Library of Congress Interview with Anthony G. Freeman Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs History Project Labor Series ANTHONY G. FREEMAN Interviewed by: Don Kienzle Initial Interview date: February 7, 1995 Copyright 2004 ADST Q: This is Don Kienzle. Today is Tuesday, February 7, 1995, and I have the pleasure this morning of interviewing Anthony G. Freeman, a long-time Foreign Service Officer and until November 1994, the Special Assistant to the Secretary of State and Coordinator International Labor Affairs (S/IL). Thank you very much, Tony, for agreeing to participate in our Labor Diplomacy Oral History Project. FREEMAN:My pleasure, Don. Q: Shall we begin with your personal background, where you came from, your education, etc? FREEMAN: I'm from New Jersey. I did most of my schooling in New Jersey. I was born in Newark and went to high school in East Orange, New Jersey. I did my undergraduate work at Rutgers University. I spent one year at the main campus in New Brunswick and finished up the last three years in Newark. My degree was a bachelor of arts in the social sciences - history, economics, and politics. Immediately after college I had a fellowship for the summer to come down here to Washington to attend the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University. They had a program in Mediterranean and Interview with Anthony G. Freeman http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001352 Library of Congress Maghreb affairs. That was the summer of 1956. Immediately thereafter I volunteered for the draft and was in the Army for almost two years in Kentucky, Texas and Germany. When I came out of the Army, I received a fellowship to attend the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University for a two year masters program in what they called “public affairs.” I stayed on a third year in the Politics Department and was contemplating doing my doctorate there, but in the meantime I took the Foreign Service exam and decided that I had enough school and wanted to get to work. I came to Washington in mid-1961 and joined the Foreign Service. Q: Did your family have a labor background of any kind? FREEMAN: No. My immediate family did not. My father was in the auto parts industry; he was a salesman and distributor of auto parts. I cannot say that I had any real association with organized labor except by empathy. My grandfather on my father's side was a bootmaker and laborer who had immigrated from Hungary. My mother's family came from Paterson, New Jersey, which had been a major textile center. The Triangle Fire tragedy in lower Manhattan was something we all learned about from an early age. I had many, many part-time jobs myself and paid my way through high school and college, but have to admit none of those were union jobs. [Laughter] Q: No union card? FREEMAN: Sorry to say I didn't have a union card. I worked on the docks in Port Newark and didn't have a union card. Q: Was any of your academic work in the area of international labor? FREEMAN: I cannot say that it was. I have to think back myself as to how I developed an interest in labor affairs, and frankly, it is a bit hazy to me. I did elect a course at Rutgers on domestic American labor issues, but the professor was not inspiring. I would say that probably there was some kind of social underpinning for this interest. Certainly I came Interview with Anthony G. Freeman http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001352 Library of Congress from a family background in which we were strong supporters of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, and I think I had a good social consciousness all through my high school and college days. And, as far as I can recall, I was always sympathetic to the idea of organized labor. Also, my first job in Washington - one summer in the 1950s while I was still going to school - was at the Department of Labor verifying the wage slips of agricultural guest-workers from Mexico allowed in on the “bracero” program. I got that job through a Federal civil service-wide examination and the assignment to Labor may have been by accident, but probably there was an element of choice involved and I may have opted for this. Following the Army and the Woodrow Wilson School, when I stayed on at Princeton for the third year in 1959-1960 to contemplate a doctoral dissertation, I began working on the idea of doing my thesis on the Alliance for Progress in Latin America. I wanted to concentrate on the social impact of the Alliance for Progress. I did some research before giving it up and deciding to go into the Foreign Service. So I had an interest in Latin America, and more specifically in social affairs in Latin America, before I came into the Foreign Service. Then I joined the Foreign Service in 1961 and took the entry level training program at the Foreign Service Institute (FSI). I was assigned on my first tour to Buenos Aires as a “central complement officer.” I think that's what it was called. Q: What time frame was this? FREEMAN: I started in the Foreign Service in July of 1961, so by December of 1961 I was finished with the training program and language training and everything. And I was due to go out to Buenos Aires, but then I was caught in a travel freeze. So it isn't true that the screw-ups in the State Department are of recent vintage only. [Laughter] There was a travel freeze because of delay in Congressional appropriations, I believe, at the end of 1961, so I was detailed to the State Department and my assignment to Buenos Aires was put off for six months. In the meantime, I was temporarily detailed to the Labor Interview with Anthony G. Freeman http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001352 Library of Congress Advisor's Office in the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs (ARA). During the time I was there, I signed up for an evening training program on domestic and international labor issues, once a week or something like that, at American University in which Murray Weisz was one of the teachers among others. Q: Phil Kaiser? FREEMAN: I don't remember Phil from that time, but Phil, I think, was the director of the program. And there were a few others whom I could identify if I went through the names. My classmates in this course were all taking it as part of their training preparing them for labor attache positions abroad to which they had already been assigned. Among these were Russ Olson and Roger Schrader, as I recall, but I'm not absolutely certain of that. For these officers, the labor training program was a full semester at American University, including night classes, but I just attended the night class, because I was working in my assignment in ARA during the day. So that was for four to six months or something like that during the time that we had the travel freeze. The head of the ARA labor office at that time was Henry Hammond, who is since deceased. Henry was a fine gentleman, who came from the Labor Department and was a senior labor attach#. He himself was being assigned to Buenos Aires in the July 1962 time frame, as labor attach#. One of the major projects he had me work on in the ARA office was to do research on the Argentine trade union movement, and I did an in-depth paper on every personality there was. I had access to the relevant reporting from the field, of course, and everything that came across the State Department desks on Latin America. I did a detailed profile of the trade union movement and the political parties in Argentina, so by the time I got to Argentina myself in July 1962, I was extremely well- read on Argentine affairs. I knew the bios of all the characters I was going to meet when I got down there. I say, “I was going to meet,” but I am skipping something here, so let me backtrack. As I said earlier, I was assigned as a central complement officer, where you “rotate” Interview with Anthony G. Freeman http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001352 Library of Congress from one section to another in the Embassy. But during the time that I was working for Henry Hammond, our Ambassador at that time to Argentina, Rob McClintock, came to Washington. I asked to meet with him, and an interesting thing happened, which had some impact on what my first assignment in Buenos Aires would be later on. He came through Washington, among other reasons, to have a meeting at the AFL-CIO with Serafino Romualdi, Jessie Friedman's step-father. Now Serafino was a legend in those days. He had been a very active labor person during the War. He evidently had worked for the OSS in the labor area. He was an Italian Socialist who had fled Italy during Mussolini's time prior to the War. He had lived or worked in Latin America and had many Socialist friends from Italy who were in prominent places in the trade union movement and in politics in Latin America, for example, in Venezuela, Uruguay and Argentina, et cetera. And it had been a strong article of faith for Serafino as head oInter-American affairs of the AFL-CIO to oppose the Peronists, who came to power in Argentina and took control of the labor movement by pushing out the socialists and anarcho-syndicalists, with muggings and killings and so forth.