Carmel Offie
Carmel Offie was an American diplomat.
Early life
Offie was born in Pennsylvania in 1909 to parents from Caserta in southern Italy.[1]
Foreign Service
Offie joined the Foreign Service and in 1934 was posted to Moscow where he served as a clerk under ambassador William C. Bullitt. When Bullitt was posted to Paris in 1936, Offie joined him.[2]
Back in Washington in 1943, helped Bullitt act on a grudge against Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles by leaking evidence of the latter's homosexuality. Ironically, Offie was himself homosexual and was arrested on 8 September 1943 at Lafayette Park, a Washington gay hangout. He was charged with "perversion - disorderly conduct" but was saved from prosecution by a note from Secretary of State Cordell Hull claiming he had been on official business, meeting a State Department informant.[3]
In March 1944, Offie was posted as an assistant to Robert Murphy who was serving on the Allied Advisory Council in Italy. He moved to Germany in 1945 when Murphy was appointed as an adviser to General Lucius Clay.[4]
In 1947, Offie was caught using the diplomatic bag to move $4000 dollars for a friend, Army colonel Anthony Drexel Biddle. He resigned from the Foreign Service in April 1948.[5]
CIA
In the later 1940s, Charles Bohlen persuaded Frank Wisner to take Office on in the CIA's Office of Policy Coordination (OPC).[6] Despite security concerns around his 1943 arrest, Offie joined in September 1948.[7]
In the late 1940s, Offie became Wisner's special assistant for labour and émigré affairs. His role included overseeing the National Committee for a Free Europe.[8]
Wisner and Offie planned the the International Day of Resistance to Dictatorship and War on 30 April 1949 as a counter to the Cominform's World Congress of Peace.[9]
U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) agent James H. Paul claimed that Offie made sexual advances to him on 15 October 1949. The CIC subsequently reported this to CIA security chief Col Sheffield Edwards, who requested an official report.[10]
The CIA security staff then leaked details of Offie's 1943 arrest to Senator Joseph McCarthy. At Senate hearings in March and April 1950, McCarthy threatened to name the "convicted homosexual" who was working for the CIA.[11]
Free Trade Union Committee
As a result of McCarthy's investigation, Offie left the OPC in June 1950, and began working for Jay Lovestone at the Free Trade Union Committee (FTUC). Hugh Wilford notes that "he appears to have transferred his personal allegiance from Wisner to Lovestone at the same time, henceforth siding with the FTUC boss in his faction fights against the OPC.[12]
After Allen Dulles took over control of the CIA's labour operations in 1951, he insisted that the FTUC remove Offie from the payroll in return for continued funding.[13]
Notes
- ↑ Ted Morgan, A Covert Life - Jay Lovestone: Communist, Anti-Communist and Spymaster, Random House, 1999, p.210.
- ↑ Ted Morgan, A Covert Life - Jay Lovestone: Communist, Anti-Communist and Spymaster, Random House, 1999, p.210.
- ↑ Ted Morgan, A Covert Life - Jay Lovestone: Communist, Anti-Communist and Spymaster, Random House, 1999, pp.220-211.
- ↑ Ted Morgan, A Covert Life - Jay Lovestone: Communist, Anti-Communist and Spymaster, Random House, 1999, p.211.
- ↑ Ted Morgan, A Covert Life - Jay Lovestone: Communist, Anti-Communist and Spymaster, Random House, 1999, p.212.
- ↑ Francis Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War, Granta, 1999, p.67.
- ↑ Ted Morgan, A Covert Life - Jay Lovestone: Communist, Anti-Communist and Spymaster, Random House, 1999, p.212.
- ↑ Francis Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War, Granta, 1999, p.67.
- ↑ Francis Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War, Granta, 1999, pp.67-68.
- ↑ Ted Morgan, A Covert Life - Jay Lovestone: Communist, Anti-Communist and Spymaster, Random House, 1999, p.212.
- ↑ Ted Morgan, A Covert Life - Jay Lovestone: Communist, Anti-Communist and Spymaster, Random House, 1999, p.213.
- ↑ Hugh Wilford, The CIA, the British Left and the Cold War: Calling the Tune? Frank Cass, 2003, p.96.
- ↑ Hugh Wilford, The CIA, the British Left and the Cold War: Calling the Tune? Frank Cass, 2003, p.98.
