The Foreign Service Journal, June 2003

policy input more anecdotal than analytical. Such criticism was most pronounced during the drive to German unification. Walters may not have helped his cause with his own books. Silent Missions , published in 1978 when he was sitting out the Carter years, was his bid to be seen as a Johnson. Yet the book’s Boswellian passages are most memorable. Where his exploits as an aide and interpreter with a front-row seat at history are set down, the book brims with vital- ity. But it is maddeningly discreet when discussing his trouble-shoot- ing diplomacy. According to one White House colleague, this “reti- cence” in his writings made Walters an unlikely suspect as Watergate’s “Deep Throat.” Germans developed a fuller appreciation of Walters’ transforma- tion. The tributes of Chancellor Kohl and Foreign Minister Genscher are a case in point. Germans, as some of their memoirs now show, were struck by Walters’ prediction in the spring of 1989 that the Berlin Wall would col- lapse and Germany would unite. Over the years Walters had honed his instincts about Germany. In 1989, he wanted to sound the tocsin. He once framed a newspaper report of his views — “Walters: German Unity Soon.” The article had appeared in the International Herald Tribune on Sept. 4, 1989 — two months before the fall of the wall and 13 months before unification. In an act of pride and defiance, he hung the piece in his Bonn office. Brent Scowcroft recalled later that Washington in 1989 did not want to initiate a discussion of German unity. Rather, in his words, it was inclined “to let sleeping dogs lie.” Walters drew the State Department’s ire with his unautho- rized pronouncements on the matter because their side effect was to com- 60 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U N E 2 0 0 3 A P P R E C I A T I O N AMERICAN DIPLOMACY’S SAMUEL JOHNSON Commentary from Vernon Walters, drawn from his table talk, as recorded by the author: ON HIMSELF: (After terrorists fired at the American Embassy in Bonn): I have only contempt for this attack. I wanted to feel like de Gaulle who, after he was once shot at, dismissed it as “just an incident along the road.” But then, not every- one is de Gaulle. (February 1991) I’m enjoying the World Cup. Action in soccer is continuous, unlike our football, where every few minutes people stop play to mill about and confer. (July 1994) ON THE EUROPEANS: Americans and Germans show a hypochondriacal compulsion to take each other’s temperature. Bismarck once said, “We fear God and no one else.” Now Germans are saying, “We don’t fear God but everyone else.” (June 1991) (After attending Wagner’s Lohengrin in Beyreuth): Wagnerian opera is only a German speech set to music. It goes on and on. The first act lasted an hour and a half. The second act lasted two hours. The third act I spared myself. (July 1991) Eastern Germany is like deep, dark Africa during the days of Stanley and Livingston. Everyone is eager to explore it, as long as good hotels are available. (May 1991) Frederick the Great emphasized human rights. … I was reminded of this last night as I read myself to sleep with the Prussian-American Friendship Treaty. (August 1991) France most enjoys it when it stands alone, knowing that the world is out of step with France. (March 1991) Germans think the French brought back Germany into polite society. But the French were real hard-liners at first. We had to use can-openers on them. (June 1991) The Marshall Plan was like building on a cleared site because World War II had devastated Europe. Even three years after the war’s end, only every other street light was burning in Paris. Food rationing was still in effect, except in Belgium, where we would dart over for cream puffs. (June 1995) I once encountered Alexander Dubcek (who led the “Prague Spring” uprising in 1968) and told him, “You were a lantern blazing in the darkness of the night.” But I was thinking at the time, “He was dreaming the impossible dream: socialism with a human face.” (April 1991) WARNINGS: The danger is that the twentieth century will end how it began: with a war in the Balkans. (May 1991) We made a mistake in dealing with the Iraqi generals after the Gulf War. We should have told them, along the lines of what we told Hindenburg and Ludendorff after World War I: “We will not deal with anyone representing Kaiser Wilhelm.” (August 1994)