On the second floor of the palatial U.S. Embassy in Rio de Janeiro last week, the spacious, air-conditioned ambassador's office was being readied for a new tenant. Earnest, dynamic William D. Pawley, who resigned as ambassador last month, had checked out—private airplane and all. To fill the $25,000-a-year job, President Truman had picked 53-year-old Career Diplomat Herschel Vespasian Johnson.
Johnson, a scholarly Southern bachelor, had plugged along through 27 years of foreign service in both Latin America and Europe, was U.S. Minister to neutral Sweden during World War II. In the past two years as deputy U.S. representative in the...
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