Harry Dexter White
 Harry Dexter White     ( economist, spy?) | ||||||||||||
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| Born | 29 October 1892 Boston, Massachusetts | |||||||||||
| Died | 16 August 1948 (Age 55) Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire | |||||||||||
| Alma mater | • Columbia University • Stanford University • Harvard University | |||||||||||
| Parents | Joseph Weit Sarah Magilewski | |||||||||||
| Children | • Joan White Pinkham • Ruth White Levitan | |||||||||||
| Spouse | Anne Terry White | |||||||||||
US economist and alleged Soviet spy
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Harry Dexter White was a senior American government official who represented the United States Department of the Treasury at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference that established the post-World War II economic order and the primacy of the US Dollar.
White dominated the conference, and his vision of post-war financial institutions mostly prevailed over those of John Maynard Keynes, the British representative who was the other main founder.
Through Bretton Woods, White was the major architect of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.[1]
"Mr Nobody"
On 28 July 2026, David Dimbleby told the story of "Mr Nobody" on BBC Radio 4:
This is the story of the most important person you've probably never heard of. The man who made the dollar the centre of the world. And America along with it.
His name is Harry Dexter White and, as an economist at the US Treasury, he had a vision of how to ensure another conflict like World War Two would never happen again.
To do that he had to upend the whole structure of the world financial system - and make the US Dollar the most important currency on Earth. Standing in his way was the greatest celebrity economist of all time, John Maynard Keynes. The battle between these two men - and Harry Dexter White’s eventual victory - would come to define the next 80 years of world history.
And yet, just a few years later, this visionary economist - the man who changed the world - would be dead. Branded as a traitor to his country. Accused of being the worst thing an American could be accused of - a Soviet Spy.
In Series 2 of "Invisible Hands: The American Century", David Dimbleby tells the story of how, in the middle of the 20th century, America became a superpower and shaped the world around it.
It began with a vision. A vision born out of the ashes of World War Two. A vision of a world shaped not by war but by peace. This vision of America at the head of the free world came to be the defining idea at the centre of the past 80 years of world politics. And yet now, it is under threat.
So how did we get here? How did America become the leader of the free world and why did it go wrong? It’s a story shaped by people. People you may not know.
These ‘invisible hands’ wrote the story America came to believe about itself. A story of moral leadership leading to prosperity and peace. But is it a story that has run out of steam?[2]
Alleged Soviet spy
On 7 November 1945, defecting Soviet espionage courier Elizabeth Bentley told investigators of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that in late 1942 or early 1943 she learned from Soviet spies Nathan Gregory Silvermaster and Ludwig Ullmann that one source of the government documents they were photographing and passing on to her and NKVD spymaster Jacob Golos was Harry Dexter White.
The next day, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover sent a hand-delivered letter to President Truman's Military Aide, Gen. Harry Vaughan, at the White House, reporting information that "a number of persons employed by the government of the United States have been furnishing data and information to persons outside the Federal Government, who are in turn transmitting this information to espionage agents of the Soviet government." The letter listed a dozen Bentley suspects, the second of whom was Harry Dexter White.
The FBI summarised the Bentley information and in its follow-up investigation on the suspects she named, again including White, in a report entitled 'Soviet Espionage in the United States', which was sent to the White House, the Attorney General and the US State Department on 4 December 1945. Six weeks later, on 23 January 1946, Truman nominated White as US Director of the International Monetary Fund. The FBI responded with a 28-page memo specifically on White and his contacts, received by the White House on 4 February 1946. White's nomination was approved by the US Senate, acting in ignorance of the allegations against White, on 6 February 1946.
(Six years later, Truman would testify that White had been "separated from the Government service promptly" upon receipt of this information—first from the Treasury, and then from the IMF. In fact, White was still at the IMF on 19 June 1947—more than two years after the FBI had alerted the White House about him—when he abruptly resigned (vacating his office the same day), after Attorney General Tom Clark ordered a Federal grand jury investigation of the Bentley charges.)
Bentley testifies
On 31 July 1948, Bentley told the House Committee on Un-American Activities that White had been involved in espionage activities on behalf of the Soviet Union during World War II, and had passed sensitive Treasury documents to Soviet agents. Bentley said White's colleagues passed information to her from him. In her 1953 testimony Bentley said that White was responsible for passing Treasury plates for printing Allied military marks in occupied Germany to the Soviets, who thereupon printed currency with abandon, sparking a black market and serious inflation throughout the occupied country, costing the US a quarter of a billion dollars. However the alternative explanation is that Treasury officials feared that denying Soviet use of the plates in their occupation sector would endanger postwar cooperation.
Bentley wrote in her 1951 autobiography that she had been "able through Harry Dexter White to arrange that the United States Treasury Department turn the actual printing plates over to the Russians". Bentley had not previously mentioned this to the FBI or to any of the committees, grand juries or prosecutors before whom she had testified earlier, and there was no evidence at the time that Bentley had any role in this transfer. Some questioned Harry Dexter White's role in it. In her 1953 testimony before Joseph McCarthy's Senate subcommittee, she elaborated, testifying that she was following instructions from NKVD New York resident Iskhak Abdulovich Akhmerov (who operated under the cover name "Bill") to pass word through Ludwig Ullmann and Nathan Gregory Silvermaster for White to "put the pressure on for the delivery of the plates to Russia". This is the only case in which Bentley biographer Kathryn Olmsted concluded that Bentley was lying about her role, citing historian Bruce Craig's conclusion that "the whole 'scheme' was a complete fabrication". However, Bentley's testimony would later be corroborated in dramatic fashion by a memorandum found in Soviet archives after half a century. In it, Gaik Ovakimian, head of the American desk of the NKVD (for which Bentley worked), cites a report from New York (where Bentley was based) from 14 April 1944 (when Bentley was running the Silvermaster group) reporting that, "following our instructions" via Silvermaster, White had obtained "the positive decision of the Treasury Department to provide the Soviet side with the plates for engraving German occupation marks".[3]
White testifies
On 13 August 1948, White testified before HUAC and denied being a communist. After he finished testifying, he had a heart attack. He left Washington for a rest on his Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire farm. He had just arrived when he had another heart attack. Two days later, on 16 August 1948, he died, age 55. Allegations later made it look as if an overdose of digoxin was the cause of death.[4]
