REAGAN NOMINATES WALTERS TO BE AMBASSADOR TO U.N.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000201110065-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 21, 2010
• Sequence Number: 65
• Publication Date: February 9, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/21 : CIA-RDP90-00806R000201110065-5
P TP 1 (P Ef:RED
By John M. Goshko
Washington Post Staff Writer
WASHINGTON POST
9 February 1985
Reagan Nominates Wal ers
To Be Ambassador to U.N.
President Reagan yesterday
named retired lieutenant general
Vernon A. Walters, a former deputy
director of the Central Intelligence
Agency and the State Department's
chief diplomatic troubleshooter
since 1981, to succeed Jeane J.
Kirkpatrick as ambassador to the
United Nations.
The nomination had been expect-
ed since last week when Kirkpatrick
announced her resignation. If con-
firmed by the Senate, Walters
would emerge from the shadowy
world of intelligence and secret dip-
lomatic missions. into the limelight
of public diploacy for the first
time in his 44 years of intermittent
government service. Walters, 68,
has undertaken missions for pres-
idents of both parties. But his
strong anticommunist views and
wide-ranging contacts with foreign
military leaders, particularly in
Latin America and Africa, have
made him a favorite of conservative
Republican administrations.
Thus, his outlook on global affairs
strongly resembles that of Kirkpa-
trick, who was well-liked by conser-
vatives for seeking a tough U.S. re-
sponse to leftist insurgency in Third
World areas such as Latin America.
Kirkpatrick is known to have en-
dorsed Walters' selection. And,
when reporters yesterday asked his
opinion of her performance at the
United Nations, Walters replied, "I
think she's done a fantastic job .... If I could do
half as well, I would be well-pleased."
However, administration sources said it is un-
likely that Walters will function like Kirkpatrick,
who had considerable influence with Reagan and
who seemed at times to be an independent in the
-abinet, frequently at odds with moderates such
is Secretary of State George P. Shultz.
Shultz was the leading advocate of giving the
J.N. post to Walters, who, as ambassador-at-
arge, has been a Shultz subordinate and is re-
tarded as loyal to the secretary's policies. Shultz
ilso had argued for dropping the U.N. ambassa-
lor's Cabinet status so as to bring the post under
State Department control. But even though the
secretary lost that battle, Walters hinted yester-
dzy that he expects to take his lead from Shultz.
"I do not intend to be just a messenger boy,"
he said in a brief appearance before reporters.
"But I do not intend to make difficulties for the
policymakers of the United States."
Walters first drew attention as a gifted linguist
whose mastery of eight languages caused five
presidents and many other important officials to
use him as an interpreter in meetings with for-
eign leaders. One of his closest relationships was
with Richard M. Nixon, whom he accompanied to
Caracas in 1958, when the then-vice president
was besieged by a mob.
Nixon appointed Walters deputy CIA director
in May 1972, and a month later Walters became
embroiled in the Watergate controversy. At the
request of H.R. (Bob) Haldeman, Nixon's chief of
staff, Walters tried to wave the Federal Bureau
of Investigation off the Watergate case by telling
FBI Director L. Patrick Gray that continued in-
vestigation might expose CIA operations in Mex-
ico.
A few days later, after looking into the matter,
Walters told White House counsel John W. Dean
III that the Watergate investigation posed no
-danger to CIA activities. Walters later wrote in
his memoirs, -"Silent Missions": "It simply did not
occur to me that the chief of staff to the presi-
dent might be asking me to do something that
was illegal or wrong."
In 1964, when the Brazilian army overthrew
the civilian government, leftists in Brazil charged
that Walters, then the military attache at the
U.S. Embassy in Rio de Janeiro, had encouraged
the coup. Walters denied the charge, and no ev-
idence has been offered to support it.
Later, while military attache in Paris in the
late 1960s and early 1970s, he arranged secret
negotiations between then-national security af-
' fairs adviser Henry A. Kissinger and North Viet-
namese diplomats.
Early in the Reagan administration, Walters
made a secret trip to Cuba to explore the pos.
sibility of improved relations with President
Fidel Castro. Last year, after rumors that sup.
porters of the rightist Salvadoran political leader
Roberto D'Aubuisson were plotting to murder
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/21 : CIA-RDP90-00806R000201110065-5