1. John Emil Peurifoy was an American diplomat and ambassador in the early years of the Cold War.
22 Facts About John Peurifoy
1. 2.
John Peurifoy served as ambassador to Greece, Thailand, and Guatemala.
3.
John Peurifoy withdrew from the military academy after two years because of pneumonia.
4.
John Peurifoy worked for a time in New York City as a restaurant cashier and then as a Wall Street clerk.
5.
John Peurifoy went to Washington, DC, in April 1935 in the hopes of working for the State Department.
6.
John Peurifoy attended night school at American University and George Washington University.
7.
John Peurifoy married Betty Jane Cox, a former Oklahoma schoolteacher, in 1936.
8.
John Peurifoy joined the State Department in October 1938 as a $2000 a year clerk and eight years later was earning $8000 a year as assistant to the Under Secretary of State.
9.
In 1945, John Peurifoy managed the arrangements for Conference on International Organization in San Francisco that led to the establishment of the United Nations.
10.
On December 7,1948, John Peurifoy testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, as it pursued the Alger Hiss Case.
11.
John Peurifoy's responsibilities included everything except the substance of foreign policy: the Offices of Personnel, Consular Affairs, Operating Facilities, and Management and Budget.
12.
When Senator Joseph McCarthy charged in 1950 that Communists were working in the State Department, John Peurifoy unsuccessfully challenged him to share his information.
13.
However, the same year, John Peurifoy told a United States Senate committee of a "homosexual underground" in the State Department and announced that 91 State Department employees had been outed and discharged.
14.
John Peurifoy passed his foreign service examinations in 1949 and joined the Foreign Service that year.
15.
In 1953, John Peurifoy told Adlai Stevenson that the career members of the Foreign Service were "depressed" by Senator McCarthy's campaign against the State Department.
16.
John Peurifoy said he was "unhappy" himself and believed that McCarthy had engineered his transfer from Greece because of a dispute over "some files", though the more likely reason was his experience dealing with Communists.
17.
In 1953, during the Eisenhower administration, John Peurifoy was sent to Guatemala, the first Western Hemisphere nation to allegedly include Communists in its government.
18.
John Peurifoy took up his position as Ambassador there in November 1953.
19.
John Peurifoy made clear to Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz that the United States cared only about removing Communists from any role in the government.
20.
John Peurifoy pressed Arbenz hard on his positions on land reform and played an active role in the coup.
21.
John Peurifoy then played a central role in the negotiations between Guatemala's army officers, Elfego Monzon, the head of the military junta that seized power and Carlos Castillo Armas, leader of rebel forces.
22.
John Peurifoy was given a new post as US ambassador to Thailand.