Courtesan To Patriot: The Remarkable Life Of Pamela Harriman

Sonia Purnell’s just released biography of Pamela Harriman, Kingmaker, attempts to be fairer to its subject than previous biographies. As the subtitle implies, Harriman led a “Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue,” and there is a lot in here about the subject’s early role as a courtesan. Whatever the details of that role, it was far in the past when I came to know and work with Ambassador Harriman on issues of international importance.

During my last four years in the FBI, I worked with dozens of U.S. ambassadors. I served as the Legal Attaché (“Legat” in Bureau jargon) at the U.S. Embassy in Paris. However, for the FBI and the DOJ, our office had wide regional responsibility. We handled the business of the Justice Department with 26 countries in Africa. So, I dealt with a wide variety of our ambassadors at posts large and small.

“Political” ambassadors are often criticized as dilettantes who buy their appointments with large campaign donations. They are contrasted with career ambassadors, who rise through the ranks of the State Department. I have quite a different impression. The political ambassadors, coming from various roles in American society, saw their mission as representing the United States as a whole, while career ambassadors narrowly protected the interests of the State Department, to the exclusion of other agencies.     

When I was first assigned to the embassy in Paris, it was led by an ambassador who understood and valued what the FBI could do. Yes, she was a substantial fundraiser for President Bill Clinton, who appointed her, but she demonstrated a love for her adopted country. Pamela Churchill Harriman, a British-born aristocrat, had become the U.S. ambassador to France just months before my arrival in June 1994. On my first day there, I had to present myself to her. As I walked into her large office, she gestured for me to sit in a chair, which was somewhat sideways to hers.

The Winter Olympics

She had a copy of my one-page bio on her lap. Glancing down at it, she said “I see you had some involvement with the Calgary Winter Olympics.” This would be a point on which we would make an initial connection.

In Feb. 1988, for the two weeks of the Calgary Winter Olympics, the Bureau assigned me as liaison to the RCMP’s Command Post. I was to coordinate counter-terrorist efforts with the Mounties. There were no terrorist incidents at those Olympics. And, as my bio reflected, I was decorated by the government of Canada for this contribution, which impressed the ambassador. 

The International Olympic Committee was meeting in Paris, and a group from Salt Lake City were also there to lobby for the 2002 Winter Olympics. Ambassador Harriman hosted a reception at her residence that evening for “some Olympic people” and asked if I — she glanced again at the bio on her lap — and my wife Anne could possibly make it. We could.

The reception for “some Olympic people” involved nearly a hundred. The delegation from Salt Lake City was led by Deedee Corradini, the city’s mayor. Accompanying them from the International Olympic Committee were a variety of European notables, including Princess Anne of Great Britain. My Anne and I enjoyed the event. Like many of Pamela Harriman’s efforts as ambassador, this reception led to a success: One year later, on June 16, 1995, Salt Lake City was chosen as the host for the XIX Winter Olympic Games, held in 2002.

A great benefit of a political ambassador is their ability and willingness to help with representational events. You seldom had to ask Pamela Harriman for help, a hint would do. I would just inform her about visiting officials and she would respond, “Well, Tom, what do you think I should do?” We would look at the schedule and decide on a cocktail party or a luncheon. That is how we happened to set up a luncheon for a group of federal judges.

At that luncheon, Thomas S. Ellis III, a federal district judge from the Eastern District of Virginia, discussed the World War II Normandy landings. Tom Ellis was recommending a new book. He mentioned a specific finding by the author, concerning a key Allied decision.

Ambassador Harriman responded, “No, that was Ike’s call.”

Judge Ellis persisted. “This author says …”

The ambassador: “Oh, no, Omar Bradley told me it was Ike’s call.”

A look of recognition came over Judge Ellis’s face: He realized he was in the presence of someone with firsthand knowledge of World War II.

Pamela Churchill Harriman was truly a remarkable woman. Once married to Winston Churchill’s only son and the mother of Churchill’s only grandson, she was in the room when many of the key decisions of World War II were made. For the next half century, she would continue to meet influential men, be they from London, Washington, or Hollywood.

Anne worked as the American nurse in the embassy’s health unit, staffed by her and a French nurse. Anne received a summons to the ambassador’s office. Pamela Harriman had a favor to ask. Part of the request was that it must be kept secret: the ambassador had a “special guest” staying at the residence.

Gregory Peck was traveling in Europe when he developed an acute medical problem that required surgery. The surgery was successful, but he could not travel back to California. He could make it to Paris where his friend, Pamela Harriman, had a room for him in her official residence. For a week Anne checked in on Gregory Peck each morning and provided whatever care he needed. Anne was impressed by the 80-year-old Peck’s positive attitude. 

Peck’s room in the Residence at 41 Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré was named after Thomas Jefferson, an early ambassador to France. The framed letters on the walls were Jefferson originals – written in his own hand. These were Peck’s favorite part of the room. Anne walked around the room with Gregory Peck as they discussed each item. 

During that same week Attorney General Janet Reno made one of her several visits to Paris. She was attending a conference at Le Place Kléber. The details of the visit and the conference were handled by Allyson Gilliland, an assistant legal attaché. At the end of the conference, I showed up to accompany the attorney general to the airport. At almost the same moment, the ambassador arrived on the scene.

As we were exchanging pleasantries, Ambassador Harriman uttered, “Tom, Anne is doing a wonderful job with my special guest.” In a minute or two, as we made our way to the cars, Allyson asked me, “Who’s the special guest?” I told her — there was no way I could not; she had worked hard that day and the ambassador herself had babbled it out.

I accompanied the attorney general to de Gaulle Airport. It would be hours before I got home. Allyson returned to the embassy in minutes. As the elevator was taking her to our office on the third floor, the door opened on the second floor. Standing there, waiting to go down, were Anne and the French nurse. As the elevator doors started to close, Allyson quickly remarked to Anne, “Tom told me you’re taking care of Gregory Peck.” I had a lot of explaining to do.

Can You Make This Go Away?

Not all the celebrities in Paris who crossed the ambassador’s trail — or ours — were as endearing as Gregory Peck. One was Régine Zylberberg, who ran Régine’s nightclub on East 54th Street in New York City. On April 17, 1996, Régine and her son, Lionel Rotcage, were on American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami. Midway across the Atlantic, Rotcage lit up a cigarette. Asked to stop smoking by the cabin crew, he refused. The aircraft’s pilot diverted the flight to Boston, where Régine and Lionel were arrested by the FBI and charged with interfering with a flight crew, a felony, which could lead to 20 years imprisonment.

The French media had a field day making fun of the puritanical Americans. The Sunday TV talk shows questioned the wisdom of diverting an aircraft for “one lit cigarette.” Ambassador Harriman did not like this mockery of her adopted country. She asked often about the Boston case and I furnished her regular updates.

At the end of April 1996, Janet Reno returned to France. Early in the morning, I met the ambassador at her residence and we rode to de Gaulle Airport, to welcome the attorney general. Sitting together in the back seat of her limo, Ambassador Harriman again asked about Régine’s case in Boston. I told her that Régine was constantly invoking the ambassador’s name. She leaned over towards me and said, “Tom, she is, what we used to call, a cheap broad.” I turned responding, “Madame Ambassador, we still call them that.” She let out a loud throaty laugh.    

Three days later, I accompanied AG Reno to Paris’ Orly Airport. Ambassador Harriman joined us in a VIP lounge at the airport. The conversation was jovial as these two remarkable women critiqued the ministers and other personalities the AG met during the previous days. When we stood and said our goodbyes the ambassador, directly facing the AG, asked, “Can you can make Régine’s case in Boston go away?”

Reno, until now relaxed and chatty, just stared straight ahead, not uttering a word. The silence was palpable. I spoke up. “Madame ambassador, the attorney general can’t comment on that.” The ambassador responded, “Oh, I see.” The AG would not interfere in what was a decision for the U.S. attorney in Boston. The ambassador, not being an attorney and having no previous experience in government, did not initially gasp that concept. I would recall this exchange 20 years later, when it was reported that President Trump posed a similar hopeful question to FBI Director James Comey.  

Deception 

On the afternoon of Feb. 10, 1995, as I walked towards the door of Ambassador Harriman’s office, I passed Richard L. Holm, the CIA’s Paris Chief of Station, walking out. His body language was unmistakable. Head down and shoulders slumped, he said to me as we passed, “This is the worst day of my life.”

The news Richard L. Holm received from a furious Ambassador Harriman was shocking. Earlier that day, she had been summoned to the office of French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua. There she received a stern official complaint about CIA spying in France. Pasqua detailed — with photographs — an agency operation. He named several CIA officers caught up in it, whom he said must leave the country.

We already knew something about this simmering problem. Earlier, on Jan. 26, 1995, Pasqua had informally warned the ambassador about the CIA spying and asked that it stop. She passed that warning on to Dick Holm and a small number of us were read into the situation. In a one-on-one meeting, Dick told me he was not going to stop; he does not get his “marching orders from her.” And he would not be telling the ambassador what he was doing. He was saying he would be deceiving her. It shocked me. The ambassador is the president’s representative.

Two weeks later, when the ambassador was summoned to that second session with Pasqua, it became apparent the agency did not stop spying after being warned. Her embarrassment and anger was understandable. The matter became public in a Feb. 22 leak to the French newspaper Le Monde, which was then picked up by the world media. We learned more details. The operation was aimed at gathering information about the French position on certain trade negotiations.

As this imbroglio was unwinding, Anne and I accompanied Ambassador Harriman on a visit to the Pernod-Ricard headquarters in Créteil. Riding out in the security of the ambassador’s limo, the CIA crisis and her annoyance came up. “Wanted to know the French position on a trade issue, did they?” I could invite someone in for coffee or a cocktail and just ask them, the ambassador asserted.

We toured the Pernod-Ricard plant and had an enjoyable lunch, Ambassador Harriman seemed relaxed and focused on the conversation with the French executives. As soon as we got into the limo, however, she let it be known she was in a hurry to return to the embassy. She had a secure phone call scheduled with President Bill Clinton at 3 p.m.; He wanted a direct conversation about the CIA’s Paris fiasco, without any agency filters.

Bring Me Good News

A significant portion of the criminal portfolio in the Paris Legal Attaché’s office involved art theft investigations. France is one of the nations most affected by art theft. Not surprisingly, the French National Police have significant expertise in these investigations. We organized an international conference with them on art theft.

Anne, a docent at the residence, organized with Ambassador Harriman a tour of the ambassador’s residence. The permanent residence collection included paintings by the early American artists Gilbert Stuart and Charles and Rembrandt Peale as well as Houdon sculptures of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. Added to that was the ambassador’s personal collection, which included Cézanne, Picasso, Renoir, and Matisse.

The tour Anne provided included everything from some small drawings by Winston Churchill — Pamela Harriman’s father-in-law — to the grand still-life “White Roses” by Vincent van Gogh. That painting, then estimated to be worth $50 million, is now in the National Gallery of Art. The photo Anne took of the group in front of the “White Roses” became everyone’s favorite souvenir of the conference. 

The Paris Embassy had a long tradition of holding an art show. This was an occasion to showcase the artwork of embassy employees, their families, and friends. My mother had taken up painting in her retirement on the New Jersey shore. She sent a few paintings.  

We invited some of the French Art Theft Squad as our guests at the opening.  As we were entering the building’s courtyard with our guests, Ambassador Harriman was just exiting. As we passed, she exclaimed “Oh, Tom, I just saw your mother’s paintings and they are the best in the show.” To these French police detectives, Pamela Harriman was a celebrity and her recognition of me clearly impressed them.

Art recoveries by the FBI generated positive coverage in the French media. At a Country Team meeting, just after the negative publicity of the CIA spying debacle, Ambassador Harriman arrived with a folded newspaper in her hand. Taking her place at the head of the long conference table, she unfolded the morning’s paper, Le Figaro, to a front-page story with photos of the recoveries. Pointedly looking down the table at the CIA’s Chief of Station she exclaimed, I wish everyone, like Tom Baker and his team, would “bring me good news!”

Death Over Water

An explosion broke up TWA Flight 800 at 8:30 p.m. on July 16, 1996. The Boeing 747 aircraft was at 14,000 feet above the Atlantic, within sight of New York’s Long Island. It departed JFK Airport at 8:19 p.m. with a crew of 18 and 212 passengers, a total of 230, men, women, and children: all killed.

In Paris, Flight 800’s destination, it was 2:30 a.m., on July 17, 1996, when the explosion happened. Early morning phone calls to our Paris apartment began. James K. Kallstrom, the Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York FBI office, asked me to initiate the French end of the investigation. The embassy called with a message: the ambassador wanted to be briefed as soon as possible. 

So began one of the largest investigations in FBI history and a case that would stay a priority for Legat Paris for over a year. The assumption that this was a terrorist act was not questioned by anyone in the first months of the investigation. The FBI, as well as French police and intelligence, proceeded on that assumption.

Pierre Salinger, former press secretary to President John F. Kennedy, put forth that a U.S. Navy missile brought down the plane. Salinger, then a well-known personality, had great cachet from his Camelot days in Kennedy’s White House. In France, where he was at the time, he often made his remarks in fluent French. We located Salinger in a matter of hours and interviewed him.

He could not provide any information of value; he was asserting what he believed but would not say more. In the Country Team meeting where the case was first discussed, Ambassador Harriman, who personally knew Salinger, used the word “traitor” for his blaming this disaster on the U.S. Navy. Salinger would continue to air his malign opinions over the coming months.  

Pierre Salinger Redux

On Friday, Nov. 8, 1996, Salinger gave a press conference at an aviation industry meeting on the Riviera, where he persisted in his missile theory. He waved a paper as proof, which he claimed came from the Services Secret, confusing matters even more. American journalists reported the story as if he were claiming the information originated with the U.S. Secret Service. The French media translated Services Secret as Intelligence Services.

In the middle of this imbroglio, I received an invitation to lunch at the ambassador’s residence. These summonses were followed by a seating plan, sometimes even suggested talking points. We would be lunching with two important French officials from the Transportation Ministry and the Aviation agency, both women. Also on the luncheon seating plan was the name Nicole Helene Gillman. As I was entering the residence for lunch “Joseph” (Giuseppe Santos), the head butler, told me sotto voce Nicole Gillman was a former wife of Pierre Salinger and a good friend of the ambassador.

The luncheon focused on the TWA 800 case, including commentary about Pierre Salinger. He was not liked by the ambassador nor anyone else at that table. They had seen on CNN that morning Jim Kallstrom’s response to Salinger’s latest broadside. Jim’s typically pithy retorts “that’s crazy” and “he’s crazy” were loved by the media and eaten up by the women at this luncheon.

Nicole Gillman joked about the confusion Salinger created with his Secret Service/Services Secret assertions. She said Salinger “replaced her” with another Nicole. She said he was getting old and maybe needed help remembering names. But after a few years, he left the second Nicole. So now there are two former Madames Nicole Salinger. Gillman concluded, “Pierre always leaves confusion in his wake.”

Kallstrom would come to Paris several times on this case. With input from the NTSB, Boeing, and TWA, the conclusion was announced on Nov. 18, 1997: it was an accident; an explosion of vapors in the central fuel tank.

In the final days of Jan. 1997, I received an invitation to lunch at the ambassador’s residence. I did not receive the usual “cheat-sheet” seating plan. I phoned the ambassador’s secretary to learn the name of our guests. I was surprised to learn there was none. This was to be a private lunch.

On what was a cold wet day in Paris, I arrived at almost the same moment the head of the U.S. Information Agency, the embassy’s press officer. We were directed upstairs to the ambassador’s quarters. In a small room, with a fire blazing in the fireplace, Joseph, the butler, asked us what we would like to drink. We both asked for a Perrier. A minute or so later, the ambassador appeared. Just in from the chilly weather, she stood with her back to the fire, warming her hands behind her back, and asked us if Joseph had taken our drink orders. As we responded, she added, “I hope you didn’t order anything sissy, like a Perrier.”

At that very moment Joseph, a very self-assured individual, reappeared with three Bloody Marys on a silver tray. As we enjoyed our drinks, Pamela Harriman explained she had been out shopping for an apartment that morning. She had expressed an interest in buying a French apartment since her arrival in Paris. She told us her plans were to divide her time between a home in Middleburg, Virginia, and Paris, when her term as ambassador ended. We were then shown into an adjoining room where we sat at a small round table. It was a private lunch. Pamela Harriman was very cheerful and relaxed, making plans for the next stage of life. In a week she would be dead. 

Death at the Ritz    

Just as I was leaving our Paris apartment on the morning of Feb. 5, 1997, the phone that was an extension off the embassy switchboard rang, usually not good news. I was quickly told there was an emergency Country Team meeting at 9 a.m. and I was to be there.

The Deputy Chief of Mission, the number two in the embassy, had called the meeting. Once we were in the secure conference room he got right to the point. Ambassador Harriman had suffered a stroke hours earlier, while swimming in the pool at the Ritz Hotel. She was on life support and not expected to live. He asked for our help as both Washington and Paris would want to honor her.

The following day, Feb. 6, 1997, Pamela Churchill Harriman, aged 76, died at the American Hospital in suburban Neuilly. The day following her death there was a solemn service in the back garden of the residence. An honor guard of U.S. Marines, coordinating with the French Garde Républicaine, accompanied the casket with the traditional slow dirge. Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, the Archbishop of Paris, presided. It was not widely known, Harriman was a Catholic; she had converted at age 30, when she got an earlier marriage annulled. The French president, Jacques Chirac, placed the Grand Cross of the Légion d’ Honneur on Harriman’s flag-draped coffin. President Bill Clinton sent the aircraft usually used as Air Force One to carry Harriman’s casket home. There she was again honored, on Feb. 13, 1997, in a televised service from the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. Among the personalities in the large crowd, was Gregory Peck. How ironic, six months earlier, she was concerned about his health. Now he looked perfectly robust at her funeral. 

Thomas J. Baker is an international law enforcement consultant. He served as a FBI Special Agent for 33 years in a variety of investigative and management positions facing the challenges of crime and terrorism. He is the author of “The Fall of the FBI: How a Once Great Agency Became a Threat to Democracy.”