The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2010

work, after all; you want to be where the action is and are eager to lead. FSJ: Besides Iran, do any of your other overseas postings stand out in your memory? LBL: For me, professionally, the Indo-Pakistani issues always made life interesting. Still, I did not care for Karachi when I was there in the 1960s. It’s not an attractive place to live, and even then it was violent. But my whole family loved Afghanistan, where I was deputy chief of mission from 1968 to 1971. The ambassador then was Robert Neumann, whose oldest son, Ron, would later become the ambassa- dor there—setting a record unequaled to this day by having a father and son serve as ambassadors in the same post. At one point while I was in Kabul, Vice President Spiro Agnew was com- ing for a visit. The Peace Corps Volun- teers in the country made it clear that they wanted to stage a demonstration rather than meet with him. As DCM, I was assigned to meet with and calm them down; they showed up for the meeting. FSJ: You were ambassador to Malta from 1977 to 1979. What were some of the challenges you faced there as chief of mission, and how did you handle them? LBL: While Valletta was a very small post, at least in those days, my role there was pretty much what it would have been anywhere else: to win friends and influence people, and keep the mission running smoothly. That wasn’t hard, fortunately, because the Maltese are pro-American and pro- European. But we did have concerns about the Libyan presence there: Muammar Gaddafi had his eyes on Malta, and the embassy later got a Ma- rine security guard contingent when things became a bit sensitive. In addition, the Maltese prime min- ister, DomMintoff, didn’t like our hav- ing any naval presence and famously banned visits by ships of the Sixth Fleet. But I got along just fine with him; in fact, he used to invite me to his cottage by the sea for his special soup. Incidentally, my three sons are active sailors, and while we lived inMalta they had an 18-foot dinghy, painted with the colors of the Stars and Stripes, pre- tending to be the absent Sixth Fleet. All in all, I enjoyed my time in Malta; how could one not? I’ve been back twice, once as part of a presiden- tial delegation for the 25th anniversary of the country’s independence. FSJ: How did you end up returning to Iran in 1979? LBL: The February 1979 Iranian Revolution had touched off a hot policy debate in Washington. Some people advocated pulling out of the country, but the consensus was that we had too many vital national interests in that part of the world not to maintain a high- level diplomatic presence in Tehran. So to replaceWilliamSullivan, the U.S. government nominatedWalter L. Cut- ler, our former ambassador to Zaire, to be chief of mission in Tehran. The new Iranian government grant- ed agrément. But then the U.S. Senate passed a resolution by Sen. Jacob Javits, R-N.Y., denouncing Tehran for its human rights record, focusing espe- cially on treatment of the Jewish mi- nority. In response, Tehran withdrew its agrément. By this point I had completed my tour in Valletta, and was enjoying home leave on that family farm inMinnesota. I had been assigned to the Office of the Inspector General and was getting ready to lead an inspection team to Ar- gentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. But I never made it. Once again, as had hap- pened in 1953, I was diverted from a totally different part of the world to Tehran, this time as chargé d’affaires. My wife urged me not to go, but as I told her, I always wanted to be where the action is. And I assured her, as the State Department had earlier assured me, that it would only be for six to eight weeks, until a permanent ambassador was assigned. And the rest is history. FSJ: Over the years, you’ve been in- terviewed repeatedly about your expe- rience as a hostage. Rather than ask you to go over that painful ground again, perhaps you could comment on what you learned from that experience. LBL: First, it gave me an enormous respect for the role of my staff, includ- ing a sizable Marine detachment, rep- resenting the United States on the front lines in a very stressful situation. And I gained a new appreciation of the role of the family in the Foreign Service, both in making possible the work that we do and in the lives that we lead. I feel particularly strongly about my wife, Penne, who did so much to lead back in the U.S. She organized a group called FLAG (Family Liaison Action Group) and stayed in touch with all the family members of the U.S. hostages, keeping up their spirits —and ours. In the process, she showed true leader- ship; her idea of hanging yellow ribbons until we came home has been trans- formed into a concrete, universal sym- bol of caring. On a political level, I would have to say that the hostage experience symbol- J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 1 0 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 43 “While I was being held hostage, the Spanish ambassador to Iran managed to get a note to me that said: ‘Patience is a bitter cup that only the strong can drink.’”