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1 the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project L. MICHAEL RIVES Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: July 25, 1995 Copyright 1998 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born in New York City - Raised in New Jersey Princeton University U.S. Marines, ,orld ,ar II .ntered the Foreign Service -19 1901 Frankfurt, 2ermany - Refugee Relief 1901-1901 Bonn, 2ermany 1901-1902 Hanoi, 4ietnam - Political Officer 1902-1903 4ice Consul - visa officer and political reporter 4iet Minh - siege environment French military 4ientiane, 6aos 1903-1900 Officer in charge - contacts Royal family The French Communists CIA activity 2uatemala City, 2uatemala - Political officer 1900-1907 6ocal culture and society United Fruit Co. Paris, France 1907-1981 Ambassador:s aide De 2aulle takes over Ambassador Armour:s relations with Dulles and .isenhower McCarthy era 1 State Department - Director for Central African countries 1981-1983 "Soapy" ,illiams and Africa policy U.S. interests Soviet influence Brazzaville, Congo - DCM and Chargé 1983-1988 Bad relations - Soviet and Chinese influence .mbassy closed Bujumbura, Burundi - Chargé 1988-1988 Arab attacks on U.S. .mbassy (Six day warA Hutu and Tutsis Buiet Soviet and Chinese presence State Department - Senior Seminar 1988-1989 Toured U.S. Phnom Penh, Cambodia - Chargé 1989-1971 Sihanouk - U.S. attitude toward U.S. bombings American .agle episode - U.S. arms Coup against Sihanouk U.S. incursion - 1971 4ietnamese activities in Cambodia ixon Doctrine Ballooning embassy 2eneral Haig visit 4ice President Agnew visit 6on Nol Secret Service operations State Department - Chief, African Affairs I R 1971-1972 State Department - 6aos and Cambodian Affairs 1972-197C "Mayaguez incident" Henry Dissinger Djakarta, Indonesia - Deputy Chief of Mission 1970-1978 Human Rights issue Congressional visit Diplomat in Residence, Rollins College 1978-1979 Montreal, Canada - Consul 2eneral 2 Separatist sentiment Retirement and reflection INTERVIEW Q: Today is July 25, 1995. This is an interview with Michael Rives on behalf of the ssociation for Diplomatic Studies and Training. Thank you very much for coming all the way down from Boston. I,m glad we have a chance to catch you here. I wonder if we could start with a bit about where you were born and when, and a bit about your background. RI4.SE I was born in New York City in 1921, brought up in New Jersey, and went to Princeton University. Q: Tell me a bit about your family. RI4.SE My grandfather on my mother:s side was ,hitney ,arren, who built 2rand Central Station and a few other buildings, and my grandfather on my father:s side was a sportsman, President of the Coaching Club of America for many years. My father was a broker, and that:s about it. Q: Before you went to Princeton, did you go to... RI4.SE St 2eorge:s School in Newport, Rhode Island. Q: nd you entered Princeton when. RI4.SE 19C1. Q: 1940 was a good year1 2ere you interested at all, and had you done any traveling, or anything like that. RI4.SE ,ell, as a child, we used to go to .urope every summer until the Depression. After that we went to Canada, where we had a cabin. Q: 2hen you entered Princeton in 1940 did you have any feel for the Foreign Service. RI4.SE Absolutely not. I didn:t have a clue what I was going to do. I majored in modern languages. Q: ,hat languageF 3 RI4.SE French. Q: I take it that events beyond the ken of Princeton overtook your academic career. RI4.SE I left in :C1 after finishing my freshman year and joined the Marines and served with them until :C0. Q: I think it,s important for people who are looking at this in later years, 4wondering5, 62ho are these Foreign Service people.6 to understand a bit about their background. 7our generation was very heavily affected by 2orld 2ar II. Could you tell me where you served and what you were doing. RI4.SE I joined, as I say, the Marine Corps, and I was assigned, finally, to the First Marine Division and landed on Tulagi and 2uadalcanal, went to Australia on RGR, then went to the New Britain campaign. Q: 7ou went through the whole New Britain campaign with the First Division. RI4.SE Yes. Q: Did this make you lust for the South Pacific Islands. RI4.SE Not at allH Q: 2hat was your position, what were you doing. 2ere you a rifleman.... RI4.SE I was a Private to start with, and I came out a Second 6ieutenant. After New Britain they sent me back home, and I went to 4-12 in Princeton, so I caught up a year there, and graduated in :C7 as a civilian. Q: In 1947 did you, again... 7ou had seen the glories of :uadalcanal and New Britain, two lush islands in the South Pacific... RI4.SE I saw an advertisement for the Foreign Service .xam, not having really a clue what I wanted to do, and I took them and, to my happy surprise, passed them. Q: Had you known anybody in the Foreign Service, anybody in Princeton.... RI4.SE No. Q: That was an era when a lot of people from Princeton were in the Foreign Service. RI4.SE That:s right, and most of them went to ,oodrow ,ilson School, which I didn:t. C Q: 2as there an oral exam.... RI4.SE Yes. Q: I,m trying to capture a period of time... Can you tell me a bit about the oral exam. Do you remember anything about it. RI4.SE I took the writtens in :C7 and then the orals in :C8, I guess it was, and passed them, but I must say, they were very simple. They weren:t really very serious, I don:t think. I was asked when was the last time I:d been drunk, and what were the four languages of Switzerland, where they knew I had lived as a child. But I had the right sponsors, I think... Somebody was very kind to me. Q: I think they were looking at people,s military record and all that and weren,t getting very precious about it... RI4.SE One of my sponsors was Ambassador Norman Armour, Sr., one of my father:s friends. Q: He was Latin America. Oh, he was all over the place. RI4.SE Yes. All over. Q: 2as there the equivalent to a basic officer,s course when you came in. RI4.SE There was in theory. ,e started it, but then they rushed us. I didn:t get appointed :till 1901, and they were desperate for visa officers in the DP program in 2ermany, so they shot us over there. Q: So where did you go. RI4.SE Frankfurt. Q: That was my first assignment. I was in the Refugee Relief Program, which was exactly the same thing... Can you talk a bit about how you saw :ermany in 1950. RI4.SE Being completely new to the Foreign Service, and never having been in 2ermany before, I was fascinated by it, especially the destruction still visible after the ,ar. I was very fortunate, though, because three of us were sent to a little DP camp in Butzbach, which was north of Frankfurt, but we lived in Bad- auheim in the Daiserhof Hotel, which was very nice. Q: Ah, yes, this was a cohort (FA of... 0 RI4.SE That:s right, a really tough place. That was interesting. I served there, and went to Berlin for DP on TDY, and to Austria..., places like that. Q: Tell me about the Displaced Persons Program. 2hat were you looking at, and can you tell some of the types of people you were dealing with. RI4.SE ,ell, all types. A lot of them, of course, were Jewish refugees, but there were all sorts of other types also. ,hat we mainly were doing, we were trying to stop Nazis from sneaking in, and there were plenty who tried that. ,ell, we just did the usual thing. They all had sponsors, mostly religious groups, who sponsored them entering the U.S. Q: How did you find out the background of these people. RI4.SE The 2ermans were terribly well organized. I suppose they still are today. In Berlin they had the Document Center... Q: The Berlin Document Center, yes. RI4.SE They had files on absolutely everybody, you can imagine. That was the basic document we had. Q: Did you feel while you were working on the DP program that you were under any particular pressure... were there Congressional cases saying why weren,t you doing this or that, or... RI4.SE Only one that I was involved in. Q: 2hat was that. RI4.SE I went to Berlin. The lady in charge of the Jewish Refugees Program--HIAS--as I recall was a Jewish lady, a refugee. She applied under the refugee program and I refused her, because (I must say I was very youngA... she had been hidden by her husband all during the ,ar (he was a very prominent 2erman doctorA, so she had never been persecuted or in a concentration camp, fortunately for her. I thought she should go to the United States as an ordinary immigrant, if she wanted to go, since she hadn:t suffered. So I turned her down. I flew back to Frankfurt and went into the Consulate, where I was told to report immediately to the Consul 2eneral:s office, who by that time had already been contacted by ,ashington, who had been contacted by Berlin at the highest level.
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