William D. Pawley

William D. Pawley (1896–1977) was a noted American businessman, diplomat and intelligence operative.

Early life

Pawley was born in Florence, South Carolina on 7 September 1896. His father was a wealthy businessman based in Cuba, and young Pawley attended private schools in both Havana and Santiago. He later returned to the United States where he studied at the Gordon Military Academy in Georgia.

Business career

In 1927, Pawley began a connection with Curtiss-Wright that would make him a wealthy man. He worked in Cuba as president of Nacional Cubana de Aviacion Curtiss, then became president of Intercontinent Corporation in New York, evidently founded by the former president of Curtiss. In 1933 he moved to China where he became president of China National Aviation Corporation and later assembled aircraft in partnership with the Chinese Nationalist government under the corporate name of Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company in Hangzhou, Wuhan, and finally Loiwing on the China-Burma border. (CAMCO was owned in partnership with the Chinese government, with the Pawley family interest represented by Intercontinent, which now served as a Pawley family holding company.)

World War II

In 1941, with his brothers Edward and Eugene, he played a part in the organization and support of the 1st American Volunteer Group, popularly known as the Flying Tigers. When the final CAMCO factory was captured by Japan in May 1942, Pawley moved his operation to India as a partner in Hindustan Aircraft Limited.

Later years

Pawley was appointed as U.S. Ambassador by Harry Truman to Peru in 1945. Left-wing Lima, Peru newspapers later asserted he was making "lucrative deals" benefiting himself transporting goods both in and out of Peru. He was named U.S. Ambassador to to Brazil in 1948. Postwar, Pawley was an active member of the Republican Party. A close friend of both President Dwight Eisenhower and Central Intelligence Agency director Allen W. Dulles, he took part in a policy that later become known as Executive Action, a plan to remove unfriendly foreign leaders from power. Pawley played a role Operation PBSUCCESS, a CIA plot to overthrow the Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 after Arbenz introduced land reforms and nationalized the United Fruit Company. Pawley is thought to have served in Peru, Brazil, Panama, Guatemala, Cuba and Nicaragua between 1945 and 1960.

His final residence was in Miami, where he died, apparently of self-inflicted gunshot wounds, in January 1977, possibly because he suffered from a severe case of shingles.

succession box
title = United States Ambassador to Peru
before = John Campbell White
after = Prentice Cooper
years = 20 July 1945–27 April 1946succession box
title = United States Ambassador to Brazil
before = Adolf A. Berle, Jr.
after = Herschel V. Johnson
years = 13 June 1946–26 March 1948

References

* Ford, Daniel. "Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault and His American Volunteers, 1941-1942". Washington, DC: HarperCollins|Smithsonian Books, 2007. ISBN 0-06124-655-7.
* Holland, Max, "Private Sources of U.S. Foreign Policy: William Pawley and the 1954 Coup d'État in Guatemala," "Journal of Cold War Studies", vol. 7, no. 4, Fall 2005, pp. 36-73
* "Life", 22 March 1943.
* Pawley, William. "Wings Over Asia". New York: self-published, 1941.

External links

* [http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKpawley.htm Pawley at Spartacus Educational]
* [http://www.namebase.org/main4/William-D-Pawley.html NameBase link]
* [http://www.warbirdforum.com/roster5.htm Roster of CAMCO personnel]
* [http://www.warbirdforum.com/pawley.htm Annals of the Flying Tigers]