Harry Dexter White

Harry Dexter White (October 9, 1892 – August 16, 1948) was an American economist, and a senior U.S. Treasury department official. He was the senior American official at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference, and reportedly dominated the conference and imposed his vision of post-war financial institutions over the objections of John Maynard Keynes, the British representative. After the war, White was a major architect of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

In August 1948, White testified and defended his record to the House Un-American Activities Committee. Three days after testifying he died of a heart attack at his summer home in Fitzwilliam, NH. A number of sources, including the FBI and Soviet archives, indicate that he passed secret state information to the Soviet Union during World War II.