John Peurifoy

John Emil Peurifoy (August 9, 1907 – August 12, 1955) was an American diplomat, an ambassador in the early years of the Cold War. He served as United States ambassador in Greece and Thailand and was the United States Ambassador to Guatemala during the 1954 coup that overthrew the democratic government of Jacobo Arbenz.

Early life and work

Peurifoy was born in Walterboro, South Carolina on August 9, 1907.^[1] His family of lawyers and jurists traced their New World ancestry to 1619, two years before the arrival of the Mayflower.^[1] His mother Emily Wright died when he was six, and his father John H. Peurifoy died in December 1926.^[2][3] When he graduated from high school in 1926, the yearbook recorded his ambition to be President of the United States.^[1] Peurifoy won an appointment to West Point in 1926. He withdrew from the military academy after two years because of pneumonia.^[1]

He worked for a time in New York City as a restaurant cashier and then as a Wall Street clerk.^[3] He went to Washington, D.C. in April 1935 in the hopes of working for the State Department. He operated an elevator for the House of Representatives–a patronage job he got through South Carolina Congressman "Cotton Ed" Smith–and worked for the Treasury Department.^[1][3] He attended night school at American University and George Washington University.^[1]

Peurifoy married Betty Jane Cox, a former Oklahoma schoolteacher, in 1936.^[1][3] When he lost his job at Treasury, he and his wife both worked at Woodward & Lothrop department store.^[3]

Peurifoy identified himself as a political liberal and was a lifelong Democrat, because, he said, "You're born that way in South Carolina. It's almost like your religion."^[3]

State Department career

He joined the State Department in October 1938 as a $2000 a year clerk and 8 years later was earning $8000 a year as assistant to the Under Secretary of State.^[1][3]

During World War II, Peurifoy served as the State Department's representative on several inter-departmental committees of the Board of Economic Warfare and the War Production Board.^[4]

In 1945, Peurifoy managed the arrangements for a conference in San Francisco that led to the establishment of the United Nations.^[5] President Truman's Executive Order 9835 (1947) established departmental review boards to remove from government service or to deny employment to persons if "reasonable grounds exist for belief that the person involved is disloyal to the United States." In 1947, Peurifoy asked the FBI to conduct an audit of the State Department's Division of Security and Investigations, which found them "lacking in thoroughness."^[6]

Secretary of State George C. Marshall appointed him Deputy Undersecretary of State for Administration in 1949, the third-ranking job in the Department, and tasked him with reorganizing the Department and handling relations with Congress.^[1] His responsibilities included everything except the substance of foreign policy: the Offices of Personnel, Consular Affairs, Operating Facilities, and Management and Budget.^[7] Throughout the years of Peurifoy's involvement in security and personnel issues, the Department focused on new hires rather than its established employees–the primary targets of Soviet attempts at infiltration–unless Congressional investigations prompted a review of a particular employee.^[6]

When Senator Joseph McCarthy charged in 1950 that Communists were working in the State Department, Peurifoy unsuccessfully challenged him to share his information.^[3] However, the same year, Peurifoy tells a United States Senate committee of a "homosexual underground" in the State Department. His remarks along with gay baiting comments from Senator Joseph McCarthy help ignite the so-called "Lavender scare".

Peurifoy passed his foreign service examinations in 1949 and joined the Foreign Service that year.^[3]

Greece

In 1950, he was appointed ambassador to Greece. The Communists had already been defeated in the Greek Civil War. During his three-year tenure in Greece, to counter the possible return of the Communists, he helped strengthen the anti-Communist government, a center-right Greek government that included the Greek royal family, with whom Peurifoy had warm personal relations.^[3] Due to his direct and un-diplomatic involvement in Greece's internal affairs, his name has negative connotations in Greece and a foreigner who attempts to interfere with Greece's politics is called a "Peurifoy".^[8][9][10]

In 1953, Peurifoy told Adlai Stevenson that the career members of the Foreign Service were "depressed" by Senator McCarthy's campaign against the State Department. He said he was "unhappy" himself and believed that McCarthy had engineered his transfer from Greece because of a dispute over "some files," though the more likely reason was his experience dealing with Communists.^[11]

Guatemala

In 1953, during the Eisenhower administration, Peurifoy was sent to Guatemala, the first Western Hemisphere nation to include Communists in its government.^[1] He took up his position as Ambassador there in November 1953.^[1] Carlos Castillo Armas, leader of rebel forces, was already raising and arming his forces.^[3] Peurifoy made clear to Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz that the United States cared only about removing Communists from any role in the government.^[3] In June 1954, the CIA set into motion a plan to overthrow the Arbenz government. Peurifoy pressed Arbenz hard on his positions on land reform and played an active role in the coup. He then played a central role negotiations between Guatemala's army officers, Elfego Monzon, the head of the military junta that seized power and Carlos Castillo Armas, leader of rebel forces. Carlos Castillo Armas was later declared president of Guatemala.^[1][3]

His work in Greece and Guatemala earned him a reputation as "the State Department's ace troubleshooter in Communist hotspots."^[1] The New York Times reported in 1954 that he contemplated running for the U.S. Presidency someday.^[3]

Death

Peurifoy was given a new post as U.S. ambassador to Thailand.

On August 12, 1955, while serving as ambassador in Thailand, Peurifoy and his 9-year-old son Daniel Byrd Peurifoy died when the Thunderbird he was driving collided with a truck near Hua Hin, Thailand.^[12] His older son, John Clinton Peurifoy, known as Clinton, who was injured in the accident, had cerebral palsy. In 1957, Time in its "Religion" section published a story from the Peurifoys' years in Greece, when Prince Constantine told Clinton "My sister and I have been talking about you, and we have decided that you must be the favorite pupil of Jesus....In school the best pupil is always given the hardest problems to solve. God gave you the hardest problem of all, so you must be His favorite pupil." Clinton protested. Queen Frederika repeated her son's words to the Ambassador, who also objected to the sentiment.^[13] A few weeks later, Time published a letter from a woman with cerebral palsy who defended Peurifoy and asked: "Why do we become mushy and impractical as well as intolerant when we speak of religion?". Another letter called the point of view taken by Time and the Queen as "fantastically puerile."^[14] John Clinton died in 1959 at the age of 19.^[15] Peurifoy and his sons are buried together in Arlington National Cemetery. Betty Jane Cox Peurifoy (1912-1998), the ambassador's widow, later married Arthur Chidester Steward.^[16]

Based in Thailand, the John E. Peurifoy Memorial Foundation provides funds for Fulbright Scholars.^[17]

Notes

1. New York Times: "Peurifoy's First-Name Diplomacy Succeeded in Hard Assignments," August 13, 1955, accessed April 17, 2011
2. Walter B. Edgar, ed., The South Carolina Encyclopedia (University of South Carolina Press, 2006), 718
3. New York Times: Flora Lewis, "Ambassador Extraordinary: John Peurifoy" July 18, 1954, accessed April 17, 2011
4. Alexander Hopkins McDannald , ed., The Americana 1956 Annual: An Encyclopedia of the Events of 1955 (Americana Corporation, 1956), 585
5. Though Peurifoy is sometimes described as playing a role in the creation of the United Nations, his assignment, according to Flora Lewis of the New York Times, was "little more than a gigantic housekeeping job–to arrange for 5,600 hotel rooms, endless taxis, world-wide cable and radio facilities, committee offices and reception halls." New York Times: Flora Lewis, "Ambassador Extraordinary: John Peurifoy" July 18, 1954, accessed April 17, 2011
6. Richard Loss, "Secretary of State Dean Acheson as Political Executive: Administrator of Personnel Security," Public Administration Review, vol. 34 (1974), 354-6
7. Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (NY: W.W. Norton, 1969), 255
8. Bitsika, Panagiota (26 April 1998). Οι αμερικανοί πρεσβευτές στην Αθήνα [The American ambassadors in Athens]. To Vima (in Greek). Retrieved 18 March 2013. Το όνομα «Πιουριφόι» έγινε σύντομα σύμβολο για τον άθλιο και ωμό τρόπο με τον οποίο οι Αμερικανοί φέρονταν στους... υποτελείς τους. Ο βιογράφος του μάλιστα σημειώνει: «Ο Πιουριφόι εννοούσε να φέρεται προς τις ελληνικές κυβερνήσεις σαν να ήταν υποταγμένες, όπως στα πολεμικά χρόνια του 1946-49»." "The name "Peurifoy" soon became a byword for the vile and brutal way the Americans treated their... subjects. His biographer notes that: "Peurifoy intended to behave towards the Greek governments as if they were subservient, as in the war years of 1946–49"."
9. Αγωνιστική απάντηση στον σύγχρονο Πιουριφόι [Combative response to the new Peurifoy]. Rizospastis (in Greek). 26 April 1998. Retrieved 18 March 2013. ... του τοποτηρητή των αμερικανικών συμφερόντων στη χώρα μας πρέσβη, Ν. Μπερνς. Ο νέος Πιουριφόι... ["the supervisor of American interests in our country, ambassador N. Burns. The new Peurifoy..."]
10. "Δυσφορία Aθήνας για Mίλερ" [Athens expresses discontent with Miller]. Kathimerini (in Greek). 5 March 2003. Retrieved 18 March 2013. Eίναι καιρός να συνειδητοποιήσει ότι η εποχή Πιουριφόι δεν μπορεί ν’ αναβιώσει. ["It is time he realized that the era of Peurifoy can not be revived"]
11. Blanche Wiesen Cook, The Declassified Eisenhower: A Divided Legacy (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1981), 158, 242
12. TIME: "Milestones," August 22, 1955, accessed April 17, 2011
13. TIME': "Religion: The Best Pupil," January 7, 1957, accessed April 17, 2011
14. TIME': "Letters," January 28, 1957, accessed April 17, 2011. The story was retold by Robert Sargent Shriver, Jr. later that year. Sargent Shriver Peace Institute: "The Ancient Mystery of Guiltless Suffering," March 21, 1957, accessed April 18, 2011
15. TIME: "Milestones," October 5, 1959, accessed April 17, 2011
16. Find a Grave: Betty Jane Cox Peurifoy Stewart, accessed April 17, 2011
17. Thailand - United States Educational Foundation: "Peurifoy Foundation: Holding TUSEF’s Hands to Help Fulbright Grantees", accessed April 17, 2011