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The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project AMBASSADOR EDWARD L. PECK Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: June 29, 1989 Copyright 2020 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background 1929–1961 Son of Russian immigrants Army service B.A. UCLA (1956) Project India Decision to enter Foreign Service Foreign Service Officer training class Trainee at Bureau of Economic Affairs Göteborg, Sweden 1959–1961 Difficulty of making changes in bureaucracy Advantages of Consulate General at first assignment Impressions of post Tangier 1962–1964 Arab language training Dialect problems Tunis, Tunisia 1964–1966 Inadequacy of language training Economic officer Ambassador Francis Russell Problem of ‘clientitis’ Effort to report economic problems Problems with official documents AID program in Tunisia Oran, Morocco 1966–1969 Origin of assignment Algiers in 1966 American interests in Algeria Value of consulates Differing perspectives in capital cities 1 1967 Arab-Israeli War Arab perspectives on the Arab-Israeli conflict Washington 1968–1974 Deputy Director of Office of Intelligence Coordination Changes in vulnerable platform intelligence program State Department role in intelligence operations Impressions of intelligence community Special Assistant to Secretary Alexis Johnson Impressions of Secretary Johnson Johnson compared with Kissinger and William Porter Operation of executive secretariat 1972 India-Pakistan War Impressions of Joe Sisco Revision of telegram messages to embassies Revision of COM handbook Economic/Commercial Officer in Cairo 1974–1977 Ambassador Ellis Aversion to AID mission Increase in size of AID mission IMF agreement controversy Economic problems in Egypt Kissinger’s increasing of AID program in Egypt Lack of restrictions in Israeli AID program Comparison between Israeli and Egyptian AID programs Principle Officer in Baghdad 1977–1980 Interest section of Belgian Embassy Issue of diplomatic relations Nature of assignments in the Foreign Service Situation in Iraq Nature of work Relations with the Iraqi Government Impressions of Saddam Hussein Problem of dealing with Iraq Goals and objectives of Interest Section Effects of Iranian Revolution Soviet presence in Iraq Human Rights issue Director of Egyptian Affairs 1980–1982 Origins of assignment Israeli-Egyptian relationship Problems in Office of Egyptian Affairs Role of EGY in Arab-Israeli matters 2 Problems with superiors Problems with AID programs Politics of Egyptian AID program Visitor problem in Embassy President Sadat Reaction to Sadat assassination and Mubarak Bureaucratic problems Arms sales to Egypt 1982 Egypt – Israeli Peace Treaty Israeli withdrawal from Sinai Israeli invasion of Lebanon Secretary Haig Ambassador to Mauritania 1983–1985 Origins of appointment Mauritania assignment from career perspective Mauritania in 1983 War against Polisarios American interests in Mauritania Anti-American demonstrations Expulsion of AID personnel Cutting off of AID program Problems within post Difficulty of post Problems with AID program Some successes in Mauritania Ambassador Reid and problem of clientitis Corruption within AID mission Deputy Director Vice President’s Task force on Terrorism 1985–1986 Impressions of George Bush Nature of work Terrorist threat against American diplomats Report of task force Office of Management Operations 1986–1988 Study to reduce diplomatic staffs Prospects for success Difficulty of bureaucracy Rewriting of COM handbook Outplacement training program Director of Career Transitions Retirement 1989 Conclusion 3 Careers after the Foreign Service A career in the Foreign Service INTERVIEW Q: Ed, I wonder if you could give a little about your background before we get you into ​ ​ the Foreign Service. PECK: Certainly. Los Angeles born and raised, of immigrant parents. Q: Immigrants from where? ​ ​ PECK: Russia. Q: Russia. ​ ​ PECK: Both of them. They didn't know each other. Q: Peck doesn't sound— ​ ​ PECK: Father always said that when he got off the boat, and they said, "What's your name?" and he answered, "Alexandroff Gregorivitch Pich," which became Alexander George Peck. His father came from Lithuania and migrated, for reasons which I've never known, down to the Odessa region, where dad was born, in a town called Akermann, which shows how the borders have changed. At the time of his birth, I think it was Romania. It later became Russia, an issue that the State Department focused on when I applied for the Service because one record showed Romanian birth and the other place showed Russian birth. They wanted to know why, I said, well, it's both, depends when you want to time it. I was raised there in L.A. One sister, older. Junior high school, high school, in Los Angeles, then the U.S. Army at the end of World War II. I am a veteran of World War II, by law, but I never left the States. Went from the Army to college—UCLA, majoring in forestry because I'd been a very active Boy Scout, and in my high school summers I worked in the Sierras with the Forestry Service. The Korean War came, I was recalled to active duty, spent another two years in the Army, came back and went to college again, this time as a business administration major, indicating very clearly that I didn't know what I wanted to do. In the summer between my junior and senior years (1955), I participated in a program called, "Project India," in which an interracial, interreligious group of twelve UCLA students went off in two teams of six and spent the summer in India, financed in part by the Rockefeller Foundation. A goodwill, sort of precursor of the Peace Corps, kind of thing. I spent eleven weeks in India. 4 Q: Where in India? ​ ​ PECK: Mostly in the south, the area now called Kerala. Partly in the north as well, ten days in Lucknow, a few days in Delhi, Calcutta, Bombay, Puri, all sorts of places. Traveled extensively. I was fascinated by it and decided that I would like to go into the ​ ​ Foreign Service. Graduated from college. I went to work for the Mobil Oil Company in their management program. Was fired from that job. Went to work for Shell, at which time the call from the Foreign Service came, and I joined in November of '57, and stayed with it until April of this year (1989). Q: What did you feel about the Foreign Service before you went in? I assume you'd done ​ ​ some reading about it and all. Did you feel that you were a Foreign Service type, or did you feel you were going to be somewhat different coming in? PECK: Well, I hadn't really thought about that. What I really tried to come into was USIS, and it's kind of interesting because most people in the Foreign Service believe that anybody who goes into the USIS end of things did so because they failed to get into the State Department Foreign Service. I did it the other way, and that was largely because the people who took care of us when I was in India, who set up the programs and traveled with us, were Branch Public Affairs Officers (BPAOs) from USIS, in posts which are now closed. They spoke the language, they knew the people, they were really living an interesting, challenging, rewarding, exotic kind of life, and I thought, boy, I'd like to do that. USIS found me unqualified because they were looking for people with backgrounds in USIS-type activities. Q: Newspapers, media. ​ ​ PECK: Media, that sort of thing, yes. So I took and passed the Foreign Service exam. Q: Could you explain what the Foreign Service exam was when you took it? ​ ​ PECK: That was the one day exam. Q: They'd switched over to that. ​ ​ PECK: They had already switched over to it. It was also given in various places. I took it in Los Angeles. Before taking the exam I went down and dug out the books written by a company called ARCO, to look at what the Foreign Service exam was like when it was three days long. That's a company that did all sorts of books on how to take exams. Mail handlers, you know, all sorts of positions of that sort. Q: Ah yes, yes. The civil service type things, yes. ​ ​ PECK: Right. I took the book home. It just fell open on the section on geography. In those days the correct answer was worth a point, a wrong answer was a minus point, and 5 a no answer was a minus half a point, which was an interesting way to do it. It fell open to geography and the first question, true or false, was: "In June the winds off the Malabar Coast blow generally from east to west." Well, I was one of those rare people who knew where the Malabar coast was because that's the part of India I had visited, but I didn't know which way the wind blew. Second true or false question was: "At noon on the fifteenth of November on the northern border of South Dakota"—notice that—"the sun is more than fifteen degrees south of the zenith." Well, you know. [Laughter] That's a different kind of exam than the one I took. I closed the book and returned it to its place on the shelf. Q: I know before I took the exam—I took the three-and-a-half day exam couple of years ​ ​ before— PECK: Oh. Q: I was in the military and all I did was I sat down and memorized who wrote operas. I ​ ​ just thought this is a cultural thing, and no operatic question appeared on the exam. PECK: When I took the written exam, they had a very heavy section on economics, because they had discovered that there was a dearth of people who could do that work, and there were a number of graphs and charts which destroyed all of the people from UCLA who took the test.

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