“we can tell that the order to stop all bombardments will be given within the next day or two”
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W. Averell Harriman
William Averell Harriman was an American politician, businessman, and scion of the wealthy Harriman family. He was a founder of Harriman & Co. which merged with the older Brown Brothers to form the Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. investment bank, served as Secretary of Commerce under President Harry S. Truman, and was the 48th governor of New York. He unsuccessfully sought the Democratic Party nomin…
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business · American businessman, politician and diplomat (1891–1986) · diplomat · politician · polo player · businessperson · ambassador · governor · also W. Averell Harriman, Averell Harriman, William Averell Harriman, Harriman
Born 15 November 1891 · Died 26 July 1986 · Q345531
73 published statements · 0 followers
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2026· 2 entries
The Guardian: ‘I’ve always used my voice online’: the rapid rise of photographer Misan Harriman – and what happened next
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2025· 1 entry
c-span: W. Averell Harriman
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1986· 1 entry
Died 1986-07-26.
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1983· 1 entry
Won Four Freedoms Award – Freedom Medal in New York City (1983).
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1972· 2 entries
“Today people tend to forget that, in 1941, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill had one prime objective: to destroy Hitler”
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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 te
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1969· 2 entries
Won Presidential Medal of Freedom presented by Lyndon B. Johnson (1969).
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Harriman became affiliated with various organizations, including the Club of Rome and the Council on Foreign Relations
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1968· 5 entries
At the CIA safehouse in Sceaux, a crucial meeting occurred over the champagne and caviar Harriman had purchased
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Harriman finally met Tho in a villa in the town of Vitry-sur-Seine
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The first session of the Paris peace talks that would go on until 1973 opened
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The North Vietnamese suggested taking up the offer of French president Charles de Gaulle to have Paris as the negotiating site, an offer that Johnson accepted
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To announce he was withdrawing from the election and wanted to open peace talks, Rusk called Harriman to say that he was Johnson's preferred lead negotiator if the talks began
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1965· 1 entry
Harriman visited Moscow to press the Soviet Union to end its support of North Vietnam, meeting the Premier Alexei Kosygin
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1963· 4 entries
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 p
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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
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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
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Career landmark: Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (1963–1965).
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1962· 3 entries
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
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Phoumi Nosavan led his men into a notable defeat at Nam Tha
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“s administration was responding to journalistic coverage of Indochina, saying that the media would treat a greater role by U.S. advisers as”
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1961· 4 entries
The Pathet Lao unilaterally declared a ceasefire, and Harriman headed to Geneva to head the American delegation to discuss the neutralization of Laos
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And all of Laos seemed to be brink of taken over by the Pathet Lao
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At the suggestion of Ambassador Charles W
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Career landmark: Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs (1961–1963).
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1958· 1 entry
Harriman was embarrassed by revelations from the Senate's McClellan Committee on organized crime
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1956· 1 entry
And of showing further bad faith by supporting the Saigon regime in its war against the Viet Cong guerrillas
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1955· 1 entry
Career landmark: Governor of New York (1955–1958).
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1954· 1 entry
Harriman defeated Republican Senator Irving Ives to become the Governor of New York
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1952· 3 entries
And again in 1956 when he was endorsed by Truman but lost (both times) to Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson
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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"
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The gift, a carved wood Great Seal of the United States, which had adorned "the ambassador's Moscow residential office" in Spaso House, was found to be bugged
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1951· 1 entry
Career landmark: director (1951–1953).
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1949· 1 entry
The Defense Secretary James Forrestal committed suicide and afterwards Harriman and his wife Marie virtually adopted Forrestal's son Michael
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1948· 2 entries
Career landmark: Special Representative in Europe (1948–1950).
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Was put in charge of the Marshall Plan
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1946· 2 entries
Career landmark: United States Secretary of Commerce (1946–1948).
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Career landmark: United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom (1946–1946).
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1945· 5 entries
Harriman reported in a cable to Washington that Stalin "feared a separate peace by ourselves with Japan" before the Soviet Union had moved its forces eastwards to invade Manchuria
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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
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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
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America would have pressured the French to grant independence to Vietnam after the war
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While Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Harriman was presented with a Trojan Horse gift
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1944· 6 entries
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 in
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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 Amer
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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 Chi
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Harriman informed Stalin that Roosevelt had agreed to the British call for the "Big Four" to become the "Big Five" by including France
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Harriman's daughter Kathleen, whom the British Foreign Office described as "the poor man's Mrs
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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
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1943· 5 entries
By Hull, Eden, Molotov and Foo stating that the four permanent members of the United Nations Security Council would be the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union and China
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Harriman met with Churchill to tell him that Roosevelt did not want him to attend the up-coming summit meeting with Stalin, saying that it was important to allow Roosevelt who had never met Stalin to establish an "intima
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But that the Soviets had rejected the peace overtures
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“the most inscrutable and contradictory character I have ever known”
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Career landmark: United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union (1943–1946).
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1942· 2 entries
Keeping Soviet Russia fighting would impose major losses on the Wehrmacht, which would only benefit the United States and the United Kingdom
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With the "civilian" fraction triumphing over the military as Roosevelt decided upon what was known as the "90 division gamble"
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1941· 7 entries
Twelve days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Harriman noted that "The United States Navy is shooting the Germans—German submarines and aircraft at sea
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Had been sending cables predicting the Soviet Union would be rapidly defeated, and that any American aid would thus be wasted
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A point that the American delegation and to a lesser extent British delegation resisted
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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
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Hitler would almost certainly defeat Britain in 1942
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It was Germany—not the Soviet Union—that represented the main danger to the United States
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And the Soviets objected that having Foo Ping Shen, the Chinese ambassador to Moscow, sign the proposed Four Power Declaration would cause tensions with Tokyo
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1940· 1 entry
“No, I do not recall the subject came up”
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1927· 1 entry
And the name was changed to Harriman Brothers & Company
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1924· 1 entry
Harriman, George Walker, and Joseph E
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1917· 1 entry
Mary Averell Harriman (January 1917 – 1996), who married Shirley C.
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1916· 1 entry
President Wilson entrusted him with organizing the American intervention in the war ("Operation Harriman")
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1915· 2 entries
Career landmark: director (1915–1946).
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Career landmark: vice president (1915–1917).
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1913· 1 entry
Studied at Yale University (1913).
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1891· 1 entry
Born 1891-11-15.
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