Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project AMBASSADOR SHELDON J. KRYS Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: August 18, 1994 Copyright 2 2 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born in New ork City" raised in Washington, DC University of Maryland Radio program production Entered Foreign Service - 19.5 State Department - Educational Cultural E0change Program 19.1 Specialist on leader grants 2ondon, England- Special Assistant to Ambassador 19.5-19.9 Reorgani4ation of embassy duties E0ecutive Review of Programs 5EROP6 Ambassador David Bruce 7ietnam demonstrations Middle East Ambassador Walter Annenberg State Department - ARA - Deputy to Chief of Personnel 19.9-1983 Policy Analysis and Resource Application 5PARA6 Findlay Burns Personnel assignments Comprehensive Country Planning System 5CCPS6 FSI - Serbo-Croatian 2anguage Training 1983-1984 Belgrade, ugoslavia - Administrative Counselor 1984-198. Tito Security Relations National War College 198.-1988 Korea 1 State Department - Inspection Corps 1988-1989 Issues West Africa Peace Corps AID China Passport Office State Department - NEA - E0ecutive Director 1989-1983 Spike Dubbs murder Teheran embassy taken Near East embassy evacuations Family liaison group Canadian assistance to hostages Teheran hostages Islamabad embassy attacked Hostage Relief Act Canadian Si0 Algerian role President Carter>s role Warren Christopher Hostages> reactions U.S. press Hostage reception Embassy Tel Aviv Bureau management styles State Department - Management - Deputy MMO 1983-1984 NSDD-38 - mission personnel quotas Ron Spiers Secretary of State Aeorge Shult4 Trinidad and Tobago - Ambassador 1985-1988 AID couple kidnapping Israeli interests section TD Beirut U.S. interests Environment Apartheid UN voting Relations Cuba Caribbean Basin Initiative TD - 2air Commission State Department - Administration and Information Management 1988-1989 2 - Assistant Secretary Operations Moderni4ation Telecommunications Budgeting Secretary of State Baker State Department - Diplomatic Security - Assistant Secretary 1989-1991 FSI growth Consular Affairs Secretary of State Baker Embassy protection Telecommunications Budgeting Consular missions Aulf War security problems Kuwait embassy 2atin America security Aeorge Washington University - Diplomat in Residence 1991-1993 Retirement 1993 Somalia UN assignment Bosnia Consultant, international affairs INTERVIEW 5Note: This interview was not edited by Ambassador Krys6 Q: Today is August 18, 1994. This is an interview with Ambassador Sheldon J. Krys. It is being done on behalf of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and I am Charles Stuart Kennedy. Sheldon and I are old friends. Can we start with your bac)ground* Tell us something about your family, your parents, when and where you were born, where you grew up* We want to get an idea where the people come from that we are interviewing. KR S: I grew up here in Washington. I was born in New ork City. My mother>s parents were from New ork. I spent from age si0 onward in either Maryland or Washington, DC. Q: ,ou were born in 1934* KR S: es, right. We came here just as the war years began and of course Washington was a small town. 3 Q: What was your father doing* KR S: My father was a builder. He had apprenticed with his father and so on for generations. They were cabinet makers. Even though they were cabinet makers they were all builders, for three generations at any rate. Q: I thin) that was very much carpenter gothic and the whole thing. KR S: That>s e0actly right. During the Depression years, things were terrible for us and I remember my mother always told a story that on one of my earliest birthdays, he spent his entire salary of eight dollars a week to buy me a tricycle, so this was always a big thing. I think it fashioned his thinking about what I should do. I think he was quite torn between having me come into what became a fairly successful business here in Washington and fearing that somewhere in the back of his mind there may be another depression and this was not the way to go. I went to the University of Maryland and lived at home and life had improved considerably after the war, not that we were deprived. As you probably remember, you didn>t know you were poor" you just lived like everybody else. There was food on the table. Q: This was it. I sometimes go bac) to the houses I lived in in California and I loo) at those little houses and I thin) they were really very nice. Now I thin) that/s for the other fol) but then I was the other fol). KR S: We were the other folk as well and my father did it on his own with his own two hands literally. I have always been very proud of what he>s done and tried this sort of thing in summers but it wasn>t necessarily my life. He was a terrible teacher because he knew how to get things done and he was a very definite type-A. My lagging behind was not his great idea. At any rate, I went off to the University of Maryland because I was going to follow a wish of my parents to become a doctor, which was the wish of every parent. I majored in starting up the radio station at Maryland University. As soon as I got out of school, I went to South Dakota and started in radio. Q: When one ma0ors in starting up a radio program, what type of courses does one ta)e* KR S: I ended up as an English major but I was still seeing myself as a pre-med student which was absurd. It was just as the Korean War was coming to an end and Maryland University, which was a very large university, really wasn>t prepared for the influ0 of veterans so they didn>t have microphones in large rooms. I had a chemistry professor and he taught a course which was known as Dewey>s mystery hour because no one really understood anything he was saying. It was in an amphitheater and he spoke with his back to the student body and he filled the blackboard with equations, as this was organic chemistry. Then as he put the last equation down, he picked up the eraser, never turned to the students, and erased the board so we never knew anything. His great claim to fame apparently was that he helped to invent detergents, so he was going to stay on the faculty forever. 4 Anyway, in the summer of C55, I went off to South Dakota and started in radio having e0aggerated my e0perience. I actually started in radio in Washington when I was in high school. Q: Where did you go to high school* KR S: I went to Coolidge High School which is in northwest Washington. One of my classmates was a kid by the name of Ron Nessen and Ron and I had similar ambitions. I actually got the program on WO2 which at that time was located on Dupont Circle and did DWhat>s Happening with Teenage Washington.E Ron Nessen later was Aerry Ford>s press secretary. I think he went to American with Willard Scott and Ed Walker. We were part of the intercollegiate broadcasting network here in Washington. When he got out of school he went off to West 7irginia, Fhe never talks about this) and he was known as Ron Harold and then later he was known as Old Hickory because he had a country music formatted station. I went to Rapid City, South Dakota. Q: 1ow did that come about* KR S: The owner of the station was in town learning to build a television station, and he went to 2adio and Television Maga4ine which was an industry maga4ine that has want ads. I had placed a want ad in which I had spoken of this e0traordinary e0perience in news broadcasting. I went out as a news broadcaster. He actually drove me out there. He was a man who had been a coal miner and a coal miner>s son and created two radio stations with his own hands. I joined part of a large network which consisted of two stations, one in Rapid City and the other in Deadwood. These were sister stations. I was big stuff. I became really enamored of a program that I did, and we traveled around three or four states in which it was carried. It was a children>s show. It taught me a great deal about what goes on in this country that we in the East would never understand, and that was the plight of the Native Americans as they are now known, the Maglala and the Siou0 Indians. I had a partner and he and I would go into the supermarkets in all of these little towns on Saturday mornings, where we did this children>s show. As many as 500 or .00 children, or as few as 50 children, would turn out, depending on the si4e of the town. Most of them came because we had a sponsor called Foremost Foods which was a dairy that sold ice cream and milk, and we gave ice cream and milk to the children. That>s probably why they came because it was an awful program. This is my life story, isn>t it, StuI Q: ,es, but I thin) this is very important because we are trying to figure out where somebody comes from. KR S: Actually, I>ll show you how I came into government in a sort of a left handed way. At the end of 195., instead of doing the morning news where I started, I was doing the evening news.