Family Weekly I January 20, 1963
4
Meet
Llewellyn
Thompson
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y M iv pur
1 r W -
A) V-
Thorn pnon'n diplomatic achievements earned him the Rockefeller Public Service Award for 1962.
Our Expert
on the
Kremlin
Still pale and hesitant of step, United
States Ambassador-at-large Llew
ellyn E. Thompson entered his bright,
paneled office on the seventh floor of the
New State Department Building facing
the Lincoln Memorial.
It was a sunny Oct. 2, the second full day back
on the job for our former ambassador to Moscow
and now presidential advisor on Kremlin affairs.
Six weeks earlier, while golfing during a Colorado
vacation, he had been stricken by a kidney-stone
attack and subsequently underwent surgery. He
was ordered to maintain an "easy schedule."
Maryann Collison, his secretary, had such a
routine charted. Ready were decoded overnight
cables from U. S. embassies reporting on Soviet
political moves throughout the world. Paramount
were two pressure points: Berlin and Cuba. In
the latter case, Soviet diplomats were going out
of their way to deny that offensive missiles were
being supplied to Castro.
With characteristic deliberateness, Thompson
alternately puffed a cigarette, studied the cables,
and moved them from one neat pile to another.
Next on his agenda would be briefings from non
diplomatic sources, then a series of evaluation
meetings with other State Department experts.
But the routine day was short-lived. From the
office of Secretary of State Dean Rusk came a
cryptic message a top-level conference had been
called for 11:45 and, Thompson was told, "the
President urgently requests your presence."
The Cuban crisis had erupted. U-2 aerial photo
graphs had confirmed a build-up in offensive
weapons on the island, and President Kennedy
had set up a special nine-man executive committee
which would decide on life-and-death counter
measures. Llewellyn Thompson's role would be to
judge how the Kremlin would react; he would
appraise the subsequent threats, guile, promises.
For the next weeks, Thompson's "easy schedule"
would consist of 18-hour days divided between
stark meeting rooms at the State Department
and the Oval Room in the White House.
For career diplomat Thompson, such a regimen
came as no innovation. As chief negotiator for
the Austrian peace treaty, he once lost 17 pounds
in 11 days of hard bargaining with the Russians.
Duty at posts ranging from a stuffy little office in
Ceylon to the imposing Spaso House, our am
bassador's residence in Moscow, has given him
an ulcer which, he says, gets little rest "between
bland sandwiches taken at my desk at lunch and
rich foods at evening diplomatic dinners."
In pin-stripe dress, deferential poise, and pre
cise speech, Thompson fits the public image of a
Tamil Wtrfcly. January TO. IN)