The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project DR. PAUL M. KATTENBURG Interviewed
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The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project DR. PAUL M. KATTENBURG Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: June 18, 1990 Copyright 1998 A ST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born in Brussels, Belgium ame to US in 1940 US army World War II hinese studies at Harvard )ale University, 1946-1949 Indonesia Department of State 19,0-19,, IN.-Indonesia 19,0-19,2 Friction 0ith Netherlands desk UN ommission for Indonesia IN.-Indochina 19,2-19,, Support for Bao Dai1s 2ietnam Baie d1Along agreement of 1948 4eneral 5a0ton ollins mission to 2ietnam Ambassador Donald Heath Department of State 19,,-19,6 2ietnam desk officer TE.8 9Temporary E:uipment .ecovery 8ission) Dulles orders full support for Diem Entered the Foreign Service 19,6 8anila, The Philippines 19,6-19,9 4reater contact 0ith the Filipinos Internal political reporting The A:uinos and the upper class Politics and anti-Americanism Ambassador harles 9 hip) Bohlen IA 1 Frankfurt, 4ermany 19,9-1962 Department of State 1962-1964 Senior Seminar Deputy Director Office of S.E. Asian Affairs hairman, 2ietnam Interdepartmental 0orking group Henry abot 5odge, assignment as Ambassador to 2ietnam Internal politics onflict over US 2ietnam policy hief, .egional Affairs in SE Asian Affairs Bur. Over-emphasis on military planning 5odge avoids Diem EX O8 8eeting on 2ietnam, Aug. 31, 1963 Pres. Kennedy American U. speech Dissenters to US 2ietnam policy Department of State 1964-1967 Policy Planning Staff Philippine paper Officer in harge of Philippine Affairs Negotiations 0ith the Philippine 4ovt. President 8arcos 4eorgeto0n, 4uyana 1967-1969 Deputy hief of 8ission President Burnham ontacts 0ith the opposition Intra-embassy problems Department of State 1969-1972 Instructor, political training omments on FSI INTERVIEW ": This is an interview with Dr. Paul Kattenburg concerning his career in the Foreign Service. This is being done on behalf of the Foreign Affairs Oral History Program and I am Charles Stuart Kennedy. Okay Paul, I wonder if you would give me a little about your background. KATTENBU.4A I 0as born in Brussels and educated there in a private school. I came to the United States in 1940 0ithout any particular intention of remaining there permanently because I 0as determined to get into the Free French Forces in 5ondon. I had come from 2 Brussels via 5ondon to the U.S. By early 1941 I 0as enrolled in the University of North arolina at hapel Hill on a scholarship provided to foreign refugees from Europe by 8rs. Eleanor .oosevelt. Her acolyte Boe 5ash, 0ho 0as subse:uently her biographer, 0as the administrator of this. After I started college at hapel Hill I never gave leaving the United States another thought. Immediately after graduation in 8arch 1943, on a speed up system, I 0as drafted into the army. After basic training, I 0as assigned to ASTP 0here for some reason 0hich I 0ill never be able to understand I 0as put into East Asian area and language studies and sent to study hinese at Harvard. From there I 0ent to the Office of Strategic Services and they plucked me out for a 0estern European mission, a sabotage mission. I 0ent to the SO part of the Office of Strategic Services, Special Operations. The mission 0as scrubbed before my training 0as completed and I 0as returned to the central pool of OSS. We are no0 in mid-1944. At this point I 0as picked out for research and analysis in OSS 0hich 0as the ancestor group of 0hat later became IN. in the State Department. I joined it along 0ith a lot of other military people at that time as a tech sergeant, I guess. One of those, by the 0ay, 0as Boris Klosson, another 0as lint KnoC and there 0ere a lot of interesting stories one could tell about that 0hole contingent, including the day of our discharge at Fort Belvoir, November 194,, 0hen 0e refused to be discharged separately from lint KnoC, 0ho as you may recall 0as black. They 0anted to segregate him for discharge. Boris Klosson stood in the back of the bus, I 0ill never forget it, as 0e reached the gates of Fort Belvoir 9Phil TreDise 0as in that bus and so 0as Boe )ager and a lot of other people 0ho later became :uite famous), he said that 0e 0ill not be separated, none of us 0ill get discharged. We all agreed 0ith Boris. A captain came on board and said, EWell if that is the case you might just as 0ell go back because you 0ill not get discharged.E So our rebellion failed. lint said, EDonFt be silly fello0sE and he left the bus. Then 0e all got discharged. We got discharged on some sort of deal that had been arranged bet0een OSS, and the Department of State and 0ere immediately pumped into the State Department. I believe it 0as called then, I may be 0rong, .NA. I 0as part of 0hat 0as called D.F, Division of .esearch Far East, 0hich 0as then headed by harlie Stelle. 5ater by Phil TreDise and I think Ed. W. 8artin also at one time headed it. I became the Indonesian analyst, as I had been in OSS. .easons I believe I 0as picked out for Indonesia 0as that I could read Dutch and had some Far Eastern background, given the training at Harvard. So the combination seemed appropriate and they had... ": Indonesia was a Dutch colony at that time. KATTENBU.4A ThatFs right. Indonesia 0as a Dutch colony, of course, the Dutch East Indies at the time. The only other person in a similar situation 0as .ichard K. Stuart, Dick Stuart, 0ho never left the civil service in the State Department and later became the Director of our 5iaison 0ith the IA in that particular portion of IN.. He and I both 0orked on Indonesia under laire Holt, a famous person 0hose name should be recorded here because she did a lot of 0ork for the U.S. during WWII. 3 To cut all this short, I left the Department 7 or 8 months after my November F4, discharge, in Buly 1946, and 0ent to graduate school. At this point I 0as about to obtain an 8A from 4eorge Washington, having 0ritten a 8asters Thesis during the time I 0as 0orking. I started almost immediately upon coming to Washington in 1944 taking courses at 4W at night and some early in the morning. All I had left to do 0as 0riting the thesis, 0hich I did in the summer of 1946 on Indonesia. It 0as on internal aspects of Indonesian political development. By that time I 0as about to publish a couple of articles on Indonesia. Frankly, unabashedly these 0ere based on 0hat I had learned being a research analyst on Indonesia. These articles appeared in 0hat later became a very unpopular publication, Far Eastern Survey, part of the Institute of Pacific .elations. It 0as hounded do0n by 8c arthyites later. I donFt think it hurt me particularly. Any0ay, I 0ent to )ale in the early fall of 1946 and did three years of graduate 0ork culminating in the Ph.D. in Bune or Buly F49. 8y dissertation 0as entitled, EThe Indonesian Guestion in World Politics, 1946-48.E It stressed the U.S. role in Indonesian independence. That dissertation 0as never really published but a lot of people have used itH it is on micro film at the University of 8ichigan. Then I had a yearFs post-doctoral study as a Social Science .esearch ouncil Fello0 in Indonesia proper 0here I did a village study in a village in central Bava. This study, called EA entral Bavanese 2illage in 19,0E, 0as published in the ornell Data Series on Southeast Asia. I came back from Indonesia right after the Korean War had started in the middle of 19,0, Bune or Buly 19,0, and after a brief period of recuperation because I 0as a little ill, reentered the Department in IN. to 0ork again on Indonesia. This lasted until early 19,2. I came back in September of 19,0 and stayed in IN. Indonesia until sometime in the spring of 19,2 0hen I traded places 0ith Al Seligmann, 0ho had been 0orking on Indochina and 0ho 0anted out of that being, I think, :uite a bit disaffected by the policy, by the 0hole situation... ": Can I ask a ,uestion- KATTENBU.4A Sure ": Indonesia was going through a ma.or decoloni/ation process00a forceful process through revolt. 1hat was the attitude within the Department- KATTENBU.4A The attitude 0as that those of us in IN., 0orking on Indonesia, along 0ith the desk officers, and I recall very clearly 0ho they 0ere--Bim OFSullivan and his assistant Wym oerr, 0ho later replaced Bim and 0ent on to become an ambassador to 5atin America in the F60s. Wym oerr, Bim OFSullivan, 0ho has since retired from Political Science at the University of 5ouisville, and Dick Stuart, Dick had also come out of OSS and had remained steadily in the same position and 0as really my boss, and Back 4 5ydman 9later our Ambassador to 8alaysia) 0ho 0as the director of our division of Southeast Asian Studies, or Southeast Asian Analysis, 0hatever it 0as called--our attitude 0as one of considerable conflict really 0ith the Dutch Desk, headed by none other than FritD Nolting and it seems sad to me in a 0ay, I have never kno0n Nolting very 0ell, but on t0o occasions in my career I 0as at opposite ends of policy 0ith him, but much junior to him.