The Foreign Service Journal, October 2020

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2020 53 licenses to U.S. entities engaged in defense-related trade. But because space was in short supply at the department, they were squeezed into the Western European division. Yost’s association with individuals with whom he worked would put him in the crosshairs of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. There was, for instance, Noel Field, a young Quaker “who was liked by all,” as Yost recalled. Field, however, turned out to have been a Soviet spy, as did several others: Michael Straight of the department’s Eastern European division was unmasked by the Venona Project, a secret U.S. Army counterintelligence program, for recommending Yost’s recruitment to his KGB colleagues. Laurence Duggan, chief of the department’s Latin American division, who Yost reports was “considered a man of such great promise,” was an active Soviet spy during the 1930s and 1940s and died under suspicious circumstances. Harry Dexter White of the Department of the Treasury was a Soviet spy who died mysteriously while being investigated by HUAC. Henry Julian Wadleigh, an economist, turns out to have passed classified department documents to the Soviets. And Alger Hiss, whom Yost found “supercilious and inclined to carp and nitpick,” was also found to have been attempting to recruit Yost to the communist cause. KGB documents reveal that Yost was targeted for his left- leaning views, but the attempts to recruit him were done, as he later wrote, “so subtly that I was blissfully unaware.” In those days the State Department was relatively small, and employees knew each other and regularly consulted and socialized. In fact, some who turned out to have been spies belonged to a weekly foreign affairs discussion group that included Yost and was held at the home of another colleague. Until these individuals were unmasked, in some cases decades later, their department col- leagues remained ignorant of their work as Soviet spies. Success Leads to More Attention As the witch hunts intensified with the Truman and Eisen- hower Loyalty Review Board investigations of State Department employees, and Yost was placed under further scrutiny, he benefitted from the support of department mentors and friends. Yost’s FBI file shows that among those who testified on his behalf were Leo Pasvolsky and Dean Acheson. Pasvolsky was a remarkable man who is largely forgotten even though he was a principal author of the United Nations Charter. Dean Acheson, whom Yost considered “by far the best Secretary of State under whom I served,” also played an early role, nurturing Yost’s apti- tude for troubleshooting, which Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Ford and Carter would call on, too, in times of crisis. A meeting at the State Department in 1950. Secretary of State Dean Acheson is at the head of the table, with John Foster Dulles, then adviser to the Secretary of State, to his left. Charles Yost is at the lower right. Inset: Yost, at left, with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in 1958 at the State Department, as Dulles announces Yost’s appointment as U.S. ambassador to Morocco. U.S.DEPARTMENTOFSTATE HERBERTJ.MEYLE