Fischer, David
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The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project AMBASSADOR DAVID J. FISCHER Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy and Robert S. Pastorino Initial interview date: March 6, 199 Copyright 2000 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born in Connecticut raised in Minnesota Brown University University of Vienna Harvard Law School Army Security Agency Entered Foreign Service - 1961 Frankfurt, -ermany - Consular Officer 1961-196. Duties National -erman Party CODELs Cu0an Missile Crisis 1nspection Foreign Service 1nstitute - Polish Language Training 196.-1962 3arsaw, Poland - Rotation Officer 1962-1968 -overnment Environment US1A programs E6patriates Security Soviets Communists Catholic Church Student uprising -erman representation State Department - Eastern Europe 1968 Secretary of State 3illiam Rogers 1ntelligence sources State Department - ACDA 1968-1969 1 China relations State Department- SALT Negotiations 1969-1972 Secretary to delegation Soviet views U.S. views M1RVs -erry Smith New :ork Times ;leak“ ABMs Kissinger>s China visit Sofia, Bulgaria - Political/Economic Officer 1972-1972 U.S. relations Security Environment 1ntelligence Turkish minority Communists Kathmandu, Nepal - Political/Economic Officer 1972-1977 Environment Monarchy Travel Nepal>s neigh0ors -overnment operations Hashish/marijuana Carol Laise Mount Everest Am0assador Marquita Maytag State Department - Arms Control Officer 1977-1978 State Department - Pu0lic Affairs 1978-1979 Panama Canal Treaty SALT 11 Congressional relations NSC ACS Talk shows Dar es Salaam, TanBania - Deputy Chief of Mission 1979-1982 A1D C1A Nyerere 2 Seychelles - Am0assador 1982-198C President Reagan>s ;visit“ U.S. tracking station Environment Coup attempt U.S. interests C1A operations Crime Mario Ricci Money laundering Peace Corps UN Russians Human rights report Terrorism State Department - East African Affairs - Office Director 198C-1987 Ethiopia Somalia Sudan Eritrea Human rights Uganda Am0assadors Famine A1D Munich, -ermany - Consul -eneral 1987-1991 Feli6 Bloch case FranB Aosef Strauss Politics U.S. presence Unification NATO Am0assador Richard 3alters Visas Radio Free Europe Radio Li0erty US1A Security Retirement 1991 3 INTERVIEW (: Let*s start with where and when you were born and something about your family. F1SCHERD 1 was born in Connecticut in 19.9 into an essentially middle class family. My father was a salesman. But 1 was raised really in Minnesota, moving there when 1 was eight years old. 1 grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. 1 went to a private school and from there went on to college back east at Brown University. (: O.ay, well, we*re going to go bac. a bit. /here did you live in Connecticut0 F1SCHERD 1 lived in the su0ur0an bedroom communities of 3estport, Fairfield, and Southport. (: Now, your father and mother had they gone to college0 F1SCHERD No, my father was a self-made man. He left school with a fourth grade education and eventually rose to become vice president of 3eyerhaeuser Tim0er Company. My mother was born in the United States in a -erman family that immigrated here in the late 19th century. (: /hat was life li.e while you were in Connecticut0 F1SCHERD Oh, an idyllic kind of life. 1 guess all of us look back on our childhood in those first five, si6, seven years as being wonderful. My father was not in the military, 0ecause at age 20 or 21 he was too old to be drafted. The war was very, for me, seminal, although 1 was only si6 years old when the war ended. -rowing up in that time on the east coast, 1 felt the war very personally. 3hether it was 0lackouts or a victory garden or taking the twenty-five cents to school every week to buy war bonds - all that stuff made the war very real. My jo0 was to collect milkweed pods. Milkweed pods grow on the East Coast of the United States. 3e were told as children that we were collecting this ;kapok“ to be stuffed into life jackets for sailors on the north Atlantic. (: Did your family have political views0 The family mythology is that before the war my -erman-0orn grandmother was a fairly staunch supporter of Hitler. 1f true, itFs not surprising, since many -erman immigrants found NaBism attractive. 1 do know that she was invited back to -ermany in 19.6 and returned enthusiastic a0out what she had seen. My father was a staunch isolationist, at least until Pearl Har0or. -rowing up in the GC0s, 1 inherited a certain li0eral bent, particularly from my mother. My father was a political agnostic in the sense that he felt a 4 Hcurse onH both their houses. He took pride in his vote for Norman Thomas Ia socialist candidate) in one election. (: 2ou say you went to Minnesota when you were about eight years old0 /here did you go there0 F1SCHERD Minneapolis. They only memora0le event was that 1 got polio in the great polio epidemic of 1927 or 1928. But with no, thank -od, lasting consequences. 1 guess 1 a0sor0ed a lot of my parents hostility to the Midwest. Both my parents consider themselves East Coast people. My mother 1 can remem0er was appalled by the fact that she used to say how could anyone name the capital of a state ;urine,“ speaking of Huron, South Dakota. Those in the Midwest pronounce it ;urine.“ So that was that. 1 went to an a0solute fantastic private school, a country day school, largely because 1 was put into a pu0lic school in fourth grade and there was a school strike. The then-mayor of Minneapolis, Hu0ert Humphrey, refused to settle that strike so the schools were closed for seven and half months. At that point 1 was then put into a private school. (: /hat was the name of the private school0 F1SCHERD The Blake School. (: Oh, yes, that*s a well3.nown school. /hat were you interested in at this time, reading or interested in anything in particular in school0 F1SCHERD :es, 1 certainly was a history buff, and 1 credit of people for pro0a0ly setting me on the Foreign Service career path. One was a fifth grade geography teacher. He had 0een in the war, been in -ermany during the war and had collected what are called ;stocknageln“ in -ermany. 3hen you walk from village to village or clim0 a hill or mountain in -ermany, you get a little enameled plaque that you can nail onto your walking stick. So my assignment in the fifth grade class of geography was to take that walking stick and to find on a map every place where he had walked. 1t was a very fascinating e6perience. And the second most influential man was a guy by the name of Aack Eddy, who was the history teacher at Blake - senior history and head of the de0ate team. 1 became very involved in that and won a state championship for e6temporaneous speaking and a few other things like that. But those two people were, 1 think, very influential in first igniting my interest in overseas stuff, Europe, and second, for making me read the New :ork Times every day. That was a demand of every senior at Blake School. :ou had to read the New :ork Times on a daily basis, which was tough to do in those days in Minneapolis. 3e must have been reading three-day-old newspapers. (: So you were at the Bla.e School from when to when about0 5 F1SCHERD 1928 until 1 graduated in 19C6. (: Did the world intrude much on the rest of Minnesota during this period0 F1SCHERD Pro0a0ly not. 1 can remem0er, however my classmates. 1t was a very small country day school, 1 mean there were thirty guys in my class, and 1 think pro0a0ly at least half of them were what 1 would call socially aware. Aware of politics. 1 can remem0er vividly walking home from school one day in 19C2 with a classmate of mine whose father had just called to say that the Supreme Court had just ruled in Brown v. the Board of Education. His father had been someone who had worked with the NAACP. 1 mean that was an important event to us. So we were certainly much more aware than the average kid growing up in a rural town in Minnesota. Blake was a school for the upper classes in Minneapolis, children of people who ran the local millsD Pills0ury and -eneral Mills. But it drew from a class of transplanted New :orkers and Bostonians, as well. (: /hat about the McCarthy impact. I mean McCarthy was from /isconsin and I was 5ust wondering if this was a man and policy admired in Minnesota0 F1SCHERD 1 don>t know why - 1 may have been ill - but 1 remem0er as a child watching the McCarthy-Army hearings on television on a daily basis. 1 don>t if it took place in the summer or sometime overK 1 think 1 may have been at a time when 1 was out of school for si6 weeks following an accident. But it a0solutely dominated the family conversation and certainly very widely talked a0out in my school, of course. 1 also remem0er the famous broadcast by Edward R. Murrow that signaled the beginning of the end of McCarthy. My family was very anti-McCarthy an attitude certainly passed down to me. (: /here were the .ids from the school and your family coming down on the McCarthy issue0 F1SCHERD Oh, very anti. One couldn>t be a McCarthy supporter in that milieu and survive very long. (: I mean did you feel that being in Minnesota, this is the height of the real sort of liberal labor type state wasn*t it0 F1SCHERD :es, Democratic Farmer La0or, DFL. Hu0ert Humphrey, Orville Freeman, and later, Eugene McCarthy and 3alter Mondale.