MY FOREIGN SERVICE ROLE MODEL- – AMBASSADOR FRANK WISNER
by Kenneth M Quinn
My wartime experience as a Foreign Service Officer in Vietnam lasted for over five years, in significant part due to the enormous respect and admiration I had for Frank Wisner. Frank was my image of what a Foreign Service Officer should be: highly intelligent; sophisticated; extremely well educated; personally engaging; fascinated by and endlessly curious about the country and the people; genuinely interested in the individuals who worked for him; and, most importantly for me, prepared to judge you solely based on the quality of your work.
Here he was a Princeton graduate with close connections to the Washington political power structure, who was interested in and full of praise for a rough around the edges new FSO from Dubuque, Iowa who had graduated from a little known college. No one affected my career more, both in Vietnam, and then on multiple occasions in later years, than Frank Wisner.
At one point early in my time in Vietnam, feeling unnoticed and unappreciated, I was pretty far down the road toward leaving the Service. I was applying to law schools and asking senior officers to write recommendation letters for me. But Frank Wisner and Paul Hare praised my work as exceptional and painted a vision for my future that convinced me I should stay in the Foreign Service.
Several years later, in the immediate post-Paris Peace Agreement period, Frank served as Deputy Consul General at the brand new Foreign Service post in Can Tho in the Mekong Delta, where I was a roaming vice-consul covering the remote Vietnam-Cambodian border. If there ever was a “golden period” of the Foreign Service in Vietnam, I would argue that it came during that January to June 1973 timeframe, when Ambassador Charlie Whitehouse became the interim Chargé d’Affaires and new senior officers like Consul General Tom Barnes and especially Frank Wisner, fostered a spirit of openness and candid tell-it-like-it-is reporting. This approach had the morale among the young provincial reporting officers like me soaring.
Reflecting his own earlier experiences as a provincial representative, Frank lauded my reporting from the border about Cambodian military units desperately trying to hold off the genocidal Khmer Rouge. He then came to join me at the front lines, demonstrating the key element of leadership by showing he was willing to take the same risks that I did. On another occasion, when I was caught in a North Vietnamese ambush of a military cargo shipment on the Mekong River and reported to be missing or dead, it was Frank Wisner who initiated the emergency search that eventually found me unharmed on an island. Assured of my safety, Frank characteristically sent word encouraging me to quickly submit my report on this blatant cease fire violation.
With the Departmental recognition Frank brought to me, I was soon plucked off the Cambodian border and assigned to Henry Kissinger’s National Security Council staff at the White House. As Saigon was collapsing, I collaborated closely with Frank by getting the President’s approval to initiate the evacuation of over 100,000 Indochina refugees to America.
In retrospect, Frank Wisner exuded the humanitarian spirit of alleviating the suffering of others less fortunate than yourself, born of coming face-to-face with the anguish of refugees and war victims in the provinces of Vietnam. Officers like Frank Wisner, who got to very senior positions in the U.S. government and others like him who had time in Vietnam in the provinces, not in Saigon but in the countryside, were a different type of diplomat and foreign policy executive.
Our relationship came full circle in January of 1977, when Richard Holbrooke, who had served alongside Frank, in USAID / MACV in Vietnam, was chosen by President Jimmy Carter to be the new Assistant Secretary of the East Asia and Pacific Bureau. Turning to Frank to ask his recommendation for an FSO to serve as his Special Assistant, Frank gave him only one name – mine. And so while we had never previously met, I became Dick Holbrooke’s first State Department employee.”
I shared other poignant and memorable experiences with Frank along the way. I was there to grieve with him at the funeral of his wife, whom I had met when I introduced Frank and her to the unique Khmer-Vietnamese fusion Buddhist culture in Chau Doc Province. In the Department, Frank counseled me and then lent his support when I led the “Group of 46” young officers, many of whom had served in Vietnam, in confronting Secretary Vance on the declining commitment to excellence in the Foreign Service.
After we both had retired, I recall having lunch with Frank in the AIG executive dining room as the company was crashing and the 2008 recession was about to begin. I remarked that it reminded me of the last days of Saigon.
My favorite story about Frank came when I was a DAS in the EAP Bureau dealing with Vietnam and he was an Under Secretary on the Seventh Floor. In response to a harsh personal attack on me behind my back by a highly aggressive POW / MIA advocacy group leader unhappy with our policy, the newly appointed career FSO Assistant Secretary called me into his office and summarily dismissed me, ordering me to immediately clean out my office. About an hour later, I was busy packing when the chagrined Assistant Secretary called me back to his office. Saying “you clearly have strong support in high places,” he told me his order had been countermanded and I was back in my position.
As I later learned, when Frank Wisner heard about his action, he personally called the Assistant Secretary and ordered him to immediately restore me to my role in leading the negotiations with Hanoi. In this capacity, I rewarded his faith in me by subsequently being honored with the Presidential Distinguished Service Rank Award and the AFSA Herter Award for Intellectual Courage for moving our relationship with Vietnam and Cambodia forward, while simultaneously attaining increased POW / MIA accounting, despite opposition both within the government and without.
I loved Frank Wisner. I will miss him terribly. My hope is that through the State Department, AFSA, the ADST and the American Academy of Diplomacy, some action will be taken so that Ambassador Frank Wisner’s legacy will be preserved in order to inspire future generations of Foreign Service Officers, just as he inspired me.