 He was Vice Consul and Third Secretary in the US embassy in Havana in 1938 and 1939, followed by a year in Washington as Cuban desk officer at the State Department.While on the staff of the US embassy in Bolivia in 1944, he tried without success to persuade the State Department to ignore the rhetoric of Bolivia's radical opposition parties, which he excused as reflexive opposition to the recently ousted pro-American regime of Enrique Peñaranda.He told Secretary of State Cordell Hull that the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR) embodied the "legitimate and respectable... aspirations of certain sectors of the Bolivian people."