The Foreign Service Oral History project--WashPost 5/19/07
*His Diplomatic Coup: Getting Them on the Record*
By Peter Carlson Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, May 19, 2007; C01
Diplomats are trained to be, you know, /diplomatic,/ but somehow Stu Kennedy gets them to say what they really think.
He waits until they retire, then he sits them down in front of his tape recorder and pretty soon they're telling him great stories about wars and revolutions and coups -- lots of coups! -- and about the ( Collapse )
*Four-letter Word for Tenet: Liar By Ray McGovern * ** /*If they question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied. Rudyard Kipling */ *Mercifully, the flurry of media coverage of former CIA director George Tenet hawking his memoir, At the Center of the Storm, has abated. Buffeted by those on the right and left who see through his lame attempt at self-justification, Tenet probably now wishes he had opted to just fade away, as old soldiers used to do.
He listened instead to his old PR buddy and "co-author" Bill Harlow who failed miserably in trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. By this point, they may be having second thoughts.But, hey, $4 million is a sizable sum, even if split two ways. But, aside from the money, what else could they have been thinking?
When I heard John Waterbury was stepping down as president <http://www.aub.edu.lb/news/dynamic/69540.html> of the American University of Beirut < http://www.aub.edu.lb/>, I phoned him to ask how his 10-year tenure had gone. I was slightly taken aback by Waterbury's gloom when I asked him how he saw things generally in the Middle East. He offered a long-term view that was disturbing but certainly thought-provoking.
"I have been working and living in the Middle East since 1959-1960," he said, "and I have never seen a period in which U.S.-Arab or U.S.-Middle Eastern relations have been at a lower ebb. ( Collapse )
