John C. Wiley

Portrait of U.S. Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary John C. Wiley as sketched by his wife Irena B. Wiley.

John Cooper Wiley was born in Bordeaux, France on September 26, 1893, where his father served as the U.S. Consul. After being tutored privately, Wiley attended Union College for a year followed by a year and a half at Georgetown Law School in Washington, D.C.

In 1915, Wiley joined the staff of the U.S. Embassy in Paris as a clerk before being promoted to Fifth Secretary the following year. Over the next ten years, Wiley served at the U.S. Missions in The Hague, Santiago, Buenos Aires, Caracas, Copenhagen, Madrid, and Lima as he rose through the ranks of the U.S. Foreign Service. In 1926, Wiley became First Secretary at the U.S. Embassy in Berlin. In 1930, he was promoted to Counselor (the number two person) at the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw. In 1932, Wiley became the Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid. After a year in Spain, Wiley returned to Washington where he was appointed to be the technical advisor to the U.S. Delegation attending the 1933 International Monetary and Economic Conference in London. At the conference, delegates from 66 countries discussed various issues pertaining to trade and foreign exchange in order to find a way out of the Great Depression.

In March 1934, shortly after the United States reestablished formal diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, Wiley became the Counselor as well as the Consul General at the new U.S. Embassy in Moscow. On September 26, 1934, Wiley married Irena Monique Baruch, a Polish-born sculptor. Starting with their assignment to Moscow, Mrs. Wiley would document their diplomatic life together in her memoirs Around the Globe in Twenty Years (1962). In 1936, Wiley became the U.S. Consul General in Antwerp, Belgium. In July 1937, he transferred to the U.S. Legation in Vienna as both the Counselor and Consul General. When Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Wiley became Chargé d'Affaires ad interim after the U.S. withdrew its Minister. As Chargé, Wiley helped several prominent Austrian-Jews (including Sigmund Freud) escape the country before the Nazis shut down the U.S. Mission.

On July 18, 1938, Wiley was appointed U.S. Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Latvia and Estonia. (The U.S. State Department assigned a separate U.S. Minister to Lithuania the year before). He presented his credentials in Tallinn on November 24, 1938. Unlike his predecessors, Minister Wiley and his wife Irena spent a significant amount of their time in Estonia. Minister Wiley's assignment came to an abrupt end when Soviet forces occupied Estonia on June 17, 1940. Minister Wiley departed post on July 25, 1940, two days after Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles issued the U.S. statement refusing to acknowledge the illegal incorporation of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania into the Soviet Union.

From 1941 to 1944, Wiley served at the U.S. Department of State in a number of different capacities. In 1944, he was appointed U.S. Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Columbia. Ambassador Wiley went on to represent the United States in Portugal (1947-1948), Iran (1948-1951), and Panama (1951-1953). While in Panama, Ambassador Wiley helped negotiate changes to the Panama Canal Treaty. Ambassador Wiley retired on January 1, 1954, but continued to work as a consultant for the U.S. Department of State. He died in Washington, D.C. on February 3, 1967.


Minister Wiley's Estonian diplomatic ID.