The Foreign Service Journal, October 2020

58 OCTOBER 2020 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL ineffective in prosecuting the war against the Japanese. Apart from the war effort, Vincent promoted a Chinese polity in classic “civil society” terms: support for human rights, democratization and the rule of law. But his no-nonsense criticism of Chiang and Madame Chiang—darlings of the American press and the powerful “China Lobby”—came back to haunt him once they retreated to the island of Taiwan (then called Formosa) and the communists took over the mainland in 1949. For the sin of accurately foreseeing the success of Mao Tse- tung’s communist insurgency, John Carter Vincent and other Foreign Service China hands were accused of having “lost China.” By the time Vincent settled into his new Tangier position, one of his colleagues, John Stewart Service, had already been dismissed from the Foreign Service. More ousters were to follow. The Tangier Tangent Historian Gary May’s definitive biography of Vincent— China Scapegoat: The Diplomatic Ordeal of John Carter Vincent (New Republic Books, 1979)—describes how he ended up with a decid- edly “out-of-area” Tangier assignment. By the spring of 1951, Vincent’s nomination as ambassador to Costa Rica was seen as doomed. Rather than pursuing that process, the State Depart- ment switched gears and sent him to Tangier because the position of chief of mission in a legation did not require Senate approval. In a midnight phone call to Vincent, New York Herald Tribune correspondent Bert Andrews wondered why the veteran diplomat would accept such “a terrific comedown” (at the time, Vincent was chief of mission at the U.S. legation in Switzerland). Vincent, the product of a Baptist Sunday school education in Georgia, began his response by quoting a missionary hymn: “I’ll go where you want me to go, dear Lord.” He then continued, “I’ll take the Tangier appointment because I’m in no position to fight this thing financially.” Vincent had been under suspicion since 1947, and though he was to receive important moral support from The Foreign Service Journal and the American Foreign Service Association, AFSA had not yet established its Legal Defense Fund. (Vincent did receive the pro bono services of a team of experi- enced Washington lawyers.) The new assignment did not end Vincent’s ordeal, however. His 22 months in Tangier were spent under the shadow of multiple investigations, requiring travel back to Washington no fewer than three times to testify before succes- sive investigative bodies. During a particularly trying period where he remained alone in Tangier, he bit- terly wrote to his wife, Betty: “This is the god-damnedest house to get lonesome in. ... There isn’t a thing in its curious roominess that I can get sentimental about. ... The place and the people are without mean- ing to me with you and the children gone.” Mark Twain would have commiserated. Though not on the front line of the Cold War, Tangier never- theless felt its imprint. Radio relay stations proliferated, several of which were American: RCA, Mackay and the Voice of America. With its strategic location on the Strait of Gibraltar separat- ing Europe from Africa, Tangier had changed hands over the centuries between Moroccan, Portuguese, English, Spanish and, John Carter Vincent’s assignment to Tangier, as it appeared in the Foreign Service List of Jan. 1, 1952. U.S.DEPARTMENTOFSTATE In January 1953, the FSJ Editorial Board published this appraisal of the ruling in the John Carter Vincent case. “It is disturbing not only because it recommends dismissal for a veteran officer who had already been cleared by the department’s Loyalty Security Board, but because it implies doctrines which would prevent the Service from doing its full duty,” the board states. THEFOREIGNSERVICEJOURNAL