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The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project ROBERT H. STERN Interviewed by: David Reuther Initial interview date: April 8, 2015 Copyright 2019 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born in Bronx, New York City, March 6, 1938 Immigrant Background Impact of World War II 1941-1945 Attended public schools 1943-1955 Attended Academy of Aeronautics in Long Island City, NY 1955-1956 Joined the Air Force 1956-1960 Exposure to Jim Crow Discrimination Stationed at Yokota Air Base, Japan Salesman paper products/Night school Queens College 1960-1966 Entered the Foreign Service 74th A-100 Class 1966 San Jose, Costa Rica — Junior Office Rotation assignment 1967–1968 Consular Section Becoming Acting Consul AID Section Economic Section Uneven quality of section chiefs Manila, The Philippines—Chief, Non-Immigrant Section 1968-1970 Impact of 1968 Immigration Law Organization of the Consular Section Ship crew issues Value of Foreign Service Staff Officers Views on ambassadors Tricks of the visa trade Night school at Santo Tomas Deputy Commercial Attaché—Economic Section 1970-1972 Organization of Economic Section Commodities reporting Laurel-Langley Act reporting 1 Traveling around the Philippines Sugar Industry and end of quota system Representational entertaining in the Philippines Moon Landing Sharing notes with Anglo-Saxon embassies Rumors of coup State Department, FSI Economics Course 1972–1973 Student Colleagues and Professors Demanding course Department of Commerce 1973-1974 Latin American Bureau—trade promotion State Department, Bureau of Inter-American Affairs, 1974-1976 Office Regional Economic Policy (ARA/ECP) Venezuela and energy policy Liaison with Petroleum Intelligence Weekly Drafting U.S. policy on energy for UN Researching the usefulness of the Panama Canal International companies hiding profits Arguing against nationalization of foreign companies Venezuela and oil boom Kissinger and view of OAS General Assembly Meeting Transnational enterprises Oil policy (Venezuela) Hong Kong, Commercial Section Chief 1976-1978 (also Deputy Chief Economic Section, Regional Commercial Officer) Supporting American companies which sourced they product from a third country Supporting competing American companies (aviation) Market research, shoes, white goods Staff personalities Congressional visitors’ escort duty Representational entertaining Working with the American Chamber of Commerce State Department, East Asia Bureaus, Philippine Desk (EAP/PHIL) 1978-1981 Economic portfolio Monitoring Philippines’s jumbo loan Paris Club meetings Interaction with new Human Rights Bureau Briefing the Christopher Committee Critic of Embassy economic reporting Dominant role of the bases Embassy staffing 2 Elected to Board of American Foreign Service Association Lobbying Congress and State about the Foreign Service Act of 1980 Hemenway as president, impeachment Personnel changes in Foreign Service Act State Department, Operations Center — Senior Watch Officer (S/S-O) 1981-1983 24 hour, three shifts, 7-day, operation Alerting senior State and White House personnel As a call center connecting principle officials Handling assassination of Anwar Sadat Setting up a Task Force Working for Jerry Bremer Ops Center and the Falklands Handling restricted traffic messages Brief view of secretaries Hague and Schultz SECTO and TOSEC message Bombing of Iraqi nuclear reactor Bombing of Embassy Beirut April 1981 State Department, Board of Examiners (PER/REE) — Deputy Examiner 1983-1983 Deputy Examiner Giving the Foreign Service oral examination Learning non-discrimination State Department, Office for Combatting Terrorism (M/CT) 1983-1986 Nuclear, Biological, Chemical portfolio Crisis management as chairman of the interdepartmental group on terrorism exercises Institutionalizing the counterterrorism function Organizing a simulated hijacking of a U.S. military aircraft in Germany Simulated exercise for an embassy As State representative to 1984 Los Angeles Olympics Robert Oakley as boss in reorganized S/CT Working with contractors Writing terrorism scenarios Personal lessons learned Meeting Ollie North Seoul, Korea — Deputy Economic Counselor 1986-1989 Family medical issues can be accommodated View on Ambassador Richard Walker and DCM David Lamberts Negotiating around Korean autarky policies Economic Section fights tariff and non-tariff barriers Korean social values Offsetting the cost of U.S. military equipment Staffing the Economic Section 3 Visitors: The Secretary, congressional delegations Student outreach, demonstrations 1988 Summer Olympics New Section Chief Kevin McGuire CERP has low priority Lessons learned State Department, Office of Aviation (EB/TT/OA) – Deputy Director 1989-1991 Corridor reputation leads to a job offer Responsible for aviation negotiations with Latin America and Eastern Europe Negotiations with Poland, Guatemala, Argentina, Brazil, Disunited Yugoslav delegation Impact of improved equipment Reprises of discussion on AFSA and Foreign Service Act of 1980 1980 Negotiating with State management Importance of rank in person, needs of the service Pitching to Congress and former Secretary Rusk Six years and forced retirement stipulation State Department, Office of the Inspector General (S/IG)—Inspector 1991-1993 By 1989 the diplomatic world had changed significantly Staffing the inspection teams Observations in East Germany Internationalization of production Snippets from inspections Need for language training Retirement 1993 Correcting health issues 1991-1996 Consulting for an aerospace company Anti-terrorism consulting State Department, Freedom of Information office as WAE 1999-2001 State Department, Political Military Action Team (PMAT) 2001-2014 More than a temporary task force Centralizing State Department liaison role with Pentagon on Afghanistan policy Usefulness of the PMAT situation report State Department, Freedom of Information Office Assigned to declassify Latin American materials Handling FOIA request concerning Peruvian President Fujimori The clearance process 4 FOIA has no budget priority Would you recommend a Foreign Service career? How has the Foreign Service environment changed? INTERVIEW Q: Today is the 8th of April, 2015. This is an Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training oral history interview with Robert Stern. We’re conducting this interview at his place here in Chantilly, Virginia. I’m David Reuther. Bob, let’s start out. When and where were you born and what was some of your family background? STERN: I was born March 6, 1938 in Bronx, New York. I come from a working class background. My father was an immigrant from Poland. He came to the U.S. when he was 12. My mother was from Providence, Rhode Island. Unfortunately, my grandfather was an alcoholic, so she had to quit school to support her family, as she was the eldest. I have twin brothers, seven years younger than me, both electricians, who now live in Florida. I grew up, as I said, in the Bronx, not too far from the Yankee Stadium. As a kid I always thought everybody had a major league ballpark in their backyard. Who knew better? I went to New York City public schools and essentially lived the life of the average working class kid in New York. I didn't know that we didn't have any money because nobody I knew had any; but we were never actually poor; we always had plenty to eat, we had a decent place to live, and so forth. We just didn't have many luxuries. Q: Tell us about your father. Immigrant from Poland, what part of Poland? STERN: He came from Lublin, which is the third largest city in Poland after Warsaw and Krakow. It’s located in southeastern Poland, the area toward the Soviet Union. Many years later while in the Foreign Service I had an opportunity to visit there. Q: Now, what drew him to immigrate? STERN: Well, of course it was my grandfather who chose to emigrate. We’re Jewish and life for Jews in Poland has rarely been good, except possibly the first couple of hundred years. Anti-Semitism runs very, very deep. My family was very poor. My grandfather and my eldest uncles worked as cigar makers. They worked with Russian and Turkish leaf, rolling cigars by hand, so many Kopecks a dozen. As you can imagine, that’s not exactly tall cotton. So a combination of poverty and persecution were, I believe, the primary driving forces. We had some family in the States, some cousins had already come over and I presume that they had painted a picture of life in America better than life in Poland. My grandfather made the decision to bring his immediate family -- my father, three uncles, and an aunt over. Curiously my eldest uncle, my father’s brother Jacob known as Jack, had gotten to the Americas long before we did. He had been drafted into the Russian Army, prior to World War I. Poland was part of Russia at that time and they had a cute habit: They would draft Jewish kids for 25 years. And then they would try to send them to the furthest reaches of the empire where they 5 could be converted. Jack deserted and made his way to Odessa somehow and stowed away on a ship. And, I was told, he had no idea where it was going, other than it was leaving Russia. When they made port he was in Havana, Cuba where he jumped ship, settled, married, and had two children. His knowing how to make cigars of course helped him fit in in Cuba immediately. Jack never did come to the United States. Q: What do you understand was the mechanism of how that immigration worked? Was there paperwork or— STERN: Prior to 1923—and they came in 1921—there were no real laws or rules on immigration, certainly nothing that we as FSOs (Foreign Service Officers) know or use in our work as consular officers. Prior to 1923 if you wanted to come to the U.S. you just came. You basically only had to be literate and non-contagious. And interestingly, while everybody knows about Ellis Island, that’s not the whole story. My wife’s father's family was fairly well off, came first class on a ship from Sweden as it happened. If you were a first class passenger you just walked down the gangplank and into New York City.

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