For a small-town Nova Scotia boy, Lauchlin Currie traveled far. He studied economics at Harvard and remained to teach; he became a U.S. citizen, a Treasury Department economist, eventually administrative assistant, friend and close adviser to President Roosevelt. After Roosevelt's death Currie, at 43, bowed out of Government, opened an import-export firm in Manhattan.
In 1948 Elizabeth Bentley told the
House Un-American Activities Committee that Lauchlin Currie had aided the Communist underground in Washington; Currie hotly denied her accusations, but his name kept turning up in FBI reports and congressional investigations.
In 1950 Currie left the U.S., became an economic adviser to...