The Foreign Service Journal, December 2009

64 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 9 acquiring skills that proved highly use- ful in Madrid when Lyndon Johnson sent him there in 1965. As soon as he was notified about the missing nuclear weapon, the ambassa- dor recognized the danger of stone- walling, as the military urged him to do. Instead, he met with a key contact in the Spanish Foreign Ministry and worked out press guidance that kept the two governments in sync. And once the news leaked that the bomb had landed in the sea and might not be recovered, he ably managed the situa- tion on several fronts, minimizing dam- age to the bilateral relationship. (Chap- ter 13, “Spin Control,” is quite funny in this regard, but it also makes Duke’s diplomatic skills quite clear.) What could have been a terrible dis- aster instead had two happy endings. Nearly three months after the accident, the fourth H-bomb (code-named “Ro- bert”) was safely recovered. And Angie Duke would go on to serve as ambas- sador to Denmark andMorocco before retiring from the Foreign Service in 1981, at which time he received the first Hans J. Morgenthau Award for his “exemplary foreign policy contributions to the United States.” On the evidence Moran presents in this highly readable account, Duke richly deserved that honor. ■ Steven Alan Honley is the editor of the Journal . B O O K S What could have been a terrible disaster instead had two happy endings.