The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project RICHARD FENTON ROSS Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: June 19, 2003 Copyright 2012 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born in Virginia, raised in Virginia and several other East Coast States University of Florida, Vanderbilt University Newspaper work US Army Entered the USIA Foreign Service in 1964 Beirut, Lebanon: Arabic language study 1964-1965 Beirut Students Beirut, Lebanon: USIA, Junior Officer in Training/Assistant 1965-1966 Information/Cultural Affairs Officer Environment Operations Staff Chamoun Nationalist Chinese Chester Opal Robert Gilkey Wireless File Ambassador Armin Meyer French language Nasser Confessionalism Mohammed Naguib Agriculture Hickenlooper Amendment Saint Joseph College University Maronite Christians Religions American University of Beirut (AUB) Cultural Exchanges 1 Mormon missionaries Bookmobiles Susan Fitzgerald Kennedy Center Printing Press Arabic weekly Lebanese University Palestine Refugee camps Pan American Airways Lebanese-Israeli issues Muslim schools Shiites Amman Jordan: Acting Cultural Affairs Officer 1966-1967 Residence in Jerusalem (late 1966 to 1967) Fulbright and International Visitors Programs Housing Partitioned Jerusalem Burt Stimmel Baalbeck Festival Roman ruins Travel check points Israeli-Arab disputes Archaeological sites Telkarm Qumran caves Dead Sea Scrolls Jordan environment Cultural Center USIS headquarters Soviet Cultural Center Vietnam Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA) * * * * * * * (Two weeks active Military Duty) Seventh Army Headquarters, Germany; Liaison duties Operations Baha’i faith War Games Amman, Jordan (continued) King Hussein Palestinians Majlis al-Ayan Security British influence 2 Nablus US Marine Air Group ? (Military Assistance Group, MAAG) F-104s flown to Turkey Tourism Jordanian Diaspora Property rights Housing Archaeological sites House guests Ambassador Robert Gaylord Barnes Ambassador Findley Burns Nasser threats Mandelbaum Gate US periodicals Evan Wilson Consulates Mack and Priscilla Hall Consular problems Muslim Brotherhood Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Trip to Palmyra adventure Movies American Friends of the Middle East (AFME) Joe Alex Morris Patrick Seale Jordanian-American citizens Arab-Israel War Experiences Hippies and smuggling American Colony Hotel Bertha Vester USS Liberty Golan Heights Census Israeli occupation policies Populace reactions to war Jordanian Army Rockefeller Museum American School of Oriental Research Palestinian fear of Jews Local press Post war environment Jordanian/Palestinian relations Palestinian independence Israeli/Palestinian relations Christian holy sites Anti-American sentiment 3 Bishop (James) Pike Mar Saba State Department: Foreign Service Institute (FSI): French 1967-1968 Language Study Calcutta, India: USIA; Audio-Visual Officer 1968-1970 Operations Film Exhibits Geographic area Branch Posts Caste system Jock Shirley Duncan Scott Environment Exhibits Strikes Youth Speaking engagements Naxalites NASA exhibits Movies Moon rock Internal travel A look in the files Recreation Wealthy class Soviet MIGs Jyoti Basu Economy Poverty Leper colonies East Pakistan Muslims University of Maryland: Communication Theory study 1970-1972 International Communications Seminar Alan Carter Course of instruction Filming Washington, DC; Headquarters, USIA: Training Workshops 1972-1973 Marriage Program production Programs for Foreign Service Officers 4 Colombo, Sri Lanka: Cultural Attaché 1973-1977 Lester James Peries Government officials Mrs. and Mr. Bandaranaike Cooperatives Socialism Peace Corps Communist Chinese Spirit of Bandung Sixth Nonaligned Conference attendees Qadhafi Nationalizations Economy Currency Political Parties Samil/Sinhalese rivalry Rohana Wijeweera Junius Richard Jayewardene Cultural Center facilities Environment British Tea Japanese Colombo port Cultural programs Interest in film making Ceylonese view of US politics Pat Byrne Nixon resignation Ambassador and Eliza Van Hollen Ambassador John Hathaway Ron Walcott Birth of son Washington, DC: Dari (Persian dialect) language study 1977 Kabul, Afghanistan: Cultural Affairs Officer 1977-1979 USAID Development Program Peace Corps Daoud Khan Environment Royal family Fulbright board Russians Camel caravans Security 5 Difficulties with cultural presentations Lapis lazuli Kabul Gorge Revolution Ambassador Theodore L. Eliot, Jr. Babrak Karmal Murder of Ambassador Adolph “Spike” Dubs (in detail) Tape recording Embassy personnel reductions Nur Mohammed Taraki Government restrictions Hafizullah Amin Internal travel Relations with government Foreign wives of Afghans Government officials Paris, France: Assistant Cultural Affairs Officer 1979-1984 University contacts Lecture programs French interest in US politics Security Corsicans French views of US Local press Neutron bomb French views of Russians Jean-Marie Le Pen Operations American speakers French Universities Programs of French leaders Paris, France: UNESCO; Public Affairs Advisor 1984-1988 Ambassador Jean Broward Shevlin Gerard Ed Hennessey Operations US threat to leave UNESCO New World Information Order Jan de Wilde Members UNESCO agenda US staff Director Charles Wick US withdraws membership Ambassador Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow 6 Ursula Meese Ed Hennessey New World Information Order UNESCO proceedings Colonial resentment Rhine River French attitudes Fall of the French franc Headquarters, USIA: Desk Officer/; Director; Bangladesh, 1988 Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sri Lanka Operations Director Wick Melina Mercouri Elgin Marbles US Embassy, Kabul Soviet armament US aid to Afghan Media Service Charlie Wilson Visit to Peshawar Views on change in Afghanistan General observations Foreign Service Institute: Djarja & Standard Modern Arabic study 1988 Rabat, Morocco: Cultural Affairs Officer 1988-1992 Ambassador Mike Ussery Crown Prince Vernon Walters Acceptance of gifts prohibition Cultural Center Richard Jackson Operations Ambassador Frederick Vreeland King Hassan II and family Dyna-Soar Polisario Arab-Israel issue Jewish community Wife’s activities Community Liaison Officer Retirement 1992 Accompanying wife in Yemen 1993-1996 President Ali Abdullah Saleh 7 Ghat North and South Yemen Environment Politics Horn of Africa Feuding War US C-130’s visit U-2s Teaching at Yemen American Language Institute Haynes Mahoney kidnapped Yemen-Hunt Oil Company Tribal discontent Local architecture Arms availability Accompanying wife in Damascus, Syria 1996-2000 Transiting Saudi Arabia by car Hotels Customs Wife’s professional duties Embassy contract work Environment Ambassador Christopher Ross Ba’ath Party Anti-US demonstrations Damascus University Ambassador Ryan Crocker Trashing the US Embassy Hafiz al-Assad Terrorism Additional Comments Working with the French in France Personal contacts in Paris Kabul, Afghanistan INTERVIEW [Note: this interview was not edited by Mr. Ross] Q: Today is June 19, 2003. This is an interview with Richard Fenton Ross, R-O-S-S. This is being done on behalf of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, and I am Charles Stuart Kennedy. 8 Well, do you go by Dick, Richard, or…? ROSS: Richard, usually. Q: Richard, okay. Let’s sort of start at the beginning. Could you tell me when and where you were born and a little about your family? ROSS: Sure. I was born in Alexandria, Virginia in November 1935, and I was born in the old Alexandria Hospital, which was at Duke and South Washington, and that building’s torn down now, and it was the Time Life Building; they’d built on top of it. It was a building from the late part of the nineteenth century. Q: Yes. ROSS: I’ll get into it maybe a little bit more. I lived until I was seven years old…maybe six years old…two houses away from the hospital. At that time it wasn’t called Old Town; it was just called Alexandria. Q: Yes. ROSS: So that’s where I started out. My father had worked at a bank in Alexandria for 19 years, on King Street, Citizens National Bank, which doesn’t exist anymore; and he came from what they used to call “up in the country.” He came from the area between Middleburg and Leesburg in Loudon County, and he came from a family that had been up there for a long while, but they weren’t landed. They were yeomen farmers, I guess. Q: Well, I’d like to get a little feel. I mean where did they come from? ROSS: They were English and Scots, “Ross” being Scots. My father’s father had gone to Randolph-Macon Academy. His father, that is to say my great-grandfather Ross, had a dry goods store and a post office at a place up at the base of Mount Weather, where the government later dug out (ha, ha, ha) the big caverns on the other side, on the western side of the mountain. But it was called Mount Weather because there was an early weather station at the top, from the turn of the century or perhaps before. Q: Yes. ROSS: He was the postmaster and so forth up there at the Trap, and that is a little place that’s been there, called the Trap, since middle of the 1800s or before. Q: Yes. ROSS: So the Rosses had been wheat farmers and corn farmers up there. Q: Were they involved in the Civil War? 9 ROSS: Actually I haven’t done any family history, but the Rosses seemed to avoid the Civil War. The other half of my father’s parents were the Leiths, who were big landowners up there, and that’s an English kind of name, or Scots too, I should say. Q: How is that spelled? ROSS: L-E-I-T-H. Q: Yes. ROSS: The Leiths, some of them, lost their lives—there’s one guy that comes to mind called Dallas Leith, second battle of Chancellorsville. Q: Yes. ROSS: After the Civil War, Great-Grandpa Leith gave four farms to his four extant sons, and they were four very big farms. One of them was called “Farmer’s Delight,” and that’s an eighteenth century Georgian place; and another’s now, was called “Pot Town” for a long while, then it was called “Leithtown” or “Leithton”—my Great-Grandmother Leith got that (that’s my father’s grandmother). These are big, big places. Another was “Foxcroft,” which is now the girls’ school [Foxcroft School]. Q: Yes. ROSS: And the last one was Farmer’s Delight. These were all fieldstone or brick with additions, and they’re all up in the country there. One of them had an airstrip put on it so that you could put planes down on it, you know, that kind of a thing. Q: Well, how did your mother and father meet? ROSS: Well, my mother’s father and mother grew up in Philadelphia, and they had run off and gotten married, I guess, when they were sixteen. It’s very hard to pin these things down because the people who may have remembered all this stuff have passed away. He was from a sort of a Delaware and Pennsylvania family, and she was of Irish stock. Q: Yes. ROSS: Her father, that’s my great-grandfather on her [my mother’s?] side, her grandfather, had a livery stable in Philadelphia in the 1880s or 90s. He had come over, I guess, after the potato famines, but I’m not even sure when. He did well, as a person could—he wasn’t educated at all; in fact, it’s said he couldn’t read or write. Q: Yes. 10