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The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project CAROL R. KALIN Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: November 10, 2014 Copyright 2018 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born in Kansas City, Missouri July 16, 1959 BA in French, University of Kansas 1976-1981 Computer certificate, New York University 1983 MA in Economics, New School for Social Research 1987-1992 First Boston Corporation 1983-1985 Prudential Bache Securities 1985-1987 Federal Farm Credit System 1988-1989 U.S. General Accounting Office 1990-1993 Entered the Foreign Service 1993 Washington, DC; West African Affairs desk Dakar, Senegal; Economic officer 1994-1996 Foreign Service nationals Senegalese economy Ivory Coast Democracy in Senegal High-level visits Expatriates Liberia Health in Senegal Cairo, Egypt; Economic officer 1996-1998 High-level visits Inter-agency work Friendship with Mahmoud Mohieldin, managing director, World Bank Muslim Brotherhood Women and Islam in Egypt Lack of language training for economic officers Mubarak regime Aid to Egypt Chuck Hagel’s visit 1 Washington, DC; Assistant to the Undersecretary for Economics 1998-1999 Stu Eizenstat Near Eastern Affairs Israel Meeting Ariel Sharon Netanyahu International Religious Freedom Act Monica Lewinsky scandal Partisanship and foreign policy Washington, DC; Deputy Office Director, Egypt and North Africa, NEA 1999-2001 New King of Morocco Madeleine Albright Qadhafi Morocco Margaret Tutwiler Women at the State Department Mubarak Crash of EgyptAir 990 Beirut, Lebanon; Deputy Chief of Mission 2001-2003 9/11 Politics in Lebanon Bashar al-Assad U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan Child custody case Attributes necessary for the position Terrorism concerns Secretary Colin Powell’s visits Infractions Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Public Affairs Counselor 2003-2005 Beirut versus Riyadh Prime Minister Rafic Hariri of Lebanon Western housing compound bombing Ambassador Jim Oberwetter Saudi students Meeting top American journalists Saudi society Women in Saudi Arabia Security Jeddah consulate under attack Saudi education practices King Abdullah Majlis ash-Shura 2 Saudi Arabian economy Fatal incidents every four to six weeks Saudi Arabia and Israel Saudi press Iraq War Inadequate staffing Discrimination complaints Washington, DC; Rapid Response team member 2006 Athens, Greece; Information Officer/Spokesperson 2007-2009 Promotions during the Iraq War Studying Greek Forest fires Interview with Deputy Secretary John Negroponte Political turmoil Economic crisis Greek press Macedonia controversy 2008 U.S. election Turkey Communist party in Greece Greece and the Middle East Immigration Greek Church Relationship with the United States Kabul, Afghanistan; Congressional Liaison Officer 2009 Afghan presidential election Military strategy Joint Visitors Bureau Ambassador Karl Eikenberry Congressional delegations Richard Holbrooke General Stanley McChrystal Senator Lindsey Graham Points of view on Afghanistan Afghan leaders Pakistan Afghan provinces Rolling Stone article Embassy culture Militarization of foreign policy Washington, DC; Staff Member, Global Strategic Engagement Center 2009-2010 Screening travelers 3 Cultural exchanges War on Terrorism Hurricane in Haiti Nouakchott, Mauritania; Deputy Chief of Mission 2010-2012 Al-Qaeda Arab Spring Organization of African Unity Cities in Mauritania Western Sahara President Abdel Aziz Human rights issues Cultural richness Desertification European presence Ambassador Jo Ellen Powell WikiLeaks Festival of the ancient cities Retirement February 2012 Post retirement activities Collegeville, PA; Ursinus College 2013 Philadelphia, PA; University of Pennsylvania 2013-Present INTERVIEW Q: Today is November 10, 2014, with Carol R. Kalin. What’s the “R” stand for? KALIN: Renee. Q: Renee. Ah ha. Alright. Carol, let’s start at the beginning. When and where were you born? KALIN: I was born July 16, 1959 in Kansas City, Missouri. Q: Nineteen fifty-nine. Huh, you and my wife were born in the same city. KALIN: Well. Q: Let’s look at the Kalin family first. Where do they come from; what do you know about them? And you can go way back. KALIN: OK. Kalin is a Swiss/German name. My grandfather came from Switzerland in 1921. He lost that “umlaut” on the name at Ellis Island. Some of my family in the United 4 States spell the name K-A-E-L-I-N but most spell it K-A-L-I-N. My grandfather was among the younger members of a family that included a dozen children. Now, Switzerland at the time, unlike today, was a relatively poor country so, you know, grandfather, around his early 20s decided to try his luck in the new country. So he bought a package deal from his village in Kanton Schwyz, from which the name Switzerland derives, and got on a boat in France at Le Havre and came across to New York City. He was given a box lunch that included a banana, something he’d never seen before. And got on a train to Missouri, where some acquaintances had already landed. So he spent his 20s working for other people in kind of a bonded labor situation. Q: What do you know about, what were the Kalins doing back in Switzerland? KALIN: The Kalins were farmers, mostly, but there is a town called Einsiedeln in Central Switzerland that, where every other person is named Kalin. There’s the Kalin bicycle shop, the Kalin butcher shop, the Kalin candle shop, etc., etc., and Einsiedeln is the site of a rather ancient monastery. So it’s well known in Switzerland. In fact, some of my relatives went to school at that monastery over the years. My grandmother also was a new immigrant. She came with her family in about 1903. Her name was Rose Rutschman and I think her family was a bit more prosperous than my grandfather’s family. Her father had been the mayor of a small town on the German border and came with his large family of 12 or so. My grandmother was the youngest, she was a twin and the youngest, so they also established themselves in Faucett, Missouri, near St. Joseph. Q: Missouri seems so unlikely. Do you know what brought them there? KALIN: Agriculture essentially. You know, they were dairy farmers. You know, John Kalin and Rose, his wife, once they had, once my grandfather had worked for others on farms, you know, for many years, he was able to save enough to buy his own farm around the time he was about 30 and he married my grandmother, who was about 20-something at the time. And so they started out and they ultimately ended up with a dairy farm and six children of their own. And there was a fairly significant Swiss community that they integrated in around this area. There was a Swiss lodge, you know, they went on Saturday nights and sang Swiss songs and so on and so forth. Q: I assume they were Catholic. KALIN: They were but they weren’t particularly practicing Catholics. My father said at his father’s funeral, my grandfather’s funeral that if my grandfather had known there was a rosary wrapped around his hand he might have thrown it across the room. So my father and his four, well they were four brothers and, he had four brothers and one sister; they were raised in the community more so than in the Catholic Church. They attended a Protestant church from time to time, as did my mother’s family. But it was a rural environment so there was more community than religion, I think, in their lives, although 5 religion later played an important part in my own life and the life of my nuclear family. So. Q: You say nuclear family. Was it of a particular, was it Republican, Democrat or something like that? KALIN: No, but my father, the second of the six children, was the first one in his family, in his immigrant family to attend college. My mother was the second of four children in an all American kind of family. Her name was Eleanor Jean Mears of the Mears family and the Linboldt family. That’s my grandmothers name, you know. They had been in America for many, many years, decades, hundreds, if not a hundred years. So they were folks who came from Europe early on, English, Irish and French and gradually worked their way across the country from Virginia to Kentucky out to Missouri as the generations passed and there was a need for more land and so on and so forth. You know, they do had lived in the area for a period of time and had very large families so there was a very big sort of integration there. Anyway, at any rate my mother, being the second of the four children in her family, my father the second of six, you know, moved to the “big city,” right? So my father got his degree in engineering from University of Missouri at Rolla, a school of mines, still a very famous engineering school. They had been sort of high school sweethearts in this small town, you know, Faucett High School. My mother was a cheerleader, my dad was the basketball star. At 5-11, you know, he was well placed for basketball at that time, at any rate - Q: Oh, absolutely. KALIN: -on a local team. And so, they were high school sweethearts. My mother was very intelligent and could have gone to college but at that time that was not the goal. So she and my father married when she was 18, he was 21. He was finishing his college degree and she worked as a secretary to support him. And, you know, he got an offer with a local Kansas City firm, Black and Veatch, Consulting Engineers. It was a well- established concern by that time, founded, I guess in the ‘20s. That’s where he stayed for 41 years, working his way up to managing partner of that firm and doing international work, building power plants in China and Australia and so on.