The Foreign Service Journal, March 2019

50 MARCH 2019 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL join the vice president. And so at the last minute I was rushing to catch Air Force II to Europe. The trip got off to a rough start, but there was never a harsh word from the vice president or his staff about my late arrival. Now part of the delegation, I was included in all the meetings with foreign leaders, attended the audience with Pope John Paul II and had a seat at the table for meals at the PM’s office at 10 Down- ing Street in London and the Élysée Palace in Paris. When asked, I explained U.S. policy and actions, stressing the importance of international cooperation; but I wasn’t asked for my thoughts very often. About midway through the trip, the crisis ended and some 40 hostages were permitted to return to the United States. When the Air Force plane carrying them back touched down at Rheine Main Air base for debriefing and medical exams, Vice President Bush was present. We returned to the States in the early hours of July 4, having been away for nearly two weeks. At some point during the trip, probably feeling the pressure to show the White House was engaged on terrorism, President Ron- ald Reagan issued a statement saying he had asked Vice President Bush to chair a new interagency group to review counterterrorism policy. On the last leg of the trip, I put together my thoughts on the key interagency counterterrorism questions and gave them to Don Gregg, Bush’s assistant for national security affairs. Three days after we landed I received a handwritten note fromVice President Bush, thanking me for my support and for the memo I’d presented about the work of his new task force. Whether he ever looked at my memo, I’ll never know; but he remembered it andmade a point of thanking me for it. Bush was famous for his notes to leaders and people who had been helpful to him. It was his way of developing personal relation- ships with leaders around the world, but there was no particular reason for him to sendme a message. Such was the graciousness of George H. W. Bush. ‘Ah, Yes, I Know Ambassador Borg’ I had first met George Bush in late 1972, when he was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and I was working as special assistant to the Director General. As ambassador, he was con- cerned that diplomats assigned to work at the United Nations couldn’t afford the rent near the U.S. mission inmidtownMan- hattan. Unlike foreign postings where supplemental allowances helped cover costs for expensive places like London or Tokyo, there were no such allowances for diplomats living in expensive American cities. Bush thought this was wrong and detrimental to U.S. goals. He wanted to fix it. Tomy knowledge, no previous U.S. ambassador in New York had raised this issue. After our delegationmet with him to hear his concerns, we went back toWashington and arranged that all U.S. diplomats assigned to New York would receive new cost-of-living allowances. That was yet another example of Bush’s graciousness. I had several other occasions tomeet with him, most memora- bly when Terry Waite, the Anglican priest who was trying to broker the release of hostages in Lebanon, returned fromone of his first trips to the region and briefed the White House on his observa- tions. I crossed paths with him again in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1991, at the ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Having been appointed by President Bush as ambassador-designate toMyanmar/Burma, I was attending the East Asia Chief of Mission Conference scheduled for that weekend. In a session with the president, each of us made a brief statement. Mine was especially brief because the Senate was still holding my nomination in limbo. When he came around to shake each of our hands, President Bush said, “Ah, yes, I know Ambassador Borg.” Friends and former adversaries have writtenmuch about George H. W. Bush as president—a man committed to service to his nation and a courageous political figure who worked easily on both sides of the aisle. Bush 41 oversaw the end of the ColdWar without claiming credit or belittling the Soviets, pushed the Iraqis out of Kuwait with a broad international coalition, and raised U.S. taxes when it was necessary and when he probably recognized it A handwritten note from Vice President George H.W. Bush to Parker Borg. COURTESYOFPARKERBORG