The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2004

mance and achievements in helping coordinate U.S. Army, Air Force and CIA participation in the operation on the American side. From 1965 to 1966, Amb. Clingerman was on detail to the University of Paris-Sorbonne, where he pursued African studies prior to assignment in July 1966 as deputy chief of mission in Cotonou. Embassy Brussels, where he was political officer, was his next assignment from 1969 to 1972. After Brussels, he was in the department for two years, successively as educational and cultural officer, career management officer and per- sonnel placement officer. Then, fol- lowing a year’s study at the Army War College, he served as deputy chief of mission in Lusaka, earning the depart- ment’s superior honor award for his work there. Mr. Clingerman was named ambas- sador to Lesotho in 1979. Returning to Washington in 1981, he held a senior position in human resources until detailed to the U.S. Information Agency as area director of its African division in 1983. USIA bestowed its distinguished honor award on him for his outstanding leadership and man- agement. He served thereafter as a Senior Foreign Service inspector in the department until his retirement in January 1987. For some 13 years after retirement, Amb. Clingerman was a member of the faculty of Troy State University and taught courses on international rela- tions and U.S. foreign policy formula- tion at U.S. Army and Air Force bases in Germany, the United Kingdom and the Azores, and psychological warfare strategies at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, N.C. Amb. Clingerman’s wife Ruth died of cancer in August 2000. He is sur- vived by three sisters, Marion Shotwell, Ethel Donn, and Ann Lauterbach, all of Michigan, and one brother, Edgar Clingerman, also of Michigan. Elizabeth Ann Swift Cronin , 63, retired FSO and a former hostage in Iran, died May 7 in a horseback riding accident near her home in Rector- town, Va. Born in Washington, D.C., Mrs. Cronin was raised in Georgetown and was an alumna of the Madeira School in McLean, Va. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1962. Then known by her maiden name, Elizabeth Ann Swift, she joined the Foreign Service in 1963, and was posted first to Manila. She returned to State in 1965, and was assigned to Jakarta in 1968 as a political officer. She studied at Cornell University in 1971 and 1972, and was then assigned to State. In 1979, she was posted to Tehran as deputy political counselor, and within months found herself a hostage to followers of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. With the other U.S. hostages, Ms. Swift was freed in January 1981. She was assigned to the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University for the 1981-1982 academic year. She then served as a senior con- sular officer in Athens (1984-1986), Kingston (1986-1989) and London (1993-1995). From 1989 to 1992, as deputy assistant secretary for Overseas Citizens’ Services, she aided family members of U.S. victims of the hijack- ing by Libyan agents of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. She retired from the Foreign Service in 1995. “I remember Ann well,” recalls AFSA President John Limbert, a fel- low hostage in Iran. “I was also in the political section, where it was a joy working with her. I regret that we had only a few months together as colleagues in Tehran before the roof fell in. She would not accept Washington’s view that ‘everything would somehow turn out all right,’ but saw clearly that we — and Iran — were in serious trouble even before the shah came to the U.S. I owe her a lot. On Nov. 4, 1979, I was outside the second-floor chancery door with a gun to my head, and the Iranians were threatening to shoot me and the RSO if the door wasn’t opened. It was clear that no help was on the way, and Ann probably saved my life by agreeing to open that door.” At a May 11 memorial service in Upperville, Va., where Ambassador Parker Borg delivered the eulogy, friends and former colleagues paid tribute toMs. Swift, “a Foreign Service officer of the highest competence and dedication,” as fellow hostage Ambassador Bruce Laingen put it. “I knew Ann as a colleague for only a short time in Tehran, but [that was long] enough to know what a spirited woman she was, a fighter for her con- victions, who would often challenge, but always with a smile.” By a “quirk of fate,” Amb. Laingen recalled, Ann Swift was the ranking officer at the embassy when it was stormed by the followers of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini on the morning of Nov. 4, 1979. Laingen, then chargé d’affaires, and Ms. Swift’s boss had gone to the Foreign Ministry. Just before being taken hostage, Swift was able to describe the rapidly deteriorat- ing security situation at Embassy Tehran in a phone call to Assistant Secretary for Near East Affairs Harold Saunders. She courageously refused to give her captors the combination to an embassy safe and endured being blind- folded and tied to a chair in terror for her life. “She was on the other end of the telephone wire with me, as I sat in the foreign minister’s office, trying my best to provide leadership, but she was physically where leadership was most 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 75 I N M E M O R Y