Reed Harris

Reed Harris (November 5, 1909 – October 15, 1982) was an American writer, publisher, and U.S. government official who served as deputy director of the United States Information Agency.

Life and career Harris was born on November 5, 1909, in New York City. He attended Staunton Military Academy He was a member of the Student League for Industrial Democracy. but following student protests he was readmitted twenty days later. "To put forth winning football teams," he wrote, "alumni, faculty and trustees will lie, cheat and steal, unofficially." He called the players "privileged mugs", said the faculty had a "percentage of utter numbskulls", attacked Columbia President Nicholas Murray Butler, and praised college newspaper editors and Soviet Russia. The book included a defense of academic freedom that included the right of communists to teach. until 1934, when he joined the Works Progress Administration, where he helped edit Project, a magazine that publicized the work of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, and later became assistant director of the Federal Writers' Project. He resigned effective July 1, 1938, unhappy with the FWP's leadership for failing to rein in its more militant left-wing staff members.

Harris edited travel books for a short time at Robbins Travel House. He was planning chief for the Office of War Information (OWI) from 1942 to 1944, then joined the air force, and returned to the OWI in 1945 when it became part of the State Department.

Two IIA employees testified that they had prevented State Department officials from suspending Hebrew-language broadcasts to Israel in 1952 and 1953, when it was important to attack Soviet anti-semitism. Harris explained it as a budget decision based on the ineffectiveness of the service and that the decision was suspended only to allow a new administration to make the decision after taking office in 1953. Others charged that several IIA employees received important posts despite failing security tests, including Theodore Kaghan, Ed Schechter and Charles Lewis.

Harris resigned on April 14, 1953, effective April 24, saying he had planned to return to private business for a long time and had delayed doing so while he prepared a statement of his accomplishments and documentation of his loyalty through fifteen testimonial letters, which he sent to Sen. McCarthy's Subcommittee. In response, McCarthy said "resignation" was the wrong word to describe it, that it was "the best thing that has happened there in a very long time" and added: "I only hope that a lot of Mr. Harris' close friends will follow him out."

Personal life Harris married the former Martha Tellier of Cambridge, New York. They had three children.