Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project FISHER HOWE Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: February 3, 1998 Copyright 2 8 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born and raised in Illinois Harvard niversity Private business London, England% Executive Officer, OSS 1941-1945 Organi,ation Personalities Relations .ith British Intelligence Relations .ith S Embassy Relations .ith exiled European governments De 0aulle and free French .S. Navy. nited 3ingdom 1943-1944 Commando Training Overseas intelligence operations Far East Southern Europe State Department role Entry into Foreign Service .ithdra.n 1942 OSS pressure on State Foreign OSS 7issions Algiers 1943 Ceylon 1944 7arriage 1945 Donovan and the OSS, Post .ar 1945 Central Intelligence Agency Donovan8s methods 1 7ac Arthur and the OSS 0eneral 7arshall Personality clashes Foreign Service Act of 1949 1949 Departments of Commerce and Agriculture :oseph 0reen Resistance to change Foreign Service ;elitism“ Congressman :ohn Rooney Comments on Foreign Service 20-23 William Donovan biographies Changes in the Service Foreign Service Auxiliary Personalities :oseph 0reen Congress.oman Frances Bolton The National War College 1947-1948 State Department% I2R% Deputy Chief 1950-1959 2ational Security Act Breakup of OSS I2R relations .ith geographic bureaus 7cCarthy atmosphere Dulles and ;Positive loyalty“ statement The Dulles brothers Israel Russian policy StateACIA relations State Department% Executive Secretary of the Department 1959-1958 Herbert Hoover, :r. Bill 7aconber Duties Secretary :ohn Foster Dulles Dulles relations .ith the President Working atmosphere Commissioned Foreign Service Officer 1958 Oslo, Nor.ay% Deputy Chief of 7ission 1958-1992 Ambassador Frances Willis Saarinen8s Embassy shield 2 Relations NATO -2 shoot-do.n Environment Long Range Navigation (LORA2C 2ordics in the S The Hague, the Netherlands% Deputy Chief of 7ission 1992-1995 Relations Environment 2ATO 3ennedy assassination Dutch vie.s on De 0aulle Diplomat in Residence, the niversity of tah 1999-1997 Environment Author-Computer Science State Department% Policy Planning Staff 1997-1999 Workings and influence Dean, Sal,burg Seminar (SAISCD 1970-1973 State Department% Presidential Commission on the Organisation 1973-1975 of 0overnment for the Conduct of Foreign Affairs 3issinger Contents and future of report Participants INTERVIEW E2oteD This intervie. has not been edited by 7r. Ho.eF $: Today is the third of February 1998. This is an interview with Fisher Howe being done on behalf of the Association of Diplomatic Studies and Training and I*m Charles Stuart Kennedy. Fisher could we start at the beginning? Could you tell me when and where you were born and something about your family? HOWED I8m a native of Winnetka, Illinois, born in 1914, of parents .ho .ere comfortable but not affluent. 7y father .as an investment banker .ho had gone out to Chicago from Boston. 7y mother .as a native of Ne. Gork. We gre. up in a family of five children, a very close family. All five children .ent to the same splendid North Shore Country Day School (3 to 12C. Four brothers .ent to Harvard, one sister .ent to 3 Hassar. We summered regularly in Plymouth, 7assachusetts, so that .e drove east and had large members of a clan in a big family settling in Plymouth, 7assachusetts each summer. $: ,ou went through the Country Day school up through the twelfth grade? So this would have gotten you out when? HOWED 831. I .ent to Harvard in 831, graduated in 835. AB degree, history and literature. Debated as to going to la. school or go into business. Everybody in my class said they8d do anything in business except selling, so I decided I8d go into selling. They said they .ouldn8t go .est of the Hudson River so I decided to go to Texas. In fact I .ent to .ork almost immediately on graduation for the Coats and Clark Thread Company. After a couple months of training in their factory getting used to the thread products, I .as assigned a territory in Northern Ne. Gork and proceeded .ith a car full of thread samples to go from Albany, Ne. Gork, north to Plattsburg and cross Ogdensburg and 7alone to Waterto.n, and back through tica selling threads on the .ay. $: I*d li-e to go bac- to the college years and then we*ll come bac- to this. *31 to *3.. This was the high point of the Depression. /as this ma-ing much of an affect on the student body and on you? HOWED Ges. I had to .ork through college mainly to pay club bills. I had a grandmother .ho paid a good part of my tuition. Tuition at Harvard in those years .as I400 for the year. We had a one-room of a three-room suite of rooms .as something like I295. I coached at a school in Boston - a private, very junior secondary school - to earn money to keep up .ith my peers. $: /hat about the political life of Harvard in those days? There was a lot of flirting with communism, even probably fascism and all that. A lot of currents were going through there. /ere you feeling any of this? HOWED I don8t think I felt one iota of that. I don8t have any recollection of any political forces. I .ould not have, by the nature of my enjoyment of Harvard, .ould not have been involved any.ay. I .as going to enjoy people and social and athletic events mostly but I .as not a.are that it .as going on and I had to be ducking it or taking a position on it. $: It doesn*t necessarily mean there was. There*s always some strain. I was just wondering whether it dominated the campus? HOWED No. Categorically no. It may have come up later, near the .ar time, by 1935. Roosevelt .as controversial. 7y father .as pretty strongly Republican and I .as in the center and later very much for Roosevelt. $: In the thread business, was it difficult because of the depression or did people have to have clothes? 4 HOWED Ges. It .as pretty basic article, thread. Curiously enough, the Coats and Clark8s Thread and Domestic Household had almost a complete monopoly so that I could go into any dry goods store or variety store in the country and they8d kno. the threads, very closely. Anecdotal. They said, ;Here8s this Harvard man.“ When I got started in Ne. Gork, they said, ;We8ll sho. him .hat it8s like,“ and proceeded to put me at one end of Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn .ith a spool of thread and said, ;Don8t sho. your face until you come out the other end.“ Three days later, I came out and I8d sold three boxes of thread in the .hole length of Flatbush Avenue and t.o of them .ere returned. They8d bought it just to get me out of the place. This is a humbling experience. $: As designed. HOWED As designed. $: How long were you with Coats and Clar-? HOWED I stayed .ith them from 835 to 839. Hery luckily, .ithin a year, I .as chosen to be an apprentice to go to another British company in Gorkshire, England. I spent a year in England, came back and .as assigned a territory in Colorado and then Ari,ona. I also had almost a year right in Ne. Gork selling to the big department stores. I rather precipitously left the company, although I .as very happy .ith them, because I got a sense that I .anted to go into the Foreign Service. I had a very good friend, Randolph 3idder, classmate, .ho .as in the Foreign Service. I came east and talked to him and got encouragement from him and explored the tutoring services that .ere available and proceeded to come in 1940 - it may have been the end of 1939 - 1940, to go to Turner8s Diplomatic School .hich .as tutoring for the Foreign Service exam. $: /ith the thread business, I*m just wondering if they moved you around to these territories, does this lead anywhere? ,ou say you were sent to England to get trained and all but then to put you out in the field and do some more selling HOWED It .as better and better jobs. They kept a record and .hen I left, I had built a record of selling in Ari,ona, particularly, that .ould have led me to a higher position. I .as on a good track for.ard. I .as not unhappy .ith .hat I .as doing or the recognition that I .as getting for .hat I .as doing. $: /hat, besides -nowing Randy Kidder, what appealed to you about the Foreign ServiceJ HOWED Probably a misleading sense of the glamour. I had kno.n once an Ambassador Wilson .ho .as ambassador to 0ermany at one time. I8ve forgotten .hat his first name .as. He .as a friend of the family. I had met him and .ent up there on holidays. I had 5 read some about foreign affairs but I .as not a student by any means. I don8t think it .as any profound intellectual motivation that got me there, but I got there. $: ,ou too- this cram course. /hat were they concentrating on? HOWED It .as a pretty intensive course% it must have been for a good six months. They gave us a good overlay of economics, international trade, and international la. .ith professors, adjunct kind of professors, .ho moonlighted from 0eorge Washington and 0eorgeto.n niversity. Dean Acheson8s brother, Ted, taught economics. A la.yer by the name of Armisted Booten, prominent in Alexandria, taught international la.. There .ere probably 30 or 40 of us in that course studying really very intensely because the exams .ere kno.n to be very tough.