HUNGARY COUNTRY READER TABLE OF CONTENTS Kingsley W. Hamilton 1937-1938 Rotation Officer, Budapest James Cowles Hart Bonbright 1941-1942 Consular Officer, Budapest James McCargar 1946-1947 Vice Consul, Budapest Jordan Thomas Rogers 1954-1958 Economic/Political Officer, Budapest S. Douglas Martin 1956 Hungarian Desk Officer, Washington, DC Horace G. Torbert 1961-1962 Chargé d’Affaires, Budapest John Richardson, Jr. 1961-1968 President, National Committee for a Free Europe, New York Harry Joseph Gilmore 1965-1967 Consular Officer, Budapest Alfred Puhan 1969-1973 Ambassador, Hungary Alan Hardy 1970-1978 Political Officer, Budapest Robert B. Morley 1971-1973 Polish, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary Desk Officer, Washington, DC Donald B. Kursch 1971-1975 Consular/Economic Officer, Budapest Keith C. Smith 1973-1976 Political Officer, Budapest Stephen H. Dachi 1973-1977 Public Affairs Office, USIS, Budapest Philip M. Kaiser 1977-1980 Ambassador, Hungary Roland K. Kuchel 1980-1983 Deputy Chief of Mission, Budapest G. Jonathan Greenwald 1982-1984 Political Counselor, Budapest Keith C. Smith 1983-1986 Deputy Chief of Mission, Budapest Nicholas M. Salgo 1983-1986 Ambassador, Hungary 1 Donald B. Kursch 1986-1990 Deputy Chief of Mission, Budapest Robie M.H. “Mark” Palmer 1986-1990 Ambassador, Hungary Nadia Tongour 1987-1988 Hungarian Desk Officer, Washington, DC Robert E. McCarthy 1988-1992 Public Affairs Officer, USIS, Budapest Lawrence Cohen 1991-1994 Environment, Science and Technology Attaché, Budapest Beatrice Camp 1996-1999 Cultural Affairs Officer, Budapest Lynne Lambert 1997-1998 Deputy Chief of Mission, Budapest Charlotte Row 1997-1999 Environment and Science Attaché, Budapest KINGSLEY W. HAMILTON Rotation Officer Budapest (1937-1938) Kingsley W. Hamilton was born in 1911 to Presbyterian missionaries in the Philippines. He attended high school in China, the Philippines and Ohio. He graduated from the College of Wooster in 1933. One of his favorite history professors topics on world history influenced his interest in international affairs. This led him to graduate work at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and his taking the Foreign Service Exam. He has also served in Hungary and Switzerland. He was interviewed by Charles Stuart Kennedy on December 9, 1994. Q: So obviously you passed. How did the system in 1937 work? We're still in the depression, government is beginning to expand, but the United States is not a major player in the world in a way. Here you are a young guy just out of college, how did they absorb you into the Foreign Service? HAMILTON: Well, they sent everyone right out to a post. I went to Budapest. Some of the officers at those posts were very good at helping young officers. I was rotated through several fields of activity--passports and help to American citizens, visas, and economic reporting. Q: You went to Budapest and you were there from 1937 to '38, this is normal. Did we have a Legation? HAMILTON: A Legation at that time. 2 Q: Who was the minister? HAMILTON: I forget his first name, [John Flournoy] Montgomery was his last name, a political appointee. Q: What was he like? HAMILTON: Very capable, a pleasant man. The office ran smoothly--thanks in good measure to Howard K. Travers, First Secretary and Consul--and he seemed to get along well with the Hungarians. Since he did not care for opera or concerts, one of my jobs--a most pleasant one-- was escorting Mrs. Montgomery to them. Q: What was the situation in Hungary in those days? HAMILTON: Well, it was a dictatorship, a benevolent dictatorship. Admiral Horthy was in charge, he was relatively mild. Things ran smoothly. Everything was in order and people seemed content. As far as normal living was concerned, there were no problems. It was a very pleasant life. The Hungarians were a friendly people, at least those in Budapest, the ones I had the most contact with. Q: What was our Legation doing in those days? What was the main interest? HAMILTON: Well, I don't know that it had any special interest. Of course I didn't get into that. Although I moved around in various assignments for a few months, it was all really on the consular side. I did some economic reporting, but I never got into any of the political work. As far as I could tell, the Legation was concentrating on keeping Washington informed of whatever of interest was going on. I was not aware of anything special. Q: Was the news from Germany and Hitler who was consolidating his power, and consolidating part of Germany, was this a subject of much speculation or interest? HAMILTON: It didn't seem to be. Hitler moved into Austria just after I left to come back to the Foreign Service School. I think it took everybody by surprise. When I went through Vienna for a few days on the way back to Washington there didn't seem to be any feeling of an impending German move. JAMES COWLES HART BONBRIGHT Consular Officer Budapest (1941-1942) Ambassador James Cowles Hart Bonbright entered the Foreign Service in 1927. His career included positions in Ottawa, Washington, DC, Brussels, Belgrade, Budapest, Paris, and an ambassadorship to Portugal. Ambassador Bonbright was interviewed by Peter Jessup in 1986. 3 Q: Good morning, Ambassador Bonbright. You were in Budapest, I think, when we last broke off--en route or there? BONBRIGHT: I had got there by car with Ray Brock a few days before. The boat which we had arranged to charter to pick up our people in Belgrade took off on the night of May 13 down river and picked everyone up and started back up again on the 18th, arriving on the 23rd. Most of the others, including the Lanes, stayed in Budapest for a few days and then went off in different directions. Sybil and I settled in. The legation was in the hands of Mr. Herbert Claiborne Pell at that time. He had previously been minister to Portugal and had only just presented his letters of credence in Budapest. Q: The father of Senator Pell? BONBRIGHT: He was the father of Claiborne Pell, who was still at that time a young Foreign Service officer, but he was proved correct, because as of this day he's still a United States Senator from Rhode Island and a rather senior one at that. Mr. Pell was known around the legation privately as "The Vanishing American." This was only partly due to the fact that he had a rather large shaggy head and looked a little like an American bison, but he was a nice man, a good man, but seemed to be quite oblivious to what was going on in the world around him at that time. Q: By "vanishing American," you meant an American of an ancient breed? BONBRIGHT: Like the bison, yes. For instance, his daily staff meetings were quite incredible. It seemed to me, just having come from two countries overrun by war, we would sit around the table while he would give a little talk on some subject of no relevance. I remember one particularly he gave on the history of the old French coin, the Louis d'Or. In any other place or time, it might have been quite interesting, but for those of us having to sit there at that time, it made us restive. The number two was a man named Howard Travers, known as "Purse." His main interest was in the administrative field; in fact, he was overline (sic) [as a] consular officer. I guess this is my day to say catty remarks, but he used to remind me of the old adage that "you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear." We kept that very quiet, because one of our officers who had been there the time before got into quite bad trouble by being a little too open in his comments. He was serving under a Mr. Montgomery, who made his fortune out of Carnation Milk, and this officer used to go around saying, "All I have I owe to `utters.'" Of course, this was too good to not spread around, and it eventually got back to Mr. Montgomery himself, and our friend was quickly recalled and, actually, it pretty well ended his career. He never got over it. So much for liking to wisecrack too much. The next man in the office was Bill Schott, who did the political reporting. Q: You had stayed with them en route to Belgrade. 4 BONBRIGHT: Yes. We had known them before briefly, and they're a very nice couple and good friends while we were there. Incidentally, he was the only one in the group who could speak any Hungarian and, at that, not very much. All I remember, though, was that he took lessons from one of the most beautiful Hungarian girls you ever would lay your eyes on. Q: To digress for a moment, of all the countries you'd been in before that and since, wasn't there a plethora of stunning-looking Hungarian women? BONBRIGHT: They seemed to me to have more than their share, very, very good-looking and very attractive, plus they're all wonderful linguists, which comes from living in a country with seven or eight borders with different countries and being overrun in war for centuries. The Poles have the same gift, I think, in language; they all can speak with great ease and fluency. Q: For the record, would you define the Balkans? Are the Balkans only Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and so forth? They don't include Hungary and Czechoslovakia, do they? What are the Balkans? BONBRIGHT: In my thoughts and the way the geographical divisions in the State Department went, we considered Hungary as part of it.