U.S. Ambassador To France Collapses, May Be Near Death

Pamela Harriman, the U.S. ambassador to Paris, was hospitalized here Monday night with what Clinton administration sources and close associates characterized as a massive stroke that left her near death.

A U.S. Embassy spokesman, Christopher Snow, offered no details of Harriman’s condition or the circumstances under which she fell ill except to say she had been taken to the American Hospital in suburban Neuilly around 7 p.m. Monday.

In Washington, however, a close Harriman confidant who asked that he not be named said he had been told by State Department officials that the ambassador had suffered a stroke and was “in serious condition.” Another longtime associate said he had been informed by administration officials that physicians attending her viewed her condition as life-threatening.

Harriman, 76, reportedly collapsed after she went to swim at the Ritz Hotel’s health club, a few blocks from her palatial official residence on the Rue du Faubourg St. Honore, near the Place de la Concorde.

Harriman was born in Farnborough, England, and became a naturalized U.S. citizen after marrying her third husband, multimillionaire financier, diplomat and Democratic Party power broker W. Averell Harriman, in 1971.