The Foreign Service Journal, September 2013

28 SEPTEMBER 2013 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL FSJ: Where did you go next? GWL: After spending a total of five years in Montevideo, I returned to Washington in 1962 and was detailed to Com- merce as executive director of the Committee for the Alliance for Progress, which was headed by top U.S. bankers like David Rockefeller and Walt Wriston. Regrettably, COMAP never really got off the ground. In any case, I felt I had done enough commercial work, and I really wanted to become a political officer. I was duly assigned to the political section in Madrid for the next three years. My job was to deal with the opposition and to keep an eye on exiled leaders from Latin America like Juan Perón, Fulgencio Batista, Marcos Pérez Jiménez and the Trujillo brothers, Ramfis and Radames. FSJ: At one point you played a role in keeping Juan Perón from returning to Argentina, right ? GWL: Yes, indeed. Franco had given Perón asylum but contrary to what he had promised the Spanish government, Perón kept planning his return to Buenos Aires. One day, the Spanish assistant secretary for Latin American affairs called me and said, “You’re aware that Perón had chartered an aircraft and is leaving tonight for Argentina, right?” I admitted that was the first I’d heard of that, so he simply said, “Well, now you know.” I immediately called Washing- ton, and also informed the Argentine ambassador, who did not know either. Sure enough, his plane was intercepted when he landed for refueling in Brazil, and he had to return to Madrid. The Spanish were very clever to obtain what they wanted without getting their hands dirty. FSJ: Did you return to the department immediately after finishing your posting in Madrid? GWL: No, first I spent a wonderful year, 1965-1966, at the Canadian War College (now known as the Canadian Forces College). I sometimes think that was the best year of my Foreign Service career, because we traveled around the world, studied and learned a lot. Normally, that assignment would have put me on a career path to specialize in Canadian affairs, but fate intervened. In what became known as the Palomares incident, a U.S. Air Force plane crashed during a refueling operation and lost four nuclear devices over Spain in 1966. Three of them were found immediately near the small town of Palomares, but one fell into the water and was not recov- ered for 80 days. This, of course, was very worrisome, because Washington and Madrid were about to begin negotiations on renewing our base agreement, and the accident turned Span- ish public opinion against the renewal. Because I’d served in Madrid, and knew many of the key players, the department, after urging from Ambassador Angier Biddle Duke, assigned me to be the director of the newly created Office for Spanish and Portuguese Affairs. For various reasons, the negotiations stretched from the tenure of Secretary of State Dean Rusk during the Johnson adminis- tration to Secretary Rogers under Nixon’s presidency. Upon successful conclusion of the Spanish base agreement in 1970, I was assigned to handle the renewal of the Azores Agree- ment with Portugal, which had been originally negotiated by George Kennan in Lisbon in 1943. Ambassador George W. Landau, right, with Lula da Silva, then a Brazilian presidential candidate, in May 1989. Photo courtesy of G.W. Landau