THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | APRIL-MAY 2025 81 monitoring efforts, I spent the day escorting the former president to dusty polling places in the slums of Port-au-Prince. He was gracious, inquisitive, and tireless under difficult conditions and security threats—a true statesman. At his request, we took Carter to meet popular but controversial leftist presidential candidate Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who subsequently surprised most foreign observers by winning the election in a landslide. Sad to see him pass on … Steve Kashkett Senior FSO, retired New Year’s Eve in Tehran Iran, 1977 My first and only contact with President Carter was during his overnight visit to the Shah of Iran on New Year’s Eve in 1977, when he praised Iran as “an island of stability” in an unstable Middle East. I had received a personal letter of thanks from the woman directing State’s new Bureau of Human Rights for something I had done as political counselor in Tehran, and I enjoyed a handshake and pleasantries as the president saluted the embassy’s senior officers and their spouses before climbing into Air Force One. In retrospect (I am now 93 years old), President Carter had the misfortune to be pressured by many Rockefellers and others to let the shah into the United States for medical treatment. He was honest but could never convince a suspicious Ayatollah Khomeini— whose own maneuvers and half-truths had convinced Washington that he was the right foil to the Soviets—to admit the shah. Khomeini had, after all, released us Americans from the first takeover of the embassy back in February 1979. So, despite repeated warnings from our embassy in Tehran that we could never convince Khomeini, the second embassy takeover in November 1979 lasted 14 months—and lost Carter his reelection. Happily, we all know this defeat did not stop President Carter from his unique lifelong devotion to truth, peace, and support of human rights around the world. George B. Lambrakis Senior FSO, retired Brighton/Hove, England The “Anti-Hero” with a Heroic Legacy Washington, D.C., 1977 When Jimmy Carter entered hospice care in February 2023, Taylor Swift’s song “Anti-Hero” was atop the pop music charts. That caused me to reflect that “Anti-Hero” might have seemed the most appropriate appellation for the 39th president, when I first encountered him at a meeting in the Cabinet Room in March 1977. As an FSO with five years of experience in Vietnam, I had been selected as a member of the first postwar mission to be sent by the new president to Hanoi. As I entered the West Wing, I noticed the absence of any photos of the new president, which made the White House feel bland and devoid of its prior grandeur. Carter’s informal attire, along with his refusal to have “Hail to the Chief” played when he entered the room during formal events, reinforced that anti-hero image. At that meeting, however, I had the opportunity to observe President Carter’s “heroic” inner character. With deep empathy, he articulated the pain that families of the more than 2,500 U.S. military personnel who were still missing in Vietnam were enduring. Our mission was to begin accounting for those MIAs—a process that continues in 2025, the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. In July 1979, I again saw that empathy with the president’s decision to reopen America’s doors to the “Boat People” refugees from Vietnam, who were tragically dying at sea as they desperately sought freedom. I will never forget witnessing the spontaneous standing ovation that America received at the UN Conference in Geneva, when Vice President Walter Mondale announced President Carter’s decision to accept 168,000 Indochina refugees a year, thus saving the Boat People. It is the ultimate irony that at what was arguably the most significant humanitarian achievement of his presidency, perhaps reflecting his anti-hero instincts, Jimmy Carter was not present. Ambassador Kenneth M. Quinn U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia, 1996-1999 President Emeritus, the World Food Prize Foundation Des Moines, Iowa Kenneth Quinn was the interpreter and junior-most member of the delegation for the first postwar mission to Vietnam, led by Amb. Leonard Woodcock in March 1977. He is in the left corner of the photo, next to the window. COURTESY OF KENNETH M. QUINN
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