FORMER DIPLOMATS: HOW MUCH SHOULD THEY TELL?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302640079-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 20, 2012
• Sequence Number: 79
• Publication Date: November 27, 1981
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302640079-4
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NEW YORK TIMES
27 NOVEMBER 1981
Former Dip' lomats:
How Much Should They Tell?
By BERNARD BERNARD GWERTZMAN
Special to The New York Thom
WASHINGTON, Nov. 25 ? As Wil-
liam H. Sullivan recounts the tale, it
was "a complete surprise" when he
was asked in 1977 to become the
American Ambassador to Iran. Mr.
Sullivan, perhaps the leading South-
east Asian specialist in the Foreign
Service, had never served in the Mid-
dle East and "knew little about its cul-
ture or its ethos."
"While I recognized the importance
of Iran, the proposal did not make rue
jump for joy," the retired diplomat
says in a 296-page book, "Mission to
Iran," which has just been published.
Mr. Sullivan, it turned out, was to be
the last United States envoy to Iran.
He was there when the Shah left the
country and Ayatollah Ruhollah Kho-
meini returned from exile. He de-
parted seven months before the take-
over of the American Embassy.
Now, just two years later, he has
written a highly readable, controver-
sial memoir that is, in effect, a cri de!
coeur by a proud diplomat who makes
It clear that he thinks Jimmy Carter's
White House, and in particular Zbig-
niew Brzezinski, President Carter's ,
national security adviser, did as much
as anyone to "lose" Iran.
Mr. Carter and Mr. Brzezinski are
working on their own memoirs and un-
? doubtedly will have something differ-
ent to say about Mr. Sullivan's sweep-
ing conclusion that after he departed
Iran in April 1979, "the feckless man-
ner in which the Carter Administra-
tion conducted its affairs continued,
the erratic ambitions of Brzezinski
were unabated, and the failure to un-
derstand events in Iran was com-
pounded."
'It Was Not Our Finest Hour'
"All of this led, in November of 1979,
to the taking of the hostages in the
American Embassy and to a period of
national humiliation unmatched in our
history," he writes. "It was not our fin-
est hour."
Mr. Sullivan's memoir is the latest
example of a rapidly growing cottage,
industry in Washington in which for-
mer diplomats take to the typewriter
to write about their experiences and
publicize their views of policy and,
events. David Newsom, who retired in
January as Under Secretary of State
for Political Affairs. has written an ar-
iicle criticizing GUlf poli-
cies of the Carter and Reagan Admin-
istrations; Herman Ellis, former Am-
bassador to Egypt, has publicized his
view that the Camp David process has
run out of steam and that a different
Middle East policy should be found.
The proliferation of memoirs and ar-
ticles by such well-known and re-
spected career diplomats as Mr. Sulli-
van, Mr. Ellis and Mr. Newsom have
alarmed some past and present mem-
bers of the Foreign Service who be..
lieve that retired officers should keep
their thoughts to themselves. If they
feel compelled to write, this school of
thought holds, they should put consid-
erable distance between the event and
the writing of it.
"I think it is outrageous for career
Foreign Service officers to write mem-
oirs about what they have just done,"
a veteran diplomat still on active duty
said the other day. "Every President
comes into office _questioning the loy-
alty of the Foreign Service. When criti-
cal memoirs start appearing, it only
makes it harder to convince Presi-
dents in the future that we can be
trusted."
The debate is, of course, not new.
When Dean Rusk was Secretary of
State in the 1900's, he was highly in-
censed by the articles and books writ-
ten by former aides. to John F. Ken-
nedy, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and
Theodore Sorensen, and a book about
the State Department by Roger Hills-
Man.
All three disclosed "classified" in-
formation relating to relatively recent
events. Mr. Rusk shares the view of
such other retired officers as Philip
Habib that Foreign Service officers
should not write about contemporary
events. He has never published a
memoir. But Mr. Rusk did record his
experiences for Columbia University's
oral history project so that they would
be available to scholars inthe future.
On the other side, the literature of
diplomatic history would certainly be
much poorer if such former ambassa-
dors to Moscow as George F. Kennan
and Charles Bohlen had not written
about their careers. And Henry A. Kis-
singer, completing the second of three
volumes on his experiences, differs
sharply with Mr. Rusk on the propri-
ety of former Secretaries of State tell-
ing all.
Mr. Sullivan's book is limited to Iran
and is not an attempt even to tell the
detailed story of the two years when he
was Ambassador. Rather, it is an epi-
sodic and pointed account in which he
reveals how he and the Carter Admin-
istration ? principally Mr. Brzezinski
? came to a parting of the ways over
framing policy even though Mr. Sulli-
van was still the Ambassador in Tehe-
ran.
- At one point, he says, "I received a
most unpleasant and abrasive cable
from Washington, which, in my judg-
ment, contained an unacceptable as-
persion upon my loyalty."
'Too Much for My Tolerance'
"In the whole cascade of frustration
that had swept over me during the past
few months, this proved to be too much
for my tolerance," he wrote.
"When I was told by telephone from
the State Department that the insult-
ing message had originated at the
White House, I thought that I no longer
had a useful function to perform on be-
half of the President in Teheran."
Mr. Sullivan says that he remained
on post to help in the evacuation of
Americans but that, since hens longer
had the confidence of the White House,
"and since I no longer held them in ap-
propriate respect, there was no need
for me to disguise my attitudes
through the use of tactfullanguage."
"My communications became not
only abrupt but occasionally acerbic."
he said.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302640079-4