William J. LaVarre (1898–1991) was an American geographer, explorer, and journalist known for his books Up the Mazaruni for Diamonds (1919) and Southward ho!
In 1922 he made headlines for discovering what he claimed was the world's largest diamond, in British Guiana.
[4] In 1933, at age 31, LaVarre became the owner and editor of the Spartanburg Herald-Journal in South Carolina, after a hostile takeover.
[6] In 1938, LaVarre met the famous prison escapee René Belbenoît and helped him publicize his memoir, Dry Guillotine, and wrote the Introduction.
[10] In 1951 LaVarre published "Moscow's Red Letter Day" in the American Legion Magazine accusing Franklin Delano Roosevelt of inviting communism into the Americas in a secret deal with Maxim Litvinov that led to normalizing diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union by accepting the ambassadorship of A.A. Troyanovsky and appointing William Christian Bullitt Jr. ambassador to the Soviet Union.