Harry Dexter White
Harry Dexter White (October 29, 1892 – August 16, 1948) was a senior U.S. Treasury department official. Working closely with the Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr., he helped set American financial policy toward the Allies of World War II. He was later accused of espionage by passing information to the Soviet Union.
Harry Dexter White | |
|---|---|
Harry Dexter White (left) with John Maynard Keynes at the Bretton Woods Conference | |
| Born | October 29, 1892 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Died | August 16, 1948 (aged 55) |
| Education | Columbia University Stanford University Harvard University |
| Occupation | Economist |
| Employer(s) | Lawrence University U.S. Treasury department International Monetary Fund |
| Known for | Bretton Woods agreement First U.S. Director of IMF (1946-47) |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 2 |
He was a senior American official at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference that established the postwar economic order. He 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 a major architect of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
White was accused in 1948 of spying for the Soviet Union, which he adamantly denied. He was never a Communist party member, but he had frequent contacts with Soviet officials as part of his duties at the Treasury. That he passed sensitive and classified documents on to people he knew were agents of the Soviet Union has been confirmed, although hard evidence only came over time via the decoded and finally declassified Soviet cables intercepted in the Venona Project, plus the opening of the Soviet archives in the 1990s.