Word: harrimans
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Venerable Bivouac. For the Paris parley, Harriman and Vance will be accompanied by three principal aides: Philip Habib, Lebanese-descended Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian Affairs; William Jordan, former newsman and Viet Nam specialist for the National Security Council staff; and Lieut. General Andrew Goodpaster, Dwight Eisenhower's onetime military aide who was recently designated General Creighton Abrams' deputy in Viet Nam. The huge, 164-member U.S. Embassy in Paris will provide manpower and logistical support for the delegates, most of whom are likely to bivouac just across the street from the embassy at the venerable Hotel...
...head of the U.S. negotiating team in Paris, Averell Harriman faces the most delicate and grueling test of his 34-year career in Government service. President Kennedy once remarked that the lean, lantern-jawed New York millionaire had held "as many important jobs as any man in our history," with the possible exception of John Quincy Adams.* At 76, Harriman is hard of hearing, but his vigor of mind and body remain unimpaired-and perhaps a touch of deafness might even help in talks that are likely to drone on for months, perhaps years...
...Harriman's public history is, with only a few gaps, parallel to and part of the sweep of U.S. foreign policy since the eve of World War II. Son of Railroad Baron E. H. Harriman (Union Pacific), whom Teddy Roosevelt castigated as one of the "malefactors of great wealth," William Averell Harriman has been a Secretary of Commerce (under Harry Truman), Governor of New York (Nelson Rockefeller unseated him in 1958), ambassador to Moscow during the war and to the Court of St. James's afterward. Of the major World War II conferences, he missed only Quebec...
Always outspoken and never involved in personal vendettas, he even managed to charm Joseph Stalin during his Moscow service, but at war's end found the aims of Communism and the U.S. "irreconcilable." Calm and courtly, Harriman became a bridge expert at Yale (class of 1913), coached crew and rowed in the same shell with Dean Acheson, later was an eight-goal polo player at Long Island's Meadow Brook club. Even today, dismounted, the slim six-footer is acknowledged by Hobe Sound (Fla.) residents to be a champion croquet strategist...
...abortive tries for the Democratic presidential nomination (1952 and 1956), coupled with the defeat at Rocky's hands, dimmed the Harriman aura for awhile, but John Kennedy brought him back into public service in 1961. As an ambassador at large, Harriman conducted the sensitive negotiations that brought about the 1962 Geneva accords on Laos. A year later, he represented the U.S. during the nuclear test-ban talks and initialed the treaty with Andrei Gromyko and Britain's Lord Hailsham-perhaps the high point of Harriman's career...