Thomas L. Hughes

Thomas Lowe Hughes (born December 11, 1925) was Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. From 1971 he was President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He was also counsel to Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey (1955-1958).^[1]

Born in Mankato, Minnesota, Hughes was educated at Carleton College, Minnesota, Oxford University, as a Rhodes Scholar, and Yale Law School, graduating in 1952.^[2]

References

Government offices
Preceded by Roger Hilsman	Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research April 28, 1963 – August 25, 1969	Succeeded by Ray S. Cline

Authority control VIAF: 70173302 ISNI: 0000 0001 0984 9703 SUDOC: 087380587

Wikipedia Additions (September 2014)

EARLY LIFE, EDUCATION, MILITARY SERVICE

Born and raised in Mankato, Minnesota, Hughes was a national award-winning student debater and orator. He graduated summa cum laude in 1947 from Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota, where he majored in international relations and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. As a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford, Hughes earned an M. A. in political theory in 1949. He graduated from Yale Law School in 1952 and was admitted to practice before the Minnesota and United States Supreme Courts.

After enlisting in the Air Force during the Korean War, Hughes rose to the rank of major while serving in the Judge Advocate General’s Department. From 1955-64 he was active in the 9999th Air Force Reserve Squadron on Capitol Hill.

EARLY CAREER YEARS

During his first summer from law school Hughes volunteered for service at a kibbutz in Israel (1950). The next summer he joined the staff of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Labor and Labor Management Relations (1951.) While an Air Force officer, he taught as an adjunct professor of political science for the University of Southern California (1952-3) and at Trinity College, Texas (1953-4.) In 1957-8 he also taught at George Washington University, DC.

In 1954-5 Hughes became executive secretary to former Connecticut Governor Chester Bowles, whom he had previously known at law school and who had meanwhile returned from a successful ambassadorship in India. Hughes worked with Bowles on foreign policy books and articles.

In the summer of 1955 Hughes, now married, moved to Washington where he succeeded Max Kampelman as legislative counsel to Senator Hubert Humphrey. For three years he worked closely with Humphrey on all foreign and most domestic policy matters. His position also involved close working relations with the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the office of Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson.

In 1959 Hughes rejoined Bowles who had meanwhile been elected to the House of Representatives. This position involved frequent liaison with Senator John F. Kennedy and his staff on joint legislation for New England and collaboration on US foreign aid programs. These relationships deepened in 1960 when Bowles was appointed chairman of the platform committee for the Democratic national convention and Hughes became the committee’s staff director for the months up to, and including, Kennedy’s nomination at Los Angeles that summer. In early 1960 Bowles had also been selected by Kennedy as his foreign policy adviser for the campaign.

THE KENNEDY TALENT HUNT

The day after his election, Kennedy asked Bowles to be his representative to the Eisenhower State Department. Secretary Herter made space available there for Bowles and Hughes, who began working with Sargent Shriver on the “talent hunt” for new diplomatic and State Department personnel. In mid-December, 1960, Dean Rusk (the Secretary designate) joined Bowles (the Undersecretary designate) and Hughes as the first three New Frontiersmen at State. For several weeks before Kennedy’s inauguration, they put together a highly praised slate of diplomatic and departmental appointments.

THE BUREAU OF INTELLIGENCE AND RESEARCH (INR) UNDER KENNEDY.

At the outset of the new administration, the State Department’s non-involvement in the Bay of Pigs fiasco led Kennedy to enhance the role of State’s INR bureau with new responsibilities for policy-oriented research, including new monitoring responsibilities for vetting CIA proposals for covert action. Hughes was appointed to INR as deputy to the new director, Roger Hilsman. They had been professional and personal friends from Capitol Hill. Though daily briefings—oral and written--they quickly made INR’s analytical product an essential part of the State Department’s daily operations. The Kennedy White House proved to be an eager recipient as well.

Hughes had a deep background in German affairs which enabled him to play a special role in stabilizing the rather nervous German-American relationship in the first Kennedy years. He accompanied Rusk on his visit to Adenauer in Bonn in May, 1962, and participated in Kennedy’s famous visit to Berlin in June, 1963. Two months earlier Kennedy had appointed Hughes INR director to succeed Hilsman, when the latter became Assistant Secretary for East Asia.

In October, 1962, INR had also played significant supporting roles for Kennedy in the Cuban Missile Crisis, including the Scali-Fomin back-channel communications with Khrushchev. On Wednesday, October 26, Kennedy decided to risk inviting all the nation’s governors, senators, and congressmen to leave their political campaigns and come to New York or Chicago to be secretly briefed on the crisis. Kennedy asked Hughes to conduct the briefings.

INR AND THE JOHNSON ADMINISTRATION (1963-69)

Hughes remained head of INR for the next six years, despite the change of administration after Kennedy’s murder. He was one of the top officials who briefed LBJ on August 2, 1964, on the opening skirmish in the Gulf of Tonkin. Aware of the their long-time relationship, Rusk also asked Hughes to brief Humphrey during the 1964 campaign. In November the Johnson-Humphrey election victory convinced Hughes to remain in office despite the deepening crisis of the Vietnam War.

For some time INR had been the most skeptical member of the intelligence community about Vietnam. By February, 1965, national intelligence estimates were veering closer in INR’s direction. With grave decisions imminent and pointing toward escalation, Hughes flew to Georgia for a weekend with Humphrey. After hours of discussion, Humphrey decided to write a secret, private memo to Johnson opposing escalation. It is reprinted in Humphrey’s memoirs (p. 320-4.) In retrospect it has been widely praised. For example:

“The most significant effort aimed at stopping and reversing the move to war came from none other than Vice President Hubert Humphrey. With Hughes’s help, Humphrey produced a document that detailed his fears of escalation and his reasons for believing that extrication was possible in domestic political terms. The result was a tour de force, a memorandum that must rank as one of the most incisive and prescient memos ever written on the prospect of an Americanize war in Vietnam. The Humphrey memorandum is simply extraordinary.” Fredrik Logevall, “Choosing War”, p. 346-7

In his last months at INR in early 1969, Hughes arranged for a comprehensive in-house assessment of INR’s role on Vietnam from 1961-9. Fifty years later it is finally available on the National Security Archive website.

THE CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE

Surprisingly, in the summer of 1969, Nixon’s new Secretary of State, William Rogers, asked Hughes to go to London as deputy to Nixon’s new Ambasador Walter Annenberg, whose opening weeks had been marked by few false starts. The last few months of Harold WIlson’s Labour government provided a kind-of official vacation for Hughes who enjoyed being back in England.

Suddenly the presidency of the Carnegie Endowment became available and Hughes was asked to take the job. For the next twenty years (1971-91) he presided over this oldest international affairs foundation. After closing offices in Geneva and New York, and reopening in Washington where the endowment started in 1910, Hughes expanded the orientation and outreach of the foundation. The new foundation made a point of incubating other new organizations by providing synergism and space during their institutional infancy. The Arms Control Association, the Institute for International Economics, the German Marshall Fund, and the Women’s Foreign Policy Group wre examples.

Tony Lake, Les Gelb, Doris Meissner, Don McHenry, Pauline Baker, Richard Holbrooke, Jenonne Walker, and Bill Maynes were early appointees. Carnegie became the publisher of Foreign Policy Magazine, and for many years Hughes was chairman of FP’s editorial board. For an extensive treatment of Hughes’s two decades at Carnegie, see “Beyond Government”, edited by Craufurd D. Goodwin and Michael Nacht, Westview Press, 1995 p. 61-104

In retirement Hughes has been a Senior Research Scholar at the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC.

AFFILIATIONS OVER VARIOUS YEARS (1965-2014)

Recipient of Arthur S. Fleming Outstanding Public Service award (as the State Department nominee) 1965. Chair of Nuclear Proliferation and Safeguards Advisory Panel, Office of Technology Assessment, US Congress. Co-Chair of Council on Puerto Rico-US Affairs. Founding trustee and secretary, German Marshall Fund of US. President of Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs. Chairman of US-UK Bicentennial Fellowships Committee on the Arts. Chairman of Mid-Atlantic Club of Washington. Trustee of American Institute of Contemporary German Studies. Trustee of American Academy of Berlin. Trustee of Social Science Foundation, Korbel Institute, U. of Denver. Trustee (American committee) of International Institute of Strategic Studies, London. Trustee, Institute of Current World Affairs. Member, board of governors, Ditchley Foundation, England. Member, visiting committee, Center for International Studies, Harvard. Member, board of visitors, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown U. Member, board of visitors, BMW Center for German and European Studies, Georgetown U. Member, board of directors, Arms Control Association. Member, advisory council, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton U. Member, advisory board, Fundacion Luis Munoz Marin, Puerto Rico. Member, board of directors, Atlantic Council. Member, international advisory board, Batelle Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Member, American Academy of Diplomacy. Member, Trilateral Commission. Member, Advisory Board, Arthur Burns Fellowships Member, American Association of Rhodes Scholars. Member, New England Historic Genealogical Society. Member, Society of Mayflower Descendants. Member, Century Association, New York. Member, Cosmos Club, Washington and chairman, Advisory Board, Cosmos Magazine Member, Chevy Chase Club, Chevy Chase, Maryland. Member, Oxford Union, England. Knight of St. John (Johanniterorden, Balley Brandenburg).

PUBLICATIONS

“Perilous Encounters: the Cold War Collisions of Domestic and World Politics” (Xlibris 2011) is Hughes’s oral history consisting of interviews by Charles Stuart Kennedy and published by the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Diplomatic Oral History Series.

“Oxford After Dinner” (iUniverse 2011) is a compilation of Hughes’s humorous after dinner speeches before Oxford audiences from 1965-99.

“Speaking Up and Speaking Out” (Xlibis 2014) is a selection of speeches made by Hughes while inside the Johnson administration, designed to encourage LBJ and those around him to think more creatively about foreign policy. These previously off-the record speeches attracted a celebrity readership in the ‘60s and contemporaneous reactions are included in the book.

“Anecdotage” (Amazon Books, Createspace, 2014) recounts the lighter moments of Hughes’s career in politics, diplomacy, intelligence, and the foundation world. There are conversations and episodes of high humor involving American presidents and other leading national and international figures from the 1950s to the 1980s.

Hughes has also been a frequent contributor to articles in public and professional journals including the Atlantic, the Reporter, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the New York Times Magazine, and the Washington Post.

FAMILY

Hughes married (1) Jean Hurlburt Reiman of Connecticut. They had two sons, Thomas Evan Hughes and Allan Cameron Hughes. After Jean’s death in 1993, Hughes in 1995 married (2) Jane Dudley Casey Kuczynski of Washington. He has three stepchildren.

DONATIONS IN KIND

Over a forty-year period (1974-2014) Hughes donated appraised items in excess of $2 million from his extensive family art collections of historic portraits, porcelains, bronzes, paintings, lithographs, antique maps, rare books, coins, and letters from celebrities.

Yale University received the largest of these gifts (valued at over $1 million) in 2011. This “Hohenzollern-Schlaberg-Hughes” donation is divided among the Yale University Art Gallery, the Yale Center for British Art, and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library includes 300 letters from the former German royal family.

The Washington, DC, area recipients of donations include: Library of Congress; Georgetown University and Foreign Service School; Georgetown University Law Library; Sackler Gallery; National Intelligence Study Center; Order of the Cincinnati; Cosmos Club, Woman’s National Democratic Club; National Defense University Foundation; Ford’s Theater; German Historical Institute; Woodrow Wilson Center, Smithsonian; American Indian Museum, Smithsonian; German Marshall Fund of the US.

Other east coast recipients include: President Buchanan Foundation, Pennsylvania; Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University; New York Public Library; King Baudoin Foundation, NY and Brussels; Zion Church, Baltimore, MD; Washington College, MD; Vassar College, NY; Columbus Citizens Committee, NY; French-American Foundation, NY; American Ditchley Foundation, NY and England; Center for Advanced Studies of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, San Juan, PR.

Midwest recipients include: Minnesota History Center, St. Paul, MN; Carleton College, Minnesota; Blue Earth County Historical Society, MN; U. of Minnesota Library, Mankato, MN; Minneapolis Institute of Art; Brown County Historical Society, MN; Nicollet County Historical Society, MN; Rice County Historical Museum, MN; Treaty Site History Center, MN; Fond du Lac Historical Society, Wisconsin; Danish Immigrant Museum, Iowa.