The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project PHILIP C. WILCOX, JR. Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: April 27, 1998 Copyright 2 2 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born in Den er, Colorado; raised there and in New York Williams College and Stanford (ni ersity Teacher - Sierra Leone 19,1-19,3 .ntered Foreign Ser ice - 19,, /ientiane, Laos - (S0S - Press Officer 19,1-19,9 /ietnam War Press (.S. ambassadors State Department - Office of Deputy (nder Secretary for 4anagement 19,9-1911 Staff assistant duties William 4acomber Djakarta, 0ndonesia - .conomic5Commercial Officer 1912-191, Corruption (.S. relations Foreign relations Suharto Communists Cornell studies Oil State Department - FS0 - .conomic Studies 191,-1911 Dhaka, Bangladesh - .conomic Officer 1911-1919 Aid programs .conomy .7ternal relations National War College 1919-1980 1 State Department - 0nternational Organi:ations - Political Affairs 1980-1983 N.A problems 4N Jeane Kirkpatrick Political appointees 0sraeli-Arab relations (.S.-0srael policy Lebanon (.S. 4arines 4NF0L So iets Professional diplomats Palestine State Department - Near .ast Affairs - Regional Affairs 1983-1984 0ran-0raq war So iets CO40D.ASTFOR (.S.-0sraeli cooperation 0sraeli Defense Force [0DFA LebanonBs war State Department - Near .ast Affairs - Deputy Assistant Secretary 1984-1981 Office of 0sraeli and Arab-0sraeli Affairs Jewish lobby Arab lobby (.S.-0sraeli relations Pollard affair 0sraelBs retaliation policy (SA0D PLO Palestine Jerusalem Jewish settlements Terrorism 0sraeli security Arab-0sraeli peace Arafat 4adrid process 0sraeli politics A0PAC 0srael policies .n ironment West Bank Shamir (.S. relations 2 (.S. citi:ens Reporting (N 0ntifada PLO Contacts Relations with 0srael .mbassy location issue Culf War Palestinian nationalism Jordan Faisal Husseini Secretary of State Baker - Palestinian meetings Jerusalem - Consul Ceneral 1988-1991 A0PAC 0sraeli policies .n ironment West Bank Shamir (.S. relations (.S. citi:ens Reporting (N 0ntifada PLO Contacts Relations with 0srael .mbassy location issue Culf War Palestinian nationalism Jordan Faisal Hussein Secretary of State Baker - Palestinian meetings State Department - 0ntelligence and Research - Deputy Assistant Secretary 1991-1994 4ission Obser ations and appraisal 0ntelligence sources Personalities Arab-0sraeli relations 0ndia-Pakistan relations Southeast Asia China C0A 3 State Department - Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Ambassador at Large 1994-1991 0ran-Contra Affair Agency coordination Arab-0sraeli coordination 0RA 0slamic terrorism Sanctions (.S. losses Saudi Arabia Foreign cooperation State sponsored terrorism 0sraeli cooperation INTERVIEW Q: Today is April 27, 1998, and this is an interview with Philip C. Wilco(, )r. This is being done on behalf of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, and I,m Charles Stuart Kennedy. I wonder if we could just start at the beginning. Could you tell me when and where you were born and something about your family. W0LCODE 0 was born in Den er, Colorado, on February 21, 1931. 4y father was a businessman, an employee of the Bell System, the telephone company, born in Den er and worked there. During my early years we mo ed to New York where my dad worked for the ATFT in New York. Then we returned back to Den er where 0 attended high school. 4y mother was born in .l Paso, Te7as, so our family had a strong western background. When 0 finished high school in Den er, 0 went to college at Williams College in 4assachusetts, and then 0 went to the Stanford Law School. Q: All right, well let,s go bac/. We,ll start in Colorado. 0ou went to grammar school there, or was that in New 0or/. W0LCODE 0 went to grammar school in Colorado, but then we mo ed to 4aplewood, New Jersey, and 0 finished grammar school and went to junior high school there. We then mo ed back to Den er where 0 attended public high school. Q: Well, before you hit high school, what were your main interests. W0LCODE 0 was an ordinary kid who was interested in sports, and 0 liked to read. 4y parents encouraged me to read and as a ery young child 0 remember a map of the world in our breakfast room. 0 had some sense of geography and of other countries at a fairly early age. 4y mother was from .l Paso; she spoke Spanish, so there was a little bit of a 4 4e7ican dimension to our family. Q: 0ou were a little young to be caught up in the news of WWII, weren,t you. W0LCODE 0 remember listening to the radio and hearing the announcement of Pearl Harbor when 0 was four years old. 0 also i idly remember many years thereafter the Korean War. We were swept up in that. With the help and encouragement of my parents and teachers, 0 was somewhat aware of what was going on in the rest of the world, e en as a child. Q: 0ou did your high school in Colorado. Where in Colorado. W0LCODE 0 went to .ast Den er High School. Den er, although it is deep in the west, has always had kind of a cosmopolitan character and an interest in the rest of the world. As a high school student, 0 attended World Affairs Council meetings. 0 heard diplomats, including State Department officials, who isited Den er and began to be more oriented toward foreign affairs. Q: When you were in high school, what were your sub-ects of greatest interest. W0LCODE 0 read a lot, and 0 liked cars and skiing. Q: What sort of things did you read. W0LCODE Oh, 0 liked ad enture stories and historical no els, including those set in e7otic foreign countries. 0 maintain that interest today. Q: Were you still loo/ing at the map. W0LCODE Yes, we always had a map somewhere in our house and an atlas on our coffee table. 4y parents were interested and in ol ed. We often had isitors at our home from foreign countries, including isitors who came under the (.S. 0nformation AgencyBs program. A Turkish student li ed with us for a year in Den er. Q: Well, then you went to Williams. 0ou were there from when to when. W0LCODE 0 was there from 1954 to H58. Q: What got you to western Massachusetts. W0LCODE When 0 li ed in New Jersey, 0 got to know the .ast Coast well, and 0 disco ered Williams. 0 decided, as a Den er boy, that it would be broadening to lea e Den er and go to college somewhere else, so 0 went to Williams. That opened up the world for me, intellectually. 0 studied history and political science, and got a good grounding in the history of Western .urope, the So iet (nion. There were no courses at that time on Asia, Africa, or the rest of the world. 5 Q: Did you have Richard Newhall. W0LCODE He was my professor of philosophy. Fred Schuman was my political science professor. He had been e7iled from the (ni ersity of Chicago, and was a mar elous teacher and a great scholar and articulator of power politics. Q: I was class of ,5 at Williams and a history ma-or, so these are people I /now. I thin/ a wonderful grounding. What was your impression of Williams at that time. W0LCODE 0t was a terrific college because of the caliber of the teachers and the students. There was an intimate relationship among students and faculty. That indeed, was the ocation of the college, to teach. The college is physically remote, in the mountains of Berkshire County, but it was not intellectually isolated. People came from Washington and around the world I Ceorge Kennan, John Foster Dulles, and Henry Cabot Lodge, for e7ample. There were a good many foreign students. The mission of the college was to pro ide a broad liberal education. You absorbed a lot by osmosis, by being there. Q: When I was there, the faculty was relatively liberal and the student body was relatively conservative. I don,t /now if that still applied. W0LCODE That was true in my era too. 0t was during the .isenhower years when American students were not engaged politically, and it was a more inward looking time in our history 0 think. The students, as 0 recall, were mostly Republicans if they had gi en any thought to politics, and many of them hadnHt. Q: While you were at Williams, you were ta/ing history and political science. Did you have any career in mind. W0LCODE 0 had ague thoughts about the Foreign Ser ice e en then, but 0 had no career plans. 0 was not oriented. 0 isited .urope during one of my summers in college, and 0 also spent a summer in /ene:uela working in an oil field. 4y uncle got me the job. He had mo ed to Caracas when he finished Dartmouth College and Har ard Law School, to go into business with his classmate at Dartmouth, Nelson Rockefeller. That ad enture stimulated my interest in the rest of the world. Q: Was there any effort at recruiting while you were at Williams for the foreign Service, particularly CIA, because CIA at that time, Williams was sort of a prime hunting grounds I thin/, particularly in my class. W0LCODE 0 donHt remember any. 0 had two classmates who joined one or another branch of the Foreign Ser ice. Warren Clark joined the State Department and Jack Platt joined the C0A. Q: When you got out, what were you doing. , W0LCODE 0n my senior year in 1958 0 was at loose ends. So, like a lot of undergraduates e en then, 0 decided to go to law school which seemed a reasonable option to prepare me to be a lawyer or something else.