signed
29/11/1962
29/11/1962. John F. Kennedy John Wesley Jones was a veteran American diplomat. He rose to the rank of consul at the U.S. embassy in Rome in 1937 and returned to Italy after World War II as first secretary of the embassy. He was one of the last American diplomats to leave mainland China during the Communist takeover when he was the political officer in charge of the U.S. embassy, then situated in Nanjing. He directed the State Department's Office of Western European Affairs in Washington from 1953 to 1957. The year after that he was posted by President Eisenhower to Tripoli as Ambassador to Libya. His last foreign assignment came in 1962 when President Kennedy named him Ambassador to Peru, where he served until 1969.Document signed as President, Washington, November 29, 1962, appointing “J. Wesley Jones of Iowa…Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to Peru.” The document is countersigned by Secretary of State Dean Rusk.Documents of President Kennedy granting full ambassadorships are rare, this being the first one we have ever carried in all these decades. (Inventory #: 17760)