John Peurifoy

John Emil Peurifoy (August 9, 1907 – August 12, 1955) was an American diplomat and ambassador in the early years of the Cold War. He served as ambassador to Greece, Thailand, and Guatemala. In this latter country, he was serving during the 1954 coup that overthrew the democratic government of Jacobo Arbenz.

Background Peurifoy was born in Walterboro, South Carolina, on August 9, 1907. His family of lawyers and jurists traced their New World ancestry to 1619, two years before the arrival of the Mayflower. When he graduated from high school in 1926, the yearbook recorded his ambition to be President of the United States.

In 1945, Peurifoy managed the arrangements for Conference on International Organization in San Francisco that led to the establishment of the United Nations. President Truman's Executive Order 9835 (1947) established departmental review boards to remove from government service or to deny employment to persons if "reasonable grounds exist for belief that the person involved is disloyal to the United States." In 1947, Peurifoy asked the FBI to conduct an audit of the State Department's Division of Security and Investigations, which found them "lacking in thoroughness."

On December 7, 1948, Peurifoy testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), as it pursued the Alger Hiss Case.

Secretary of State George C. Marshall appointed him Deputy Undersecretary of State for Administration in 1949, the third-ranking job in the Department, and tasked him with reorganizing the Department and handling relations with Congress. Throughout the years of Peurifoy's involvement in security and personnel issues, the Department focused on new hires rather than its established employees–the primary targets of Soviet attempts at infiltration–unless Congressional investigations prompted a review of a particular employee. His remarks along with gay-baiting comments from Senator Joseph McCarthy help ignite the so-called "Lavender scare".

Peurifoy passed his foreign service examinations in 1949 and joined the Foreign Service that year.

In 1953, Peurifoy told Adlai Stevenson that the career members of the Foreign Service were "depressed" by Senator McCarthy's campaign against the State Department. He said he was "unhappy" himself and believed that McCarthy had engineered his transfer from Greece because of a dispute over "some files", though the more likely reason was his experience dealing with Communists.

Guatemala In 1953, during the Eisenhower administration, Peurifoy was sent to Guatemala, the first Western Hemisphere nation to allegedly include Communists in its government.

Death On August 12, 1955, while serving as ambassador in Thailand, Peurifoy and his nine-year-old son Daniel Byrd Peurifoy died when the Thunderbird he was driving collided with a truck near Hua Hin. The President sent a military plane for the safe transport of their bodies back to the United States, despite questions of propriety. A few weeks later, Time published a letter from a woman with cerebral palsy who defended Peurifoy and asked: "Why do we become mushy and impractical as well as intolerant when we speak of religion?". Another letter called the point of view taken by Time and the Queen as "fantastically puerile." John Clinton died in 1959 at the age of 19. Peurifoy and his sons are buried together in Arlington National Cemetery. Betty Jane Cox Peurifoy (1912–1998), the ambassador's widow, later married Arthur Chidester Steward.

Legacy Based in Thailand, the John E. Peurifoy Memorial Foundation provides funds for Fulbright Scholars.