The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2004

RP : Beirut was the most fun. I served there three times, once as a language student, once as political officer, and once as ambassador. The Lebanese are very hospitable, and you get to know a lot of people. Even the last tour as ambassador in the late 1970s, which was a time of great danger — my predecessor had been assassinated — was much better than today in terms of security for our personnel. We were much freer to move around. Even so, it’s no fun to have to go everywhere in an armored vehicle and not be able to stop and go into a shop or look at the sights with- out a bunch of bodyguards jumping out and standing around you, intimi- dating everybody. The third time I went to Beirut, I should note, I was plucked out of Algiers and sent there on very short notice. Algiers was a tough post, although the security situation was nothing like what it is today. Back then (1974-1977) I was the only U.S. ambassador accredited to an Arab country who didn’t have a bodyguard. But I was the first ambassador to serve there after the resumption of diplomatic relations, which had been broken in 1967 and restored in late 1974. So there was a lot of work to be done. I liked the Algerians, but the infrastructure there for diplomats and the possibilities were very restricted. Housing was a great problem, and my staff was generally unhappy with the fact that Algerians never returned telephone calls. It was a frustrating place to work in, but relations have improved a good deal since then. Still, Beirut was a much easier place to work. I knew everybody, or had access to everybody, and people were willing to help. The only prob- lem was, there was no functioning government; it was basically anarchy. Courts did not operate; judges were afraid to sentence people for fear of reprisals. The president’s power did not extend much beyond the presi- dential palace. But the Lebanese are very entrepreneurial and found ways to make things work. FSJ : Who were some of the people you especially admired or were inspired by during your Foreign Service career? RP : I liked all my chiefs but one, who shall be nameless. My first boss, the consul general in Sydney, was Orsen Nielsen, long since gone to his reward. His first post had been St. Petersburg, in 1917. It was 1949 when I met him, so that had been 32 years earlier: it was so unbelievably remote to me. It wasn’t until I went back to Amman, I think in 1989 — 33 years after I’d left that post — that I realized how short a span that actual- ly was. Nielsen was old-line Foreign J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 4 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 53