterling, President, Stanford University]²

In order to ascertain whether any facts whatsoever might support Senator McCarthy’s assertions that Mr. Lattimore has a desk in the Department, access to its files, and a position as a top adviser on Far Eastern affairs, a check has been made with officers of the Department who have been concerned with the Far East, and many of whom have come to know Mr. Lattimore, who is widely regarded as one of the leading experts in this field. Beyond the normal contacts found among persons having a common specialized professional training and interest, this check developed only that Mr. Lattimore, as Director of the Walter Hines Page School of International Relations of Johns Hopkins University, has participated in setting up at Johns Hopkins a Mongolian language project in which the Department is interested. The Department of State, in line with the policy of promoting and utilizing foreign language and other international studies in numerous American universities, has, under authority of Public Law 724 (79th Congress), entered into a contract with the Johns Hopkins University, pursuant to which it has contributed $3,200 toward this language project. Very much larger sums have been made available for this project, it is understood, by the American Council of Learned Societies and the Carnegie Foundation. In connection with this project, it was possible to arrange for three Mongol scholars, including Dilowa Hutuktu, or the “Living Buddha”, to enter the United States and work in the Walter Hines Page School in Baltimore. Officers of the Department’s Foreign Service Institute have visited the project from time to time to observe its progress, and a junior member of the Foreign Service Staff, a specialist on the Far East, whose salary is $4,650 a year, is studying at the Walter Hines Page School as part of this project. The end results of the project will be a descriptive grammar of the Mongolian language and other teaching materials in spoken Mongolian.

Mr. Lattimore was recently sent by the Secretariat of the United Nations as a member of a preliminary economic survey mission to Afghanistan. In this capacity, Mr. Lattimore was hired by and responsible to the United Nations and not the Department of State.

Mr. Lattimore does not have a desk in the Department of State, nor does he have access to its files. Of course, in connection with his OWI employment (1942–1945) and his four-month assignment to the Pauley Reparations Mission which terminated February 12, 1946, Mr. Lattimore, like others in such positions, might have been required as part of his duties to consider some official papers from other agencies of the Government, including the Department of State.

These are the facts.

Sincerely yours,

[John E. Peurifoy]

1. The source text is an unsigned copy of the original.
2. Brackets in the source text.