Charles W. Thayer
| Charles W. Thayer | |
|---|---|
| Born |
February 9, 1910 Villanova, Pennsylvania |
| Died | August 27, 1969 (aged 59) Salzburg, Austria |
| Nationality | United States |
| Occupation | Diplomat, author, target of McCarthyism |
Charles W. Thayer (February 9, 1910– August 27, 1969) was an American diplomat and author. He was an expert on Soviet-American relations and headed the Voice of America.
Charles Wheeler Thayer was born in Villanova, Pennsylvania, the son of George Chapman Thayer, a shipbuilding engineer, and Gertrude May Wheeler Thayer. He attended St. Paul's School and the U.S. Military Academy, where he played polo, and graduated in 1933. He served for a few months as a cavalry lieutenant.
Thayer went to the Soviet Union to study Russian and won a position at the newly opened American Embassy in Moscow, first as personal secretary to Ambassador William Bullitt (a friend of Thayer's father) and then as Embassy Secretary. He taught a group of Russian cavalrymen to play polo so the Americans and Soviets could play "a hard-fought, clean, friendly match", and an embassy official recalled his "youthful exuberance" and "ready wit".
His sister Avis Howard Thayer visited him during his Moscow posting and met Charles E. Bohlen, with whom Thayer shared an apartment. She later married Bohlen, who served as American Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1957.
In 1937, Thayer became a Foreign Service Officer, after passing his exams. In 1942, he was appointed chargé d'affaires in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1942. He was assigned for a time to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), in Belgrade. Thayer served in London on the European Advisors Committee which drafted the German terms of surrender at the end of World War II.
He attended the Naval War College for a year at the end of the war. After the war, Thayer headed the OSS in Austria and served in 1946 on the Joint United States-Soviet Commission on Korea. He played a key role in developing the secret Office of Policy Coordination, later merged into the CIA, to counter and destabilize the Soviets (including its clandestine recruitment of former Nazis and collaborators for paramilitary operations).
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