John Fremont Melby (July 1, 1913 – December 18, 1992) was a United States diplomat, who served in the Soviet Union from 1943 to 1945 and in China from 1945 to 1948. He held other positions with the Department of State until 1953, when he was dismissed as a security risk because of his long and intimate association with the playwright Lillian Hellman, who was accused of communist ties. He later became an academic specializing in Far Eastern affairs.
Early years Melby was born in Portland, Oregon, on July 1, 1913, to Harry Charles Melby and Helen Fremont. He moved several times in his childhood. He spent part of it in Brazil, where he became fluent in Portuguese and French. He attended Bloomington High School in Bloomington, Illinois, and was graduated from Illinois Wesleyan University in 1934.Robert P. Newman, The Cold War Romance of Lillian Hellman and John Melby (University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 22 While at Illinois Wesleyan University, Melby was a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity. He received a master's degree and a doctorate in political science at the University of Chicago.New York Times: Richard Perez-Pena, "John Melby, 79, Who Tied Ouster As a Diplomat to Hellman Affair," December 27, 1992, accessed October 11, 2011
Service in the State Department Melby joined the Foreign Service in 1937 and that year took up his first State Department assignment in Juarez, Mexico. In 1938, he married Florence Cathcart, whom he met across the border in El Paso, Texas.Newman, Cold War Romance, 23-4 His next posting was Caracas, Venezuela, where he served as vice consul from 1939 to 1941.New York Times: "Coal Lack Checks Reich Industries," October 1, 1939, accessed October 11, 2011 In 1943 he was assigned to the American Embassy in Moscow, where his rank did not allow him to bring his family. He and his wife, the parents of two boys, grew apart during his absence in Moscow and never lived together again.Newman, Cold War Romance, 73-4
In 1944, Melby met the playwright, Lillian Hellman, whom President Roosevelt had sent on a cultural good-will mission to Moscow.Newman, Cold War Romance, 33-40 They were equally committed to the U.S.-Soviet alliance of World War II. They began an affair that lasted several years.Newman, Cold War Romance, passim
In 1945, he attended the founding conference of the United Nations in San Francisco as liaison officer for the Soviet delegation, handling details ranging from transportation to translations. He described it as the work of "nursemaid, office boy, and messenger."Newman, Cold War Romance, 60-3, quote 62 That same year, at the suggestion of U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Averell Harriman, he was sent to China, where Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Government was fighting Mao's army, in order to monitor the role of the Soviets in China.David Halberstam, The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War, (Hyperion, 2007), 319, available online, accessed October 10, 2011 He was second secretary and vice consul in Chungking in 1944-1945 and then in the embassy's new location in Nanking in 1946–7, and then second secretary and consul in Nanking in 1947–48. In December 1945, he recorded his assessment of the two sides in his diary:Halberstam, Coldest Winter, 233, available online, accessed October 10, 2011
He faulted U.S. policy in his diary in June 1948 as the communist victory neared: "All the power of the United States will not stem the tides of Asia, but all the wisdom of which we are capable might conceivably make those tides a little more friendly to us than they are now."
Melby and Hellman found their political views diverging during Melby's years in China. He came to advocate containment of Communism while she was unwilling to hear criticism of the Soviet Union. They became, in one historian's view, "political strangers, occasional lovers, and mostly friends."Bernard F. Dick, "Review of Newman, Cold War Romance," Journal of American History, vol. 77, no. 1, June 1990, 354-5. On Melby's changing views, see Newman, Cold War Romance, 92, 99-100, 106, 108, 113-7 Her support for Henry Wallace in the 1948 campaign proved an especially sore point. When Wallace blamed the Soviet takeover of Czechoslovakia on U.S. policy, Melby wrote Hellman:Newman, Cold War Romance, 121-3
In March 1948, Melby delivered an address the National Catholic Educational Conference of China in Shanghai, in which he called communism an "iron helmet over the minds of men" and which his hosts called "the strongest public condemnation of communism by an American diplomat so far uttered by an American diplomat in China."Newman, Cold War Romance, 123
Melby was recalled to Washington and left China on December 15, 1948, as the communists were winning control.Newman, Cold War Romance, 131 On instructions from his State Department superiors, he produced an analysis of the communist revolution in China and, with Charles Yost became a principal author of an influential study known as the China White Paper (1949).Newman, Cold War Romance, 138-9 He held the view that Chiang and the Nationalists were responsible for the communist victory in China and privately criticized those who shared this belief, but surrendered to the interpretation of the pro-Chiang China Lobby in the U.S. and blamed the communists' success on the U.S. government and especially, on the State Department's China Hands.Halberstam, Coldest Winter, 235-6, 240-1, 319, available online, accessed October 10, 2011 Because Melby's role in authoring the White Paper was not publicized, he escaped the criticism it received from the China Lobby.
In 1950, he headed a sixteen-person mission, the Joint State-Defense Military Assistance Mission to Southeast Asia,Penn Archives: Penn Biographies: John F. Melby (1913-1992), accessed October 11, 2011 also known as the Melby-Erskine mission,Martin E. Goldstein, American Policy Towards Laos (Associated University Presses, 1973), 49 to study the military capabilities and requirements of Southeast Asian nations in light of the threat of communist advances.New York Times: "Burma Trip Dropped by U.S. Arms Mission," September 7, 1950, accessed October 11, 2011; Pamela Sodhy, "America's Melby Mission to Southeast Asia in 1950: The Case of Malaya," Jebat: Malaysian Journal of History, Politics and Strategic Studies, vol. 18 (1900), 263-87; Newman, Cold War Romance, 148-9 It was one of the first American missions to Vietnam to assess the struggle of communist insurgents against French colonial rule. Melby's assessment of French efforts was very pessimistic and he advised major changes in the French approach. He nevertheless recommended providing the military aid France was requesting. His policy recommendations were neither heeded nor communicated to the French.Irwin M. Wall, The United States and the Making of Postwar France, 1945-1954 (Cambridge University Press, 1991), 240-1; Kathryn C. Statler, Replacing France: The Origins of American Intervention in Vietnam (University Press of Kentucky, 2007), 26-7; Newman, Cold War Romance, 149-50
His State Department positions in these years were assistant chief of the division of Philippine Affairs in 1949, officer in charge of Philippine Affairs in 1949–50, and assistant to assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern Affairs from 1950 to 1953.
In January 1951, following his divorce from his first wife, Melby married Hilda Hordern, a State Department employee whom he had first met in China in 1947, when she was secretary to Ambassador John Leighton Stuart.Newman, Cold War Romance, 112, 152, 158. Melby's first wife initiated divorce proceedings in December 1949; Newman, Cold War Romance, 140
Dismissal and security clearance In the 1950s, at the height of American anticommunist sentiment, the State Department investigated whether Melby posed a security risk. The investigation began in September 1951, a week after ex-communist Martin Berkeley told the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) that Hellman had attended an organizational meeting of the Communist Party in 1937. Initially, the issues Melby was asked to address were minor.Newman, Cold War Romance, 163-4 Then in April 1952, the department stated its one formal charge against Melby: "that during the period 1945 to date, you have maintained an association with one, Lillian Hellman, reliably reported to be a member of the Communist Party." Based on unverified testimony from informants that she was a member of the Communist Party, along with her participation in many communist-front organizations and left-wing advocacy groups, Melby's suitability for government service was questioned, and when Melby appeared before the department's Loyalty Security Board, he was not allowed to contest Hellman's communist affiliation or learn the identity of those who informed against her, only his understanding of her politics and the nature of his relationship with her, including detailed discussion of their occasional renewal of their physical relationship. He never promised to avoid contact with Hellman, but allowed that he had no plans to renew their friendship.Newman, Cold War Romance, 164ff., includes lengthy excerpts from testimony.
In the course of a series of appeals, Hellman testified before the Loyalty Security Board on his behalf. She offered to answer questions, but the board was not prepared to hear testimony about her politics, which it had already determined on the basis of an FBI investigation. She was only allowed to describe her relationship with Melby. She testified that she had many longstanding friendships with people of different political views and that political sympathy was not a part of those relationships. She described how her relationship with Melby changed over time and how their sexual relationship was briefly renewed in 1950 after a long hiatus: "The relationship obviously at this point was neither one thing nor the other: it was neither over nor was it not over."Newman, Cold War Romance, esp. 233-52, quote 242 In summary, she said that:Newman, Cold War Romance, 245
After seven hearings, the State Department dismissed him on April 22, 1953. As was its practice, the loyalty board gave no reason for its decision.Newman, Cold War Romance, 261 The entire process went unnoticed by the press. Melby later credited his good relations with the press: "I think among newspapermen there was a kind of conspiracy to protect me."Newman, Cold War Romance, 267
In December 1960, as the Kennedy Administration took shape, Melby tried to have his security clearance restored, encouraged by the appointment of Dean Rusk, who was familiar with his State Department work, as the new Secretary of State. His longtime friend Averell Harriman was becoming ambassador-at-large. Robert F. Kennedy blocked their efforts. Appeals to State Department officials responsible for administrative matters failed, as did the advocacy of Pennsylvania Senator Joseph S. Clark Jr. on Melby's behalf. HUAC maintained a list of persons it considered ineligible for government employment that overrode State Department views. Melby dropped these efforts in 1966, when he moved to Canada.Newman, Cold War Romance, 278-81
Harriman urged Melby to press the issue once again in 1977 at the start of the Carter administration, and Richard Holbrooke lent his support. Secretary of State Edmund Muskie restored Melby's security clearance in December 1980 and hired him to work as a consultant on the Sino-Vietnamese Conflict for several months.Newman, Cold War Romance, 287-8; Robert P. Newman, "Review: Arch Demagogue of the Fifties," Reviews in American History, vol. 11, no. 2, June 1983, 286
Later years