The Foreign Service Journal, June 2012

some suits. Always the jester, NBC’s State Department correspondent, Bernie Kalb, replied: “No big deal. My shoemaker will be flying in from Trieste!” It is not clear that Haig got to wear the suits that Tarpey presumably cre- ated for him, at least as Secretary of State, for Pres. Reagan fired him just six weeks later without explanation. Haig broke a self-imposed silence about the mysterious circumstances of his departure from Foggy Bottom two months later, while delivering a speech to a private group on “the four pillars of American foreign policy.” Informed that Haig had been paid $25,000 for the speech, Bernie Kalb said, “Gee, I would have given them eight pillars for half that!” Not long after succeeding Haig as Secretary of State, George P. Shultz took off for Europe. Ahead of his stop in Germany, Embassy Bonn put out a booklet welcoming “Secretary of State Charles Schultz.” It was probably the only publication of its kind that ever became a collector’s item. A few years later, Shultz traveled to Uruguay to attend a presidential inau- guration. After a meeting at the Hotel Plaza Victoria, Assistant Secretary for Latin American Affairs Tony Motley was unable to find his boss’s limousine. He became frantic, shouting, “This re- minds me of the time when I was try- ing to start a war [in Grenada in 1983] and couldn’t because I was standing at the corner of 20th and Pennsylvania Avenue and couldn’t get a cab!” During the Shultz era (1982-1989), Deputy Spokesperson Phyllis Oakley conducted many of the noon briefings. One day she was asked about a rumor that Shultz had a tiger tattoo on his posterior. “I have no way of knowing,” Oakley answered, a line that followed her around for years. (Shultz was a graduate of Princeton and a fan of its Tigers football team.) Stuck in the Mud I found traveling abroad with Sec- retaries of State was often overrated. No matter how interesting the venue, I seemed to spend most of my time locked in a hotel press room grinding out stories on deadline. And even if there was an opportunity to see the country, sometimes a crisis elsewhere would cut short the visit. One adventure that went ahead as planned was a Shultz safari in Africa, back in January 1987. Two hours into a Sunday outing at the Masai Mara game preserve in Tanzania, the Secre- tary’s jeep (one of several on the expe- dition) got stuck in the mud. While aides tried to extract the ve- hicle, Shultz wandered over the muddy turf to a grassy area where I was standing. We observed the messy situation before us. “A metaphor for U.S. foreign policy?” I jokingly asked. “Stuck in the mud,” he replied, smil- ingly. Secretary of State Madeleine Al- bright (1997-2001) had a habit of scheduling visits to exotic places and then having to cancel because of unan- ticipated developments. Examples were Timbuktu (in northern Mali) and the Taj Majal. Kalb vs. Kalb Accomplished as Bernie Kalb was, he always lived in the shadow of his brother, Marvin. Bernie told me about the time their mother called the CBS 38 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 1 2 One spokesman had a habit of practicing his golf swing during particularly long-winded questions. CHANGE OF ADDRESS Moving? Take AFSA With You! Change your address online, visit us at http://www.afsa.org/ address_change.aspx Or Send change of address to: AFSA Membership Department 2101 E Street NW Washington, DC 20037