Leo Pasvolsky

Who was Leo Pasvolsky?

Leo Pasvolsky was a journalist, economist, state department official and special assistant to Secretary of State Cordell Hull. He was one of the United States government's main planners for the post World War II world and "probably the foremost author of the UN Charter." Thomas Connally said in his memoirs "Certainly he had more to do with writing the framework of the charter than anyone else." His New York Times obituary is subtitled "Wrote Charter of World Organization."

A short, rotund, mustachioed pipe smoker with a very large and round head, he joked that he might find it easier to roll than to walk. An aide compared him to the third little pig in the Three Little Pigs, Hull called him "Friar Tuck". A hardworking "one-man think tank" for Hull, he preferred to stay invisible, in the background. In the words of Richard Holbrooke, he "was one of those figures peculiar to Washington – a tenacious bureaucrat who, fixed on a single goal, left behind a huge legacy while virtually disappearing from history."