Monday, Aug. 25, 1958
Five-Star Diplomat
(See Cover)
Weary-eyed, a little rumpled and sniffling from a cold caught somewhere between Athens and Rome, U.S. Deputy Under Secretary of State Robert Daniel Murphy eased his 6 ft. 2 in. gratefully into a seat in Columbine III. Turning to his traveling companion, Murphy began talking quietly, steadily of the historic trip just ending; rushed to the Middle East 29 days before, Murphy had traveled 18,575 miles, visited nine Middle East and European nations, in Lebanon alone met 45 times with government and rebel leaders. When Diplomat Murphy finished talking, his friend on the Columbine leaned toward him. "Bob," said the President of the U.S., returning to Washington after his United Nations speech, "you did a wonderful job."
Five-Star Ambassador* Bob Murphy, 63, had indeed done a remarkable job. Among his major achievements: 1) by urging a positive, performance-over-propaganda U.S. program for the Middle East, he contributed directly to the policies set forth in the President's U.N. speech; 2) by rallying rival Lebanese parties behind compromise President-elect Fuad Chehab, he arranged a shaky sort of cease-fire and brought a promise of political order to Lebanon; 3) he shrewdly impressed Arab leaders, both friendly and hostile, with the key fact that the U.S. had shown itself able and willing to help its friends in the Middle East--while the U.S.S.R., for all its ballistic-blackmail diplomacy, had backed off when the going got rough.
Behind those achievements lay nearly 40 years of international troubleshooting.
Murphy has been on hand wherever and whenever the flames of world controversy burned hottest: in Munich during Hitler's brawling beer-hall days, in North Africa patiently maneuvering to deliver Vichy France's colonies to the World War II Allies, in Berlin during the airlift, in Trieste and at Panmunjom, in London during the Suez crisis. To Tunisians he is "Monsieur Bans Offices," to austere Britons he is "Breezy Bob," and to Pravda he is "Warmonger Murphy." To friends and enemies alike, he is perhaps the world's fastest-moving, most highly skilled diplomatic fireman.
From Warm to Cold. Murphy's fire-fighting talents come from the diplomatic professionalism that has made him senior careerman of all the 12,585 State Department and Foreign Service professionals spread round the world in 77 embassies, three legations, 199 consulates and other outposts. Murphy knows the diplomatic rule book as well as anyone alive--and his professionalism tells him the proper time to throw it away. He can be a charming, top-hatted and white-gloved diplomat--or a deadly antagonist. Says an admiring British Commonwealth diplomat: "He is a joy to behold in action. I have never seen any man who could sit at a conference table and smile and nod and rub his hands--and, when the occasion demands, be so coldly vicious." Thus, in Lebanon last fortnight, when Nasserite Rebel Leader Saeb Salam threatened to pitch U.S. marines into the sea, Murphy's eyes turned hard, and he began cracking his knuckles like a machine gun. Said he: "You know, Mr. Salam, we have the power to destroy your positions in a matter of seconds." Then, softly: "We haven't used it. We hope we don't have to."
Yet it is the mark of Bob Murphy's professionalism that he left with Salam singing his praises. Such was Murphy's total performance that another U.S. career diplomat in the Middle East was moved to remark: "Bob proves the ultimate value of professionalism in diplomacy--proves the case for a Foreign Service career. We can't do without men like him."
"Work, Work, Work." Careerman Bob Murphy fell into the Foreign Service almost by accident. Born in Milwaukee on Oct. 28, 1894, he was the only son of an Irish-American steam fitter on the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad. He worked his way through school, held dozens of odd jobs, e.g., selling the Milwaukee Journal. By 1916 he had managed to get into Washington's George Washington University Law School. There, an old foot injury kept him out of World War I military service--so he applied for a civilian war job and wound up as a clerk in the U.S. legation in neutral, window-on-the-world Bern, Switzerland. Murphy's two-year record was summed up by a colleague, a young diplomat named Allen Welsh Dulles: "Work, work, work."
"Wait a Minute." At war's end Murphy returned to George Washington, got his law degree, was admitted to the District of Columbia bar. He had always wanted to be a lawyer, but he indulged himself by taking Foreign Service exams simply because "I was curious to see if I could pass them." He did--and in April 1921, he was offered a place in the U.S. consulate at Zurich. He talked it over with his bride of one month, a former Red Cross worker named Mildred Claire Taylor, and accepted. Says Murphy: "We decided to try it for a year."
The year has never ended. In 1921-25 he was in Munich, where he made the sort of mistake that is part of the training of a professional. The U.S. was interested in the doings of rising young Rabble Rouser Adolf Hitler. Murphy reported that Hitler was simply too loony to be dangerous. Among the diplomatic observers in Munich who agreed with Murphy was Apostolic Nuncio Eugenio Pacelli. Years later, after the liberation of Rome. Diplomat Robert Murphy saw Pacelli again, grinned: "Do you remember the reports which we agreed to send about Hitler?" Replied Eugenio Pacelli. by this time Pope Pius XII: "Now Robert, wait a minute. Don't you even mention papal infallibility. That was long before I became Pope."
After 16 years spent learning his trade in routine jobs, Diplomat Murphy's breakthrough came in 1936. with the arrival in Paris of Ambassador William Bullitt, a close friend of Franklin Roosevelt's and a man with a sharp eye for young talent. "When I got to Paris." recalls Bullitt, "Murphy was No. 3 consul. He seemed so much abler than the No. 2 consul and the No. 1 consul that I had him made consul general.'' By 1939 Murphy was a full-blown counselor at the Paris embassy. "This," says Bullitt, "was going up very fast."
Meet Lieut. Colonel McGowan. When France fell in June 1940, Ambassador Bullitt returned to the U.S., and Murphy became the top-ranking American in a France divided between the German occupation in the North and the Vichy French government in the South. Main aim of U.S. policy: to keep the German-Italian Axis out of strategic French North Africa. In December 1940, Murphy went to Algiers, negotiated a deal with the Vichy authorities to supply them with U.S. economic aid and U.S. "technical assistants," soon took charge of an expanding North African intelligence network. North Africa began Murphy's cloakand-dagger days. On the eve of the U.S.British landings in North Africa in the fall of 1942, Bob Murphy took on the name, identification papers and guise of Lieut. Colonel McGowan, U.S. Army. He flew secretly to London for talks with Supreme Commander Dwight Eisenhower, then to Washington to confer with President Roosevelt. A key Murphy recommendation to General Eisenhower: a top-level U.S. officer should be smuggled into North Africa to persuade friendly French leaders to support the Allied invasion. Ike agreed, selected Lieut. General Mark Clark as his representative.
At midnight on Oct. 22, 1942, Clark's submarine spotted a flickering light on an Algerian coastal bluff. It was the signal to row ashore, that the way was clear. W'hen Clark and his team reached shore, Bob Murphy was on hand to greet them: "Welcome to North Africa." That day, in a red-roofed villa on the road to Algiers. Clark and Murphy ate bread, jam and sardines, plotted the North African invasion with French leaders brought by Murphy. Suddenly the telephone rang, followed by the cry: "The police will be here in a few minutes." Tipped off in time's nick, Mark Clark and his men ducked desperately into the wine cellar. Murphy, an aide and a French officer remained upstairs, tipsily greeted the cops, clanked bottles, sang noisily, urged the French police not to disturb the young ladies supposedly in an upstairs room. With Gallic gallantry, the cops searched routinely, left.
Panting & Pantsless. That night, ready to row back to his submarine, Clark took off his trousers to prevent their getting soaked as he helped push his boat into the breakers. In his hurry, he left the trousers on the beach, arrived panting and pantsless on the sub. Three weeks later Clark got a package from Murphy: it contained his trousers, freshly cleaned and pressed. The result of the Clark expedition and Murphy's work: French collaboration made the Allied invasion immeasurably easier.
As General Eisenhower's political assistant in North Africa after the invasion (his British counterpart on Ike's staff was Harold Macmillan), Murphy masterminded U.S. negotiations with Vichy's devious Admiral Darlan, helped procure a ceasefire in Algeria and Morocco, saved thou sands of U.S. and British soldiers' lives --and was severely criticized by U.S. liberals. Sample: "He is an Irish Catholic," said the New Republic. "Obviously his relations with the extreme right in French politics were warm." Dwight Eisenhower felt differently. He awarded Murphy the Distinguished Service Medal, later wrote of him: "Affable, friendly, exceedingly shrewd . . . Unquestionably his missionary work had much to do with eventual success."
History's Proofs. After the war, Murphy became Military Governor Lucius Clay's political adviser in Germany, argued along with Clay that defeated Germany ought to be brought up to the status of ally in the anti-Communist camp. From job to job, in Washington as chief of the State Department's Office of German and Austrian Affairs, in Belgium as ambassador, as first postwar U.S. Ambassador to Japan, as Mark Clark's Korean war truce adviser at Panmunjom, Bob Murphy kept proving his professional versatility. He even found time to give Joe McCarthy a comeuppance. "Why," cried Joe one day when Murphy was a witness before his Senate committee, "look at Dag Hammarskjold drinking tea with Chou Enlai, while American boys are held prisoners. Why should he be drinking tea?" Answered Bob Murphy tartly: "Because Chou doesn't serve whisky."
But as soon as Troubleshooter Murphy doused one flame, another flared up. He flew to see Tito in 1954 and again in 1955, helped get a favorable settlement on combustible Trieste. He flew to see Eden in 1956 after Nasser seized the Suez Canal. He flew to Tunis and Paris last February in a U.S.-British "good-offices mission" designed to ease the French-Tunisian crisis, managed to lay out the lines of an interim solution later adopted by De Gaulle.
Travel Log. On July 14, 1958 the fire bell rang again: the pro-West government of Iraq had been bloodily overthrown, threatening the pro-West but trouble-racked government of nearby Lebanon; Lebanon asked for and promptly got U.S. military help. Bob Murphy jumped into a KC-135 jet tanker, set an 11-hr. 1-min. record from the U.S. to Beirut. From that moment on, Murphy moved from country to country, from Middle East hero to Middle East villain, averaged less than five hours' sleep a night. But no matter what other demands were made on him, Murphy found time each night to retire behind closed doors, write longhand on yellow foolscap to Washington, reporting his activities.
These were the activities that shaped his reports:
LEBANON : Murphy found President Camille Chamoun a prisoner in his own home, there for 62 days and afraid even to go near the window. Murphy's first and foremost objective was to try to bring peace by finding a compromise President acceptable to Lebanon's evenly divided Christian and Moslem communities. The obvious choice: Army Chief of Staff Fuad Chehab, a Maronite Christian and political neutralist. After 14 days of Murphy negotiations with government and rebel leaders, as well as Chehab, the crisis eased with Chehab's election.
JORDAN : Murphy flew to Amman, met young King Hussein under a portrait of Hussein's assassinated grandfather, Abdullah. Hussein assured Murphy that he had no notion of abdicating, that he felt sure his troops were loyal. Murphy's reaction to Hussein: "I felt great admiration for him."
IRAQ: In Baghdad, Murphy assured revolutionary Prime Minister Karim Kassem that U.S. troops are in Lebanon without hostile intent toward Iraq. For their part the revolutionists professed nothing but friendship for the West. Murphy's conclusion: they may not mean it--but they deserve every chance to prove themselves one way or another.
ISRAEL: Tough, white-maned Premier Ben-Gurion flatly said that if Nasser's United Arab Republic tries to take over Hussein's Jordan, then Israeli troops will march. Murphy's conclusion: Ben-Gurion meant precisely what he said.
EGYPT: Murphy arrived in Cairo for an appointment with Nasser, met with a clumsy snub in the form of a ten-hour delay before Nasser would see him. When Nasser finally received Murphy that night, Nasser shrugged off the delay as just "one of those things." But Nasser, nervous and withdrawn at first, was soon talking freely to Murphy in a four-hour session that lasted past midnight. A neutral Lebanon, said Nasser, would be acceptable to the U.A.R. as long as it behaved itself. The Jordanian situation was "impossible." and Hussein was just a child. If Israel intervened in Jordan, then Nasser would fight (and he would probably get drubbed by Israel for the third time in ten years).
At one point, Nasser complained about the U.S. military buildup in Lebanon. An account from the Middle East of Murphy's reply: you're a military man, Mr. President. So is President Eisenhower. You should understand that he doesn't want this to be a failure; he would rather have too much strength than too little. After all, the U.S.S.R. threatened to send in troops during the Suez crisis. They might have made the same threat again--but they haven't. Soviet reaction is relatively mild--and that is very interesting.
Nasser, who has increasingly come to depend on Soviet help to bail him out of trouble, got the point.
By the time Murphy had finished sending his findings and recommendations from the Middle East, his fire-fighting job was virtually over. The General Assembly was about to meet at United Nations, N.Y., and the U.S. proposals, based partly on Murphy's field reports, were ready. After landing in New York, Murphy chatted for an hour or so with Secretary Dulles at the Waldorf, dropped by the President's suite to pay his respects that night and again the next morning, flew back to Washington on the Columbine in the afternoon.
From the Washington airport, Murphy went to the White House for a brief stop, then, after his long, hard trip, to his spacious and comfortable home, where he joined his long-ailing wife Mildred (the Murphys have two daughters: Rosemary, an actress now appearing on Broadway in Look Homeward, Angel, and Mildred, a New York Times reporter). Next morning Murphy arose early, went to his State Department office. With Dulles at the U.N. and Under Secretary Christian Herter at the weekly National Security Council meeting Five-Star Diplomat Murphy found himself the ranking officer. He presided over the regular morning conference, went back to his desk and attacked the overnight cables. Bob Murphy was back at the day-to-day storekeeping that, between fire alarms, is the sinew of professional diplomacy.
* Career Ambassador rank, equivalent to Navy Fleet Admiral, General of the Army or Air Force, was signed into law in August 1955. The five-star ambassadors: Robert D. Murphy; Loy Wesley Henderson, 66, Deputy Under Secretary of State (Administration), since retired from the Foreign Service but serving on by presidential appointment; H. Freeman ("Doc") Matthews, 59, onetime Deputy Under Secretary of State (1950-53), now Ambassador to Austria; James Clement Dunn, 67, onetime Ambassador to Italy, France, Brazil, since retired.
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.