Reed Harris (November 5, 1909 – October 15, 1982) was an American writer, publisher, and U.S. government official who served as deputy director of the
United States Information Agency
The United States Information Agency (USIA), which operated from 1953 to 1999, was a United States agency devoted to " public diplomacy". In 1999, prior to the reorganization of intelligence agencies by President George W. Bush, President Bil ...
.
Biography
Harris was born on November 5, 1909, in New York City. He attended
Staunton Military Academy
Staunton Military Academy was a private all-male military school located in Staunton, Virginia. Founded in 1884, the academy closed in 1976. The school was highly regarded for its academic and military programs, and many notable American politica ...
and in 1932 graduated from
Columbia College, where he edited the school newspaper, the ''
Columbia Spectator
The ''Columbia Daily Spectator'' (known colloquially as the ''Spec'') is the student newspaper of Columbia University. Founded in 1877, it is the oldest continuously operating college news daily in the nation after ''The Harvard Crimson'', and has ...
''.
His college classmates voted him "most likely to succeed". He was a member of the
Student League for Industrial Democracy.
In the fall of 1931, he characterized the college football program as a "semiprofessional racket". He published inflammatory articles in which he exposed the
Nacoms and criticized the university's administration. He was expelled in April 1932, but following student protests he was readmitted twenty days later.
In the fall of 1932, he published ''King Football: The Vulgarization of the American College'' (1932), an exposé of commercialism in college football and an attack on higher education that accused United States schools of turning out "regimented lead soldiers of mediocrity".
"To put forth winning football teams," he wrote, "alumni, faculty and trustees will lie, cheat and steal, unofficially." He called the players "privileged mugs", said the faculty had a "percentage of utter numbskulls", attacked Columbia President
Nicholas Murray Butler
Nicholas Murray Butler () was an American philosopher, diplomat, and educator. Butler was president of Columbia University, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, and the deceased Ja ...
, and praised college newspaper editors and Soviet Russia. The book included a defense of academic freedom that included the right of communists to teach.
Harris worked as a freelance journalist in New York City
[Michael S. Mayer, ''The Eisenhower Years'' (Facts on File, 2010), 281-2] until 1934, when he joined the
Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...
, where he helped edit ''Project'', a magazine that publicized the work of the
Federal Emergency Relief Administration, and later became assistant director of the
Federal Writers' Project. He resigned effective July 1, 1938, unhappy with the FWP's leadership for failing to rein in its more militant left-wing staff members.
Harris edited travel books for a short time at Robbins Travel House.
In 1939 he became an administrative officer for the
National Emergency Council
The Executive Office of the President (EOP) comprises the offices and agencies that support the work of the president at the center of the executive branch of the United States federal government. The EOP consists of several offices and agen ...
, a body tasked with inter-agency coordination. He was planning chief for the
Office of War Information
The United States Office of War Information (OWI) was a United States government agency created during World War II. The OWI operated from June 1942 until September 1945. Through radio broadcasts, newspapers, posters, photographs, films and other ...
(OWI) from 1942 to 1944, then joined the air force, and returned to the OWI in 1945 when it became part of the State Department.
In 1950, he became deputy director of the International Information Administration (IIA), the parent agency of the
Voice of America
Voice of America (VOA or VoA) is the state-owned news network and international radio broadcaster of the United States of America. It is the largest and oldest U.S.-funded international broadcaster. VOA produces digital, TV, and radio content ...
.
For three days in February and March 1953, he testified before Senator
Joseph McCarthy's
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), stood up in March 1941 as the "Truman Committee," is the oldest subcommittee of the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (formerly the Committee on Governme ...
. McCarthy quoted from ''King Football'' and Harris denied that it represented his current opinions. Harris disavowed ever believing in communism except in the sense of collectivism in "convents and monasteries". According to ''Time'', "Harris showed a bureaucrat's tendency to engage in long-winded arguments with his pursuers."
He accused McCarthy of using one-sided testimony to charge the IIA with supporting communism and said McCarthy's efforts were harming anti-communist propaganda efforts. At one point he told McCarthy: "It is my neck, my public neck, you are trying very skillfully to wring."
Two IIA employees testified that they had prevented State Department officials from suspending Hebrew-language broadcasts to Israel in 1952 and 1953, when it was important to attack Soviet anti-semitism.
[''The New York Times'']
William R. Conklin, "2 'Voice' Officials Hit Program Rule as Boon to Soviet", March 1, 1953
accessed May 6, 2011 Harris explained it as a budget decision based on the ineffectiveness of the service and that the decision was suspended only to allow a new administration to make the decision after taking office in 1953. Others charged that several IIA employees received important posts despite failing security tests, including
Theodore Kaghan
Theodore Kaghan (July 24, 1912 – August 9, 1989) was an American civil servant and journalist.
Early years
Kaghan was born in Boston on July 24, 1912 and graduated from the University of Michigan.''New York Times''"Theodore Kaghan, 77; Was in ...
, Ed Schechter and Charles Lewis.
Some of Harris' testimony was televised, but the
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) is an American commercial broadcast television network. It is the flagship property of the ABC Entertainment Group division of The Walt Disney Company. The network is headquartered in Burbank, Cali ...
(ABC) network aired only part of his rebuttal to McCarthy, even after Harris had complained of unfair coverage. ABC instead showed "a commercially-sponsored giveaway show" designed "to amuse the housewives", according to a ''New York Times'' writer, who wrote: "The episode showed more clearly than anything else how both Senator McCarthy and television are putting show business considerations above the minimum canons of fair play and responsible journalistic behavior....The tyranny of time is always a problem in broadcasting. But this tyranny must not be extended to a deadly serious inquiry where men's reputations are at stake and national policy is in the balance."
Harris resigned on April 14, 1953, effective April 24, saying he had planned to return to private business for a long time and had delayed doing so while he prepared a statement of his accomplishments and documentation of his loyalty through fifteen testimonial letters, which he sent to Sen. McCarthy's Subcommittee.
In response, McCarthy said "resignation" was the wrong word to describe it, that it was "the best thing that has happened there in a very long time" and added: "I only hope that a lot of Mr. Harris' close friends will follow him out."
IIA head Robert L. Johnson expressed regret at Harris' departure and wrote to him: "If I were you, I would be a very proud man today. So many of us are neophytes in the service of our country while you are completing seventeen years of devotion to the responsibilities of government."
For several years, Harris headed a Washington-based company called Publications Services Inc. In 1962,
Edward R. Murrow
Edward Roscoe Murrow (born Egbert Roscoe Murrow; April 25, 1908 – April 27, 1965) was an American broadcast journalist and war correspondent. He first gained prominence during World War II with a series of live radio broadcasts from Europe f ...
, director of the
United States Information Agency
The United States Information Agency (USIA), which operated from 1953 to 1999, was a United States agency devoted to " public diplomacy". In 1999, prior to the reorganization of intelligence agencies by President George W. Bush, President Bil ...
, the successor to the IIA now independent of the State Department, appointed him deputy director.
Personal life
Harris married the former Martha Tellier of
Cambridge, N.Y. They had three children.
Harris died on October 15, 1982, in
Holy Cross Hospital in
Silver Spring, Maryland
Silver Spring is a census-designated place (CDP) in southeastern Montgomery County, Maryland, United States, near Washington, D.C. Although officially unincorporated, in practice it is an edge city, with a population of 81,015 at the 2020 ce ...
. He had a heart ailment and
Alzheimer's disease.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Harris, Reed
1909 births
1982 deaths
Writers from New York City
American civil servants
Victims of McCarthyism
Columbia College (New York) alumni
People of the United States Office of War Information