The Best and the Brightest: Kennedy-Johnson Administrations (Modern Library)

by David Halberstam

Fritz to his friends, who were numerous. A proper man of proper credentials. He had been a college teacher at one time, he came from a good Virginia family, and he had a good war record, Navy of course. He was part of that special group of relatively conservative Democrats from Virginia who play a major role in the foreign service and control much of its apparatus from the inside, who regard the foreign service as a gentleman’s calling, and feel they produce a particularly fine brand of gentleman. He had compiled a very good record, this hard-working, straight, somewhat unquestioning man. He was steady and solid, and he had been sponsored by everyone he had ever worked for. Before coming to Vietnam, he had been at NATO, where he was head of the political section, with rank of minister, thus the first deputy to the NATO ambassador. Vietnam was his first ambassadorial post; he had never been to Asia before, and his ideas of Communism had all been fashioned through his European experience. It was axiomatic that those who knew most about Asian nationalism were not allowed to serve in their chosen area (they were contaminated by their past), and if they had not left the foreign service they had at least switched to another desk. Thus the price of the past was sending Europeanists like Nolting to Asia; the new ambassador, knowing nothing of Asia, soon asked for and received as his deputy chief of mission his prime deputy from NATO, William Trueheart, who had not been to Asia eit...