John W. Pehle


John W. Pehle was a US Treasury Department lawyer and one of the authors of the Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of the Jews, a 1944 document exposing the State Department’s alleged cover-up of the Holocaust. He became the first director of the War Refugee Board.

Life

John W. Pehle was born in Minneapolis, grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and studied at Yale Law School. From 1934 to 1940, he was a lawyer in the Office of the General Counsel for the Department of the Treasury. Later he became director of the Treasury Department's foreign-funds control and assistant to the secretary of the Treasury.
He was the first director of the War Refugee Board, created in 1944, while he continued work for the Treasury Department's Foreign Funds control. Early in 1945 he left the War Refugee Board, where he was succeeded by William O'Dwyer.
In 1946 he entered private practice, as senior partner in the Washington, D.C., law firm of Pehle & Lesser and successor firms; and, later, in the Washington office of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius.
He died in 1999.