Harriman was one of the most influential public figures during the
Cold War. Heir to the Union Pacific Railroad fortune, he joined his
father’s company in 1915 and became chairman of the board in 1932.
At the same time, he was involved in other ventures in banking, ship-
building, and international finance.
Averell Harriman was one of the first Americans to seek business
opportunities in the Soviet Union. President Franklin D. Roosevelt
sent him to Moscow in 1941, first as a minister and later as ambas-
sador, a post he held until 1946. Harriman served briefly as ambas-
sador to the United Kingdom in 1946 but was called back to the
United States to serve as President Harry S. Truman’ssecretary of
commerce and worked on the Marshall Plan. He later served as na-
tional security advisorduring the Korean War.
Amember of the Democratic Party, Averell Harriman was elected
governor of New York in 1954 and served in that capacity until 1959.
Harriman tried twice, unsuccessfully, to become the Democratic
Party nominee for president, in 1952 and 1956. When President John
F. Kennedycame to office in 1961, he appointed Harriman as un-
dersecretary of state as well as the negotiator of the Limited Nuclear
Test Ban Treaty(LNTBT) in 1963. President Lyndon B. Johnson
appointed him ambassador at large for Southeast Asian affairs in
1965, a position in which he traveled around the world eliciting sup-
port for the U.S. position on the Vietnam War. He also served as
chief U.S. negotiator when preliminary peace talks opened in France
between the United States and North Vietnam in 1968. President
Richard M. Nixonremoved Harriman as negotiator in the Paris
peace talks because he had criticized the manner in which the Nixon
White House handled both the war and the peace talks. Harriman,
however, returned to government service in 1978 when he was ap-
pointed the senior member of the U.S. delegation to the United Na-
tions (UN) General Assembly’s Special Session on Disarmament.HELMS, RICHARD McGARRAH (1913–2002). Director of central
intelligence (DCI) from 1966 until 1973. Helms, a former member of
the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II, en-
tered the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)when it was established
in 1947 and worked in the clandestine ranks until the mid-1960s. He
headed CIAclandestine operations during the Bay of Pigs invasion86 • HELMS, RICHARD McGARRAH05-398 (2) Dictionary.qxd 10/20/05 6:27 AM Page 86