A Diplomat on the Podium

Hodding Carter, the new voice of America

To many Americans, the coolest and most visible U.S. official throughout the tense Iranian crisis has been a man few of them had ever heard of: Hodding Carter III, the State Department's chief spokesman. Each day at noon, he has faced an obstreperous crowd of 100 or so reporters in Room 2118 of the department's headquarters, fully aware that a slip on his part could provoke tragedy in Tehran. Nearly every night a portion of his performance is replayed on the network news programs. Precise, articulate and diplomatic for the most part, Carter has nevertheless managed to convey official outrage at the seizure of the U.S. embassy. His undiplomatic term for the Iranian students: gangsters.

Carter, 44, has been Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs ever since Jimmy Carter (no kin) took office and is a favorite among the always skeptical Washington press corps. "He is the best guy I have seen in his job in 20 years," declares Boston Globe Columnist William Beecher.

Reporters admire the way Carter frankly admits it when he either does not know something or simply does not want to answer a question. They also appreciate his guarded guidance when they are on the right track but he cannot officially elaborate. "Read your own work," he may say, or "I don't have any trouble with that." Says Carter's boss, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance: "Hodding performs one of the most difficult tasks in Government with mastery. In Hodding's job the difference between the right word and the almost right word, as Mark Twain once said, is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug."

Carter clearly does not believe that diplomats must be stuffy, or even statesmanlike all the time. When Candidate John Connally accused the President of muzzling critics of his handling of the Iranian crisis, the spokesman replied: "Mr. Connally has never understood the nature of the presidency, and that's why he'll never be elected." When a journalist asked last week about Henry Kissinger's role in bringing the Shah to the U.S., Carter declined to comment on what he called a "sideshow," a devilish reference to William Shawcross's book of that name highly critical of Kissinger. Carter once flung a rubber chicken at one particularly querulous reporter. A gregarious partygoer who loves to sing and dance, Carter last year married Patricia Derian, 50, Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, after divorcing his wife of 21 years.

Carter's father, Hodding Jr., was a distinguished Southern newspaper editor who, despite frequent threats, crusaded courageously against the Huey Long machine in Louisiana and for the civil rights of blacks in Mississippi. After majoring in international affairs at Princeton, young Hodding took over the family's Delta Democrat-Times in Greenville, Miss. He helped organize a biracial Democratic Party in Mississippi and led its successful fight to unseat the all-white regular delegation at the 1968 National Convention. He joined Jimmy Carter's campaign early in 1976 and now jokes: "I was chosen for this job either because I was a small-town editor, I was a brilliant writer, or I worked for Jimmy Carter. Obviously it was because I worked for Jimmy Carter."

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