Table Of ContentThe Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training
Foreign Affairs Oral History Project
AMBASSADOR WILLIAM ANDREAS BROWN
Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy
Initial interview date: November 3, 1998
Copyright 2004 ADST
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Background
Born and raised in Massachusetts
U.S. Marine Corps, Korea
Harvard University (Chinese studies)
Entered Foreign Service - 1956
Hong Kong - Passport/Commercial Officer 1956-1959
Fraud cases (citizenship)
Citizen verification
Quemoy-Matsui
Communist Asia commerce
Environment
Citizenship fraud cases
Taichung, Taiwan - Chinese Language Training 1959-1961
Political situation
Singapore - Political Officer 1961-1964
British
Politics
Federation of Malaysia
Kuching, Sarawak (Malaysia) - Principal Officer 1964-1965
Indonesia
Federation developments
Economy
State Department - Foreign Service Institute [FSI] 1965-1966
Russian Language Training
Moscow, USSR - Political Officer 1966-1968
China
1
Travel
Environment
Security
Economy
KGB
Lumumba University
New Delhi, India - Political/Economic Officer 1968-1970
Dalai Lama
Soviets
Svetlana Stalin
Bhutan
Sikkim
Indira Gandhi
U.S. visitors
China
State Department - Bureau of East Asian Affairs -
Office of Asian Communist Affairs [ACA]- Deputy Director 1970-1972
Taiwan
Warsaw/Geneva talks
China relations
Kissinger’s China visits
Congressional China visit
China contacts open
National War College 1972
China
Leeds, United Kingdom - Mongolian Language Study 1972-1974
Mongolian communist history publication
U.S. embassy (Mongolia) proposal
Environmental Protection Agency - Executive Secretary 1974-1977
U.S.-Soviet Environmental Agreement
Soviets
Russell Train
Expo 74 - Soviet Pavilion
Soviet environmental disasters
Travels worldwide
Moscow, USSR 1977-1978
Ambassador Malcolm Toon
Relations
Dissidents
2
Human rights
Carter-Sakharov message
Congressional visit
Sharansky
Environment
Corruption
Arab-Israeli relations
Brezhnev
Microwave radiation scandal
China relations
Soviet contacts
Soviet society
Economy
Embassy fire
Information sources
Taipei, Taiwan - Deputy Chief of Mission 1978
U.S. recognizes China
Break in relations
Anti-U.S. demonstrations
Congressional delegations
Office organization
Taiwan Relations Act
Official visitors
Taipei, Taiwan - American Institute in Taiwan - Trustee 1978-1979
Organization
Japanese
Nuclear issue
Elections canceled
Reporting
Language School
Tel Aviv, Israel - Deputy Chief of Mission 1979-1982
Geneva Peace Conference proposal
Ambassador Sam Lewis
Jerusalem consulate relationship
American Jewish community
Begin
Phil Habib “shuttle”
UN resolutions
Iran hostages
Lebanon
Iraq nuclear reactor
Ariel Sharon
3
Palestinian autonomy
Sinai force
Golan Heights
Israeli invasion of Lebanon
Egyptians
PLO
Syria
Arafat
Camp David
Christian sects
Israeli pressure
Israeli religious groups
Israeli-Americans
Human rights
University of New Hampshire - Diplomat in Residence 1982-1983
Arab-Israeli relationship course
University of Pennsylvania - China course
Environment
State Department - East Asia and Pacific Affairs – Assistant
Secretary 1983-1985
Paul Wolfowitz
Meetings
White House relationship
China/Taiwan
ANZUS
Nuclear (navy) issue
Discussion of Women in the Foreign Service
Hong Kong consulate general
Forced resignation
Female ambassadors
Discussion of Relationship of Career Officers and Political Appointees
State Department - East Asia and Pacific Affairs -
Assistant Secretary (continued) 1983-1985
China/Taiwan
VIP visits
KAL flight downed (1983)
Assassinations
Chinese spies
Pakistan nuclear issues
Australia
4
Pacific Islands
Fishing
Philippines
ASEAN
Refugees
Vietnamese
Thai military
Government
U.S. agency presence
Narcotics
Relations
Visas
Environment
Cambodia
Ethnic groups
Congressional visits
MIA/POWs
Khmer Rouge
Economy
ASEAN Bali meeting
Sex trade
AIDS
Textiles
Aircraft sales
State Department - Temporary Duty - Moscow Embassy Security 1987-1988
Marine guards and KGB
Congressional hearings
Security options
Accountability and responsibility
U.S.-Soviet meetings
Moscow chancery
Recommendation report
Israel - Ambassador 1988-1992
PLO dialogue
Arafat
Intifada
Relations
Government
“Land for Peace” process
Jerusalem/embassy issue
Israeli settlements
U.S.-Israeli discussions
Baker-Israeli talks
5
Economy
Russian Jews
Saddam Hussein/Israel
Gulf War
Jewish lobby
Teddy Kollek
Syria
Iraqi threat to Israel
UN Resolution 425
Missile systems
Jordan
SCUD attacks
PATRIOT missiles
Israeli military
Retirement 1992
Private banking
“Senior Review Panel”
Ambassador to Israel (continued)
“Operation Shlomo”
Falasha community
Madrid Peace Conference
Rabin
Indyk (group) Israel visit
Senior Review Panel
Black Hebrews
Ed Djerejian
Oslo talks
Jewish settlement
Retirement (Second) 1994
Senior Review Panel
American Institute in Taipei
Special envoy on Burma
Comments on the Foreign Service
INTERVIEW
[Note: This interview has not been edited by Ambassador Brown.]
Q: This is an interview with Ambassador William A. Brown. It is being done on behalf of
the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. I'm Charles Stuart Kennedy. Well,
6
Bill, let's start at the beginning. Can you tell me when and where you were born and
something about your family?
BROWN: Alright. I was born on September 7, 1930, at the hospital in Winchester,
Massachusetts, because there was no hospital in Lexington, Massachusetts, where I grew
up. My family and I considered that Lexington, Massachusetts, was, indeed, “the
birthplace of American liberty” - which was the town slogan. We thought that this was
more than a slogan. The place of my birth imbued me with certain attitudes, given the fact
that we considered that we were at the center of the American Revolution and that it all
began there. In my early years I didn't realize that the Revolution began in other places as
well and about at the same time.
Secondly, I would say that I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. That is, I grew up in
East Lexington, Massachusetts. There was quite a divide between the center of the town
of Lexington, where the more affluent, establishment people lived, and those of us who
were from East Lexington, on the Arlington County line. I just addressed my 50th high
school reunion and mentioned this. My reference to it in these terms touched those others
who were from East Lexington.
I grew up in unusual circumstances. My parents were divorced when I was a baby. My
father was from a nouveau riche family which had suffered reverses in the Depression.
My mother was the daughter of a Danish immigrant workingman. Given the social
attitudes of the time, my mother had no recourse, due to the Depression and so forth, but
to move in with her widower father, who was a sort of surrogate father to me, a hard-
working Danish man from the working class. So, although I had a formerly wealthy
widowed grandmother who lived in the more affluent town center, I grew up in a working
class milieu, in an area which was significantly Irish Catholic and Italian-American. This
Italian section of Lexington was called, “Guineaville.” On the fringes of this area there
was a small, Jewish community which was very poor and was called “Jewville.” So I
grew up in the midst of all of these stereotypes, ethnic, religious, and so forth.
Q: Were you raised a Catholic?
BROWN: No.
Q: I was going to say that there must have been quite a divide between the Catholic...
BROWN: There was. Remember, this was not just Catholic. It was Irish Catholic in the
Boston sense. That is to say that Jesuit priests visited the families of the parish. When I
was a kid, I remember hearing stories about this. The Jesuits reportedly thundered from
the pulpit of the Catholic parish that they knew that some of their parishioners were
murderers who practiced contraception. Abortion wasn't even mentioned in those days,
but people who used contraceptives were considered murderers and were considered
guilty of sin.
7
There was a very strong, anti-British background to all of this. This was very interesting
to me when, much later in life, I dealt with British diplomats and lived in Leeds England
for over a year.
I went through Lexington High School. I didn't know this at the time but, for those
conservative days, Lexington had a rather progressive school system. My classmates,
once I reached high school and discovered the whole town, included the sons and
daughters of some very accomplished people. They were professors at the universities in
the Boston area, such as Harvard College, MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology],
Tufts College, and so forth. So there were some remarkable people around Lexington.
I said that I came from, shall I say, the wrong side of the tracks. Looking back on this
time, I originally thought that I was going to be a military officer. An Italian neighbor of
ours had fought in World War I. He had sons, but they didn't quite measure up to his
standards. This neighbor had been impoverished between World Wars I and II but had
been in the National Guard or the Army Reserve. When World War II came, he suddenly
rose from the status of being a butcher in civilian like to that of full Colonel in the United
States Army. He came back from World War II in glory and picked me as a sort of
surrogate son in this respect. He was determined that I was going to go to West Point
[U.S. Military Academy].
Q: May we go back just a bit? When you were in grammar or elementary school, what
were your interests at that time?
BROWN: I was quite sports-oriented. I was fortunate, through my mother and her friends,
to become fond of reading quite early. Lexington was still significantly rural, although a
suburb of Boston in those days. So there were plenty of woods and open fields in which
to play Cowboys and Indians and so forth. In those days tennis was a popular sport, but
the people I knew didn't play tennis. That was a wealthy man's sport. I was a caddy at the
golf course, but I didn't play golf. I carried the golf clubs of the wealthy. [Laughter] So
the sports I played included baseball, football, basketball, and track.
Q: I assume that quite a bit of this was also organized, was it not?
BROWN: Yes.
Q: You didn't have Little Leagues and things like that...
BROWN: There was no formal organization. It was sand lot baseball. I still bear a scar
from playing ice hockey. That was played outdoors. In those days there was no easily
available, indoor hockey rink. Lexington had quite a sports reputation, including
championship baseball, basketball and ice hockey. We were very good in track and in
baseball and football.
Q: What sort of books were you reading?
8
Q: Somewhere my mother had obtained a copy of the old “World Book of Knowledge,”
published in about 1905. I still have it.
Q: It consisted of about 20 volumes. I read it all the way through.
BROWN: It was extraordinary. Early on, I became interested in military history. By the
time I was in junior high school I was reading a great deal about the history of the
American Civil War. Of course, Lexington had its own history and held annual parades
on April 19 to commemorate Paul Revere's ride. Houses were marked with signs saying
that this was where Paul Revere stayed, and this was the old tavern he visited. Lexington
was steeped in history, and there were artifacts from the period of the American
Revolution in the buildings and so forth. History was very much in my reading.
Q: The statue of the “Minute Man...”
BROWN: Oh, yes.
Q: Must have permeated the atmosphere of the place. Although there was still some anti-
British feeling, you must have been old enough to begin to feel the impact of World War
II. How did that affect you?
BROWN: At my age World War II meant that my mother went to work. Remember, my
parents were divorced. My mother and I were living with my Danish widower
grandfather, who was a hard-working man. With the manpower shortage at the time, my
mother went to work in a cookie factory, on a cookie assembly line. I myself was able to
find work, and I started out making 15 cents an hour, working on local farms. That was a
real taste of farm work. The years from 1941 to 1944 involved rough farm work, when I
worked down on my knees, weeding. The employers really pushed us. As I said, I started
work at 15 cents an hour and felt damned lucky to get that.
World War II meant that my grandfather, like other neighbors, worked for the Office of
Civil Defense. He was issued a helmet, an arm band, and a shovel. Meanwhile, my father,
whom I rarely saw, was in his late 30s. He was so gung ho in support of the war that he
managed to get a commission as a chemical warfare officer. All of the males of the right
age went off to military service, including Dickie Cook, a guy who was a sort of role
model for me. Dickie was the son of the local fire chief. He lived about two houses away
from us. Dickie Cook got a commission in the Army Air Corps right out of high school.
He had the right stuff, and they rushed him through mathematics and so forth. He became
a Bombardier. He came back, years later, with a different attitude toward the Air Force.
On a bombing run over Japan his plane was attacked. When it gained maximum altitude
to evade the enemy he froze, and suffered severe nerve damage.
During World War II one was filled with patriotism. As the war continued, I remember
getting summer jobs at a Boys' Baptist Camp on the southern coast of Maine. That's
9
where I was when the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki took place, and the
war came to an end. I was then 15 years old and just itching, almost dying to get into
combat. Thank God I didn't! However, I was influenced by the other neighbor I
mentioned who came back to Lexington as a full colonel He reinforced an emerging
mindset. I wanted to be a military officer, go to West Point, and so forth. Indeed, my high
school yearbook said, “We hope that Bill Brown does as well at West Point as he did,
playing the piano.” Both of these objectives faded, with the passage of time.
Q: I was wondering. For many members of our generation, although I was two years
older than you, World War II was the greatest course imaginable in the geography of the
world. We read about places like Rostov [in the Soviet Union], Caserta [in Italy], and
Iwo Jima [in Japan]. Did you follow the war closely?
BROWN: Yes. My Danish grandfather, although he did not have much of a formal
education, was a reader. So, like millions of other Americans, we gathered around the
radio in the evenings for a real ritual of listening to the news. My grandfather subscribed
to the “Boston Globe.” Yes, we followed the development of the war in great detail.
Q: How did this turn out in terms of your experience? Were you much interested in girls?
Usually, I've found that with Foreign Service officers it usually turns out, when I ask
what they majored in, they say, “Sports and girls.” [Laughter]
BROWN: Well, I had a girlfriend. I met her once again at the 50th reunion of my high
school class, after the passage of 50 years. Because of my working experience at the camp
on the coast of Maine, where I worked in the kitchen and so forth, I also met a girl from
the Bronxville, New York, who was really something. So I had a romantic attachment
there. I was also heavily into music. I was into classical music and then I turned to jazz.
For a while there it looked as if I might make music a career. All of that faded away, but I
was in a band, circulating around and making some money, playing musical engagements.
I was pretty heavily into sports and was determined to get a college degree. I thought that
I was going to West Point. There was one other thing. I was inducted into the DeMolay
organization and became the head of the local DeMolay group.
Q: The DeMolay organization is the Masonic youth organization.
BROWN: It's an affiliate. I don't know how they are now, but Masons were sort of our
mentors and sponsors. DeMolay was an independent organization for young men. There
was a counterpart organization for girls, called the “Rainbow Girls.” So I had something
to do with that as well.
Q: You were getting ready to graduate from high school, which would have been about
1948 or so?
BROWN: Yes. Then came the shock of realizing that I couldn't get into West Point [U.S.
10
Description:Leeds, United Kingdom - Mongolian Language Study. 1972-1974. Mongolian communist history publication. U.S. embassy Elections canceled.
