title: Emerson Electric

text: The company's leaders since the mid-20th century have been, respectively, W. R. Persons (19541973; President), Charles Knight (19732000, CEO), and David Farr (20002021, CEO). The company's chair of the board have been Charles Knight (19742004) and David Farr (2004 to 2021). Jim Turley is the current Chair of the Board.


title: Emerson Electric

text: In 2008 (using data from 2005), researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst identified Emerson as the 97th largest corporate producer of air pollution in the United States, down from its previous rank of 56th. Major pollutants indicated by the study include nickel compounds, manganese, diisocyanate, and lead.


title: Emerson Electric

text: On December 22, 2014, Emerson announced the acquisition of Scotland-based Cascade Technologies Ltd., expanding their gas-analysis portfolio with laser-based measurement analyzers and systems for enhanced industrial emissions monitoring, production efficiencies and regulatory compliance. Other main Emerson acquisitions and brands include:


title: Emerson Electric

text: On October 2, 2006, Emerson filed suit in federal court against NBC regarding a scene that appeared in the pilot episode of the network's TV series "Heroes". The scene depicted Claire Bennet reaching into an active garbage disposal, severely injuring her hand. Emerson's suit claims the scene "casts the disposer in an unsavory light, irreparably tarnishing the product" by suggesting that serious injuries will result "in the event consumers were to accidentally insert their hand into one."


title: Emerson Electric

text: Emerson asked for a ruling barring future broadcasts of the pilot and to block NBC from using any Emerson trademarks in the future.


title: Emerson Electric

text: On February 23, 2007, the case was dropped. NBC Universal and Emerson Electric settled the lawsuit outside of court.


title: Stadium

text: A stadium (: stadiums or stadia) is a place or venue for (mostly) outdoor sports, concerts, or other events and consists of a field or stage either partly or completely surrounded by a tiered structure designed to allow spectators to stand or sit and view the event.


title: Stadium

text: Pausanias noted that for about half a century the only event at the ancient Greek Olympic festival was the race that comprised one length of the stadion at Olympia, where the word "stadium" originated.


title: Stadium

text: Most of the stadiums with a capacity of at least 10,000 are used for association football. Other popular stadium sports include gridiron football, baseball, cricket, the various codes of rugby, field lacrosse, bandy, and bullfighting. Many large sports venues are also used for concerts.


title: Stadium

text: "Stadium" is the Latin form of the Greek word "stadion" ("στάδιον"), a measure of length equalling the length of 600 human feet. As feet are of variable length the exact length of a stadion depends on the exact length adopted for 1 foot at a given place and time. Although in modern terms 1 stadion = , in a given historical context it may actually signify a length up to 15% larger or smaller.


title: Stadium

text: The equivalent Roman measure, the "stadium", had a similar length – about – but instead of being defined in feet was defined using the Roman standard passus to be a distance of 125 "passūs" (double-paces).


title: Stadium

text: The English use of "stadium" comes from the tiered infrastructure surrounding a Roman track of such length.


title: Stadium

text: The oldest known stadium is the Stadium at Olympia in Greece, where the ancient Olympic Games were held from 776 BC. Initially the Games consisted of a single event, a sprint along the length of the stadium.


title: Stadium

text: Greek and Roman stadiums have been found in numerous ancient cities, perhaps the most famous being the Stadium of Domitian, in Rome.


title: Stadium

text: The excavated and refurbished ancient Panathenaic Stadium hosted attempted revivals of the Olympic Games in 1870 and 1875 before hosting the first modern Olympics in 1896, the 1906 Intercalated Games, and some events of the 2004 Summer Olympics. The excavation and refurbishment of the stadium was part of the legacy of the Greek national benefactor Evangelos Zappas, and it was the first ancient stadium to be used in modern times.


title: Stadium

text: The first stadiums to be built in the modern era were basic facilities, designed for the single purpose of fitting as many spectators in as possible. With tremendous growth in the popularity of organised sport in the late Victorian era, especially association football in the United Kingdom and baseball in the United States, the first such structures were built. One such early stadium was the Lansdowne Road Stadium, the brainchild of Henry Dunlop, who organised the first All Ireland Athletics Championships. Banned from locating sporting events at Trinity College, Dunlop built the stadium in 1872. "I laid down a cinder running path of a quarter-mile, laid down the present Lansdowne Tennis Club ground with my own theodolite, started a Lansdowne archery club, a Lansdowne cricket club, and last, but not least, the Lansdowne Rugby Football Club – colours red, black and yellow." Some 300 cartloads of soil from a trench beneath the railway were used to raise the ground, allowing Dunlop to use his engineering expertise to create a pitch envied around Ireland.


title: Stadium

text: Other early stadiums from this period in the UK include the Stamford Bridge stadium (opened in 1877 for the London Athletic Club) and Anfield stadium (1884 as a venue for Everton F.C.).


title: Stadium

text: In the U.S., many professional baseball teams built large stadiums mainly out of wood, with the first such venue being the South End Grounds in Boston, opened in 1871 for the team then known as the Boston Beaneaters (now the Atlanta Braves). Many of these parks caught fire, and those that did not proved inadequate for a growing game. All of the 19th-century wooden parks were replaced, some after a few years, and none survive today.


title: Stadium

text: Goodison Park was the first purpose-built association football stadium in the world. Walton-based building firm Kelly brothers were instructed to erect two uncovered stands that could each accommodate 4,000 spectators. A third covered stand accommodating 3,000 spectators was also requested. Everton officials were impressed with the builder's workmanship and agreed two further contracts: exterior hoardings were constructed at a cost of £150 and 12 turnstiles were installed at a cost of £7 each. The stadium was officially opened on 24 August 1892 by Lord Kinnaird and Frederick Wall of the Football Association. No football was played; instead the 12,000 crowd watched a short track and field event followed by music and a fireworks display. Upon its completion the stadium was the first joint purpose-built football stadium in the world.


title: Stadium

text: The architect Archibald Leitch brought his experience with the construction of industrial buildings to bear on the design of functional stadiums up and down the country. His work encompassed the first 40 years of the 20th century. One of his most notable designs was Old Trafford in Manchester. The ground was originally designed with a capacity of 100,000 spectators and featured seating in the south stand under cover, while the remaining three stands were left as terraces and uncovered. It was the first stadium to feature continuous seating along the contours of the stadium.


title: Stadium

text: These early venues, originally designed to host football matches, were adopted for use by the Olympic Games, the first one being held in 1896 in Athens, Greece. The White City Stadium, built for the 1908 Summer Olympics in London is often cited as the first modern seater stadium, at least in the UK. Designed by the engineer J.J. Webster and completed in 10 months by George Wimpey, on the site of the Franco-British Exhibition, this stadium with a seating capacity of 68,000 was opened by King Edward VII on 27 April 1908. Upon completion, the stadium had a running track and three laps to the mile (536 m); outside there was a , cycle track. The infield included a swimming and diving pool. The London Highbury Stadium, built in 1913, was the first stadium in the UK to feature a two-tiered seating arrangement when it was redesigned in the Art Deco style in 1936.


title: Stadium

text: During these decades, parallel stadium developments were taking place in the U.S. The Baker Bowl, a baseball park in Philadelphia that opened in its original form in 1887 but was completely rebuilt in 1895, broke new ground in stadium construction in two major ways. The stadium's second incarnation featured the world's first cantilevered second deck (tier) in a sports venue, and was the first baseball park to use steel and brick for the majority of its construction. Another influential venue was Boston's Harvard Stadium, built in 1903 by Harvard University for its American football team and track and field program. It was the world's first stadium to use concrete-and-steel construction. In 1909, concrete-and-steel construction came to baseball with the opening of Shibe Park in Philadelphia and, a few months later, Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. The latter was the world's first three-tiered sporting venue. The opening of these parks marked the start of the "jewel box" era of park construction. The largest stadium crowd ever was 199,854 people watching the final match of the 1950 World Cup at Rio de Janeiro's Maracanã on 16 July 1950.


title: Stadium

text: Stadiums in ancient Greece and Rome were built for different purposes, and at first only the Greeks built structures called "stadium"; Romans built structures called "circus". Greek stadia were for foot races, whereas the Roman circus was for horse races. Both had similar shapes and bowl-like areas around them for spectators. The Greeks also developed the theatre, with its seating arrangements foreshadowing those of modern stadiums. The Romans copied the theatre, then expanded it to accommodate larger crowds and more elaborate settings. The Romans also developed the double-sized round theatre called amphitheatre, seating crowds in the tens of thousands for gladiatorial combats and beast shows. The Greek stadium and theatre and the Roman circus and amphitheatre are all ancestral to the modern stadium.


title: Stadium

text: Domed stadiums are distinguished from conventional stadiums by their enclosing roofs. Many of these are not actually domes in the pure architectural sense, some being better described as vaults, some having truss-supported roofs and others having more exotic designs such as a tensegrity structure. But, in the context of sports stadiums, the term "dome" has become standard for all covered stadiums, particularly because the first such enclosed stadium, the Houston Astrodome, was built with an actual dome-shaped roof. Some stadiums have partial roofs, and a few have even been designed to have moveable fields as part of the infrastructure. The Caesars Superdome in New Orleans is a true dome structure made of a lamellar multi-ringed frame and has a diameter of 680 feet (210 m). It is the largest fixed domed structure in the world.


title: Stadium

text: Even though enclosed, dome stadiums are called "stadiums" because they are large enough for, and designed for, what are generally considered to be outdoor sports such as athletics, American football, association football, rugby, and baseball. Those designed for what are usually indoor sports like basketball, ice hockey and volleyball are generally called "arenas". Exceptions include:


title: Stadium

text: Different sports require different playing surfaces of various size and shape. Some stadiums are designed primarily for a single sport while others can accommodate different events, particularly ones with retractable seating. Stadiums built specifically for association football are common in Europe; Gaelic games stadiums, such as Croke Park, are common in Ireland, while stadiums built specifically for baseball or American football are common in the United States. The most common multiple use design combines a football pitch with a running track, although certain compromises must be made. The major drawback is that the stands are necessarily set back a good distance from the pitch, especially at the ends of the pitch. In the case of some smaller stadiums, there are not stands at the ends. When there are stands all the way around, the stadium takes on an oval shape. When one end is open, the stadium has a horseshoe shape. All three configurations (open, oval and horseshoe) are common, especially in the case of American college football stadiums. Rectangular stadiums are more common in Europe, especially for football where many stadiums have four often distinct and very different stands on the four sides of the stadium. These are often all of different sizes and designs and have been erected at different periods in the stadium's history. The vastly differing character of European football stadiums has led to the growing hobby of ground hopping where spectators make a journey to visit the stadium for itself rather than for the event held there. In recent years the trend of building completely new oval stadiums in Europe has led to traditionalists criticising the designs as bland and lacking in the character of the old stadiums they replace.


title: Stadium

text: In North America, where baseball and American football are the two most popular outdoor spectator sports, a number of football/baseball multi-use stadiums were built, especially during the 1960s, and some of them were successful.


title: Stadium

text: Since the requirements for baseball and football are significantly different, the trend has been toward the construction of single-purpose stadiums, beginning with Kansas City in 1972–1973 and accelerating in the 1990s. In several cases, an American football stadium has been constructed adjacent to a baseball park, to allow for the sharing of mutual parking lots and other amenities. With the rise of MLS, the construction of soccer-specific stadiums has also increased since the late 1990s to better fit the needs of that sport. In many cases, earlier baseball stadiums were constructed to fit into a particular land area or city block. This resulted in asymmetrical dimensions for many baseball fields. Yankee Stadium, for example, was built on a triangular city block in The Bronx, New York City. This resulted in a large left field dimension but a small right field dimension.


title: Stadium

text: Before more modern football stadiums were built in the United States, many baseball parks, including Fenway Park, the Polo Grounds, Wrigley Field, Comiskey Park, Tiger Stadium, Griffith Stadium, Milwaukee County Stadium, Shibe Park, Forbes Field, Yankee Stadium, and Sportsman's Park were used by the National Football League or the American Football League. (To a certain extent, this continues in lower football leagues as well, with the venue now known as Charles Schwab Field Omaha being used as the home stadium of the United Football League's Omaha Nighthawks.) Along with today's single use stadiums is the trend for retro-style ballparks closer to downtown areas. Oriole Park at Camden Yards was the first such ballpark for Major League Baseball to be built, using early-20th-century styling with 21st-century amenities.


title: Stadium

text: Stadium designers often study acoustics to increase noise caused by fans' voices, aiming to create a lively atmosphere.


title: Stadium

text: Bramall Lane was reportedly the first floodlit stadium. Floodlighting in association football dates as far back as 1878, when there were floodlit experimental matches at Bramall Lane, Sheffield during the dark winter afternoons. With no national grid, lights were powered by batteries and dynamoes, and were unreliable.


title: Stadium

text: Since the development of electrical grids, lighting has been an important element in stadium design, allowing games to be played after sundown, and in covered, or partly covered stadiums that allow less natural light, but provide more shelter for the public.


title: Stadium

text: An "all-seater" stadium has seats for all spectators. Other stadiums are designed so that all or some spectators stand to view the event. The term "all-seater" is not common in the U.S., as very few American stadiums have sizeable standing-only sections. Poor stadium design has contributed to disasters, such as the Hillsborough disaster and the Heysel Stadium disaster. Since these, all Premier League, UEFA European Championship and FIFA World Cup qualifying matches require all spectators to be seated.


title: Stadium

text: Seating areas may be known as "terraces", "tiers", or "decks". Originally set out for standing room only, they are now usually equipped with seating. Another term used in the US is "bleachers", which is mostly used for seating areas with bench seats as opposed to individual seats, and which often are uncovered; the name refers to the bleaching effect direct, unshaded sunlight has on the benches and patrons in those sections.


title: Stadium

text: Many stadiums make luxury suites or boxes available to patrons at high prices. These suites can accommodate ten to thirty people, depending on the venue. Luxury suites at events such as the Super Bowl can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.


title: Stadium

text: Due to the number of people congregating in stadiums and the frequency of events, many notable accidents have occurred in the past, some causing injury and death. For example, the Hillsborough disaster was a human crush at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, England on 15 April 1989. The resulting 97 deaths and 765 injuries makes this the worst disaster in British sporting history.


title: Stadium

text: Much effort has been spent to avoid the recurrence of such events, both in design and legislation. Especially where there is a perceived risk of terrorism or violence attention remains high to prevent human death and keep stadiums as places where families can enjoy a public event together.


title: Stadium

text: In Europe and South America, during the twentieth century, it was common for violent bands of supporters to fight inside or close to association football stadiums. In the United Kingdom they are known as hooligans.


title: Stadium

text: Structural features that increase safety include separate entry and exit accesses for each spectator area, especially separating accesses for home and visitor supporters, dividing walls, glass parapets, vibration attenuation and sprinkler systems.


title: Stadium

text: Security features that have been adopted include armed surveillance, Identity document checks, video surveillance, metal detectors and security searches to enforce rules that forbid spectators to carry dangerous or potentially dangerous items.


title: Stadium

text: Modern stadiums, especially the largest among them, are megaprojects that can only be afforded by the largest corporations, wealthiest individuals, or government. Sports fans have a deep emotional attachment to their teams. In North America, with its closed-league "franchise" system, there are fewer teams than cities which would like them. This creates tremendous bargaining power for the owners of teams, whereby owners can threaten to relocate teams to other cities unless governments subsidize the construction of new facilities. In Europe and Latin America, where there are multiple association football clubs in any given city, and several leagues in each country, no such monopoly power exists, and stadiums are built primarily with private money. Outside professional sports, governments are also involved through the intense competition for the right to host major sporting events, primarily the Summer Olympics and the FIFA World Cup (of association football), during which cities often pledge to build new stadiums in order to satisfy the International Olympic Committee (IOC) or FIFA.


title: Stadium

text: In recent decades, to help take the burden of the massive expense of building and maintaining a stadium, many American and European sports teams have sold the rights to the name of the facility. This trend, which began in the 1970s, but accelerated greatly in the 1990s, has led to sponsors' names being affixed to both established stadiums and new ones. In some cases, the corporate name replaces (with varying degrees of success) the name by which the venue has been known for many years. But many of the more recently built stadiums, like the Volkswagen Arena in Wolfsburg, Germany, have never been known by a non-corporate name. The sponsorship phenomenon has since spread worldwide. There remain a few municipally owned stadiums, which are often known by a name that is significant to their area (for example, Boston's Fenway Park). In recent years, some government-owned stadiums have also been subject to naming-rights agreements, with some or all of the revenue often going to the team(s) that play there.


title: Stadium

text: One consequence of corporate naming has been an increase in stadium name changes, when the namesake corporation changes its name, or if it is the naming agreement simply expires. Phoenix's Chase Field, for example, was previously known as Bank One Ballpark, but was renamed to reflect the takeover of the latter corporation. San Francisco's historic Candlestick Park was renamed as 3Com Park for several years, but the name was dropped when the sponsorship agreement expired, and it was another two years before the new name of Monster Cable Products' Monster Park was applied. Local opposition to the corporate naming of that particular stadium led San Francisco's city council to permanently restore the Candlestick Park name once the Monster contract expired. More recently, in Ireland, there has been huge opposition to the renaming of Dublin's historic Lansdowne Road as the Aviva Stadium. Lansdowne was redeveloped as the Aviva, opening in May 2010.


title: Stadium

text: On the other hand, Los Angeles' Great Western Forum, one of the earliest examples of corporate renaming, retained its name for many years, even after the namesake bank no longer existed, the corporate name being dropped only after the building later changed ownership. This practice has typically been less common in countries outside the United States. A notable exception is the Nippon Professional Baseball league of Japan, in which many of the teams are themselves named after their parent corporations. Also, many newer European football stadiums, such as the University of Bolton and Emirates Stadiums in England and Signal Iduna Park and Allianz Arena in Germany have been corporately named.


title: Stadium

text: This new trend in corporate naming (or renaming) is distinguishable from names of some older venues, such as Crosley Field, Wrigley Field, and the first and second Busch Stadiums, in that the parks were named by and for the club's owner, which also happened to be the name of the company owned by those clubowners. (The current Busch Stadium received its name via a modern naming rights agreement.)


title: Stadium

text: During the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany, some stadiums were temporarily renamed because FIFA prohibits sponsorship of stadiums. For example, the Allianz Arena in Munich was called the "FIFA World Cup Stadium, Munich" during the tournament. Likewise, the same stadium will be known as the "München Arena" during the European Competitions. Similar rules affect the Imtech Arena and Veltins-Arena. This rule applies even if the stadium sponsor is an official FIFA sponsor—the Johannesburg stadium then commercially known as "Coca-Cola Park", bearing the name of one of FIFA's major sponsors, was known by its historic name of Ellis Park Stadium during the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Corporate names are also temporarily replaced during the Olympics.


title: Stadium

text: Modern stadiums bring several negative environmental issues with their construction. They require thousands of tons of materials to build, they greatly increase traffic in the area around the stadium, as well as maintaining the stadium. The increased traffic around modern stadiums has led to create exposure zones says the Health Effect Institute, exposing 30-40% of people living around the stadium to potential health issues. Many stadiums are attempting to counteract these issues by implementing solar panels, and high efficiency lighting, to reduce their own carbon footprint.


title: Stadium

text: Although concerts, such as classical music, had been presented in them for decades, beginning in the 1960s stadiums began to be used as live venues for popular music, giving rise to the term "stadium rock", particularly for forms of hard rock and progressive rock. The origins of stadium rock are sometimes dated to when The Beatles played Shea Stadium in New York in 1965. Also important was the use of large stadiums for American tours by bands in the later 1960s, such as The Rolling Stones, Grand Funk Railroad and Led Zeppelin. The tendency developed in the mid-1970s as the increased power of amplification and sound systems allowed the use of larger and larger venues. Smoke, fireworks and sophisticated lighting shows became staples of arena rock performances. Key acts from this era included Journey, REO Speedwagon, Boston, Foreigner, Styx, Kiss, Peter Frampton and Queen. In the 1980s arena rock became dominated by glam metal bands, following the lead of Aerosmith and including Mötley Crüe, Quiet Riot, W.A.S.P. and Ratt. Since the 1980s, rock, pop and folk stars, including the Grateful Dead, Madonna, Britney Spears, Beyoncé, and Taylor Swift, have undertaken large-scale stadium based concert tours.


title: Pagglait

text: Pagglait is a 2021 Indian Hindi-language black comedy drama film written and directed by Umesh Bist. The film was produced by Shobha Kapoor, Ekta Kapoor, Guneet Monga and Achin Jain under the banners Balaji Motion Pictures and Sikhya Entertainment. The film features Sanya Malhotra, Ashutosh Rana, Shruti Sharma and Raghubir Yadav in lead roles.


title: Pagglait

text: The film follows a young widow as she learns how to face the family and was released on 26 March 2021 on Netflix.


title: Pagglait

text: A young widow, Sandhya, and her in-laws are dealing with the loss of her husband, Astik, who died after just five months of marriage. Astik's parents, Usha and Shivendra, are deeply saddened by the sudden loss of their eldest son, on whom they were financially dependent. The family suffers, even more, when their relatives come to the house and create a mess. Amidst a house full of grieving relatives, Sandhya yawns through the social media condolence posts and "copy-paste" comments for Astik. Her attitude leaves some puzzled and others miffed. A relative, Ghanashyam, suggests she is suffering from PTSD. When Sandhya's best friend Nazia comes to support her, Sandhya confesses to her that she does not feel anything for the loss of her husband. To get away from the mourning family, she sneaks away with Nazia for a feast of 'golgappe', even as Astik's younger brother Alok performs the necessary funeral rituals at the river.


title: Pagglait

text: Sandhya and Astik were never really a close couple in the few months they shared. While looking for Astik's documents for the bank claim, Sandhya finds a photo of a girl in the closet. Sandhya feels anger towards her dead husband thinking he was cheating on her. When Astik's colleagues visit her to offer condolences, she finds the girl from the photo, Aakanksha. Sandhya confronts her in private about her affair. Aakanksha states that she and Astik were deeply in love since college and they both worked in the same company. But he never cheated on his wife, and that they were together until Astik married Sandhya. They could not get married as her parents did not agree to their union. Sandhya finds this hard to believe. The two, however, grow close as she tries to learn more about Astik from Aakanksha.


title: Pagglait

text: Meanwhile, members of the family react strongly when it is revealed that Astik had signed an insurance policy for INR 50 lakhs of which Sandhya is the sole nominee. Shivendra's brothers Tarun, Ghanshyam, and Pappu convince him to use the insurance money for repaying his own bank loans, and he unwillingly tries to replace Sandhya with himself and Usha as nominees. Shivendra and Usha, still grieving the loss of their son, try to come to terms with the family's proposal that Sandhya should be married off to Astik's paternal cousin, Tarun's son Aditya, who is unemployed and failing to manage money for his hotel business.


title: Pagglait

text: Sandhya asks Aditya why he wants to marry her. He says he is in love with her, which touches her heart and she accepts the proposal. This angers her parents and Alok, who is also in love with her. On the 13th day of Astik's funeral, Aditya leaves hastily. His parents tell everyone that Sandhya told him that she was pregnant with Astik's child. It is revealed by Aditya's sister, Aditi, that Sandhya lied about her pregnancy to test Aditya's love for her. Sandhya goes missing from the house after the funeral.


title: Pagglait

text: Sandhya, meanwhile, is ready to begin a new life with a new job in a new city. Even after being a topper in her M.A. class, her family never let her settle for a job. She shares how since childhood, the main focus of her parents was to marry her off, not concerned about letting her be independent. Seeing Aakanksha working in her office, she becomes motivated about working herself and becoming financially independent. She realises as long as she stayed there, she could never live her own life; as in society, other people make decisions for the women.


title: Pagglait

text: Eventually, in three separate letters to Usha, her mother Alka, and Alok, Sandhya bids goodbye to her in-laws. Shivendra finds a cheque for the full insurance money, which Sandhya left for him as she believed he'd need it more than her. She also promises to support her in-laws as her husband did.


title: Pagglait

text: Sandhya meets with Aakanksha one last time and apologises for earlier her outburst, and gives her the photograph Astik had kept in his book. In the end, she travels on a bus, ready to face life afresh.


title: Pagglait

text: The principal photography commenced in Lucknow on 21 November 2019 and wrapped up on 12 January 2020.


title: Pagglait

text: The film marked the debut of playback singer Arijit Singh as a music director. The soundtrack features 24 tracks, with a compilation of eight songs, and four different renditions of the tracks, with 12 instrumentals. All songs had vocals accompanied by female singers, in connection with the theme and storyline. Neelesh Misra wrote the lyrics for all the tracks, after a four-year long hiatus since 2017. The album released on 10 March 2021, through Singh's record label Oriyon Music, and garnered positive response for the compositions, fusing of genres and choice of singers, but criticism directed on the length of the soundtrack album.


title: Pagglait

text: Pagglait received mixed to positive reviews from critics. Certain audiences noted that the film had similarities with Seema Pahwa's directorial debut "Ramprasad Ki Tehrvi". Speaking about the film, Pahwa stated that this was due to both films having a similar setting. She went on to commend the actors' performances, especially Malhotra's, but objected to the fact that the film portrayed humour in a family at a time when they had just lost a young member.


title: M47 Dragon

text: The M47 Dragon, known as the FGM-77 during development, is an American shoulder-fired, man-portable anti-tank guided missile system. It was phased out of U.S. military service in 2001, in favor of the newer FGM-148 Javelin system.


title: M47 Dragon

text: The M47 Dragon uses a wire-guidance system in concert with a high explosive anti-tank warhead and was capable of defeating armored vehicles, fortified bunkers, main battle tanks, and other hardened targets. While it was primarily created to defeat the Soviet Union's T-55, T-62, and T-72 tanks, it saw use well into the 1990s, seeing action in the Persian Gulf War. The U.S. military officially retired the weapon in 2001. The United States destroyed the last of its stocks of the missile in 2009. The weapon system remains in active service with other militaries around the world.


title: M47 Dragon

text: In 1959, the US Army Ordnance Missile Command suggested the development of a heavy medium range assault weapon.


title: M47 Dragon

text: In 1960, the United States Army launched the MAW (Medium Anti-tank Weapon) program on a proposal from Douglas. In 1966, Douglas was awarded the contract to develop the XM47. In 1967, the XM47 was redesignated FGM-77 and FTM-77 (the FTM-77 being the training version). The first missile test took place in December 1967 followed by the first shot in real conditions (firing set, guidance and launcher) on 5 July 1968.


title: M47 Dragon

text: Used by the U.S. Army, the U.S. Marine Corps, as well as many foreign militaries, the M47 Dragon was first fielded in January 1975 to U.S. Army soldiers stationed in mainland Europe. In April 1981, the deployment of the base version of the Dragon in the Army was complete. The Army initially deployed the Dragon as a squad weapon, with every rifle squad containing an antiarmor specialist who carried the weapon.


title: M47 Dragon

text: Reorganization in the 1990s saw Dragons moved, with mechanized infantry received two launchers per squad. Infantry, Airborne, and Air Assault units received a pair of two-man ATGM teams in the platoon's weapons squad, while Light Infantry (six teams) and Ranger (three teams) units held their Dragons at the company level.


title: M47 Dragon

text: In USMC service, the Dragon was concentrated at the battalion level in a dedicated missile platoon with 32 Dragon teams. The platoon was organized with four sections, each with four squads of two 2-man teams.


title: M47 Dragon

text: The M47 Dragon uses a so-called "automatic remote control" (TCA) guidance system previously used on the TOW and Shillelagh missiles.


title: M47 Dragon

text: With this system, all that is required of the infantryman is to look through an amplifying optical sight and keep it exactly aligned with the objective.


title: M47 Dragon

text: During this time, a second electro-optical system mounted parallel to the sight visually receives thermal radiation (generally infrared) from a pyrotechnic system located on the tail of the missile and focuses it on a sensitive receiver / locator. This continuously measures via a computer the position of the heat source (the missile) in relation to the line of sight fixed on the objective, any deviation automatically causing the desired correction signal, which is in turn transmitted along wires (connecting the missile to the launcher) and that without any intervention by the operator.


title: M47 Dragon

text: The basic missile, the M222 missile, weighs 11.5 kilograms and is 744mm long in a 1154mm long launch tube. The fairly basic warhead can penetrate 330 mm of armor plate.


title: M47 Dragon

text: Dragon II is a simple warhead upgrade, originally called "Dragon PIP" and officially known as MK1 MOD0. The Dragon II received a new warhead that offers an 85% increase in penetration, to about 600mm. Weight increased to 12.3 kilograms and length to 846mm. Dragon II entered service in 1988.


title: M47 Dragon

text: A further improved Dragon II, the Dragon III received an even more powerful dual shaped charge warhead, reportedly a Dragon II head with additional precursor charge. Exact penetration remains unknown, though it is claimed to be "several hundred millimeters" better than the SMAW's 600 mm pen HEAA rocket.


title: M47 Dragon

text: Additionally, the motor is improved, allowing the missile to reach a range of 1,000 meters in 6.5 seconds, much faster than the original missile's 11 second flight time. The improved motor increases the range as well, propelling Dragon III to 1,500 meters.


title: M47 Dragon

text: The second final improvement is a new combined day/night tracker with laser guidance. Only the United States Marine Corps bought this variant, beginning in 1991, while the Army opted to wait for Javelin to enter service.


title: M47 Dragon

text: Iran has reverse-engineered a version of the Dragon, the Saeghe. They displayed it in 2002 at the Defendory exhibition in Athens, when it was in mass production. Hezbollah has acquired Saeghes for anti-tank and anti-armor uses.


title: M47 Dragon

text: Known versions include Saeghe 1, a copy of Dragon II and Saeghe 2, a copy of Dragon III. Saeghe 3 is not confirmed to exist and Saeghe 4 is believed to use a thermobaric warhead. It is mostly produced for export, only issued to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (Iranian National Guard).


title: M47 Dragon

text: Saeghe (also transliterated as Saegheh, Saeqeh and several other variations) is a very common name for Iranian weapon systems. Other things with the name include a recon drone, a target drone, a fighter jet, an air-to-air missile, and an RPG-7 warhead.


title: M47 Dragon

text: The launcher system of the M47 Dragon consists of a smoothbore fiberglass tube, breech/gas generator, tracker, bipod, battery, sling, and forward and aft shock absorbers. To fire the weapon, non-integrated day or night sights must be attached. While the launcher itself is expendable, the sights can be removed and reused.


title: M47 Dragon

text: The SU-36/P, properly "Infrared Tracker, Guided Missile, SU-36/P", provides the user with control over the missile. The sight slots onto the missile tube and The SU-36/P has a 6x magnification capability and a viewing angle of 6°. The simple crosshair reticle has a pair of stadia lines To the right of the gunner's monocular is an infrared receiver, consisting of a large lens fitted with a filter used to capture the infrared signal emitted by the missile during its flight.


title: M47 Dragon

text: The Dragon night tracker (AN/TAS-5) increases the gunner's ability to engage targets during limited visibility. Targets can be engaged during daylight and also during limited visibility such as smoke, fog, or darkness.


title: Maxwel Cornet

text: Gnaly Albert Maxwel Cornet (born 27 September 1996) is an Ivorian professional footballer who plays as a winger and full-back for Premier League club West Ham United and the Ivory Coast national team. He has previously played in France for Metz II, Metz, Lyon II and Lyon and in England with Burnley.


title: Maxwel Cornet

text: Cornet is a youth exponent from Metz. Aged 15 years and 11 months he made his debut for Metz in the third-tier of French football, the Championnat National in a game on 31 August 2012. Cornet was an 85th minute substitute for Alhassane Keita in Metz’ 6-3 win against Quevilly. He made his Ligue 2 debut on 2 August 2013 against Laval. He replaced Yeni Ngbakoto after 79 minutes in a 1–0 home victory.


title: Maxwel Cornet

text: On 16 January 2015, Cornet signed for Ligue 1 club Lyon. He made his league debut for the club against his former club Metz on 25 January 2015, replacing Alexandre Lacazette after 34 minutes due to an injury, in an eventual 2–0 home win. Cornet scored his first goal for Lyon on 23 October 2015 as an 89th-minute substitute in a 3–0 home win over Toulouse.


title: Maxwel Cornet

text: In January 2020, Cornet was tested at the left-back position by Lyon's coach Rudi Garcia following the injuries of Youssouf Koné and Fernando Marçal. After his good performances, he became the club's starting left-back for the rest of the season. On 15 August 2020, Cornet scored a goal against Manchester City in the 2019–20 UEFA Champions League quarter-finals which Lyon won 3–1 and progressed to the semi-finals.


title: Maxwel Cornet

text: On 29 August 2021, Cornet signed for Premier League club Burnley for a €15 million fee on a five-year deal. On 18 September, he made his Burnley debut as a substitute, replacing Jóhann Berg Guðmundsson in a 1–0 defeat against Arsenal. Cornet scored his first goal for the club in a 2–2 draw against Leicester City on 25 September. Although the season culminated in relegation for Burnley, Cornet finished the season as the team’s top scorer with nine goals in 26 appearances.


title: Maxwel Cornet

text: On 5 August 2022, Cornet joined West Ham United, signing a five-year contract with a further one-year option, for an undisclosed fee from Burnley.


title: Maxwel Cornet

text: Cornet was born in Ivory Coast, and emigrated with his family to northern France at the age of three. He was a youth international for France at every level but declared for the Ivory Coast national team on 5 April 2017. He made his senior debut for Ivory Coast in a 5–0 friendly loss to the Netherlands on 4 June 2017.


title: Maxwel Cornet

text: Cornet has three children. Growing up, he idolised Didier Drogba due to his Ivorian birth and subsequent move to France. Outside of football, he enjoys playing tennis.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: William Averell Harriman (November 15, 1891July 26, 1986), better known as Averell Harriman, was an American Democratic politician, businessman, and diplomat. The son of railroad baron E. H. Harriman, he served as Secretary of Commerce under President Harry S. Truman, and later as the 48th governor of New York. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1952 and 1956, as well as a core member of the group of foreign policy elders known as "The Wise Men".


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: While attending Groton School and Yale University, he made contacts that led to creation of a banking firm that eventually merged into Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. He owned parts of various other companies, including Union Pacific Railroad, Merchant Shipping Corporation, and Polaroid Corporation. During the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harriman served in the National Recovery Administration and on the Business Advisory Council before moving into foreign policy roles. After helping to coordinate the Lend-Lease program, Harriman served as the ambassador to the Soviet Union, and attended the major World War II conferences. After the war, he became a prominent advocate of George F. Kennan's policy of containment. He also served as Secretary of Commerce, and coordinated the implementation of the Marshall Plan.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: In 1954, Harriman defeated Republican Senator Irving Ives to become the Governor of New York. He served a single term before his defeat by Nelson Rockefeller in the 1958 election. Harriman unsuccessfully sought the presidential nomination at the 1952 Democratic National Convention and the 1956 Democratic National Convention. Although Harriman had Truman's backing at the 1956 convention, the Democrats nominated Adlai Stevenson II in both elections.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: After his gubernatorial defeat, Harriman became a widely respected foreign policy elder within the Democratic Party. He helped negotiate the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty during President John F. Kennedy's administration, and was deeply involved in the Vietnam War during the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. After Johnson left office in 1969, Harriman became affiliated with various organizations, including the Club of Rome and the Council on Foreign Relations.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: Better known as Averell Harriman, he was born in New York City, the son of railroad baron Edward Henry Harriman and Mary Williamson Averell. He was the brother of E. Roland Harriman and Mary Harriman Rumsey. Harriman was a close friend of Hall Roosevelt, the brother of Eleanor Roosevelt.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: During the summer of 1899, Harriman's father organized the Harriman Alaska Expedition, a philanthropic-scientific survey of coastal Alaska and Russia that attracted 25 of the leading scientific, naturalist, and artist luminaries of the day, including John Muir, John Burroughs, George Bird Grinnell, C. Hart Merriam, Grove Karl Gilbert, and Edward Curtis, along with 100 family members and staff, aboard the steamship "George Elder". Young Harriman would have his first introduction to Russia, a nation on which he would spend much attention in his later life in public service.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: He attended Groton School in Massachusetts before going on to Yale, where he joined the Skull and Bones society and Psi Upsilon. He graduated in 1913. After graduating, he inherited one of the largest fortunes in America, and became Yale's youngest Crew coach.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: Using money from his father, he established the W.A. Harriman & Co banking business in 1922. His brother Roland joined the business in 1927 and the name was changed to Harriman Brothers & Company. In 1931 it merged with Brown Bros. & Co. to create the highly successful Wall Street firm Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. Notable employees included George Herbert Walker and his son-in-law Prescott Bush.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: Harriman's main properties included Brown Brothers & Harriman & Co, the Union Pacific Railroad, the Merchant Shipbuilding Corporation, and venture capital investments that included the Polaroid Corporation. Harriman's associated properties included the Southern Pacific Railroad (including the Central Pacific Railroad), the Illinois Central Railroad, Wells Fargo & Co., the Pacific Mail Steamship Co., American Ship & Commerce, Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Aktiengesellschaft (HAPAG), the American Hawaiian Steamship Co., United American Lines, the Guaranty Trust Company, and the Union Banking Corporation.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: He served as Chairman of The Business Council, then known as the Business Advisory Council for the United States Department of Commerce, in 1937 and 1939.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: Harriman's older sister, Mary Rumsey, encouraged Averell to leave his finance job and work with her and their friends, the Roosevelts, to advance the goals of the New Deal. Averell joined the NRA National Recovery Administration, an effort to cartelise the American economy via a Corporate State model (ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1935), marking the beginning of his political career.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: Following the death of August Belmont Jr., in 1924, Harriman, George Walker, and Joseph E. Widener purchased much of Belmont's thoroughbred breeding stock. Harriman raced under the nom de course of Arden Farm. Among his horses, Chance Play won the 1927 Jockey Club Gold Cup. He also raced in partnership with Walker under the name Log Cabin Stable before buying him out. U.S. Racing Hall of Fame inductee Louis Feustel, trainer of Man o' War, trained the Log Cabin horses until 1926. Of the partnership's successful runners purchased from the August Belmont estate, Ladkin is best remembered for defeating the European star Epinard in the International Special.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: Harriman's banking business was the main Wall Street connection for German companies and the varied U.S. financial interests of Fritz Thyssen, who was a financial backer of the Nazi Party until 1938. The Trading With the Enemy Act (enacted on October 6, 1917) classified any business transactions for profit with enemy nations as illegal, and any funds or assets involved were subject to seizure by the U.S. government. The declaration of war on the U.S. by Hitler led to a U.S. government order on October 20, 1942, to seize German interests in the U.S., which included Harriman's operations in New York City.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: The assets were held by the government for the duration of the war, then returned afterward; UBC was dissolved in 1951.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: Compensation for wartime losses in Poland was based on prewar assets. Harriman, who owned vast coal reserves in Poland, was handsomely compensated for them through an agreement between the American and Polish governments. Poles who had owned little but their homes received negligible sums.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: Beginning in the spring of 1941, Harriman served President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a special envoy to Europe and helped coordinate the Lend-Lease program. In August 1941, Harriman was present at the meeting between FDR and Winston Churchill at Placentia Bay, which yielded the Atlantic Charter. The joint agreement would establish American and British goals for the period following the end of World War II—before the U.S. was involved in that war—in the form of a common declaration of principles that were eventually endorsed by all of the Allies. Harriman was subsequently dispatched to Moscow to negotiate the terms of the Lend-Lease agreement with the Soviet Union in September 1941, together with the Canadian publishing millionaire Lord Beaverbrook, who represented the United Kingdom. Harriman tended to follow Beaverbrook's argument that since Germany had committed three million men to the invasion of the Soviet Union—so that the Soviets were doing the bulk of the fighting against the Third Reich—it was in the best interests of the Western powers to do everything to assist the Soviet Union. The decision to aid the Soviet Union was taken against the advice of the U.S. ambassador in Moscow, Laurence Steinhardt, who from the moment that Operation Barbarossa started on June 22, 1941, had been sending cables predicting the Soviet Union would be rapidly defeated, and that any American aid would thus be wasted. Likewise, General George Marshall was advising President Roosevelt that it was inevitable that Germany would crush the Soviet Union, and predicted that the Wehrmacht would reach Lake Baikal by the end of 1941.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: The most important result of the Beaverbrook-Harriman mission to Moscow was the conclusion agreed upon between Churchill and Roosevelt that the Soviet Union would not collapse by the end of 1941. Additional conditions of the agreement were that even if the Soviet Union was defeated in 1942, keeping Soviet Russia fighting would impose major losses on the Wehrmacht, which would only benefit the United States and the United Kingdom. Harriman has been subsequently criticized for not imposing preconditions on American aid to the Soviet Union, but the American historian, Gerhard Weinberg, has defended him on this point, arguing that in 1941, it was Germany—not the Soviet Union—that represented the main danger to the United States. Furthermore, Joseph Stalin told Harriman that he would refuse American aid if preconditions were attached, leaving Harriman with no alternatives on the issue. Harriman believed if Germany defeated the Soviet Union, then all of the vast natural resources of the Soviet Union would be at the disposal of the "Reich", making Germany far more powerful than it already was. Therefore, it was in the best interests of the United States to deny those resources to the "Reich". He also pointed out that the defeat of the Soviet Union would free up three million men of the Wehrmacht for operations elsewhere, allowing Hitler to shift money and resources from his army to his navy and potentially increasing the threat to the United States. Harriman told Roosevelt that if Operation Barbarossa was successful in 1941, Hitler would almost certainly defeat Britain in 1942. His promise of $1 billion in aid technically exceeded his brief. Determined to win over the doubtful American public, he used his own funds to purchase time on CBS radio to explain the program in terms of enlightened self-interest. Nonetheless, considerable U.S. public skepticism towards Soviet aid persisted, lifting only with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: In a speech in 1972, Harriman stated: "Today people tend to forget that, in 1941, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill had one prime objective: to destroy Hitler's forces, and win the war in a way that would be least costly in terms of human lives. For over a year, the British alone had borne the brunt of Nazi attacks; for their own self-preservation, they wanted to keep Russia as a fighting ally. Roosevelt had yet another consideration in mind. In those early days of the war, he was fearful that we would eventually be drawn into the conflict, yet he still hoped that our participation could be limited to air and naval forces, with a minimum of ground troops. We are all, to a considerable extent, the product of our experience: Roosevelt had a particular horror of the trench warfare of World War I and he wanted above all to prevent that fate from again befalling American fighting men. He hoped that, with our support, the Red Army would be able to keep the Axis forces engaged. The strength of the British divisions coupled with our own air and sea power might then make it unnecessary for the United States to commit major ground forces on the European continent". The Beaverbrook-Harriman mission promised that the United States and Great Britain would supply the Soviet Union every month with 500 tanks and 400 airplanes, plus tin, copper, and zinc. However, the promised supplies had to be sent via the perilous "Murmansk run" through the Arctic Ocean, and only a tiny fraction of what was promised had in fact arrived by December 1941.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: On November 25, 1941 (twelve days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor), Harriman noted that "The United States Navy is shooting the Germans—German submarines and aircraft at sea." In 1941, a team of officers, led by General Albert Wedemeyer on behalf of General Marshall, drew up the Victory Program, whose premise was that the Soviet Union would be defeated that year, and that to defeat Germany would require the United States to raise by the summer of 1943 a force of 215 divisions comprising 8.7 million men. The Harriman-Beaverbrook mission, whose more optimistic appraisal of Soviet fighting power ran contrary to the more pessimistic assessment, challenged one of the basic assumptions of the Victory Program. The Victory Program, with its call for a 215-division army plus men for the Army Air Corps, the Navy and the Marines that would require massive amounts of equipment, leading to what was known as the Feasibility Dispute within different departments of the government. To build the necessary weapons for such a massive force would require the government essentially to end all civilian production in the U.S, a measure estimated to cause a 60% reduction in living standards. Many in the government felt this would impose a level of sacrifice that the American people would be unwilling to accept. The Feasibility Dispute ended in 1942 with the "civilian" fraction triumphing over the military as Roosevelt decided upon what was known as the "90 division gamble". Roosevelt decided that all of the evidence he received since the Harriman-Beaverbrook mission indicated that the Soviet Union would not be defeated as the Victory Program had assumed, and accordingly the 215 division force envisioned was not necessary and instead he would "gamble" with a 90 division force.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: In August 1942, Harriman accompanied Churchill to the Moscow Conference to explain to Stalin why the western allies were carrying out operations in North Africa instead of opening the promised second front in France. The meeting was a difficult one with Stalin openly accusing Churchill to his face of lying to him and suggested that the British would not open a second front in Europe because of cowardice, sarcastically saying that the recent defeats suffered by the British 8th Army in North Africa showed how brave the British were against the Wehrmacht. Harriman had spent much time after the meeting at the Kremlin reminding Churchill that the Allies needed the Soviet Union and to try not to take Stalin's remarks too personally, saying the fate of the world was hanging in balance. On June 24, 1943, Harriman met with Churchill to tell him that Roosevelt did not want him to attend the up-coming summit meeting with Stalin, saying that it was important to allow Roosevelt who had never met Stalin to establish an "intimate understanding", which would be "impossible" if Churchill was there. Churchill rejected this suggestion, sending a telegram to Roosevelt full of hurt feelings saying: "I do not underrate the use that enemy propaganda would make of a meeting between the heads of Soviet Russia and the United States at this juncture with the British Commonwealth and Empire excluded. It would be serious and vexatious, and many would be bewildered and alarmed thereby". Roosevelt in his reply lied by saying that this was just a "misunderstanding" and he had never wanted to exclude Churchill from the summit with Stalin.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: Harriman was appointed as United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union in October 1943. In his 1975 memoir "Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941-1946", Harriman wrote that Stalin was "the most inscrutable and contradictory character I have ever known", a mysterious man of "high intelligence and fantastic grasp of detail" who possessed much "shrewdness" and "surprising human sensitivity". Harriman concluded that Stalin was "better informed than Roosevelt, more realistic than Churchill, in some ways the most effective of the war leaders. At the same time he was, of course, a murderous tyrant". Harriman, who thoroughly enjoyed living in London, did not want to be U.S ambassador in Moscow and only reluctantly accepted the assignment in October 1943 after Roosevelt told him that he was the only man he wanted in Moscow. Harriman was also reluctant to part with his mistress, Pamela Churchill, the wife of Randolph Churchill. Although Harriman was one of the richest men in the United States, running a vast business empire comprising investments in railroads, aviation, banks, utilities, shipbuilding, oil production, steel manufacturing, and resorts, this in fact endeared him to the Soviets who believed he represented American capitalist ruling class. Nikita Khrushchev later told Harriman: "We like to do business with you, for you are the master and not the lackey". Stalin viewed the United States through a Marxist prism, which saw American Big Business as the puppeteers and American politicians as the puppets.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: At a three power conference in Moscow that took place between October 19 and 30, 1943, Harriman played a major role in representing the United States as part of the American delegation headed by Secretary of State Cordell Hull while the Soviet delegation was headed by the Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov and the British delegation headed by the Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden. The main American demands at the Moscow Conference were to have a new international organization replace the League of Nations to be called the United Nations; to have Soviet Union to agree to adhere to the "unconditional surrender" formula adopted at the Casablanca conference (a major point given that the Soviets sometimes hinted that they were willing to sign a separate peace with Germany); and for the "Big Three" powers whom it was assumed would dominate the post-war world to be a "Big Four" as the Americans wanted China to stand alongside the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain as one of the world's dominant powers. The demand for a "Big Four" instead of a "Big Three" turned out to the main difficulty at the Moscow conference as the British and Soviets did not consider China a major power in any sense. As long as the Soviet Union was engaged in the war against Germany, they not did wish to antagonize Japan with whom they had signed a neutrality agreement in 1941, and the Soviets objected that having Foo Ping Shen, the Chinese ambassador to Moscow, sign the proposed Four Power Declaration would cause tensions with Tokyo. Eventually, after much patient diplomacy, Harriman won out, and a Four Power declaration was signed on October 30, 1943, by Hull, Eden, Molotov and Foo stating that the four permanent members of the United Nations Security Council would be the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union and China.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: Besides for the Four Power declaration, the other issues at the Moscow conference were whether the United States would recognize the French Committee of National Liberation headed by General Charles de Gaulle as the French government-in-exile. Roosevelt had a strong personal aversion to de Gaulle, and throughout the war, the Americans had an "anybody but de Gaulle" attitude. At Moscow, the Americans very reluctantly agreed to Eden's insistence that they extend some recognition to de Gaulle, although the Americans still refused to grant him full recognition, a matter which contributed much to de Gaulle's subsequent anti-Americanism. The question of who the legitimate government of France was posed a major potential problem since the next year Operation Overlord, the invasion of France, was scheduled to take place. Presuming Overlord was successful, the question would arise over whom the Anglo-Americans would turn France over to. Nothing infuriated de Gaulle more than the implication that the Americans would not hand over France to his National Committee after the liberation. Tensions between Great Britain and the Soviet Union over the Arctic supply convoys were eased while the difficulties over supplies coming over Iran were left unresolved despite Harriman's best efforts at playing mediator. On the matter of Germany, the Soviet Union agreed to the "unconditional surrender" formula while it agreed that after the war, Germany was to be disarmed and denazified.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: All of the delegations at the Moscow conference agreed that Germany was to be permanently disarmed after the war, which led to the question of whether Germany should be also deindustrialized as well in order to ensure that Germany would never be able to build military weapons again; no consensus was reached over this issue. The question of what Germany's borders were to be after the war was left unresolved, through everybody at the conference agreed that Germany was going to lose territory with the only question being just how much. One matter where agreement was reached was with Austria as it was announced at the Moscow conference that the "Anschluss" of 1938 was to be undone and Austria would have its independence restored after the war. Finally, in regards to the "Reich", it was agreed that war crimes trials were to take place after the war with lesser war criminals to be tried in the nations where they had committed their crimes while the leaders of Germany were to be tried by a special court consisting of judges from the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union. The communique in Moscow which announced that war crimes trials would be held after the war was intended primarily as a deterrent to German officials currently engaged in war crimes as it was hoped that the prospect of facing a hangman's noose after the war might change their behavior. As for Italy, it was agreed that the Soviet Union was to send a representative to the Allied Control Commission which governed the liberated parts of Italy and that Italy was to pay reparations to the Soviet Union in the form of ships, as much of the Italian merchant marine was to be handed over to the Soviet Union. No agreement was reached over the question of the Soviet Union's borders after the war, with the Soviets insisting that their postwar borders should be exactly where they were on June 21, 1941, a point that the American delegation and to a lesser extent British delegation resisted.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: At the Tehran Conference in late 1943 Harriman was tasked with placating a suspicious Churchill while Roosevelt attempted to gain the confidence of Stalin. The conference highlighted the divisions between the United States and Britain about the postwar world. Churchill was intent on maintaining Britain's empire and carving the postwar world into spheres of influence while the United States upheld the principles of self-determination as laid out in the Atlantic Charter. Harriman mistrusted the Soviet leader's motives and intentions and opposed the spheres approach as it would give Stalin a free hand in eastern Europe. At the Tehran conference, Molotov finally promised Harriman what he long sought, namely that after Germany was defeated, the Soviet Union would declare war on Japan. At Tehran, Roosevelt told Stalin that as a "practical man" who was planning to run for a fourth term in 1944 that he had to think of Polish-American voters, but that he agreed that the Soviets could keep the part of Poland they had annexed in 1939, provided that this was kept a secret until the 1944 election. Harriman felt that this was a mistake, as he regarded Roosevelt's statement that the Polish government had to accept the loss of some of its territory as virtually agreeing to allow the Soviets to impose any government they wanted on Poland because it was unlikely that the Polish government-in-exile would agree with the annexation. At the same time, Harriman was jolted when Molotov admitted to him that there had been attempts at arranging a separate German-Soviet peace which would leave the Western Allies to face the full force of the Wehrmacht earlier in 1943, but that the Soviets had rejected the peace overtures. The way in which Molotov phrased his account implied to Harriman that in the future the Soviets might be more receptive to such peace offers, which Harriman regarded as an attempt at blackmail. On January 22, 1944, Harriman's daughter Kathleen, whom the British Foreign Office described as "the poor man's Mrs. Roosevelt", traveled to Katyn Forest to see the "evidence" that the Soviet authorities had produced meant to prove that the Katyn Forest massacre had been committed by the Germans in 1941, instead of the Soviets in 1940. Since all of the available evidence suggested that the Soviets had in fact committed the Katyn Forest massacre in April 1940, Harriman later stated that he tried to avoid the subject, telling a Senate hearing "No, I do not recall the subject came up".


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: Starting in February 1944, Harriman pressed Stalin to open U.S-Soviet staff talks to prepare for when the Soviet Union would enter the war against Japan, only to be told this was "premature" as Stalin stated it would require at least four infantry divisions to invade Manchuria, which would not be possible given that the Soviets were fully involved in the war against Germany. For the rest of 1944, Harriman pressed Molotov to bring the head of the Soviet Far Eastern Air Force to Moscow to open staff talks with the U.S military mission about establishing American air bases in either the Vladivostok area or in Kamchatka to allow American aircraft to bomb Japan. Molotov refused to make any firm commitments about allowing American bombers to strike Japan from air bases in the Soviet Union. Another major concern of the Roosevelt administration was to ensure that the Chinese civil war did not resume with the end of World War II, and to do so, the Americans sought a coalition government between the Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang. In connection with this, Harriman met Stalin on June 10, 1944, to get from him a rather generalized statement declaring his support for Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek as China's only leader and a promise that he would use his influence with Mao Zedong to pressure him to recognize Chiang. In August 1944, Harriman sought permission for American aircraft flying supplies to the "Armia Krajowa" rebels fighting in the Warsaw Uprising to land at the Poltava airbase as otherwise the American aircraft would have no fuel to make it home. On August 16, 1944, the Assistant Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Andrei Vyshinsky, told Harriman that "the Soviet government cannot of course object to English or American aircraft dropping arms in the region of Warsaw since this is an American or British affair. But they decidedly object to American or British aircraft, after dropping arms in the region of Warsaw, landing on Soviet territory, since the Soviet government does not wish to associate themselves either directly or indirectly with the adventure in Warsaw". In a cable to Washington, Harriman wrote: "The Soviet Government's refusal is not based on operational difficulties nor on a denial of the conflict, but on ruthless political calculations".


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: In the summer of 1944, Stalin promised Harriman that the Americans would be allowed to use air bases in the Soviet Far East to bomb Japan, but only if the Americans supplied the Soviet Air Force with hundreds of four engine bombers. In September 1944, Stalin expressed much pique to Harriman that the recent Anglo-American communique issued at the Quebec Conference did not mention the Soviet Union, leading him to sarcastically state "if the United States and Great Britain desired to bring the Japanese to their knees without Russian participation, the Russians were ready to do this". When Harriman protested it was impossible to include the Soviet Union in the plans for victory over Japan until the Soviets opened staff talks, Stalin assented.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: In early October 1944, the commanders of military forces in the Soviet Far East arrived in Moscow to begin staff talks with General John Deanne of the U.S. military mission. At the same time, Stalin informed Harriman that Soviet entry into the war against Japan would require American approval of certain political conditions about the future of Manchuria, a point about which he did not elaborate upon. On December 14, 1944, Stalin spelled out to Harriman what these political conditions were, namely that the Soviet Union be allowed to lease the Chinese Eastern Railroad and the ports on the Liaotung peninsula and for China to recognize the independence of Outer Mongolia. In a thinly veiled threat, Stalin boasted to Harriman that the flat open plains of Manchuria and northern China were the perfect country for Soviet combined arms operations, expressing much confidence that the Red Army would have no difficulty defeating the Kwantung Army and that all of northern China would be under Soviet control once the Soviets declared war on Japan. Essentially, Stalin was saying the Soviets would take whatever they wanted in China, regardless if they had an agreement with the United States or not. At a dinner at the Kremlin during the visit of General de Gaulle to Moscow in December 1944, Harriman was disturbed by the way Stalin toasted Chief Air Marshal Alexander Novikov in front of him and de Gaulle, saying: "He has created a wonderful air force. But if he doesn't do his job properly then we'll kill him".


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: Harriman also attended the Yalta Conference, where he encouraged taking a stronger line with the Soviet Union—especially on questions of Poland. The American delegation at the Yalta conference stayed at the luxurious Livadia Palace overlooking the Black Sea, and Harriman was given a room of his own to stay, a sign of presidential favor as most of the American delegation had to sleep five men to a room owing to a surplus of delegates and a lack of space in the Livadia Palace. The Livadia palace had been built in 1910–11 as a summer residence for the Emperor Nicholas II and his family, and was designed to house only 61 people, hence the presence of a 215-strong American delegation literally overwhelmed its facilities.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: On February 8, 1945, Roosevelt, Harriman and Charles "Chip" Bohlen who served as the interpreter met Stalin, Molotov and the translator Vladimir Pavlov to discuss the Soviet entry into the war against Japan. During the meeting, it was agreed that the Kuriles islands and the southern half of Sakhalin island were to be annexed by the Soviets. Without consulting Chiang, Roosevelt agreed to the Soviet demands for a role in managing the port of Dairen and to own the Chinese Eastern Railroad, through with the regard to the former he felt that Dairen should be internationalized. Roosevelt stated that he could not inform the Chinese at present because whatever was said to them "was known to the whole world in twenty-four hours", but he would tell them when the time was right; much to Harriman's mirth, Stalin promised he could "guarantee the security of the Supreme Soviet!" Once Molotov presented a draft note to Harriman about the future of Manchuria, Harriman complained that the Soviet draft stated the Soviet Union would lease both Dairen and Port Arthur and manage not only the Chinese Eastern Railroad, but the South Manchuria Railroad as well. Harriman objected, stating that Roosevelt wanted the ports on the Liaotung peninsula to be internationalized, not leased by the Soviet Union and for the Manchurian railroads to be run jointly by a Sino-Soviet commission instead of being owned by the Soviet Union. Molotov agreed to Harriman's amendments, but when Churchill expressed his approval of Stalin's request for the Soviets to have a naval base at Port Arthur, the latter told Harriman that internationalization would not be possible for Port Arthur. The final draft called for the internationalization of Dairen with a leading role reserved for the Soviet Union; the Soviets to have a naval base at Port Arthur; a Sino-Soviet commission to run the railroads of Manchuria; and China to recognize Outer Mongolia.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: On February 10, 1944, Harriman informed Stalin that Roosevelt had agreed to the British call for the "Big Four" to become the "Big Five" by including France. Specifically, the Americans were backing the British call to recognize France as one of the great powers of the post-war world and to allow the French to have an occupation zone in Germany. Through Stalin had been opposed to de Gaulle's claims for the French to have an occupation zone in Germany, the Anglo-American front on this issue, which was relatively unimportant to him, led him to tell Harriman that he now agreed on a four-power occupation of Germany. On February 11, 1945, the conference ended and the following day Harriman saw Roosevelt, his friend since childhood, for the last time, as he boarded a C-54 airplane at Saki airfield to take him to Egypt. On April 12, 1945, Roosevelt died.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: At the Yalta conference, it was agreed that American prisoners captured by the Germans and liberated by the Soviets were to be immediately repatriated to American forces. The fact that the Soviets made many difficulties about fulfilling this promise such as not allowing American officers into Poland to contact American prisoners of war there led to frequent clashes between Harriman and Molotov, and contributed much to Harriman's increasing negative feelings about the Soviet Union. On May 11, 1945, Harriman reported in a cable to Washington that Stalin "feared a separate peace by ourselves with Japan" before the Soviet Union had moved its forces eastwards to take invade Manchuria. After Roosevelt's death, he attended the final "Big Three" conference at Potsdam. Although the new president, Harry Truman, was receptive to Harriman's anti-Soviet hard line advice, the new secretary of state, James Byrnes, managed to sideline him. While in Berlin, he noted the tight security imposed by Soviet military authorities and the beginnings of a program of reparations by which the Soviets were stripping out German industry.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: In 1945, while Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Harriman was presented with a Trojan Horse gift. In 1952, the gift, a carved wood Great Seal of the United States, which had adorned "the ambassador's Moscow residential office" in Spaso House, was found to be bugged.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: Harriman served as ambassador to the Soviet Union until January 1946. When he returned to the United States, he worked hard to get George Kennan's Long Telegram into wide distribution. Kennan's analysis, which generally accorded with Harriman's, became the cornerstone of Truman's Cold War strategy of containment.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: From April to October 1946, he was ambassador to Britain, but he was soon appointed to become United States Secretary of Commerce under President Harry S. Truman to replace Henry A. Wallace, a critic of Truman's foreign policies. In 1948, he was put in charge of the Marshall Plan. In Paris, he became friendly with the CIA agent Irving Brown, who organised anti-communist unions and organisations. Harriman was then sent to Tehran in July 1951 to mediate between Iran and Britain in the wake of the Iranian nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: In 1949, the Defense Secretary James Forrestal committed suicide and afterwards Harriman and his wife Marie virtually adopted Forrestal's son Michael. Harriman paid tuition for Michael Forrestal when he attended Harvard Law School and made him make connections with New York's elite when he went into work at a law firm. Michael Forrestal served as a protege of Harriman's and later followed him into the Kennedy administration.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: In the 1954 race to succeed Republican Thomas E. Dewey as Governor of New York, the Democratic Harriman defeated Dewey's protege, U.S. Senator Irving M. Ives, by a tiny margin. He served as governor for one term until Republican Nelson Rockefeller unseated him in 1958. As governor, he increased personal taxes by 11% but his tenure was dominated by his presidential ambitions. Harriman was a candidate for the Democratic Presidential Nomination in 1952, and again in 1956 when he was endorsed by Truman but lost (both times) to Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: Despite the failure of his presidential ambitions, Harriman became a widely respected elder statesman of the party. Harriman's long friend Truman believed that the United States, which was a Protestant majority country, would never elect a Catholic president, which led him to oppose Senator John F. Kennedy in the 1960 Democratic primaries. Under Truman's influence, Harriman had been slow to endorse Kennedy, only doing so after it became clear that Kennedy was going to win the Democratic nomination. After Kennedy won the 1960 election, Harriman pressed hard for a position in the new Kennedy administration, which Kennedy younger brother and right-hand man Robert Kennedy opposed, saying that Harriman was too old and a latecomer to the Kennedy camp. However, after a luncheon, where Harriman recalled his service with Roosevelt and Truman, the elder Kennedy decided that Harriman's knowledge and experience might serve his administration well. Kennedy did make a condition: he told Harriman's adopted son, Michael Forrestal: "Averell's hearing is atrocious. If we're going to give him a job, he has to have a hearing aid, and I want you to see that he does".


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: In January 1961, he was appointed Ambassador at Large in the Kennedy administration, a position he held until November, when he became Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs. In 1961, at the suggestion of Ambassador Charles W. Yost Harriman represented President Kennedy at the funeral of King Mohammed V of Morocco. During this period he advocated U.S. support of a neutral government in Laos and helped to negotiate the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: During a visit to New Delhi to meet the Indian prime minister Nehru, Harriman met an exiled Lao Prince Souvanna Phouma, who favored neutrality for his nation in the Cold War. At the time, there was a civil war in Laos between the Communist Pathet Lao and the anti-Communist Special Forces, and Harriman concluded based on his talks in New Delhi that the best outcome would be neutrality for Laos and that Souvanna Phouma was not a Communist dupe as the CIA claimed. Shortly after his return to the United States, the Pathet Lao won a victory on the Plain of Jars on March 9, 1961, and all of Laos seemed to be brink of taken over by the Pathet Lao. Kennedy seriously considered American intervention in Laos, but he soon learned that Laos was logistically difficult for the American forces to reach and more importantly to be supplied once they had arrived. Furthermore, Laos bordered China and Kennedy was informed that if the United States sent troops to fight in Laos, so too would the Chinese sent troops to Laos to fight them.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: As Kennedy pondered what to do about Laos, Khrushchev in Moscow told the American ambassador, Llewellyn Thompson, that he was wanted to see an international conference to settle the Lao civil war, an offer Kennedy promptly accepted. Harriman was visiting Turkey with the Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, when he suddenly received a call from Kennedy telling him to go to Laos at once for an assessment of the situation. Harriman relished his job as a diplomatic trouble-shooter who was accustomed to working on his own and embraced the assignment, through he complained that he was not dressed for the tropics as he rushed off to Laos. On his way to Vientiane, he stopped in Saigon to meet the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Lemnitzer, who agreed with Harriman's plans to send troops to Laos to improve the American bargaining position. However, on April 24, 1961, the Pathet Lao unilaterally declared a ceasefire, and Harriman headed to Geneva to head the American delegation to discuss the neutralization of Laos.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: Rusk headed the American delegation at the Geneva conference, but after a week he returned to Washington and left Harriman in charge. Harriman felt at 126 strong that the American delegation was too large, and believed that too much time would be wasted in meetings. Harriman appointed William Sullivan as his deputy and ordered him to reduce the size of the delegation. When Sullivan suggested cutting the delegation by a third, Harriman shouted "That's not enough. I want it cut by half". When Rusk objected that Sullivan as a Class 3 officer was not senior enough to serve as Harriman's deputy, the latter replied: "Nobody will know, nobody will care, what his rank is". When the Chinese foreign minister Chen Yi indicated a willingness to meet privately with Harriman, Rusk refused, saying the Republicans would attack the Democrat Kennedy as "soft on Communism" if it emerged that an American diplomat had a met Chinese diplomat. An infuriated Harriman responded that in World War II Roosevelt had let him meet anyone whom it was necessary for him to meet, and charged that Rusk was too rigid to serve as secretary of state.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: The Chinese delegation accused the United States of supporting Phoumi, leading Harriman to accuse the Chinese of supporting the Pathet Lao. A Soviet diplomat named Georgi Pushkin told Harriman privately the next day: "You did the Chinese a great injustice". When Harriman inquired how, Pushkin replied: "They're not helping the Pathet Lao. All the arms and ammunition are coming from us". With that remark, Harriman came to understand that the Soviets wanted Laos to be neutral out of the fear that a Communist Laos would be in the Chinese sphere of influence, an insight that did much to improve his bargaining power.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: Harriman, who at this stage still thought that Southeast Asia was relatively unimportant for the United States, endorsed a call by Undersecretary of State Chester Bowles to make all of Southeast Asia neutral. This plan Rusk stoutly opposed. In November 1961, Kennedy promoted Harriman to the role of assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs. William Sullivan replaced Harriman as the head of the American delegation in Geneva.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: Harriman favored the neutralist Prince Souvanna Phouma as the next leader of Laos and urged Kennedy to drop American support for right-wing Prince Phoumi Nosavan. In a memo in 1962 to Carl Rowan of the U.S. Information Agency entitled "Burn this!", Harriman stated his views about how Kennedy's administration was responding to journalistic coverage of Indochina, saying that the media would treat a greater role by U.S. advisers as "our participation in this war - a new war under President Kennedy - the Democratic War Party, so skillfully avoided by the Republican President Eisenhower. The press do not belong in these aircraft, but can be kept fully informed by briefings in Saigon by our military or embassy". During a visit to Vientiane, Harriman pressed Phoumi Nosavan to accept Souvanna Phouma as prime minister and a lesser cabinet post in his a government headed by him. Harriman was in notably cranky mood and Michael Forrestal, who translated Harriman's remarks into French for Lao leaders, found himself substituting less offensive words for some of Harriman's ruder words. Harriman's original remark to Phoumi Nosavan that he was stupidly self-destructive was one of his kinder statements.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: Shortly afterwards, on May 6, 1962, Phoumi Nosavan led his men into a notable defeat at Nam Tha. Phoumi Nosavan claimed to have been defeated by a North Vietnamese division, but an American general, Reuben Tucker, reported to Kennedy that there were no North Vietnamese at Nam Tha and that Phoumi "couldn't lead a squad around a corner". General Tucker's reports confirmed to Kennedy Harriman's assessment of Phoumi as a weak leader. Harriman together with Roger Hilsman called for a show of force to prove that the United States was unwilling to accept a Communist Laos after Phoumi's defeat. Kennedy decide to move the 7th Fleet into the Gulf of Siam to signal the possibility of American intervention in Laos, which Harriman decided was too mild a statement and urged Kennedy not to move the fleet, least it be seen as a weakness by the Communists. On June 11, 1962, Prince Souvanna Phouma announced the formation of a coalition government to end the civil war in Laos and declared that henceforward his nation would be neutral in the Cold War. Harriman predicted to Kennedy too that the North Vietnamese would keep using the Ho Chi Minh Trail running through Laos, but would accept Souvanna's government.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: In July 1962 while visiting Geneva, a Burmese diplomat offered Harriman a chance to a meet a North Vietnamese cabinet minister, Ung Van Khiem. Harriman knew that Rusk would not grant permission, so he instead phoned Kennedy and obtained his permission. At the meeting with Khiem, Harriman began by remembering Roosevelt's support for Vietnamese independence, saying that if Roosevelt had not died in 1945, America would have pressured the French to grant independence to Vietnam after the war. Khiem replied that he had warm memories of American aid to the Viet Minh in World War II, and said he was surprised that the United States had supported France in an attempt to take back its lost colony after 1945. Khiem accused the United States of acting in bad faith by encouraging President Diem of South Vietnam to cancel the elections that were supposed to unify Vietnam in 1956, and of showing further bad faith by supporting the Saigon regime in its war against the Viet Cong guerrillas. Harriman told Khiem that North Vietnam should stop supporting the Viet Cong and then Vietnam would have peace.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: Khiem was very disillusioned by the fact that Harriman believed North Vietnam and South Vietnam to be different countries with little in common. Khiem's translator thought that he was missing an opportunity, as Harriman seemed to hint if the Laos accords were respected, then Kennedy might change his policies towards South Vietnam. The meeting ended inconclusively with Harriman saying that North Vietnam should cease its support for the Viet Cong while Khiem stated that the partition of Vietnam was unnatural and that his government was the real Vietnam.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: In the Cuban Missile crisis, Harriman urged firmness in pressing for the removal of the Soviet missiles from Cuba. Nevertheless he also advised Kennedy to give Khrushchev a dignified way to back down.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: The Laos settlement, together with Harriman's counsel in the Cuban Missile Crisis, greatly raised his prestige with Kennedy. Knowing that he had the president's approval, Harriman took to such churlish antics such as turning off his hearing aid whenever a speaker at a National Security Council meetings started to bore him. At one meeting, Harriman cursed the "goddamned generals" who wanted to fight a war first in Laos, and now in South Vietnam, and then, turning to General Earle Wheeler who was sitting opposite him, said "Oh, excuse me, Wheeler" without any embarrassment. The National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy called Harriman "the crocodile" because he was usually quiet before bursting into fury. Harriman became rather enthusiastic about the appellation, and therefore had his desk decorated with miniature silver, bass and crystal crocodiles.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: Harriman's image was that of a crusty and autocratic elder statesman whose brusqueness and bad temper were legendary in Washington, but whose counsel was greatly valued by Kennedy who appreciated him for his sound judgement on international affairs. When Michael Forrestal joined the National Security Council, Kennedy half-jokingly told him: "You will be my emissary to that special sovereignty, Averell Harriman". In February 1963, when the embassy in Saigon blamed the negative reporting on South Vietnam's government on biased journalists, Harriman advised Frederick Nolting, the American ambassador in Saigon, to stop treating journalists like his enemies.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: In December 1961, Anatoliy Golitsyn defected from the Soviet Union and accused Harriman of being a Soviet spy, but his claims were dismissed by the CIA and Harriman remained in his position until April 1963, when he became Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. He retained that position during the transition to the Johnson administration until March 1965 when he again became Ambassador at Large. He held that position for the remainder of Johnson's presidency. Harriman headed the U.S. delegation to the preliminary peace talks in Paris between the United States and North Vietnam (1968–69).


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: President-elect Kennedy appointed Harriman as ambassador-at-large, to operate "with the full confidence of the president and an intimate knowledge of all aspects of United States policy. By the summer of 1963, South Vietnam was in crisis with massive demonstrations being orchestrated by the Buddhist clergy against the regime of President Ngo Dinh Diem. In August 1963, the Central Intelligence Agency reported to Kennedy that there were at least three different plots being organized within the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) against Diem. On August 21, 1963, the South Vietnamese Special Forces, which were not part of the ARVN, raided Buddhist pagodas all over South Vietnam, most notably the Xa Loi pagoda in Saigon, the most sacred pagoda in South Vietnam. The raids and the killing of Buddhist monks had raised the temperature in South Vietnam to boiling point. Several ARVN generals complained to the CIA that the press release saying the raids were the work of the ARVN was false, and charged that Diem was not an effective leader, saying that Diem's younger brother and right-hand man Ngô Đình Nhu together with his abrasive wife Madame Nhu were in control. Roger Hilsman, the assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern Affairs, had become convinced that the Diem regime was a liability and the United States needed a new government in Saigon to win the war. Harriman supported Hilsman.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: On August 24, 1963, on a weekend when Kennedy, Rusk and the Defense Secretary Robert McNamara were all out of Washington, Hilsman with the support of Harriman and Forrestal sent out two cables. The first cable was a press release that announced the raids on the Buddhist pagodas were the work of the Special Forces, not the ARVN. The second cable instructed Henry Cabot Lodge Jr, the American ambassador in Saigon, to support a coup if Diem did not exile his younger brother and his sister-in-law whom both Hilsman and Harriman thought were the source of the crisis. Lodge asked for a change in wording, to say his instructions authorize him to tell the rebellious ARVN generals "we are prepared to have Diem without the Nhus, but it is in effect up to them whether to keep them". The undersecretary of state, George Ball, consulted with Forrestal and agreed to the change, which in effect authorized a coup. The National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy felt he had delegated too much to Forrestal who seemed to him to be more closer to Harriman than to himself.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: On August 25, 1963, several members of the cabinet such as Rusk and McNamara who were against a coup were accusing Hilsman and Harriman of attempting to do an end-run around them by sending out a cable supporting a coup when they were not present in Washington. At a meeting called by Kennedy that day to discuss the dispute, the president stated that they had not crossed the Rubicon and it would still possible to change the policy. Harriman argued that before the pagoda raids, it was impossible to know the true state of South Vietnamese public opinion, but the massive demonstrations with millions protesting in the streets showed the Diem regime was deeply unpopular. Kennedy seemed indecisive as McNamara together with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Maxwell Taylor, spoke for retaining Diem while Hisman and Harriman argued that the Ngo brothers could not be separated, and to get rid of Nhu, whom Kennedy conceded was a trouble-maker, would also mean getting rid of his older brother. Kennedy agreed to another meeting that same day. Before the meeting, Harriman asked about the mood of the National Security Council, and if it was possible that Kennedy might change his mind. Harriman did not attend the second meeting, which weakened the case for a coup. Still uncertain about what to do, Kennedy opened a third meeting the next day. Before the meeting, Forrestal told him that he was concerned about the claim that he acted unethically in changing the instructions, leading Harriman to say "quit being a goddamned fool". At the third meeting, Harriman made a vigorous case for a coup and insulted nearly everyone who was opposed to the coup. Harriman told Taylor to his face that he had been wrong on every issue since World War II and was also wrong on this issue. When the Marine General Victor "Brute" Krulak spoke against a coup, Harriman mocked him for his short stature and his nickname of "Brute". When the former ambassador to South Vietnam, Frederick Nolting, spoke of Diem as a friend and an honorable man, Harriman snapped "No one cares what you think". Finally, Harriman's rudeness got to such a point that Kennedy asked him to please be civil to others in the room or leave. The meeting ended with Kennedy seemingly come around to supporting a coup as Harriman argued that if South Vietnam would be lost to Communism if the Ngo brothers stayed.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: Seeking support to change Kennedy's mind, Taylor cabled General Paul D. Harkins, the commander of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, to tell him to advise Kennedy that Diem was the only effective leader South Vietnam had. At the next meeting on August 27, Taylor read out Harkin's cable and stated that Harkins had only agreed to support a coup because he thought it was policy in Washington. The cable seemed to have some effect on Kennedy as Taylor maintained that Harkins and the other American advisers were all for Diem as the only leader capable of defeating the Viet Cong. Harriman, who was more polite at this meeting, told Kennedy: "Mr. President, I was very puzzled by the cable from General Harkins until I read the outgoing from General Taylor". Once it was pointed out that Taylor had asked Harkins to back him up by offering an assessment that supported his views, Kennedy smiled and said afterwards: "Averell Harriman is one sharp cookie".


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: The American author Joseph Trento has accused Harriman of being responsible for the coup. In an interview with Trento, Colonel William Corson, USMC, by 1963 has alleged that Harriman was running "Vietnam without consulting the president or the attorney general." Corson said Kenny O'Donnell, JFK's appointments secretary, was convinced that the National Security Advisor, McGeorge Bundy, followed the orders of Harriman rather than the president. Corson also claimed that O'Donnell was particularly concerned about Michael Forrestal, a young White House staffer who handled liaison on Vietnam with Harriman.


title: W. Averell Harriman

text: Harriman certainly supported the coup against the South Vietnam president Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963. However, it is alleged that the orders that ended in the deaths of Diem and his brother actually originated with Harriman and were carried out by Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.'s military assistant. Special Operations Army officer, John Michael Dunn, was sent to Vietnam in his stead. He followed the orders of Harriman and Forrestal rather than the CIA. According to Corson, Dunn's role in the incident has never been made public but he was assigned to Ambassador Lodge for "special operations" with the authority to act without hindrance; and he was known to have access to the coup plotters. Corson speculated that with Richardson recalled the way was clear for Dunn to freely act.