The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project

The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project RICHARD E. UNDELAND Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: July 29, 1994 Text revised May 200 Copyright 200 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Beginnings Beirut 19 7-19 8 $unior Officer Trainee Tunis 19 8-1962 Radio Officer, Assistant Information Officer Alexandria 1962-1964 Branch Pu,lic Affairs Officer Saigon 1964-1966 Field Operations Officer Algiers 1966-1967 Information Officer -ashington 1967-1969 -riter for the .OA Special Assistant in the /SIA Office of Policy and Plans Beirut and 0u1ait 1970 Ara,ic study at FSI, Temporary Posting Amman 1970-1974 Pu,lic Affairs Officer 0u1ait 3plus Bahrain and 4atar5 1974-197 Pu,lic Affairs Officer -ashington 197 -1977 1 Exchange Assignment 1ith /SAF Head7uarters -ashington 1977-1979 Deputy Director, State NEA9P Damascus 1979 -1983 Pu,lic Affairs Officer Riyadh 1983-198 Pu,lic Affairs Officer Cairo 198 -1988 Pu,lic Affairs Officer Tunis 1988-1992 Pu,lic Affairs Officer /SIA < My Perspectives Closing Comments Appendix Introductory Explanation: In taking another look at this oral history more than a decade after the original version came out, I have decided to revise this document. -hyA < I felt I could and should be more pointed in talking a,out people 1ith 1hom I interacted, to include much more the naming of names, letting the chips fall 1here they may. This BreformC brings, to my mind at least, greater context, moment and verve. There are still a very fe1 cases 1here I have on purpose held back on direct identification, mostly foreigners, out of the 1ish to avoid any potential em,arrassment. And, alas, that doesnDt count the all too many names I have forgotten. < More is to be said, more vignettes to be told, more meat to be added to 1hat is already there, so as to present a fuller and rounder picture of situations throughout my career and ho1 I fit into them. In the intervie1s, too much seemed to be slighted, incompletely handled or overlooked9forgotten. -hile the initial editing let me fill in many of these gaps, I no1 find the jo, I did back then more than a little inade7uate. < I realiEe I could have 1ritten another document that expands on 1hat came out originally, but I like the give and take of the intervie1 formula. Thus, expansion made 2 more sense to me. It someho1 facilitates my saying 1hat I 1ant to and keeps an informal, often 7uite personal, character that appeals to me. I ask, is it too personalA < I believe the time and distance of an added decade plus lets me look back at my career in a fuller, more focused and, frankly, clearer 1ay. I find that my memory has not flagged 1ith the passage of the extra time. < At a fe1 places, I did not, on reflection, say exactly 1hat I 1ish I had, and then did not catch and correct these instances in the editing done back then. Some of it 1as due to over-telescoping my responses. In other cases, I just did not get it 7uite right on the initial go-round. < And a couple of purely personal considerations. I have had the time and, o,viously, the inclination to take on the task, and, secondly, it is a record, as I 1ant to leave it, for my children as much as for the Foreign Affairs Oral History Program. Dunno, but may,e some colleagues and friends 1ill also be interested. If so, it 1ill be out there for them. Richard E. /ndeland May, 2006 B ginnings: &: Could we start this off by your giving me something about your parents, your early background and schooling? /8DELA8D: I 1as born in 1930 in Omaha, 1here I attended the same grade school and high school that my parents had gone to, SaundersH and Central High respectively, although in their earlier days it 1as Omaha High School. My mother 1as also born in Omaha and my father arrived there as a ba,y. In the real estate9property appraisal ,usiness for himself throughout his adult life, he 1as at one point the president of the 8ational Association of Real Estate Appraisers. He thre1 himself into getting housing loan guarantees for black veterans after -orld -ar II, and to the end of his life looked on this as professionally his finest hour. The family lived all their lives in Omaha. It is 1here they are buried, as are three of my four grandparents. &: Is ,ndeland a -erman name? /8DELA8D: No, itHs Nor1egian, and 1hereas I had earlier assumed it meant the ancestors had lived in the lo1lands, I have no1 learned its origin is far more complex. Tied up in the complexities of the Hardanger dialect, it pro,a,ly denotes the family took on the name of a remote area up in the mountains, 1hich seems to be 1hat the name means, though there are a couple of other possi,ilities. It lies a,ove /lvik, at the uppermost reaches of Hardanger Fjord. 3 My grandfather immigrated in early 1881from the family homestead at /ndeland. After a couple of years in Illinois, 1here he 1orked in a 1atch factory, he settled in Omaha. He opened a bar,er supply business, but 1as at heart a technical person, a self-taught engineer, if you 1ill. He invented the hydraulic mechanism, 1hich to this day is used to raise and lo1er bar,er chairs. -hen he died suddenly in 1932, he 1as 1orking on an electric shaver. A fla1ed businessman, his shop burned do1n three times, but he never sa1 the need for fire insuranceI he never made any money from his inventions. In 190 he ,ecame the Nor1egian consul for Ne,raska and environs, a position he held until his death 27 years later. My motherHs family 1as 7uite 1ell off. Her father 1as vice president of the largest 1holesale dry goods company bet1een Chicago and the -est Coast into the 1920Hs. Among other things, he 1as a pioneer in developing ne1 1ays of handling commercial credit. -hen the Depression struck, my parents and so many of their friends, their JclassJ if you 1ill, 1ere not made destitute, but the means to maintain their former status disappeared. I had a modest up,ringing. There 1as not enough money for many extras, ,ut 1e 1ere 1ell clothed and fed and never in real 1ant. They 1ere happy years for me. &: At that time, were you developing any interest in foreign affairs, or anything like that? /8DELA8D: Not specifically, at least nothing hinting at 1here I 1ould end up, although I 1as an avid reader, and a lot of it 1as history, historical fiction and biography. My interest in the 1ider 1orld dated from -orld -ar II, 1hich held for me a consuming interest. I still have the scrap book of photos and articles I clipped from ne1spapers and magaEines to trace the course of the fighting. That 1ar dominated our thinking in a 1ay and to an extent that no other single 1orld event had or has since. I, my parents and many of our friends took to heart the ne1s on each American and British defeat and victory, ,eing saddened by the former and 1elcoming the latter. -e looked on Americans and Brits almost as one, for they 1ere representing the good and defending themselves and others against evil. In 1948, I entered Harvard, 1here I majored in English literature, but took nearly as many courses in modern history and government, as political science 1as called there in those days. It 1as at Harvard my real appreciation of the 1hys and ho1s and 1hats of the 1orld seriously came forth, although this interest had begun earlier. In thinking back on it no1, yes it 1as at Harvard, my internationalist focus and outlook took hold. My 1949 summer in Nor1ay strengthened this outlook. &: .ou graduated in 1952, correct? /8DELA8D: Spring of 19 2, yes. In autumn I entered the Stanford Business School, though I am still more than a little befuddled as to 1hy I 1ent there. I sa1 it through the normal t1o years and got my MBA, but by the second year I 1as pretty thoroughly bored 1ith marketing, finance and the rest of the SBS fare. Looking for something more stimulating, I found it at the Hoover Institute largely through the colorful and dynamic 4 professor, Christina Phelps Harris, 1ho 1as its resident scholar on the Middle East. An intrepid English1oman, she had flo1n airplanes over much of the Ara, 1orld in the 1930Hs. She came to the /.S., got American citiEenship and in the immediate post-1ar years, 1orked in the Department of State, from 1hich she resigned in protest over the /.S. recognition of Israel. She, remarried to the noted historian David Harris, then joined him on the faculty of the Hoover Institute. In those days it 1as not the bastion of the right it 1as later to become. Though I 1as lacking in the re7uired background, she accepted me for her graduate seminar on modern Egypt. My second Middle East a1akener 1as an Egyptian professor, Mohammed 0afafi, a Cairo /niversity li,rarian, 1ho 1as spending a year at Stanford on a Ful,right grant and 1ith 1hom I developed a,iding ties. He 1as my de facto advisor for my term paper on the early emergence of the Egyptian nationalist movement. Though my interest 1as much aroused by these persons, I 1as by no means yet hooked on the Middle East, and, on getting My MBA in spring of 19 4, I 1ent to 1ork for Shell Chemical in San Francisco, a stop-gap jo,, 1hile a1aiting my draft num,er to come up.

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