David Kirkparick Bruce
was born in 1898 in Baltimore, Maryland in 1898. After graduating
from Princeton University he entered the diplomatic service.
Bruce served in the United
States Army during the Second World War.
He was head of the Office
of Strategic Services (OSS)
in London and in 1944 took
part in the liberation of Paris. After the war he worked for the European
Cooperation Administration.
President Harry
Truman appointed Bruce as the US Ambassador to France (1949-52).
According to Evan Thomas (The Very Best Men)
Bruce discovered that the CIA was involved
in a plot to overthrow the government of Guatemala in 1952. Bruce
joined forces with the Secretary of State, Dean
Acheson, to persuade Truman that "overthrowing the duly elected
government of a Central American country would do more harm than good."
Bruce moved
to Washington where he associated
with a group of journalists, politicians and government officials
that became known as the Georgetown Set.
This included Frank
Wisner,
George Kennan, Dean
Acheson,
Richard
Bissell,
Desmond
FitzGerald,
Joseph Alsop, Stewart
Alsop,
Tracy
Barnes,
Thomas
Braden,
Philip
Graham,
Clark
Clifford, Walt Rostow, Eugene
Rostow, Chip Bohlen, Cord
Meyer, James Angleton, William
Averill Harriman, John
McCloy, Felix Frankfurter,
John Sherman Cooper, James
Reston, Allen
W. Dulles
and Paul Nitze.
Most men
brought their wives to these gatherings. Members of what was later
called the Georgetown Ladies' Social Club included Katharine
Graham,
Mary Pinchot Meyer, Sally Reston, Polly
Wisner, Joan Braden, Lorraine Cooper, Evangeline
Bruce, Avis Bohlen, Janet Barnes, Tish Alsop, Cynthia Helms, Marietta
FitzGerald, Phyllis Nitze and Annie Bissell.
In 1956 President Dwight
Eisenhower appointed Bruce as a member of the President's Board
of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities (PBCFIA). Eisenhower
asked Bruce to write a report on the CIA. It was presented to Eisenhower
on 20th December, 1956. Bruce argued that the CIA's covert actions
were "responsible in great measure for stirring up the turmoil
and raising the doubts about us that exists in many countries in the
world today." Bruce was also highly critical of Operation
Mockingbird. He argued: "what right have we to go barging
around in other countries buying newspapers and handling money to
opposition parties or supporting a candidate for this, that, or the
other office."
Eisenhower appointed
Bruce as US Ambassador to West Germany (1957-59). He returned to office
when President John F. Kennedy made
him Ambassador to Great Britain in 1961. He held the post until the
resignation of Lyndon B. Johnson.
David Kirkparick Bruce
died in 1977.
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