Ambassador Toon in Moscow 1977-1979

When I arrived in Moscow, Ambassador Toon had already been there as Chief of Mission for six months. Appointed by President Gerald Ford, he presented his credentials only a few days before Ford’s successor, Jimmy Carter, took office. Toon’s first months were most precarious. The Soviets had initially opposed his appointment, and Toon was clearly out of sync with his new Washington leadership. Jimmy Carter and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance were in favor of a much more accommodationist approach to the Soviet Union, and were intent on saving détente, which had flowered under Nixon, but was now withering at the edges. There was talk of recalling Toon and replacing him with a more congenial political appointee, such as Sargent Shriver. Eventually, though, and probably at the urging of NSC Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, another hardliner more sympathetic to Toon’s views, the decision was taken to let Toon remain.

Toon’s troubles were not over by a long shot, however. He viewed Carter and Vance as naïve in their dealings with the Soviets, and particularly objected to their continued use of Soviet Ambassador Anatoliy Dobrynin as a back channel to the Kremlin, to the detriment of Toon and Embassy Moscow. Like his two immediate predecessors, Beam and Stoessel, Toon was systematically frozen out by most of the Soviet hierarchy, and never had the kind of access that Dobrynin had. Toon felt that his side should have insisted on equal access and equal status for the two Ambassadors, rightly pointing out that the White House could not know how accurately Dobrynin was reporting to the Kremlin. There is little doubt that a double-track policy would have been much wiser in order to avoid misunderstandings, but Carter White House staffers preferred the more personal Dobrynin channel, since it gave them greater influence over the process. In fact, they were only following the precedent set by the Nixon Administration, when a secretive President and NSC Advisor Henry Kissinger effectively gutted the role of the State Department and Embassy Moscow in policymaking vis à vis the Soviet Union.

Relations between Toon and Dobrynin were somewhat less than congenial. In his memoir, “In Confidence,” Dobrynin referred to Toon as “a belligerent career diplomat,” while ignoring the fact that one of the possible reasons for Toon's belligerence was Dobrynin's own success in monopolizing high-level contacts.

Ambassador and Mrs. Toon with Tchaikovskiy Winner Elmar Olveira
 Moscow 1978

Occasionally, and despite the fact that the field was tilted decisively in Dobrynin's favor, Toon could make his influence felt. For example, in June of 1978, in the wake of the arrest of Soviet spies Valdik Enger and Rudolf Chernyayev, the Soviets reacted by arresting International Harvester representative Jay Crawford, in effect holding him hostage for the release of their spies. Toon, who sarcastically referred to Enger and Chernyayev as “the Woodbridge Duo,” bent every effort to help Crawford, and in a short time a deal was fashioned to have Crawford released to his custody while Enger and Chernyayev, who were U.N. employees and did not have diplomatic immunity, were released to the custody of Ambassador Dobrynin. Crawford was expelled from the Soviet Union a few days later, and the “Woodbridge Duo” was eventually sentenced to 50 years in jail.

The following month, Toon lobbied strongly against the July 12-13, 1978 Gromyko-Vance meeting in Geneva to discuss arms control issues, since it came at the same time as the trials of Anatoliy Shcharanskiy and Aleksandr Ginzburg. In the end, the Carter Administration decided to go ahead with the meeting, but accompanied it with statements highly critical of Soviet treatment of the two dissidents. Several months later, on April 27, 1979, Ginzburg, Eduard Kuznetsov, Mark Dymshits, Valentin Moroz, and Georgy Vins were traded for the “Woodbridge Duo,” thus bringing a number of serious espionage and human rights issues to a successful conclusion. Toon’s role in the effective handling of this problem was typical of his unsentimental and unsparing view of relations with the Soviets.

This complicated and instructive episode in U.S.-Soviet relations pointed up the dilemma often faced by Carter Administration policymakers. The Administration was very strongly committed to supporting human rights in the Soviet Union, but it did so at a cost to the relationship in other areas. Early in the Administration, before this reality became apparent, the White House sometimes overreached in its zeal to promote human rights issues, and the Embassy would often bear the brunt of Soviet displeasure. For example, early on Toon was instructed to deliver a Presidential letter to Soviet human rights leader Andrey Sakharov, an act which, had he carried out his instruction literally, would have gotten him expelled, at least according to Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Georgiy Korniyenko. After this initial close shave, Toon decided to control more closely all Embassy contacts with human rights activists and dissidents. This policy was widely misunderstood at the time, but it probably saved several Embassy officers from expulsion. Dick Combs notes that the policy was not as draconian as many assumed, since Toon delegated to him control of Embassy contacts with the Soviet dissident community. In practice, this allowed Political Officers to continue their work without stultifying restrictions, while requiring others to clear contact work with Political/Internal.

With regard to high-level talks, Toon was systematically frozen out of the Administration’s SALT II negotiations, even though he knew the issue well and accurately predicted that the Soviets would reject the Administration’s initial proposals as non-negotiable and grossly biased in favor of the U.S. Toon's lack of influence in arms control matters suited the White House, Secretary Vance, and the Soviets themselves, who were all in a position to prevent Toon from carving out a role for himself.

Toon’s perceived hardliner attitude, and his dour manner, earned him the moniker “Looney Tunes” from detractors within the Administration, but few really understood the impossible situation he faced in implementing a policy that was often ill-advised, and on which he was rarely consulted. After leaving Moscow for retirement, Toon lamented that under Beam and Stoessel the role of the U.S. Ambassador in formulating policy had been significantly eroded. He had tried, but had not been able to make much progress in rectifying this situation during his three years in Moscow.

Toon’s difficulties in Moscow were compounded by the fact that the Soviets made a conscious effort to isolate him, as they did all diplomats, from the realities of Soviet life and politics. Toon was a perceptive observer of the Soviet scene, but his lack of contact with Soviet citizens, from the most powerful to the most humble, hampered his ability to accurately discern what was going on inside the Soviet world. Toon, for example, favored Politburo powerhouses Andrey Kirilenko and Vladimir Shcherbitskiy as possible successors to Brezhnev. In the end, however, neither made it to the top spot. There was also one memorable staff meeting at which Toon coldly predicted that the Soviet Union would last at least another 60 years, this just 12 years before the actual disintegration of the USSR. Of course, at the time, I was even further off in my own estimate, and thought that there was no prospect for an end to Soviet power.

As a lowly staff aide, I knew little about the bureaucratic politics surrounding Toon’s tenure, or the difficulties of his work in Moscow. Toon would of course make occasional comments that indicated the severe problems he and the Embassy faced, both in Moscow and in Washington, but, more often than not, he retained his steely reserve, and betrayed little about his real feelings to his staff. Later on, he would unburden himself to his friends in the Moscow correspondent corps, and to diplomatic historians, but at the time much of the behind the scenes bureaucratic tussling was just that – hidden from view. In any case, I was not particularly aware of or interested in these battles in the clouds. I was simply glad to be working for Ambassador Toon again, and, in my own limited area of responsibility, there was more than enough to keep me fully occupied.

After a very frustrating tour of duty, Toon left post for retirement on October 16, 1979, but he did stay on long enough to preside at ceremonies marking the beginning of construction of the ill-fated New Office Building that September. Toon was replaced by a political appointee who was inadequate for the job in almost every respect.

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“The opinions and characterizations in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the U.S. government.”

Chapter 11.6 PM 1979-1981 ver.20230704

The Moscow Fire of 1977

I had only been in Moscow for a few weeks when the Embassy faced one of its greatest crises. This was the fire of August 26, 1977, in which the Embassy nearly burned down.

It was a little after 10:30 pm on a Friday night. I was relaxing in my apartment at Spaso House when the phone rang. It was the DCM, Jack Matlock. He said he was in his office in the Embassy and needed to talk to the Ambassador as quickly as possible. I asked Svetlana Alekhina, our beautiful blonde telephone operator, where the Ambassador was, and she told me that he was at the Romanian Ambassador’s residence, attending a black tie dinner. I passed this information on to the DCM, and said I would try to get the Ambassador on the phone. “Please hurry, Jim,” Matlock urged. After a few tries, I got through to the Romanian Ambassador’s residence. The phone was answered by a very arrogant butler who absolutely refused to bring the Ambassador to the phone. “I can’t interrupt dinner,” he said. I didn’t know exactly what the problem was, but I told the butler in no uncertain terms that it wasn’t up to him to make that kind of decision. “Tell the Ambassador, and let him decide,” I said. The butler agreed and hung up. I waited for about five minutes and then the phone rang. It was the Ambassador. “What’s going on, Jim?” he said. “I don’t know, Mr. Ambassador, but the DCM needs to speak to you right away.” At that moment, the other line rang. It was Matlock again. “Mr. Matlock, I’ve got the Ambassador on the other line. What should I tell him?” Matlock, the agitation rising in his voice, replied, “Jim, tell him we’ve got a fire here in--”… and at that moment the line suddenly went dead. I relayed this information to Ambassador Toon. He thought a second and said, “I guess I should get over there.” I agreed, and said I would meet him at the Embassy.

I jumped in my 1969 Chevy Caprice and barreled off to the Embassy, which was only a couple of blocks away. The sight that greeted me was hard to believe. Most of the eighth floor of the Embassy was on fire. The economic section, on the north side of the central wing, was almost completely engulfed, and I could see that the fire was rapidly spreading to the Press and Culture section down the hall on the south side of the building. The Marines had been fighting the fire ever since it had been discovered less than an hour before, but it was rapidly getting out of control. GSO had called the Moscow Fire Department, but no one had arrived yet. A couple of hundred people, mostly those living in apartments on the lower floors of the central wing, but also denizens of the north and south wings, were milling around in front of the Embassy, and spilling out into the 16-lane Ring Road, on which the Embassy fronted. Many were in a bit of a daze, like poor Ken Skoug, the Economic Counselor. Ken wandered up and down in front of the Embassy, mumbling to no one in particular, “I’ve lost everything,” as flames billowed out of his eighth floor office window.

The Ambassador arrived in his black tie outfit, and began directing operations. The fire was really going now, and had spread to the seventh, ninth and tenth floors. The Fire Department arrived and began fighting the fire on the lower floors. Many of our officers who escorted the firemen were struck by the poor condition of the initial group of Soviet firefighters, most of whom were not very well trained young men with outdated equipment and leaky fire hoses. These first responders nonetheless fought the fire well, and gradually gained the upper hand. However, when the Soviet fire brigade commander asked for permission to move to the attic in order to fight the fire there, Toon at first replied, “Let it burn.” This was because Toon suspected that some of the “professional firefighters” might actually be working for the KGB, and because the Embassy had a lot of sensitive equipment under the eves. In reviewing later accounts by eyewitnesses, it seems unlikely that the first responders had KGB mixed in, but there is little doubt that some later arrivals were indeed representatives of the “Special Services.”

Eventually, the firefighters were allowed to enter the upper floors under DAO escort. To prevent the KGB from hacking their way into our safes, several of the Embassy’s military officers stayed on the tenth floor to watch the firefighters as they did their work. A few suffered from smoke inhalation, and a good friend of mine, Doug Englund, suffered a somewhat more embarrassing injury, accidentally sitting down in a pool of battery acid. His colleagues later ribbed poor Doug mercilessly about his “noble sacrifice,” noting that they were going to put him in for a medal. Other DAO personnel exhibited esprit de corps in other ways, not only by safeguarding the classified areas, but also by saving valuable items from the blaze. For example, as the fire was worsening on the ninth floor, Marc Powe ran to Post One to retrieve the American flag.

Plenty of other Embassy officers were also involved in the firefighting operations. For example, Dick Combs was stationed on the ninth floor to watch what was going on there, and A/GSO Sandy Gust was the direct liaison with the Soviet firefighters on the street. I recall listening in on her conversations with the firefighters, and she was quite effective. Once, when the fire blazed up again, the Soviet fire brigade commander wanted to return to the tenth floor, which he believed to be the source of the new fire. DAO personnel had determined, however, that the fire was actually in the emergency generator room on the ninth floor, and Sandy convinced the Soviet fire brigade commander that foam, not water, was the only way to douse the fire. In particular, she impressed the Ambassador by knowing the Russian words for “foam dispensing fire extinguisher” (пена-дающий огнетушитель), thus winning his good opinion, a most difficult thing to do.

Ambassador Toon continued to direct operations at the scene, but in some cases, his orders were not carried out. On one occasion, when it looked like the fire might get out of control and burn down the Embassy, he instructed Marc Powe to find CIA Station Chief Gus Hathaway and tell him to leave the building. Marc found Gus guarding his area dressed in a London Fog raincoat and armed with a .38 caliber revolver. On hearing the Ambassador’s order, Gus gave Marc “a rather undiplomatic response,” the gist of which was that he wasn’t going to leave under any circumstances, even if the building was burning down around him. Ambassador Toon was not happy, but there was nothing he could do, and Gus stayed behind. Gus, like Toon, was a World War II veteran, and knew his duty.

Evacuation to Spaso.
On towards midnight, the fire was slowly coming under control, and it was becoming increasingly evident that at least a hundred former residents of the central wing were going to have to find another place to spend the night. After checking with the Ambassador, I alerted the Spaso staff, and started ferrying people over to spend the night there. By the time I got there with the first car convoy, our staff, which had all reported back for duty despite the late hour, had set up cots in the ballroom and the chandelier room. I kept on ferrying people until there was no one left who needed a place to stay. At that point, a funny thing happened. My car suddenly stalled and could not be revived. My passengers and I pushed it to the side of the road, and were wondering what to do next, when a Russian drove up and offered to take the rest of us back to Spaso. It was evidently one of our KGB minders, who decided to take pity on us and help out. We immediately accepted his offer, and drove back to Spaso.

By the time I got back, it was the wee hours of the morning, and I had to gingerly step over the bodies of sleeping Embassy employees to get to my apartment. Breathing a sigh of relief, I turned on the lights and was greeted with about twenty of my colleagues who I startled out of sleep. “Turn off that light!” someone said, and I dutifully did so, stepping past more supine bodies to get to my bedroom, which had thoughtfully been left vacant.

The Aftermath.
The next morning, I clambered out of bed and walked over to the Embassy to retrieve my car and take a look at the damage. The eighth floor had been burned out, and every floor from seven on up had suffered smoke and water damage. The Chancery was a wreck, for all intents and purposes. Fortunately, no one had been killed in the fire, although it had been a near thing. One of our communicators in the ninth floor communications SCIF didn’t hear the alarm, and was nearly trapped, until the Marines, ever thorough, broke in to make sure no one was left behind.

DCM Matlock also nearly came to grief. He stayed in his offices on the ninth floor well past when it was safe. According to Ed Watson, our burly black telephone technician, he had to lift Matlock up bodily and carry him out of his office. At first, Matlock had refused to go, clambering around trying to save some of his books, or so Ed told the story. I’m just glad we were all able to laugh about it afterwards.

Some of the families in the Central Wing also had narrow escapes. Air Attaché Chuck Roades and his family were a case in point. As the fire was getting out of control, and the Marines were getting everyone out of the Central Wing, Chuck’s wife Vicki first found out about the evacuation order when she heard pounding on the front door, which was then split apart by an ax. The Marines helped Chuck’s elderly mother down the steps, and rapidly tossed his sleeping seven-year-old son, Chas, from one Marine to another, landing by landing, all the way down six flights of stairs. Legend has it that Chas slept through the whole thing and awoke only when he was safely outside.

The fire made the front pages of most of the papers in the States, with pictures of the Embassy the morning after prominently featured. Ambassador Toon told the media that he thought it would take about five months to repair the damage, and he turned out to be correct. In later years, the Embassy proved to be a proper firetrap, with a serious electrical fire in 1988, and an elevator shaft fire in March 1991 that nearly burned down the Embassy -- again.

As time went on, debate grew over what exactly caused the fire. The Embassy had always been something of a firetrap, and there had been serious fires, including one in the Medical Unit when a welding accident had set some pipe insulation on fire. The biggest fire hazard, however, was the Chancery’s balky electrical wiring, which was continuously overloaded due to the extremely high demand from all the electronic equipment placed in what was essentially a 1950s Stalin-era apartment building. Early reports indicated that a hot water kettle had been left on in Econ and that this was the cause of the blaze. If so, it was a most inopportune place for a fire to start, since Econ was full of loose stacks of paper that must have gone up instantly. Another more way-out theory was that the KGB had something to do with it. The KGB had built a shed on the roof of the building across the Ring Road from the Embassy and was beaming microwaves at the Embassy. One theory, although not the leading one, was that the microwaves could somehow disable electronic equipment or make it otherwise malfunction. Personally, I lean to the hot water kettle theory -- it fits Occam's razor best.

Whatever the function of the KGB microwave shed may have been, the Embassy got a measure of revenge when, in the winter of 1979, it caught fire and much of the roof went up in flames. The Marines saw the conflagration and opened their bar on the second floor to celebrate, reportedly playing "Disco Inferno" by The Trammps ("Burn, Baby Burn") at top volume out the windows of the Embassy. That was of course very droll of the Marines, but we got a protest note from the MFA, all the same.

In the days following the fire, many occupants of the eighth, ninth and tenth floors came down to share our offices on the smoke-damaged seventh floor, and for a few months, we were five to a desk. It was fun for a while, but got old quick. Rusty Hughes distinguished himself by stepping out of his Political Officer role and rewiring and electrifying the seventh floor. I’m not sure where he picked up such practical knowledge, but we were all very grateful. Other refugees from the eighth floor moved to P&C Down for the next few months, sharing cramped spaces with their colleagues and several noisy teletype machines. The Ambassador and DCM took up temporary residence in USCO.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs very “generously” offered to provide whatever help we needed to assist in the restoration of the Embassy building. Unfortunately, our first request, for a crane tall enough to reach the roof, met with the response that none were available – this despite the fact that Moscow’s skyline was festooned with construction cranes of every type. Eventually, the Embassy obtained a crane from an American contractor who was exhibiting it at VDNKh. We were on our own, as usual. Other arms of the Soviet government had their own ideas about how to help. For several days after the fire, helicopters flew low over the Embassy to get a close look at the attic. They were too late, however, to see anything of consequence.

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“The opinions and characterizations in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the U.S. government.”

Chapter 11.5 Moscow 1977-1979 ver. 20240318b

Malcolm Toon and the Moscow Press By Robin Knight

 

Chapter 11.4 Ops Center 1976-1977 ver. 20230704

 

Ambassador Laurence Silberman 1935-2022

Ambassador Laurence Silberman passed away on Sunday, October 2, after serving on the DC Appeals Court for decades following an illustrious career in several Republican administrations. I never knew him as a politician or a judge, but only as President Gerald Ford's Ambassador to Yugoslavia from 1975-1976. Ambassador Silberman was abrasive, opinionated, controversial, and outspoken but also open, honest and in many ways quite admirable. Needless to say, he did not get on well with most of the career Foreign Service staff.  Here are my memories of him.

Ambassador Laurence Silberman.

Ambassador Larry Silberman arrived at post on May 26, 1975, about three months after Ambassador Toon's departure for his new posting in Israel.  The appointment of Silberman was controversial and somewhat unexpected.  Balding, overweight, and wearing glasses, Silberman looked much older than his 39 years and fit the standard description of a conservative Republican lawyer who knew the ways of Washington.  Silberman had no foreign policy experience, but he had lots of political clout and had already served in many responsible positions in the Nixon and Ford Administrations.  In October 1973 he had been named Deputy Attorney General after the Saturday Night Massacre in which Attorney General Eliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus had refused a presidential order to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox and were themselves fired.  Silberman reportedly did a good job under the new Attorney General William Saxbe, but with the change of Administrations, both Saxbe and Silberman left the Justice Department, Saxbe to replace Daniel Patrick Moynihan as Ambassador to India and Silberman, at first, to become the next Special Trade Representative.  This appointment was derailed, however, when Finance Committee Chairman Russell B. Long raised objections over Silberman's lack of trade experience and said that he would agree to confirmation only if he could name Silberman's deputy.  Silberman would not agree to this and so he, too, got a vacant Ambassadorship -- Yugoslavia.

 

The career Foreign Service, by and large, took a dim view of the Silberman appointment.  Most considered Yugoslavia a country that demanded a professional who was already familiar with the ins and outs of Eastern European diplomacy.  Yugoslavia was not normally considered a post for political appointees, particularly those with no prior foreign affairs experience.  This was not Silberman's only problem, however, in the eyes of the career Service.  The key concern most people had was that Silberman often behaved like a bull in a china shop.  Although brilliant, he could be very aggressive and abrasive in his manner, and the fact that he was a neocon and in tight with Donald Rumsfeld did not help his cause in a Department that was largely liberal and democratic in outlook.

 

For his part, it was clear that Silberman was not particularly enamored of the professional Foreign Service.  Even before coming out to post, he had crossed swords with European Bureau Assistant Secretary Arthur Hartman and Counselor Helmut Sonnenfeldt, whose policy toward Yugoslavia he thought too accommodationist.  His relations with the Eastern European Desk were also strained.  On arrival at post, he immediately sensed that most of the staff, particularly Acting Political Counselor Ken Hill and DCM Dudley Miller, were not on his side.  In addition, his wife, Ricky, told him that she was having difficulties in dealing with the Foreign Service wives at post, largely because of the uncooperative attitude of Pat Miller, the DCM's wife.  This seemed to confirm his impression that the professionals were hostile to him at every level. 

 

As for me, I was blissfully unaware of all this, working away in my Executive floor office, operating under the assumption that all would go on as before.  I briefly introduced myself to Ambassador Silberman and he seemed to be a nice enough person as far as I was concerned.  The first night after his arrival, as I walked home from work, I could still see him through the window in his office, puffing away on his pipe and reading classified documents late into the night.  Not being as conscious of the intelligence threat then as I was later, it didn't occur to me to tell him to draw the curtains.  Undoubtedly, the UDBA was reading everything over his shoulder.

 

I soon found out that my own professional life was about to undergo a sudden change, however, when a couple of weeks after the Ambassador had arrived, Ricky Silberman poked her head in my office, looked around and then said to her companion, as if I were so much furniture, "Yes, I think this will do nicely," and then left without further explanation.  The next day, I was told to get my things together and move down to Political.  My office was to be taken over by Brandon Sweitzer, a friend of the Silbermans, who had worked as his assistant before.  Brandon, who was in his 30's, was a nice enough sort of guy, but also had no foreign policy experience, and, strictly speaking, could not be appointed to a career position in the Embassy.  But this did not stop Silberman and in came Brandon.  There was no room in Political, so I wound up in a vacant office on the landing between Political and the Executive Office.

 

Soon, rumors began to spread that Silberman actually wanted Brandon to be his Deputy Chief of Mission.  I didn't believe this, but then, about a month after Brandon had first taken up residence in my former office, Ambassador Silberman called a staff meeting in the tank, and, with a flush-faced Dudley Miller in tow, announced to a stunned staff that Dudley would be leaving within the next few days.  This did not go down well with the Embassy staff, who gave Dudley a farewell party to remember.  Several dozen of us also accompanied him and Pat out to the airport, clapping and cheering as they boarded their plane. 

 

Shortly after Dudley departed, Brandon, who had already taken over Don Tice's residence at the Marble Palace, moved into Dudley's office and became DCM in fact if not in name.  I got to know Brandon over the next year or so and actually liked him.  He was in an impossible situation.  As far as I could tell, he did very little work that could traditionally be construed as within the purview of a DCM.  He confided to me that he had really been hoping that Silberman would be posted to Germany.  As it was, he spent much of his spare time learning German and planning to start a business venture in Vienna.  Basically, the rest of the Embassy just worked around him.  In any event, Silberman didn't really need a DCM -- he wanted to do everything himself.

 

Mark Palmer arrived as the new Political Counselor that summer and was enough of a political animal to know immediately which way the wind blew.  He urged all of us to make our peace with the Ambassador and to serve him to the best of our ability, a suggestion that I took to heart, as did most of the political section.  Some, however, like Ken Hill could not and departed post early.  Ken felt, with much justification, that Ambassador Silberman had unfairly targeted him and actually enjoyed bullying those subordinates who disagreed with him.  As it was, Silberman wrote a scathing review of Ken’s performance -- accusing him of insubordination -- that set back his promotion chances for many years.  Fortunately, Ken's career was not hurt in the long run, and he ended up as Ambassador to Bulgaria in the early 1990s.  Others, like Sheldon Krys, did their best to lighten the atmosphere and unite the Embassy staff behind the Ambassador, and as a result, much of the friction that had been developing within the Embassy gradually disappeared.

 

The same cannot be said, however, for Silberman's relations with the Department.  While he had the support of the White House and the conservative media (Evans and Novak in particular), his name was mud with Hartman and Sonnenfeldt and much of the State bureaucracy.   Things got so bad, that I even saw one cable go out from Silberman to a couple of leading lights in the Department, in answer to an instruction, with the curt reply: "Kiss my ass."

 

Silberman's relations may have been bad with the Department, but they were even worse with the Yugoslavs.  Silberman's direct and abrasive approach brought out the worst in them, particularly the cosseted Communist elite, who were arrogant, used to being toadied by diplomats and not at all pleased when spoken to bluntly.  The principal driver of tensions between the Yugoslavs and Silberman was the arrest of Laszlo Toth, a naturalized American citizen, on the last day of President Ford’s visit to Yugoslavia in August 1975.  Toth, who was in the sugar manufacturing business, had returned to Yugoslavia to look into business opportunities with local firms.  Instead, he was arrested in an UDBA operation, accused of espionage and sentenced to seven years in jail.  Toth was not a spy, just a victim of Yugoslav paranoia, in a society that in Tito's final years was slipping increasingly into authoritarianism and xenophobia.  The State Department wanted to take a restrained approach, hoping to solve the problem quietly, but Silberman would have none of it.  He beat the Yugoslavs over the head with the Toth case every chance he got.  The Yugoslavs were infuriated, even more so because they had been caught out and Silberman was completely in the right.

 

Eventually, Toth was freed after enduring almost a year in prison, apparently through a personal decision by President Tito.  Silberman released a statement crowing about his victory and criticizing the Eastern European Desk for its lack of aggressiveness in seeking Toth's release.  The next day, Tito made a statement of his own, personally criticizing Silberman for his behavior and leading to rumors that the Ambassador might be declared Persona Non-Grata.  In the event, Silberman was not PNG'd, although he was shunned by the Yugoslav establishment for the rest of his tour.  Many in the Department believed that Silberman had gotten his comeuppance.  Personally, I thought he was right to adopt the stand he did.  Sometimes, you just have to call a spade a spade.  Most of the U.S. media also agreed with this view, with Malcolm Browne of the New York Times and Dusko Doder of the Washington Post emphatic in their approval of his actions.  President Ford also came out foursquare behind him, so that was that.

 

I was not involved in the Toth case, but during my final year in Belgrade, I did find myself working more and more with the Ambassador.  Silberman did not like to use Yugoslav interpreters for his meetings and as I was one of the few officers who could speak Serbo-Croatian well enough to interpret for him and take notes at the same time, I found myself accompanying him to quite a few high-level meetings, at least until the big freeze-out began.  I recall one particularly interesting meeting between the Ambassador and Yugoslav Minister of Defense Nikola Ljubičić, during which we discussed the details of an agreement for TOW missile sales to the Yugoslavs.  Despite an increasing divergence in US and Yugoslav foreign policies, the USG was anxious to provide the Yugoslavs with sophisticated defensive weaponry, in order to provide some sort of deterrent to the Soviets, should Tito die suddenly and the Soviets be tempted to intervene.  Of course, we didn't say any of this out loud, but the Yugoslavs understood and negotiations went ahead fairly quickly.  The Ambassador's bluntness often got him into trouble, however.  At one meeting with Ljubičić, the Yugoslavs raised some sort of trivial objection to a part of the sale agreement, at which point the Ambassador replied, "Well, then, I guess the sale is off."  Stunned, I asked him if he really wanted to say this.  "Translate it," he replied.  I did and it was the Yugoslavs' turn to be stunned.  Later, the Ambassador realized he had been too harsh and smoothed things over.  As it was, an Evans and Novak column explaining the real reasons why we were willing to sell TOWs to the Yugoslavs nearly derailed negotiations again.  We were still discussing terms when I left Belgrade in July of 1976.

 

Ambassador Silberman was impressed with a couple of Airgrams I had done on my trips to Montenegro and Kosovo and as a result, when he decided to visit Montenegro, he was very receptive to Mark Palmer's suggestion that I accompany as note taker and general factotum.  It was good that I did.  Our first stop in Montenegro was the Miločer Hotel near Sveti Stefan.  Ambassador and Mrs. Silberman and I had a great dinner at a local restaurant and spent the evening walking around the port, enjoying life.  It was one of the few times I ever saw the Silbermans in relatively normal circumstances and we all got on well together.  The next morning, we were in the breakfast room, getting ready for the new day when a rather ratty-looking Yugoslav man came over to our table and began talking.  It was clear that he was not quite right in the head and had some consular grievance against the Embassy.  I gave the Ambassador and Ricky the high sign to get back to their room and offered to stay with our "guest" and get his full story.  I interviewed him at length and then told him that we would be in touch with him soon.  He became belligerent, in an unhinged sort of way, and said he wanted to talk to the Ambassador.  I left, on the pretext that I would find out if this could be done.  Instead, I went to the front desk and asked the concierge to call the police.  I then went up to the Ambassador's room and told him what had happened.  The Ambassador was in an agitated state, mainly out of concern for Ricky and he was afraid that this nut case might actually get violent.  I went out into the hall to wait for the police, while the Ambassador locked himself and Ricky in their room.  After about a forty-minute wait, the police finally showed up and escorted our deranged Yugoslav consular case out of the hotel.  After that, the rest of the Montenegro trip, while pleasant, was strictly an anti-climax.

 

The Ambassador, thinking about the incident later, concluded that it was a put-up job from the beginning.  We were being closely shadowed by the UDBA.  One word from them and the incident would have been over before it had started.  On reflection, I think that the Ambassador may have been on to something.  We'll never know for sure, but one thing we do know is that all of us were under the scrutiny of the UDBA and any signs of vulnerability would be exploited to the full.  Many of our employees were reporting to the UDBA and the Ambassador was sure that most of his personal employees were.  He told me once that, in order to test his driver, Salih Zučanin, he had left his briefcase in the car while going into a meeting.  Looking out of an upper window, he saw Salih hurriedly going through the briefcase, looking for documents.  Proof positive.

 

My tour in Belgrade came to an end in July of 1976.  In the months that followed, Ambassador Silberman’s relations with the Yugoslavs continued to deteriorate.  Virtually ignored by Tito and other high-level officials, who were still in a snit over the Toth affair, his effectiveness as Ambassador had become limited at best.  That November, Jimmy Carter defeated President Ford and Republican political appointees began heading for the exits.  Silberman was one of the first to go, vowing that he would never work a single day for someone like Carter.

 

The Silbermans departed post on December 26, 1976.  Shortly after Jimmy Carter was sworn in as President, Larry Eagleburger came out to Belgrade as the new Ambassador, to the vast relief of the remaining Foreign Service staff and the even greater relief of the Tito regime.  Silberman worked for a time at the American Enterprise Institute and authored two articles on his foreign policy experiences.  The first, which appeared in the Spring 1977 edition of Foreign Policy, was entitled "Yugoslavia's 'Old' Communism: Europe's Fiddler on the Roof;" it pretty much burned any bridges he might have left standing between him and the Yugoslavs, not to mention the State Department.  The second article, which appeared in the Spring 1979 edition of Foreign Affairs, was entitled "Toward Presidential Control of the State Department;" it suggested doing away with Presidential appointee status for career Ambassadors, something which no doubt endeared him even further to the members of the career Foreign Service.

 

In 1985, Silberman was appointed by President Reagan to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.  In 2001, he presided over the swearing-in ceremony of his old friend, Donald Rumsfeld, as Secretary of Defense.  In February of 2007, his wife of 49 years, Ricky Silberman, passed away from cancer.

 

Ambassador Silberman did an interview for the Oral History project and his recollections of his tour in Yugoslavia are very informative.