THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2025 55 And State Department policy toward the Czechoslovak regime, as Bill recounted, was simply: “Don’t deal with them.” When Bill Luers, as is customary, went to present his diplomatic credentials to Czechoslovak President Gustav Husaak, the latter warned that relations between their two countries had never been so bad (a significant statement given that President Woodrow Wilson, following World War I, helped birth an independent Czechoslovakia). The recent U.S. deployment of Pershing II missiles in Europe, he cautioned, risked a third World War. He further informed Luers that he would not get to meet any senior Czechoslovak officials during his tenure as ambassador, beyond the Foreign Minister, save for at formal occasions where protocol obliged them to invite the entire ambassadorial corps. Luers then presented his credentials to Foreign Minister Bohuslav Chnoupek, who told him much the same but offhandedly asked if he would like to go hunting. Luers, who had never shot a weapon before, readily accepted the invitation, and purchased two Czechoslovakmade shotguns and later a rifle. The Foreign Minister taught him to hunt pheasant, rabbit, and boar, and brought him along on weekend outings with the Soviet and East European ambassadors and other senior members of the party and government, including the powerful Minister of Interior and the head of the secret police. It helped that, having been posted previously in Moscow, he spoke Russian fluently and could converse easily with the group. As Luers recounted, it “turned out to be a major source of my access to that closed government.” He also attended all the formal diplomatic events: the state celebrations of Czechoslovak holidays, the trade fairs, and the independence-day celebrations that other countries hosted at their embassies. These were the only other occasions where he could rub shoulders with top officials other than the Foreign Minister, and within the safety of such a formal setting, they proved willing to talk. Luers’ efforts to build relationships with important members of the communist regime paid dividends. Before his term as ambassador ended in 1986—when he left the Foreign Service to become president of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art— he concluded an agreement with the Czechoslovak Foreign Ministry to open wide-ranging talks between the two governments. Based on the Helsinki Accords that West European governments negotiated with the Soviets and signed along with the United States and Canada in 1975, the agreement called for bilateral discussions on three “baskets” of issues: security, trade and technology, and, importantly, human rights. So unusual was the agreement that the U.S. assistant secretary of State for Europe traveled to Czechoslovakia to sign it— the highest-level U.S. official to visit since World War II. From these efforts, Luers was also able to acquire a valuable nugget of intelligence regarding how Mikhail Gorbachev ascended to power in the Soviet Union. While watching the William Luers, second from the right in the foreground, in 2000. To his right is Vaclav Havel, the often-imprisoned poet-playwright who later became the president of Czechoslovakia. THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX
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