David Ransom
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The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project AMBASSADOR DAVID MICHAEL RANSOM Interviewed by: November 2, 1999 Initial interview date: Charles Stuart Kennedy Copyright 2016 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born in Missouri, son of a US Air Force Officer family Raised in the US and abroad Princeton University; Johns Hopkins School of International Studies US Marine Corps, Vietnam Entered the Foreign Service in 1965 Family Taiz, Yemen; General Officer 1966-1967 Family Mission closed Personal losses Environment Government Egyptian intervention Aden Saudi Arabia role Yemeni Americans Move to Sanaa Teheran, Iran; Consular Officer 1967-1968 Shah’s “White Revolution” Environment Personnel Beirut, Lebanon; FSI; Arabic language Study 1968-1969 Lebanese politics Environment Family Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; Consular/Economic Officer 1969-1970 Environment Family 1 Saudi stability The “White Army” Saudi government Relations State Department; Jordan Desk Officer 1970-1973 King Hussein Israel sensibilities Hawk missiles 1973 Arab-Israeli War Nuclear Alert US role Jordan’s role National Security Council, Crisis Management Group 1973-1975 Security and Military Assistance Defense/State relations CIA Decision to Evacuate Vietnam Henry Kissinger Brent Scowcroft Nixon resignation drama Ford’s Nixon pardon Sana’a, Yemen; Deputy Chief of Mission 1975-1978 Wife Marjorie’s tandem assignment South Yemen Environment Saudi relations AID Divided Yemen Soviets USIA Tribalism Government Assassinations Yemeni Jews Defense Department; Acting Director, Near East & Africa, 1978-1982 International Security Agency Somalia Military Access Agreements Afghanistan Iran Israel Egypt 2 Military Assistance Congressional briefings Defense-State rivalry National War College 1982-1983 Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Deputy Chief of Mission 1983-1985 Environment Dubai relations Government Iran-Iraq US interests Tandem assignment Damascus, Syria; Deputy Chief of Mission 1985-1988 Soviets Hafez al-Assad Iraq relations Iran relations Terrorism Break in relations USIS Visas Israel relations Contacts with government US-Syria relations CIA Palestinians Golan Heights Iran-Contra Lebanon war Khalil Hadam Syria’s views on Lebanon Syria/Israel Strained US/Syrian relations Syria plot to destroy El Al aircraft US hostages in Lebanon NSC in hostage crisis Syrians target US Ambassador in Lebanon Ambassador John Kelly Syrians support Hezbollah Syrian-Iran connection Syria/Israel combat US bombs Libya Anti-US demonstration British foil Syrian El Al plot 3 US interests in Syria Sanctions against Syria President (Ex) Carter’s Syrian visit Abu Nidal Hafez al Assad State Department; Director, Arabian Peninsula Affairs 1988-1990 Saddam Hussein Kuwait Saudi Arabia Near East Bureau Assistant Secretary John Kelly Secretary of State Baker State Department; Director, Southern European Affairs 1990-1993 John Kelly Greece and the Gulf War Turkey and the Gulf War Turkey relations Kurds Iraq “no fly zones” Kurdish refugees Secretary of State James Baker Turkish politics Turgid Ozal F-16s to Turkey Bush visit to Turkey Russia Greek-Turkish relations Cyprus Albania Macedonia Ambassador to Bahrain 1994-1997 Disturbances Shia US military presence Shaikh Isa bin Salman al-Khalifa Relations with government Comments on the Peace Process Population Islamic Republic idea Oil production Security Fundamentalism Iraq war 4 Kuwait relations Iran Retirement 1997 Post Retirement Wife Marjorie appointed Ambassador to Yemen Private consulting INTERVIEW [Note: Ambassador Ransom was unable to edit his interview before his death.] Q: What were some of the places you lived in? RANSOM: After the war, we lived in Alexandria, Louisiana, where an air base was being opened and in Greenville, Texas, where an air base was being opened, and in San Antonio, where there was an air base was being opened and in New York City. After the war, my father decided to remain in the Air Force. It became an independent service at that time. We then lived in Washington, DC and in Athens, Greece. Q: Were you being raised mainly with other military kids? RANSOM: Of course; we moved from place to place and I attended civilian schools, so that I was both in a military community and a civilian one as well. Immediately after the war, I was a member of one of the first families that went to live in Japan. My father had been sent there immediately after the war to be part of the occupation army. When facilities for dependents were developed and it was deemed secure, families were sent to join the bread winners. Q: You were in Japan when? RANSOM: That would have been early 1947-1949. I can remember driving across the country from Texas, where we had a small house. My father had previously been assigned to open a base. We drove to Seattle, Washington, crossing states where roads were poorly paved and were very narrow, passing through all kinds of scenery. Then we got on a ship and went to Japan–a country in ruins--, and moved into a house off in the hillsides. Q: Where were you? RANSOM: In Fukuoka, down in Kyushu, the southernmost island. We had a purely military existence there. We went to military schools and eventually moved onto a military base. It was called Ikazikay. I made Japanese friends in Fukuoka with whom I 5 still correspond and even visit. They have gone through the whole 50 years of post-World War II Japanese development while I have watched a similar evolution in the United States. They are very good friends. Q: You must have assimilated more than most. During the Korean War, I was on an Air Force base. I was an enlisted man. We had a significant number of the adults who never went off the base. RANSOM: We did go off the base, but it is fair to say that I didn’t assimilate an awful lot of the local culture. I saw it almost entirely through the eyes of my father and his colleagues. They were occupiers. They were not contemptuous, but many of the fathers of the boys and girls that went to school with me had flown the raids that had devastated Japan. They thought they were both entirely justified in doing that and lucky to have survived. We looked at our role as benign, but as warranted opposition. The results were plain to see. One of the things that I carry away from my childhood and subsequent periods is the view that World War II was indeed a good war in the sense that our main antagonist then was a threat to the world and is now a democracy, an ally and friend and very prosperous. So, I came away from this early experience with a nationalist view of America that was essentially one of a country that was not just victorious but was engaged in great transformation of its previous foes. Q: Was there much talk about whither Japan around the dinner table at home? RANSOM: That was something that came naturally to me when I eventually ended up in the Foreign Service, but, to be honest, it was not a staple in our military household. My father was engaged in different types of activities. We tended, particularly through my mother, to have a broader range of interests-- in Japanese art, Japanese friends, and Japanese life. We had friends who were not strictly speaking engaged in military activity in Japan. My father was a logistics officer-- materiel, and supply. We had friends in the military government. There was no business community to speak of. There were some channels into Japanese society, but I must tell you that most of what I learned about Japan I learned later when I was in college and studied it. Q: I think this is true for so many of us. Let’s start first with grammar and elementary school and then move to high school. What courses, types of reading, particularly interested you? RANSOM: There was no television and there was very little radio that I could listen to; so I spent a lot of my time with books and magazines in my youth, particularly when I lived off the base in Japan and elsewhere. I subscribed to a lot of boys’ magazines and I read a lot of westerns and dog stories, romances, adventure stories and such. I had stacks of them and I tended to read them not just once but twice. I found good books to be good friends and that experience of my childhood has stayed with me all my life. 6 Q: Where did you go to high school? RANSOM: After Japan, my father was assigned to Andrews Air Force Base in Washington. After that tour, we went to Greece. My father was part of the U.S. military mission there. That was really in many ways my coming of age. I learned a lot of lessons and it was part of my intellectual dawning. However, at the very end of that tour of duty, my father very unexpectedly died of a heart attack. He was 39. We had no home place. We had had an itinerant existence up to then. We ended up going back to the only place where we had a house -- in Greenville, Texas. We had no family there, no real close friends, just this house. My mother didn’t know what to do on five days’ notice. The household goods had to be shipped, tickets had to be bought. We were suddenly left in a vacuum. Q: How old were you then? RANSOM: I was 14. Then, by a circuitous set of circumstances which involved friends we had made in the Athens embassy, I was recommended for a scholarship at the Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut. I was tested through essays and eventually accepted. So, at the age of 16-- in many ways a very young man--I got on the MKT Blue Bonnet Express in Greenville, Texas, and two and a half days later, I got off the train in Wallingford, Connecticut, and made my way up the hill to this school.