Hurley, Patrick Jay, 1883–1963, U.S. cabinet officer, b. Choctaw Territory (now in Oklahoma). Hurley practiced law in Tulsa, Okla., was (1912–17) national attorney for the Choctaw Nation, and fought in France in World War I as a colonel in the U.S. army. He was Under Secretary of War (1929) and Secretary of War (1929–33), served on diplomatic missions, and participated in Republican party politics. After the outbreak of World War II he saw active fighting in East Asia as the personal representative of Gen. George C. Marshall. Hurley served (1942) as the first U.S. minister to New Zealand and afterward was (1942–43) President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's personal representative in the Middle East. He was promoted (1944) to major general, and was envoy (1944–45) and ambassador to China. A champion of Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Chinese government, he later charged that officials in the U.S. Department of State had subverted the U.S. policy of support to Chiang's government.
See study by R. D. Buhite (1973).
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