The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project
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The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project AMBASSADOR RICHARD M. MILES Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: February 2, 2007 Copyright 2015 ADST FOREIGN SERVICE POSTS Oslo, Norway. Vice-Consul 1967-1969 Washington. Serbo-Croatian language training. 1969-1970 Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Consul 1970-1971 Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Second Secretary, Political Section 1971-1973 Washington. Soviet Desk 1973-1975 Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. US Army Russian Institute 1975-1976 Advanced Russian language training Moscow. Second Secretary. Political Section 1976-1979 Washington. Yugoslav Desk Officer 1979-1981 Washington. Politico-Military Bureau. Deputy Director, PM/RSA 1981-1982 Washington. Politico-Military Bureau. Acting Director, PM/RSA 1982-1983 Washington. American Political Science Association Fellowship 1983-1984 Worked for Senator Hollings. D-SC Belgrade. Political Counselor 1984-1987 Harvard University. Fellow at Center for International Affairs 1987-1988 Leningrad. USSR. Consul General 1988-1991 Berlin, Germany. Leader of the Embassy Office 1991-1992 Baku. Azerbaijan. Ambassador 1992-1993 1 Moscow. Deputy Chief of Mission 1993-1996 Belgrade. Chief of Mission 1996-1999 Sofia, Bulgaria. Ambassador 1999-2002 Tbilisi, Georgia. Ambassador 2002-2005 Retired 2005 INTERVIEW Q: Today is February 21, 2007. This is an interview with Richard Miles, M-I-L-E-S. Do you have a middle initial? MILES: It’s “M” for Monroe, but I seldom use it. And I usually go by Dick. Q: You go by Dick. Okay. And this is being done on behalf of the Association of Diplomatic Studies and Training and I am Charles Stuart Kennedy. Well Dick, let’s start at the beginning. When and where were you born? MILES: I was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1937. It was kind of an accident of birth; my mother was a Hoosier and my father was a southerner from Louisiana. The marriage didn’t last and my mother took me back to Indiana so I’m really a Hoosier. Q: Okay. Well, let’s start—first just to get an idea—I don’t know how significant your father was in your upbringing. Where does the Miles come from? MILES: It’s from my father and I guess I was an infant when he and my mother separated so I didn’t actually meet my father until I was about 45. It’s kind of a soap opera story. My wife, Sharon, felt that the children should know their paternal grandfather, that side of the family, because that is their name. So, happily, he’s from the South; I think if he had been from the North it would have been more difficult to find him. But she knew, from my mother, the town that his people were from and she looked in the phone book and wrote letters to all the Mileses there. She got some very nice, interesting replies back, including one from a black man who said he was pretty sure that he was not my father but he would have been proud to have been. Sharon had described me as a diplomat and mentioned our having been in the civil rights movement too. But anyhow, she got a letter back from my father’s brother, Monroe Miles, and there was enough corroborating evidence so that it was clear that he was my uncle and he arranged a meeting. I went on down to Shreveport, where Monroe still lived, and he drove me over 2 to meet my father. We met on the Louisiana side near the bridge across from Vicksburg, Mississippi, and then we had a pleasant, if awkward lunch near there, took a photograph, and that was that. It was kind of like a soap opera, really, and we never met again, although I’ve stayed in touch and am still in touch with his brother, Monroe, who was an Army chaplain most of his life and then retired, had his own church and is now totally retired. Monroe has visited us overseas, so I’ve gotten to know the family in that way. My family has become particularly close to Monroe’s daughter, Linda Miles, a very sweet and talented woman. Q: Just to get an idea of where people come from and so forth— MILES: I don’t come from a typical Foreign Service background. Q: There really isn’t a typical Foreign Service background. MILES: Well, the stereotypical background. Q: That’s what I am trying to get at. Do you have any idea where they lived? Was it a Southern family? MILES: Well, yes, they were from around the Shreveport, Louisiana, area and it was a reasonably extended family. Back in the 1930s, my father was a railroad man working security—I don’t remember the name of the railway company which went up to Chicago, probably the New Orleans-Chicago route—and somehow met my mother, in Indiana. She was a high school graduate and her parents lived on a farm and I guess there was a romance or whatever and they were married. But it didn’t take, there was just a big cultural difference, you know, between the North and the South. And it’s kind of funny because when I met my southern relatives finally and got to know them a little bit, somehow in the course of the conversation it came out that they, all those years, for like 45 years, they had been convinced that my mother was a Catholic. They are Protestants and they thought that was why the marriage broke up, but in fact we were Protestants too so it was just, you know, myths grow in the families and there you are. Q: Okay. Let’s talk about your mother. Where did she come from? MILES: Well, my maternal grandfather was a farmer and a nurseryman. He worked for many years for the Hobbs Nursery, an old and large, commercial nursery near Bridgeport, Indiana. His specialty was shrubs and bushes—just like in the movie Time Bandits. The nursery was in the country then but Bridgeport has long since been incorporated into the city of Indianapolis. His avocation was buying rundown small farms, rehabilitating them, fixing the fences, putting a pond on them, painting the barn, that kind of thing. He really enjoyed doing this. At some point he would sell the farm for a small profit and then buy another one and fix that one up. So he was a combination of a professional nurseryman and a farmer. He taught an extension course occasionally at Purdue University so he was not an unsophisticated man although I don’t believe his education went beyond high 3 school either. He was successful enough so that in his retirement he, my grandmother and one of my mother’s sisters bought a small hotel in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Q: Of course in that era very few— MILES: Not from Indiana anyhow. Q: Well, you know, my family came from the Chicago area. My brothers were the first to get college degrees although they read a lot. MILES: Oh, everyone read, yes. Q: Where did you grow up? MILES: In Indiana pretty much. My mother married again; I went through several names, by the way. In fact, when I came in the Foreign Service you had to list aliases or other names on the security clearance form. I had several because the custom at that time, at least where I lived, was that you would use your stepfather’s name without legally acquiring it and so I never used the name Miles until I went into the military service years later. After my mother and father were divorced, my mother married a fellow named Max Lehman whose parents were also farmers in the eastern part of Indiana, very rural—no indoor plumbing, for example. They must have gotten married while I was still an infant; anyhow, I really have few memories of their marriage. During the war he went off to work on the Hanford plutonium project as an accountant. Q: In Washington state. MILES: In Washington state. We never heard from him all during the war. At that time you received—I remember getting very tightly rolled comic books as a present from him and it always was with a mysterious post office box number—I think out of Chicago. I think that was where the post office box was, and he was not allowed to return home, so for all those years we didn’t really know where he was or what he was doing and that complete separation ruined that marriage. So my mother was working, during the war, for the Allison aircraft engine company in Indianapolis, testing aircraft engines; these were the proudest moments of her life. Q: Turned out to be a very good engine for the Mustang, I believe. MILES: The P-51 Mustang, the P-40, the P-38, the P-39 Airacobra. It was a decent engine and she tested the engines before they were put into the airplanes. They mounted each engine, propeller and all behind a big test stand faced with ballistic glass and then she started it up and put it through its paces, testing the oil and gas consumption and the manifold pressure and all that. It was exciting work and she had “yes or no” authority. If the engine did not meet the required specifications, they would take it out and tear it down and rebuild it until it did meet them. After all, engine performance could be a life or death matter for the pilots of those aircraft. She was very proud of her contribution to 4 the war effort.