The Foreign Service Journal, September 2008

make policy in dealing with issues ranging from Algerian independence to advancing our interests from Mor- occo to Ethiopia. David said his favorite assignment was as assistant secretary for African affairs, where he could really make a difference — and where he could indulge his fondness for travel to exot- ic places, visiting all but two of the countries on the continent (and those two were embargoed international pariahs). In his memoirs, he acknowl- edges that he did not achieve all that he wanted to in bringing change to Africa, but at least maintained some balance in the African policies of the Nixon administration. For instance, even though he made no major advance against South Afri- can apartheid, he did maintain some pressure on the issue by assigning FSO Jim Baker as the first African- American to serve in Pretoria and by having his own charismatic African- American deputy, Beverly Carter, accompany him on the first visit by an assistant secretary for African affairs to apartheid-era South Africa in 1970. In his last press conference there, Newsom declared: “The American official attitude toward the policy of racial discrimination in South Africa S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 8 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 65 Newsom dealt with the 1969 coup in Libya, the Iranian Revolution and grueling hostage crisis, as well as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.