about negroponte, whose career stretches over five decades. this is about an hour and 10 minutes. >> we are lucky to have george liebmann with us tonight. george is in or in private practice in this story specializing in american and international diplomatic history. his publications include diplomacy between the wars, five diplomat in the shape of the modern world. tonight he's here are bad to us is by u.s. ambassador john make her ponty. locum, george. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. the book is called "the last american diplomat" not because you've in a literal sense did diplomat, but because in some respects is last diplomat of

good generation. he entered the foreign service immediately on graduation from yale. his education was essentially in the humanities, not international relations theory. he felt the most viable course he took in college was in economic geography, which is not hot anymore come either in colleges or high schools. he was required to yield major to take a course in dealing with the english civil service. no one pays attention in which english constitutional history. and when he entered the foreign service, whose first assignment was in hong kong in 1960.

hong kong in 1960 is hard to remember this was the place that existed in almost total isolation from china. there were millions of refugees in hong kong, but no american could go to china. and there is no trade. it was a listening post, but not a very informative one. but the experience that he had their used to be typical of the experience that foreign service officers had. he was assigned to interview these applicants. he learned that these rudimentary bantering chinese and is undoubtedly a broadening experience for a graduate of exeter and yell to suddenly find themselves interrogating impoverished and desperate

people. and it's an experience in which the denizens of washington didn't think the days haven't had and it produces i would think less servitude and more humanity than we see on the part of those who think that they are entitled to make foreign policy washington. i was not close to john negroponte during that period. we grew up in not department building. we were very close friends until about each until about teacher ted went off when off in completely different directions and i didn't see him for 50 years. and i then saw him when my mother saw his mother's obituary in the new speed for when she was in her 80s. she said well, he was always a nice boy and i found at my age i wouldn't have any friends if i hadn't tried to renew old

acquaintances because they have a tendency to die off when you get in your 70s and 80s. so i look tonight. he was then outside of government at mcgraw-hill. one thing led to another and there came a time when we were having lunch when he said something is suggested to me that he might not be adverse to having someone write about his career although he hadn't kept a diary and had an undertaking to write anything himself. and i thought having written an earlier book about diplomats of the 20s and 30s that is life would be a good way of telling the story of american foreign policy during the last 50 years, which is what i've tried to do in this book. he's secure in hong kong was uneventful.

the leading foreign-policy issue with hong kong at that time concerned textile in port and the administration was not happy at the volume of hong kong textile imports. kennedy complained to prime minister mcmillan about it. mcmillan's answer was a good one. we used to have the same problem. we sold all this textile machinery to india and india promptly took away our market and we decided the only thing to do about it was to try to educate our population. so they could reduce and sell other things which in britain's case was and is invisible exports, thinking, insurance, low, academia, publishing and so on with the british still

probably leading the world and almost certainly the best. with respect -- this hong kong. was merely an interlude and negroponte like most american foreign service officers during the johnson administration was then assigned to serve for a period of down and he went to language school for nine months and became by most accounts the second best vietnamese speaker in the foreign service, which gives you some idea of how inadequate language training is in the foreign service. he had a gift for languages. he had grown up in a household for the french and english were spoken interchangeably. nonetheless, he was sent -- his

assignment for the first two years in the amount was to work with a group presided over by a sameness diplomat named habeeb. it was a group of about eight or 10 americans, the best-known of whom was richard holbrooke. whose job was to go out into the vietnamese provinces and make assessments of the political situation in each province. these assessments are essentially the only objective assessment that anyone made at that time. the defense department people were fond of proclaiming what they were doing was a great success and the prosperity was just around the corner. the people from the agency for international development coded themselves to giving away brise, king roosting cinderblocks.

annoyingly, were proud of the way they were winning the hearts and minds of the people. the state department people didn't have a dog in that site. they were not delivering programs. they were just observing. what they observed and they were all pretty much in agreement about this was that there were dramatic differences between the provinces in south vietnam and the most pronounced differences depended upon the religious composition of the population and how many of the people there have been refugees from the north. when the french got out of north vietnam there was a massacre of about 50,000 catholics and this was followed by a flight to the south of more than a million catholics in the united states played a considerable part in

helping evacuate them to the south, which led senator george 18, who is best known for his later recommendation that the should declare the jury and go home to pithily observed that no good deed goes unpunished because the effect of having this very large northern population consisting mostly of catholics in the south was to create a condition in which the government of the south is almost entirely in the hands of northern catholics. the provinces with large catholic population were pro-government. provinces that didn't have a large northern catholic population were at best neutral listing you will recall the demonstrations by the buddhists that people immolating themselves and so forth. so the recommendations --

negroponte was a pessimist and a death for the early part of his stay in vietnam. he then was assigned to observe the vietnamese constituent assembly and the assembly was the constitution recommended essentially gave off power to the president. this tendency was aggravated by the policy of the american embassy throughout our involvement to be at dom. the chief objective of american policy as far as domestic vietnamese politics were concerned was to avoid a situation in which there was a division in the south vietnamese military. in the first of these, the logical arrivals were few who is

a catholic, albeit a southern catholic and marcia key who lives at least a nominal buddhist. marshaler key, you may remember was a rather colorful dirt who is known to the population as mr. mustache. the embassy rather obviously favored few and the resolve was there was an election in which there was a ticket and he accepted the vice presidency. so wasn't much of an election. it was a foregone conclusion. the second vietnamese election and the same thing to place. there is a possible candidacy of general meeting, otherwise known as big name. the msc discouraged at and ultimately there was an election in which the army candidate opposed some rather underfinanced vietnamese

civilians with the result that might have been expected. after this first part of his tenure in vietnam, which lasted about four years, negroponte was then assigned to work at the paris peace conference and he did not like this assignment much. because his view and that of anthony lake and various other people on the american side was as long as the united states was withdrawing troops, which it then was committed to do beginning on the last year the johnson administration, the vietnamese -- the north vietnamese had no incentive to negotiate a serious agreement. negroponte have the job of being an interpreter during the day and write a non-dispatches to washington at night, which he

found rather exhausting after a couple of years of the fee was given a sabbatical and spent nine months at the hoover institution at stanford as the diplomat in residence. while at the hoover institution, he wrote 45 papers they really are the most important and in some respects the only expressions of his personal point of view as to these matters. his essential view about the vietnam war was that the united states could not possibly succeed because it was fighting a limited war, which provided no existential threat to the north vietnamese government or is the north vietnamese were fighting an unlimited war and which they could command alter resources for the purpose of taking over

the south. bull was going on was of course exacerbated by the rather extraordinary analysis of the situation on the part of the american commander general westmoreland. ..

there was no significant guerrilla presence in the south after the tet offensive. the north vietnamese when they occupied the city massacred several thousand buddhist leaders, which did not endear them to the buddhist population in the south. instead of being neutral, then began to support the south vietnamese of the government. and then violate the other major change that took place at the time of the tet offensive was that westmoreland was replaced by general creighton abrams. westmorland philosophy was that he american troops should be in

the front lines, and the south vietnamese army which the french had trained wasn't good for anything and was just used in the rear echelon. so no effort, no serious effort was made during westmoreland's tenure to train the south vietnamese. abrams of course undertook the minimization and train the south vietnamese army, and did so quite successfully. the only flaw in what was done was while the enlisted men were well trained, the officer corps was appointed in saigon and not very wisely appointed. later when negroponte was ambassador to iraq, worked rather hard at getting training for the iraqi generals, and this was in part of a collection of his experience in vietnam. but in any event, what then

transpired was the most, probably the most dramatic episode in negroponte's career. when the new administration came to power, kissinger proposed a bombing campaign which, unlike previous bombing campaigns, would seriously attack the hanoi railyards and would include a blockade. much to kissinger surprise, negroponte would oppose all of the tactical bombing that it previously taken place on the ground but had no effect except to alienate the south vietnamese, supported this strategic bombing, on the theory that for the first time the united states was presenting an existential threat to the north vietnamese government. the war at that point had ceased to be a guerrilla war and become

a conventional war. the north vietnamese needed supplies from china and the soviet union. and what was being done in addictive of those supplies. this game to a peak at the time of the so-called christmas bombing in 1973. but the christmas bombing had been preceded by nixon's opening to china and his visits, first with mao zedong and then later with brezhnev in the soviet union. and negroponte was present in connection with both those visits. and was rather shocked when kissinger put on the table what was called the leopardskin plan, which would provide for a peace

agreement which would allow the north vietnamese domain -- to retain troops in the south. negroponte thought that that was actually fatal to any chance of survival on of the south vietnamese government. because instead of having a relatively short frontier of 100 miles or so to defend, they would put presented with different to that was really a thousand or more miles long. and this was the view that was shared by general, the robert thompson who had been the british commander in the light it and he was an adviser to the nixon administration. but the terms on which the war was settled a lot of north vietnamese to retain troops in the south, and the terms were quite different from those which had been secured by the french at the end of the french war, which resulted in the withdrawal

of the north vietnamese troops from the south. and they were also quite different from the terms that were secured at the time of the settlement of the korean war in 1953, and the chinese were required to withdraw from the country as part of the peace agreement. so negroponte was quite disillusioned by the powers agreement and made clear to kissinger he didn't agree with it. he attended the initialing of it the preferred -- refuse to go to hanoi for the signing. there were stories that appeared in american newspapers, notably the "washington post," which disclosed his point of view which was also the point of view of alexander haig, who was kissinger's deputy. kissinger didn't blame

negroponte for these disclosures because they obviously came from alexander haig. but later on about a year later, kissinger -- negroponte gave an interview in the new your times which wasn't published until a year after that, until roughly 1974. and that interview was sort of the last straw in the relationship between kissinger and negroponte. negroponte didn't want to work for kissinger any longer, and he asked for reassignment, and he was reassigned. he was just told to take pop lock in the foreign service for and he went from being -- potluck. he went from being ahead of it not just at the state department of the age of about 34 deal with the most serious of foreign policy problems. and instead found itself the

number three man in quito ecuador for the most these problems involved conflicts over tuna fishing. he made a success of its tenure and ecuador because he rather rapidly decided that the south american countries that wanted wider fishing limits, wider powers of regulation over coastal fisheries were basically right. what had happened until that time was the soviet and japanese fishing trawler's came up to the three-mile limit and essentially sucked up enormous quantities of fish which had a rather bad effect on the conversation viewpoint -- conservation viewpoint. when they were allowed to regulate fishing up to 200 miles, which was the ultimate arrangement reached in the law of the sea treaty, the problems presented by the

troller plates were greatly diminished. after ecuador there was another rather curious episode that revealed the extent of his event is with kissinger. he had arranged that his next assignment would be as deputy you cannot rush who was a very prominent republican diplomatic appointee who had just been named ambassador to france. and negroponte was to be his special assistant. and he learned that kissinger was on his way to washington, and he wrote kissinger and said, i haven't seen in several years and i want to talk to you about this terrible defamation that the cia is being subjected to in latin america, in which all kinds of accusations were being

made about its nefarious activities by people like victor marquette the and a couple of other people who have written books at that time. and this was a rather naïve thing to say because at that point, kissinger, according to many later accounts, was up to his ears in the chilean coup d'état. so far from seeing negroponte, kissinger sent word to his then deputy, who later became secretary of state, that i don't want negroponte a sign anywhere where i might meet him. [laughter] and eagleburger said, well, mr. secretary, there's an agreement with the association that once they've been assigned the only way of changing the assignment is to abolish his position, and to which kissinger said, well, abolish it been. which is what happened. and negroponte was again

relegated to the foreign service school, was offered the job of counsel general in turkey. the then ambassador to turkey, quite understandably, took the view that assigning summit of weak extraction to the scene of the massacre in 1922 might not be well received by the turks. so negroponte instead was assigned as counsel general -- not the most intellectually stimulate job for someone whose family had its roots in the greek shipping industry. after his tenure there where he got married, she then received another rather minor assignment during the kissinger era as assistant secretary of state for fisheries. the fishing industry is not a big factor in the american economy.

it amounts to about $6 billion a year, and in $18 trillion economy. but he negotiated some fishing treaties and he wrote a paper which provided the basis of american policy. the law of the sea treaty has been ratified by virtually everyone except the united states. and negroponte has strongly urged its ratification by the trait which has been prevented by people who think that our naval superiority is so overwhelming and will be so permanent that we have no need of a treaty. when one reflects on what happened to the british naval superiority at the beginning of the second world war, when it was technologically nullified by the new capacities of bombers, the wisdom of this appears questionable. but in any event, negroponte had

this fishery in the law of the csi met, and then with the end of the nixon and ford administrations, he got out of purgatory because his friend richard holbrooke, hard left the government, came back as assistant secretary for far eastern affairs. and negroponte at that point became his deputy. and what been transpired is something that is still rather unappreciated in this country, and that is the role of some people who had been second and third level foreign service officers in providing for the relief of indochinese refugees. there were a proximate 2 million

indochinese refugees who were able to emigrate in the 1970s and 1980s, and the foreign service officers who had served in vietnam and to have promoted this immigration were successful in arranging for the setting up of three kids, all the countries which have not received in his refugees. one in the philippines, one in malaysia and one in thailand. these reception camps were financed by another country that didn't receive refugees, namely japan. and 50 million refugees that passed through them over a period of 10 or 12 years were received approximately half by the united states and half in roughly equal shares by australia, canada and france,

which made, involved a radical change in the immigration policies of australia and canada, which previously had been limited to the receipt of white immigrants. at the reception of the million the danish refugees by the united states was almost a political miracle, because at that time this country was very hard even on its veterans of vietnam, let alone refugees from vietnam. most public opinion polls showed something like 70% of the population didn't favor the reception of refugees in large numbers. and it was accomplished lyrically largely because the then chairman of the relevant house subcommittee, congressman solarz brooklyn, was strongly in favor of the program. there was no opponent of it in the senate, and both the ford and carter administrations,

particularly julia taft who is the secretary for refugees in the ford administration and later in the reagan administration, were very supportive of this development. is one diplomat has to be given credit for, that diplomat -- that diplomat would probably be holbrooke. but negroponte played an important role in giving congressional testimony. and negroponte's deputy, actually the assistant secretary for refugees later served as the deputy chief of mission under negroponte in honduras. with the end of the carter administration, negroponte served for a relatively short time as colin powell's deputy of the national security council, which meant that powell as well

as haig became one of his patrons in his later career, and then at the start of the reagan administration embarked on the most controversial portion as the ambassador to honduras. and there's been a good deal of misunderstanding about honduras. the honduran government had as the chief of staff of the army at the time -- i'm sorry, the head of intelligence of the army at the time negroponte arrived a colonel alvarez, who became a favorite of the americans because unlike most of the honduran military who fundamentally couldn't have cared less about communism are anti-communism, general alvarez had religion on this subject.

he had been trained why the argentine who appeared he had the ideology of the argentinians. and he also was not a catholic. he was evangelical. he was a disciple of the reverend sun myung moon. and a very militant anti-communist. in the last several months of the carter administration, there was a rather dramatic shift in american foreign policy all over the world because it began to appear that the soviet union was taking a much more aggressive approach to the development in the third world. there have been, of course, the invasion of afghanistan. there was the assistance to the cuban forces in angola. there were even some russian

troops in the horn of africa. there was involvement in the congo. and the carter administration in its last days begin to push back against this. general alvarez in honduras was responsible for the disappearance of several opposition leaders, and this took place not during the reagan administration after negroponte's arrival, but actually prior to it. there were two cases that went to the inter-american human rights court that arose during the carter administration, and what it was quite clear that the honduran government was not paying too much regard to the civil liberties of its opponents. immediately after negroponte's arrival as ambassador, the honduran rebels had been successful in blowing up the

power plant that served about half the country, plunging half the country into darkness for a period of about two weeks with people dying in hospitals, enormous traffic jams, housewives losing the refrigerated meat, and so forth. and negroponte made himself so very popular at the outset by flying in substitute power plants and so forth. but the reaction of the honduran government to this development was about what might've been expected. you may recall that when a bomb went off in the capital during the later part of the reagan administration, the response of the government was to seek legislation making the unlicensed possession of explosives a federal offense. well, when this bomb went off,

honduras had only the most rudimentary criminal code. and negroponte urged them to adopt a more modern one to reach some of these, the reaction of the government was simply to round up everybody it suspected and throw away the key. at the number of people who were detained, many if not most of them, were ultimately killed, was not enormous but it was several hundred people. and this cast a cloud over negroponte's tenure in the eyes of many of his critics in the united states. what is rather peculiar about what happened to his reputation was that what was going on in el salvador at this time totally dwarfed anything that took place in honduras. the american ambassador in el salvador was a man named dean

hinton who was totally forgotten by history. the united states assisted the government of el salvador which was headed by josé, and he turned over armaments to death squads who are headed by a man, and in the ensuing civil war there were something like 100,000 dead salvadorans, loves almost all of them on the rebel side. at one point the army did a sweep through the countryside. and there was a massacre in el salvador at a village called -- i forget the name of the village, but at any event, the ambassador to el salvador was asked to comment on and he said he didn't think anything untoward had happened. negroponte was asked to comment on it and said, well, in fact, it was an unusual flight of

refugees across the border so something must have happened. elliott abrams was then the assistant secretary in washington said no, no, nothing happened. finally, dean hinton himself got fed up, and about several months later declared publicly declared that 30,000 people in salvador have been murdered by the government i forces allied to the government. and his speech was cleaned up a bit at the state department after he delivered it, but the effect was vice president, george bush, the elder george bush, was sent to el salvador to read the riot act to the salvadoran military, with some effect. but the bad press that negroponte got for what was going on in honduras really had

two sources. when he was sent to honduras, there was great controversy within the american government about the wisdom of resistance to the nicaraguan government in central america. and there were basically three points. the point of view of people like the outgoing ambassador to nicaragua, ma and a number of other people, this was essentially a civil war, it was being stoked by both sides. it was going to go on, didn't pose a threat to the united states, and it wouldn't come to an end until there was some overarching agreement between the united states and the soviet union. and that is ultimately how the civil wars ended in roughly 1989

when baker met and whose agreed both sides would stop hating the competing factions in central america. there was a second faction that negroponte, i think can be said to have alone to, that basically favored the contra war as a way of pushing back at expansionist efforts by the nicaraguan government. not with a view to overthrowing it but a few to contain it. and negroponte as ambassador opposed the idea of american military bases in honduras, and opposed giving the hondurans offensive weapons. but he did favor aid to the contras who were nicaraguan guerrillas. there was a third more militant faction, including people, a great many people in washington, attorney general meese, jeane kirkpatrick, robert gates who

was the head of the cia who wanted something very close to drug american military involvement. gates at one point proposed giving the nicaraguans an ultimatum. and if they didn't comply with it, bombing the air force, just obliterating the air force and blockading of their ports, gates was never terribly moderate. there were other people in the administration in washington who have this very highly charged idea about the importance of central america, which is ultimately what gave rise to the iran-contra affair. negroponte left honduras before the iran-contra affair blew up, and his next assignment was --

while in honduras he had been subjected to criticism in the american press, really for two bad reasons and one good one. the two bad reasons were the faction in the state department wanted to discredit any effort to support the contras. essentially leaked against him and there was a front-page story in "newsweek" magazine by a reporter that portrayed him very early in his tenure as a villain of darkness you -- darkest hue, and the stuck with him for quite a while. the nicaraguans, not to be outdone, published a 48 page magazine accusing him of every sin in both english and spanish,

accusing them of virtually every sin under the sun. they accuse him of supporting the greek colonels, even though he didn't arrive until after they've been overthrown. they accuse him of fomenting a queue in ecuador even though he did take place until well after he left. they accuse him of sponsoring the phoenix program in vietnam even though he was a political reporting officer who had nothing to do with the military, and so on. but a good deal of all this.com and then there was the famous episode of the human rights report. human rights reports were a rather new innovation at that time. congress in the wake of the helsinki agreement had required the resident ambassadors of each country to write annual reports on the human rights situation there. mainly as a method of pressuring their governments, not as a means of informing congress.

and the report that negroponte wrote for nicaragua after his first year there was a relatively benign report, largely because he did not want to imperil aid to the honduran government. these reports were rather new at that time, and they were rather strange to most diplomats because the normal function of a diplomat is to get along with the government to which he is accredited, not to write annual public critiques of it. and in other parts of the world they were more dramatic problems involving human rights reports. it was a battle royal between richard holbrooke as assistant secretary for the far east, and the assistant secretary of the human rights during the carter administration about what the

human rights report for china should say. and holbrooke took the view that we are attempting to improve our relations with china after a long lapse, and they would be most undiplomatic to write anything terribly offensive about them. and the same issues arose in connection with the report on saudi arabia and russia. the soviet union, now russia. ultimately it came to be accepted even by foreign governments that these reports were peculiar american eccentricity that have to be put up with without taking too much offense. but at the time that was a good deal less evident. after honduras, negroponte became the assistant secretary for the environment, which had been a back wall are in the government but which he made it

considered successful. i won't go into details on that, but the three major accomplishments were the montréal protocol on those on. it was the first nature international environmental treaty. the two treaties that were signed in the wake of the chernobyl nuclear accident, one relating to international cooperation in dealing with nuclear accidents, and another relating to reporting of them. and, finally, the first series of concern shown during the reagan administration about the aids crisis. there was a joint memorandum written by chas freeman and negroponte at a time when the reagan administration was pretty much in denial about the aids crisis, which pointed out that since and fairly drastic action of the nations of central africa would be essentially denuded of middle age people within a period of about 10 years if

there wasn't some medical retardation of the epidemic. following his assignment as the assistant secretary for environment, and again at the beginning of the first bush administration, negroponte became ambassador to mexico. and as ambassador to mexico, he was essentially the promoter and savior of the nafta agreement. the nafta agreement was not an american initiative. it was an initiative of the salina's government in mexico. mexico's economic problem was that it had a relatively small market for consumer goods because that relatively small middle class. and, therefore, unless they could export on a large scale

its industries would not achieve the economies of scale necessary to be competitive on the international market. so mexico went looking for markets and first went to the common market, to the eu. and salinas was told by the president that if the western europeans were going to make trade concessions to anyone at that point in the late '80s, those concessions would be made to the new nations of eastern europe and russia, which is what happened. and the europeans had other fish to fry and were not going to be worrying very much about latin america. so salinas was an economist, whose cabinet became publicly more american trained economist and any cabinet in the history of the world, including in the american cabinet, then approached the united states, approached negroponte. and negroponte supported the

idea of a north american free trade agreement, and supported it at the time when the u.s. trade representative's office was opposed to it. the u.s., the trade representative's office was opposed to because was trying to promote another set of multi-lateral agreements like the kennedy round and the doha round and so forth. these agreements have not come about largely because the assistance of agriculture countries to them. so linus promoted free trade agreement. and the free trade agreement, in spite of its name is not a free trade agreement in the 19th century case, because the essence of the preferential free trade agreement is that the nations that are not parties to it confront an external tariff. so these agreements, these bilateral agreements may or may not promote the ultimate in

efficiency. one e. fact of the nafta agreement -- one effect of the nafta agreement was those put obstacles in the way of chinese imports that otherwise wouldn't have existed. but the principal effect of the nafta agreement was to promote american agricultural exports to mexico, and to promote mexican manufacturing of things like automobile parts that were exported to the united states. the effects of the nafta agreement were much more dramatic than they otherwise would have been because of the doctrinaire nature of the salinas government. the agreement gave mexico 10 or 15 years to dismantle its tariffs on american corn and soybeans, but the salinas agreement, the science government on its own dismantle the them essentially at one stroke, which drove hundreds of

thousands at least of mexicans off the land, some into large cities in south of mexico where they went in the industry to everyone's benefit. but many of them fled northward. the women tended to stop at the border and go to work in plans making textiles. the men kept on going and took jobs as illegal immigrants in the american construction, out of culture and restaurant industries. and a good many of them in the drug trade. while this was going on there was a fight in congress over ratification of the agreement, and everything else was subordinated to the task of getting the agreement ratified. so is essentially american policy at that time to play down the severity of the growing drug problem, probably two or subsequent asaro.

but the agreement was ultimately ratified. it has been an important agreement for mexico. it has certainly drawn the two countries much closer together, and the political influence has not all been one way because there isn't much doubt that the protests of the latin american presidents against american drug policies embodied in the report of the latin american commission on drugs and democracy has probably had more than a little to do with the movement in this country towards deregulation of marijuana. the nafta agreement, or better or worse, as negroponte's signature achievement because the decision to go ahead with it was made in a very small meeting involving bush, baker, negroponte, and not more than 12 other people. it was thought through over the

ensuing period of two or three years, and it was then followed by a series of bilateral agreements with other countries, including central american country, south korea, that have been quite important. passing from mexico, negroponte then went, was assigned to the philippines in the clinton administration, and then to animal. neither of these is that -- assignments were easy once because he's being asked to do the impossible, namely, secure the agreement of the two governments to the maintenance of the american military bases at a time when the two governments were glad to be rid of the vestiges of colonialism. but after his assignment in the philippines, he left the state

department, went to work for mcgraw-hill because the only assignment the clinton administration then offered them was ambassador to greece, which he did not want. and he came back into government, of course, with the coming of the second bush administration where he was made ambassador to the u.n. he was essentially alone among the higher officials of the bush administration, voicing opposition to our involvement in the iraq war before the final decision had been made. powell's opposition to the war had been widely leaked, but he didn't say anything publicly. negroponte did. he gave an interview to a reporter for the "washington post" in which he said that if it were up to him, nation building would be no part of our united nations program. and that his experience in

vietnam suggested it wasn't very easy. but, of course, that viewpoint was disregarded. negroponte was successful in getting a unanimous resolution of the united nations authorizing ordering the iraqis to permit inspections. and he would've favored at the time of his famous second resolution was brought portrait he would've favored giving the iraqis more time. but the folks in washington had planned an invasion and didn't want troops sitting around in iraq during the summer, in kuwait during the summer, a poor excuse, and we all know what happened. negroponte while at the u.n. also had two other significant events. one the adoption by the u.n.

governing the intervention in iraq which recognized the right of the iraqis to tell the foreign troops to withdraw, which ultimately is what happened. and the second accomplishment was the adoption of a resolution, unanimously adopted by the security council which was the first endorsement by the u.n. of a two-state solution in palestine. and negroponte then volunteered in effect to be ambassador to iraq, and inherited a disastrous situations where we disbanded the iraqi military. it was the state of essential anarchy. and he presided over iraqi elections, which were

unfortunate in many ways because they had been organized by ambassador bremer to use proportional representation rather than single memory constituencies, which is a virtually guaranteed way of producing parliamentarians who were extremists. but in any event he made the best of the elections on the theory that once an iraqi political class have been created, there were at least personalities who would be in a position to negotiate the competing interests. he also abandoned any notion that we would be able to produce a swift economic recovery in iraqi. his first priority was to do with iraq security problems. and in training an iraqi army, which was a trained, and i find hard to believe that it was in a state of total collapse but it is represented as being in, seems to me that the shiites are likely to be able to

successfully resist the sunnis at some point. but in any event, his vision of the future of iraq was that it wasn't going to be easy. indeed, he told the bush administration something that it didn't want to hear. and roughly 2004, namely, that the united states would have to stay for at least another five years for the situation to stabilize. and that is in effect what happened. and how successful what he did was, remains to be seen. but to the extent there is any chance of a positive outcome, it's due to the fact that there is an iraqi parliament, that the are somewhat trained security forces. following iraq, he was given another almost impossible job, and i'm drawing to a close now, as director of national

intelligence. something paradoxical about that appointment, because he did not think, just as he thought the iraq intervention was not a terribly good idea, he didn't think the creation of the directorate of the national intelligence was a terribly good idea. he thought the same thing could've been done through informal coordination among the three or four leading agencies. and the creation of the dni integration of the department of homeland security was the work not of the bush administration but of the democrats who didn't want to be seen as being soft on terrorism. we still live with the consequences of that, those particular decisions. as the director of dni who is heavily involved in intelligence estimate on iran, which forecasts quite accurately that iran was not going to develop nuclear capability before the end of the second bush

administration. and this was very unpopular with a number of people in washington, including vice president cheney, but it proved to be entirely accurate. he left as director of national intelligence under circumstances that haven't been fully explained, but his main interest as director of national intelligence was in advising the president who h we felt like thy needed advice at that point. he and gates and condoleezza rice supplanted the influence of people like donald rumsfeld and paul wolfowitz during the last two years of the second bush administration, but one consequence of his devoting himself to giving advice was that he had less time to give it to management, and he was criticized for this. and whether his replacement was due to the advice that he gave or the need for more management is unclear.

but in any event he accepted the job of deputy secretary of state, and where his achievements were essentially two. first, he pressed hard for elections in pakistan, which ultimately were won by the civilian parties which had the effect of delegitimizing the more extreme islamist. and even though they were immediately followed by the assassination of benazir bhutto, and the second achievement was the deepening of relations with china. there were several dozen working groups established that hadn't previously existed, that joint meetings of all kinds of american and chinese officials, that were essentially is the compass but on that and second of the treasury paulson who was very interested also in deepening the relationships with china. and that the close of his

tenure, at the close of the second bush administration, he almost certainly would have been secretary of state had condoleezza rice, condoleezza rice apparently according to her memoirs offer to resign in his favor and was told by the white house that the bush administration wouldn't do it. so she remained until the end of the administration. so he has retired. he does consulting work and he teaches one day a week at yale. i don't think his career is over. it's hard to say, but it does example by the influence, a relatively clear-sighted diplomat can have on a variety of events. and the book which, as was said earlier, is called "the last american diplomat" can be ordered from all sorts of sources, and the paperback edition costs $24 if anyone wants to order it.

i'm not glad to take any questions. i've gone on for too long, but 50 years is a long career and abbreviating it into 50 minutes isn't too easy. >> thank you. if you have a question to ask we have about five minutes remaining. if you could come up to the microphone. thank you. >> good evening. very good presentation. i had a question. if ambassador negroponte, is still up at yale want to become what advice you give to future students that are involved in studying international relations? if such a complex, huge experience of 50 years. what would he say? if he does anything, but what would be his best advice? >> i don't want to put words in his mouth, and i've tried to be careful about that. our views don't correspond on all questions. i think he would advise them to take courses in economic

geography and in history rather than international relations theory. that's the sense i would have. i think he also doesn't hold to the view that we are the hyperpower. he has a sense of history and of the rise and fall of nations and of the limitations on american power. and when he was ambassador to the u.n., he at least in my view came closer than anyone else who has been there to realizing the original design of the u.n. as seen by roosevelt. namely, churchill and stalin also, as a concert of the great powers, not as a parliament of the world. but as a means whereby the five permanent members could adjust

conflicts, at least conflicts not involving themselves. and that's a vision that really hasn't prevailed, but he was on very good terms with the british and french ambassadors, and the chinese and russian ones also. and if it had been left to the levitt, greenstock and and negroponte, there would not have been in iraq war, i'm quite sure of that. >> any of the questions? yes. >> this one? >> this one? to questions kind of. how old is he now? that's my first question spent his almost exactly my age. he is 75 or 76. >> you sound italian.

>> no. is great. is down has interesting background. they were natives of the island of chios which was the scene of a massacre of greeks by the ottoman turks in the 1820s or 1830s. massacred about 90% of the population. thereafter, they became essentially wandering refugees. the family was in odessa for a while, was in switzerland. his father wanted to join the greek diplomatic service and they would let him because he had been educated -- he hadn't been educated in greece, and his father was a small-scale shipowner who left london at the outbreak of the second world war and came to new york. his wife, who is a decade or two younger than he is, is an english woman who was the daughter of a prominent

anglo-catholic family, and whose mother who was a belgian aristocrat have been part of the belgian resistance during the war, and is one of the cleanest is this closest friends. so he is an interesting family background. the other thing, his family background is quite remarkable, is that when he was in honduras, he and his wife adopted to honduran children, and after he left honduras, they adopted three more of them. so he has five at adopted honduran children, some of whom are still in school and college. so he has an interesting, very interesting family. >> i know a lot about names. it's kind of like a hobby. negroponte means black. >> there is a negroponte street

on that in a slideshow, for what that is worth, yes. >> second question was, i grew up in the vietnam era so i've a lot of memories from that time but i didn't know the bombing, we can pretested, we didn't -- was it successful? >> this was transport great frustration, -- trained force great frustration. that at the time it stopped the north vietnamese were down to the last three surface-to-air missiles so they were totally open at that point. it would've been a turkish habit -- had a continued and that's why negroponte thought we could've gotten an agreement that would've required the withdrawal from south vietnam. and this was the view of the robert thompson, the view of general haig.

now, in kissinger's defense, there are a few things to be said. one of them is that the bombing, ma that sort of bombing had been considered earlier during the johnson administration and it had not been done and the reason it hadn't been done was that the memories of the retreat from the chosin reservoir n. korea were still fresh and it was feared that it would provoke chinese or russian intervention. and the reason that the bombing was done in 73 when it wasn't done previously was that both the chinese and the russians wanted things from the united states, and kissinger was confident that they would not intervene if we bombed. with the chinese wanted at that point was protection against the threat of the russians would bomb their nation nuclear program that the chinese were

just developing a nuclear program. the russians were rumored to want to put a stop to it. what the russians wanted at that point, primarily was american wheat, which we supplied in large quantities which they had desperate need of. by the time of the ultimate collapse in 1975, all those conditions had disappeared but there was this rather narrow window of opportunity when we could bomb with impunity, and blockade with impunity. [inaudible] >> now we are friends with the vietnam but there's no question that the development of the country as well beyond the other countries as a result, 20 years of communism. >> thanks. >> thank you. thank everyone for coming. where copies of trenton for sale at the table, and he will be happy to sign your book up at the table here.

thank you. >> thank you. [applause] >> interested in american history? watch american history television on c-span3 every weekend. 40 hours of people and events that help document the american story. visit c-span.org/history for more information. >> absolutely nothing to place in iraq or in america's conduct of the war. to cause the democrats but for. absolutely nothing. what happened to change the democrats is the saboteurs of that war was this. in the spring of 2003 as american troops entered iraq, a democratic presidential primary was in progress, and