tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54428005407238999362024-03-05T22:36:06.565-05:00Global PublicksMark Taplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18013095388375294492noreply@blogger.comBlogger79125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5442800540723899936.post-12196877217563130162015-02-18T18:24:00.001-05:002015-02-20T09:29:18.844-05:00Walter Roberts: The Impact of U.S. Cold War Public Diplomacy -- "The Most Effective Way of Influencing...Was the Voice of America"<div class="MsoNormal">
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At the end of my two 2010 interviews with Walter Roberts, I asked him which U.S. government public diplomacy programs had had the biggest impact during the Cold War. His response was unequivocal. As Walter reflected on the question, approaching it from his seventy-some years of professional involvement in the field of international information and cultural programs, his views carried a unique degree of credibility:<br />
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<i>You have to divide the Soviet bloc, Yugoslavia and the
West.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As far as the Soviet bloc is
concerned, I have not the slightest doubt that the most effective way of
influencing the Hungarian, the Romanian and the Soviet peoples was the Voice of
America.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Far above
everything else, because everything else was restricted and even though the
Voice of America was jammed in the indigenous languages, it was not jammed in
English.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></div>
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<i>In 1959, when I visited the Sokolniki Park exhibit, I was
also instructed to call on the Foreign Office to protest the jamming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Deputy Foreign Minister – I forget
his name now -- who received me was obviously prepared that I would object to
their jamming the Russian programs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When I walked into his office, I immediately realized that he was going
to play a trick here because he had on his desk a large Grundig radio receiver.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I started talking, he
said:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Well, Mr. Roberts, we don’t
jam the Voice of America.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
said: “Well, of course you do.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He said, no, and he turns and turns the radio on and there was the Voice
of America in English coming in loud and clear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said, “Yeah, but that’s in English but you jam the
Russian.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Mr. Roberts, is Russian your
language?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said “No, but we
broadcast in Russian in order to converse with the Russian people.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“But that is an interference in our internal affairs.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so on and so on – a typical
conversation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But they did not jam
the Voice of America in English.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jazz program host <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willis_Conover">Willis Conover</a> and Louis Armstrong on the VOA</td></tr>
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<i>I believe that the Voice of America – <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Europe/Radio_Liberty">and Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe</a> – made an enormous difference.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Eastern European peoples and the Soviet Union
peoples were ready for a change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In my opinion, the enormous barrage from the West – VOA, Radio Liberty,
BBC, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Welle">Deutsche Welle</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_France_Internationale">Radio France Internationale,</a> the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_Radio">Vatican Radio</a> and so on –
made an enormous difference.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
cultural exchange programs, yes, of course, they had individual impressions –
but that was a very individual, whereas the Voice was a mass appeal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The libraries in Yugoslavia helped the
cause but very frankly, the people who went to the library were people who already
were in the American corner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They
were able to strengthen their beliefs, strengthen their arguments in
conversations by what they read and what they saw in the libraries. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the Voice of America and the other
broadcasting organizations – they had a mass appeal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I do not think that the approach to the Cold War of the information
and cultural program changed very much except through the broadcasting
media.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s at least my opinion.
</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
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Mark Taplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18013095388375294492noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5442800540723899936.post-70526046598527381282015-02-18T12:46:00.000-05:002015-02-18T12:46:16.498-05:00Walter Roberts: George Kennan and Public Diplomacy -- "Basically, George Kennan Was an Old-Line Diplomat"<div class="MsoNormal">
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<i><br /></i>
Walter's friendship with George F. Kennan was forged in Yugoslavia; Kennan was his boss but also became a mentor. They continued to stay in touch over the years, until shortly before Kennan's death. This connection grew up despite the fact that Kennan's perspective on U.S. public diplomacy was definitely from the old school -- respectful, perhaps, but aloof. Both Walter and Milt Iossi, a former Foreign Service officer who also served at Embassy Belgrade under Ambassador Kennan, shared their memories of him <a href="http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/item/2005/0406/ioss/iossi_kennan.html">in pieces posted on UNC's "American Diplomacy" online journal</a>.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Amb.-Designate Kennan with JFK at the White House, Feb. 1961</td></tr>
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<i>…We in the Embassy in Belgrade were fascinated when the
telegram came in to request accreditation for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_F._Kennan">George Kennan.</a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We had known George Kennan – I
personally had known him very, very slightly from previous incarnations – and
we were very happy because it enhanced our own stature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The fact that John F. Kennedy would
select George Kennan, and that George Kennan would accept an appointment to be
ambassador to Yugoslavia, having been Ambassador to the Soviet Union, was in my
opinion an indication that the Presidency of John F. Kennedy would take
Yugoslavia seriously.</i></div>
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<i>When George Kennan came, he immediately showed an interest
in what we were doing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I might say that he showed an interest
particularly because that was the time when the press law was published, so the
entire American -Yugoslav relationship was somehow involved.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because if the Yugoslavs had succeeded
in eradicating USIS, that would have been a major setback in Yugoslav-American
relations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So George Kennan
took an immediate interest, and talked to Tito about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He wanted that law to become a non-law.</i><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kennan with Tito, Belgrade 1961</td></tr>
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<i>But I have to tell you that basically George Kennan was an
old-line diplomat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He did not show
a particular interest in the information program.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As far as the cultural program was concerned, he was more
interested.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I think if you had
woken him up at 3 o’clock in the morning and asked him whether he’s happy with
USIS, he would probably have said “I’m happy with USIS, but I don’t think it
ought to be in the Embassy.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think
he was much more taken with the British approach, whereby the cultural program
was a self-standing operation outside the Embassy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he was kind enough, and smart enough, not to show this
openly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And in particular, it was
his personal relationship with me – he somehow liked me – and I think I was
probably the one officer in whom he confided most.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But not because I was a USIS officer, but because I was who
I was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1973 Note to George Kennan</td></tr>
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<i>So my relationship with
George Kennan continued to become a friendship.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I continued to visit him in Princeton after he retired or
resigned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was basically in touch
with him until about a year before he died, when he really didn’t want to talk
on the telephone anymore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As you
know, he reached 101 I think, and I think the last time I saw him in Princeton
was when he was 98 or 99.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was
still mentally completely, at the time I saw him, but I understand when he
reached 100, things went wrong a little way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he continued to live in his own house, they had a couple
working for them, and he was one of the sweetest and kindest and nicest persons
I ever encountered in my whole life.</i></div>
Mark Taplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18013095388375294492noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5442800540723899936.post-65488677015606678272015-02-18T00:18:00.000-05:002015-02-18T00:18:24.323-05:00Walter Roberts: USIS Magazines and Exhibits in Yugoslavia -- "I'm Red-Faced. I Apologize."<div class="MsoNormal">
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Walter and his USIS staff faced some of the same petty challenges and obstacles that other U.S. public diplomats wrestled with in closed societies during the Cold War period, even if Yugoslavia featured a less obdurate program environment than the Communist Bloc countries under Moscow's direct sway. Information that was neither vetted or approved by the authorities, and especially from a foreign capitalist country, was anathema to the security services. One of Walter's favorite stories about tangling with the Yugoslav apparatchiki was this one:<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>We had a mailing list for our magazine called <u>Pregled</u>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One day, at some occasion, one of the
Yugoslavs approached me and said:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Have
you discontinued <u>Pregled</u>?” And I said, no, not at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Well, I didn’t get my copy this month.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, I said, give me your name and
I’ll see that a copy be sent to you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the next two or three or four days, other people on
the staff, both local employees and Americans, said they had heard that <u>Pregled</u>
was not distributed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i><i style="text-align: center;">So finally I
came to the conclusion that <u>Pregled</u> was not sent out by the post
office.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I took my jacket and
went to the Foreign Office.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I
said: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“<u>Pregled</u> was not
distributed – what happened?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
<a href="http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%B8%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%BD_%D0%91%D1%83%D0%BB%D0%B0%D1%98%D0%B8%D1%9B">Mr. Milan Bulajic</a>, who was the American desk officer said:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Out of the question.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said, “No out of the question,
it’s a fact but let’s find out what happened.”</i><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">Pregled Cover, December 1963<br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</i><i style="text-align: center;"><br /></i>
<i>One Sunday, a week later, the telephone rings and Milan
Bulajic calls me at home and he asked me whether he could come over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said, well of course.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So Milan came over to my house and he said:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I’m red-faced.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I apologize.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><u>Pregled</u> was thrown by the Ministry of the Interior into
the Danube River.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lock, stock and
barrel.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We found out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i><br />
<i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>But that was the only time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was very different from a program in France; but it was
very different from a program in Bucharest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a very enjoyable stay for me because I was able to do
things that I knew I could not do in Bucharest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For instance, exhibits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We had beautiful exhibits coming from the United States, and
they were always part of the Belgrade fair.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a matter of course, and policy, Tito came to these
fairs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I got to know him through these
fairs because I took him around the American pavilion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was much more widespread – yes, we
had the Sokolniki Park exhibit in Moscow but I don’t know when the next exhibit
was in Moscow because I was not in the line of command anymore at that time
because I had gone to Yugoslavia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tito was very interested.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
remember the capsule in which <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Glenn">Glenn</a>, later Senator Glenn, circled the Earth; we
got that capsule to show it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
remember I showed it to Tito and Tito said “Well, I’d have to lose a lot of weight
to get into it.”</i><br />
<i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlz-qhEcUOD21kwlKPr1ScXWZ1jx41FGOfVoqE0deSHo59CbUtDSgUyouAWk9x62Bf8qCgPRDMMQKB7IPN7j_1gvU5iMT0gPuaBmVW8w9swjSzmyIXweKah5AkZri1EVjdqGgOltv93VJk/s1600/roberts2_orbiter.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlz-qhEcUOD21kwlKPr1ScXWZ1jx41FGOfVoqE0deSHo59CbUtDSgUyouAWk9x62Bf8qCgPRDMMQKB7IPN7j_1gvU5iMT0gPuaBmVW8w9swjSzmyIXweKah5AkZri1EVjdqGgOltv93VJk/s1600/roberts2_orbiter.png" height="281" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">John Glenn's Friendship 7 Capsule Arrives at Belgrade Airport<br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span></i></div>
Mark Taplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18013095388375294492noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5442800540723899936.post-27288346788169606972015-02-17T13:48:00.001-05:002015-02-18T00:19:09.598-05:00Walter Roberts: The Fulbright Program in Yugoslavia -- "Tito Thought It Was An Excellent Idea"<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgbXBEYNx3AzYZRQRzPJG0NRDTrdKxeTie_n7M5kXX_I40i9LCNwg3OLPxHOGwbxmshe-qVu1bzr16EeuBLkr3OTwTP-cRGG6349DZ20lPme3-eNbbj95zIyTLceL9bAXVrW0hXZX67uZq/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-02-17+at+12.57.17+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgbXBEYNx3AzYZRQRzPJG0NRDTrdKxeTie_n7M5kXX_I40i9LCNwg3OLPxHOGwbxmshe-qVu1bzr16EeuBLkr3OTwTP-cRGG6349DZ20lPme3-eNbbj95zIyTLceL9bAXVrW0hXZX67uZq/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-02-17+at+12.57.17+PM.png" height="320" width="297" /></a></div>
<i>It was very interesting period for me, because I began to
realize that my <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbo-Croatian">Serbo-Croatian</a>, which I had learned – I think I should put the
word “learned” in quotation marks – at the <a href="http://www.state.gov/m/fsi/">Foreign Service Institute</a>, was not
adequate for me to conduct these negotiations with the Yugoslavs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the main negotiator on the Yugoslav
side spoke French, and so we discussed the agreement in French, and that I was
able to do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you ask me now,
what kind of agreement we reached, I’m not quite sure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But obviously it worked, because in the
end our program continued as it was before.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>We always had difficulties </i>[with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulbright_Program">the Fulbright program</a>] <i>but
I made it one of my priorities that during my tenure as Public Affairs Officer
there, I would reach a Fulbright agreement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I didn’t give up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I used cocktail parties, I used lunches, I used my calls on
the Foreign Office or with other people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We always would say “Well, things will not be the same until we have a
Fulbright agreement.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjp62f6WY7WeT4-kiDXMUFPusvlH7FovOFdrfSYDa-UwimHuiPkk4qnRod1-tF1LtNIFNJUzmlYFtS53q6GHyR2H3PvqWO_t-YSGzfDmiCCBmaeEHJNx_PA8eW_jque1rG7GRQNlJ-fwBw/s1600/Tito+and+JFK.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjp62f6WY7WeT4-kiDXMUFPusvlH7FovOFdrfSYDa-UwimHuiPkk4qnRod1-tF1LtNIFNJUzmlYFtS53q6GHyR2H3PvqWO_t-YSGzfDmiCCBmaeEHJNx_PA8eW_jque1rG7GRQNlJ-fwBw/s1600/Tito+and+JFK.jpg" height="249" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kennedy and Tito at the White House</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i>The story goes, and I have no reason to doubt it, that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josip_Broz_Tito">Tito</a>,
who was the last head of state to visit John F. Kennedy alive, he came at the
end of October or early November 1963, and apparently established a very good
rapport with the President.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was
happy with his trip to the United States.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Allegedly, upon his return, he said to his immediate staff that he wants
to show his gratitude for the way Kennedy received him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And was there anything in
American-Yugoslav relations that he could do to further that?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The American desk officer in the Foreign
Office, to whom I had told every day of the week that we wanted a Fulbright
agreement, told his Foreign Minister to tell Tito that maybe we can sign a
Fulbright agreement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i><br />
<i style="text-align: center;"><br /></i>
<i style="text-align: center;">Tito thought
that was an excellent idea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
Yugoslavs relented on their insistence that all exchangees – and that was the
stumbling block, they wanted to choose the people, and they would not want to
give that to a commission – they relented that <a href="http://fulbright.org.rs/en/about-us">a Fulbright commission be established in Belgrade</a>, of which the cultural officer of the United States
would be the chairman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1964/10/27/yugoslavia-may-get-fulbright-scholars.html?_r=0">So we had a Fulbright agreement</a> and Bill Fulbright himself came for the signing in
1964.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was absolutely the first
Fulbright agreement in Eastern Europe; from what I hear it is still thriving. <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIt_hnR01Md1k4r0sbGlmXyDInoHJTnTBDaxjbNwK-gLrlZXSaWAQNOtry-MBf3U5IpGr46CMfqoBkVvlmNLqanEIfVyoFVAWt2MwZe9ijiCnmzrSZHh5tBGnpDATddImKWoz11aRehEdP/s1600/Fulbright+LBJ+1964.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIt_hnR01Md1k4r0sbGlmXyDInoHJTnTBDaxjbNwK-gLrlZXSaWAQNOtry-MBf3U5IpGr46CMfqoBkVvlmNLqanEIfVyoFVAWt2MwZe9ijiCnmzrSZHh5tBGnpDATddImKWoz11aRehEdP/s1600/Fulbright+LBJ+1964.jpg" height="216" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Senator Fulbright and LBJ, April 1964</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</i><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
</div>
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Mark Taplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18013095388375294492noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5442800540723899936.post-17789882357400067522015-02-17T13:07:00.000-05:002015-02-17T13:07:32.663-05:00Walter Roberts: U.S. Public Diplomacy in Yugoslavia -- "We Had Quite a Program There"<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeuRiLhVtlR_AL2oxVkbjMx3zEyRBJhjY0ET1wl727QE-eT4JG1WdgquGQEJ-aW-DV6fmocIza8rLVcGmYZn4a-Iyv8wseEjJNWzAR10tWxyod2Y9qfUPpS6v52M2-EO9tANu-Wbm_KVfc/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-02-17+at+12.59.42+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeuRiLhVtlR_AL2oxVkbjMx3zEyRBJhjY0ET1wl727QE-eT4JG1WdgquGQEJ-aW-DV6fmocIza8rLVcGmYZn4a-Iyv8wseEjJNWzAR10tWxyod2Y9qfUPpS6v52M2-EO9tANu-Wbm_KVfc/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-02-17+at+12.59.42+PM.png" height="257" width="320" /></a></div>
In 1960, Walter was offered the choice of a promotion to the European area director job at USIA -- or the position of Counselor for Public Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. The latter was one of the most responsible U.S. public diplomacy jobs in the field because of Yugoslavia's unique position as a non-aligned Communist state, and Walter opted to go overseas. It was not an easy decision, Walter acknowledged (the USIA area director position was viewed as a prestigious one), but he was later grateful he had chosen Belgrade. As he chronicled in various articles over the years, Walter's tour there turned out to be a rich experience that led to a continuing relationship with Yugoslavia and its successor states long after he retired from the Foreign Service.<br />
<br />
<i>Perhaps </i>[the]<i> best </i>[way to]<i> describe the situation in
Yugoslavia is by a story that I told a USIA director when he asked me:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“How is it to work in Belgrade?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And my answer was, at the time, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>if you travel from Sofia to Rome,
Belgrade looks like Rome.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But if
you travel from Rome to Sofia, Belgrade looks like Sofia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>What I meant is, that in contradistinction to all the USIA
programs behind <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Curtain">the Iron Curtain</a>, including of course Moscow, we had a large
program in Yugoslavia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the time
I came, I had the distinct feeling that while of course I worked in a Communist
country, that in many respects our USIS program in Yugoslavia was more like a
USIS program in Austria than in Budapest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1V8M30nMFgb1aPuKebQ1D8_XjWObEubKfrpcOYHCxR89LAnCBT_Uouuck70QO4vv3c7chwul3DrEmBBlPPtJyJdVt01z61_fF_87BOhDNUR3_UlXgtr0pSQduwFFF2eqsSchICGl1qaia/s1600/Belgrade+1960s.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1V8M30nMFgb1aPuKebQ1D8_XjWObEubKfrpcOYHCxR89LAnCBT_Uouuck70QO4vv3c7chwul3DrEmBBlPPtJyJdVt01z61_fF_87BOhDNUR3_UlXgtr0pSQduwFFF2eqsSchICGl1qaia/s1600/Belgrade+1960s.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Belgrade in the 1960s</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>But I spoke too fast.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Within six or eight months of my arrival in Belgrade, the Yugoslavia
government issued a press law.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If
you read that press law from A to Z, it meant the end of USIS.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It did not mean the end of <a href="http://www.britishcouncil.org/">the British Council</a>, because as you know the British Council is a non-governmental
organization.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They had to register
and were there as a Yugoslav incorporated organization.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>USIS could never have done that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>I personally was convinced that my days were numbered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had arrived in the summer of 1960,
this was in the spring of 1961.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said this was not the way we could
operate, because the press law denied diplomatic status to any foreign
information program, or cultural program.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In other words, it denied diplomatic status to the relationship with the
Yugoslav people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was the view
of the Yugoslav government, which adopted this law, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that a diplomat had to deal with the Foreign Office.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not even with the Minister of
Culture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not even with the
Minister of Information.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You had
to go to the Foreign Office, and if the Foreign Office allowed you to speak to
the Minister of Information, then you could talk to him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And of course, we bitterly protested,
but in vain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They told us, “confidentially,”
that this was done to rein in the Soviets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I personally had no doubt they told the Soviets that they
did it in order to rein in the Americans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Former USIS American Center, Ljubljana</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i>Because we had quite a program there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We had ten or twelve American officers,
we had about one hundred Foreign Service nationals, we published a magazine, we
had information centers in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ljubljana">Ljubljana</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zagreb">Zagreb</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novi_Sad">Novi Sad </a>and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarajevo">Sarajevo</a>, to the
best of my recollection, and of course in Belgrade.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And a very eager audience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Literally thousands of people came every day and picked
up the news bulletins.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I never
quite understood why the Yugoslavs allowed us to do that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But they did until the press law was
published.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We then started
negotiations about how to make our program livable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And in the course of it, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>we used certain gimmicks, like putting an American resident
in Belgrade in charge of our library.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And as the weeks and the months went by, the Yugoslavs became less
interested in enforcing it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So
within a year or so, we were back to where we were before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></div>
Mark Taplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18013095388375294492noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5442800540723899936.post-47426254933641291172015-02-08T23:57:00.000-05:002015-02-08T23:57:56.693-05:00Duvergier de Hauranne: A Frenchman in Lincoln's Washington -- "Republics Fill Positions of General Esteem and Power with Carpenters Like Abraham Lincoln"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMbok-zh9CPosDWj44sv70OYY76AtCWTAHE-iLgktnqxmqE3xaKBVRPu6v6CxCwVUbMwQUeW9ZrEkvu538QLX1xdnJtvk7g01yHvPtehBZ_yl4CG6vqi2RoYhSCxRX9MRgeSCHJRCjqT18/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-02-08+at+11.38.23+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMbok-zh9CPosDWj44sv70OYY76AtCWTAHE-iLgktnqxmqE3xaKBVRPu6v6CxCwVUbMwQUeW9ZrEkvu538QLX1xdnJtvk7g01yHvPtehBZ_yl4CG6vqi2RoYhSCxRX9MRgeSCHJRCjqT18/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-02-08+at+11.38.23+PM.png" height="232" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In diplomatic parlance, it could be called a “courtesy call.” These are meetings, usually offered out
of a sense of obligation, by prominent officials: ministers, ambassadors and so forth. They are intended to be short; they
almost never have a prearranged agenda. Usually,
the <u>demandeur</u> of the courtesy call wants to shake the
prominent person’s hand – at a minimum -- and ideally establish some sort of
connection. Duvergier de Hauranne had
requested such a meeting, and it did take place eventually, with the young
Frenchman introduced to Lincoln by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sumner">Charles Sumner</a>, at what amounted to the
President’s open office hours. In
fact, throughout his presidency, Lincoln made a practice of receiving visitors and petitioners on this wildly democratic basis, in what he labeled “public opinion baths.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMGQ9L0zai8wIxnSUhjacx1eckQrwn2PpYca73DDW1Rvxd2uNwqxFpxIWVH-ClL4VERBmFoHgB_VuiLndEVxLTCPGImKw37SEi1fAzHgsH6BZ2ajGJ-dJ0pqJrwDhApcKHec_hnXx_WO8C/s1600/Blog-Abraham-Lincoln-picture.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMGQ9L0zai8wIxnSUhjacx1eckQrwn2PpYca73DDW1Rvxd2uNwqxFpxIWVH-ClL4VERBmFoHgB_VuiLndEVxLTCPGImKw37SEi1fAzHgsH6BZ2ajGJ-dJ0pqJrwDhApcKHec_hnXx_WO8C/s1600/Blog-Abraham-Lincoln-picture.jpg" height="320" width="269" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In early 1865, Abraham Lincoln held in his hands the future of the country and the
American people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The outcome of a devastating
and traumatic Civil War was no longer in doubt, but a vast challenge of reconstruction
and reconciliation lay ahead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Few
of Duvergier de Hauranne’s conversations in Washington that winter would have
gone at any length without reference to the President and his plans for the
postbellum future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Lincoln
was still in the minds of most of his countrymen a rough and tumble politician, successful
for sure but not universally admired, not yet a haloed martyr for a sacred
cause.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Duvergier de Hauranne was inclined even before he met Lincoln to defend the incumbent President.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">How
can I believe,</i>” he asks, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in the
reputation for incompetence that is imputed to him in Europe?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This man who has raised himself by his
own unaided efforts from a “log cabin” deep in the Indiana woods to the
presidency of the United States cannot possibly be a run-of-the-mill
person.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He needed a great deal
more than just intelligence – a gift less rare than we commonly realize – which
counts for nothing without character.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He also needed the moral force, those virtues of perseverance and
resolution which are, indeed, the American virtues par excellence</i>.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As he awaits his turn to meet the President, Duvergier de
Hauranne marvels, again, at the ease of access to the White House:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">For a foreigner, the
White House possesses a certain prestige…Yet its doors stand open to every
American:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>like a church, it is
everybody’s house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At all
hours of the day, you will find curious or idle people milling about in the
great reception room where the President holds his popular audiences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is said that some visitors – country
bumpkins no doubt – cut pieces from the silk curtains to take home as souvenirs
of their pilgrimage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You may think
that a policeman or at least a guard has been posted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not at all!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There is only a notice asking visitors to respect the furnishings, which
belong to the government.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ushered into the President’s suite, Duvergier de Hauranne watches
Lincoln interact with a pretty young woman in velvet who flirtatiously seeks a
favor from him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is unmoved, the
Frenchman reports, urging her to come to the point and dismissing her after
jotting down some notes behind<a href="http://www.mrlincolnswhitehouse.org/inside.asp?ID=217&subjectID=3"> “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a huge
desk piled so high with papers that it seemed to enclose him like the walls of
a confessional</i>.”<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwMGy5PF4OJJYaJxTqsbucIIEBVGg-bZzCLx3t7lqna9S9spV9aiOkd-jmCKkobDnjYHprAei3NMFloupp57ZbPBP-oikRto9KSHaVgpZnm7ZLuZOxpJZhunnmQ5iJuRIJ8-pTFhiY5tk1/s1600/lincoln+in+his+office+1864.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwMGy5PF4OJJYaJxTqsbucIIEBVGg-bZzCLx3t7lqna9S9spV9aiOkd-jmCKkobDnjYHprAei3NMFloupp57ZbPBP-oikRto9KSHaVgpZnm7ZLuZOxpJZhunnmQ5iJuRIJ8-pTFhiY5tk1/s1600/lincoln+in+his+office+1864.jpg" height="320" width="228" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lincoln in his office, 1864</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
While other supplicants sit in a row awaiting their turn, Duvergier de Hauranne is invited over to meet Lincoln:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The President rose to
receive us; it was then that his great height was revealed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I looked up and saw a bony face, framed
by a shock of carelessly combed hair, a flat nose and a wide mouth with tightly
closed lips.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His face was angular
and furrowed by deep wrinkles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His
eyes were strangely penetrating and held a sardonic expression; he seemed sad
and preoccupied, bent under the burden of his immense task.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His posture was awkward and like
nothing I’ve ever seen before – partly rigid and partly loose-jointed; he
doesn’t seem to know how to carry his great height.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We all opened our mouths after the customary handshake, I to
pay him a compliment, Mr. Sumner to explain who I was, and he himself to
respond to my remark and to pretend that he already knew my name.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His voice is far from musical; his
language is not flowery; he speaks more or less like an ordinary person from
the West and slang comes easily to his tongue.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It may be that Duvergier de Hauranne is underwhelmed by the Lincoln he meets in
the flesh, as opposed to the conceptual Lincoln he reveres as the embodiment of republican virtue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Or, perhaps, Duvergier de Hauranne is simply being objective when he
argues that the desiderata of leadership in a republic is inherently different from that of a monarchy like his native France:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikR9vqaEbDtg1fB2jG_JYeRyv38OzNsphIbEW5WgRH9Qbqo6j6Mie9mgPmkSJFvGjg3-3_Tc1xpxhYhz4iL1eqnMz6zLW1s0h44VIozG19_OUXxCvWs5Dco3ckvuRhaYDln7rQyhQ44sjj/s1600/lincoln.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikR9vqaEbDtg1fB2jG_JYeRyv38OzNsphIbEW5WgRH9Qbqo6j6Mie9mgPmkSJFvGjg3-3_Tc1xpxhYhz4iL1eqnMz6zLW1s0h44VIozG19_OUXxCvWs5Dco3ckvuRhaYDln7rQyhQ44sjj/s1600/lincoln.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">…He is simple, serious
and full of good sense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He made
some comments on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Everett">Mr. Everett</a> and on the unrealistic hopes the Democratic party
entertained four years ago that it could impose its policies on the victorious
Republicans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These remarks may
have been lacking in sparkle, but the thought behind them was subtle and witty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was not a single burst of
clownish laughter, not a single remark in doubtful taste, not one of the
“jokes” for which he is famous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
shook hands again and left him to his chores.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I took away from this ten-minute interview an impression of
a man who is doubtless not very brilliant, not very polished, but worthy,
honest, capable and hardworking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
think the Europeans who have spoken and written about him have been predisposed
to consider it amusing to exaggerate his odd ways – either that or else they
went to the White House expecting to see some splendid, decorative figure,
wearing a white tie and behaving in a manner both courteous and condescending
like some sort of republican monarch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What a stupid and egregious error to expect that Abraham Lincoln, the
former Mississippi boatman, could have the manners of a king or a prince.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">…In a republic, people
are more practical and down to earth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The President is chosen to perform his political functions, not to dance
royal quadrilles nor to gallop up and down in a plumed hat at military reviews.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is not necessary that he be a man of
letters or a scholar; he need not have written philosophical treatises, nor
published a ten-volume set of collected works.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He doesn’t even have to be what Americans call “a fine
gentleman.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Uncalloused, perfumed
hands are useless in the rough game of American politics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Provided he does his job well and
honestly, no one troubles to ask whether he writes in a “classical” style or
whether he is dressed in the height of fashion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Despotism holds up little idols for the crowd’s adoration;
but republics fill positions of general esteem and power with carpenters like
Abraham Lincoln. <o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<br /></div>
Mark Taplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18013095388375294492noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5442800540723899936.post-15273348835461490262015-02-06T22:51:00.000-05:002015-02-06T22:51:18.683-05:00Duvergier de Hauranne: A Frenchman in Lincoln's Washington -- "Let Them Talk, and Come With Me to One of Mrs. Lincoln's Receptions"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieR-8JX2nHoGGIE6Eum1w46AuwYRXzN6iUI4RPMRljhY_5sRxVSbHFh6A9lEja2QhsJ5zn2q6DgOau-XCq8AaxMHn7urIBsWSgOCqk_wIE40yHYCRGCdAfUQF6hRQ5GKO5pr4MVQm9XMNj/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-02-06+at+10.26.25+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieR-8JX2nHoGGIE6Eum1w46AuwYRXzN6iUI4RPMRljhY_5sRxVSbHFh6A9lEja2QhsJ5zn2q6DgOau-XCq8AaxMHn7urIBsWSgOCqk_wIE40yHYCRGCdAfUQF6hRQ5GKO5pr4MVQm9XMNj/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-02-06+at+10.26.25+PM.png" height="320" width="266" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
While Duvergier de Hauranne has only managed to catch sight
of President Lincoln at a distance during his first weeks in Washington – a mere glimpse of “a long-legged giant who
was leaving the White House lobby wrapped up to his nose in an enormous scarf”
– the visitor does manage to enter the Presidential mansion on a different basis. His account of attending one of Mrs.
Lincoln’s receptions leads him to comment on the no-frills lifestyle she
and the President maintain, in marked contrast to the luxurious trappings of kings and
potentates in other countries. Duvergier de
Hauranne came to the U.S. heavily influenced by de Tocqueville’s accounts of American
egalitarianism, and his sympathy for the Lincolns is evident. Many other European
visitors during Lincoln's time in office took the opposite tack; they often lampooned the President and his wife as country rubes, a nineteenth century version of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beverly_Hillbillies">Beverly Hillbillies.</a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5nTaZ6z8KLVSTPlOlPLyppCJ3ovt8Vx2ZDtOAHa2sQQqVAJU1KTsYIFuhxxIJXEC39A6G3D0suWkcJfEBbm5cXzHWKj36EEA1EH_gNcSZr0w6bgqCU1ze3sCBMy9GQ-ndoe3uYPnrnya1/s1600/Mary+Todd+Lincoln.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5nTaZ6z8KLVSTPlOlPLyppCJ3ovt8Vx2ZDtOAHa2sQQqVAJU1KTsYIFuhxxIJXEC39A6G3D0suWkcJfEBbm5cXzHWKj36EEA1EH_gNcSZr0w6bgqCU1ze3sCBMy9GQ-ndoe3uYPnrnya1/s1600/Mary+Todd+Lincoln.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mary Todd Lincoln</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After relating that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Todd_Lincoln">Mary Todd Lincoln</a> had been savaged in
American newspapers for charging the government for unofficial dinners and for
not paying her bills on a timely basis, Duvergier de Hauranne comments that “in
spite of all the thievery they are accused of, these American leaders are not
very rich.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He reports, admiringly, that Lincoln refused to take payment of his annual salary of $25,000 <a href="http://online.barrons.com/articles/SB50001424052748703596604578235552788285428">in gold rather than in paper money</a> -- at that time an uncertain monetary instrument at best.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When the Frenchman asked <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Todd_Lincoln">Robert Todd Lincoln</a> if he had any plans to visit Europe, the President’s son replied that the trip would cost too
much.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I know of no other country
where the Chief of State is too poor to afford a trip abroad for his son,”
Duvergier de Hauranne writes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> He continues:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Let them talk, and
come with me to one of Mrs. Lincoln’s receptions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You arrive on foot, you enter <a href="http://www.mrlincolnswhitehouse.org/inside.asp?ID=70&subjectID=3">the huge, bare vestibule of the White House</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are no
honor guards with golden breastplates, no swarms of glittering lackeys, not
even a sentry at the door.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A lone
servant in a black coat asks for your card and opens the drawing-room door for
you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is a simple, plain room,
hung with red damask.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The mistress
of the house rises and comes forward; her welcome is so open and friendly that
you think she is going to offer you her hand like an old acquaintance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUryeXoC1hkwOoRDWLlDH_5XNneyV6jR2rRPPSuMzAztRq9lqZieKrdyNV7R9-avgMnwck9fw7pN1-UR29ecQrnYxgCyVYpxSrX1N6thMwiWKE0tzWd4ZcQg-TMn2ZXU5_p8D_HdGHKAYT/s1600/White+House+vestibule.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUryeXoC1hkwOoRDWLlDH_5XNneyV6jR2rRPPSuMzAztRq9lqZieKrdyNV7R9-avgMnwck9fw7pN1-UR29ecQrnYxgCyVYpxSrX1N6thMwiWKE0tzWd4ZcQg-TMn2ZXU5_p8D_HdGHKAYT/s1600/White+House+vestibule.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">White House vestibule, 1860s</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The heavy stiffness of
your formal bow recalls her to the cold conventions of official etiquette.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This former country-woman looks no
worse in her velvet gown than any other aging lady who is a little bit plump
and middle-class.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her manner is
dignified, kindly, reserved and almost shy; I must admit that her conversation
is not phenomenally brilliant, and it seems that she feels an easily
understandable diffidence when speaking with strangers from Europe, thought by
her to be very severe judges --- especially after all the indecent mockery that
has been showered upon her. The joke is on those who scoff at her, for there is
nothing to laugh at in this respectable household, and I have a poor opinion of
those who jeer at this modest simplicity as though the Lincolns were crude
backwoodsmen.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
Mark Taplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18013095388375294492noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5442800540723899936.post-57020532217560662852015-02-02T23:36:00.000-05:002015-02-02T23:36:13.978-05:00Duvergier de Hauranne: A Frenchman in Lincoln's Washington -- "The Political Milieu Will Always Be a Grab-bag of People From All Classes and Backgrounds"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGPOF6NQ4Jyw8jLuKtYz-bhANfKzUb3RRIbi2fhV72zLR8mFqX5Nlssfh6bfRHsJgqV62l6DTOLcM_bYCN5Qdh3ZjanS-4i-OX-JXNoFVcrk5aAd_hmcnHUIFtbXWqDPiWrUtOjt8_Fjes/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-01-23+at+11.24.51+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGPOF6NQ4Jyw8jLuKtYz-bhANfKzUb3RRIbi2fhV72zLR8mFqX5Nlssfh6bfRHsJgqV62l6DTOLcM_bYCN5Qdh3ZjanS-4i-OX-JXNoFVcrk5aAd_hmcnHUIFtbXWqDPiWrUtOjt8_Fjes/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-01-23+at+11.24.51+PM.png" height="250" width="400" /></a></div>
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What makes Duvergier de Hauranne’s travel narrative <u>Huit
Mois en Amerique</u> a classic? His epistles home to Paris have many qualities: the author’s malleable prose, his sense
of the historical moment, his gift for quick and true portraits of the people he meets -- from high society and low -- and his pointed descriptions of American mores and
foibles. On occasion, his
observations – some one hundred and fifty years later – can even pierce
the wall of time and circumstance and feel as fresh and relevant today as when they were first written. </div>
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<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigrhyphenhyphenTySbLqwpXwtbBTx3w3J72G192cXzc2uuu0MpzkwZaW8FBcXZpY_xY-ZH0EKAGGl_NJmua-A_5H36EbHl1ptSvbAENYvZT80dpZenq-aZkI307Xt6TFmPtHlFjF-AIS9Xyg7xnzehL/s1600/Capitol_under_const_1860.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigrhyphenhyphenTySbLqwpXwtbBTx3w3J72G192cXzc2uuu0MpzkwZaW8FBcXZpY_xY-ZH0EKAGGl_NJmua-A_5H36EbHl1ptSvbAENYvZT80dpZenq-aZkI307Xt6TFmPtHlFjF-AIS9Xyg7xnzehL/s1600/Capitol_under_const_1860.jpg" height="165" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">U.S. Capitol Under Construction, 1860</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Viewed from his perch at Willards Hotel,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>rubbing shoulders with senators,
generals and other notables, Duvergier de Hauranne describes under the heading "The Men in Power" the distinctly
American political class emerging at the end of the Civil War:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Unlike France, America
will never have a true capital, a sort of sovereign queen imposing down to the
smallest detail the rule of her whims on the inert body she drags behind
her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is more appropriate to
compare London with the future capital of the United States because in London
there is only one society, gathered together for one purpose – politics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Apart from this select circle, London
is really nothing but a particularly large provincial city, a gigantic
Manchester piled on top of a colossal Liverpool…<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">In England, inherited
social position, the continuity of political alignments and the centuries-old
institution of an aristocratic ruling class combine to give cohesion and unity
to the temporary gathering that is called London Society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In America, on the contrary, even
allowing for the passage of several hundred years and even supposing that by
that time customs and manners will have become uniform, I cannot imagine
anything but a nomadic high society, full of shocking contrasts, with great
diversity of dress and behavior, the faithful image of the democratic society
in whose womb it was formed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
political milieu will always be a grab-bag of people from all classes and
backgrounds, united today only to be dispersed tomorrow, too fluid for habits
to be fixed or for traditions to be passed on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It will always be a patchwork affair, its members drawn from
the four corners of the nation by the accidents of popular election.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRPXL0jcInP6kO8yqPlxrBvaf2Y2fne8lYA8Jc4oYzp7J3NQkCZfx687U-38aoXZ4C3Y1WMFlxJlqkgUHpcvhOoxGFIOPhjvmqXNmWfnqUwpDuu7CJvPTLCSrmCpK_8VQ2XXLrod9vE-sW/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-02-02+at+10.59.28+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRPXL0jcInP6kO8yqPlxrBvaf2Y2fne8lYA8Jc4oYzp7J3NQkCZfx687U-38aoXZ4C3Y1WMFlxJlqkgUHpcvhOoxGFIOPhjvmqXNmWfnqUwpDuu7CJvPTLCSrmCpK_8VQ2XXLrod9vE-sW/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-02-02+at+10.59.28+PM.png" height="219" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">Dividing the National Map, 1860</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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The differences between “Easterners” and “Westerners” in
Washington’s political circles are more than evident to Duvergier de Hauranne,
who is willing to see the good qualities in both camps, without turning a blind eye to the less salutary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> While we may worry today whether the American "Everyman" can truly aspire to political office in an era of fat cat contributors and K Street lobbyists, t</span>here are echoes in the Frenchman's account even now of what makes “Blue” and “Red” state politicans distinguishable from one another:</div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">There are, moreover,
two distinct types among the residents of Washington:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the Easterners who are much like us Europeans – the most
distinguished among them unconsciously copy British ways – and the Westerners
who, almost to a man, are six-foot giants, coarse-featured, robust in build,
and have mops of hair as thick as horses’ manes…Almost all these vigorous
Westerners have something very attractive and likeable about them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You musn’t expect them to exhibit
refinement of language nor politeness carried to the point of foolish
exaggeration; but for frankness, openness and good fellowship mixed with
shrewdness they have no equals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<i><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAwicn5I0ojQPRxLrUmUyi6IgrD-DY1Wot7txpkQWDAYdAF6bslTSPRocXwZqoWPeIMmISsjME9iRU_QtF5U9cYfk0A9j3WpuNcZNNmzZAN8OhjbXxreD4kuns2NwCQjGv0AAMakSLbuvY/s1600/Hon._James_M._Ashley,_Ohio_-_NARA_-_527915.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAwicn5I0ojQPRxLrUmUyi6IgrD-DY1Wot7txpkQWDAYdAF6bslTSPRocXwZqoWPeIMmISsjME9iRU_QtF5U9cYfk0A9j3WpuNcZNNmzZAN8OhjbXxreD4kuns2NwCQjGv0AAMakSLbuvY/s1600/Hon._James_M._Ashley,_Ohio_-_NARA_-_527915.jpg" height="211" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rep. James M. Ashley (R-Ohio)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</i><br />
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I
am not talking about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salmon_P._Chase">Mr. Chase</a>, who is not so much typical of the West as he is
of New England, where he was born.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As an excellent example of the Westerner at his best I propose a certain
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Mitchell_Ashley">Mr. Ashley, of Ohio</a>, one of the most influential members of the House, a
tireless foe of slavery, a man of generous, jovial aspect who cuts a lively,
even a heroic figure; he is cordial, obliging, informal without being rude,
courtly in his relations with women, and pleasing in his speech.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He also shows more genuine zest for
living than any man I’ve ever met.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Powerful, elemental natures such as his continually fill me with amazement
and make me feel like the small, stunted fruit of a kitchen-garden
civilization.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I stand near
the entrance to the Senate at the end of a session and watch all these lusty,
raw-boned fellows come striding out, I feel the same twinge of awe as if a
troop of Horse Guards were parading in front of me… <o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></i></div>
Mark Taplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18013095388375294492noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5442800540723899936.post-23585564036847325542015-02-02T11:54:00.000-05:002015-02-02T11:54:33.371-05:00Walter Roberts: Cold War Cultural Policy and USIA -- "USIA Followed the Policy Directives of the Department of State"<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTRLQ88brCO9tw7iXT7cTYOANB4na4sMXaxsy-5L158N9Yl5LGzB7rWVtdsmYRAXHqqfsxUZXTtx34Rs5flBdR7CdoXfQLtkKXE6r_Q8nrbJWi-sg1EMwg_Q5darU9wQoRM7Y5SmUCDkB6/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-02-01+at+11.33.36+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTRLQ88brCO9tw7iXT7cTYOANB4na4sMXaxsy-5L158N9Yl5LGzB7rWVtdsmYRAXHqqfsxUZXTtx34Rs5flBdR7CdoXfQLtkKXE6r_Q8nrbJWi-sg1EMwg_Q5darU9wQoRM7Y5SmUCDkB6/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-02-01+at+11.33.36+PM.png" height="267" width="320" /></a></div>
Walter emphasized that, at least until the late sixties, USIA closely followed the State Department's foreign policy lead. When Khrushchev came to power and shifted Soviet policy towards a less confrontational approach in the mid-fifties, USIA followed State's lead in pursuing openings in the U.S.-Soviet relationship, including the negotiation of the groundbreaking 1958 cultural agreement.<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>The role of USIA in the Cold War was very much, policy-wise,
directed or at least influenced, by the Department of State.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An officer of the policy office of USIA
would attend daily the meetings of the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs
in the State Department, where the questions as to how to answer at that time
mostly American<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>correspondents,
not yet very much foreign correspondents, mind you in the fifties, was
discussed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the policy officer
came back and more or less then sent out a policy note to the field, and
particularly to the Voice of America.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So if there was a change in 1956 in State Department thinking about the
Cold War, then there was one in USIA.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not until a few years
later, quite a few years in the Nixon administration with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Shakespeare">Frank Shakespeare</a> as
director, was there ever a policy disagreement between the State Department and
USIA.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now the Voice of
America may have raised a point “Surely we don’t want to say this, we want to
say it this way” or something like that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’m not saying that all possible differences between the Department of
State and USIA, that there were none – of course, there were.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But, on the whole, the United States
Information Agency followed the policy directives of the Department of
State.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMOCETZqEvi-QEgGfXi_I8GzXk9A80hUPYkkyA4jVPsE-ENOAkesU9uiqIPrrIjdMxQVcD9IcFbz-A22IQhD00JrG4Rfu0Knrw3RmZqrQoQLtarADbHaln8i9RwtqRiNRNqBVE4XNaDkg_/s1600/khrushchev-eisenhower+at+geneva+summit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMOCETZqEvi-QEgGfXi_I8GzXk9A80hUPYkkyA4jVPsE-ENOAkesU9uiqIPrrIjdMxQVcD9IcFbz-A22IQhD00JrG4Rfu0Knrw3RmZqrQoQLtarADbHaln8i9RwtqRiNRNqBVE4XNaDkg_/s1600/khrushchev-eisenhower+at+geneva+summit.jpg" height="128" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">Eisenhower, Khrushchev at Geneva Summit, 1955<br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
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<i>I might add, that the attitude in the Department was
changing in the fifties, including John Foster Dulles’ attitude, because I
think the Department regarded Khrushchev’s efforts to distance himself from the
Stalin policy, with approbation and I think our Cold War line was not as strong
after Khrushchev made his speeches, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgrade_declaration">went to Belgrade for a trip</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even, I think, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Summit_(1955)">the meetings in Geneva </a>sort
of made it clear that there was a way to negotiate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i>For me, [</i>the U.S.-Soviet cultural agreement negotiation<i>] was personally a very interesting experience
because I had known the Soviet ambassador to the United States, <a href="http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/achesonmemos/view.php?documentVersion=original&documentid=71-1_31&documentYear=1952">Mr. Zarubin</a>,
from previous negotiations involving the Austria Treaty as a man without any
sense of humor, as a stubborn, non-simpatico person whom I would never have
asked whether he wanted to have a cup of coffee with me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKAR07B3V1F66DhpMfiCETl4ilxVU_pnn6Ii_3B-6cnlZtfSqowgDC7vqJRyXKix_CFqO7R_Qh88iHk4XMA3kPIWlio-h0yKvXuKh24C2554bP-EYuVepHAzEC3E28jQsvxCK-R4uqnzND/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-02-02+at+11.34.08+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKAR07B3V1F66DhpMfiCETl4ilxVU_pnn6Ii_3B-6cnlZtfSqowgDC7vqJRyXKix_CFqO7R_Qh88iHk4XMA3kPIWlio-h0yKvXuKh24C2554bP-EYuVepHAzEC3E28jQsvxCK-R4uqnzND/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-02-02+at+11.34.08+AM.png" height="252" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">New Soviet Ambassador Zarubin Arrives at White House, 1952</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span>But then, when I was invited as the
USIA representative to sit in on t<a href="https://librariesandcoldwarculturalexchange.wordpress.com/text-of-lacy-zaroubin-agreement-january-27-1958/">he Soviet-American negotiations regarding the future of cultural relations</a>, I was absolutely stunned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here was a man who was nice, witty,
cooperative and those negotiations actually were concluded in a very few
weeks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I remembered that I
had sat through Austrian negotiations for seven years, with Zarubin’s famous
“nyet”, as famous as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Gromyko">Gromyko</a>’s “nyet” in the Security Council, I was absolutely
floored.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8JkhDZ0PAfZ4Vxu7Xwuzv5XUAu_-x5QcN9d-50C8H95W5P2FLua01LQ7H3TK8m9ngiSIvpto6GHBJdjFKP2Z_VhrgYdVKvaBXl6Awvk590lG-keTaGcDwL2sWj8GY5hEug_1Z5je2yQxM/s1600/amerika1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8JkhDZ0PAfZ4Vxu7Xwuzv5XUAu_-x5QcN9d-50C8H95W5P2FLua01LQ7H3TK8m9ngiSIvpto6GHBJdjFKP2Z_VhrgYdVKvaBXl6Awvk590lG-keTaGcDwL2sWj8GY5hEug_1Z5je2yQxM/s1600/amerika1.jpg" height="200" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">First Issue, Amerika Magazine, 1956</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i>The Russians were quite
ready to negotiate a cultural agreement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It showed its results.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
had not only <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_National_Exhibition">the Sokolniki Park exhibition in Moscow in 1959</a>, but we started
having an easier time distributing<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerika_(magazine)"> <u>Amerika</u> </a>magazine, although it was
limited, I think, to 75,000 copies and the kiosks in Moscow held them back, or
sold them at higher prices, whatever.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i><i style="text-align: center;">I don’t think 75,000 copies of <u>Amerika</u> were ever distributed,
even in the best of times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
nevertheless we had, at least on the cultural level, a much better atmosphere
after the cultural agreement.</i></div>
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<i><br /></i>
<i>I was not there on the day Nixon and Khrushchev had the
famous “kitchen debate.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I was
very impressed, </i>[the 1959 American National Exhibition at Sokolniki Park]<i> was a very good exhibit, and I was most impressed of course
with the enormous amount of people who wanted to see it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mean you had, just from a visual
point of view, you had a feeling that there are hundreds of thousands of
people, who obviously did not harbor any strong anti-American views who wanted
to see the exhibit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a very
good exhibit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3Y8aEhCSTXhxOmAJ5lrF5Od8CjH8kjl61o63JhN2C4DQdeH_YbslQ2FkT7ENn55rWBnd_dMSX_8GoUVtMxfvkQeJr3F6ynf-Ollyx4VCVxROk82OGjFktJ7eXsVYvJpoWBxshTMabIXvz/s1600/Marylee-Duehring.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3Y8aEhCSTXhxOmAJ5lrF5Od8CjH8kjl61o63JhN2C4DQdeH_YbslQ2FkT7ENn55rWBnd_dMSX_8GoUVtMxfvkQeJr3F6ynf-Ollyx4VCVxROk82OGjFktJ7eXsVYvJpoWBxshTMabIXvz/s1600/Marylee-Duehring.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">General Mills Demonstration Kitchen at Sokolniki, 1959</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><div style="text-align: right;">
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</span></i></div>
Mark Taplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18013095388375294492noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5442800540723899936.post-40889627065212545292015-02-01T23:48:00.000-05:002015-02-02T10:25:34.252-05:00Walter Roberts: Relations With State, CIA -- "Most of the People in the Department...Were Happy to Get Rid of the Information Program"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvfOex4fOWarnUyz34kQ2tbctMkJCMF7jfc4lRyLeplngiyQ78a3_CCkim4Zf9H9Bs_GeU3b90QczaUtImbcESsdaPI989WLLBdonmo9tzMJdw6Rj-rbRyT4fJ8iIl-E85Q28fn5zTipXA/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-02-01+at+11.32.46+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvfOex4fOWarnUyz34kQ2tbctMkJCMF7jfc4lRyLeplngiyQ78a3_CCkim4Zf9H9Bs_GeU3b90QczaUtImbcESsdaPI989WLLBdonmo9tzMJdw6Rj-rbRyT4fJ8iIl-E85Q28fn5zTipXA/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-02-01+at+11.32.46+PM.png" height="320" width="257" /></a></div>
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Walter labeled USIA's relationship with the State Department during the fifties and sixties as "excellent" -- but made it clear that it was so partly because many State Department officers were relieved not to have to bother with USIA's media outreach and information programs. The connections between USIA and the CIA were distant -- purposely so -- with the U.S. government international broadcasters -- VOA on the one hand, RFE/RL on the other -- eyeing each other warily.</div>
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<i>Most of the people in the Department – and I stress the word
“most” – were happy to get rid of the information program.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They certainly thought that the
Voice of America did not belong in the State Department.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But even the old- line Foreign Service
officers didn’t want to have very much to do with information work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I remember, for instance, sitting in
meetings in the Department of State as the USIA representative, where on many
occasions the chairman would say:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“Well, let’s not worry about this, let’s USIA handle it.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many, many old time Foreign
Service officers in the State Department welcomed this, that this idea of
trying to tell a correspondent how to write about a foreign policy action --
that was anathema to most of the Foreign Service officers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They did not like that, and they were
happy that there was another agency of the United States government that took
on that responsibility.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, in all
the seven years, from ’53 to ‘60, when I went overseas, when I was in sometimes
elevated positions in USIA, I can say nothing but the finest about my
relations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For instance, as deputy
area director of USIA, I had a weekly meeting with the Deputy Assistant
Secretary for European Affairs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Now, I will say very frankly, depending upon the personality of the Deputy
Assistant Secretary, how much he told me and how much he didn’t tell me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When people, for instance like Foy Kohler, was Deputy Assistant
Secretary, it was a wonderful relationship.</i></div>
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<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigbtCJyh164TwzuVNFlqISpWafRl6JJpCT1IxpoVE2Acn2TVCRqa012Adxk0lzJPeHCWolXmn5LMCmzdmGmMtwcPBSBmFUafxjq-uMqyYp1vyli0KHtL1XHFhWiv1pJ0ZUWqSObI36RzyC/s1600/allen_w_dulles.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigbtCJyh164TwzuVNFlqISpWafRl6JJpCT1IxpoVE2Acn2TVCRqa012Adxk0lzJPeHCWolXmn5LMCmzdmGmMtwcPBSBmFUafxjq-uMqyYp1vyli0KHtL1XHFhWiv1pJ0ZUWqSObI36RzyC/s1600/allen_w_dulles.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Allen W. Dulles</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<i>Well, let me speak for a minute in general about USIA-CIA
relationships.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>…I was designated
in 1950 to organize a USIS program in Austria, taking over the information and
cultural activities, carried out quite well, I might add, by the United States
Army.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I found at that time that
certain operatives of the CIA were assigned to the State Department.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ted Streibert found out that there were people in the USIS payroll who were basically employees of the Central
Intelligence Agency, and he called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Dulles">Allen Dulles</a> on the phone and designated me
to work out an arrangement whereby USIA would not, in the future, house CIA
operatives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such an agreement was
reached sometime in 1954 or 55.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></div>
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<i>As far as <a href="http://www.rferl.org/info/history/133.html">Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty</a> was concerned,
I always had the feeling that the Voice of America was not happy with them,
that they felt that they were encroaching on their territory and that they were
saying things that might even be at cross purposes from what VOA said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>…Relations between the Voice of
America and RFE/RL, I would designate them as cool, and maybe even cold.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As far as the USIA in general is
concerned, we felt that despite the treaty that I negotiated, the CIA people
were not always very open with us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOlMm3r6ZIziaLCqBq7vhy5fDokm8pJK0uNCvVUiUkjld6M8hwAP1yZjZj6XR9Qd6iGJlrLR4bzVSa26h9fORbFmxsCLJun0jlJjtN6bSnW6ekvOU_COhs-45wYEAonK8GDuuaL9vJS1sQ/s1600/encounter+magazine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOlMm3r6ZIziaLCqBq7vhy5fDokm8pJK0uNCvVUiUkjld6M8hwAP1yZjZj6XR9Qd6iGJlrLR4bzVSa26h9fORbFmxsCLJun0jlJjtN6bSnW6ekvOU_COhs-45wYEAonK8GDuuaL9vJS1sQ/s1600/encounter+magazine.jpg" height="200" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Encounter</u> Magazine</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>The relationships in the field usually worked better.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll give you an example, for
instance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The CIA started several
magazines, <u><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encounter_(magazine)">Encounter</a></u> in Britain, <u><a href="http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Monat">Der Monat</a></u> in Germany, and there was
also one in Austria called <u><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FORVM">FORVM</a></u>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was the Public Affairs Officer who suggested to the
local CIA representative a particular person who might be very good at editing <u>FORVM</u>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that man was hired; it was at the
suggestion of the senior USIA officer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But otherwise, I do not know how often Ted Streibert saw Allen Dulles,
or even George Allen saw Allen Dulles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Relations were either non-existent or cool.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></div>
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<i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<object class="BLOG_video_class" contentid="UPLOADING" height="266" id="BLOG_video-UPLOADING-0" width="320"></object><iframe width="320" height="266" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/LNPp9zEGW4s/0.jpg" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/LNPp9zEGW4s?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
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<i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></i></div>
Mark Taplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18013095388375294492noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5442800540723899936.post-59572489679803365992015-01-25T22:41:00.000-05:002015-01-25T22:41:54.521-05:00Walter Roberts: The First USIA Directors -- "As I Look Back Upon All USIA Directors...George Allen Is At The Top"<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUbRrURfZAjpdnb4ads2rkMk6Urlsc4A-BRhbHOq0lk9Rle2ID0rA1Z3KyLlx2tiASZQgE12rTgvuUGnyrytUJ59_XeEjO-ufixDrnNVcaGzWM1MIiAckL55Pwj9VIMekukr5VK1rbMb6G/s1600/walter+1-25.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUbRrURfZAjpdnb4ads2rkMk6Urlsc4A-BRhbHOq0lk9Rle2ID0rA1Z3KyLlx2tiASZQgE12rTgvuUGnyrytUJ59_XeEjO-ufixDrnNVcaGzWM1MIiAckL55Pwj9VIMekukr5VK1rbMb6G/s1600/walter+1-25.png" height="277" width="320" /></a></div>
Walter worked closely with USIA's first directors -- several of whom he admired, one of whom he did not. <br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>First, <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1987-01-23/news/mn-606_1_u-s-information-agency">Ted Streibert</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I always think that Ted Streibert was a very good man to start the U.S.
Information Agency, for various reasons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>One of them I would like to stress here is that when USIA was created,
the overwhelming part of USIA was the Voice of America.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only eight years had passed since the
end of the war in which the Department of State was able to establish
information programs in the different countries of the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let’s take France, for instance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a very small program.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The budget for the Voice of America was
the overwhelming part of the budget of USIA.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was one other very large area of USIA, where programs
were really very developed, and that was in the occupied areas:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Germany, Austria and Japan.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHlNO0UzAV2OY4eutyz8ZOJga99z9lrCs6gu1LQks17jwIqMI1Q69YbiRfTaiQyWklSkMJNM5BkxRKq7yZwoofZ6uKV5SUIQRuA4RCpFgCepEmvlzep20IHTHUywoHdOGQbJRT4up4b7xa/s1600/ted+streibert.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHlNO0UzAV2OY4eutyz8ZOJga99z9lrCs6gu1LQks17jwIqMI1Q69YbiRfTaiQyWklSkMJNM5BkxRKq7yZwoofZ6uKV5SUIQRuA4RCpFgCepEmvlzep20IHTHUywoHdOGQbJRT4up4b7xa/s1600/ted+streibert.jpg" height="320" width="251" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Theodore C. Streibert, USIA Director 1953-57</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</i></div>
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<i>So when Eisenhower appointed Streibert, who was a station
manager of a radio station in New Jersey, if I remember correctly, and a good
administrator, I had the feeling that the President did the right thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I personally got along famously with
Streibert.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We became friends, and
stayed friends after he left.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>May
I tell an anecdote?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One day I sat
in my office, and Streibert called me, and he said: “Walter, can you arrange
for me to see the Pope next week?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I said:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“What?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And he had a slightly Brooklyn accent
and said:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“You hurd me.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I was absolutely flabbergasted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was something that I had never
been connected with.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So finally I
got up and went down to his office, went in there and I said:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Ted, why in the world would you want
to see the Pope?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said to me:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Walter, you don’t understand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s in the anti-communist business;
I’m in the anti-communist business.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Don’t you think he and I should talk?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was Ted Streibert. He was a very good witness before the appropriations
committees; we did quite well under Streibert.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he wanted to stay only one term.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i>So then, for reasons which I often thought about a great
deal and never quite understood, the President appointed the Under Secretary
for Labor, a lawyer, with the name of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Larson">Arthur Larson</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And he was a disaster.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And it was <a href="http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/video/2008/wallace/larson_arthur.html">all due to one stupid speech that he gave in Hawaii, in which he called the New Deal “an importation from socialist Europe.</a>”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that annoyed Lyndon Johnson very
much, who at that time was the chairman of the subcommittee that handled USIA
appropriations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was at that
hearing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was only blood on
the floor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We lost 25 % of our
budget.<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNX1lvDD-zeC8YMfYVzt3bEwlENHjtOXgY5TQAiCD-aZclUCRPRFHniGwV_GR80k9Qjl3AdvsnUj3YUAvRJssA8RAdyq4ckHGCgEA9kAkCufciey0mha4EcXOO1I8mNuJNn-udXNNmnDnR/s1600/arthur+larson+mike+wallace+interview.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNX1lvDD-zeC8YMfYVzt3bEwlENHjtOXgY5TQAiCD-aZclUCRPRFHniGwV_GR80k9Qjl3AdvsnUj3YUAvRJssA8RAdyq4ckHGCgEA9kAkCufciey0mha4EcXOO1I8mNuJNn-udXNNmnDnR/s1600/arthur+larson+mike+wallace+interview.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Arthur Larson in ABC Interview with Mike Wallace, 1958</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</i></div>
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<i>Now, I happened to have been in a carpool, with the
Assistant Secretary of State for public affairs, a former high official of
USIA, the third ranking official, who had gone to the meetings with the
Russians in Geneva as USIA policy representative, obviously made a very good
impression on John Foster Dulles and John Foster Dulles one day asked him to be
Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>His name was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_H._Berding">Andy Berding</a>, and I told him about this disastrous
appropriations committee hearing, and obviously Andy told John Foster Dulles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And John Foster Dulles for various
other reasons already had some doubts about Arthur Larson.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the story goes that he asked for his car for an immediate
appointment with the President, and went to the President and said:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Mr. President, we need another USIA
director.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And again,
according to what I’ve heard, Eisenhower did not object.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In view of the history that says that
John Foster Dulles was utterly disinterested in information and cultural
programs, he took a great interest in leadership of USIA and he selected in his
own mind one of the top Foreign Service officers, a man with the rank of career
ambassador, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_V._Allen">George Allen</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And he asked George whether he wanted to be USIA director, and George
said yes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj62Dl8IfRET5-oMuvVlQzYr98_uxdunmoRLw0QFvCNGBZw9N82ugTkS1BGNP_mz_fcm2CbuzISeVAUhG63e-PweaZq8TYor_6ovr58hpelknxYyH0XdzkFkonJSOeogd2snkz2wgQH3b_A/s1600/george+v.+allen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj62Dl8IfRET5-oMuvVlQzYr98_uxdunmoRLw0QFvCNGBZw9N82ugTkS1BGNP_mz_fcm2CbuzISeVAUhG63e-PweaZq8TYor_6ovr58hpelknxYyH0XdzkFkonJSOeogd2snkz2wgQH3b_A/s1600/george+v.+allen.jpg" height="320" width="135" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">George V. Allen, USIA Director, 1957-60</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i>George had a public affairs, public diplomacy
background.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 1948, he was
assistant secretary for public affairs, and therefore, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>at that time, had already supervision
over the programs from the OWI and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_the_Coordinator_of_Inter-American_Affairs">OCIAA</a>, meaning the Coordinator of Inter-American
Affairs, that came into the State Department.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So he knew about the programs from way back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So this was 1957 and 1948 <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>-- so this was nine years.</i></div>
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<i>George was brought back for a meeting with the President,
the meeting went well, and George Allen was appointed USIA director in
1957.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I look back upon all USIA
directors – and I knew them all – George Allen is at the very top.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of the finest minds, fully aware of what this was all
about and I can again tell an anecdote which indicates how his thinking
developed.</i></div>
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<i>As you know, the USIA, when it was created, contained only
more or less information programs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The cultural programs, and by this I mean really only the exchange
program, which Senator Fulbright sponsored and had so much faith in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When the USIA was created, Fulbright
put his foot down and he said “Well, that’s going to be a propaganda agency.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t want the exchange program to be
there.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And he insisted that
the exchange program stay in the Department of State, which it did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But sometime in 1958, after George had
been USIA director for a year or so, he wrote a memorandum to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loy_W._Henderson">Loy Henderson</a>,
who was then the Under Secretary for Management in the Department, suggesting
that <a href="http://eca.state.gov/about-bureau/history-and-mission-eca">CU -- Cultural Affairs from the State Department</a> -- be transferred to
USIA.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Henderson was very taken
aback and asked George to go to lunch with him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>George Allen took me along, so I’m a first witness to that
conversation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></div>
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<i>Loy Henderson started the meeting, to the best of my
recollection, by saying “You know, in 1953, when USIA was created, we sent a
memorandum to all top ambassadors and asked whether the split between
information and culture made any sense, and what our position should be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And you sent back a telegram saying
that’s a very good idea to separate the two.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And now you want to reunite it?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What happened?</i></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Livy Merchant</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i>And George Allen, who always had wonderful stories,
said:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Loy, let me tell you, when <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livingston_T._Merchant">Livingston Merchant</a> was assigned to Australia in the late forties, early fifties, he sent
a memorandum to the Department saying “Times have changed, Australia and New
Zealand should not be in the European Bureau any more, it should be in the Far
Eastern Bureau.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When Eisenhower
became President, he appointed Livy Merchant as Assistant Secretary for
European Affairs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of the first
memoranda that he had to sign is that the Office of European Affairs had to
give up Australia and New Zealand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He objected, and they pointed out to him “But Livy, this was your idea
in the first place.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And Livy
answered saying, “Now that I’m Assistant Secretary of European Affairs, I’m
being more objective.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Loy, now
that I’m USIA Director, I’m being more objective, and that’s why I want CU in
USIA.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4xTv5znOgQ&feature=youtu.be"> </a> </span>He was one of the finest
minds I ever encountered in the Foreign Service.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A very, very nice guy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And a superb USIA director.</i><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/U4xTv5znOgQ?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<i><br /></i></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><i> </i></span></div>
Mark Taplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18013095388375294492noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5442800540723899936.post-16222284337982147212015-01-25T20:49:00.001-05:002015-01-25T20:49:24.733-05:00Walter Roberts: Evaluating Success -- "Evidence of Effectiveness Has Haunted USIA Since Its Beginning"<div class="MsoNormal">
When I asked Walter what successes USIA had known in its early years, he pivoted to answer the question more broadly. The challenge of measuring success of public diplomacy programs remains to this day. How can one prove that any specific program or initiative "moved the needle," especially in a complex world?<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKClKc-tqLg2va3VhdIkl7F0ORjbJ6NBjNRVVqCp3epwtQaYeCut2Sr9LrEd8k_hicM50dafSwcqUdsOtlIUBy0LZI_JPQmaaIhx8X5HlQO60LRMqY53AxTD14cQo_x7uLRqv0y25Ih8UX/s1600/walter+1-24.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKClKc-tqLg2va3VhdIkl7F0ORjbJ6NBjNRVVqCp3epwtQaYeCut2Sr9LrEd8k_hicM50dafSwcqUdsOtlIUBy0LZI_JPQmaaIhx8X5HlQO60LRMqY53AxTD14cQo_x7uLRqv0y25Ih8UX/s1600/walter+1-24.png" height="258" width="320" /></a></div>
<i>You know, this item called evidence of effectiveness has haunted
USIA since its beginning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is
extremely difficult to correlate a USIA activity with a success.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All you can do with what we called
evidence of effectiveness is, again [to come] back to public opinion surveys, for
instance, in Austria and in Germany, of which I know a little.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>The atmosphere regarding the United
States, and the German and Austrian view of the United States, was very
high.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I always felt that our
information programs in Germany and Austria were extremely successful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibIVz2nZ5RFg2g258P2o-ecYUcFkAnE_pivsxMdCnC3bq0BaWSWu-_LGcpHfTSIYBB0YntOBak-VkcWemy7fUp2h4XXPUUbHS4S9zL_YxK5N-ip5ym1p38E45aoSYqTKqZ7cbLiblSVHN5/s1600/Leonard+Bernstein+in+Vienna.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibIVz2nZ5RFg2g258P2o-ecYUcFkAnE_pivsxMdCnC3bq0BaWSWu-_LGcpHfTSIYBB0YntOBak-VkcWemy7fUp2h4XXPUUbHS4S9zL_YxK5N-ip5ym1p38E45aoSYqTKqZ7cbLiblSVHN5/s1600/Leonard+Bernstein+in+Vienna.jpg" height="220" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px;">Leonard Bernstein conducting in Vienna, early 1970s</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i>You turned a population that was at war
with the United States into one that basically loved the United States.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Public opinion figures in Austria and
in Germany in the fifties and sixties were extremely high.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now, you can say of course that when
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Rubinstein">Arthur Rubinstein</a> came and played in Vienna, or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Bernstein">Leonard Bernstein</a> conducted the
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Philharmonic">Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra</a>, and there were rave reviews, you might use that
as evidence of effectiveness of our programs…</i></div>
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<i>We opened <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1964/02/23/art-notes-cutting-culture.html">an information center [in Paris] on the Left Bank</a>,
not far from the Sorbonne, and that was full every day, from opening to closing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Again, you might say, what kind of evidence is that?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I think it is better to know that
it was full, and all seats were taken, than to say, for instance, nobody
came.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii7mD4JtEd7GlGUw2ScBhWzOdTk43GGD792yICnZ79ZnP9_uFdDz-jXJhLCtBDOlybFU4aN_Oqa3lswvizQyZ0Zzy2mgky8JW2S0e5LeBpRQHVQH0QFf1-bdUkQS70j9nl2FK3MOxmW6Xa/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-01-25+at+6.59.38+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii7mD4JtEd7GlGUw2ScBhWzOdTk43GGD792yICnZ79ZnP9_uFdDz-jXJhLCtBDOlybFU4aN_Oqa3lswvizQyZ0Zzy2mgky8JW2S0e5LeBpRQHVQH0QFf1-bdUkQS70j9nl2FK3MOxmW6Xa/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-01-25+at+6.59.38+PM.png" height="256" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">American artist Beauford Delaney at Rue du Dragon USIS Cultural Center, 1969</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span>You can also talk about
evidence of effectiveness of people who were <a href="http://foreign.fulbrightonline.org/about/history">Fulbright scholars</a> in the United
States and later became prime ministers and presidents of countries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their view of the United States was
certainly more open-minded than if they had not been in the United States.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_Sadat">Sadat</a>, for instance, was an exchange
student in the United States. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></div>
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<i>We made it our business to have libraries in as many
countries as we could.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We called
them information centers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As far
as the film program is concerned, we were dealing of course with Hollywood. We
were not responsible for Hollywood launching a film in Paris.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was Hollywood’s business.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But, if we could in the course of
negotiations and so on, create a little enhancing role, we did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We also made a number of
documentaries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of the great
documentaries that was made was about Kennedy, and his death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy:_Years_of_Lightning,_Day_of_Drums">That Kennedy film</a> had an enormous
attraction overseas, I remember that.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJdPbOkpqtmjY3Jv-2jc86XIraD4x5ucI93rdj7MTXRNb2MRURwMw6JpbKhmq8T0v2YnBqMpjbXU62qgwqiYYQtTyau3wochP2VZkn8fovBPRlD9S_205F73of5SXfDMArAaibbKa65LNn/s1600/years+of+lightning,+days+of+thunder.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJdPbOkpqtmjY3Jv-2jc86XIraD4x5ucI93rdj7MTXRNb2MRURwMw6JpbKhmq8T0v2YnBqMpjbXU62qgwqiYYQtTyau3wochP2VZkn8fovBPRlD9S_205F73of5SXfDMArAaibbKa65LNn/s1600/years+of+lightning,+days+of+thunder.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Years of Lightning, Day of Drums (1965)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</i></div>
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Mark Taplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18013095388375294492noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5442800540723899936.post-53989805873004717432015-01-24T00:04:00.001-05:002015-01-24T00:04:25.077-05:00Duvergier de Hauranne: A Frenchman in Lincoln's Washington -- "...This Great Work of Patriotism and Charity"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG7TyAmkfaUmn5zjJO9o2XhdT93nJN-_VZWvJq5PH9Ss8lRv2u693O5KJnW43K3mtVEN1rXKdC-rXllMUDwNMMpBLrQmK8GdXuKhkEK4C3gAENfEBS7xCKdosiMmjX99d0q1Qc1DRDakh5/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-01-23+at+11.28.35+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG7TyAmkfaUmn5zjJO9o2XhdT93nJN-_VZWvJq5PH9Ss8lRv2u693O5KJnW43K3mtVEN1rXKdC-rXllMUDwNMMpBLrQmK8GdXuKhkEK4C3gAENfEBS7xCKdosiMmjX99d0q1Qc1DRDakh5/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-01-23+at+11.28.35+PM.png" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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Like many other visitors to these shores before and after, Duvergier
de Hauranne is much impressed by the spirit and practice of American volunteerism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One organization he visits in Washington stands out above all others.</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxzAsseNaWggpqfyh2wTP1u35CHCaRxC2fb2HRKW190YtzP00VPvICqn0QpPNdWyh5Sp7Z5DXsDgh3yPEbetXOP_hDVbYr3QBvehCrv3NNRyqCOr7544-owkI0gvpLTMASrT4il6dns6mM/s1600/sanitary+commission+april+1865.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxzAsseNaWggpqfyh2wTP1u35CHCaRxC2fb2HRKW190YtzP00VPvICqn0QpPNdWyh5Sp7Z5DXsDgh3yPEbetXOP_hDVbYr3QBvehCrv3NNRyqCOr7544-owkI0gvpLTMASrT4il6dns6mM/s1600/sanitary+commission+april+1865.jpg" height="255" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Outside the Sanitary Commission Home Lodge, Washington D.C., April 1865</td></tr>
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Duvergier de Hauranne's foray to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Sanitary_Commission">United States Sanitary Commission</a>’s offices and
storerooms leaves him astounded by a “marvelous” private benevolent
organization that “performs three-fourths of a task the government should do
but doesn’t.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Commission was
the brainchild of a who’s who of prominent Northerners, including renowned
landscape architect <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Law_Olmsted">Frederick Law Olmsted</a> and leading clergyman <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Whitney_Bellows">Henry Whitney Bellows</a>. </div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKJjlgFtjmZQWzH8wgdpJPZ9qV6q_YDYVw3fuLReo4L5sO4nHB4um5WM7eobbwZgoAmlJo-6eFdO3g4D9-OCfzIkWIhFEez0cy7v-ozs1DeDDatFnO1CgD7USO9bO3Cm8hhr1EBuvyUMGB/s1600/220px-Henry_Whitney_Bellows_-_Brady-Handy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKJjlgFtjmZQWzH8wgdpJPZ9qV6q_YDYVw3fuLReo4L5sO4nHB4um5WM7eobbwZgoAmlJo-6eFdO3g4D9-OCfzIkWIhFEez0cy7v-ozs1DeDDatFnO1CgD7USO9bO3Cm8hhr1EBuvyUMGB/s1600/220px-Henry_Whitney_Bellows_-_Brady-Handy.jpg" height="200" width="158" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">Henry Whitney Bellows, President, Sanitary Commission</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">Raising funds from private sources was only one of their tasks. During a matter of months, an entire volunteer benevolent organization was built across the Northern states, from the ground up. </span>In a meeting with the Commission’s
regional director – a young volunteer himself -- Duvergier de Hauranne is
astounded to learn that over one million soldiers had passed through the Commission’s hands since the beginning of the war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He lauds the efforts of the tens of thousands of private
citizens, including many women, who provide practically the only care the
North’s sick and wounded soldiers could count on receiving following their
evacuation from the battlefield -- including via a
network of “Soldier’s Homes” to aid in their convalescence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> (</span>Duvergier de Hauranne reports, to his surprise, that
three-fourths of the Union’s losses were attributable to disease rather than to
combat.)</div>
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In an age long before bulging government bureaucracies and pervasive databases, Duvergier de Hauranne describes how well-organized the United States Sanitary Commission’s efforts are, and adds that its role often extended beyond
care and provisioning to outright advocacy for wounded and discharged soldiers
who had fallen off the Army’s chaotic rolls:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir93lPrpyPqOMjy8s72z3cvex2dRKjp8de29SjFz23S9zd2DPd35ge240mxh1AH8PeQLhK7yE_GQL_OZPgceCUzLCbWhi3KYb7u0Dau5xDrYoJSyO52mhLNIZf2RWWyN_O5gFsnvULAGsr/s1600/DC+Soldiers+Home.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">In the city of
Washington alone, the expenses of the Soldier’s Home, where discharged or
furloughed solders stay during the long time it takes to get their papers in
order, amount to $12,000 a week.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What is even more astonishing than these large donations is the order,
the dependability and the perfect discipline of this improvised
administration.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most astonishing
of all is the dedication of those who are giving several years of their lives
to this great work of patriotism and charity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This achievement teaches us to admire America and the
philanthropists of the Old World would do well to take some lessons from it.</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir93lPrpyPqOMjy8s72z3cvex2dRKjp8de29SjFz23S9zd2DPd35ge240mxh1AH8PeQLhK7yE_GQL_OZPgceCUzLCbWhi3KYb7u0Dau5xDrYoJSyO52mhLNIZf2RWWyN_O5gFsnvULAGsr/s1600/DC+Soldiers+Home.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir93lPrpyPqOMjy8s72z3cvex2dRKjp8de29SjFz23S9zd2DPd35ge240mxh1AH8PeQLhK7yE_GQL_OZPgceCUzLCbWhi3KYb7u0Dau5xDrYoJSyO52mhLNIZf2RWWyN_O5gFsnvULAGsr/s1600/DC+Soldiers+Home.jpg" height="223" width="320" /></a></div>
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The U.S. Sanitary Commission, formally chartered under Congress as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Home_for_Disabled_Volunteer_Soldiers">"National Asylum for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers"</a> just
two months after Duvergier de Hauranne’s account, laid the foundation for what would in the nineteen-thirties become the
Veterans Administration. Were the Frenchman miraculously to return to Washington in 2015, it is not
entirely clear he would be as favorably impressed by today's Department of Veterans Affairs, including its organizational acumen and determination to provide the best possible service…</div>
Mark Taplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18013095388375294492noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5442800540723899936.post-14101966006293156972015-01-22T09:56:00.000-05:002015-01-22T09:58:33.410-05:00Duvergier de Hauranne: A Frenchman in Lincoln's Washington -- Impressions of The Civil War Congress<div class="MsoNormal">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQDsrx98zVnQtmXi09jhksuHTLT6PzA7AI7BCwVBZM5U3lX6ZAG4C68LMY15ThyphenhyphenmAqU7YhI760-txJKIM5EeYuQfDefDDHByvpfZuk6pJME3xB3X0L1Rt8udQWvBhYC6g6NMc8AblMJrUj/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-01-22+at+12.07.53+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQDsrx98zVnQtmXi09jhksuHTLT6PzA7AI7BCwVBZM5U3lX6ZAG4C68LMY15ThyphenhyphenmAqU7YhI760-txJKIM5EeYuQfDefDDHByvpfZuk6pJME3xB3X0L1Rt8udQWvBhYC6g6NMc8AblMJrUj/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-01-22+at+12.07.53+AM.png" height="272" width="320" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaQCnypPBbTzndAwb6rcZ8CZmZeriU4KaoybOfoEXqRXEZXnXCtqyFGl93CrhwuFsymtt9SkMZk4rSOIdIbdyaBOV8ITHav8dCGD9QrB3ZnPprHUp_IepgRKCrDht8JUr03UNirVk7_rv8/s1600/Sumner_glc_04609_mwh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaQCnypPBbTzndAwb6rcZ8CZmZeriU4KaoybOfoEXqRXEZXnXCtqyFGl93CrhwuFsymtt9SkMZk4rSOIdIbdyaBOV8ITHav8dCGD9QrB3ZnPprHUp_IepgRKCrDht8JUr03UNirVk7_rv8/s1600/Sumner_glc_04609_mwh.jpg" height="200" width="160" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sen. Charles Sumner (R-Massachusettts)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Congress remained a source of fascination for Duvergier de
Hauranne during his first week back in the District of Columbia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Thanks to Massachusetts Senator <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sumner">Charles Sumner</a>, who had taken an interest in the young
Frenchman, Duvergier de Hauranne was able to attend the next sessions on the
very floor of the House, at one point even occupying the seat of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Winter_Davis">Henry Winter Davis</a>, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee.<br />
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A speech by Missouri Democrat <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_S._Rollins">James Sidney Rollins</a> piques
his interest; Rollins, formerly a fierce opponent of the abolitionists, speaks
out in favor of the 13<sup>th</sup> Amendment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Duvergier de Hauranne has a keen eye and a strong writerly
touch:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3VjI0COyQ2IANGDuBC3tvGTyFy3WXbQfp_TTFj6QxnEawdRQCd98wIlRxbOQEGaEfEdIVb8vxVQmQS2UqrtINF9OBPtvDJ3ZBJO3OzZ8VBeJwCpf-iyF7x6J_WKNPyKp7lpcMd08nrZIr/s1600/sav1914p0008ROLLINS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3VjI0COyQ2IANGDuBC3tvGTyFy3WXbQfp_TTFj6QxnEawdRQCd98wIlRxbOQEGaEfEdIVb8vxVQmQS2UqrtINF9OBPtvDJ3ZBJO3OzZ8VBeJwCpf-iyF7x6J_WKNPyKp7lpcMd08nrZIr/s1600/sav1914p0008ROLLINS.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rep. James P. Rollins (D-Missouri)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">He has the rough
exterior one expects of men from the West, but along with that there is a
strain of candor and native tact that raises him above the ordinary…He would
have agreed, he said, to the preservation or even the expansion of slavery if
that would have saved the Union.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He agreed now to accept abolition because it had become necessary to win
the war and restore the public peace.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It was strange to hear this slave-owner, impoverished only yesterday by
the new principles, defying the Democrats to find any religious, moral or even
economic or political argument to justify slavery.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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In contrast, Duvergier de Hauranne archly dismisses the
overblown rhetoric of an unnamed abolitionist Congressman:</div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I will pass in silence over the speech made
by a loud-mouthed representative who delivered himself of a string of
anti-slavery platitudes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He seems
to be one of those who don’t believe they are speaking eloquently until they
are blue in the face and have bloodshot eyes.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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The French visitor is impressed by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thaddeus_Stevens">Thaddeus Stevens</a>, whom he
characterizes as among the last of the great orators of the antebellum
legislature, comparing him to the likes of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and John
C. Calhoun.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjewRhKY9l290fz-jANZL0BO4FAJP3VMOO4yvWVoasEDPw9Gf_aQzivF7T9HUcl-uPzIMAnNT2DzIApLTuLDT0wKYNp6cBiXChAgoqNk3Pa2MDiq4X-JsJDriFzWzh_PWmVYA0mcxYgUjz/s1600/thaddeus+stevens+orator.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjewRhKY9l290fz-jANZL0BO4FAJP3VMOO4yvWVoasEDPw9Gf_aQzivF7T9HUcl-uPzIMAnNT2DzIApLTuLDT0wKYNp6cBiXChAgoqNk3Pa2MDiq4X-JsJDriFzWzh_PWmVYA0mcxYgUjz/s1600/thaddeus+stevens+orator.jpg" height="320" width="251" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rep. Thaddeus Stevens (R- Pennsylvania)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">At his very first word
I was able to recognize a born orator.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Mr. Stevens is a strong, vigorous old man with deep-set eyes whose
expressive, haughty face is heavily furrowed by wrinkles. ..The House of
Representatives, which is usually so disorderly, lending only half an ear to
partisan clamor, suddenly grows quiet when Mr. Stevens rises to speak,
rendering an involuntary tribute to an eloquence and dignity whose secret it
has lost.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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In conclusion, Duvergier de Hauranne allows that the House
is not, “as I may sometimes have led you to believe,” made up entirely of
opportunists and “barroom politicians.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He remarks that “ugly faces and home-made haircuts abound…but when you
are once accustomed to the typical American face and costume – a strange
mixture of stiff formality and unbuttoned negligence – you realize that the
greater part of the House is composed of ‘gentlemen.’”</div>
Mark Taplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18013095388375294492noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5442800540723899936.post-2326081579053278512015-01-21T11:30:00.000-05:002015-01-21T11:30:13.882-05:00Walter Roberts: A Brush with Joe McCarthy -- "You Are Excused, But You Will Be Called Back"<div class="MsoNormal">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_bL-2nlVHah075t3eN9qVoGd-3cKRK_5WOs5kPH-bkMj59qJXRsnomI2xO-WqIhtTlGMVSX1gRvYkYTLhxdcm2ln7K7kojFAwOfauGi_uDNu-ymvkGaNUGCLVA55oOaQ0d3U47heFMznj/s1600/walter+1:21.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_bL-2nlVHah075t3eN9qVoGd-3cKRK_5WOs5kPH-bkMj59qJXRsnomI2xO-WqIhtTlGMVSX1gRvYkYTLhxdcm2ln7K7kojFAwOfauGi_uDNu-ymvkGaNUGCLVA55oOaQ0d3U47heFMznj/s1600/walter+1:21.jpg" height="225" width="400" /></a></div>
A phone call to be "interviewed" by the infamous Senator Joe McCarthy was never a welcome thing. But Walter's brief taste of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_Homeland_Security_Permanent_Subcommittee_on_Investigations">Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations</a> was milder than that of many -- his career, happily, was not destroyed on the alter of "anti-Communism" as happened to dozens of other State Department and VOA officials. <br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>...Since you mentioned <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy">McCarthy</a>, I will recall a story for
you which is very typical of McCarthy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>One day, in spring of 1953, that’s before USIA was created, when I was
still in the Department of State, I got a phone call from the security people
in the Department of State, asking me to go up to room so and so in the Dirksen
Building or whatever it is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Senator McCarthy would like to interview me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I said, is a lawyer from the Department of State
going to accompany me?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They said,
no, you’re on your own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I
went.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></div>
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<i>As I entered the committee
room, there was a witness there whom I remember well from the days when I was
assigned to Austria.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was an
engineer, and he bought the transmitters to replace old ones in Vienna, Linz
and Salzburg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://www.ominous-valve.com/wlw.html">Beautiful 500 kW transmitters</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All that was really
required for Austria would have been a 25 or 50 kW transmitter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I sat down in the committee
room and Gillett -- <a href="http://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/document.php?id=cqal53-1369079">Mr. Gillett</a> was his name -- talked about how he helped
install the transmitters for the Red White Red network in Austria.<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIEKWouWYLH7MaHhuzvsmVuAxVYyzAiete2n3MpFp6ACwJ0nmPtHRAkyGtf9nvn3E3ndwRZyaQhW07a3udVdEjU-n0gbIoPDROxRUmMlzGbuj3nx2dAlKJn-yqzkAqJlDVHZ2Z2t1iJxtc/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-01-21+at+10.09.43+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIEKWouWYLH7MaHhuzvsmVuAxVYyzAiete2n3MpFp6ACwJ0nmPtHRAkyGtf9nvn3E3ndwRZyaQhW07a3udVdEjU-n0gbIoPDROxRUmMlzGbuj3nx2dAlKJn-yqzkAqJlDVHZ2Z2t1iJxtc/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-01-21+at+10.09.43+AM.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Excerpt from March 12, 1953 UP story</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that one day it was decided to
lower the antenna, and thereby our reach into Kyiv and other Eastern European
cities was reduced or cut off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-pqSsE0go5fWKlgYHB1s5k5eeDhN06USKdwgU-ZI2u5DSho-316NHRtrUXyYKAaimRdeEC67bO0s11K098fgKkzOkN3_NfZwbYOjwtLypHNR3OpTSISoZT8CTpCIzcmXVvHiMerUqMLWJ/s1600/McCarthy_80e85.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-pqSsE0go5fWKlgYHB1s5k5eeDhN06USKdwgU-ZI2u5DSho-316NHRtrUXyYKAaimRdeEC67bO0s11K098fgKkzOkN3_NfZwbYOjwtLypHNR3OpTSISoZT8CTpCIzcmXVvHiMerUqMLWJ/s1600/McCarthy_80e85.jpg" height="149" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Roy Cohn (l), Joe McCarthy</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span>I
remember vividly, Senator McCarthy asked:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And who authorized the reduction of the antennas?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And he said:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mr. Walter Roberts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Whereupon, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Cohn">Mr. Cohn</a>, who was one of the assistants to Mr. McCarthy, took
a large blue book and leafed through it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It was clear that he looked at the letter "R," whether he could find
anything on me, that I was the head of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Youth_League_(United_States)">Socialist Youth </a>at Harvard, or
something like that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
apparently he didn’t find anything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And he whispered to McCarthy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And McCarthy said:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is Mr.
Roberts here?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, sir.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well,
you are excused, but you will be called back.</i></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Walter J. Donnelly (l), 1951 with U.S. defense officials</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i>Now what really happened was this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One day, while I was in Vienna, the civilian High
Commissioner, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_J._Donnelly">Walter J. Donnelly</a>, he was the first civilian high commissioner, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>called me in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I went over to the Embassy, and there was the British High
Commissioner, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1990/11/12/obituaries/harold-caccia-84-dies-in-wales-envoy-to-us-after-the-suez-crisis.html">Sir Harold Caccia</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And Donnelly said to me:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“Walter, Sir Harold came to me and asked whether we could reduce the
antennas because it interferes with the air traffic to the British airport
outside Vienna."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> "</span>Mr Ambassador, I cannot say since I’m
not a technical person but let me ask the engineers and I’ll be back to
you." <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I asked the engineers and
I said:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> "T</span>hey want it [lowered] by
25 feet </i>[sic]<i>, would that be alright for Linz, Salzburg and Vienna?" And they said,
sure, we don’t need that kind of antenna, only if we want to reach far into
eastern Europe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that was not the
purpose of the indigenous Austrian network.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It did not do any psychological warfare.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We informed the Austrians in Linz,
Vienna and Salzburg about the news and other matters.</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i><br /></i>
<i><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijko_l5qRApb4jOo7Y7iwgQKsMpFfKKu0VDsOHpRz5MoLJiiDf6R9RbSwnZ175JU2zW6hg2TN0z5XYYkuPEwhR1F8fACneu2YhQmsxBCHUmJTb_cq1VivjSRZQutj7qh6GyVPjVvlDSHUR/s1600/sir+harold+caccia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijko_l5qRApb4jOo7Y7iwgQKsMpFfKKu0VDsOHpRz5MoLJiiDf6R9RbSwnZ175JU2zW6hg2TN0z5XYYkuPEwhR1F8fACneu2YhQmsxBCHUmJTb_cq1VivjSRZQutj7qh6GyVPjVvlDSHUR/s1600/sir+harold+caccia.jpg" height="251" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">Sir Harold Caccia, British Ambassador to the U.S., with President Kennedy, 1961</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</i><i>So what happened there was obviously, Mr. Gillett was very
unhappy with me, because his dream of having created in Austria a network for
eastern Europe and the Soviet Union did not come to pass.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I never saw McCarthy
again, except on television.</i></div>
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Mark Taplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18013095388375294492noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5442800540723899936.post-54799406695839154392015-01-21T00:00:00.000-05:002015-01-21T00:00:07.332-05:00Walter Roberts: Creating USIA -- "It Was Very Clear...That There Would Be An Agency"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiBeWuLA8pHPQauxM1796k9kAUhXmp5mKhiwK8DBbXQ6e4cSuzfC1RpiZjFaWXlkoUbPi9Fg6AFyY3mAngPn81c_WAqUuEzgxHxIV4ddWdc8cMCRWQyyadQWste0hMqmEfXZvXB9A7oFRe/s1600/walter+1:20.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiBeWuLA8pHPQauxM1796k9kAUhXmp5mKhiwK8DBbXQ6e4cSuzfC1RpiZjFaWXlkoUbPi9Fg6AFyY3mAngPn81c_WAqUuEzgxHxIV4ddWdc8cMCRWQyyadQWste0hMqmEfXZvXB9A7oFRe/s1600/walter+1:20.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></div>
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Thanks to Walter's experience building a public diplomacy program in Austria, he was in demand in Washington as the new Eisenhower presidential transition team began to draw up plans for an independent U.S. agency to run international information programs.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<i>From 1950 to 1953, I worked on the Austrian desk of the
Department of State.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was
divided at that time into three positions:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>political, economic and public affairs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The political officer was a man with
the name of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1964/02/08/francis-t-williamson-56-dies.html?_r=0">Francis Williamson</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The economic affairs officer was <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/04/world/eleanor-l-dulles-of-state-dept-dies-at-101.html">Mrs. Dulles</a>, the sister of John Foster
and Allen Dulles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the public
affairs officer was I.</i></div>
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<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP187LjCCQELa_9ynDPvTJJ9pfxDpls6bp7ZunyS8w2z1uWrWHWqb1g0M1wlaDwAUzMBM-i11-2hc1hU59QIG06fvuL_PGsDgv6kurhJoBmZs4tEdpYSA5geDysjJYXHV_gnLLi_1GS7Vm/s1600/sm_aw-edrmurrow_jpg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP187LjCCQELa_9ynDPvTJJ9pfxDpls6bp7ZunyS8w2z1uWrWHWqb1g0M1wlaDwAUzMBM-i11-2hc1hU59QIG06fvuL_PGsDgv6kurhJoBmZs4tEdpYSA5geDysjJYXHV_gnLLi_1GS7Vm/s1600/sm_aw-edrmurrow_jpg.jpg" height="200" width="191" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Abbott Washburn with Edward R. Murrow, 1961</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<i>In 1952, Dwight Eisenhower won the election and the
transition team that came in included people like <a href="http://www.abbottwashburn.com/">Abbott Washburn</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Loomis">Henry Loomis</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And for one reason or
another, these two people, who were clearly assigned to at least present a
blueprint of a new agency, were interested in me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I was literally an assistant to them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was made clear that the information
and the cultural program was dominated not only by people but also by funds by
the Voice of America.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was
basically the information and cultural program.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, we had exchange programs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, we sent dance groups and the New York Philharmonic
Orchestra and the Metropolitan Opera overseas and so on and so forth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the mainstay of the information
program was the Voice of America.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And so between Washburn and Loomis and myself and others of course, we
tried to establish a program that would perhaps also emphasize other
media.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So we came to the
conclusion that USIA should be divided into four media:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>radio, libraries, films and press and
publications.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those were the four
media directors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then it was
decided to have four area directors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And then it was decided that there would be a policy chief, and an
administrative chief.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcqhEKhm4N-4Z_HY8M7U4UJEAPAOdH1ytevW3_7njNW0LblWxsDkQU-m1ziRfzOnw6XoR5SO-PG2W95nTYjhbBy8cxzFWBoGL1imIIcF50O_Oq75XSoD_peOu-7zPG5bpw8IteXpAmZd_g/s1600/14loomis.190.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcqhEKhm4N-4Z_HY8M7U4UJEAPAOdH1ytevW3_7njNW0LblWxsDkQU-m1ziRfzOnw6XoR5SO-PG2W95nTYjhbBy8cxzFWBoGL1imIIcF50O_Oq75XSoD_peOu-7zPG5bpw8IteXpAmZd_g/s1600/14loomis.190.jpg" height="200" width="152" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Henry Loomis</td></tr>
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</span></i></div>
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<i>There were lots of commissions; they all came up with the
idea there should be a separate agency.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Foster_Dulles">John Foster Dulles</a> did not like the program to be in the Department of
State.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He had a very constricted
idea about the functions of the Department of State, that it was a policy
agency, and not a program agency.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That is on one side.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the
other side, Dwight Eisenhower had very positive recollections about how
psychological warfare helped him when he was Allied Supreme Commander.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was very clear -- Dulles didn’t want
to have this in the State Department, Eisenhower was interested in an
information program -- that there would be an agency.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so the Agency was created in the summer of 1953.</i></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghxfxPiYCkiGVyEjaFUOGhHiJvyveLNafbN1m3Y3kiyhSzxj1B3kDuVAJWzVoR-mE_sMLIPnscPIsUAPNE6tYXq15pPWsl1UMkBvx27z3EOXSspQr0xpBka4xwUIj_D0yTNGQtgAgLH50y/s1600/john+foster+dulles.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghxfxPiYCkiGVyEjaFUOGhHiJvyveLNafbN1m3Y3kiyhSzxj1B3kDuVAJWzVoR-mE_sMLIPnscPIsUAPNE6tYXq15pPWsl1UMkBvx27z3EOXSspQr0xpBka4xwUIj_D0yTNGQtgAgLH50y/s1600/john+foster+dulles.jpg" height="320" width="242" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Secretary of State John Foster Dulles</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<i>…I think deep down in his mind, Dulles heard that there were
quote “hundreds of communists” in the State Department. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I think he was convinced, as I later
heard from my good friend <a href="https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/berding-andrew-henry-thomas">Andy Berding</a>, who was Assistant Secretary for Public
Affairs under John Foster Dulles, in Dulles’ second term.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So John Foster Dulles, I think, while
he never said so, was convinced that part of the problem of communists in the
State Department, is the information program – which contained newspaper people
– and the cultural program – which contained academics -- all of whom were more
likely to be Communists than straight State Department officers, because of
their backgrounds and so on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I
think he was very happy to be rid of it.</i></div>
Mark Taplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18013095388375294492noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5442800540723899936.post-71671447311427415092015-01-13T12:59:00.000-05:002015-01-13T12:59:23.378-05:00Duvergier de Hauranne: A Frenchman in Lincoln's Washington -- Congress is Not Exactly "A Festival of Eloquence"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvOPy4L9dzm8mpZtWfZ0g3Gh4MFxCNEZRKqdxKorz5Tzcd0QvNkpBQ8S28QOawWpnbSc6A0ARXGKdCInEljmjVW1MAlFz2fIKEPtnJFfrJCeU2juDb9xB0OPu0bdUWkRxmT6chhBfd7Lso/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-01-13+at+12.21.53+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvOPy4L9dzm8mpZtWfZ0g3Gh4MFxCNEZRKqdxKorz5Tzcd0QvNkpBQ8S28QOawWpnbSc6A0ARXGKdCInEljmjVW1MAlFz2fIKEPtnJFfrJCeU2juDb9xB0OPu0bdUWkRxmT6chhBfd7Lso/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-01-13+at+12.21.53+PM.png" height="261" width="320" /></a></div>
In the days that followed, Duvergier de Hauranne reacquainted himself with wartime Washington, D.C., which he had first visited at the outset of his U.S. travels during the summer of 1864. Outside the city, he finds the same "vast, level spaces that have been turned into wastelands by military encampments; everything has been scraped clean to the ground; there remains not a tree, not a blade of grass, nothing but tents and barracks." Likewise, inside the city: "the same monotonous stretches of mud and the same vain and pitiful attempts at grandeur." But the city had come alive, dramaticallly so, roused from the August doldrums, with "the clatter of carriages, the screeching of the horsecars on their iron rails and the hum of pedestrians who crowd the sidewalks." The destiny of Washington, Duvergier de Hauranne believes, would be tied to the fortunes of the federal government. If the capital were to fall back into "its earlier insignificance," it would simply wither away; if everything added to the permanent features of the city by the wartime exigencies were swept away, "scarely anything but a desert would remain." Looking ahead, Duvergier de Hauranne cannot help but comment, as he anticipates the country's rapid expansion westwards, that Washington, D.C. -- "a badly situated fulcrum of the American nation" -- would need to be supplanted by another city in the Mississippi basin, perhaps St. Louis.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhudilcQxmSDHIoFBv3CHwJCHd959UZnceG_iMY3aXCvYMQE8DeQxudOvnqLsHrdVHwg2fV-6rEI0L7FRQMF4TCK5p-ZWCMLppsladnrMKZjfo_kCL9_X87pE4lxwLygB0UZkl3oKjM4ycd/s1600/Benjamin_Franklin_Butler_politician_-_Brady-Handy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhudilcQxmSDHIoFBv3CHwJCHd959UZnceG_iMY3aXCvYMQE8DeQxudOvnqLsHrdVHwg2fV-6rEI0L7FRQMF4TCK5p-ZWCMLppsladnrMKZjfo_kCL9_X87pE4lxwLygB0UZkl3oKjM4ycd/s1600/Benjamin_Franklin_Butler_politician_-_Brady-Handy.jpg" height="320" width="177" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gen. Benjamin F. Butler</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The news of the day: the replacement of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Butler_(politician)">General Benjamin Butler </a>-- announced, per Duvergier de Hauranne, "like a thunderbolt from the mysterious cloud that conceals the government's august summit." The Frenchman, reviewing Butler's career, dismisses him as a poor military leader and an unscrupulous politician whom Grant had protected but whose failures and misdeeds had become too glaring to ignore any longer. (Even now, 150 years later, it is hard to find any historians who have much that is positive to say about this son of Massachusetts other than his fierce anti-slavery convictions.) Yet Butler's dubious wartime record did not prevent him from being returned to Congress by the state's voters as well as elected governor in 1882. Duvergier de Hauranne also reports rumors of a secret peace mission to the Confederacy undertaken by an informal advisor of Lincoln's, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Preston_Blair">Francis P. Blair.</a> While welcoming the idea of the North making such overtures, he dismisses the notion that they would bear fruit due to "the blind obstinacy of the Richmond government."<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZDHdiAW5x4Frbh1jX086OVfuC1_0kMrwOACqs56XTD04iFdaSV8uSibTQrrlEzjg7zGF23BRLFoLkCP9UjNlMjzK4-QMYN1PoyDs3F9oovzQnpt1lr71gWjlCZMh93FX5_Slb5coWWC-d/s1600/U.S.+Capitol+1861.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZDHdiAW5x4Frbh1jX086OVfuC1_0kMrwOACqs56XTD04iFdaSV8uSibTQrrlEzjg7zGF23BRLFoLkCP9UjNlMjzK4-QMYN1PoyDs3F9oovzQnpt1lr71gWjlCZMh93FX5_Slb5coWWC-d/s1600/U.S.+Capitol+1861.jpg" height="196" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">U.S. Capitol, 1861</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Meanwhile, the politics of the moment remains front and center in Duvergier de Hauranne's account. His first visit to Congress, he reports, is "a waste of time." Describing two contrasting schools of rhetoric -- comparing the staid Senate and the raucous House -- the Frenchman comments that Congress is not exactly "a festival of eloquence." The Senate debates, he relates, resemble more "a conversation, interrupted by courteous, muted disagreements," before a mostly empty gallery and a slumbering presiding officer. The House, on the other hand, is like "a storm-tossed sea," surrounded by galleries packed with noisy spectators. Duvergier de Hauranne is clearly not enamored of the House's "general atmosphere of indiscipline, insubordination and irreverance":<br />
<br />
<i>Few speakers are accorded more than five minutes of attentive silence; the debates are carried on at one end of the room, while at the other end no one is any longer paying the slightest heed. It is therefore necessary to speak like Demosthenes so as to be heard above the sound of the waves, to go right on speaking without giving any thought to ones audience and to shout loudly enough for the stenographers to hear. Hence the oratory of the House is full of long-winded bluster, accompanied by gesticulations -- in fact, the very image of a public meeting.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
As usual, Duvergier de Hauranne demonstrates he is a keen observer of the political scene. With perhaps as little as five votes needed in the House to pass the anti-slavery Thirteenth Amendment, he describes how difficult the naysaying Democrats will be to win over but notes that the Republicans at the same time have the luxury of allowing their adversaries "to tear themselves to pieces" knowing the anti-slavery cause will ultimately prevail. <br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu7uxKbsPqVtbx52paLPZzDRi3RmYp7qz97-wzkdbY39LYprfFb-pekBG98uqZo1EgaMLONgcgjBS9EDw7fZB7DPCARyT-5szp5qzXAUPpsAy2q09XfeDBPfcWiXUqPOQvAVv5REe3RUqd/s1600/fernando+wood.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu7uxKbsPqVtbx52paLPZzDRi3RmYp7qz97-wzkdbY39LYprfFb-pekBG98uqZo1EgaMLONgcgjBS9EDw7fZB7DPCARyT-5szp5qzXAUPpsAy2q09XfeDBPfcWiXUqPOQvAVv5REe3RUqd/s1600/fernando+wood.jpg" height="320" width="256" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rep. Fernando Wood (D-NY)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Duvergier de Hauranne is scathing about the arguments of Copperhead holdouts like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_Wood">Fernando Wood</a>, a former mayor of New York and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammany_Hall">Tammany Hall</a> figure par excellence, who insist the proposed amendment would be "unconstitutional" and unfairly reviewed in the absence of Southern representatives in Congress. The Frenchman cooly observes that the Constitution had always been subject to amendment, so the true motivation is simply "to preserve forever the equivocal silence of the Constitution on the question and thus retain the pretext it offers for rebellion." As for the lament over the absence of a voice from the Confederate South in the debate, Duvergier de Hauranne exclaims: "But if representatives of the South are not in Congress today to oppose the amendment, whose fault is that? Who drove them out?"<br />
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<br />Mark Taplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18013095388375294492noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5442800540723899936.post-67296568138791515562015-01-11T23:28:00.002-05:002015-01-22T09:56:26.314-05:00Duvergier de Hauranne: A Frenchman in Lincoln's Washington -- "Democracy is a Quicksand that Swallows Up Famous Men..."<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy9czyJbkLapX5LTMG8hWFkJMEoRKm8nv61CuB_GfKs5sja5xb29lg64j3hcXQixZsu1d2N1I4303bOZuHoZLvOVhofMi6kC3obGHV3I3w0fmO-jdmCzTWEvCTSH84l9tchxXjED3QH-FM/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-01-11+at+10.14.28+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy9czyJbkLapX5LTMG8hWFkJMEoRKm8nv61CuB_GfKs5sja5xb29lg64j3hcXQixZsu1d2N1I4303bOZuHoZLvOVhofMi6kC3obGHV3I3w0fmO-jdmCzTWEvCTSH84l9tchxXjED3QH-FM/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-01-11+at+10.14.28+PM.png" height="320" width="284" /></a></div>
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Duvergier de Hauranne arrived in Washington on January 11,
1865 on the midnight train from New York City – one hundred and fifty
years ago already a frenetic, chaotic metropolis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The young Frenchman found New York, for the most part, an appalling
place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqIjPXujPd7CDOlZAHRr0KxWjrhmDS7UplYcNC7hxcgT0loMrt1EHCTlYvjc0k6WoCDd1YdNJqvZLWgvQRRlwxBSb5dWps7rmDKxaSmQUaFF-LqQW-Bl4C7-_gQ6UUkpBghYU5w51pf3hc/s1600/Willard+Hotel+3a01617u.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
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Nor was he impressed
by his return stay at the District of Columbia’s own Willard Hotel, whatever
its five star qualities may be today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“<a href="http://www.mrlincolnswhitehouse.org/inside.asp?ID=184&subjectID=4">Willards' Hotel</a>,” he wrote, “is the same as ever, the worst
and most expensive hotel in the United States.” With the still half-constructed city overwhelmed by
officials of various ranks and hustlers eager to cash in the largesse of a
Federal government in full wartime mobilization, Willards' could charge
whatever it liked for its services. Nor would Duvergier de Hauranne have provided an indulgent review of the
hotel’s restaurant on any 19th century version of TripAdvisor or
Travelocity. “The service is
abominable,” he complained, “the meals are hasty and penny-pinching despite the
elaborate menu; the portions are trimmed down by thrifty hands and it is all too
evident that they serve leftovers from other people’s plates.” He described a scene, however, would not be so far removed from today’s high-end hotel lobbies of 21st century Washington:
“…The mainstay of the hotel’s trade consists of members of Congress,
governors of states and general officers…the place is like a hive always full
of buzzing bees that perpetually come and go without ever alighting.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqIjPXujPd7CDOlZAHRr0KxWjrhmDS7UplYcNC7hxcgT0loMrt1EHCTlYvjc0k6WoCDd1YdNJqvZLWgvQRRlwxBSb5dWps7rmDKxaSmQUaFF-LqQW-Bl4C7-_gQ6UUkpBghYU5w51pf3hc/s1600/Willard+Hotel+3a01617u.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqIjPXujPd7CDOlZAHRr0KxWjrhmDS7UplYcNC7hxcgT0loMrt1EHCTlYvjc0k6WoCDd1YdNJqvZLWgvQRRlwxBSb5dWps7rmDKxaSmQUaFF-LqQW-Bl4C7-_gQ6UUkpBghYU5w51pf3hc/s1600/Willard+Hotel+3a01617u.jpg" height="257" width="320" /></a></div>
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Arriving that morning in the District of Columbia, though, Duvergier
de Hauranne already had his mind on politics, which was a source of fascination
for him throughout his life, in France as well as in the United States. He reported on the impending resignation
of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_P._Fessenden">Treasury Secretary William Fessenden</a>, whom he described as utterly worn out
by his task of keeping the Federal government solvent, and commented on how fickle fate
and fortune are in political life. </div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuhjeqtcl2T0ECiaO3Y0lKJHGmq9QO9BLwUl_fN1Kpu-hCOBczV-XCLheYSXEp7yod0eZct8PmmiDkxcMP8EQ6lHR33AwC2G9IOJs3Gi08G5oBhm2XSVwHavCRmMujj1z5rTnlSAD4_4bj/s1600/Hon._Wm._Pitt_Fessenden_of_Maine.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuhjeqtcl2T0ECiaO3Y0lKJHGmq9QO9BLwUl_fN1Kpu-hCOBczV-XCLheYSXEp7yod0eZct8PmmiDkxcMP8EQ6lHR33AwC2G9IOJs3Gi08G5oBhm2XSVwHavCRmMujj1z5rTnlSAD4_4bj/s1600/Hon._Wm._Pitt_Fessenden_of_Maine.png" height="200" width="152" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">William Fessenden</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span>“Who recognizes today the names of Fillmore, Pierce or Buchanan?” he
asked rhetorically, noting<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“they are
mentioned only as objects of ridicule.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“Today’s forgotten man” – here Duvergier de Hauranne is referring to
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_B._McClellan">General George McClellan</a>, who only two months before had been defeated by Lincoln
in the 1864 presidential campaign – “is lost in obscurity, the one who only
yesterday was hailed as the victor of Antietam.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Democracy is a quicksand that swallows up famous men who
have been stranded on the shore.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pennsylvania’s
Radical Congressman and abolitionist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thaddeus_Stevens">Thaddeus Stevens </a>would refuse to take on the
Treasury job, Duvergier de Hauranne speculated, preferring “the
independent and less responsible role of legislator to the burden
borne by a Cabinet member.”</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi07eCkWinmw0cCLi8RkuJDkCQeCUaoda-BJbDsCVqF7hIm5YXG5tMbRC0jgElhKgvdOijJPd7z0YwUUdOYYC_Ugd-eq6lqZJYUVjb6DbT57F2sS__ub_ZPUxbfk9gB8O-RF82M2NL1ciB/s1600/Democratic_presidential_ticket_1864b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi07eCkWinmw0cCLi8RkuJDkCQeCUaoda-BJbDsCVqF7hIm5YXG5tMbRC0jgElhKgvdOijJPd7z0YwUUdOYYC_Ugd-eq6lqZJYUVjb6DbT57F2sS__ub_ZPUxbfk9gB8O-RF82M2NL1ciB/s1600/Democratic_presidential_ticket_1864b.jpg" height="320" width="227" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">McClellan Campaign Poster, 1864</td></tr>
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But Duvergier de Hauranne’s primary preoccupation on this
first day back in the nation’s capital was the prospects for
passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, in “the great debate about slavery and
the new amendment to the Constitution” as he described it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He pointed out that in the House, the
two-thirds majority required to pass the amendment remained elusive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet as the defeat of the Confederacy looked increasingly certain, the opposition of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copperhead_(politics)">Copperheads</a> and other Democrats appeared more tactical than heartfelt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The fate of the South and slavery was
being settled on the battlefield, not in speeches on the floor of Congress.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Duvergier de Hauranne warned that the Radical
Republicans ought to be more nuanced in their rhetoric to better achieve their objectives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Meanwhile, </span>the political logic for Northern Democrats would point them in the
direction of accommodation and compromise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Duvergier de Hauranne described the calculus on slavery for Lincoln's opponents this way, partly tongue
in cheek:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“If you’re trying to win
a race, you mustn’t attempt to carry your dead horse on your own back; instead, you
should abandon his useless carcass and, if you can, steal your rival’s
horse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover, Abolition is a
good cause in its own right, for slavery is, after all, a great injustice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The game is lost, so let’s change the
rules and try to recoup our fortunes!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></div>
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Even then, behind the scenes, Lincoln was leaving nothing to chance, using every means at his disposal to get the votes needed for the amendment’s
passage in the House…</div>
Mark Taplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18013095388375294492noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5442800540723899936.post-70435384724843522592015-01-10T18:39:00.000-05:002015-01-10T18:39:51.984-05:00Walter Roberts: Postwar Austria -- "It Was Not Easy for Some of the Austrians to Talk to People Like Me."<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFufxXKy9SgbazqEF8jUUBllzh4ZPEqYn7oa3FYIWyUQQ_9-4CReSDfTV3VlJ4Y5KVHVmGKmH2mZTsWiO2NSmFkGgnAc56DqwY88eAF46DoWT154pPkHtnIPtPzrOrFfqJt9HvioaFsIfm/s1600/walter+--+1:10+-+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFufxXKy9SgbazqEF8jUUBllzh4ZPEqYn7oa3FYIWyUQQ_9-4CReSDfTV3VlJ4Y5KVHVmGKmH2mZTsWiO2NSmFkGgnAc56DqwY88eAF46DoWT154pPkHtnIPtPzrOrFfqJt9HvioaFsIfm/s1600/walter+--+1:10+-+2.jpg" height="225" width="400" /></a></div>
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Following the war, Walter seized an unexpected opportunity to move from the VOA's Austrian Service to the State Department's EUR Bureau. Returning as a U.S. official to his birthplace in order to launch a public diplomacy program was an invigorating yet bittersweet experience.</div>
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<i>…As early as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Peace_Treaties,_1947">the Paris Conference of 1947</a>, I think, it was
decided by the four Powers – now France was included – to achieve an Austrian
treaty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And each of the four
powers appointed a deputy for Austria.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Most of these meetings took place in London.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They led nowhere because of the famous “nyet” of our Russian
colleagues.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 1948, the foreign
ministers met at the General Assembly session of the United Nations in New
York, and the Americans and the British and the French asked -- I think it was
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrey_Vyshinsky">Vyshinsky</a> at the time – “What about an Austrian treaty?” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And he said, well, we have to have
this, this, this and this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which
were enormous burdens on Austria.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Austria had oil wells in the eastern part, which the Russians exploited.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></div>
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<i>But it was decided that the Austrian deputies of the four Powers
meet at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in September of 1949, and Foy Kohler sent me,
because I served on the Austrian desk, to be the VOA correspondent at these
Austrian treaty talks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrKEVu42s9T_Gnp8ezm-vXc7rLe6kzPv-ulrhhcjMCaPk49VaPOC3sVcl8YXl10Q8plbeIHDAJJuLdG_NgHHU4gI-Ew87pzxrMDyh98LVejU1sn65pDei1Efi8Xsqyb0RJ0oo7Rg-Nthhd/s1600/samuel+reber.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrKEVu42s9T_Gnp8ezm-vXc7rLe6kzPv-ulrhhcjMCaPk49VaPOC3sVcl8YXl10Q8plbeIHDAJJuLdG_NgHHU4gI-Ew87pzxrMDyh98LVejU1sn65pDei1Efi8Xsqyb0RJ0oo7Rg-Nthhd/s1600/samuel+reber.jpg" height="200" width="152" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Samuel Reber</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span>There was
the deputy for Austria, a high-ranking Foreign Service officer with the name of
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Reber">Samuel Reber</a>, who one day said: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Why don’t we have a cup of coffee?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And he and I had a cup of coffee, and he said to me:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“What’s your future, Walter?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said, ‘Well, doing my job at
the Voice of America.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said, “I
have a feeling you can do more than that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I would like you to meet a friend of mine who is Deputy Assistant Secretary
for European Affairs with the name of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llewellyn_Thompson">Llewellyn Thompson</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’d like to arrange a meeting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is that alright with you?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Well, wonderful, thank you.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So the meeting was arranged, I went to Washington from New
York.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tommy Thompson couldn’t have
been nicer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the middle of the
conversation, he goes to his desk, pulls out a chart, and that was the
organizational chart of the Department of State.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He puts it in front of me and says:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Which job would you like to
have?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I said, “Mr. Secretary,
all I want is to work on the Austrian desk.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“Well, let’s see whether this can be arranged.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Three months later, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1983/10/06/obituaries/martin-f-herz-is-dead-at-66-educator-and-former-envoy.html">Martin Herz</a>, who
was very well known in the Department, got an assignment as political officer
in Paris.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The job came open, and I
was asked whether I would come to Washington.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, it was an internal transfer, because people who
worked in the Voice of America were State Department employees since 1945.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So for me it was basically a transfer
from New York to Washington, and I came to the Austrian desk in the spring of
1950.</i></div>
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<i><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVwbtbg-Fk5_dIMe8SrFcQ6HaWHhF18VFi_uvAuL8KEKitlTs3E83W_O6XPE8fj9kpFifUdNcWKrMRONUIqiohyDvPsm_pQ9W122huEZ03IlZXQ6nBTOGbZ5CPqFvEIjBrs7UyOMHszRzM/s1600/wiener_kurier27081945.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVwbtbg-Fk5_dIMe8SrFcQ6HaWHhF18VFi_uvAuL8KEKitlTs3E83W_O6XPE8fj9kpFifUdNcWKrMRONUIqiohyDvPsm_pQ9W122huEZ03IlZXQ6nBTOGbZ5CPqFvEIjBrs7UyOMHszRzM/s1600/wiener_kurier27081945.jpg" height="200" width="140" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">Wiener Kurier, 1945</td></tr>
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<i>What happened was that the four Powers had decided to change
their arrangements in Austria, as they did in Germany in ‘49.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The principal officer of each country
was a high commissioner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After
1950, it was an American general, in charge of American troops in Austria; he
was the high commissioner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There
was an American legation, not an embassy, which had certain functions, limited.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it was decided to put these two
together, and put them under civilian control.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I was asked to establish a USIS program, the way we had
it in France or in Spain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Public
affairs officer, information officer, cultural officer etcetera and so forth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was absolutely amazed at the size of
the program.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Army was in
charge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For them, information and
cultural and press programs were minor expenditures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I remember when I became deputy area director for Europe
when USIA was created in 1953, the program in Austria still at that time was $7
million a year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I always loved to
say we spent one dollar on every Austrian.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whereas the
program in France was $280,000.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That was the ordinary State Department/USIS program.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were not large.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Germany and /Austria had extremely
large programs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think the table
of organization that I left when I came back to Washington was 50 or so
people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></div>
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<i>Now, we ran a newspaper in
Vienna, the <u><a href="http://kurier.at/">Wiener Kurier</a></u>. We ran a three radio station
network, <a href="http://www.onb.ac.at/siteseeing/flu/wieder_frei/exhibition_usa/usa05_text_eng.htm">Red-White-Red</a>. Surely,
there was more money because of these factors. But it was a great program, and I must say, in fairness, the
Army people that ran the program from ’45 to ’50 did a very adequate job. </i></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdHk3p-mwCvaNDdsdXMXv-Gu7ZUSNrHNadLiGG5yYdGjis_Xq9rHObrV5vnTw_vPeH60Kn_1j85MBfHaCUFS-TFG2MQvd1ANd0hgAGnnN_9TLJWzoxyV2wVgW_jzqkrW5LUNLZArM1In5M/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-01-10+at+5.44.31+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdHk3p-mwCvaNDdsdXMXv-Gu7ZUSNrHNadLiGG5yYdGjis_Xq9rHObrV5vnTw_vPeH60Kn_1j85MBfHaCUFS-TFG2MQvd1ANd0hgAGnnN_9TLJWzoxyV2wVgW_jzqkrW5LUNLZArM1In5M/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-01-10+at+5.44.31+PM.png" height="200" width="138" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Red-White-Red poster, 1954</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<i>Those two media I just mentioned, Red-White-Red -- we had a
very strong radio station in Vienna which of course covered the Soviet zone and
the Soviet sector of Vienna.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
we had a newspaper, which, while often in difficulty in the Soviet zone, was
distributed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So our main purpose
was to quiet and perhaps nullify the influence of the Soviet information media upon
the Austrians.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But we had a
feeling we were winning this war, handily.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Austrians did not like the Russians, oh no.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i><i style="text-align: center;"></i></div>
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<i>…I will tell you that when I try to explain to my American
friends or others the atmosphere in Vienna – I went back the first time in
1947, then again in ‘48 and ‘49 and then on this assignment in 1950 – was
extremely well presented in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Man">“The Third Man.”</a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was not a propaganda film.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is what Vienna looked like, how the Viennese behaved,
it is a remarkably good job, “The Third Man.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Austrians themselves were very much aware of the
background and the role that they played as German citizens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There were Austrians who reached the
upper level of the Nazi party.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Some of the commanders of the concentration camps were Austrians.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was not easy for some of the
Austrians to talk to people like me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They felt full of guilt, yet also wanted to explain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are different emotions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBOSHj9XJnkaECTGNCNBFXBmfjdy0TrhLgshaAfxcj_v7DoejXlGu-Kpa0pb6oiWQEaJnSfYcEqDDkNhK0npPndR6UYxHu3Xdw4G8hvhj_bJH7WIkikqFo20al1RIQ-3Ji_yk3loguOEAk/s1600/Third+Man.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBOSHj9XJnkaECTGNCNBFXBmfjdy0TrhLgshaAfxcj_v7DoejXlGu-Kpa0pb6oiWQEaJnSfYcEqDDkNhK0npPndR6UYxHu3Xdw4G8hvhj_bJH7WIkikqFo20al1RIQ-3Ji_yk3loguOEAk/s1600/Third+Man.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Vienna Street Scene from Carol Reed's "The Third Man"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span>I think I can say – and I think my
friends will confirm this – that I went about it as objectively as one
can.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I tell you very frankly my
wife would not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I, for instance, would never have
accepted, although it was offered me, a job as public affairs officer in
Vienna, particularly in those early days, because I don’t think my wife could
have been objective.</i></div>
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Mark Taplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18013095388375294492noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5442800540723899936.post-16827746969601222682015-01-10T13:32:00.000-05:002015-01-10T13:32:04.511-05:00Walter Roberts: Cold War Origins -- "I Was Very Much Aware that We Were Going Into a Period of Some Great Tension"<div class="MsoNormal">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaXnMREpmf7EFGim9tEA7NESTA7cuavQKTXSiuoj9haTQp-SkpGUQrAMZ_lnaPii_BZuKM_q0ulSX1p5QlISs-_hszxKvJ5JKqoJ1f-SqXtbp4QYwLYd4JrILcqYJSxjHFUhkUS8AsUhcY/s1600/walter+1:10-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaXnMREpmf7EFGim9tEA7NESTA7cuavQKTXSiuoj9haTQp-SkpGUQrAMZ_lnaPii_BZuKM_q0ulSX1p5QlISs-_hszxKvJ5JKqoJ1f-SqXtbp4QYwLYd4JrILcqYJSxjHFUhkUS8AsUhcY/s1600/walter+1:10-1.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></div>
Although Walter expected there would be no future in public diplomacy following the end of World War II, he in fact saw VOA strengthened, with a Russian language service being added -- belatedly -- as Cold War tensions mounted. During this period prior to the creation of the U.S. Information Agency, the State Department took the lead in communicating with foreign publics.</div>
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<i>In 1945, when the war ended, all of us at the Voice of
America were convinced that what happened to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creel_commission">the Creel Committee</a> in 1919, in that
it went out of existence, a wartime information program, would happen to us
too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a matter of fact, I had
already started correspondence with the Harvard Law School.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i>And then, on September 1, 1945,
something extraordinary happened.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>President Harry Truman, despite several proposals that he had on his
desk to discontinue OWI, decided to transfer the external division of OWI – OWI
also had a domestic division which <u>was</u> abolished – but to transfer the overseas
division of OWI to the Department of State.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I have done some research, and what I have learned
and which makes very good sense to me, was that when Harry Truman become
President of the United States, suddenly, utterly detached in a way from the inner
workings of foreign policy, he was suddenly thrust to go to an international
conference with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, the famous <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potsdam_Conference">Potsdam Conference</a> of July, 1945.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
brought along his own new Secretary of State, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_F._Byrnes">Jimmy Byrnes</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i><br />
<i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></i><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 6px; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgthZW_Sx8I0nQfj-YiqvJr87JEzJ8keC6kdJDjk_19Au-lNQVOsWsboAbZk9GbmKNKQVExYzIEufS4EBBi8Rc_6a76dYGOZgfmONPFAOkLoBwPrH-_5jFXcVI30cWBMHhvu7N_j57h4amo/s1600/truman,+bohlen+at+potsdam.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgthZW_Sx8I0nQfj-YiqvJr87JEzJ8keC6kdJDjk_19Au-lNQVOsWsboAbZk9GbmKNKQVExYzIEufS4EBBi8Rc_6a76dYGOZgfmONPFAOkLoBwPrH-_5jFXcVI30cWBMHhvu7N_j57h4amo/s1600/truman,+bohlen+at+potsdam.jpg" height="204" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;">Potsdam Conference: Bohlen behind Truman and Stalin, Byrnes to Molotov's right</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i><br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>And I think at that conference, Harry
Truman – who was a remarkably astute person – became aware that the postwar
period will not be a hunky-dory situation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And we are going to have a lot of problems with this
guy Stalin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And friends of mine
who knew Harry Truman better than I – because I only met him once – are
convinced that the experience of Harry Truman at the Potsdam Conference had a
great deal to do with the external division of OWI being retained into the
State Department.</i></div>
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<i>You ask me how I became aware of this Cold War
situation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t want to sound
arrogant, but as a newscaster in 1945 – I did not go to the Potsdam Conference
– I saw the problems that Truman and Churchill had with Stalin, and I became very
much aware that this was going to be a very, very difficult period ahead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since my responsibility in the Voice of
America was with the Austrian desk, I became very, very much aware of the
day-to-day developments in Vienna.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When, for instance, Soviet troops had liberated, quote unquote, Vienna and
gone a little bit further – not further than the occupation zones drawn in London
in 1943.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the Soviets did not
let <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_W._Clark">General Clark</a> and his American troops come into Vienna until the fall, four or
five months after Vienna was liberated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And I knew all of this, and I knew what the Soviets did in Vienna, and of
course what they did in Berlin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And the way Germany was divided and Berlin was divided.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That the main radio stations in both Berlin
and Vienna were in the Soviet zones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I was very much aware that we are not only at the beginning, but much
further ahead, in the Cold War.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I didn’t have to wait until 1948, Czechoslovakia, whatever it is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I tell you very frankly, on the basis
of the German and Austrian experience, and from how I read whatever was
available to me, including classified telegrams that State Department people
sent to the Department about the Potsdam Conference, I was very much aware that we were going into a period of
some great tension.</i></div>
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<i>And that brings us to one of the questions that we talked
about before:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the beginning of the
Russian Service.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not until 1947
did it dawn on us – and we had, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
think, 42 languages in which we broadcast the Voice of America – we never had a
Russian broadcast. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We broadcast in
Allied languages, certainly in English, but also in French, whom we regarded as
our allies and the Italians, whom we later regarded as our allies, and all
sorts of European oppressed peoples, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, in all of these
languages.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it never occurred
to me, at least – it must have to others – why don’t we broadcast in
Russian?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that decision was
made at the highest level of the State Department that we should start
broadcasting in Russian.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i><br />
<i><br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_o0UO0eVhenjeIUboUZbsoFubPwKlDwVGvJ2Ja4ZCFmH1mnmRjMf3dU0dApvKe2EdqqHuGZyT5sXbPVuF2XcuDJd_jtXFTn8OusuYDT41u3TkRMNgwenskNl4q6gcUKmLdZVLE6d9OW_U/s1600/charlie+thayer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_o0UO0eVhenjeIUboUZbsoFubPwKlDwVGvJ2Ja4ZCFmH1mnmRjMf3dU0dApvKe2EdqqHuGZyT5sXbPVuF2XcuDJd_jtXFTn8OusuYDT41u3TkRMNgwenskNl4q6gcUKmLdZVLE6d9OW_U/s1600/charlie+thayer.jpg" height="320" width="266" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Charlie Thayer</td></tr>
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</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_W._Thayer">Charlie Thayer</a> was sent from Washington to New York to supervise that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it stayed in good hands, as I said
before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foy_D._Kohler">Foy Kohler</a> succeeded
Charlie Thayer – I’m not sure whether Charlie Thayer was ever appointed
director of the Voice of America but Foy Kohler was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was director of the Voice of America.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At that time, you talked about
basically four people [among U.S. government experts on Russia]:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>George Kennan, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_E._Bohlen">Chip Bohlen</a>, Foy Kohler, and Charlie
Thayer. Tommy Thompson came on the
scene a little bit later. But I
think there was a personal relationship between Bohlen and Thayer. I think Bohlen’s sister was married to
Charlie Thayer, or the other way around; they were relatives. And I think it was Bohlen who selected
Thayer to come up to New York and do this. Charlie Thayer, by the way, played a major role early on in
postwar Yugoslavia in 1945. He was
the head of an OSS mission there.
And later, when I wrote my book, I saw him repeatedly and asked him for
advice; he was always very kind.
He retired and lived in the woods, somewhere between Munich and
Salzburg.</i></div>
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Mark Taplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18013095388375294492noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5442800540723899936.post-11723647126454366142015-01-08T13:20:00.000-05:002015-01-08T13:22:32.946-05:00Ernest Duvergier de Hauranne: A Frenchman in Lincoln’s America<div class="MsoNormal">
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Exactly one century and a half ago, a young Frenchman named
<a href="http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Duvergier_de_Hauranne">Ernest Duvergier de Hauranne </a>came to America in the waning months of the American
Civil War. Inspired by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_de_Tocqueville">de Tocqueville</a>,
who was a close friend of Duvergier de Hauranne’s father -- himself a historian
and political figure – the twenty-two year old Frenchman traveled further and
probed deeper than most foreign observers of the United States ever do. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_oRmem8-PGW5hHJmuYn1-6Y17fMrBwUOEItJx_jDWwWI2ZKWhY05i_zDlH1ckwoIIU6UzbFDOF6ciaY_DBxU3NcEFThF1LQFqM9PMYmKHQmZq4VRGn6J3fB6Phf64narm4wsQ4ERWv5KQ/s1600/duvergier+de+hauranne.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_oRmem8-PGW5hHJmuYn1-6Y17fMrBwUOEItJx_jDWwWI2ZKWhY05i_zDlH1ckwoIIU6UzbFDOF6ciaY_DBxU3NcEFThF1LQFqM9PMYmKHQmZq4VRGn6J3fB6Phf64narm4wsQ4ERWv5KQ/s1600/duvergier+de+hauranne.jpg" height="320" width="180" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ernest Duvergier de Hauranne</td></tr>
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Ernest Duvergier de Hauranne’s account of his journey in 1864-65
first appeared in France in a series of articles for the <u><a href="http://www.revuedesdeuxmondes.fr/home/english.php">Revue des Deux Mondes</a></u>, one of the most prestigious journals of its day – and was then
published in a two-volume set, <u><a href="https://archive.org/details/huitmoisenamriq02haurgoog">Huit Mois en Amerique:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lettres et Notes de Voyage</a></u>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Despite his youth, Duvergier de
Hauranne’s observations on the American North and West – he was never able to
travel behind the lines of the crumbling Confederacy – are mature beyond his
years, his prose bright, sharp and engaging.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With his series, Duvergier de Hauranne established himself for French audiences as a leading expert on the United States.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His “Huit Mois” in America also made
him a convinced believer in democratic republicanism and he emerged after his
return as an ally of up-and-coming political leaders like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Gambetta">Leon Gambetta</a> and
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Clemenceau">Georges Clemenceau</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally, his support for the
abolitionist cause and his confidence that the United States would quickly recover
from its traumatic Civil War had a significant effect on mid-century French
views of America.</div>
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Duvergier de Hauranne’s premature death, in 1877, cut short
what was by all accounts destined to be a life at the summit of French politics
and letters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Today’s reader will quickly
forgive him for the handful of mistakes he makes along the way of his American
narrative, as well as his occasional predictions about the Republic’s destiny
that time has demonstrated were misplaced.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What is
genuinely extraordinary, looking back at his account of his travels and
conversations, is his evident understanding of so much that remains fundamental
to U.S. politics and society, even to this day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Very much in the spirit of his intellectual mentor, de Tocqueville.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNCJN_ewQoLZBmMgbZD5OjT0XQqIjSu3MAHvid3toGIuD6J_mBzKUGDcVZFRXSJ7OBDMNxw9kYU3bi7xu9QcHcMOYtyNMWSObP5ZLNgxaVwEYf8BTGdrgGkwvvbsoImTnmmwgZUeQzYRae/s1600/huit+mois+en+amerique+frontispiece.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNCJN_ewQoLZBmMgbZD5OjT0XQqIjSu3MAHvid3toGIuD6J_mBzKUGDcVZFRXSJ7OBDMNxw9kYU3bi7xu9QcHcMOYtyNMWSObP5ZLNgxaVwEYf8BTGdrgGkwvvbsoImTnmmwgZUeQzYRae/s1600/huit+mois+en+amerique+frontispiece.png" height="320" width="220" /></a></div>
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I propose to follow Duvergier de Hauranne, step by step – so
to speak -- this month and next, as he visits Washington, D.C. – including in an
interview with Lincoln at the White House -- and tours the battle lines before Richmond
and Petersburg. I will be drawing
both from the original French edition and an excellent English translation
published in the nineteen seventies by the Lakeside Press. In light of the murderous attack in
Paris against the offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, it is also a useful
reminder of just how closely connected French and Americans have been, not just
today or yesterday, but throughout the past two and a half centuries.</div>
Mark Taplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18013095388375294492noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5442800540723899936.post-33430383793027723022014-12-22T00:19:00.001-05:002014-12-22T00:19:51.005-05:00Walter Roberts: Early Years at VOA -- "You Had the Feeling That You Were in the Battle..."<div class="MsoNormal">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWJ-SyhCYMWysqHlyjBWfeNjNDf62me_q0AsHqpl-hI0U243IQ5nbL3MuICXieNiW3HysBjQvUslbXcs5toIMslGM2O9HVaceycuQh1B-x9ioDoUH7NwU8_qktkxGqVYiwHIrdd23lu_tY/s1600/roberts+6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWJ-SyhCYMWysqHlyjBWfeNjNDf62me_q0AsHqpl-hI0U243IQ5nbL3MuICXieNiW3HysBjQvUslbXcs5toIMslGM2O9HVaceycuQh1B-x9ioDoUH7NwU8_qktkxGqVYiwHIrdd23lu_tY/s1600/roberts+6.jpg" height="225" width="400" /></a></div>
Walter's observations about the early days of the Voice of America -- which coincided with the beginning, too, of the practice of modern U.S. public diplomacy -- are revealing. He vividly recalls the frantic atmosphere of the war years, and the role of VOA's founding fathers -- <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._Sherwood">Robert Sherwood</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Houseman">John Houseman</a> -- in creating programming and laying the foundations for VOA's future. He also describes how the British encouraged their U.S. counterparts -- including FDR himself -- to split genuine public diplomacy activities including VOA from any "gray" or "black" propaganda operations carried out by the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Strategic_Services">Office of Strategic Services -- the OSS</a>. (Walter wrote at greater length about this same period in his 2009 article entitled <a href="http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/item/2009/1012/fsl/roberts_voice.html">The Voice of America: Origins and Recollections</a>.) </div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">"The Atmosphere was Warlike, as if You Were in the Middle of a Battle."</span></div>
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<i>As far as both the leadership and the rank and file is
concerned, I can best describe </i>[the atmosphere at the VOA]<i> by saying that these were people who were
deeply dedicated to their jobs and regarded it as a very, very important
adjunct to military operations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>These people worked 12, 16 hours a day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For them, they lived through the war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You had the feeling that you were in
the battle, they were so excited. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will tell you…on the day in February of 1943, when
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stalingrad">Stalingrad was finally rid of all Germans</a>, I was in the news desk, and there
were tickers there, the Reuters ticker, AP, UP and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_News_Service">INS</a> and I remember when the
news came through on the ticker that Stalingrad had finally been liberated, the
whole of the news desk got up and applauded.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was later described by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy">McCarthy,</a> “there you are, those
were all Communists. “<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because
they applauded the Soviet victory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That was not the case.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
Soviet Union was an ally of the United States, and when they won a battle, it
was reducing pressure on American troops.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So you asked about the atmosphere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The atmosphere was warlike, as if you were in the middle of a
battle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The only thing that didn’t
happen you weren’t shot at.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That
was the feeling of people they were excited, they were full of enthusiasm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That goes from number one – Donovan and
Sherwood – whom I did not know.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
mean I was, in 1942, twenty-five years old.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was a very, very junior person.</i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"...And Don't Take the Train. Fly!"</span></div>
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<i>When war broke out, on December 7, 1941, the Coordinator of
Information run by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._Donovan">Colonel “Wild Bill” Donovan, later General Donovan</a>, had a
subsection called FIS, the Foreign Information Service, and it was headed by
Robert Sherwood, who was Franklin Roosevelt’s speechwriter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was in Washington, of course.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He had the idea that whatever
information program, external international information program was to be created,
should be located in New York.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So one day Bob Sherwood took a train and
went to New York and personally looked for quarters, and found four floors, on
<a href="http://www.emporis.com/building/270-madison-avenue-new-york-city-ny-usa">270 Madison Ave.</a> in New York.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
he rented it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvGdskai7kCDmOuW-TUxIKRzq6zPm5eDQD25KXPW_QT7FhyphenhyphenowTYx3BVO31QkCtj5i-0K2kDztkVsj3Ost57BUOMXBv_aH_LIX89AXz0NPgiSAEKgYxn2YkvtHCGR3dmp-cK-me-eqKZQ9T/s1600/playwright-robert-e-sherwood.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvGdskai7kCDmOuW-TUxIKRzq6zPm5eDQD25KXPW_QT7FhyphenhyphenowTYx3BVO31QkCtj5i-0K2kDztkVsj3Ost57BUOMXBv_aH_LIX89AXz0NPgiSAEKgYxn2YkvtHCGR3dmp-cK-me-eqKZQ9T/s1600/playwright-robert-e-sherwood.jpg" height="320" width="239" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Robert Sherwood</td></tr>
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<i>He asked one of his good friends, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Fels_Barnes">Joseph Barnes</a>, a very,
very intelligent person, had been Moscow correspondent of the New York Herald
Tribune, which then still existed.</i><span style="font-style: italic;">
</span><i>Went to Harvard at the age of 14.</i><span style="font-style: italic;">
</span><i>As I remember him, and I had very little to do with him, a very, very
nice person – he was asked to run the New York office.</i><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><i>But he was not a radio man.</i><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><i>It became very clear to Sherwood that
what they could do best would be to start a radio operation, because all of
other media, books and leaflets and so on was in some respects minor to having
a strong radio voice from the United States.</i><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><i>So around Christmas 1941, he sent a telegram to John
Houseman, who was a director and producer in Hollywood, who spoke several
languages, was born in Romania of a British mother and an Alsatian father, and
asked him whether he would like to join.</i><span style="font-style: italic;">
</span><i>And to show you the sign of the times, he told him in the telegram: “and
don’t take the train.</i><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><i>Fly!”</i><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><i>Because at that time, flying between
the two coasts was an exception, very much of an exception.</i><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><i>If you had to go to Los Angeles from
New York, or you had to go to San Francisco, you went by train.</i><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><i>Like the Trans-Siberian train.</i><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>[Laughs.]</div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3dq7I8BfNEoCITDkJwuO8HfRRnyP0M9iDtqe1kI-sJMKnnEe4yskEPONk-p5fjaR6WWbFsWmCW3QRq9NHILzIbLPit5DDPqohdG1sXsHagBvEgaxif14bAqWXFr3W_yo8LDrdW86NN7ph/s1600/john+houseman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3dq7I8BfNEoCITDkJwuO8HfRRnyP0M9iDtqe1kI-sJMKnnEe4yskEPONk-p5fjaR6WWbFsWmCW3QRq9NHILzIbLPit5DDPqohdG1sXsHagBvEgaxif14bAqWXFr3W_yo8LDrdW86NN7ph/s1600/john+houseman.jpg" height="320" width="253" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">John Houseman</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i>So Houseman accepted, and flew to Washington, and in the
early days of January 1942, went to New York and started a radio program.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the first radio program – and the
dates I am still working on, the exact dates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://www.chriskern.net/essay/voaFirstBroadcast.html">But the first program in German – I think, and I say so in my article – went out on February the first, 1942.</a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Followed by French and Italian.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An English program was added on the
eighth of March.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That date I think
is firm, that is correct.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></div>
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<i>…One of the things that came to my mind, and I’m sure to
hundreds of other people who were involved in this – the United States we don’t
have any transmitters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, we did
have transmitters, but they belonged to private corporations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>NBC, CBS had shortwave
transmitters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Westinghouse,
General Electric, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powel_Crosley,_Jr.">Crosley Corporation</a> -- they had broadcasting mostly in
Spanish and Portuguese for Latin America.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in the middle thirties, or I should say perhaps ‘37,
they all started already doing some German broadcasts, and some Italian, and
some French broadcasts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And they
continued.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But they were not
United States governmental broadcasts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And one thing for the record, and I’m happy to do this interview.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The term Voice of America was invented
by Robert Sherwood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are lots
of people who claim that they had invented it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I know it was Bob Sherwood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I think the term Voice of America was used in the
second week of broadcasting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Until
then, and I have that from a BBC file, the programs are called “America Calling
Europe.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that in the three
languages:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>German, Italian and
French.</i><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"You Can't Run a Program that Combines Intelligence and Information"</span><br />
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[The relationship with the British was] <i>very close.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As
soon as the war broke out, I remember two Britishers – one from the BBC, and
the other one from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Warfare_Executive">the PWE, Political Warfare Executive</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, the British had already been
in this business for two years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>War started in Europe on September 1, 1939, and this was December ’41 –
so it’s two years and two months.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And they came over ostensibly to help.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And indeed they helped, beautifully.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I cannot deny that the British at
the beginning and throughout the war, tried to claim an advisory role to us, in
both intelligence and information.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And I might add here that…the British were very helpful in dividing
intelligence from information.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When they came over and found the Coordinator of Information, and Mr.
Donovan was more interested in intelligence work, and particularly in black and
gray operations in the field of radio, rather than white – what we hand in mind
in the Voice of America – the British made it very clear, and even I think got
to Roosevelt, saying “You can’t run a program that combines intelligence and
information.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, in June 1942,
Roosevelt divided the Coordinator of Information into the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Office_of_War_Information">OWI </a>and the OSS.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From then on the Office of War
Information was clearly a white operation; and the OSS was clearly a gray and
black operation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the OWI was
later, via the State Department, transformed into the U.S. Information Agency;
and OSS was later transformed into the Central Intelligency Agency.</i></div>
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Mark Taplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18013095388375294492noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5442800540723899936.post-5041017038359491262014-12-17T12:10:00.000-05:002014-12-17T12:10:01.764-05:00Walter Roberts: How I Got to the VOA -- "It Wasn't Simple..."<div class="MsoNormal">
The story of Walter's path to the United States, and to a long career in public diplomacy, is both extraordinary -- a fortuitious daisy chain of small miracles and individual determination -- as well as the reflection of the hard choices millions faced under the shadow of Nazism at the outset of World War II. <br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"It Is a Little Bit of an Extended Story..." </span></div>
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<i>It is a little bit of an extended story – it wasn’t
simple.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was 21 years old when
the Germans occupied Austria.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
came from a middle class family.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>My father was editor-in-chief of an economic weekly and previously a
university professor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What was
cataclysmic as far as I was concerned<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>-- and many of my friends and relatives -- was that the Nuremburg Laws...were extremely
broad as far as Jewish origin is concerned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> M</span>y father had gone through a rather anti-Semitic era in
Austria when he was at the university and one day decided to change
religions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> W</span>hen he married my
mother, they were married in a Protestant church.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was baptized when I was eight days old.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so I lived my life going to church every
Good Friday and assuming that I was not Jewish.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But before
Austria was annexed, we all became aware of how these laws were applied in
Germany, and for all intents and purposes I was a Jew.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the day Hitler occupied Austria, I
was prohibited from going to the university.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a Friday evening and my father didn’t go to work the
next Monday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></div>
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<i>...The
question was not how to get out of Austria.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The question was how to get into another country.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And all possibilities were basically
closed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My father, when Hitler
came to Germany, was a rather prescient man.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> S</span>o as early as when I entered high school, he sent
me to England.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then I took even
two semesters in 1935 -36 in the law school in London and obviously made a good
impression on one of the professors, a professor of Roman Law.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So when Hitler came to Austria, I wrote
this professor whether he could help me get back into England.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> H</span>e knew about a rather generous
scholarship at Trinity College at Cambridge University.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> H</span>e thought that I should apply for that and he would give his stamp
of approval.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> By God, I won the </span>scholarship and was able to get a British visa, and therefore able to go to
England.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"So I Got a Telephone Book of New York, and Wrote Down a Hundred Names"</span><br />
<br />
<i>...The quota number for Austrians [to enter the United States] was very small.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The quota numbers were assigned on the basis of the census in the United
States:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>how many Austrians lived
in the United States, how many Germans, how many Czechs and so on...The United States
did not recognize the annexation of Austria, but in one respect it did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It combined the German and the Austrian
quotas, which was of great help to Austrians because the Germans had almost
exhausted – I mean this was ’38, five years of Nazi regime, most of the people
from Germany who wanted to go to the United States had gone by that time – so
it was to the great advantage of Austrians.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The question
was how to get into the United States to prove that you have enough means to
live in the United States.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So
somebody had to sign what was called an <a href="http://travel.state.gov/content/visas/english/immigrate/immigrant-process/documents/support.html">affidavit of support.</a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I got a telephone book of New York, and I wrote down a
hundred names, and wrote letters – about a hundred.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Ninety-seven </span>did not reply.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Three of them replied and said they didn’t have enough means to support
me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But one of them said that he
knows a dentist in his house who said he would like to sponsor anybody from
overseas, from Germany or Austria.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And so he mentioned my name to him; he said “why not?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"It Was an Enormous Decision..."</span></div>
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<i>So I was in England in my first year, going for a Ph.D.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mind you, I was by that time twenty-three years
old and had no degree.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was
denied a degree in Austria but Cambridge University regarded me as a
postgraduate student and allowed me to go for my Ph.D.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the spring of 1939, I got a message from the American
Embassy in London that my quota number had been reached, and that my affidavit
of support by [the New York dentist]<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is
OK and I should go through a
certain medical exam and come down to London and pick up my visa.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> It </span>was an enormous decision.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do I go to the United States or do I
sort of hitch my star to a British education and a British future? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I decided to go to the United
States.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></div>
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<i>...I
had a girlfriend in Vienna, who had an uncle in Chicago, and she left for
Chicago before I even went to England.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And we stayed in touch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
arrived in the United States on the fifteenth of August of '39, two weeks before
the outbreak of war in Europe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We got married on the day of the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which made it very clear that war would break out any
day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And indeed it did, on
September 1, 1939.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I had to
make a decision.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do I throw all of
this away in England, and start anew here in the United States – or should I go
back to England?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>There was a very,
very unknown clause in the immigration law that allowed an immigrant to leave
the country for one year, which could be extended to 18 months.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I persuaded my new wife to go with
me to England.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was regarded
by everybody in the United States whom I knew, American or foreigner who had
just come to America, as the most idiotic thing you can do:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>you travel in wartime from the United
States to England. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But we
went on an American ship, spent the next year in England, came back to the
United States in June of 1940...John Harvard is a Cambridge graduate, so there is some sort of a relationship
between Cambridge and Harvard, and Cambridge wrote to Harvard that they would like
me to spend a third year of the PhD program at Harvard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which was granted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But where was the money?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There were British Treasury regulations
that did not allow Cambridge University, or rather Trinity College, to transfer
my scholarship.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the Dean of
the Harvard Law School told me, one day, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I may have a job for you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And there was a famous German-Austrian professor, with the
name of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Kelsen">[Hans] Kelsen, who wrote the Austrian constitution of 1919, who was aprofessor at Berkeley, and who came on a two-year assignment to Harvard</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And his English wasn’t very good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And he and Harvard Law School obtained
a Rockefeller fellowship; and I got that Rockefeller fellowship.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i><br />
<i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></i>
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<i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNZiMIQiV4TY889tGX-BlSBX31sxIoLmeGJsnAlZRgNmSSJliAt95imLrWKZB6gb6E8umyQcENVbliyA6VAYTq2Ss4vHUSCh1pd3x5tFCmtCeevBDci9YhmSqARlyjcjRLEzcFw0l8u1lv/s1600/roberts3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNZiMIQiV4TY889tGX-BlSBX31sxIoLmeGJsnAlZRgNmSSJliAt95imLrWKZB6gb6E8umyQcENVbliyA6VAYTq2Ss4vHUSCh1pd3x5tFCmtCeevBDci9YhmSqARlyjcjRLEzcFw0l8u1lv/s1600/roberts3.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></span></i></div>
<i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium; mso-spacerun: yes;">"I Answered in the Affirmative..."</span></div>
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<i>I finished the third year<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>-- almost –- but as I said in an article that I recently published,
sometime between Pearl Harbor and Christmas, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_L._Langer">I met a professor at Harvard, a famous man, William Langer, German history</a>, who asked me whether I knew
German.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I answered in the
affirmative.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And he said:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Would you like to work for the United States
government?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I said
certainly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You will hear from us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I later learned, Langer immediately
after Pearl Harbor signed up with the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_the_Coordinator_of_Information">Coordinator of Information</a>, in the
intelligence area.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I heard
about it, I assumed I would be asked to join his department.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that was not the case.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They wanted me to go to New York, where
the foreign information service, which was part of the Coordinator of Information,
was located.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I was asked, in
my first interview there, whether I could reconstruct the propaganda directive
of the German Propaganda Ministry, Dr. Goebbels and company, as to what was
being said every week to the German people, to rally them and to make them more
interested in the war, be more pro-war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I asked for certain documents that I needed, and they were supplied
through the American Legation in Bern, Switzerland, like the internal
broadcasts in Germany, and the main editorials of Nazi newspapers and so
on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I reconstructed
that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that seemed to have been
satisfactory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I was
hired.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is how I got to the
Voice of America.</i></div>
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Mark Taplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18013095388375294492noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5442800540723899936.post-6219117963947738252014-12-15T23:26:00.000-05:002015-02-19T12:26:30.145-05:00A Good and Grand Life in Public Diplomacy: Walter R. RobertsBack in 2010, while I was still at George Washington University, I had the good fortune to conduct a lengthly, on camera interview with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Roberts_(writer)">Walter Roberts -- a broadcaster, diplomat and scholar who lived a long, extraordinary life in public diplomacy</a>. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq230ig2FPZfwiT9xnCCNzahyphenhyphencC5pjfMx2fU8trVopxjiysB86yKRSxOVKQiVCRyjhjY40i4tkbwRnQnUk32fKEg5W1wnpVZ757W3qbT7voH7Eq8t0cp-5O3ey5z4Sq6eN02oilqz36P9h/s1600/Walter_r._roberts_VOA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq230ig2FPZfwiT9xnCCNzahyphenhyphencC5pjfMx2fU8trVopxjiysB86yKRSxOVKQiVCRyjhjY40i4tkbwRnQnUk32fKEg5W1wnpVZ757W3qbT7voH7Eq8t0cp-5O3ey5z4Sq6eN02oilqz36P9h/s1600/Walter_r._roberts_VOA.jpg" height="320" width="265" /></a></div>
Walter first came to the U.S. in 1939 as a graduate student and refugee from his native Austria. He began his career at the Voice of America, at the very outset of the U.S. government's wartime information effort. At the end of World War II, Walter transfered to the State Department, then joined the newly organized U.S. Information Agency in 1953. He served at USIA with distinction, occupying a number of senior posts in Washington before joining Ambassador George Kennan at the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia as counselor for public affairs. After his retirement from federal service, Walter taught public diplomacy at GWU -- in what was certainly one of the first U.S. university courses devoted to the study of international information programs. He was a prolific writer throughout his life -- on international broadcasting, on diplomacy, on Yugoslavia and on many other topics -- and created a fund that supports the study of public diplomacy, <a href="http://www.gwu.edu/~media/pressrelease.cfm?ann_id=21152">the Walter R. Roberts Endowment</a>.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://ipdgc.gwu.edu/passing-walter-roberts-public-diplomat">Walter passed away in June 2014, at 97</a>, remarkably lucid and insightful to the very end. Last month, at a memorial gathering at GW's Elliot School, Walter's family was joined by many former colleagues, friends and admirers who paid tribute to this remarkable man and shared their memories of his good and grand life. I propose to do the same here, by sharing excerpts from the 2010 interview that shed light on his life and career. Mark Taplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18013095388375294492noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5442800540723899936.post-29233811813918369752014-12-08T18:00:00.000-05:002014-12-08T18:05:21.560-05:00John McVickar: Remembered Vignettes of Embassy Moscow<div class="MsoNormal">
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijCYFvLkFOo12SjgIOIzupI-4ketAw7bVy1xVDjz3wcfyNtnYtxSUr1kGvlckLjRnL5-qz7k9L9ZL4ttvpdcZSjfh5Ow-3r4Y0BNpVv-cO7y_3VIGM5TSjkgdu4VGTLNV6QP2QJgNdyM_G/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-12-08+at+5.32.14+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijCYFvLkFOo12SjgIOIzupI-4ketAw7bVy1xVDjz3wcfyNtnYtxSUr1kGvlckLjRnL5-qz7k9L9ZL4ttvpdcZSjfh5Ow-3r4Y0BNpVv-cO7y_3VIGM5TSjkgdu4VGTLNV6QP2QJgNdyM_G/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-12-08+at+5.32.14+PM.png" height="202" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">U.S. Embassy, Moscow in the 1960s</td></tr>
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For any veteran of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow – I served
there myself twice, in the mid-eighties and then early nineties – McVickar’s
account of his tour from June 1959 to September 1961 will have a familiar
ring. The venues, from <a href="http://moscow.usembassy.gov/spaso.html">Spaso House</a>
(the U.S. Ambassador’s residence) to the Bolshoi, are entirely recognizable. So, too, the professional pressures of living
under persistent surveillance and petty bureaucracy – sadly a hallmark today, too, of diplomatic life in Putin’s Russia.</div>
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McVickar’s vantage point is from well down the pecking order.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I particularly like his anecdote about
sidling up to a conversation between Soviet leader Khrushchev and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llewellyn_Thompson">U.S. Ambassador to the U.S.S.R. Llewellyn "Tommy" Thompson</a> at the annual July 4<sup>th</sup> Spaso House reception, only to have Thompson
say:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“McVickar, get some more
ice.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Diplomatic life is one
part glamour, two parts figuratively getting more ice…</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-e6lJy57iKUb9DcWE_XBn5dSjZm3EmClqhHkePAKQkJXXgUo1S58kF_Mj2Cg30-tpGp8ibX99BmNqnWAUSjA8GN7gxNNhypZKc2netXQKG8rXnPyxKfDzRITl-WsVP7Agiz_56we0KJPj/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-12-08+at+5.53.28+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-e6lJy57iKUb9DcWE_XBn5dSjZm3EmClqhHkePAKQkJXXgUo1S58kF_Mj2Cg30-tpGp8ibX99BmNqnWAUSjA8GN7gxNNhypZKc2netXQKG8rXnPyxKfDzRITl-WsVP7Agiz_56we0KJPj/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-12-08+at+5.53.28+PM.png" height="320" width="258" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nikita Khrushchev and Mrs. Thompson at Spaso House, 1961 James Whitmore, Life Magazine</td></tr>
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But McVickar also made the most of the opportunity to mingle
with Russians whenever possible, around the city and during his travels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That, in my mind, was what made the
work in the Soviet Union exhilarating:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>listening to Russians in countless ad hoc conversations open up about
their closed society, against the backdrop of the Cold War’s riveting
headlines.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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McVickar writes that his service in Moscow “turned out to be
an intense daily venture” encompassing “three busy summers and two long, cold
but still adventureful [sic] winters.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It had an enduring effect on him, he says, “for better and worse.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Somewhat paradoxically, as he notes, it
led to him becoming both a conservative Republican and a convinced
environmentalist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His recollections of the life of a U.S. consul in Moscow are <a href="https://app.box.com/s/h4mu7wryi6s6oqj8jdlw">here</a>.</div>
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Mark Taplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18013095388375294492noreply@blogger.com0