[2] In 1927, President Calvin Coolidge pulled him from foreign service because he needed a White House director of ceremonies.

[7][5][4] His duties included arranging the dates and agendas of the United States' participation in international conferences and issuing ceremonial statements to the officials of other countries.

[4][6] Dunn was a political advisor in European affairs during the Spanish Civil War, becoming "a powerful influence in holding U.S. policy to an embargo on arms for both sides in Spain—to the chagrin of the U.S. left wing.

[8] This placed him in a "small circle" that worked with Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long to implement America's refugee policy.

[8] Dunn's role appears to have been to suppress news about the killing of Jews from reaching America, which in turn obstructed rescue opportunities.

[8] Specifically, he tried to stop information of the mass murders from reaching Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise, an American Jewish leader, in the summer of 1942.

[8] In early 1943, Dunn was involved in the order sent to diplomats in Switzerland to stop sending reports about the killing of Jews.

[8] In an April 1944 radio broadcast, Drew Person "blamed Dunn by name for squandering an opportunity to rescue several hundred rabbis whose deportation to Auschwitz had been temporarily postponed because they held Latin American passports."

Dunn was also criticized on the floor of the Senate by William Langer, a key advocate for rescuing the Jews, in December 1944.

[6][9] There, Dunn worked behind the scenes to create a pro-French consensus and to protect France's colonial interests in French Indochina.

"[4] He had once directly asked then-prime minister Alcide de Gasperi to dissolve Italian parliament and remove the PCI.

[6][3] When he retired, The Washington Post wrote, "Jimmy" Dunn had served, among other things, as a kind of press spokesman for the uncommunicative secretary of state Hull.

Mr. Dunn's stock went up and up with the newspapermen, and he came to be appreciated as a fine public servant, with a great knowledge of diplomatic precedent and history which made him one of the best ambassadors of our times.

"[6] Dunn received the State Department's Distinguished Service Award for his work as Ambassador to Italy where he helped defeat the Communists in the critical 1948 elections.