The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project JAMES ALAN WILLIAMS Interviewed by: Ray Ewing Initial interview date: October 31, 2003 Copyright 2010 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born in Wisconsin, raised in Virginia Princeton University Fulbright Scholarship, Munich, Germany Entered the Foreign Service in 1965 Ankara, Turkey: Rotation Officer/Staff Aide 1966-1969 Ambassador Parker Hart Peace Crops Kurds Cypress Relations Terrorism Fleet visits Economy State Department: Operations Center 1968-1969 Operations State Department: Petroleum Officer, Arabian Peninsula Affairs 1969-1970 ARAMCO Officer personnel US Embassy, Saudi Arabia Persian Gulf oil Yemen Jeddah desalination plant Office of Saline Waters State Department: Staff Aide to Undersecretary John Irwin 1970-1972 Personnel Office Environment Secretary of State Rogers Operations 1 Henry Kissinger Relations with NSC Family Chile State Department: FSI: Greek language training 1972-1973 Nicosia, Cyprus: Political Officer 1973-1975 Relations Reporting Political Parties EOKA and EOKA-Beta Civil War Makarios/Grivas rivalry Security Greek Junta Greek political developments Greek/Cypriot relations Nikos Sampson Recognition issue Ambassador Rodger Davies United Nations Special Representative Greek/Turkish troop rotations Archbishop Makarios Enosis Dimitriou brothers Local press reporting Coup London-Zurich Accords Turkish invasion Turkish enclave Partial evacuation Cease fire UNFICYP US policy Refugees Cerlides Embassy attacked Ambassador Davies and local employee killed Family Canadian troops Ambassador Dean Brown Ambassador Bill Crawford Bonn, Germany: Economic/Political Officer 1975-1979 Energy 2 International Energy Agency (IEA) Ambassador Hillenbrand Internal Political Affairs (FRP) VIP visitors Reporting Nazi criminals Helmut Schmidt Political parties Terrorism Embassy organization President Carter visit State Department: Cyprus Desk Officer 1979 Cyprus Embassy State Department: Turkey Desk Officer 1979-1982 Terrorism Suleyman Demirel Turkish military coup US view of coup US economic and military assistance Protection of Turks from terrorism Turk-Greek aid levels US Ambassadors to Turkey National War College 1982-1983 Overseas tour State Department: Office of United Nations Political Affairs 1983-1985 Jeane Kirkpatrick Operations Coordination with regional bureaus UNESCO Major issues NATO consultations Personnel Voting Practices Report President Reagan Relations with White House Berlin, Germany: Political Advisor 1986-1990 Relations with Embassy Bonn Environment US Army role Relations with Allies Quadripartite Agreement 3 Mission organization Allied Kommandatura La Belle disco bombing Terrorism Berlin politics National Green Party US Embassy in East Germany Major Nicholson tragedy Embassy/Military relationship Berlin Wall East Germans in Czechoslovakia Germans flee East Berlin Soviet Missions Relations with Soviets President Reagan’s “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Berlin restrictions relaxation Dismantling Berlin Wall Ambassador Vernon Walters Operations Budget issues Athens, Greece: Deputy Chief of Mission/Chargé d’affaires 1990-1994 Ambassador Michael Sotirhos Defense and Economic Cooperation Agreement (DECA) Prime Minister Constantine Mitsotakis President Karamanlis Operations Terrorism Security Environment PLO US bases phased out Cyprus President Bush visit Ambassador Tom Niles Ambassador’s residence State Department: Ambassador, Special Coordinator for Cyprus 1994-1996 Personnel Operations Greek-Turk meetings in London Greek/Cypriot negotiators Presidential Envoy for Cyprus, Richard Beattie Richard Holbrooke European Union interest Clerides/Denktash New York meetings 4 Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Ciller Ambassador Albright State Department: Director, Officer of Career Development and 1996-1999 Assignments Organization Computerization Operations Voicemail Director General National War College: Deputy Commander and International Affairs 1999-2002 Advisor Operations National Defense University Course of study Evaluation INTERVIEW [Note: This interview was not edited my Mr. Williams] Q: This is an oral history interview with James A. Williams. It’s the thirty first of October, 2003. Jim, it’s good to be starting on Halloween for this conversation. This is being conducted under the auspices of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training at the National Foreign Affairs Training Center, and Jim this is our first session. I see that you were born in Washington, D.C. and a little bit later on you went to Princeton University. Did you grow up in Washington, or were you here as a war baby November of 1942? WILLIAMS: I’m definitely a war baby. My father went into the Navy soon after Pearl Harbor and I was part of his insurance policy to make sure there would be another generation. I grew up in Arlington though. My father got out of the military when the war ended. He stayed in the Navy as a civilian management analyst, so essentially he worked at the Pentagon and at main Navy down on Constitution Avenue when I was growing up, and my brother and I grew up in Arlington, Virginia. Q: Okay and you did go on to Princeton, class of 1964. Was it at Princeton, or even before, that you became interested in the Foreign Service? WILLIAMS: I really became interested in the Foreign Service before Princeton. Living in the Washington metropolitan area you hear a lot, read a lot, breathe a lot of history, foreign policy, government affairs. So from a fairly early age I was interested in that. I majored in history and German literature at Princeton and wanted to have a career, either 5 academics or foreign affairs that would enable me to continue that interest. And on the idiosyncratic side it just happened that my father and Graham Martin were college friends from Wake Forest. From the earliest I can remember my parents were in touch with Graham and Dot Martin, sending them care packages in Paris after World War II, corresponding with them when they were in Geneva and Thailand and Rome. So hearing about the Martins’ adventures in the Foreign Service through perhaps a rose colored glass gave me a very early interest in that profession. Q: Graham Martin was our ambassador in Italy when I first arrived there in 1970. Of course, then he went on to Vietnam and certainly he’d had a very distinguished career. I’d also known him a little bit when he was a special assistant to the undersecretary for economic affairs, Douglas Dillon, in the late fifties. After Princeton you did a little bit of graduate study. WILLIAMS: I had a Fulbright scholarship for a year, for two semesters, at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, Germany. I spent two semesters there basically studying post-war German history, learning how to ski with my bride. We were married when we took that trip, and getting to meet a lot of people in Munich and renewing old contacts in Bonn which I had met the previous summer when I worked there on a scholarship. Q: Not with the embassy in Bonn. WILLIAMS: No, I was doing academic research. I got a scholarship from Princeton and lived across the river and worked in the SPD library on a project involving the elections for the German national assembly after World War I. Q: Okay and when did you take the Foreign Service written examination? While you were in Munich or before? WILLIAMS: No, I took the written exam that summer I lived in Germany and studied in Bonn. That was the summer after my junior year. It was given in some huge room at the embassy in Bonn. A lot of people took it. I took it and was fortunate to pass, although very narrowly because I was always a good test taker. That particular day I rushed through the math section and could not understand why nobody else had finished, and only three minutes before the bell rang did I turn the page over and discover there was a second page. And I raced to finish it, did not of course, and barely passed, or even flunked that portion of the exam. That was something the oral examiners asked me about when I had the oral exam. Q: When and where did you have the oral? WILLIAMS: I had the oral the summer after I graduated from Princeton, before we went to Munich, in Washington, D.C. and passed it. But the thing they zeroed in on early was why were my scores on the written test generally pretty good except for math which was 6 atrocious. I had to tell them it was because I’d been too careless to look at the whole test before I put my pen down. Q: Did you have to defer entry into the Foreign Service then to do the Fulbright in Munich, or did it all kind of work out, the timing the way you wanted it? WILLIAMS: They allowed me to do that with some reluctance. That was another part of the grilling and the oral exam, just when did I plan to come into the Foreign Service if I passed the exam. Was I really an academic who wanted to go on to the academic track or was I serious about wanting to come into the Foreign Service? I think their questions pushed me to clarify my own thinking on that point, and tell them truthfully that I planned to come into the Foreign Service if I passed the test after my Fulbright in Munich. Q: And I see you did come in September of 1965 at age 22 if my math is right. WILLIAMS: That’s right. That was not unusual at the time. Many of us were A.B. generalists with one or two years of post-graduate experience or as former Peace Corps volunteers. There were several of those. Some had masters degrees. There was only one Ph.D. in the class. He was the old man at 31, Ron Casagrande, a great guy. And it just worked out perfectly in terms of the timing. We came back on the ship. In those days you still took the ship to Europe and came back, at least the Fulbright grantees did.