Harry Dexter White

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Harry Dexter White (October 1892–August 16, 1948) was an American economist and senior U.S. Department of Treasury official. He was involved in the formation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and was a Soviet secret agent.

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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 at age 30.

White took up a teaching post at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. In 1934, Jacob Viner, a professor at the University of Chicago working at the Treasury Department, wrote to White offering him a job there. White accepted, and in the latter half of the thirties met with John Maynard Keynes and other leading economists. When the United States entered World War II, White was put in charge of international matters for the Treasury. He had extensive dealings with America's allies, including the Soviet Union.

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.

Treasury Department

In December 1941, after the attack on 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."

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, and help ensure that capitalism became the dominant post-war economic system.

Espionage

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) Whittaker Chambers subsequently testified on August 3rd of his association with White in the Communist underground secret apparatus up to 1938.(2) Bentley said White's colleagues passed information to her from him. Chambers claimed he received documents from White. White testified on August 14th before HUAC. Though recovering from a series of heart attacks, White denied being a Soviet agent. Two days later he died with conflicting reports over whether it was by a heart attack or by suicide.

Two years after his death in a memorandum dated 15 October 1950, White was positively identified by the FBI through evidence gathered by the Venona project as a Soviet agent code named "Jurist".(3)

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 nonelected 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…". In his one appearance before the House Committee in 1948, White emphatically denied participation in any conspiracy. A few days later he was found dead, the apparent victim of suicide by sleeping pills." (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)

Notes

External links

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