The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project JAMES MARVIN MONTGOMERY Interviewed by: Thomas F. Conlon Initial interview date: August 12, 1996 Copyright 2016 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born and raised in New Jersey Juniata College and Emory University Entered Foreign Service - 1958 Department of State - Personnel Office 1959 Vietnamese language training Saigon, Vietnam - Economic officer 1960-1962 National Liberation Front (NLF) Personal views on US involvement Department of State - Vietnam desk officer 1962-1964 Replacement of 200 piastre note issue OPLAN 34-A Commercial Import Program Diem overthrow - Kennedy views Mexico City, Mexico - Political officer 1964-1967 Institutional Revolution Party Political contacts Immigration Policy and justice in Mexico Department of State - FSI - Thai language training 1967 Bangkok, Thailand - Political/Military officer 1968-1971 US-Thai military relations and agreements Operation “Rolling Thunder” “Special Logistics Agreements” SLAT I and II Ambassador Graham Martin B-52s at Utapao 1 Chiang Mai, Thailand - Consul 1971-1974 Environment American colony Consulate staffing functions CIA and DEA anti-drug activities Counterinsurgency program Thai communications fiasco Pua-Nan road project Vietnam-Thailand relations Kuomintang and opium trade “Golden Triangle” Drug trade dealers operation Congressman Lester Watt visit Department of State - Soviet desk officer 1974-1976 GLOP Kissinger domination Department of State - Special Assistant to Counselor 1976-1977 “Sonnenfeldt Doctrine” and Carter-Ford debate US Jews and Soviet troubles in New York Israel Singer and Jewish communists MBFR talks Department of State - Bureau of Public Affairs 1977-1978 Director of office of Public Programs Requests for office speakers Dorothy Sarnoff Department of State - Bureau of Political-Military Affairs 1978-1979 Office of International Security Policy Deployment of intermediate range nuclear missiles to Europe Soviet SS-20s Chinese relationship ACDA - Bureau of Weapons Evaluation - Counselor 1979-1981 Brzezinski and plutonium production issue Missile controversy “Window of Vulnerability” “Mobile missiles” China and World Trade Organization General Advisory Council Department of State - Congressional Relations - Deputy 1981-1986 Assistant Secretary Speakers Program 2 Increased Congressional interest in foreign affairs Gulf of Tonkin Resolution Congressional-executive “consensus” Congressional staffs “Section 150" of Budget Resolution Kissinger and Congress China relations issues Genocide Convention Korean Rice Crisis Department of State - Human Rights Bureau - Deputy 1986-1987 Assistant Secretary Creation of bureau Representative Dante Fascell Telecommunications issue “Evenhandedness” issue Johannesburg, South Africa - Consul General 1987 “Constructive engagement” Environment Nelson Mandela Retirement 1987 Grievance board Seagram INTERVIEW Q: This is an interview with James Marvin Montgomery, a retired Foreign Service officer. It's being done for the Foreign Affairs Oral History Program. Jim, would you start this interview, as we usually do, with something about when and where you were born, where you went to school and the early period of your life, and how you got interested in the Foreign Service? MONTGOMERY: I was born on September 27, 1935, in South Jersey. I grew up in Burlington, New Jersey, went to elementary and high school there, and then moved on to Juniata College, in Huntington, Pennsylvania, from which I graduated in 1957. I majored in history there and obtained a graduate fellowship at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. One day just before graduation I was walking through the administrative section of Juniata College and saw a notice on the bulletin board inviting applications to take the Foreign Service examination. I thought, "It's free, I might as well." So I signed up and... Q: This exam was conducted in Atlanta? 3 MONTGOMERY: No, I was still studying at Juniata College at that time. I planned to go to Atlanta in September, 1957. I sent off the requisite application and received in the mail a ticket of admission to the exam, which was given at Pennsylvania State University, in State College, Pennsylvania. So I went up to Penn State and sat there with a bunch of other aspiring diplomats. A State Department type came in, in his Brooks Brothers suit, opened up a box, took out the exams - and they were the wrong exams! [Laughter] So I figured, an outfit like this couldn't be all bad! I went back to Juniata, the State Department sent me another ticket of admission, and I went to a university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, this time, where they were giving the make-up exam. I took the exam. You needed a 70 to pass. I got a 70. There was no wasted effort there. So I filled out all of the papers... Q: Was this the one-day exam? MONTGOMERY: It was a one-day exam. Q: Did you also have a foreign language exam? MONTGOMERY: No, there was no language exam. Then I continued with my plans to go to Graduate School at Emory University. In the summer of 1957 I went down to Williamsburg, Virginia, where I had the role of narrator in the pageant called, "The Common Glory," that they put on every summer there. While I was down there, I got a phone call from the State Department, asking me to take the oral examination. Q: How did they follow you up? MONTGOMERY: They called my home in New Jersey, and my mother told them where I was. So I went up to DC and reported to that building at the corner of 19th St. and Pennsylvania Avenue, NW. I was met, as I recall it, by three or four elderly Foreign Service Officers - or they seemed old at the time. We sat down and talked for about an hour and a half, and they asked me some questions. When they found out that my Dad was a local politician in his spare time, we spent a lot of time talking about that, which I could talk about because I knew a lot about it. Then they found out that I earned my spending money while I was in college by preaching every Sunday in a black Baptist church. They were utterly fascinated about that, so we spent a lot of time talking about that. Then they told me to go outside, sit down, and wait for a bit. I sat there for about 15 minutes. One of them came out and said, "Congratulations! You've been accepted into the Foreign Service. When can you begin?" I said that I had an appointment at Emory as a graduate assistant, starting in a month or so. I asked whether it would be possible to do that year at Emory and then come into the State Department in 4 the summer of 1958. They said, "That will be fine." Q: Were you the only person going through the oral exam? MONTGOMERY: There wasn't anybody else in sight. I assume that they had other people scheduled to take the exam. But that was the custom - they told you right away whether you had passed the oral exam. Q: Do you remember the names of any of the examiners? MONTGOMERY: I do not. So I finished out my summer as narrator in Williamsburg and then went on to one year in graduate school at Emory University, obviously weighing the two alternatives: a career in academia or a career in the Foreign Service. It was quite an enviable position for me. However, I ultimately decided that academia was all right, but, as I told my parents, rather than write about history, I would go off and see if I could make a little history. So I decided that, when I got the call, I would enter the Foreign Service. I finished my course work at Emory for my M. A., did some teaching while I was there, and then went back to work for the water well driller for whom I had previously worked in the summer. One day, I was plugging away on a well. The boss drove up and told me that he had received a phone call from the State Department. They needed me right away. So I put down my wrench and headed for Washington. Q: You had struck oil. MONTGOMERY: I had struck oil. So, in July, 1958, I raised my right arm and was sworn in. I think that I was one of the youngest Foreign Service Officers. Q: How old were you then? MONTGOMERY: I was 22. Q: What was your first assignment in the Department? MONTGOMERY: Well, my first assignment in the Department was the A-100 Course at the Foreign Service Institute, which I attended. Then I was sent to study a world language for four months. Since I had studied Spanish in school, I chose Spanish and I came out of this course speaking it fairly well. The Spanish language program was, in many ways, much more effective than the Vietnamese language program that you and I went through in 1959-1960. So I came out speaking pretty good Spanish, and then they assigned me to Personnel, where I dealt with the assignment of people to Germany. [Laughter] Q: Well, that figures! MONTGOMERY: My great disappointment was that we were not going to go overseas 5 right away. Everybody in the FSI class was assigned to Washington. All my classmates were sort of spread around the Department. I went off to the Personnel Operations Division and was put in charge of handling all of the paper work and the negotiations... Q: Did you ever serve with any of the people in your A-100 course later on in the Foreign Service? MONTGOMERY: That's an interesting question. Yes, I later worked for Bill Dyass, who was then a Deputy Assistant of State for Public Affairs. I was then [February, 1977, to May, 1978] the Director of the Office of Public Programs.