Quid Pro Quo?
At the intersection of the IMF, the CIA, and BIS, we find W. Randolph Burgess
W. Randolph Burgess didn’t need a government job. He said as much in an oral history.1
He was 63 years-old and financially comfortable.
But when opportunity came knocking at the dawn of the Eisenhower presidency, Burgess jumped at the chance to go work at the treasury department.
He began as deputy secretary in 1953 under George M. Humphrey, then ascended to undersecretary in charge of monetary affairs in 1954. He served in that role for the remainder of Eisenhower’s first term.
That’s when things get interesting.
A while back, I asked a contact, who is pretty read-in on the International Monetary Fund during this period, how it was that Per Jacobsson was selected to lead the Fund in late 1956.
This contact relayed back to me Burgess’s name and cited a couple of sources, one of which was A Life for Sound Money: Per Jacobsson, His Biography, by Erin Jacobsson, Per’s daughter, who herself was an economist.
Sure enough, in that book we find the following passage:
The decision to accept the IMF job had been full of agony. The question of who should be invited to succeed Ivar Rooth had been under discussion for some two years, but no generally acceptable candidate had been found. It was Burgess who eventually proposed [Jacobsson].2
That seemed pretty straight forward, so I moved on to other points of inquiry.
Later, when reading about the Eisenhower administration’s machinations around Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, I saw that name again: W. Randolph Burgess. By this time, he had taken on the role of U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO.
That seemed odd - a New York banker moving from the treasury department to the ambassador position with the western military alliance?
The timing of Burgess’s ascendance to that role was even more curious - 1957, less than a year after his friend of nearly 30 years, Per Jacobsson, became managing director at the IMF.
The Burgess transition
Like Burgess, George Humphrey, Eisenhower’s first treasury secretary, was getting on in years.
Humphrey planned on calling it a career after Eisenhower won reelection in November 1956.
It was at Humphrey’s personal request that Burgess had come to treasury in the first place, so, recognizing age also precluded him from reaching the top spot - the Eisenhower team was keen on bringing in someone younger - Burgess planned to follow Humphrey out the door.
This news became public in May 1957.
Burgess did not need to continue working. Having divorced his first wife (of 36 years no less) in 1953, he married Helen Morgan Hamilton in 1955. If some of those names sound familiar, they should - she was a descendent of Alexander Hamilton and the granddaughter of industrialist and banker J.P. Morgan.
Money was not an issue.
Burgess did, however, seem to enjoy his trans-Atlantic dealings, and he had the trust of the Eisenhower crowd.
Just before leaving for Europe, The New York Times reported that The White House had released an exchange of letters between Burgess and the president.
Eisenhower wished “Randy” a “truly rewarding experience” in his new NATO position. That statement makes the NATO job sound more like a reward than a duty, and it only added to my suspicions.
In Brussels, Burgess would be at the nexus of money and power in the Western world.
Still, I wondered, how did he get this job?
The question was put to Burgess directly in an oral history interview conducted in the 1970s. His response was evasive3:
Burgess arrived at a NATO with cracks in its foundation, and it did require some finesse on his part to hold the alliance together.
He noted that Charles de Gaulle “did an awful lot of damage” to the Western alliance, which provides further context for the CIA activities in France in the early 1960s that were revealed when the Arthur Schlesinger Jr. memo about breaking up the Agency was made public in March.
Holding the alliance together was one of Eisenhower’s motivations for his order to assassinate Lumumba.
When asked if, at the end of his presidency, if Eisenhower had bequeathed to Kennedy a united NATO, Burgess replied, “Oh, I think he did, to a degree.”4
Lumumba was assassinated, though not at the direct hand of the U.S., three days before JFK took the oath of office.
Kennedy did not learn of the assassination until a couple weeks into his term.
The Dulles Connection
Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles was up to his neck in the assassination plots against Lumumba.
I was beginning to think that perhaps he played a prescient role in Burgess getting the NATO gig.
Sure enough, in an oral history interview given to the John Foster Dulles Project at Princeton University, Burgess confirmed that Foster Dulles had originally proposed him for the NATO job.
[George Humphrey] wanted me to stay on as Under Secretary, but I was a bit restless as well, though I like Bob Anderson. And just then the position at NATO became vacant, and Foster Dulles asked me to take the post. He had known me a long time.5
Few knew one Dulles brother without knowing the other.
Burgess was not one of the few.
So, here is what I think happened:
In 1956, Dulles conveyed to Burgess his hope that Jacobsson would become managing director of the IMF
Burgess, understanding the connection between the two brothers and their immense political power, as well as his own numbered days at the treasury department, then convinced an initially reluctant Jacobsson to take the job
Burgess, now in line for a cushy ambassador role in Europe, was offered the NATO post, perhaps at Allen’s behest, or at least with his knowledge and agreement
Thus, at the beginning of 1958, Dulles would have helped move his friends, and friends of big business, Jacobsson and Burgess, into useful positions
If there is any documentary evidence that could confirm this hypothesis, it is likely to be found among the personal and professional papers of the two men.
Dulles’s papers are housed at Princeton University, while Burgess’s are at the Eisenhower Presidential Library and the Online Archive of California.
Oral History Interview: Warren Randolph Burgess. Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. Abilene, Kansas. Pg. 24-26.
Jacobsson, Erin E. A Life for Sound Money: Per Jacobsson, His Biography. Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1979. Pg. 283.
Oral History Interview: Warren Randolph Burgess. Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. Abilene, Kansas. Pg. 53.
Ibid. Pg. 65.
Oral History Interview: Warren Randolph Burgess. John Foster Dulles Project, Princeton University. Pg. 20.