THE AMBASSADOR AND THE CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00901R000500110020-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 5, 2000
• Sequence Number: 20
• Publication Date: January 1, 1979
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

Approved For Release 2001/08/01 : CIA-RDP91-00901 R0005001 10 STATINTL
ARTICLE APPEARED FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL
ON PAGE 2 -Zy January 1979 0
RAYMOND L THURSTON
0 nce upon a time when the big
trees were all little, as my
father used to preface his bed-time
stories, I was a deputy chief of mis-
sion in a large embassy presided
over by a grizzled ambassador well
past his sixtieth birthday. I was
twenty years younger.
Though there was a certain
mutual respect, the relationship be-
tween us was prickly. The genera-
tion gap was difficult to bridge.
Now that I'm on his side of it, I'm
more understanding. But this has
come too late for practical conse-
quences. The old ambassador went
to the section of the happy hunting.
grounds reserved for diplomats
many years ago. I remember him
A past contributor and memberof the edi.
lariat board. Ray Thurston tells us he's glad
to be back in the pages of the Journal. His
Foreign Service career included posts in
Canada. Europe. South Asia. Latin
America and A frica as well as several stints
on the banks of the Potomac. He was Am-
bassador to Haiti (1961-63) and to Somalia
(1965-69). Since his retirement front the Ser-
vice he has been active in international
academic and related educational pro-
grams, principally in the exotic and unchar-
tered realm of shipboard education for uni-
versity undergraduates and older adults.
Now only occasionally at sea, he leads for
the most part a landlubbe's life, alternating
between a home in Florida on the Gulf of
Mexico and one in Italy overlooking Lake
Trasimeno. It was on the shores of the latter
that Hannibal of Carthage decimated the
Roman legions in.217 B.C. His wife, a na-
tive of Italy. is quick to point out that while
Hannibal ivon the battle. he lost the war, a
useful reminder for both soldiers and dips
Somali.
fondly with that bittersweet senti-
ment former adversaries have for
each other. My memories of him
take on an even greener hue when I
read the latest CIA expose. One of
our differences had to do. with the
extensive operations of our so-
called spooks in the country in
which we served.
It was---and is-a very small
country both in size and popula-
tion. The bulk of it is an odd-sized
peninsula, but it holds sway over
detached pieces of real estate
called glorious isles by romantic
poets and piles of rock and gravel
by at least one down-to-earth
Marine guard in the embassy at the
time.
These rock piles had seen a lot of
history and had figured promi
nently in the seminal origins of
Western civilization. More to the
point, they had become after World
War 11 a testing ground in the
struggle to contain the expansionist
crusade of the Muscovites and
their fiefs.
So it was not surprising in the
middle 1950s, when the ambas-
sador and I were working in tan-
dem together in this mythical yet
real kingdom, to find the CIA all
over the place. They were in the
embassy proper, in the economic
and military aid missions, in the
military attache staffs and God
knows where else, all with the en-
thusiastic cooperation and support
of our official hosts who were glad
to have us on their side. By the
way, they had a remarkable na-
tional penchant for the skulduggery
surrounding intelligence opera-
tions.
It follows that the CIA boys and
girls had a ball. Quite apart from
the easy pickings locally, there
were nearby areas in which their
writ ran. They were also enjoying
the prestigious fruits of recent hap-
penings in Iran and Guatemala.
Their big boss, Allen Dulles,
would drop in occasionally in his
converted C-54; he'd had- part of
the interior screened off as a bed-
room featuring a large double bed
and adjacent- bookshelves brim-
ming with reading material in which
to browse on his frequent global
travels. I was impressed.
Kermit Roosevelt, another CIA
luminary, would also pass through.
He had a provocative way of de-
preciating the efficacy of traditional
diplomacy in contrast to the suc-
cesses achieved by'CIA methods.
It was a little hard to take.
My ambassador was no slouch as
a cold warrior. We shared a com-
mon aversion to Kremlin'tactics
and objectives. But his talents and
tastes ran to the tried and true, nar-
row paths of diplomacy. He was,
moreover, accustomed from his
years as a pre-World War 11 dip.
lomat tq the comfortable intimacy
of small missions in which an am-
bassador or minister was the head
of a family of two or three diploma-
Approved For Release 2001/08/01 : CIA-RDP91-00901 R000500110020-2