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The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project GRANT V. MCCLANAHAN Interviewed By The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project GRANT V. MCCLANAHAN Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: January 27, 1997 Copyright 2000 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born of missionary parents in Egypt and raised there eturned to U.S. - 1936 Life in Egypt Muskingum College, New Concord, Ohio American Uni.ersity of Cairo, Egypt U.S. Na.y - //00 State Department - Political Analyst, Egypt 1916-1921 British-Egyptian treaty U, meetings, New 3ork 4ing Farouk Ambassador 6efferson Caffery Muslim Brotherhood 0sraeli influence in U.S. Arab-0srael dispute Loy Henderson Egypt7s officers coup - 1922 Sudan So.iet influence Dhahran, Saudi Arabia - Consul 1921-1927 A AMCO Saudi Arabian justice Li:uor problems eporting 4ing Saud Palestinians Bahrain Buraimi Oasis issue Suez Canal issue ,asser influence 1 London, England - Near East - Political Officer 1927-1962 Anti-American sentiment Suez aftermath elations with foreign office Chatham House meetings 0ra:i e.olution - 1928 U.S. 0sraeli policy British reactions to 0ra:i re.olution General 4assim egional issues State Department - Libya desk officer 1962-1962 /heelus Air Base Monarchy 4ing 0driss Succession issue Visit of Crown Prince 4ing and Crown Prince relations 6ewish population British military mission in Libya A0D program .ersus oil re.enues elations with 4uwait embassy Fekini (ambassador and prime minister) Mobile Oil interests Tripoli embassy personnel Baghdad, 0ra: - Political Officer 1962-1967 SiA Day /ar - 1967 E.acuation 0ra:i go.ernment Communist Bloc relations State Department - Tunisia Desk Officer 1967 Tunisian embassy eApertise President Bourguiba .isit Presidential gifts Post- etirement BAfrica eportC Magazine DACO AuthorD Diplomatic 0mmunityD Principles, Practices, Problems INTERVIEW 2 Q: Today is the 27th of January 1997. This is an interview with Grant V. McClanahan. This is done on behalf of the Association for Diplomatic Studies, and I am Charles Stuart Kennedy. Tell me a bit about when and where you were born, and a bit about your parents. MCCLA,AHA,D 0 was born on October 22, 1919, in Tanta, in Egypt. 0 was born there because my father was a medical missionary. He and my mother had arri.ed there in 1912. He was first stationed in a mission hospital in Tanta that still eAists. That is where 0 spent the first two years of my life. My father went on furlough in 1922 to America. Afterwards, he was sent to open a clinic in LuAor in upper Egypt. /e were there until 1922, when the mission closed that clinic. Then he went to a 122-bed hospital in Assiut, also in upper Egypt, with se.eral doctors and worked there from 1922 until my parents left Egypt. Our family li.ed in an apartment on the hospital compound until they left Egypt in 1921. 0 li.ed there until 1933. Then 0 went to Schutz American Boarding School in AleAandria, but Assiut was still my home until 0 came to America in 1936. Q: Tell us about your parents. Where are they from, And what brought them into this, MCCLA,AHA,D My father was from 0llinois and my mother was from /a.erly, in Ohio. My father was the son of a United Presbyterian minister who had se.eral children. Three of the sons became doctors, and two of them became ministers. 0t was :uite a familyE Q: What was the denomination, MCCLA,AHA,D United Presbyterian, which was a small Protestant church and now is united with the main Presbyterian one. My mother, in /a.erly, Ohio, was a schoolteacher and taught there until she married. She had gone to school in /a.erly and then to Normal School at Miami Uni.ersity in OAford, Ohio. She li.ed there until she married my father. /hen she married my father, she was 22, and they went to Egypt that same year, 1922. Q: What was it li-e being a young lad in Egypt during the /20s and /00s, MCCLA,AHA,D 0t was comfortable. There were other American mission families in Assiut. There was an American junior college campus in one part of town, a girls school in another compound of the American missionaries, and my father7s hospital. There was altogether a community of about 80 Americans, so that was .ery nice. 0t was a happy childhood for all of us. There was a small American grade school at the college. From it, we all went to Schutz, an American boarding school, for three more years. That was the pattern. Then from Schutz we all went to America for college. Q: Did you get involved with the Egyptian community and its lifestyle, MCCLA,AHA,D At that time, it was a pro.incial town. Most of us had been born in Egypt and as small children learned Arabic. 0 had an Egyptian nurse who took care of me 3 as an infant, and it was not until 0 was about three years old that 0 realized clearly there were other languages. 0 was .isiting in the home of a British archeologist in LuAor with his daughter and her French nanny taught us to count in French, so 0 grasped there was e.en a third language. Howe.er, 0 did not learn the Arabic alphabet and to read Arabic until 0 was 12. Q: What type of Arabic were you learning, MCCLA,AHA,D The Egyptian dialect, which is one of the more useful dialects. /hene.er 0 speak to any Arabs, they always say, BOh, you must ha.e been in Egypt.C Q: Did you get any sense of the tensions between the Egyptians and the British as a -id, MCCLA,AHA,D /e were aware of it because Egypt in 1919 and 1920 had .iolent demonstrations against the British occupation. /e knew later that when crowds walked down the street shouting nationalist slogans, it was time to go indoors. There were ne.er any incidents of burning buildings or .iolence in Assiut, eAcept in 1919. Q: Then you went to college in 1902, MCCLA,AHA,D No, 0 went to high school in AleAandria, but 0 didn7t ha.e any science background because the school we didn7t ha.e a lab. All of us went on to high school for our fourth year in the United States. 0 went to Stony Brook, a preparatory school in Long 0sland, and there we had courses which included physics and chemistry, so that satisfied the science re:uirement. Q: Where did you go to college, MCCLA,AHA,D Then, 0 went to Muskingum College in New Concord, Ohio. 0t is a denominational college of the United Presbyterian Church. 0t was founded in 1837. 0 went to that particular college because of my mother7s sister, my aunt, who was the librarian there. Since my mother and father were going back to Egypt, they thought it would be nice for my brother and me to be close to a family member. Q: 3our brother was already there, MCCLA,AHA,D 3es. He is two years older than 0. Q: At Stony Broo- and Mus-ingum, after pedaling around in Egypt, was it difficult to settle in, MCCLA,AHA,D 3es, it put me in some respects in an awkward position. 0 had been li.ing earlier in America, but only when 0 was in the fourth and fifth grades because the missionaries had a year and a half on furlough in America e.ery se.en years. And that grade school eAperience was in New Concord, Ohio, where Muskingum College was. 0 had been in an American community only in a small town. 0n those days, if you were a 4 student and didn7t own a car, you hitchhiked, e.en to go to New 3ork and Chicago, and 0 did. 0t was :uite a no.elty to me to think that you could do that. 0n Egypt, that would ha.e been unsafe and out of the :uestion. Also, e.en though Stony Brook had a religious atmosphere, most of the boys7 fathers were in business and other professions. 0n Egypt, American men were mostly doctors, ministers, or teachers. 0t was also strange to be thousands of miles from our parents. Howe.er, our training in the American schools in Egypt was good, so 0 was .aledictorian of my class in Stony Brook. Q: At Mus-ingum College, were you pointed towards anything, MCCLA,AHA,D Since the age of 11, 0 wanted to be a field Egyptologist in Egypt. 0 collected ancient coins and read a lot about anti:uities. That is what 0 contemplated doing when 0 came to America. My brother wanted to become a doctor like my father. My parents encouraged me because they thought that was reasonable. There was no archeology program at Muskingum College, so 0 majored in the classical Greek language. 0 was .ery fortunate to ha.e an eAcellent teacher. His name was Merle ife. He taught Greek. 0n those days, if someone were aspiring to be a minister, they needed to know the ancient Greek of the New Testament. Dr. ife was writing his own teAt. /e used that in draft after he was there, and he later asked me to do the indeA, which 0 did. My minor was in history and 0 took the re:uired subjects. 0 had been taught French intensi.ely in school in Egypt. So when 0 was a freshman, 0 took a junior le.el course in French, and that met my modern foreign language re:uirement. 0 ne.er thought about the Foreign Ser.ice, although 0 knew what it was, because the American consulate general in AleAandria was an important member of the international community, as well as in the American community.
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