The ‘Wise Men’ Who Shaped U.S. Policy : New Book Examines Influential Sextet and the World They Helped Make

When they were posted to Moscow in 1933, U.S. Foreign Service officers George Kennan and Charles Bohlen were encouraged by their boss, U.S. Ambassador William Bullitt, to develop close ties with the Russian people.

As a result, Kennan and Bohlen readily accepted an invitation to serve as consultants to a local Soviet production of “The Front Page,” a hard-bitten melodrama of newspaper life in Chicago.

The play proved a diverting task for the diplomats. On stage, for example, the city editor wore a top hat and tail coat because the director presumed this was the normal style for bosses in a capitalist society.

Experts on Soviet Behavior

Laughter, however, was not an everyday experience for Kennan and Bohlen. Both men ultimately became leading U.S. experts on Soviet behavior, and only rarely in their careers did they find something to laugh about.

The pair, along with a quartet of more widely known figures--Dean Acheson, W. Averell Harriman, Robert A. Lovett and John J. McCloy--are the subjects of a new book, “The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made” (Simon & Schuster; $22.95), an 853-page narrative of a closely interwoven group who played key roles in shaping American foreign policy for many years.

Perceived by their contemporaries as symbols of the Establishment, the six men were tough-minded political internationalists who entered their period of greatest influence following World War II.

It was an era when the U.S. and U.S.S.R. appeared to be staunch allies, a time when many Americans--repelled by the idea of becoming international policemen--wanted nothing more, in Averell Harriman’s words, than to “go to the movies and drink Coke.”

Working together, the six men--to whom the label “wise men” was applied derisively at times, especially by critics--helped to bring about a remarkable transformation of American foreign policy.

Acting alone or in collaboration with others in the group, they briefed and many times profoundly influenced Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.

For better or worse, the six men left a legacy: They authored a doctrine of containment of the Soviets. They forged an array of alliances, including the creation of NATO and the Marshall Plan. They were important participants in key decisions involving the A-bomb and the H-bomb, the Korean War and Vietnam.

Contemporaries, including journalists who knew them, remember the six men with affection but not uncritically. They were often wise but they were also capable of mistakes. They were inclined to dwell too much on problems in Europe and not sufficiently on problems in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Some in the group tried to reverse their own mistakes. When, for example, President Lyndon Johnson in 1967 asked them for an evaluation of progress in the Vietnam War, he was told to carry on, which was, of course, what he hoped to hear. Six months later, however, when he assembled the group again, he encountered an opposite view: withdraw from Vietnam. (Six days later, rebuffed by voters in the New Hampshire voting primary, L.B.J. quit the presidential race.)

“The Wise Men” was written by two journalists, Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas.

‘A Natural Curiosity’

Isaacson, 34, grew up in New Orleans and, “As far back as I can remember, I always felt that I was outside the Establishment.” At the same time he had “a natural curiosity” about its power and influence. His curiosity perked further at Harvard, where he majored in history and literature, and where he spent time probing the myths and realities of Establishment influence. At Harvard he was appointed an editor of the Lampoon.

Isaacson won a Rhodes scholarship (“There is a geographic element in selection,” he said, as if to diminish the achievement, “and there simply wasn’t all that much competition in New Orleans.”) At Oxford he continued to study history. Later he worked reporting stints for the Sunday Times of London and the New Orleans Times Picayune before joining the staff of Time magazine, where he is currently a senior editor.

Co-author Thomas, 35, who grew up on Long Island, recalled that, in contrast, he had “not much curiosity” about the Establishment, probably because prominent personalities were frequent visitors at home; Thomas’ father was a major figure in the book publishing industry, first at Harper & Row, later at W. W. Norton.

The two young men became friends at Harvard, where Thomas majored in history and became a sports writer on the Crimson. After earning a law degree at the University of Virginia, Thomas was hired as a reporter by Time magazine. He is currently Washington bureau chief of Newsweek.

Thomas credits Isaacson with the idea for the book. The two men were covering the 1980 presidential campaign, and they were both intrigued by an emphasis on anti-Establishment themes that came, Isaacson said, “not just from candidates Reagan and Carter, but from the groups that hand you pamphlets with exclamation points and arrows.”

Isaacson said, “Would you like to write a book with me?” Thomas said “Sure.” They took no immediate action but during the next two years they intermittently discussed the possibility of a book that would examine the foreign policy influence and power of the American Establishment. They began researching the project in 1983 and completed their writing three years later.

In their collaboration the pair managed to spend long hours working together without alienating their wives. “They are both corporate lawyers,” Isaacson said, “so they had plenty in common to talk about, while Evan and I collaborated on the book.”

Isaacson and Thomas began their research in libraries and archives, and followed up with scores of interviews. They had sessions with four survivors among the wise men and with members of their families. Importantly, the authors gained access to their subjects’ personal papers, letters, diaries, memoirs and scrapbooks.

A Group Portrait

Within the framework of a biographical group portrait--the six men were connected by prep schools, colleges, careers, boardrooms, dinner parties--the book explores America’s recent past, showing how “at the midst of the momentous forces that shaped the modern world were flesh-and-blood individuals acting on imperfect information and half-formed beliefs.”

The members of the group, “like most human beings, were influenced by a mixture of principles and prejudices, noble goals and personal conceits. Their ideas sometimes reflected their lofty visions, at other times their momentary indignations, and occasionally their personal moods.”

Robert Lovett shuttled between careers on Wall Street--where he had been a partner of Harriman--and in Washington. He is widely credited as the person who did more than any other to bring the United States into the age of strategic air power.

Appointed secretary of defense by Harry Truman, Lovett was a rarity who actually gained some control over the Pentagon bureaucracy. With great attention to detail, he was able to withstand the constant pressure for new high-tech weapons; he thwarted, for example, a “snorkle jeep” to travel underwater.

Lovett held other government posts, but his first choice was always to work as a private citizen, behind the scenes. Tall and slender, with hooded dark eyes, he seemed to possess an inner security, a genial warmth that made him feel comfortable with others. He usually turned uncomfortable, however, when he was offered a government job. Lovett would then spend days fretting about real or imagined internal ailments and consulting with a platoon of doctors. He always worried about his health, but he lived until the spring of 1986, when he died at the age of 90.

(When John Kennedy became President, he offered Lovett a choice of three top Cabinet posts--state, defense or treasury. Lovett replied, “No, sir, I can’t. My bearings are burnt out.” But Lovett suggested the three men who ended up in those jobs.)

Like Lovett, John J. McCloy was appointed to public office--he held such varied posts as president of the World Bank and U.S. high commissioner for Germany--but he preferred to spend his life as an influential private citizen and he may hold the record for the number of Cabinet posts rejected by one man.

In the summer of 1945, McCloy, then an assistant secretary of war, kept close tabs on the progress of development of the A-bomb. That summer, a special Interim Committee of civilians and scientists--including J. Robert Oppenheimer, Harvard president James Bryant Conant and MIT president Karl Compton--made and reaffirmed a recommendation that Japan would be bombed “at the earliest possible date,” without warning and without an attempt to provide a demonstration that might cow the enemy into surrender. (A demonstration was feared because of the risk it might turn out to be a dud, thus encouraging the Japanese to fight even more fiercely.)

The bomb was regarded primarily as a weapon of incredible force--Oppenheimer estimated that it would equal 20,000 tons of TNT, an explosive power greater than could be carried by 2,000 fully loaded conventional B-29 bombers--but not necessarily one that was more morally abhorrent than the massive fire-bombing raids that were already cremating much of Tokyo.

Even the scientists seemed not fully aware of the after-effects of radioactivity, and they did not stress to civilians on the Interim Committee that a mysterious fallout might make the bomb a far more sinister weapon than gas or chemicals.

McCloy drafted the formal order to proceed with plans to drop the bomb on Japan. The order was approved by his boss, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, and then by Truman, who wrote in his memoirs that he considered the bomb strictly a military weapon and--because it would likely spare a gruesome invasion of the Japanese mainland that would cost countless lives on both sides--he “never had any doubt that it should be used.”

Another member of the “wise men” group, Dean Acheson, son of the Episcopal bishop of Connecticut, attended Groton and Yale with Harriman. As a youngster, Acheson showed little promise of achievement. At Yale, where he joined a variety of clubs dedicated to songs and good times, he was voted as among the “wittiest” and “sportiest” in the senior class. In a satirical graduation-day prediction the class historian wrote: “Dean Acheson leaves next week to do mission work in British East Guatemala.”

But at Harvard law school (where he was one year ahead of McCloy), Acheson turned into a serious student. He became a protege of professor Felix Frankfurter, who subsequently recommended Acheson for a clerkship under U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis.

Acheson later practiced law and in time went to work at the State Department. For many years he was considered, by himself and others, a traditional “liberal” who believed strongly in both America’s global role and the need for good relations with Russia. At the same time Acheson confounded his critics by making clear that he was very much a practical man who eschewed visionary schemes.

Whenever he encountered what he called the “evangelical enthusiasm” of those who believed in world government and universal democracy--and who disparaged the need for power diplomacy--Acheson would cite the admonition of Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans: “Boys, elevate them guns a little lower.”

Eventually Acheson became Truman’s secretary of state. At a high level in Washington it was known that he was more responsible for the Truman Doctrine than Truman and more responsible for the Marshall Plan than Gen. George C. Marshall.

Kennan and Bohlen, the professional diplomats whose first taste of Moscow involved a production of “The Front Page,” rose within the Foreign Service to become the nation’s foremost Soviet experts at the outset of the Cold War. Both men culminated their careers by becoming ambassador to the U.S.S.R.

It was Bohlen, at the time a State Department liaison officer to the White House, who first briefed Harry Truman--one day after the Missourian had become President--on the “basic irreconcilable differences of objectives between the Soviet Union and the United States.”

Bohlen’s boss, Averell Harriman, had earlier tried to convey his own misgivings about the Soviets to Truman’s predecessor in the White House, F.D.R. Harriman had five long talks with F.D.R. and recorded in his personal notes: “I have tried to impress the President that our principal interest in Eastern Europe is to see that the Soviets do not set up puppet governments under the Soviet system supported by the secret police. I do not believe that I have convinced the President of the importance of a vigilant firm policy.”

Bohlen, the authors state, was rankled by “F.D.R.’s lack of precision,” particularly when dealing with Soviet leaders. Bohlen recorded his own impressions: “I do not think Roosevelt had any real comprehension of the great gulf that separated the thinking of a Bolshevik from a non-Bolshevik, and particularly from an American. He felt that (Joseph) Stalin viewed the world somewhat in the same light as he did.”

Kennan made his mark separately with a scholarly paper claiming that the real threat from Moscow was not the ideology of Marxism. What the Kremlin sought, Kennan said, was not more communism but more Soviet control, the establishment of “governments amenable to their own influence and authority.” They had “no desire” to see countries move toward a socialist system “except under the guidance of persons who recognize Moscow’s authority.”

Kennan was ahead of his time; the scholarly paper was published anonymously, with the byline “X,” nearly 40 years ago in the magazine Foreign Affairs. But his formulation of a containment theory has endured.

Harriman, who also became ambassador to the U.S.S.R., spent more time with Stalin than any other American, and worked out a limited test-ban treaty with Nikita Khrushchev. Harriman, like his close friend Acheson, was often denounced by the left for being too tough on the Russians and by the right for being too soft.

Both extreme views misjudged the man. Harriman’s attitude toward the Soviets was nearly always that of a cool businessman toward a competitor, firm yet pragmatic.

His manner--mumbled diction, sleepy expression, a seeming inattention to details--was deceptive. His close colleague McGeorge Bundy dubbed him “the Crocodile” (because, Bundy said, “he just lies up there on the riverbank, his eyes half closed. Then, whap , he bites”) and the nickname stuck; Robert Kennedy later gave Harriman a gold crocodile.

Harriman’s personal ambition overrode his sense of realism when he tried in vain to run for President in 1952 and again in 1956. He dropped the “W.” before Averell and picked up a corny nickname, “Honest Ave” (reporters took to calling him “Available Averell”); he also dropped quickly out of both campaigns.

But public service was the central theme of Harriman’s life, as it was for the other wise men.

Authors Isaacson and Thomas summed it up: “There certainly does not now exist, and may never again, a breed of statesmen with the same synergism, the talent to work together in a way that transcends their contribution as individuals. Their triumphs and failures may be surpassed, but as a dying Acheson said to Harriman, ‘never in such good company.’ ”