The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project GLENN R. CELLA Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: July 18, 2006 Copyright 2021 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background 1935-1960 Italian and German Ancestry New York lower middle class ethnic community youth World War Two memories Jesuit high school education High school summers in the merchant marine Holy Cross-Navy ROTC scholarship, 1953-57 Passed Foreign Service Exam, 1957 US Navy, 1957-60—meeting Foreign Service Officers Entering Foreign Service 1960-1961 A-100. June-August Staff Assistant Office of Congressional Relations, September Rolling over and playing dead to Congress Working for Bill Macomber French Language Training, October-January, 1961 INR Resources Branch 1961 National Intelligence Surveys Country Demographics Branch abolished Staff Assistant Political Military Affairs 1961-6x Creating the PM Bureau Staffing DAS Jeffrey Kitchen Law of the Sea-Three Mile debate Berlin Impressions of Kennedy and the Kennedy Administration Vice Consul, Alexandria, Egypt 1962-1964 Nasser and Nationalization Impressions of Ambassador John Badeau 1 Yemen invasion Consul General Harlan Clarke Alexandria perspective vs Embassy Cairo perspective Consular Duties Admin Duties Consulate Martinique 1964-1966 Two person Consulate Principal Officer William Marvin A diplomatic backwater Martinique politics and social cleavages FSI Tangier, Morocco Arabic Language Training 1966-1968 Poor quality of language studies Six Day War - reporting popular sentiment Detailed to USIA - National Space Mobile Appearing on Moroccan television Traveling the region- attitudes toward America Principal Officer, Oran, Algeria 1968-1971 Post independence mood Decaying infrastructure Tracking the Soviet presence Israel Desk - Political-Military Affairs Officer 1971-1973 Scope of duties Scope of influence on policy Country Director Haywood H. Stackhouse Monitoring Munitions Act cases Israeli procurement strategy Nominated for the Rivkin Award Tracking Israeli espionage Political Advisor to Chief of Naval Operations 1973-1975 Working for Admiral Zumwalt Zumwalt and Kissinger Transition to Admiral Holloway Navy culture Reflections on the USS Liberty attack Vienna, Austria U.S. Arms Control Delegation 1975-1978 Mutual and Balanced Forces Reduction negotiations Ambassador Stanley Reasor Duties as U.S. Representative to working group East Block numbers games Working with Jock Dean 2 Brussels, NATO 1978-1984 Deputy Political Advisor U.S. NATO Delegation 1978-80 Perils of sensitive reporting Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe Reflections on Gorbachev Ministerials Reactions to Carter’s Human Rights Policy Soviet Afghanistan Invasion response Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs, NATO International Staff 1980-84 Appointment Interaction with U.S. Delegation NATO Secretary General Joseph Luns NATO Political Affairs Division Speech writing for Luns Reagan at the 1982 Heads of State meeting Cyprus - Greek Turkish tensions Spanish admission to NATO French presence Responding to martial law in Poland Luns’ retirement NATO Secretary General Lord Carrington Strategic Defense Initiative Washington, INR 1984-1988 Director, Office of Western European and Canadian Affairs, Bureau of Intelligence and Research 1984-1986 Analytic independence INR analytic process vs CIA analytic process Evaluating Intelligence Community product Interacting with the European Bureau Chairman, Commissioning and Tenure Board 1986-1988 Evaluating Talent Retaining Talent Washington, Foreign Service Institute, Senior Fellow, Center for the Study of Foreign Affairs 1986-1989 Studying NATO’s high-tech advantage State Department resistance to game theory exercises Reflections on the Policy Planning Staff Lecturing and public speaking 3 Preparing for retirement Retirement 1989 Post retirement Lecturing at FSI on Western European issues Consulting for the American Institute for Shippers Association INTERVIEW Q: When and where were you born? CELLA: In Brooklyn, New York on December of 1935, the 19th to be exact. Q: Let's start on your father's side. Where do the Cellas come from? What do you know about them? CELLA: It's kind of an interesting story. They're from the north of Italy. They took Cella for whatever reason before I came along. My father was referring to himself as Cella and I picked up that habit but there is a place in northern Italy in the mountains of the Alps, called Villa Cella and my great-grandfather came from Villa Cella. It's a very small village, it’s inland about 50 miles from Genoa on the coast, maybe about 80 miles or 100 miles from Genoa. And everybody in the village was Cella. There are very few people left there now. I visited several times. There were only two family names. I have forgotten the other one. It's sort of odd to be in a cemetery to see your name on virtually every gravestone in the churchyard. He married a Cella woman whose family was from Genoa. Q: This is your grandfather? On my father's side, my great-grandfather. And so two Cella families were united, both from the north of Italy and every Cella that I have met in this country during my lifetime one way or another we were related. It's not a particularly common name in Italy, and it’s not at an all common name here. He migrated to the United States. Q: Was he a farmer or a shop keeper or do you know? CELLA: His job when he first came here, I'm not sure and I hesitate to say. He came from, of course, a very rural background and I think he may have been a shopkeeper at some point or possibly even a peddler. I'm just not sure. I may have some records at home that would tell me but I know part of the family, I guess a cousin of his or a brother. I’m talking about my great grandfather who was at one time called the peanut king of New England. He had a roasted peanut operation going on the Connecticut-Rhode Island border in the town of Westley, Rhode Island. 4 Another part of the family, again not my direct line, was very successful in the restaurant and fruit and vegetable trade in New York City. The family legend which I believe is accurate is that that line of Cellas sold some of the land that Rockefeller Center was built on. One part of the family was fairly affluent. My part I would say rose above genteel poverty but not into the carriage trade. Q: Okay. Let's move down a generation. Grandparents? CELLA: My grandfather, again on the Cella side, my father's side, was a baseball player among other things. His wife who was born in England to a coal miner was seventeen or eighteen years old, and they met in the United States. She didn't like the idea of a professional baseball player being her spouse because in those days, and we’re talking now about the 1915 or 1920 time period, they were not considered to be particularly honorable or upstanding characters. And of course, she didn't like the idea that he would be on the road a lot. He was a fairly successful baseball player and again according to family tradition he was offered a contract by John McGraw, the famous manager of the New York Giants. The family was living in Newark, New Jersey. He played minor league baseball in Newark or in Jersey City. Again my grandmother nixed the deal. The family subsequently moved to a town on the Connecticut-Rhode Island border where my grandmother, Fanny Yates was her maiden name, supposedly burned her husband's baseball uniform, contract and glove and that got him out of the baseball business. He, if I recall correctly, worked in the mill and the town he lived in was called Pawcatuck on ​ ​ the Connecticut side of the Pawcatuck River. The other side a much bigger town Westerly and he worked on in the mill on the Rhode Island side of the border. Q: And then your father? CELLA: My father was born in Newark, New Jersey, he was raised in Pawcatuck, Connecticut. He was a very, very talented man, could do all kinds of things. He went to Bliss Electrical College which doesn't exist anymore. It was here in Washington, DC in Tacoma Park and got a two year, I guess we would call it an associate degree in electrical engineering. He was the first one in that part of the family to go on to any sort of higher education. He had a rather severe illness when he was young, four or five years old, and they believe he probably had polio. The story was, this I know to be accurate, his mother, who as I said earlier was a very determined woman massaged, if this disease was polio it affected one of his legs, and she massaged that leg supposedly for eight or 10 months or 12 months and through her care and diligence he maintained the use of the leg. He never had a brace or crutches or anything like that. He was left with one leg and one foot slightly smaller than the other and he forever walked with a bit of a limp, not terribly noticeable but he did wear special shoes but again not terribly noticeable. After he finished at Bliss Electrical School he moved to New York City, settled in Brooklyn and went to work for the American Telephone and Telegraph Company in a long line of tradition as a 5 craftsman. That's where he spent his entire professional career. He began there probably around 1931 or thereabouts and retired in 1970. Q: He was very fortunate. In 1931 was not a good date to start a livelihood. CELLA: Yes. He was born in 1908 so he may have started just before the crash.