Thank you, Harry Dexter White
22/08/23 03:53
August 22, 2023 (Vol. 17 No. 34) - I will bet that most reading this blog post have never heard of Harry Dexter White. However, adults living in the late 1940s and early 1950s may recall the brief, but intense, controversy surrounding this career government bureaucrat. White had been employed with the U.S. Treasury Department since 1934 and rose to the rank of assistant secretary after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. After the war, he became the first American Director of the International Monetary Fund. However, it would later be learned that he was a communist and had spied for the Russians. As I outlined in a scholarly paper published in American Journalism in 1996, White mysteriously died three days after testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947. (I suggest you read the paper - it's a fascinating story!) Dexter was at the center of a public relations controversy during the early days of the Eisenhower administration in 1953. That's what sparked my interest: As an assistant professor at the University of Kansas, my research concentration was crisis communications research. The Harry Dexter White affair was a great case study - and the editors of American Journalism agreed. As a result, the article was published and became one of my first major research publications. By the time I went up for promotion and tenure later that year, I had a total of three "major" publications. During my first four years at KU, I had produced none - but not for trying. Those publications - a key performance metric at a major research university such as KU - helped me gain promotion and tenure. Without them, I would have lost my job. (When someone says "publish or perish," that's what they are talking about.) So, I cannot overstate the importance of this research and the impact it had on my life and that of my wife and daughter. Was Harry Dexter White a spy? Yes, he was. When the Soviet Union fell in the early 1990s, Russian NKVD files were recovered that confirmed that White had, in fact, engaged in espionage. So, in the broad scheme of things, Harry Dexter White was not a good guy. But the opportunity to tell his story was life-changing for me. So, dripping with irony, allow me to say "Thank you, Harry Dexter White." And then let me add, "But you shouldn't have spied for the Rooskies, you lying bastard." That's it for now. Fear the Turtle.