16-03-2019, 10:49 PM
From Spanning the Century: The Life of W. Averell Harriman, by Rudy Abramson, pgs 624-5, 630 emphasis added:
<quote on, emphasis added>
Some of Averell's friends, including [Roger] Hilsman, who had heard Bob Kennedy muse about the possibility of Harriman as secretary of state, thought there was still a chance that Averell might yet get the Foggy Bottom job he long coveted. But that had been before the notorious coup cable [243 authorizing Diem coup 8/24/63].
Though the President had avoided criticism of Averell in the episode, Harriman knew Kennedy's confidence in him was shaken. After working his way to the seventh floor, he was suddenly viewed as a problem. Almost overnight, he looked ten years older. Privately, the President and the attorney general talked of finding a way to rehabilitate him, to find a job that would get him out of the Vietnam business. There was a need to put more emphasis on hemispheric matters, and the President thought that one way to solve two problems might be to create a new post of undersecretary for Latin American affairs for him.
As deeply as the administration had involved itself in the machinations against Diem, Kennedy still appeared stunned when the long-anticipatred coup ended with the assassination of Diem and Nhu on November 1. The United States could technically claim that it had been a Vietnamese affair; but the administration had conditioned the atmosphere, beginning with the Harriman-Hilsman cable to Lodge.
By that time, Averell was already turning more attention to hemispheric problems. The afternoon of November 22 was set a side for a meeting with oil company executives about the future of their contracts with the government in Argentina. Beforehand, he went to a Hilsman luncheon for a delegation of politicians from the Phillipines. He was finishing his dessert and talking with Senator Frank Church about extremism in American politics when Church was called to the telephone. A minute later, the senator rushed back into the room, his face ashen. The President had been shot, and was feared dead. There was a momen of silence, and then turmoil, shouted questions, and people getting up from the table to head for telephones. Averell hadn't heard, and when Church repeated the news, his reaction was that it couldn't be true. "No, sir, I'm not joking," said Church.
Averell heard the shattering confirmation of Kennedy's death in George Ball's office moment later. So undone that he could only think of nothing else to do, he convened his oil meeting, but it lasted only a few minutes. When an executive tastelessly suggested an urgent approach to the new President to write the government of Argentina in behalf of American oil interests, he adjourned in disgust.
He spent the afternoon helping Ball, who was, if anyone truly was, running the United States government, since Rusk and several other Cabinet members were airborne, coming home after turning back from a flight to the Far East. As darkness fell, Averell drove out to Andrews Air Force Base with Ball and Alexis Johnson, joining the official mourning party standing silently on the floodlit ramp as the President's casket was lowered from the rear door of Air Force One.
The following days were a blur of meetings and trips to airports to greet delegations arriving from all over the world for the state funeral. While Rusk and Ball attended to ceremonial duties, Harriman sat down with visitors who brought urgent diplomatic problems with them--an insurgency developing against the government in the Dominican Republic, intelligence warnings of political upheaval in Brazil, and signs of new trouble between India and Pakistan over Kashmir...
<quote off>
Harriman blew off his fondest desire -- the Sec. of State slot -- in order to prosecute his own Vietnam policies.
Kennedy was planning to withdraw from 'Nam.
As a banker W. Averell Harriman financed 45% of Nazi raw material purchases for Hitler's war machine; as a member of FDR's administration he was the #1 war hawk, pushing the United States toward war with Germany.
Who implemented the Marshall Plan, re-building Europe after the world war Harriman personally facilitated?
W. Averell Harriman.
If a man as treacherous as Averell Harriman could sacrifice his greatest personal ambition in order to maintain a militarized So. Vietnam, how hard would it have been for him to push a button on JFK?
<quote on, emphasis added>
Some of Averell's friends, including [Roger] Hilsman, who had heard Bob Kennedy muse about the possibility of Harriman as secretary of state, thought there was still a chance that Averell might yet get the Foggy Bottom job he long coveted. But that had been before the notorious coup cable [243 authorizing Diem coup 8/24/63].
Though the President had avoided criticism of Averell in the episode, Harriman knew Kennedy's confidence in him was shaken. After working his way to the seventh floor, he was suddenly viewed as a problem. Almost overnight, he looked ten years older. Privately, the President and the attorney general talked of finding a way to rehabilitate him, to find a job that would get him out of the Vietnam business. There was a need to put more emphasis on hemispheric matters, and the President thought that one way to solve two problems might be to create a new post of undersecretary for Latin American affairs for him.
As deeply as the administration had involved itself in the machinations against Diem, Kennedy still appeared stunned when the long-anticipatred coup ended with the assassination of Diem and Nhu on November 1. The United States could technically claim that it had been a Vietnamese affair; but the administration had conditioned the atmosphere, beginning with the Harriman-Hilsman cable to Lodge.
By that time, Averell was already turning more attention to hemispheric problems. The afternoon of November 22 was set a side for a meeting with oil company executives about the future of their contracts with the government in Argentina. Beforehand, he went to a Hilsman luncheon for a delegation of politicians from the Phillipines. He was finishing his dessert and talking with Senator Frank Church about extremism in American politics when Church was called to the telephone. A minute later, the senator rushed back into the room, his face ashen. The President had been shot, and was feared dead. There was a momen of silence, and then turmoil, shouted questions, and people getting up from the table to head for telephones. Averell hadn't heard, and when Church repeated the news, his reaction was that it couldn't be true. "No, sir, I'm not joking," said Church.
Averell heard the shattering confirmation of Kennedy's death in George Ball's office moment later. So undone that he could only think of nothing else to do, he convened his oil meeting, but it lasted only a few minutes. When an executive tastelessly suggested an urgent approach to the new President to write the government of Argentina in behalf of American oil interests, he adjourned in disgust.
He spent the afternoon helping Ball, who was, if anyone truly was, running the United States government, since Rusk and several other Cabinet members were airborne, coming home after turning back from a flight to the Far East. As darkness fell, Averell drove out to Andrews Air Force Base with Ball and Alexis Johnson, joining the official mourning party standing silently on the floodlit ramp as the President's casket was lowered from the rear door of Air Force One.
The following days were a blur of meetings and trips to airports to greet delegations arriving from all over the world for the state funeral. While Rusk and Ball attended to ceremonial duties, Harriman sat down with visitors who brought urgent diplomatic problems with them--an insurgency developing against the government in the Dominican Republic, intelligence warnings of political upheaval in Brazil, and signs of new trouble between India and Pakistan over Kashmir...
<quote off>
Harriman blew off his fondest desire -- the Sec. of State slot -- in order to prosecute his own Vietnam policies.
Kennedy was planning to withdraw from 'Nam.
As a banker W. Averell Harriman financed 45% of Nazi raw material purchases for Hitler's war machine; as a member of FDR's administration he was the #1 war hawk, pushing the United States toward war with Germany.
Who implemented the Marshall Plan, re-building Europe after the world war Harriman personally facilitated?
W. Averell Harriman.
If a man as treacherous as Averell Harriman could sacrifice his greatest personal ambition in order to maintain a militarized So. Vietnam, how hard would it have been for him to push a button on JFK?