Ball, George Wildman

▪ 1995

      U.S. government official and lawyer (b. Dec. 21, 1909, Des Moines, Iowa—d. May 26, 1994, New York, N.Y.), as undersecretary of state (1961-66) in the administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, vociferously objected to increasing U.S. troop involvement in Vietnam and warned both presidents that the U.S. could not win a guerrilla war. His prophetic counsel was ignored, however, and U.S. involvement escalated from 400 "advisers" to more than 500,000 ground troops. After earning a law degree from Northwestern University in Chicago, Ball practiced law there and became a supporter of Adlai Stevenson, the governor of Illinois. When Stevenson ran for the presidency in 1952, 1956, and 1960, Ball served as national director of Volunteers for Stevenson and was propelled into politics. Ball joined the Kennedy administration as undersecretary of state for economic affairs but was soon elevated to undersecretary of state and advised Kennedy during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Ball resigned in 1966 to return to his law practice but served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 1968. His dovish views on Vietnam became known with the publication in 1971 of the sensitive Pentagon Papers. Ball was the author of five books, including Diplomacy for a Crowded World (1976), Error and Betrayal in Lebanon (1984), and The Passionate Attachment (1992), an examination of U.S.-Israeli relations.

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