COTE D’IVOIRE / IVORY COAST COUNTRY READER TABLE OF CONTENTS Park D. Massey 1957-1958 Consul, Abidjan Donald R. Norland 1958-1960 Consul, Abidjan Brandon Grove 1959-1961 Vice Consul, Abidjan Gerald Michael Bache 1961-1965 Commercial Attaché, Abidjan James W. Wine 1962-1967 Ambassador, Ivory Coast Robert B. Oakley 1963-1965 Economic Officer/Political Counselor, Abidjan Robert J. MacAlister 1963-1965 Director, Peace Corps, Abidjan David Michael Wilson 1963-1965 Junior Officer Trainee/Press Infgormation, USIS, Abdijan George Allen Morgan 1965-1969 Ambassador, Ivory Coast John D. Pielemeier 1966-1968 Peace Corps, Abidjan, Ivory Coast George E. Lichtblau 1966-1969 Regional Labor Attaché, Abidjan Ronald D. Flack 1970-1971 Commercial Officer, Abidjan Charles H. Twining 1970-1972 Ivory Coast, Upper Volta, Niger Desk Officer, Washington, DC 1972-1974 Political Officer, Abidjan David Shear 1972-197? Director, USAID, REDSO, Abidjan Roy Stacey 1973-1975 Regional Planning Officer, USAID, REDSO, Abidjan Gilbert J. Donahue 1974-1976 Economic Officer, Abidjan Robert S. Smith 1974-1976 Ambassador, Cote d’Ivoire Charles C. Christian 1978-1980 Deputy Director, USAID, REDSO, Abidjan 1 Stedman Howard 1978-1981 Regional Post Management Officer, USIS, Abidjan Gordon W. Evans 1978-1982 Mission Director, USAID, REDSO, Abidjan Bruce F. Duncombe 1979-1983 Economic Counselor, Abidjan Mary A. Ryan 1980-1981 Administrative Counselor, Abidjan Carl C. Cundiff 1983-1986 Deputy Chief of Mission, Abidjan Robert H. Miller 1983-1986 Ambassador, Ivory Coast Dennis Kux 1986-1989 Ambassador, Cote d’Ivoire Robert B. Petersen 1989-1992 Public Affairs Officer, USIS, Abidjan Frederick E. Gilbert 1990-1993 Director, USAID, REDSO, Abidjan Charles O. Cecil 1992-1995 Deputy Chief of Mission, Abdijan Hume Horan 1992-1995 Ambassador, Cote d’Ivoire Haywood Rankin 1996-1998 Counselor for Political, Economic and Refugee Affairs, Abidjan Leon Weintraub 2000-2002 Deputy Director, Western African Affairs, Washington, DC Aubrey Hooks 2004-2007 Ambassador Cote d’Ivoire PARK D. MASSEY Consul Abidjan (1957-1958) Park D. Massey was born in New York in 1920. He graduated from Haverford College with a B.A. and Harvard University with an M.P.A. He also served in the U.S. Army from 1942 to 1946 overseas. After entering the Foreign Service in 1947, Mr. Massey was posted in Mexico City, Genoa, Abidjan, and Germany. While in USAID, he was posted in Nicaragua, Panama, Bolivia, Chile, Haiti, and Uruguay. 2 Q: Well, it's interesting that you should have gotten to know Mike Harris whose name comes up frequently in this project. He died a few years ago. Then you served for three years in a non- labor capacity and then? MASSEY: From then I was transferred after a brief period in Washington for training to Abidjan, Ivory Coast, as the American Consul where I opened the first American Consulate in the Ivory Coast and was responsible for the Ivory Coast and what was then Upper Volta, now Burkina Faso. Theoretically because that was still a French colony I was accredited to France and my boss was the American Ambassador in Paris. To the best of my knowledge, he was totally unaware of my existence and I did nothing whatsoever to change that situation. Q: You reported directly to Washington without going through Paris? MASSEY: I reported directly to Washington with a copy to Dakar and a copy to Paris but without having to go through them and without them having any control over the content of my reporting. In other words, I was a small, independent mission. Three people. Q: This would have been in the early 1960s? MASSEY: No, this was the late 1950s, 1957 to 1958 approximately. DONALD R. NORLAND Consul Abidjan (1958-1960) Ambassador Donald R. Norland was born in Laurens, Iowa in 1924. He joined the Foreign Service in 1952. His career included positions in Morocco, the Ivory Coast, France (NATO), the Netherlands, and Guinea, and ambassadorships to Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, and Chad. Ambassador Norland was interviewed by Charles Stuart Kennedy in 1993. Q: Then you got a very interesting assignment. You went to Abidjan, where you served from '58 to '61. NORLAND: Actually, I left in December of '60. Q: How did this assignment come about? NORLAND: [laughter] I tell you, it was an example of the Department personnel system. I was working on the Moroccan Desk and was walking down the hall one day, when I met Charlie Lemmo, an admin officer in AFEX (Executive Bureau). Charlie said that our consul in Abidjan was being PNGed, and they were looking around for someone to send out. Would I be 3 interested? And I said of course I'd be interested. I was tired of Washington; I'd been here almost three years. And so, on quite short notice, I was made consul in Ivory Coast, Abidjan. In historical perspective it may be useful to note that I was only the second consul. My predecessor had only been there for a year and a half (he came in April '57 I believe), and until then we'd had no representation. We were still living under the most elementary conditions--a two-bedroom house for my family. I had two sons then, and a daughter was born there in March of 1959. According to local historians, she was the second white child born in Abidjan. The French would send their wives to France or upcountry to missionary hospitals; they wouldn't think of having children born in Abidjan. We were having good luck with a local French doctor, and didn't see any reason not to stay, although there were no anesthetics or what you'd call modern hospital equipment. It was pioneering in many respects. Q: In the first place, how did the consul get PNGed (persona non grata)? And then what was the situation there when you arrived? NORLAND: He got PNGed because he had not shown sufficient respect for the French. He got picked up, apparently, and influenced...this is now hearsay, because I've never been able to get the full facts, but people in Ivory Coast told me that he allowed the Xerox copying machine in the consulate general to be used for anti-French leaflets. Another one told me, on good authority, that he carried a pistol. In several other ways he had reportedly insulted the French, so blatantly that the man who was in charge of that country then, and is still president today, Houphouet- Boigny, supported the French. Houphouet was friendly with the French, and did not do anything to stop my predecessor from being ousted. He couldn't probably have done much. Q: Had you picked up anything while you were on the Desk, or before you went out, about the man's attitude? Did you think this was probably a problem? NORLAND: Yes, there was definitely something there. The Department didn't fight it. That's usually the first sign that there's something going on. And my predecessor didn't fight it. And his wife reportedly did not like Abidjan. They were bridge players. And there was one person who was continuity and a source of some of those reports. The CIA officer was Bill Dunbar. You may have heard of him; he was later a historian of the CIA on Africa. Bill came to Dakar to meet us and to escort us back to Abidjan; he told us that my predecessor had done a lot of funny things. Bill was not one to make stories up. Q: So we're really talking about a personality problem and not any real state to state...Well, when you went out there, you were basically our representative to the Ivory Coast. This was before independence. NORLAND: This was two years before independence. Q: Was anybody saying, "Okay, Don, this is what we want out of the Ivory Coast, and these are our interests there," or anything like that? 4 NORLAND: There was so little knowledge about the country that I don't think we could have fashioned a letter of instruction. What we did have (and this is something which I'm prepared to document, because it really is a ridiculous episode) we had a consul general in Dakar, and the consul general thought that it could never happen that the rest of those countries in French West Africa would become independent. Q: Who was the consul general? NORLAND: Don Dumont. And Don Dumont was so sure that the situation that existed then was going to prevail that he could not believe that there was even a need for another person to be assigned to Abidjan. Q: Was he what you might call a French hand? NORLAND: Yes, he was. And his wife was French. Q: Oh, yes. This so often was the case for a long time. Dakar was sort of our French outpost down there, and we sent the equivalent to the American colonial officers out there. NORLAND: That's right. And he actually was so convinced of this...And it was easy to do if you've been to Dakar. You know there are those big, beautiful buildings. The French had made of Dakar a real bureaucratic headquarters, a center from which they governed all the rest of West Africa. And they did it by having residents general in the other eight countries, but all reporting was sent through Dakar, where they had a person of the stature of a minister. Louis Joxe, for example, was one of the great governors general in Dakar. Don Dumont got in that circuit and was convinced that we should not only agree with the French to do things their way, but we should actively oppose independence in these countries.