David Bruce and Diplomatic Practice: An American Ambassador in London, 1961–9 9781441112019, 9781501302138, 9781441154194

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David Bruce and Diplomatic Practice

About the Series Key Studies in Diplomacy is an innovative series of books on the procedures and processes of diplomacy, focusing on the interaction between states through their accredited representatives, that is, diplomats. Thus, its volumes focus on factors affecting foreign policy, and the ways in which it is implemented, through the apparatus of diplomacy – the diplomatic system – in both bilateral and multilateral contexts. But they also examine how diplomats are sometimes able to shape not just the presentation but also the substance of their states’ foreign policies. Given that the diplomatic system is worldwide, all the series’ volumes, whatever their individual focuses, contribute to an understanding of the nature of diplomacy. They do so authoritatively – in that they are written by scholars specializing in diplomacy and by former diplomats – and comprehensibly. They emphasize the actual practice of diplomacy, and analyse that practice in a clear and accessible manner, hence making them essential primary reading for both beginning practitioners and advanced-level university students. Series Editors J. Simon Rofe and Giles Scott-Smith Lorna Lloyd (Editor Emeritus) Other Titles in the Series 21st Century Diplomacy by Kishan S. Rana Embassies in Armed Conflict by G. R. Berridge

David Bruce and Diplomatic Practice An American Ambassador in London, 1961–9 John W. Young

N E W YOR K • LON DON • N E W DE L H I • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc 1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

www.bloomsbury.com Bloomsbury is a registered trade mark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2014 © John W. Young, 2014 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Young, John W., 1957David Bruce and diplomatic practice : an American ambassador in London, 1961-9 / by John W. Young. pages cm – (Key studies in diplomacy) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4411-1201-9 (hardback) 1. Bruce, David K. E., 1898-1977. 2. Diplomatic and consular service– United States. 3. Diplomacy–History–20th century. 4. United States–Foreign relations–Great Britain. 5. Great Britain–Foreign relations–United States. 6. Ambassadors–United States–Biography. I. Title. E748.B853Y68 2014 341.3´3092 – dc23 [B] 2013049570 ISBN: HB: 978-1-4411-1201-9 ePub: 978-1-4411-5793-5 ePDF: 978-1-4411-5419-4 Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd.

To my good friends Geoffrey Berridge Nicholas Cull Michael Dockrill Michael Hopkins

Contents List of Abbreviations Acknowledgements 1 Introduction 2 The Embassy and the Residence 3 Communicating with Washington 4 Engaging British Government and Society 5 The London Embassy in Anglo-American Relations 6 The Diplomatic Corps 7 Elements of Embassy Work: Consular Affairs, Intelligence, Defence and Culture 8 Threats to the Embassy? The Media, Summits and Special Missions 9 Conclusion Appendix 1 US Embassy and Consulate Staff in the UK, 1961 Appendix 2 Selected Ambassador’s Statistics, for Full Years, 1962–8 Select Bibliography Index

viii ix 1 17 43 67 93 119 141 167 191 207 209 211 217

List of Abbreviations BDOHP CFUK CIA CRO DBD EEC FAOHC FCO FO FRUS JFKL LBJL MI5 MI6 MLF NARA NATO NSF SEATO TNA US

British Diplomatic Oral History Project Country File, United Kingdom Central Intelligence Agency Commonwealth Relations Office David Bruce Diary European Economic Community Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection Foreign and Commonwealth Office Foreign Office Foreign Relations of the United States John F. Kennedy Library Lyndon B. Johnson Library British Counter-Intelligence and Counter-Subversion Service British Secret Intelligence Service Multilateral Force National Archives and Record Administration North Atlantic Treaty Organisation National Security File (Kennedy and Johnson Libraries) Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation The National Archives United States

Acknowledgements There are many people without whom this book could not have come to fruition. Among academic colleagues, I benefited from conversations with Richard Aldrich, Nick Cull (who made helpful comments on Chapters 7 and 8), Mike Dockrill, Keith Hamilton, Andrew Holt, Matthew Jones, John Kent, Spencer Mawby, Jan Melissen, Effie Pedaliu, Raj Roy (with whom I co-edited a selection from Bruce’s London diaries), Paul Sharp, Donald Watt, Rimko van der Maar (who provided quotes from the papers of the Dutch diplomat Herman van Riojen) and, most frequently, with Geoffrey Berridge, who also commented on the final text. Another good friend, Michael Hopkins, of the University of Liverpool, helped to research materials in Washington, while one of my PhD students, Roberto Fornasier, shared findings from the Lyndon Johnson Library. I am deeply grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council of Great Britain, which funded the semester of study leave that allowed me to write up the book, to the University of Nottingham, which provided both a semester of study leave and financial support to photocopy Bruce’s London diary, and to the following archives who provided source materials: The National Archives at Kew; Churchill College Archive Centre; the US National Archives and Record Administration; the John F. Kennedy Library; the Lyndon Johnson Library; and the Virginia Historical Society (where Nelson Lankford provided help and encouragement). Among those with whom I had helpful conversations and correspondence about Bruce, I would especially like to thank Professor David Adams and Charles DraceFrancis. Lorna Lloyd and the staff of Bloomsbury were an exceptional publishing team from their initial interest in the project to its eventual publication. Finally, I am deeply grateful to my wife, Helen, my children – Julie, Linda, David, Frazer and Jacob – and grandchildren – Anya, Rufus, Trudie and Eben – for their love and support.

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Introduction Towards midday on Friday, 17 March 1961, surrounded by a fascinated crowd, David Bruce mounted one of three horse-drawn carriages and began the 15-minute drive from the American ambassadorial residence in Regent’s Park to Buckingham Palace. Eight senior embassy staff followed in the other carriages. The coachmen and the footmen who stood on the back of each coach wore silk top hats and scarlet coats. Although the United States has no official diplomatic uniform, Bruce, following London protocol, wore full evening dress including a top hat. The Marshall of the Diplomatic Corps, Sir Guy Salisbury-Jones, accompanied him and on arrival led him to the Throne Room where Queen Elizabeth II, attended by the Permanent UnderSecretary (PUS) of the Foreign Office, Frederick Hoyer-Millar, received him. Bruce made three bows, shook hands and handed over his Letters of Credence and his predecessor’s Letter of Recall before having ‘a chat’ with Her Majesty. Despite British etiquette being quite formal in other respects, the audience did not include any of the set-piece speeches that were traditional in many other capitals. The other senior embassy staff were then presented to the Queen, as finally was Bruce’s wife Evangeline, who, under local protocol, had travelled by embassy car. Twenty minutes after his arrival, Bruce was on his more leisurely journey back to the Residence, where there was ‘champagne for everyone, including the attendants, and sugar for the horses’.1 In some countries, Bruce would not have been able to conduct official business until he had presented his credentials.2 The British were rather less strict: the new ambassador, who had flown into Heathrow airport nine days earlier, had already visited the Foreign Office (FO) and met the Foreign Secretary, Lord Home. But the ceremony at Buckingham Palace was an important rite of passage. As Richard Rush, one of Bruce’s predecessors, nicely put it, the presentation of credentials ‘established me in full official standing’.3 This study of Bruce’s term as Ambassador to the United Kingdom – the longest period served by a US envoy to London – combines historical research with questions raised by diplomatic studies, to investigate the relevance of resident ambassadors to twentieth century diplomacy. In contrast to many other studies of embassies which concentrate on bilateral political relations, crisis management and international security, its focus is on the ambassador’s day-to-day work as a diplomat. To this end it has little to say on such problems

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as the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War or Britain’s application to enter the European Economic Community (EEC). Instead, it investigates such themes as the promotion of friendly relations, political reporting and policy advice to Washington, Bruce’s involvement with embassy activity in such fields as intelligence work, media management and consular relations and his engagement with fellow ambassadors through the diplomatic corps. In doing so, the book addresses the claim that the resident embassy was a ‘dying’ institution in the later twentieth century. It is intended that such an in-depth analysis of the Ambassador as diplomatic actor will illuminate a little-studied aspect of international history and provide a foundation for comparative studies with other embassies, at different times and locations. The ambassadorship of David Bruce in London lends itself perfectly to a detailed study not only because it was of substantial duration, lasting eight years (more than twice as long as the average US posting4), but also because it is so well documented. The inner workings of the British and American governments, and the reasoning behind their foreign policy decisions, are illuminated by abundant documents in the US and British National Archives as well as the presidential libraries of John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.5 There are also a number of interviews with embassy staff (thanks principally to the American ‘Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection’), some informative memoirs (notably Journeying Far and Wide, by one of Bruce’s Deputy Chiefs of Mission, Philip Kaiser) and, most important, a detailed diary by the Ambassador himself. Frequently running to several typed pages a day, this allows particular insight into his routine, the only substantial break being between 14 February and 31 March 1967, in the wake of his eldest daughter’s death. The diary is not without its problems. It is elusive on some areas (like intelligence), spends considerable time on minutiae (such as what Bruce ate and drank) and is generally bland in commenting on particular individuals. The newspaper chairman Cecil King once noted, after a meeting, that ‘Bruce expressed contempt for [Foreign Secretary] Gordon Walker, and said he could not make out what [the Permanent Under-Secretary] Gore-Booth did’,6 but such sentiments are not echoed in the diary. Nevertheless, in terms of detail and the length of time covered, it may be unique as a primary source on the inner workings of a late twentieth-century embassy – and please note that, to avoid overloading the endnotes with references to it, I have often simply put precise dates in the text, the inference being that evidence is found for that date in the diary. There is an abundance of general studies of the so-called ‘special relationship’.7 However, these tend to eschew an in-depth look at the daily work of embassies and, while several excellent historical studies exist of particular ambassadorships, with few exceptions their focus is usually on the bilateral

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issues – strategic, political and economic – that faced a particular envoy in dealing with another state.8 Bruce’s London embassy has already attracted academic attention on similar lines, not least in the full-life biography by Nelson Lankford, but again these works say little on his daily routine or such subjects as the diplomatic corps and engagement with the media.9 There are some memoirs and diaries by earlier US Ambassadors to London10 and some by Bruce’s contemporaries who were posted elsewhere,11 which allow comparisons to be drawn with Bruce’s experience. However, memoirs and diaries are a radically different exercise to a research monograph and do not address such issues as the ‘death of the embassy’ in any depth. A number of excellent archive-based works already exist on Anglo-American political questions in the 1960s. These include studies of the relationship between Presidents and Prime Ministers12 or of contemporary crises and conflicts, like the Congo, Cuba, the US War in Vietnam and Britain’s ‘confrontation’ with Indonesia.13 There are also substantial works on EEC enlargement,14 French withdrawal from NATO15 and Britain’s retreat from its world role.16 However, these mention Bruce only insofar as he impacted on particular policy decisions. This study hopes to build on all the above works by exploring the Ambassador’s daily life in unprecedented detail. In the ancient and medieval worlds messages between political leaders were generally conveyed by heralds or one-off, special missions. This ad hoc system was usually insecure, slow and incapable of building up any deep, long-term understanding between governments. The resident embassy emerged properly only in fifteenth-century Italy, spreading from there to the rest of Europe. In the nineteenth century, meetings of heads of government (what Churchill, in 1950, dubbed ‘summits’) and multilateral meetings (like the 1878 Congress of Berlin) existed as alternative diplomatic institutions, and other developments threatened to sideline ambassadors. The growth of the press meant that a previously important role for the Embassy, that of gathering news from another country, was called into question, while the invention of wireless telegraphy undermined the independence even of the most far-flung post. In 1904, one senior British diplomat complained, ‘In Downing Street one can at least pull the wires whereas an Ambassador is only a d[amne]d marionette’.17 Nonetheless, permanent ambassadors were still the central element in diplomatic exchanges as Europe went to war in 1914. The July Crisis, however, followed as it was by massive bloodshed led to a questioning of the prevailing diplomatic methods. Heads of state and government, who now recognized that international issues are too important to leave to ambassadors and foreign ministries, met together more frequently and the League of Nations was created in 1919 as a radically new kind of

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international organization designed to preserve peace. Technology, too, continued to work against ambassadorial initiative helping presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers communicate directly with one another. Thanks to air travel they could soon meet quite quickly; thanks to the telephone they could talk to each other across oceans. Radio, and later television, meant that news of global events could spread almost instantly and, as states came to terms with the close connections between them all, the number of multilateral organizations grew, including powerful institutions like the United Nations, the EC and the NATO. Embassies even became in some respects a liability, presenting an obvious target for opponents. In the mid-1960s America’s London embassy was frequently the scene of demonstrations by anti-nuclear and anti-Vietnam War protesters.18 Unsurprisingly, questions were raised at this time about the value of the resident embassy. George Ball, US Under-Secretary of State during 1961–6, asserted that ‘jet planes and telephones … largely restricted ambassadors to ritual and public relations’.19 Yet, paradoxically, there were strong currents working together for the Embassy’s longevity. The breakup of old imperial states like Austria-Hungary and Tsarist Russia had created a larger number of independent European states and after 1945, with the retreat of the European empires, even more states emerged in Asia and Africa. All of these created embassies of their own (though some could not afford many) and wealthy powers like the US and Britain expanded their own system of embassies so as to be represented in the new members of the international community. In 1945, America had 54 diplomatic missions; by 1960 there were 86 and, by 1970, 125.20 Since embassies represent their state’s sovereignty in the world, national pride and identity were invested in their creation. In 1961, the legal standing of the Embassy was reinforced by the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Article 3 set out their functions as follows: to represent one state in another state; to protect ‘in the receiving State the interests of the sending State and of its nationals’; to negotiate agreements; to report on ‘conditions and developments’ in the receiving State; and to promote ‘friendly relations’.21 In contrast to George Ball’s view, academic studies have suggested that the resident embassy retained a key role in interstate relations in the late twentieth century. Its functional purpose was illustrated by the various sections into which it was subdivided, dealing with trade, public information, military co-operation, intelligence liaison or aid programmes. In this sense the Embassy became a ‘platform’ for operations by specialist staff, many of whom were not even career diplomats. G. R. Berridge has argued that the Embassy flourished because it was a flexible institution able to adapt to new roles

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and challenges. Thus, while some of its functions like news reporting may have declined over time, others – such as co-operation against international terrorism, managing aid programmes or providing consular services to tourists – became more significant.22 Thanks to a deepening interest in diplomatic practice in recent years various essays exist on ambassadors,23 including a collection on US envoys to London, and some shorter essays on incumbents of Grosvenor Square.24 These suggest it is appropriate to take a fuller, in-depth look at one example of an envoy and ask just what exactly twentieth-century ambassadors did to be worth employing. To shed light further on Bruce’s work there are handbooks on the diplomatic career, some of which discuss the day-to-day work in an embassy.25 With a different perspective, studies of US policy-making that focus on the national security machinery help to reveal how the London embassy fitted into a larger machine.26 Furthermore, this was a period when the American government and other institutions looked repeatedly at the work of the State Department and the Foreign Service. These inquiries raised questions about such issues as the structure of embassies and their role in the policy machine. Bruce took part in one of the investigations himself, appearing in 1963 before Senator ‘Scoop’ Jackson’s Senate Subcommittee on National Security Staffing and Operations, the major findings of which were turned into a book.27 A key issue in the current work will be whether an ambassador could retain a significant role in trans-Atlantic relations or whether he had indeed been reduced to a marionette, closely controlled by Washington. Another is whether the Embassy was a flexible institution fulfilling a number of roles for the United States in the United Kingdom, as Berridge believes, or whether it was indeed becoming anachronistic. It will engage with other more specific issues in the literature, such as the role of the Embassy in public diplomacy, intelligence work and consular affairs. However, it hopes, too, to draw out points that are not covered much in the literature such as the role of the ambassadorial residence,28 the value of socializing to an envoy’s work and how well communications with home were maintained. It will also address some of the questions specifically raised about the efficiency of Bruce’s embassy. Richard Neustadt, for example, after studying the Suez and Skybolt problems, concluded that Anglo-American differences were partly due to misperceptions, differing expectations and poor communication. Neustadt believed that the departmental structure of the London embassy, with its tendency to react to instructions from Washington rather than taking the initiative to discover British motives, had a role in such misunderstandings.29

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David Bruce Before taking up his post in London, Bruce was a well-established part of the US foreign policy hierarchy. Born in 1898 into a wealthy Virginia family, the son of a US Senator, he had a diverse career before the Second World War. A soldier in France in 1918, he had later worked as a journalist, lawyer, an investment banker (on Wall Street), an author (of one, ill-received book) and manager of an art collection. Privileged, cultured but dilettantish, he served briefly as a Democratic member of the Maryland House of Delegates, equally briefly as a diplomat, actually a Vice-Consul, in mid-twenties Rome. However, with the coming of the Second World War his life gained more focus and, though he could never be described as ambitious, success came easily to him. He was in London during the Blitz of 1940, heading an American Red Cross mission, and was back again in 1942 to head the London branch of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency. After the war, in addition to ten months as Under-Secretary of State in 1952–3, he held four key diplomatic posts in Western Europe. He was Paris-based Chief of the European Cooperation Administration, supervising the Marshall Aid Programme, in 1948–9, before serving as Ambassador to France, during 1949–53. Then, under the Republican administration of Dwight Eisenhower, Bruce was US representative to the European Coal– Steel Community and at the abortive talks about a European Defence Community, in 1953–4, before being recalled to duty as Ambassador to West Germany during 1957–60. His experience made him a strong supporter of European integration and close ally of its chief architect, Jean Monnet, whom he continued to meet regularly whilst in London.30 It has been said, applying the ideas of the sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, that diplomacy is ‘a field of practice with power relationships based upon capital – accumulated assets (tangible and intangible) which, when appropriated on a private … basis by agents … enable them to appropriate social energy’. Also, effective diplomatic ‘interaction is only possible between participants who understand the rules … This then leads to a mindset relative to diplomacy’. In the case of an individual ambassador, the forms of ‘capital’ ideally included diplomatic status, wealth, a high level of education and good social connections, as well as the symbolic capital provided by an ambassadorial title. When added together, Bruce’s background of wealth, education and social contacts allowed him to score highly in terms of such ‘capital’, providing him with high status in the social order, while his understanding of the rules of diplomacy had been built up over many years. With such assets he could hardly have arrived in London with better prospects for success on the diplomatic circuit.31 Indeed, according to his diary Bruce was virtually

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able to select the post of Ambassador to London for himself, being told by the President-elect, John F. Kennedy, that he could have any embassy he wanted.32 Bruce’s fit for the London post was so good that he had first been considered for it back in 1947.33 By inauguration day British visitors to Washington were aware that Bruce was indeed earmarked for London.34 Given his vast experience in the military, intelligence, cultural and financial fields, as well as his previous ambassadorial posts, no one could complain about this somewhat cavalier process. His eminence was such that Bruce’s name was suggested as Secretary of State.35 He was certainly well connected with key figures among Kennedy’s policy-makers. Averell Harriman, a former Ambassador to London who was employed on numerous difficult diplomatic missions in the 1960s, was something of a mentor for Bruce (who had been board partner of Harriman’s legal firm back in the 1920s).36 Ball, the Under-Secretary, had found Bruce ‘a major source of strength’ in the early 1950s, when they both worked for closer European integration.37 More important perhaps, Bruce was an old colleague of the Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, who served throughout the Kennedy and Johnson presidencies. While they came from very different social backgrounds, Bruce and Rusk were both strong anglophiles, they had served together during the Truman administration and they had a mutual admiration: Bruce considered Rusk ‘fair, forceful, knowledgeable’; Rusk considered Bruce a possible Secretary of State.38 By 1961, partly thanks to his wartime service in the capital, Bruce was also very familiar with the United Kingdom. His numerous acquaintances included the James Bond novelist Ian Fleming, another former intelligence officer. Furthermore, Bruce’s first marriage was to the wealthy but depressive Ailsa Mellon, whose mother was British and whose father, Andrew (the third richest man in America), served in 1932–3 as Ambassador to London. This first marriage failed but Bruce’s second wife, Evangeline Bell, who he married at the end of the war, having met her while she was working in the OSS office, was also half-British and had been born in London while her father, an American diplomat, was serving there. After his death Evangeline’s mother had married a British diplomat, while one of her grandfathers, Sir Robert Conyers Surtees, had been a Conservative MP.39 In contrast to Ailsa, Evangeline was cosmopolitan and outgoing, with wide social connections of her own and an enthusiasm for entertaining, all of which made her the ideal partner for an ambassador to one of America’s principal allies. When she died in 1995, one obituary described her as ‘intelligent, beautiful, mysterious … impossibly perfect as an ambassadress … ’.40 She helped make Winfield House into a centre of London social life.

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Once his appointment was announced, it was welcomed in both America, where he easily secured Senate approval, and Great Britain. The British Ambassador to Washington, Harold Caccia, felt able to dispense with the usual biographical details when reporting the fact to London, because Bruce and his wife were so well known: … it should be of great advantage to us to have in London a person of his standing and competence. What is more, Kennedy and Rusk will be inclined to give his advice great weight. This will not be because he is a close personal friend of the President … It is rather that the President is inclined to listen to those he has been led to expect should be worth hearing … Apart from the conduct of business, he and Evangeline should be a great addition to London … Looking ahead for trouble, I can only see that David Bruce might in time be thought in Washington to have become too ready to accept our views.

However, ‘as an old hand’, Caccia expected Bruce to avoid this danger. The FO endorsed Caccia’s judgement, with Hoyer-Millar telling him ‘We are, of course, all very pleased about Bruce’s appointment and feel that he should do very well here and that we should indeed consider ourselves lucky that the choice should have fallen on him’.41 Not only was Bruce ‘very well disposed to this country’, he was ‘an exceedingly shrewd and intelligent diplomat and very pleasant company as well’.42 Partly because they were forewarned of the appointment and despite the Queen’s absence from the country on a foreign visit, the British pushed through their approval in the unusually prompt time of four days.43 True, there was some concern over Bruce’s enthusiasm for European integration but one official argued that, far from being an embarrassment, ‘having him in London would give us a better chance of explaining our position to him … ’.44 Bruce had a positive, but unemotional view of the relationship with Britain, agreeing with premier Harold Wilson and a former British Ambassador to Washington, Oliver Franks, at a meeting on 6 February 1964 that ‘The relationship is a natural, rather than a special one, and is likely to continue despite differences of opinion and changes in government in both countries’. In May 1967 he wrote, on similar lines, that the ‘special relationship is now little more than sentimental terminology’, but he added that ‘the underground waters of it will flow with a deep current’.45 He soon found work in London was, ‘except for free weekends, fairly constant’ but despite his restless shift of careers in the inter-war years, he settled into diplomatic life and soon developed a regular routine to cope with his new post. Waking around 7.30 a.m. or 8.00 a.m., he would read a range

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of US and British newspapers before breakfast (first checking the weather forecast in the Daily Telegraph, even though he often found it inaccurate), saving The Times for reading as he was chauffeured to the Embassy. Alongside Evangeline he would also deal with the morning mail before setting off for Grosvenor Square, where he would arrive before 10.00 a.m. He felt himself ‘lucky’ if he got away from work by 7.00 p.m. and even then would frequently have some evening social event to attend. Even if he did not, he would sit up until between midnight and 2.00 a.m., reading.46 As early as October 1961 Bruce was asked by Dean Rusk, on behalf of the President, to consider returning to Washington to become Under-Secretary of State, but he refused arguing he was temperamentally unsuited to the post, of which he already had experience.47 There was talk after the 1964 presidential election of Bruce leaving London and he privately commented, ‘I really should leave Government work, giving way to younger people’.48 President Johnson, however, never did get round to removing him and he eventually survived until Richard Nixon entered the White House and replaced him with an equally wealthy Republican, Walter Annenberg, someone completely unfamiliar with diplomacy. By his own admission Bruce, a dashing beau in the 1920s, had to be accounted old-fashioned in the Swinging London of the mid-1960s, not least in his attire: ‘my dressing gown came from Chavet in Paris, 1939, my pyjamas from Venice 1952, my suit from New York 1938, shoes from London 1933 … ’. He continued to indulge his expensive tastes, getting his hair cut at Claridges – one of the most select (and expensive) hotels in the British capital, but a short distance from the Embassy.49 A wine lover and gourmet, raised to feel at ease in high society, Bruce also threw himself into the business of entertainment. He was not the only ambassador in the city to be born into privileged circles. On one occasion, when the new Brazilian ambassador called on him, they suddenly realized they had been at private school together in Baltimore, fifty years before.50 The high living gradually demanded its price in terms of ill health. Bruce himself worried about his sedentary lifestyle, noting in October 1962, ‘I have not walked a step, except to get in and out of a car, or to go up and down stairs, for the last 72 hours’. But he refused to give up smoking and some asides in his diary suggest a rather odd view of diet and medical matters.51 Regarding a lunch on 6 June 1963 he noted that ‘Abstaining from sugar, I had a delicious cherry tart … ’, while on 17 December 1966, when told of heart attacks suffered by two gamekeepers, he commented ‘no wonder, in view of their incessant walking’. On 30–31 May 1963, while in Paris, he had pains down his right side and experienced recurring fever for weeks. Worse, a cardiogram of 15 November 1966 showed a heart irregularity and he had to take a complete rest over Christmas, at

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which point he finally diagnosed his own problem: ‘leading such a sedentary life as I ordinarily do, with little exercise or fresh air, over-drinking, eating and smoking, one’s health is bound to suffer … ’.52 In his last few years in London, his foreign travel and calls on fellow ambassadors were cut back markedly. Even in 1965, Paul Gore-Booth, the new PUS at the FO, noted that Bruce ‘does not quite get around as universally as he might, no doubt because he does not get any younger’.53

The special relationship Bruce’s mission unfolded against the background of Britain’s declining role in world affairs, with chronic economic problems, withdrawal from military bases ‘East of Suez’ and a growing desire to enter the EEC. These had a major impact on Anglo-American relations as did particular crises and conflicts, not least the Vietnam War, where President Johnson was disappointed at Britain’s refusal to become involved at America’s side. Together they helped create Bruce’s major challenge as ambassador: the need to maintain a healthy bilateral relationship despite Britain’s depreciating value as an ally. The importance of the US alliance to the British cannot be doubted. A 1964 Foreign Office memorandum called it ‘the most important single factor in our foreign policy’.54 Both Lord Harlech, in his last annual review as Ambassador to Washington, and Patrick Dean, in his first, told London that Americans would judge the value of Britain’s friendship by its ability to solve its economic problems and contribute to Western stability.55 And there is evidence that the quality of the relationship was maintained in American eyes. A 1967 State Department paper argued that, ‘At no time in the post-war period have our relations with the United Kingdom been closer and more co-operative than since Labour took office in October 1964’, with disagreements ‘confined to tactics rather than broad policy objectives’.56 In 1968, the Department still felt that, ‘perhaps the best evidence that [the special relationship] is still alive is the fact that its detractors feel obliged to re-announce its death every few months’.57 The Embassy’s ‘Annual Assessment on Britain’, of June 1968, pointed out that despite the devaluation of the Pound and the recent decision to quit bases in Malaysia-Singapore and the Persian Gulf, ‘it would be a mistake to … write off the UK as a US ally … Even in her reduced circumstances, Britain remains the European power most engaged in world affairs’.58 But, equally, Britain’s declining significance in the world, relative to other powers like France, West Germany and Japan, seems undeniable. Britain’s economic problems were a particular concern to Bruce. When he arrived in London, the Conservative government of Harold Macmillan

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(1957–63) seemed locked into a ‘stop-go’ economics cycle. Attempts to boost domestic demand through tax cuts led to increased imports rather than a growth in British output; this drove the balance of payments into deficit and the treasury back into deflationary policies. Bruce shared Washington’s view that the country was living beyond its means, that it should reduce its social expenditure and enter the EEC founded in 1957, which was fast proving an economic success right on Britain’s doorstep. But, while Macmillan applied for Community membership in 1961 the attempt was vetoed in January 1963 by the French President. Charles de Gaulle claimed that Britain was too close an ally of Washington, pointing out that Macmillan had just struck a deal with Kennedy to buy Polaris missiles in order to launch Britain’s strategic nuclear deterrent. The very need to purchase American missiles raised questions about Britain’s ability to act independently as a major power. The resignation of Macmillan in October, swiftly followed by Kennedy’s assassination, proved a further blow to British hopes of retaining a leading role in world affairs. Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, was far less convinced of Britain’s value and got on poorly with occupants of Downing Street. In 1963–4, the Conservatives clung to office under Alec Douglas-Home but in October 1964 he narrowly lost power to Harold Wilson’s Labour Party, whose commitment to social spending was unwelcome to Bruce. Labour quickly rejected a devaluation of the Pound as a way to heal the country’s economic ills and looked to Washington to help sustain the currency. Soon the Americans had to construct a $3 billion support package for the Pound. Wilson secured a healthier parliamentary majority in the March 1966 general election, helped in part by his careful management of the 1965 Rhodesia crisis, when the British colony unilaterally declared independence under a white supremacist regime. But the triumph proved short-lasting. A few months later a seamen’s strike led to further balance of trade problems and forced the government into a swingeing austerity package. The tenuous recovery that followed was accompanied by a second try at entering the EEC but in November 1967 even American help was not enough to prevent a devaluation of the Pound. De Gaulle used the humiliating display of British weakness to issue a second veto. More worrying from an American perspective was that persistent economic crises led Labour to question Britain’s world role. When Wilson came into office in 1964 defence accounted for around 7 per cent of government spending, yet both the US government and key British ministers, including Wilson, believed in retaining military bases in Singapore, Aden and the Persian Gulf – the so-called ‘East of Suez’ position. For the Americans, the Vietnam War, to which Johnson committed forces in 1965, made it even more vital that Britain should continue to protect Western interests

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wherever possible; for Wilson, Britain’s claim to greatness rested on its world role. But once again economic problems took their toll. Already, under the Conservatives there had been a reduction in British forces in Germany. A similar rundown of forces in Southeast Asia was only prevented by the fact that former British colonies in Malaysia were threatened with attack by neighbouring Indonesia. But in 1965–6 the situation with Indonesia eased and in April 1967 London suddenly revealed – in a step that Bruce’s embassy failed to predict – that it wanted to withdraw from ‘East of Suez’ over the next decade. US pleas to defer the announcement were rejected. Furthermore in January 1968, following the devaluation, the pace of withdrawal was accelerated, so that British forces would be withdrawn by the end of 1971 regardless of what happened in Vietnam. The British were left with a muchreduced overseas expenditure, but also a much-reduced standing in the eyes of the United States. Yet, as Bruce left London in March 1969, they were still close partners in nuclear, defence and intelligence gathering, ideologically united in the Cold War. One argument of this study will be that personal relations fostered by the Ambassador remained excellent. Before focusing on his dealings with the British, however, this study will first look at the management of his Embassy and then at his relations with the government in Washington.

Notes  1 Virginia Historical Society, David Bruce Diary (DBD), 17 March 1961; Lord Gore-Booth (ed.), Satow’s Guide to Diplomatic Practice. 5th ed. (London: Longman, 1979), 96–102, and see 55–8 on letters of credence and recall.  2 In Congo-Zaire for example: Nicholas Bayne, Economic Diplomat (Durham, NC: The Memoir Club, 2010), 119.  3 Richard Rush, A Residence at the Court of London (London: Century, 1987), 48.  4 Elmer Plischke, United States Diplomats and Their Missions (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1975), 54, shows the average US ambassadorship in Europe lasted 3.36 years.  5 Embassy files in the series RG84 (Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State) are usually only open down to 1962. A few boxes open after this are patchy in coverage, often including materials found in the Central Records series, RG59.  6 Cecil King, The Cecil King Diary, 1965–70 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1972), 33–4.  7 Examples include: David Dimbleby and David Reynolds, An Ocean Apart (London: BBC Books, 1988); Alan Dobson, Anglo-American Relations in the Twentieth Century (London: Routledge, 1995); John Dumbrell, A Special Relationship (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2001).

Introduction

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 8 Examples relevant to Anglo-American relations, which do pay attention to embassy structures, are Michael Hopkins, Oliver Franks and the Truman Administration: Anglo-American relations, 1948–52 (London: Cass, 2003) and Richard Wevill, Britain and America after World War II: Bilateral Relations and the Beginning of the Cold War (London: Tauris, 2012).  9 Nelson Lankford, The Last American Aristocrat: The Biography of David K. E. Bruce (Boston: Little, Brown, 1995), in which see 216–21 on facets of diplomatic duty in Paris, including relations with the press and the diplomatic corps. Also, Jonathan Colman, ‘The London Ambassadorship of David K. E. Bruce during the Wilson-Johnson years, 1964–8’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, Vol. 15 (2004), 327–52; John W. Young, ‘David Bruce, 1961–9’, in Alison R. Holmes and Simon Rofe (eds), The Embassy in Grosvenor Square: American Ambassadors to the United Kingdom, 1938–2008 (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2012). 10 Rush, Residence; Julia Davis and Dolores Fleming (eds), The Ambassadorial Diary of John W. Davis (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 1993). 11 J. K. Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1969); Chester Bowles’, Promises to Keep: My Years in Public Life, 1941–69 (New York: Harper and Row, 1969) includes several chapters on his ambassadorship to India; George McGhee, At the Creation of a New Germany: From Adenauer to Brandt, an Ambassador’s Account (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989). 12 See especially Nigel Ashton, Kennedy Macmillan and the Cold War (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002); and Jonathan Colman, A Special Relationship? Harold Wilson, Lyndon Johnson and Anglo-American Relations (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004). 13 Key works include: John Kent, America, the UN and Decolonisation: Cold War Conflict in the Congo (London: Routledge, 2010); Len Scott, Macmillan, Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999); Sylvia Ellis, Britain, America and the Vietnam War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004); Matthew Jones, Conflict and Confrontation in Southeast Asia, 1961–5 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 14 N. Piers Ludlow, Dealing with Britain: The Six and the First UK Application to the EEC (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Helen Parr, Britain’s Policy Towards the European Community, 1964–7 (London: Routledge, 2006); Melissa Pine, Harold Wilson and Europe (London: I. B. Tauris, 2008). 15 Thomas Schwartz, Lyndon Johnson and Europe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003); Andrew Priest, Kennedy, Johnson and NATO: Britain, America and the Dynamics of Alliance, 1962–8 (London: Routledge, 2006); James Ellison, The United States, Britain and the Trans-Atlantic Crisis, 1963–8 (Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2007). 16 Jeffrey Pickering, Britain’s Withdrawal from East of Suez (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998); Saki Dockrill, Britain’s Retreat from East of Suez

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(Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2002); P. L. Pham, Ending East of Suez: The British Decision to Withdraw from Malaysia and Singapore (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 17 Lord Bertie in a letter of 1904 quoted in Peter Neville, ‘Nevile Henderson and Basil Newton’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, Vol. 10, No. 2–3 (1999), 271. 18 On the history of diplomacy, see: Keith Hamilton and Richard Langhorne, The Practice of Diplomacy: Its Evolution, Theory and Administration. 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2010); Jonathan Wright, The Ambassadors: From Ancient Greece to the Nation State (London: Harper, 2006); Jeremy Black, A History of Diplomacy (London: Reaktion Books, 2010). 19 George Ball, The Past has Another Pattern (New York: Norton, 1982), 452. 20 Plischke, Diplomats, 92. 21 http://untreaty.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/9_1_1961. pdf [accessed 18 March 2011]. 22 G. R. Berridge, Diplomacy: Theory and Practice. 4th ed. (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2010), chapter 7. See also his British Diplomacy in Turkey: A Study in the Evolution of the Resident Embassy (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2009), chapters 9–10; Robert Wolfe, ‘Still Lying Abroad? On the Institution of the Resident Ambassador’, Diplomatic Studies Programme, Discussion Paper 33 (University of Leicester: Centre for the Study of Diplomacy, 1998). 23 Michael Hopkins, Saul Kelly and John W. Young (eds), The Washington Embassy: British Ambassadors to the United States, 1939–77 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009). 24 Alison Holmes and Simon Rofe (eds), The Embassy in Grosvenor Square; American Ambassadors to the United Kingdom, 1983–2008 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2012); and see Jonathan Colman, ‘Portrait of an Institution: The US Embassy in London, 1945–53’, Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Vol. 4 (2009), 339–60. There is also an older study, full of fascinating information: Beckles Willson, America’s Ambassadors to England, 1785–928 (London: John Murray, 1928). 25 Charles Thayer, Diplomat (New York: Harper, 1959); Charles Roetter, The Diplomatic Art (Philadelphia, PA: Macrae Smith, 1963); Wendell Blancké, The Foreign Service of the United States (New York: Praeger, 1969); John Ensor Harr, The Professional Diplomat (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969). 26 Kenneth Weisbrode, The Atlantic Century (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2009), looks at the State Department’s Bureau of European Affairs. Morton Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1974) places embassies in the broader policy-making context. 27 Senate, Committee on Government Operations, Subcommittee on National Security Staffing and Operations, hearing of 18 September 1963; Henry Jackson, The Secretary of State and the Ambassador (New York: Praeger, 1964). See also, Vincent Barnett (ed.), The Representation of the United States Abroad (New York: Praeger, 1965).

Introduction

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28 The importance of this is, however, brought out in Helen Jacobsen, Luxury and Power: The Material World of the Stuart Diplomat, 1660–714 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 44–64. 29 Richard Neustadt, Alliance Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), 56, 72 and see 132–4. 30 For example, DBD, 22 March, 25 April, 9 June and 9 August 1961, just for Bruce’s first months in London. Bruce reported Monnet’s views to Washington whenever they seemed significant. For example: John F. Kennedy Library (JFKL), NSF, Country File, United Kingdom (CFUK), Box 170, London to State, 26 April 1961 and 4 March 1963; LBJL/NSF/CFUK, Box 211, Bruce to Rusk, 8 May 1967. 31 Alastair, Kocho-Williams, Russian and Soviet Diplomacy, 1900–39 (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2012), 7–8 and 163–4; Pierre Bourdieu, ‘The Forms of Capital’, in John Richardson (ed.), Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), 81–91. 32 DBD, undated remarks, early 1961. Kennedy also considered Bruce for the post of Ambassador to Italy: Arthur Schlesinger, Journals, 1952–2000 (London: Atlantic Books, 2012), 96. 33 National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), RG59, Lot 53D444, Records of Executive Secretariat, Dean Acheson, Memoranda for the President, Box 1, January–June 1947 folder, memorandum of 2 February 1947. I am grateful to Dr Michael Hopkins for discovering this source. 34 Deborah Devonshire, Wait for Me: Memoirs of the Youngest Mitford Sister (London: John Murray, 2010), 343. 35 Lankford, Aristocrat, 298–300; JFKL, Oral History Program (OHP), Acheson Interview, 6. 36 Rudy Abramson, Spanning the Century: The Life of W. Averell Harriman (New York: Morrow, 1992), 192. 37 Ball, Pattern, 89. 38 Lankford, Aristocrat, 300; Dean Rusk, As I Saw It (New York: Norton, 1990), 202. 39 Lankford, Aristocrat, 67–8 and 169–72. 40 The Independent, 15 December 1995. 41 The National Archives (TNA), Kew, FO371/156511, Caccia to Hoyer Millar, February, and reply, 14 February 1961. 42 TNA, Kew, FO371/156511, Samuel to Charteris, undated draft, and Hankey to Beamish, 9 January 1961. 43 TNA, Kew, FO371/156511, Barbour to Home, 26 January, and reply, 30 January 1961. 44 TNA, Kew, FO371/156511, Minute of 10 February 1961. 45 DBD, 6 February 1964; LBJL/NSF/CF/UK, Box 211, Bruce to State, 8 May 1967. 46 DBD, 20 February 1966. 47 DBD, 28–29 October 1961. 48 DBD, 11 November 1964.

16 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

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DBD, 23 and 30 September 1966. DBD, 11 January 1967. DBD, 27 May and 3 October 1962, and see 12 December 1963. DBD, 30 December 1966. TNA/FO 371/179615, Gore-Booth to Dean, 21 July. TNA/FO371/177830/7A, SC(64)30, 21 August 1964. TNA/FO371/179557/1, Washington to London, 4 January 1965; FO371/184995/1, Washington to London, 18 February 1966. 56 NARA/RG59, Office of the Executive Secretariat, Conference Files, 1964–6, Box 444, Lot 67D586, ‘Scope Paper’, UK, April 1967. 57 Harry Truman Library, Independence, Philip M. Kaiser Papers, Box 8, research memorandum, 7 February 1968. 58 LBJL/NSF/CFUK, Box 212, London to State, 1 June 1968.

2

The Embassy and the Residence David Bruce followed a long line of eminent US representatives to London. John Adams became the First Minister in 1785 and, before the civil war, four other future Presidents enjoyed postings to London: James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Martin van Buren and James Buchanan. The post was among the first four US missions raised to embassy status by President Grover Cleveland in 1893 alongside Paris, Berlin and Rome, and actually the first to which an Ambassador was appointed when Thomas F. Bayard presented his credentials on 22 June. By 1964 the United States had over 100 missions, but London remained perhaps the most desirable of postings for a US Foreign Service officer and the quality of its staff was correspondingly high. Among Bruce’s staff who went on to hold ambassadorships of their own were Monteagle Stearns (Greece), Findlay Burns (Jordan), William Eagleton (Syria), Ron Spiers (Pakistan, Turkey) and, most eminent of all, Arthur Hartman, head of the Economic Section (France, 1977–81; USSR, 1982–7). Spiers also served as Under-Secretary of State, while Willis Armstrong became Assistant Secretary of State.1 Philip Kaiser, who arrived as Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) in 1964, had already served as Ambassador to Senegal and later became Ambassador to Hungary and Austria. It is surprising then, that some of those with whom the Embassy had to deal did not believe all was well within its walls. Soon after becoming Permanent Under-Secretary of the Foreign Office (FO) in 1965, Paul Gore-Booth noted a ‘widespread feeling, not confined by any means to the Foreign Office, that the US Embassy here at the moment is … deplorably weak’. Bruce was ‘a man of very considerable stature and, of course, has the advantage of at least part of one ear of the President. It is always worth talking to him and he is much respected in London … ’; but, unlike past members of the Embassy, his staff failed to ‘go around and gossip as an Embassy ought to do … and, with the possible exception of Willis Armstrong, one has great difficulty remembering the personalities at all’. Even on the American side the National Security Adviser, McGeorge Bundy, believed the London embassy ‘was far too large and far too overpaid and really produced very little, apart from David Bruce himself ’. Such criticisms were persistent. Soon after Bruce left London, Peter Hayman, a Deputy Under-Secretary at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, recorded that ‘members of the US Embassy were much less seen

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around either in the Foreign Office or at diplomatic parties, than many other Embassies including the Soviet embassy’.2 This chapter looks at the structure of the Embassy, Bruce’s management of it and the question of whether – as some of the above quotes hint – there was a real divide between the work of the Ambassador and the performance of his staff. It also looks at the role of the Residence, which was physically separate from the Embassy but in many ways integral to its work.

Grosvenor Square The checker-faced concrete edifice that Bruce once dismissed as an ‘architectural monstrosity’ occupied the western side of Grosvenor Square and was completed, in September 1960 after three years’ work, only six months before he arrived. Its architect, the Finn, Eero Saarinen, had intended it to be ‘both bold and elegant, combining masculine strength with graceful manner’, thereby holding its own in the square of Georgian town houses and symbolizing American dignity. Bruce was not the only one to find it stark and austere, not helped by the enormous statue of a bald eagle that crowned it.3 Nonetheless it provided over a quarter million square feet of space, contained 600 rooms on nine floors (three underground) and its location was historically apt. The previous embassy building, at 1 Grosvenor Square, was just over the road, Eisenhower’s wartime headquarters was a stone’s throw away and the Square was home to a statue of Franklin Roosevelt. Indeed it was sometimes called ‘Little America’. In contrast to previous US missions in London, the new one housed all the main parts of the operation not just the Chancery (that is, the political, economic and administrative staff, who lay at the heart of the operation). On the north side was the United States Information Agency (USIA) office; located on the south was the Consular Section. The Ambassador’s suite was situated on the second floor, alongside other senior staff.4 Construction had provoked severe differences between the US government and the building firm, which ended up in a substantial court claim. Bruce was sometimes drawn into conversations on the matter but it was largely in the hands of the Federal Buildings Office in Washington.5 The Ambassador showed some interest in the decoration of the building, not least in trying to complete its collection of paintings of former ambassadors by filling the single gap, that for Joseph Kennedy. To tackle this problem Bruce wrote directly to JFK, who arranged for his father to sit for a new portrait.6 When Bruce arrived, the authorized State Department complement of the Embassy was 92 officers and 64 clerks, along with 325 locally employed staff in support. The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, signed

The Embassy and the Residence

19

that year, divided embassy staff into three groups. Most important were the ‘diplomatic staff ’, made up of professional, career officers from the Foreign Service and others parts of government, who were granted diplomatic status as Washington’s representatives.7 Then there were the ‘administrative and technical staff ’, most recruited locally. These were essential, not only to provide support services as interpreters, accountants, secretaries and the like, but also as a kind of institutional memory: ‘Without the Foreign Service Nationals (the local staff), the Embassy would need to start a knowledge base all over again every few years as American Foreign Service staff rotate out’.8 Local staff are cheaper to employ than someone flown out from Washington and in the United Kingdom, a close ally, there was not the same concern as there would be for a US embassy in, say, a Communist state, to doubt their trustworthiness – though they might not be trusted with highly sensitive information.9 The third category of employees was the ‘service staff ’, including chauffeurs, cleaners and kitchen employees. Not all the operation was based in London: in 1961, the US presence included a Consulate-General in Belfast, Northern Ireland and seven Consulates in major cities around Great Britain. Besides the State Department, there were about thirty other bodies represented in the United Kingdom. The staff of many of these was small, but there was a substantial military contingent, including the Air, Army and Naval Attachés’ offices, with sixty-two, seventeen and thirty-four staff, respectively, while the USIA employed eighty-five. There were also representatives from a range of departments and agencies, from the Treasury and Departments of Health and Commerce, to the Atomic Energy Agency and Federal Aviation Authority. All told, these other agencies amounted to 473 staff (see Appendix 1) and those figures do not include the CIA presence, which probably numbered about 120. Thus, Bruce headed a pyramid of well over a thousand staff. Figures from November 1961 show 669 staff in Grosvenor Square, the rest in other London buildings or posted around the country.10 Such a complex operation bred inevitable management challenges. Looking back, Bruce complained that ‘there were so many people in the Embassy he didn’t know who many of them were or what they were doing’.11 He even called them ‘the little State Department’.12 But, speaking in 1964, he justified the overall size of the Embassy by pointing out that despite the decline of the British Empire, ‘the UK is still the center of the Sterling Area, and the key member of the Commonwealth. Since there is no part of the world entirely unconcerned with UK policies, London requires an extraordinary diversity of skills within our mission’. He also argued that the mission did its job in one very important respect in that, despite periodic Anglo-American differences, ‘I can think of no other Foreign Service post where personal relationships between the officials of the two countries are conducted on such an agreeable and understanding basis of sympathy’.13

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Two embassies? Some staff believed there were two embassies in London: ‘There was David Bruce and then there was the rest of the Embassy and the two didn’t necessarily coordinate all the time’. However, where outsiders like GoreBooth and Bundy tended to praise the Ambassador and criticize his staff, the latter group had a different opinion. The Ambassador once remarked to a senior staff member, ‘As you know, I don’t like to get too involved and I am glad you didn’t get me involved in too many things’.14 This desire to cherry pick issues and leave practical matters, especially administrative duties, to others was a main complaint against him suggesting that, however good he was as a diplomat, he was not necessarily effective as a manager.15 William Galloway noted that Bruce ‘was not a hands-on person but stood back, did what he wanted to do and assumed everyone else knew what they were doing’.16 More damning Richard Ericson, a political officer, recalled the Ambassador was ‘very difficult to see’ and ‘never saw a damn thing that went out of that embassy before it went out except the stuff that he wrote himself ’.17 In this Bruce stood in contrast to ‘Chip’ Bohlen, who had served under him for a year in Paris and had been considered as an alternative for the London embassy. Bohlen, unusual for being a career diplomat who secured some top posts (Moscow and Paris), was popular with his subordinates because he was ‘devoutly solicitous of his people. He consulted them regularly, included them in numerous social events and won them with his lively humour … ’.18 There were complaints that Bruce sent some messages to Washington without showing them to relevant staff. Worse, not all his staff trusted Bruce’s judgement. Despite the Ambassador’s time on Wall Street and his administration of the Marshall Aid Programme, Willis Armstrong, Minister for Economic Affairs during 1964–7, felt him ‘not very experienced in economic matters’ and was concerned by some of his reporting to Washington about Britain’s financial situation.19 Despite these negative comments many staff were full of praise for Bruce, with remarks that he was ‘one of the best ambassadors we’ve ever had’, ‘a wonderful guy’, even – in a quote that neatly combines a sense of remoteness with a deep faith in his abilities – ‘a god at the end of the hall’.20 William Galloway said that ‘He presided over the Embassy with the charm and ease of a Virginia patrician’, that ‘we enjoyed an easy and instructive working relationship’ and that, while Bruce ‘delegated responsibility … both substantively and administratively’, he did let staff see ‘all incoming and outgoing messages’. Jonathan Stoddart felt it a ‘superlative embassy’, with Bruce ‘one of the finest men I have ever worked for … ’, adding that Bruce ‘delegated very well, assuming he had competent people working for him’.

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Hermann Eilts agreed: Bruce may have ‘delegated authority’, but he was also ‘interested in everything that went on in the Embassy’ and was ‘one of the outstanding persons for whom I’ve worked’.21 ‘Outstanding’ was also the adjective used by Kaiser, the DCM.22 The key to understanding these radically different views, may lie in Kenneth Weisbrode’s insight, that Bruce ‘prided himself on his nonchalance and efficiency; he excelled in not looking busy and not using up the time of others unnecessarily’.23 Bruce’s diary for 13 February 1962 is instructive: Much time is taken in an Embassy discussing current problems with members of the staff. Lewis Jones [DCM] comes in each morning with a summary of matters requiring early attention. For example, today, after seeing him, I talked to Don Smith about a letter to be written, requiring permission for the American Women’s Club of London to rent premises on Portland Place. Elim O’Shaughnessy [head of the Political Section] has just returned from home leave, so I told him about some of the political things that took place here during his absence. General [Grover] Brown [air attaché] came in to talk to me about making a speech, Bill Clark [Counselor for Public Affairs] about arranging entertainment for British newspaper correspondents. And so it goes every day.

It suggests that high-level staff, at least, were in regular contact with the Ambassador and on a wide range of issues. A deeper look at key management issues during these years will suggest an ambassador who kept an eye on the principal issues as he saw them, had a sound overall grasp of his mission’s capabilities, activities and value, involved himself in specific problems (even of a mundane sort) when necessary, but mostly left detailed policy to his subordinates. Some of them may have seen this as a lack of leadership from the top, but others were grateful for the initiative and independence it gave them. Evidence of Bruce’s ‘hands-off ’ approach to management comes from his sceptical attitude towards regular committee meetings. When Chester Bowles arrived as ambassador in New Delhi in July 1963, he paid a great deal of attention to providing ‘a clearer sense of policy direction and … greater coordination’ between the various elements of the Embassy, holding a daily meeting of key staff and a larger weekly meeting.24 When he first arrived in London, Bruce seems to have been much less ambitious. Most weeks in 1961 there was a small, morning meeting of senior staff who were ‘cleared for everything but the most secret stuff ’. The range of topics was diverse. Indeed, Bruce once commented that, ‘The go-around the table elicits all sorts of odds and ends of information from participants that otherwise would

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not come to our collective attention’.25 The ‘chief feature’ of the session on 8 September 1961 was a Treasury Attaché report on the global tin market; while, at a short meeting on 9 March 1962, the main item Bruce recalled was the Scientific Attaché’s report about research suggesting cigarettes caused lung cancer. However, Bruce’s diary suggests that he did not attend such meetings every week and initially he also avoided the practice, common in other US embassies worldwide, of having a ‘country team’, which consisted of the senior members of the Embassy, the armed services and other elements of the American presence whose activities required coordination. In September 1963, he told Henry Jackson’s Senate Subcommittee on National Security Staffing and Operations that ‘there is a tendency in any embassy to have meetings with great frequency and regular times, rather than what I would call ad hoc meetings for a specific need’; and that there was a similar tendency in the State Department. It was clear which model he preferred and Jackson seems to have agreed with him, subsequently quoting Bruce with approval in a book on the execution of US foreign policy.26 They were not the only ones to believe that ‘portentous conferences … tend to waste the time of many of the participants’.27 However, during a 1964 inspection, which was otherwise positive about the Embassy’s performance, it was recommended that he establish a monthly ‘country team’ meeting. Bruce protested – ‘I have found no difficulty to date in coordinating country team affairs without formal meetings’ – but soon conformed with the request.28 In London, the ‘country team’ included Bruce, the DCM, the Economic Minister, the Chief of the CIA station plus the local naval and air force commanders, with the Politico-Military Counsellor acting as secretary. All had clearance to see ‘top secret’ documents so that they could discuss most security and intelligence materials. The team held its first meeting on 16 June 1964, when Bruce commented that, ‘We are all entitled to access almost every type of classified information, and can talk more freely amongst ourselves than in a larger company. This … should serve to enlarge our knowledge, and to bring about closer liaison between military, political and economic activities of the US Government in the UK’. At its next meeting on 1 July 1964, the main issues were Greek–Turkish tensions in Cyprus and NATO matters, including the proposal for a multilateral nuclear force, reflecting the fact that the team drew together diplomatic and military-security issues. By 7 October 1964, Bruce found ‘these conversations increasingly useful’, a sentiment he echoed after subsequent meetings.29 The inspection had also recommended changing the weekly embassy staff meeting from Mondays to Wednesdays, so that Bruce would be better able to attend. He missed the first revised meeting on 27 May 1964 because he was called urgently to the FO, but they were held regularly thereafter. Beginning on 5 September 1968,

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Bruce even added a second, more select staff meeting to the rota, held on Thursdays and attended by Kaiser (DCM), Stanley Cleveland (Economic Minister), Ron Spiers (Political Counsellor) and Bill Galloway (an embassy political officer for an unusually long period, 1965–74). Just as Bruce seems to have been willing to adapt his relaxed approach when pressed, so his aloofness can be taken too far. He may have mixed socially more with senior than junior staff. However, the Ambassador would also appear among junior staff. On 14 March 1962, for example, at an employee awards ceremony he presented certificates for safe driving and long service. Periodically, he held a seminar with junior officers to ‘bring them up to date on what the most important pending problems are in the Embassy’ and answering their questions on a range of subjects.30 He helped maintain morale by arranging addresses from visiting dignitaries, including, on 1 May 1962, the Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, who spoke to a few hundred staff gathered in the cafeteria about the significance of the London mission. Bruce also appeared at functions held by different elements of the US operation, including non-diplomats. On 22 October 1963, he was guest of honour at the Embassy Wives Association lunch and on 9 November he was guest of honour at the US Marine Corps ball. There were innovations, too, during his tenure designed to ensure staff were ‘aboard a happy ship’. These included, in March 1962, an orientation course for new arrivals about which he commented, ‘There is such an ebb and flow of people being assigned or transferred that it is impossible to give them individual indoctrination [sic] as to the purposes of an Embassy’.31 There is also evidence that he took an interest in the welfare of individual staff. When Bob Smith, the ambassadorial chauffeur for 22 years, retired in 1963, Bruce not only found him an apartment but also gave him a car. When the Ambassador felt one officer was poorly treated over promotion he wrote a firm letter to Washington that eventually secured a higher grade. And when the Cultural Attaché, ‘De’ Myers, died suddenly of a heart attack in 1968, Bruce immediately left a Downing Street dinner to comfort his wife.32 One element behind the criticisms of Bruce may have been that he was not of the Foreign Service. Since the start of the century, the United States had transformed its representation abroad from a rather amateurish diplomatic service, dominated by wealthy but poorly motivated staff – divided from the more hard-working, but less glamorous consular personnel – into a fully integrated and professional Foreign Service. The diplomatic and consular services merged in 1927; a Foreign Service Institute was established to train recruits in 1946; and greater movement between the State Department and foreign postings took place once a single personnel system was established in 1954. Yet, more often than was the case with European governments,

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America’s key embassies still tended to be headed by political appointees like Bruce. (Even today, in 2013, there has only ever been one Foreign Service officer who became Ambassador to London: Raymond Seitz in the 1990s.) This was galling to some Foreign Service officers who, better paid and trained than ever before, felt that they could properly lead embassies. As J. K. Galbraith, appointed Ambassador to India in 1961, came to recognize, ‘the worst consequence’ of appointing amateur ambassadors was ‘the unfairness [of] having professional … officers spend their lives working their way up the ladder and then, at the last, being denied the top post’.33 Bruce was more experienced than most political appointees and could command the professionals’ respect, but career ambassadors like Ellis Briggs still maintained that, ‘practically no outsider, however talented, can be so effective at representing the United States abroad as can the outstanding professional trained for the job’.34 Yet, it was perhaps because he had served in ambassadorial posts for so long that Bruce, as will become evident later, shared the professionals’ suspicions of contemporary changes in diplomatic staffing. The Foreign Service was much larger, and thus less intimate, than it had been a generation before. America’s growing involvement in world affairs meant that ever-more experts from other government departments were based in embassies, and the Service itself faced pressures for its staff to become more specialist in areas like economics, science or information management. A number of studies appeared around 1959–60 advocating greater specialization by diplomats, which helped generate considerable debate over the future of the Service, bringing a riposte from those who continued to believe in the value of a ‘generalist’ approach to diplomacy. Professional diplomats were suspicious of technical experts brought in from outside and of approaches like game theory or systems analysis, which seemed grossly to simplify a complicated world. Over the following years Service officers continued to argue that a general, flexible approach to international relations was vital. But critics argued that diplomats could be shallow and unimaginative, more interested in their career than properly understanding the world. On 29 May 1961, soon after Bruce arrived in London, Kennedy, a president who welcomed direct communications from his ambassadors, boosted diplomats’ morale somewhat with his directive that chiefs of mission should coordinate all federal US activities in their respective countries. But by the end of Bruce’s ambassadorship, the professional diplomats were on the brink of a new humiliation when Richard Nixon and his National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger, dominated the main lines of foreign policy from the White House, sidelining the State Department and embassies abroad.35

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The Chancery, the DCM and staff turnover Bruce believed ‘the essential core of [embassy] activities consists of a small Foreign Service staff in the Political, Economic and Consular Sections, with necessary support from the Administrative Section’ – although he reckoned that the majority of the Administrative Section’s work (in finance management, personnel and technical support) was devoted to servicing agencies other than the State Department.36 In terms of high-level US–UK relations, the key units were the Political and Economic Sections, with 25 and 13 Foreign Service officers, respectively. The Political Section reported on such areas as British foreign policy and domestic politics, labour issues and disarmament; the Economic Section on commerce, finance and investments, civil aviation, science and technology. Each section was expected to advise the Ambassador on local developments, make reports to Washington and liaise with the British. Individual officers would have their own specialism: on arriving in London in 1965, for example, William Galloway became the Political Section’s specialist on the Conservative Party, monitoring their MPs, policy formulations and parliamentary tactics.37 Findlay Burns, the Counsellor for Administration during 1962–6, according to one of his staff, ‘really ran the management side’ of the Embassy. He was ‘very much the old school of the Foreign Service: precise language and a high level of expectation of his officers  …  ’. Bruce once called him ‘a bureaucratic Ulysses … He has a felicity for subjecting difficult … administrative problems to coruscations of witty comment, followed by constructive action’. The position of Counsellor for Administration was so vital to the smooth running of the Embassy that Bruce advised that his successor, Walter Annenberg, should not even think of replacing the current post-holder, Peter Skoufis, at an early date. ‘To have a new incumbent in such a position on arrival of a new Ambassador would impose an almost intolerable strain on the Ambassador, and would divert him from his essential operations’.38 Another part of the Chancery was Bruce’s private office. Here he had two special assistants from the younger Foreign Service staff, one of whom described his role as being ‘a mini, mini version of a national security council staff ’, responsible for making sure that Bruce and the DCM ‘saw the papers they should see’ while sticking to their schedules. Given the size of the Embassy, there was ‘an extraordinary calendar’ for the Ambassador, the DCM and their wives. Galbraith feared that the special assistant’s position was one ‘that must cause a great many young men to think again about their choice of career’, since it involved ‘everything from planning travel to purchasing newspapers’. However, it could be very fulfilling, especially

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under a chief who was ready to delegate responsibility. As special assistant to Bruce, Sheldon Krys ‘became involved in things that were highly sensitive’ and noted that Bruce ‘managed to have you do things without asking you to do them’. Despite being junior in the hierarchy Krys handled messages that otherwise only the Ambassador and head of communications saw. One price to pay for such responsibility was having to come into the office at 3.00 a.m. when, given trans-Atlantic time differences, important messages from Washington tended to arrive. Krys found the role nerve-wracking at times: he long remembered his ‘knees absolutely shaking’ when handling delicate exchanges with Downing Street on Vietnam. But Bruce showed complete confidence in him.39 Another essential element of the private office were the secretaries, about whom Bruce once wrote, ‘the real heroes, or heroines, in the Foreign Service are such as these; their hours are unbearable, but they never complain’.40 Aside from dealing with the Ambassador’s own correspondence and meetings, they dealt with a host of everyday tasks. The workload that ordinary US visitors put on them can be gauged from the fact that, in 1967, there were 348 letters and hundreds more telephone calls about the Ascot horse races, about 800 letters regarding attendance at Parliament and 400 for the ‘Trooping the Colour’ ceremony at Buckingham Palace.41 The correspondence flowing into Bruce’s office was large and he took an amused interest in some of the more bizarre letters. Of two that drew his attention in March 1962, one was from an American who wanted to know if it were true that washing lines in Calais, France, could be seen from the cliffs of Dover. The other came from a young British woman, claiming to be a descendant of Pocahontas, who wanted Bruce to find her a penfriend among USAF officers, ‘aged about 40, as I like men older than myself ’.42 Over the years, he collected many more of these, storing them in his diary. One, from 18 January 1964, began ‘I hate all Americans – and I am not a crank!’ Unusually, Bruce considered meeting this correspondent, ‘although if I were to interview every individual in Britain who expresses his dislike for Americans, I would indeed be ceaselessly occupied’. He kept another letter later that year from someone calling herself ‘Georgette, Princess of England’, who claimed the Pope would excommunicate anyone preventing her going to America where she intended to make various accusations against Jacqueline Kennedy.43 Even diplomats, who ought to have known better, contributed to the in-tray of absurdities. In 1967 the Embassy received a request from a former Foreign Service officer asking if a British company could be dissuaded from marketing a toilet seat with the name ‘Larissa’, because it was causing his wife – who shared the name – mental anguish.44 Central to the work of the Chancery and indeed to the work of any American embassy is the DCM, who frees the Ambassador to focus on

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high politics, while giving unity and direction to the staff. As Galbraith explained it, the DCM ‘deputizes for the Ambassador, provides professional continuity, directs subordinate officers and, with suitable tact, tells his superior what he should do’. A Foreign Service Association publication argued that, ‘Without a DCM, the ambassador risks becoming overwhelmed with management tasks, and section heads would be left to their own devices to pursue priorities and make decisions that may not reflect the larger policy … of the US government’.45 The DCM then is a lynchpin, linking US policy aims, a knowledge of the host country and embassy management. They not only deputize for the Ambassador in the latter’s absence, but also act as a kind of chief of staff with general oversight of the operation. Bruce’s first DCM, Walworth Barbour, stayed only a few months, having been in London since 1955 and was succeeded by Lewis Jones, a former Ambassador to Tunisia and Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs. He left in July 1964. The next DCM, Phil Kaiser, was criticized by Gore-Booth as ‘not very impressive’, but Bruce was enthusiastic about this appointment commenting that ‘He is an old friend of whom I have a high opinion’.46 Kaiser’s arrival in October 1964 was timely, because it coincided with the election of a Labour government with whose leaders he had excellent personal connections. As a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford in the 1930s, he was acquainted with several of Harold Wilson’s future ministers including Roy Jenkins (Home Secretary 1965–7; Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1967–70) and Denis Healey (Defence Secretary throughout the Wilson governments). A former Assistant Secretary of Labor, Kaiser also had good links with the trades union movement. Within a short time, he was meeting the Chancellor of the Exchequer, James Callaghan, to discuss Britain’s balance of payments problems. In September 1966, he spent a weekend with Callaghan on the Isle of Wight, writing a report so confidential that Bruce refused to trust it to the airwaves; instead, Kaiser personally took it to Washington to share with ‘selected individuals’. When Bruce left London, he advised his successor that Kaiser was ‘not only … unwearying in his application to the responsibilities of his position, but he enjoys the immense advantage of being on first name terms, without exception, with every member of the present British Government’.47 DCMs were not the only officials who came and went. From the moment Bruce arrived, the high turnover of staff was a constant problem. While Wally Barbour left in May, Thomas Osgood, the Scientific Attaché, followed in June and General James Boswell, the Army Attaché, in October.48 Sometimes turnover could affect one area of the US operation all at once, as with the armed forces’ leadership in July 1968. On the 9th, Bruce said his ‘official goodbye’ to Clyde Box, Commander of the Third Air Force (they spent time talking about

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the rising incidence of his men smoking marijuana). The following day, it was the turn of Colonel Lash, who had been Army Attaché for three years. Two days later, Admiral Jack McCain, the naval commander, formally handed responsibility to his successor at a ceremony in the Embassy’s auditorium. Such continuous change put particular pressures on the Ambassador. In August 1961, after meeting no less than three incoming economic officers, Bruce noted, ‘I try to see all new officers as soon as possible after their arrival’.49 He also tried to see key staff when they left.50 But sometimes he could not meet his own best intentions. He admitted on 19 February 1964 that it was the first time he had had a lengthy talk with the new Petroleum Attaché, Edgar McGinnis, who had been in London for several weeks. On 14 April 1964, the Ambassador complained that, ‘There seems to be an unceasing flow of departures and replacements here’. One especially worrying point was that busy staff were sometimes replaced without overlapping with their successors. When one of the consular officers was transferred, at short notice, Bruce argued it would disrupt several negotiations including the creation of an American Studies Institute at the University of London.51 But one of the limits of his influence over State Department practice was seen in the fact that such cases were repeated.52 He was happier with the fact that the Agricultural Attaché, Bob Anderson, remained in post for ten years and so ‘established almost a unique position’ of knowledge of the role. Bruce considered this an ‘example of how useful it is for a government to leave experienced men in a Mission for a long time, rather than to transfer them haphazardly after two or three years of residence’.53

The agencies challenge and spending cuts A major issue for the US diplomatic machinery was how to manage the expansion of government agencies into overseas theatres as America’s involvement in world affairs grew. One study has talked of a ‘crisis’ for America’s professional diplomats in the 1960s as they came to terms with the ‘active management of the full multi-agency spectrum’, which made embassies a platform for operations by numerous groups other than the Foreign Service.54 Actually, the growing number of non-Service staff was a well-established phenomenon. In 1920, an investigation showed that 14 departments or agencies had staff abroad promoting US trade and, in 1939, a Reorganization Act forced the overseas services of the Commerce and Agriculture departments to merge with the Foreign Service, the dream being to create a single, efficient system of representation. But during and after the war, with America more deeply involved around the globe, it proved

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impossible for the Foreign Service to maintain anything like a monopoly on overseas representation, even though its own staff increasingly specialized in particular areas (such as economics, commerce or labour relations). A 1954 committee, under Henry Wriston, failed to produce a solution. Even after excluding the Department of Defense, the number of civilians employed by the United States abroad grew from less than 5,000 in 1941 to nearly 43,000 in 1963, including 14,500 Americans (the remainder being locally engaged).55 In 1962 another committee, under Christian Herter, a former Secretary of State, produced a report entitled ‘Personnel for the New Diplomacy’, which emphasized the need for agencies to work together on diverse activities. A number of other works made the same point, arguing that specialist staff were becoming more important than the traditional generalists and criticizing Foreign Service officers for being conservative and defensive about their role.56 While the Herter Committee was organized outside government, the Kennedy administration backed the need for a change in outlook with one of the President’s special assistants arguing that it could ‘no longer be only a matter of making policy by the cables, of playing it by ear, day-to-day. It requires planning and programming … ’.57 However, the recommendations of the Herter Committee for moves towards a single overseas personnel system came to little, partly thanks to resistance from the Foreign Service itself. One former ambassador, Henry Villard, in a 1965 book argued that the growth of specialist staff would kill off the generalists, losing ‘the assets of perceptiveness … , panoramic understanding and intuition tempered in the fires of practical experience’.58 How did Bruce fit into this debate? It has been seen that numerous US government agencies were represented in London. While posted abroad they were under the Ambassador’s nominal control, but they had their own communications with Washington and could pursue some policies without reference to their supposed chief. The Ambassador could hardly be expected to master all the various agency fields and could even feel it better (especially in the intelligence field) not to know what was happening.59 Indeed it has been argued that the ‘sheer size and heterogeneous nature of many modern embassies … reinforced the ambassador’s supervisory position’, striking compromises between the various elements, acting more as a referee between them than as their manager.60 Appearing before the Henry Jackson Subcommittee, Bruce repeated the point that units which received their instructions from outside the State Department were responsible and loyal to their own agencies, relying on them for finance and other support. ‘Obviously, this fact imposes some limitations on the Ambassador’s freedom to direct their activities and creates possibilities for working at cross purposes’. It was not that Bruce

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received separate instructions from the Pentagon, the Treasury and the rest: all his instructions were channelled through State. But the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG), for example, received its orders from the Joint Chiefs of Staff while the Service Attachés were under orders from the Army, Navy or Air Force. He added that the team ‘functioned effectively’, that he did not feel ‘hampered by conflicts or any lack of authority’ and that closer integration within the UK mission would only really make sense if there were ‘closer integration of decision making and instruction issuing in Washington’ – which was clearly a difficult challenge. Overall, Bruce said, the London embassy was ‘reasonably well … organized to enable the Ambassador to direct the overall conduct of the US Government’s business … in accordance with his instructions’ and he believed that Kennedy’s Executive Order of 29 May 1961, placing all agencies under the direction of the Ambassador, had helped. He praised the military’s conduct of relations with the British in such areas as baserights negotiation and community relations. It was such issues that could impact on good relations with the United Kingdom (and not any day-to-day questions of military operations) that really mattered to him as Ambassador. He also asserted that any problems were ‘created primarily by lack of coordination of instructions issued by higher headquarters’. The State and Defense Departments, for example, needed to plan together for the closure of military bases and the impact such decisions had on allied governments. But the Embassy had ‘absolutely no control’ over the inter-agency debates in Washington and Bruce felt ‘the enormous difficulty of getting an established policy position which you can then represent as such to a foreign government’. He expressed his relief that there was not a large overseas aid programme operating in Britain and that the military assistance programme (under MAAG) was being wound up. As he had discovered when running the Marshall Plan, whenever someone had the power to disperse ‘a huge sum in American dollars … the officials of that country were going to look to him rather than to the ambassador’. Nevertheless, Bruce was clearly not entirely happy with the way some agencies functioned in the Embassy. He felt that while some non-diplomatic units including MAAG were well integrated into the operation, others were not. At one point he made the cryptic comment, ‘Whether all of the work of all of the US Government agencies in Great Britain is profitable would be for others to judge’. Invited by Jackson to expand on his initial statement, Bruce made clear that his ‘principal problem’ was not coordinating the UK operation, but ‘to suggest how personnel of the different agencies … might be … reduced somewhat in number’. Less than a quarter of the staff in Grosvenor Square were actually responsible to the State Department. He was clearly reluctant to press for cuts saying that the various agencies

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represented in London ‘have to determine what their necessities are’ and that it was ‘not a good thing to have people scurrying around and interfering with the operations of any agency’. However, he feared that the growth in staff numbers had too often been influenced by ‘the demands of the moment’. The corollary was his belief that the core State Department operation in London – the Political, Economic and Consular Sections – was understaffed. Numbers of diplomatic officers (less than 10 per cent of Embassy staff) had been trimmed so much that it was difficult to cope when anyone was ill, on leave or (as often happened) temporarily seconded to other duties. He often found, for example, that members of the Economic Section were sent to the UN offices in Geneva, sometimes for months at a time.61 Bruce’s comments highlight a problem for any ambassador of maintaining control of his embassy staff. Ellis Briggs argued around this time that, ‘practically every United States diplomatic mission … is so stuffed with unnecessary personnel that the handful of State Department officials trying to perform substantive diplomatic functions can scarcely find a chair to sit down on or a desk on which to stack their papers’.62 As one British diplomat commented, ‘No Ambassador can be expected to drown himself in detail and know everything that is going on, but he must maintain general guidance’.63 Partly based on Bruce’s testimony, the Jackson Committee concluded that, ‘To a degree, the primacy of the Ambassador is a polite fiction’. The ‘country team’ could provide an element of coordination between the key agencies at a post, but ‘Most elements of the country team … do not regard themselves as parts of the Ambassador’s staff … ’ and it was difficult for the team to draw up an overall plan for the mission. Yet, the Committee also found that ‘the field is refreshingly free of interagency strife’, where the ‘deep jurisdictional clashes evident in Washington’ were generally absent. To improve the situation the Committee recommended, among other points, closer involvement by ambassadors in setting budgets and appointing (or removing) staff for all agencies represented at a post, as well as a simplification of structures.64 Bruce’s comments to the Jackson Subcommittee were ones he consistently held. Soon after arriving in London, he had reported home on the confusion of agencies in the Embassy, leading Dean Rusk to see the London operation as a key example of ‘bureaucratic sprawl’.65 In 1962 Bruce told two officials of the Bureau of the Budget, ‘We are saddled with hundreds of people who occupy our offices and use our instrumentalities of various sorts, representing other Agencies of government’. He continued to complain about this ‘vexatious’ issue to Washington.66 He did make some attempt to educate himself about what non-Service staff were doing. On 16 October 1963, for example, he received a briefing from a newly arrived officer about a revised structure in the Federal Aviation Authority office. But the Ambassador’s comment

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afterwards was caustic: ‘they never seem to reach a conclusion of a definitive nature’. When the 1964 inspection took place he again focused, in one meeting, on ‘the usefulness and necessity for the numbers involved’ of nonState Department staff.67 There were some signs of movement by Washington. On 26 October 1964, a group from the Comprehensive Country Planning (CCP) team arrived, one using a new-fangled computer to discover costs in the Embassy. Bruce was sceptical anything would happen but intrigued to find that a London-based Foreign Service officer cost about $2,500 less than a USIA officer annually and that there was a representative of the Department of Commerce working on power contracts in the Midlands, ‘of whom we had never heard’. However, when steps were taken to cut staff numbers, Bruce did not necessarily welcome the way they were made. In May 1965, the Bureau of the Budget looked at the activities of the various agencies in London, but they did so through a survey targeted at the Embassy itself when Bruce felt the better way was to cure the problem ‘at the source, namely in the home offices of the departments concerned’. Bruce took the opportunity to press for cuts under the so-called Executive Review of Overseas Programmes (EROP), nonetheless, he was upset when, in September 1965, it looked as though the USIA presence might be cut so far as to threaten its viability in London.68 Worse came when he visited Washington and the proposal was made that he, as Ambassador, should set the budgets of the various agencies. He wrote this off as a ‘mad, ill-considered scheme’ but the State Department persisted with it, instructing him on 13 October to make each unit conform to budget targets he set. Bemused, Bruce wrote a memorandum to himself repeating his view that such decisions were best made in Washington and fearing that the EROP recommendations had ‘done more than anything which has occurred since I have been in London to impair what had been the high morale in this organisation’. The whole affair threatened to harm his relations with other agencies and ‘make the future conduct of our business in Great Britain more difficult’.69 A year later Bruce continued to argue with visitors from Washington that it was impracticable for him to set the budgets for agencies in the Embassy, but by then he had lost the argument.70 While Bruce’s attempt to cut back on the high staffing of agencies in London backfired somewhat, he also fought a constant battle to retain what he considered adequate Foreign Service staff. In May 1962 he complained that the State Department was ‘trying to steal another position’ from the Political Section and this at a time when they seemed ‘overworked’ with conflicts in the Congo and Laos.71 Worse came in December 1962 with instructions to cut $300,000 of spending, which Bruce estimated would mean

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about 150 staff. Although at that point there were 1,163 staff in the Embassy and consulates, only 152 were focused on State Department work so that any substantial cuts there could be damaging.72 But Bruce was canny enough to know that he could only argue with Washington up to a certain point. He privately criticized Wayne Hays, the chair of the House Administration Committee but acknowledged ‘It would be dangerous, indeed fatal, to refuse his exactions’. It was not that the Embassy was abnormally large compared to other US missions. In September 1965, Bruce obtained statistics for comparative purposes (excluding certain agencies), showing that while US and local staff at London totalled 692, in Bonn there were 741, Rome 809 and Paris (at that time the location of the NATO headquarters) no less than 1,359. In terms of staff size, despite its importance London was only about the 13th largest US embassy.73 It lacked a large international development presence (such as India had) or a substantial military assistance group (as in South Vietnam). Unfortunately, the pressure to reduce staff was not likely to disappear. The Vietnam War added to the burden on the US economy. In 1966, President Johnson introduced a new, tighter budgeting system and the Bureau of the Budget sought to assert its primacy over the State Department in controlling expenditure abroad.74 The pressures came to a head in Bruce’s last few years in London. There was another inspection of the Embassy in mid-1967 and in October Bruce was forewarned of serious cuts.75 In November, although he complained that ‘we have been cut financially almost to the bare bone’, Washington was quick to see that the devaluation of the Pound could allow further savings on dollar expenditure and, at New Year, the eventual announcements of cuts coincided with a gathering US balance of payments crisis that hinted at still more reductions to come.76 On 22 January 1968, Bruce and his key staff met to discuss how best to effect an initial cut of staff by 1 April, but on 1 February came word that a 25 per cent cut was required by 1 June, building to a total 35 per cent at some, as-yet-undefined later point. Already, Bruce had reduced total personnel levels by about 260 since 1961, he reckoned that leave and illness meant that 20 per cent of staff should be considered ‘out of combat’ at any time and he knew that there were real potential problems over morale. By mid-February a plan had been drawn up for an initial reduction, which was put to the various Embassy sections, who were given a chance to object before Bruce began the difficult process of interviewing those who lost out.77 By May work was underway on the next batch of cuts even though Bruce felt Foreign Service numbers had already ‘been reduced to a bare minimum’.78 But his complaints to Washington finally paid off because, when the results of the latest operation were announced in August, the London Embassy suffered only a 17 per cent in American and a 13 per cent reduction in local staff and

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so ‘got off more lightly than other large Embassies’. The result was that the London Embassy would in future house about 600 staff, with a hundred on the payroll elsewhere in the United Kingdom.79 There were warnings that further cuts might be necessary after the upcoming presidential election but they were for Bruce’s successor to handle.80

The Residence and Evangeline Bruce The ambassadorial residence, Winfield House, was a 12-acre site in Regent’s Park, the largest estate in London after Buckingham Palace. Its location meant that, despite being in the middle of one of the world’s great cities, it was quiet and even felt isolated. Barbara Hutton, heiress of Frank Winfield Woolworth, a chain-store magnate, bought the site in 1936 and built a new Georgian-style mansion on it but sold it for a dollar to the US government ten years later. With the approval of Prime Minister Winston Churchill it became the ambassadorial residence in 1955, replacing the previous smaller house at 14 Prince’s Gate, the sale of which helped fund renovations at Winfield.81 On arriving Winfield House, Bruce found it ‘ill-furnished but well disposed for entertaining … [with] three large reception rooms, a small dining room and a large banquet room’, as well as almost thirty staff, including a butler, two chauffeurs, five maids, five gardening staff and six in the kitchen.82 Bruce improved the range of pictures on display, adding some from the Mellon Collection including a painting of St. Paul’s cathedral by Canaletto.83 There are reports that the decoration decayed during his time with thinning curtains, stained wallpaper, a leaky roof, poor electrical wiring and outdated plumbing. Bruce’s successor, Walter Annenberg, was reputed to have spent around £400,000 in renovating it and that did include such indulgences as stripping old chinoiserie wallpaper from a house in Ireland, having it drycleaned in America, then hanging it in the garden room.84 The Residence was essential to the official entertainments offered by Bruce and his wife, being used to host receptions, lunches and dinners, as well as providing overnight accommodation for official guests. It was also where Evangeline hosted embassy wives’ meetings about once per month and received foreign ambassadresses.85 Bruce was well aware of the value of a good diplomatic spouse. He once addressed the Embassy wives about their value in ‘fostering good relationships’ and using ‘their legendary powers of observation [to] supplement the reporting capabilities of their husbands’.86 Evangeline’s duties were varied. When Vice-President Humphrey visited in April 1967, Evangeline hosted a lunch for his wife. She would also continue to fulfil lunch and dinner engagements for her

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husband if he were unwell.87 The journalist Henry Brandon counted her as one of ‘a dying breed’ of ambassador’s wives, who ‘were no pioneers of the women’s liberation movement but worked hard at making diplomacy and politics an art as well as a profession’.88 In London she ‘considered herself co-ambassador and enjoyed being the center of attention’. More negatively, ‘ “Vangie” could be very jealous and envious’ and subject to mood swings, which were rumoured to be linked to prescription drugs. Nor was the marriage as close as Bruce’s diaries suggest: both were said to have taken lovers while in London.89 Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, for one, found Evangeline to be ‘rather intense’ when seated beside her at a Buckingham Palace luncheon, ‘She understands Modern Art and has theories about the Ballet … ’, he complained.90 Jacqueline Kennedy was blunter, once telling Arthur Schlesinger of Evangeline that, ‘Everyone knows she is a bloody bore’. Schlesinger, who was Special Assistant to JFK, counted Evangeline as an old friend and felt her far from ‘a bore’ but he acknowledged ‘I suppose this shows how fashions change’.91 Certainly, her closest friends, like Lady Diana Cooper (wife of a wartime Cabinet Minister, Duff Cooper), were of an older generation than the Kennedys. One of Bruce’s first actions on arriving at Winfield was to purchase the liquor stocks of his predecessor, ‘Jock’ Whitney, a fellow East Coast millionaire, art connoisseur and anglophile who as ambassador since 1957 had helped rebuild Anglo-American friendship in the wake of the Suez crisis.92 Bruce continued to keep a careful eye on stocks of drink, knowing that they were central to the business of entertainment and realizing that sparkling water, coffee and tea were just as important as bottles of Bollinger champagne. He reckoned that purchases of Scotch whisky used up two-thirds of his $6,000 entertainment allowance and estimated that he actually spent about twice this amount on drinks, cigars and cigarettes in his first year.93 Eventually, this interest in wine provoked unwelcome, public controversy. In 1967 he answered an appeal from a former colleague to list the five best white and red wines he had drunk in London, for publication in the Foreign Service Journal. He assumed ‘this was to be an expression of personal taste … Little did I realize what trouble I was courting’. When the issue appeared, Bruce found himself at the centre of complaints that all the wines selected were French or German. Letters arrived from such eminent figures as Congressman Donald Edwards of California, who sent several bottles from his home state for Bruce to try. The Ambassador was forced to spend one Sunday concocting a reply, insisting that he supported State Department advice to serve American wines.94 The Estate itself was a more persistent concern. In May 1962, Bruce spent some time composing a letter to the Foreign Office about his concern

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with flocks of crows, whose ‘careless defecatory habits … ruin what might otherwise be agreeable outdoor cocktail parties’. The letter went all the way to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Home, who suggested he might come round for a shoot. More seriously Home’s private secretary contacted the Ministry of Works, who pointed out that one pair of crows in Regent’s Park had protected status and must not be shot. They did however provide a telephone number for the park superintendent who, it was explained, could kill any ‘unprotected’ crows.95 The superintendent does not seem to have made use of it because, in July 1967, still plagued by up to thirty crows who had driven most other birds away, Bruce appealed to Sir Solly Zuckerman, at nearby London Zoo for advice – even suggesting that one of his eagles might hunt them. But with shooting disallowed, poison too risky (it might be eaten by the Bruces’ dogs, Milou and Mosie) and traps unreliable, the best Zuckerman could suggest was waiting until the next breeding season and sticking a pin in each egg. ‘The poor crow goes on sitting on the useless eggs instead of laying another clutch’.96 Aside from the vexed situation with crows managing the estate also meant consultations with the Crown Estate Office over such issues as cutting down trees.97 Writing in 1967, Douglas Busk noted that, ‘An Ambassador, and very much more his wife, runs something like an official hotel … ’, and it has been said that, ‘The analogy between ambassadors and innkeepers is commonplace’.98 Some overnight guests literally treated Winfield as they would a commercial hotel, pilfering items, including silverware, to keep as souvenirs. When they were packing to leave the Bruces discovered the loss of numerous items, including five mustard pots. In January 1968, the Ambassador personally shopped in a sale at the Irish Linen Store to replace the Residence’s sheets, towels and tablecloths that had worn out, thanks to the large number of guests.99 There were also personnel problems at Winfield, though of a different order to those faced at the Embassy. The worst involved the son of Bruce’s Russian chef, André, who became threatening to other staff. Bruce proposed paying him to live elsewhere. A few years later the chef tried to get André back for a holiday, along with another son who ‘was once refused entry to Great Britain while performing as a female impersonator in a Cairo cabaret’. Bruce refused to let either of them stay at the House. There was a similar episode in August 1968 when the sons came back to the Embassy, the chef simultaneously tried to get his daughter employed as a maid and the other domestic staff complained that André had threatened them with knives. On this occasion, Bruce subjected the chef to a ‘tirade’.100 As at the Embassy, there were also worries about the turnover of staff, with fears in 1961 that wages might be too low for them. An investigation

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was carried out, but it suggested that pay was not the issue, nor was hard work. Instead, it was a question of the ‘long and indefinite hours of duty’ necessary to cover the social functions held at the house. Kitchen staff, maids and the like could get better deals on fixed hours and free weekends at hotels and restaurants around London. For this reason, it was recommended there should be no reduction in gratuities and paid holidays for them.101 As at the Embassy, Bruce could show personal concern for his staff. He was shocked by the sudden death of the head gardener in 1962 and, in July 1962, ‘advised Paolo, the footman, not to leave us just because the Butler insists on referring to him, and his dozen or so Spanish and Italian fellow-servants as “damned foreigners” ’.102 But the Ambassador also complained about the quality of many staff. On 3 May 1963, he wrote that ‘dramas amongst domestics, threats, knife play, unlocked doors and windows, cavorting upstairs … are part of a pattern persistent since we arrived here’. Problems with finance were hardly new for American diplomats in London. Back in 1818, Richard Rush wrote that it was American policy ‘to give to its public services small salaries’, adding that, ‘It is not for those honoured by being selected to serve the Republic abroad, to complain’.103 In 1851 Abbott Lawrence estimated that it cost him $20,000 a year to maintain himself in London (including a horse and carriage) when his salary was only $9,000.104 In October 1961 Bruce reckoned his personal household expenditure was about $8,000 per quarter. He noted on 23 March 1962 that British ambassadors seemed much better treated: in Washington, David Ormsby Gore’s allowance had just been increased to £33,950 pa (at a time when £1.00 was worth $2.80).105 The Jackson Committee singled out his comment that it was a ‘national shame’ that the London embassy was not open to a career ambassador, simply because the allowances did not cover the costs.106 But the financial situation improved, largely thanks to the efforts of Findley Burns, as head of the Administrative Section. On 2 July 1964, Bruce recorded another ‘almost daily’ meeting with Burns, who reported that he had managed to get the ambassadorial Official Residence Allowance increased from its 1963 (fiscal year) figure of $10,600, to $30,000 for 1964 with further increases to follow. Then again, figures for 1965 show Bruce was still providing almost half of the amount needed to cover his financial commitments as ambassador.107 The fact that most career diplomats could not afford to occupy the London post explains why, in the last analysis, whatever personal failings some sensed in him a character like Bruce – experienced in diplomacy and well connected with British opinion formers, as well as blessed with enormous wealth – remained the best candidate for this particular job.

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Notes  1 Philip Kaiser, Journeying Far and Wide (New York: Scribner’s, 1992), 219–20.  2 The National Archives (TNA), Kew, FO 371/179615, Gore-Booth to Dean, 21 July, and reply, 26 July 1965, and FCO 7/1445, Hayman to Greenhill, 27 August 1969.  3 Virginia Historical Society, David Bruce Diary (DBD), 9 March 1961; John F. Kennedy Library (JFKL), Boston, National Security File (NSF), Country File, United Kingdom (CFUK), Box 170, Battle to White, 8 September 1961.  4 Richard Chlupaty (designer), Embassy of the United States of America, London (London: Stone and Cox, undated); Raymond Seitz, Over Here (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998), 52–4.  5 DBD, 19 July and 30 August 1961, 24 January 1962, 18 March 1964.  6 JFKL/NSF/CFUK/170, Bruce to Kennedy, 14 February, and Bundy to Bruce, 2 April 1962.  7 On ‘diplomatic status’ see G. R. Berridge and Lorna Lloyd, The PalgraveMacmillan Dictionary of Diplomacy. 3rd ed. (Basingstoke: PalgraveMacmillan, 2012), 121–2.  8 Shawn Dorman (ed.), Inside a US Embassy: How the Foreign Service Works for America (Washington, DC: American Foreign Service Association, 2003), 9.  9 G. R. Berridge, The Counter-Revolution in Diplomacy (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011), 7. 10 DBD, ‘Breakdown of Agencies Occupying Embassy Building’, 24 November 1961, with DBD, 1 December 1961. I am grateful to Professor Richard Aldrich for the estimate of 120 for the CIA contingent. 11 Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection (FAOHC), Herbert Horowitz interview. 12 FAOHC, Arnold Denys memoir. 13 DBD, speaking notes, 1 July 1964. 14 FAOHC, Vance Armstrong interview. 15 The problems faced by ambassadors, around this time, on the managerial side are best brought out in William Macomber, The Angels’ Game (New York: Stein and Day, 1975), chapters 9–12. 16 Christopher Ogden, Legacy: A Biography of Moses and Walter Annenberg (Chicago: Little, Brown, 1999), 445. 17 FAOHC, Richard Ericson interview. 18 David Mayers, The Ambassadors and America’s Soviet Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 196; Charles Bohlen, Witness to History, 1929–69 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973), 289 and 475. 19 FAOHC, Willis Armstrong interview. 20 FAOHC, John Correll, Charles Cross and Mark Lissfelt interviews. 21 FAOHC, Galloway, Krys, Stoddart and Eilts interviews. 22 Kaiser, Journeying, 222. 23 Kenneth Weisbrode, The Atlantic Century (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2009), 104.

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24 Chester Bowles, Promises to Keep: My Years in Public Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), 458–9. 25 DBD, 30 August 1961 and 23 February 1962. 26 US Senate, Committee on Government Operations, Subcommittee on National Security Staffing and Operations, hearing of 18 September 1963 (hereinafter ‘Senate Hearing’), 238; Henry Jackson, The Secretary of State and the Ambassador (New York: Praeger, 1964), 45. 27 Douglas Busk, The Craft of Diplomacy (New York: Praeger, 1967), 48. 28 DBD, 22 April 1964. 29 DBD, 6 July 1966. 30 DBD, 15 March 1966 and 29 February 1968. 31 DBD, 30 March 1962. 32 DBD, 5 December 1963, 18 February (and Bruce to ‘DEF’, 26 July) 1965 and 13 January 1968. 33 J. K. Galbraith, A Life in our Times (London: André Deutsch, 1981), 391. 34 Ellis Briggs, Farewell to Foggy Bottom (New York: David McKay, 1964), 38. On the theme of professional versus amateur diplomats see the essays by Clare Boothe Luce and Charles Thayer in Elmer Plischke (ed.), Modern Diplomacy: The Art and the Artisans (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1979), 305–36. 35 For example: James McCamy, ‘Rebuilding the Foreign Service’, Harper’s Magazine, No. 219 (November 1959), 80–90; Zara Steiner, Present Problems of the Foreign Service (Princeton, NJ: Center for International Studies, 1961); Robert Schulzinger, The Making of the Diplomatic Mind: The Training, Outlook and Style of the US Foreign Service Officers, 1908–31 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1975), 196–7. 36 DBD, 14 September and 4 December 1962. In general embassy structure see Wendell Blancké, The Foreign Service of the United States (New York: Praeger, 1969), chapter 4. 37 FAOHC, Galloway interview. 38 DBD, 11 January 1965, and Bruce to Hillenbrand, 1 March 1969; FAOHC, Krys interview. 39 FAOHC, Krys interview; J. K. Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1969), xix. 40 DBD, 3 July 1965. 41 DBD, 1 February 1968. 42 DBD, 13 and 16 March 1962. 43 DBD, 24 January and 18 September 1964. 44 DBD, 9 May 1967. 45 Galbraith, Journal, xix and 219; Dorman, Inside, 12, quoting Daniel Russell. 46 TNA/FO 371/179615, Gore-Booth to Dean, 21 July 1965; DBD, Bruce to Rusk, 24 April 1964. 47 Kaiser, Journeying, 59–71; DBD, 19 November 1964, 7 September 1966, and Bruce to Hillenbrand, 1 March 1969. 48 DBD, 16 May, 15 June and 25–26 October 1961.

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DBD, 21 August 1961. For example, DBD, 19 November and 16 December 1963. DBD, Bruce to Rowan, 28 January 1965. For example, DBD, 10 March 1966. DBD, 4 January 1968. John Harr, The Professional Diplomat (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969), 3. 55 Warren Ilchman, Professional Diplomacy in the United States, 1779–939 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1959), 241–3; Lincoln Gordon, ‘The growth of American Representation Overseas’, in Vincent Barnett (ed.), The Representation of the United States Abroad (New York: Prager, 1965), 13–46, statistics from 17; and, on the reform attempts see Blancké, Service, 26–9. 56 Committee on Foreign Affairs Personnel, Personnel for the New Diplomacy (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institute, 1962). 57 Ralph Dungan, quoted in Harr, Diplomat, 41, and see chapter 2. 58 Henry Villard, Affairs at State (New York: Crowell, 1965), 175. 59 Morton Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1974), 261. 60 Keith Hamilton and Richard Langhorne, The Practice of Diplomacy (London: Routledge, 1995), 232–3; Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics, 261; David Newsom, Diplomacy and the American Democracy (New York: Wiley, 1988), 5. 61 Senate Hearing, Passim; Kennedy’s May 1961 directive is reproduced in Barnett (ed.), Representation, 230–2, and see chapter 6 on policy coordination in embassies. 62 Briggs, Foggy Bottom, 164–5. 63 Busk, Craft, 34. 64 Jackson, Ambassador, 21–2, and see 19–29 and 77–83. 65 Dean Rusk, As I Saw It (New York: Norton, 1990), 531. 66 DBD, 14–15 September 1962 and 27 January 1964. 67 DBD, 10 and 12 March 1964. 68 DBD, 28 May and 14 September 1965. 69 DBD, 8 and 19 October 1965 (with Bruce to himself, undated). 70 DBD, 5 October 1966. 71 DBD, 9 May 1962. 72 DBD, 4 December 1962. 73 DBD, 3 July and 22 September 1965. 74 Schulzinger, Diplomatic Mind, 152. 75 DBD, 16 May and 16 October 1967. 76 DBD, 22 November 1967 and 6 January 1968. 77 DBD, 22 January, 1 and 15 February 1968. 78 DBD, 3 May 1968. 79 DBD, 14 and 16 August, and 11 September 1968. 80 DBD, 17 September 1968. 81 Seitz, Over Here, 62–8.

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 82 DBD, 8 March 1961.  83 DBD, 15 March, 23 March and 26 July 1961.  84 Ogden, Annenberg, 409–10; Eric Clark, Corps Diplomatique (London: Allen Lane, 1973), 134.  85 DBD, ‘Ambassador’s Statistics, 1961–68’, 31 December 1968.  86 DBD, 2 May 1962.  87 DBD, 4 April 1967 and 2 May 1968.  88 Henry Brandon, Special Relationships (London: Macmillan, 1988), 182.  89 Ogden, Annenberg, 408 and 410–11.  90 Peter Catterall (ed.), The Macmillan Diaries, 1957–66 (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011), 462.  91 Arthur Schlesinger, Journals, 1952–2000 (London: Atlantic, 2012), 167.  92 See E. J. Kahn, Jock: The Life and Times of John Hay Whitney (New York: Doubleday, 1981), 223–51; and Thomas Mills, ‘John Hay Whitney, 1957–61’, in Alison Holmes and Simon Rofe (eds), The Embassy in Grosvenor Square; American Ambassadors to the United kingdom, 1983–2008 (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2012).  93 DBD, 11 March 1961 and 17 November 1962.  94 DBD, 8–9 April, and Bruce to Edwards, 10 April 1967.  95 DBD, Bruce to Samuel, 29 May, and reply, 31 May 1962.  96 DBD, Bruce to Zuckerman, 16 July, and entry, 26 July 1967.  97 TNA/CRES35/3449, Brogley to Ash, 10 October, and reply, 30 October 1961.  98 Busk, Craft, 51; Hamilton and Langhorne, Diplomacy, 238.  99 DBD, 28 February 1969 and 1 January 1968. 100 DBD, 24 November 1965, 20 July 1967 and 5 August 1968. 101 Meade to Bruce, 5 July, appended to DBD, 11 July 1961. 102 DBD, 10 and 21 July 1962. 103 Richard Rush, A Residence at the Court of London (London: Century, 1987), 31. 104 Beckles Willson, America’s Ambassadors to England, 1785–928 (London: John Murray, 1928), 264–5. 105 DBD, 30 October 1961 and 23 March 1962. 106 Jackson, Ambassador, 85. 107 Bruce provided £17,872, the US Government £18,585: ‘Statement of Accounts for year ended 31st December 1965’, with DBD for 8 February 1966.

3

Communicating with Washington Having discussed Bruce’s management of the Embassy in London, it is appropriate to turn to his relationship with Washington. A key question about twentieth-century diplomatic practice is the extent to which ambassadors lost their independence of initiative. Arguably, independence was already under threat in the nineteenth century, with the advent of the telegraph, but as Bruce arrived in London swifter communications allowed the home government to monitor an ambassador’s actions more closely than ever. In September 1962, he was able to talk to William Fulbright, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, over the new Telstar satellite communications link: ‘The telephone conversation was as clear as if we had been in the same room.’1 Yet communication is a two-way street and it is arguable that telephones and jet transport allowed ambassadors to gain a greater say in deliberations back home.2 In any case there are other significant questions that may be explored by looking at the theme of communications. As Douglas Busk, a retired British ambassador, warned in 1967, a Head of Mission must take ‘as much trouble to keep in touch with the thinking at home as he does with the atmosphere in the country in which he is serving’.3 To what extent did Bruce heed such advice? Furthermore, there was a growing concern in Washington at this time, with more messages being exchanged, policy-making could become confused. The 1963 Jackson Committee noted a number of problems in communications between Washington and its ambassadors, who felt in need of clearer guidance and swifter instructions from the State Department, as well as a broader range of discretion for themselves in dealing with the host government. Meanwhile the Department itself felt overwhelmed by the volume of reporting from its posts.4

The embassy perspective Some contemporary analysts argued that, far from being under close control from home, embassies often acted as a law to themselves. A 1970s Brookings study, which analyzed the way in which different parts of the US government pursued their own interests, argued that embassies sometimes gave priority to good relations with the host country over other US aims; ambassadors felt

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Washington had mistaken priorities and came to believe that they properly grasped only local conditions. As a result, embassies sometimes tried to reinterpret, undermine or even ignore instructions, as well as argued against and delayed action upon them. Furthermore, whereas career ambassadors might have felt loyalty to the State Department, political appointees were likely to have limited respect for its officers.5 Certainly one of Bruce’s political contemporaries, J. K. Galbraith, was quite caustic about the Department, feeling it ‘remote, mindless, petty and, above all, pompous, overbearing and late’. He once told Kennedy, ‘The other night I woke with a blissful feeling and discovered I had been dreaming that the whole Goddamn place had burned down’.6 John Harr, in a study of professional diplomats, wrote of the ‘lack of understanding, faulty communication, distrust [and] poor coordination’ between the capital and its posts overseas.7 Bruce had definite views on such questions, one distinctly coloured by what might be termed an ‘embassy perspective’. He did not by any means share Galbraith’s contempt for the State Department but, when discussing communications between Washington and its embassies before the Jackson Committee, Bruce tended to blame difficulties on the American end. One was the ‘problem of interagency agreement’, the fact that it was ‘unreal to say that State has a monopoly on the conduct of foreign affairs because so many other departments of government have a direct interest in it … ’. He added that too many officials were involved in committee meetings trying to iron out interagency differences. Another problem was the sheer volume of requests generated by Washington, which put strain on Embassy staff and meant that ‘you will not get the sort of voluntary reports, those which spring almost from the personal predilection or desire of somebody to investigate something which may be of importance to policy’.8 On another occasion Bruce compared the American policy machine unfavourably to that operated by the British: The Foreign Office administration and personnel make me envious. Their people do not seem nearly so bound up in red tape, endless clearances, interagency controversies, decisions by committees, as we are. There is less fuss and feathers, much smaller numbers involved, clearer lines of command than is the case with us.9

There were many such examples of poor communication. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Bruce faced the ‘humiliation’ of the British providing him with a copy of a Kennedy’s speech before Washington provided one to the Embassy. In September 1964, Bruce complained that the State Department kept quizzing the Embassy about British military plans against

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Indonesia when all the time such information was already available to the Pentagon. More important, he could sometimes find himself embarrassed by being excluded from some direct exchanges between the US and British governments. When he saw George Brown in November 1966, to discuss the Foreign Secretary’s recent visit to Moscow, it became evident that a telegram had already been sent by Brown to the Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, on the subject. ‘Since I have not seen message to Sec State’, Bruce complained, ‘I found some of his references to its contents mystifying’. He asked the Department to let him see a copy before he had any further meetings with the British.10 Bruce could hardly hope to turn Washington’s working methods into those of Whitehall nor, realistically, could confusion and error be entirely eradicated from the instructions he received. But he could develop strategies to deal with the ever-growing volume of communications and maximize the chances of his voice being heard above the hubbub. This chapter considers the methods he used.

Impacting on the State Department and White House It should be said at the outset that Bruce was in a privileged position among America’s ambassadors in his familiarity with those at home and his ability, therefore, to have them pay heed to his views. He was a close acquaintance of key policy-makers such as the Secretary Rusk and Under-Secretary George Ball. Bruce had the confidence to argue with them as when he advised Rusk in May 1965 that, despite pressing affairs in Washington (over a crisis in the Dominican Republic), it would be a mistake not to attend an upcoming NATO ministerial meeting; absence might set a precedent for other foreign ministers to miss meetings in future.11 Bruce was sometimes sought out by policy-makers in Washington to consider broad questions of policy especially on policy towards Western Europe. On 16 September 1964, Bruce, Bob Schaetzel of the Bureau of European Affairs and others had a conversation in which Bruce voiced the opinion that Washington was trying to push the Europeans too hard on political integration. This led Bill Tyler, the Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, to write to Bruce saying that he shared this opinion. While Tyler agreed with the general lines of Kennedy’s policies of encouraging European integration, he worried that, ‘by nagging and worrying and lecturing all and sundry’ about this, the result had been ‘to justify [French President Charles] de Gaulle’s thesis that America’s interests … are not necessarily the same as Europe’s’. Relaying these views in a memorandum, Tyler asked that Bruce keep it confidential because ‘I am not showing it to anyone in my office’.12

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The Ambassador’s standing was such that he was consulted about key issues outside his own area. Sometimes these seemed so routine that he treated them lightly. In April 1962, after Walt Rostow sent him a severalhundred page memorandum on US Basic Security Policy, Bruce admitted that he simply ‘skimmed through it’, then asked an official to write a digest for him.13 When a subject seemed significant to him, however, he was prepared to devote time and energy to it. In May 1967, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara gave the Ambassador a memorandum on the Vietnam War (later submitted to President Johnson), which set out the dangers of any further escalation of the conflict. McNamara, previously known as a ‘hawk’, wanted to reduce the bombing of North Vietnam, limit troop deployments and make a renewed effort at peace talks. The memorandum inspired Bruce to write up his own views and send these to the Defense Secretary.14 In a four-page paper Bruce set out his doubts about the war and, like McNamara, felt it would be ‘madness to contemplate achieving our aims by much further escalation in North Vietnam’. He realized that the war was unwinnable and believed in retrenchment, reducing the bombing and training South Vietnamese troops ‘as night guerrillas’, able to take on the Viet Cong. The paper identified Bruce (whose doubts about the war actually went back several years) with a growing number of officials who doubted the wisdom of escalation. Possibly it encouraged McNamara to press his case on a sceptical Johnson.15 More remarkably, Bruce could also have influence higher up, in the White House, and even have his views sought out from there. This was despite the fact that, under Kennedy at least, there was a very close relationship between the President and the British Ambassador to Washington, David Ormsby Gore (discussed more fully in the next chapter). It was also despite the fact that Bruce, by his own admission, had had no ‘prior personal friendship’ with JFK before going to London.16 Furthermore, they met only intermittently. McGeorge Bundy, the National Security Adviser during 1961–6, said Bruce was one of the few ambassadors who ‘wrote with a sense of style’, ensuring that President Kennedy was happy to read his telegrams.17 Kenneth Weisbrode has listed Bruce, alongside Llewellyn Thompson (Moscow) and Chip Bohlen (Paris), as one of only three ambassadors who Kennedy liked and trusted.18 Bruce’s staff understood that their chief had ‘the ear of the White House and he knew when to use it. He was sought out by the White House rather than the other way around’.19 True, since Britain was such a significant ally the White House was bound to be inquisitive about key developments there. Even ‘routine’ messages from the Embassy found their way to the National Security Adviser. In late 1961, these included analyses of the Queen’s speech and of a foreign policy debate, as well as news of British press reactions to a

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presidential speech.20 Nonetheless, respect for Bruce’s opinions helped ensure that his Embassy’s concerns about Anglo–US relations were heeded and Kennedy was so impressed by the Ambassador that he talked of bringing him back to Washington to become Under-Secretary of State (a suggestion Bruce himself resisted).21 Bundy himself would recommend advice from Bruce to Kennedy, as in April 1961 when the Ambassador wanted the President to tell Macmillan that EEC membership would strengthen, not weaken, Anglo–US links.22 Indeed, Bundy proved a valuable ally at the heart of the administration in safeguarding Anglo-American relations. In June 1961, he was quick to get Kennedy to scotch press rumours that he was seeking better relations with de Gaulle at Macmillan’s expense.23 This situation continued under Johnson when during 1965 Bundy supported Bruce’s arguments that, whatever the President thought of Harold Wilson, the British Prime Minister did his utmost to defend US policy in Vietnam. Bundy also once told LBJ that Bruce was the ‘wisest man in the country on our relations with the British’.24 Johnson could be an abrasive and difficult character but Philip Kaiser, who arrived as Deputy Chief of Mission in 1964, felt Bruce was ‘a superb interlocutor between President and prime minister’, and Paul Gore-Booth, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, wrote that Bruce ‘has the advantage of at least part of one ear of the President … ’.25 Perhaps the clearest example that Bruce retained an ability to influence presidential thinking under Johnson came in March 1966 after de Gaulle announced France’s withdrawal from the military and political structures of NATO (while remaining a signatory to the Atlantic Pact). Initially Washington was happy to let Britain take the lead in forging a response from the other NATO members and wanted to avoid any recriminations against the General. But Bruce disagreed with this approach, telling Rusk it was a mistake ‘to create the impression that [the British] are representing us as intermediaries in a situation where our interests are paramount and our leadership is expected’. Bruce wanted the President to demonstrate that America was ‘actively engaged and deeply concerned’ with the issue. As James Ellison has commented this telegram, though ‘at odds with US crisis strategy … achieved that rarest of results: it prompted a presidential intervention in European affairs’. Johnson read the telegram, expressed his agreement with its argument and began to play a fuller role in the crisis.26 It was not the sole occasion when the ambassador had an impact in Washington. In February 1967, during the ‘Sunflower’ talks on Vietnam, between Wilson and Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin, Bruce pressed by telegram and telephone that the United States should not renew its bombing of North Vietnam, which had been suspended for a time. He feared a resumption would upset the Soviets, offend Wilson and make a settlement

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more difficult in future.27 Walt Rostow, the National Security Adviser, although no anglophile in the Bundy mould, was clear that it was ‘at David Bruce’s strong personal recommendations’ that the White House agreed to continue the current ‘bombing halt’ until after Kosygin left London.28

Visits home One way Bruce heeded Busk’s advice to keep informed about ‘thinking at home’ was to make regular visits to Washington. Indeed, after his Senate investigation Henry Jackson recommended that US ambassadors should make two or three visits, of 7–10 days each, to Washington each year.29 Bruce made surprisingly frequent visits to the United States, exceeding Jackson’s recommendations in the early years, though slowing his pace of travel during 1967–9. In his first nine months as ambassador, Bruce travelled nearly 30,000 miles on official business outside London, mostly flights to and from America. In 1965, at the peak of his travels, he covered more than 58,000 miles (see Appendix 2). His example challenges the idea that ambassadors became mere ‘marionettes’ confirms that modern communications, for some at least, were a two-way street. For Bruce, flights were so frequent that he would come across political acquaintances en route. On a trip to Washington on 24 August 1963, he sat next to Richard Neustadt, an influential adviser to Kennedy. After flying into London on 5 October 1963, he had a conversation in the VIP lounge with Lord Home, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, who had arrived on a separate aircraft. On 12 April 1965, Bruce found Richard Nixon on a TWA flight for Washington and they discussed the impact of television on election campaigns. Visits home provided a fuller understanding of particular policy decisions and helped avoid costly misunderstandings in their execution. In October 1966, for example, he had a lunch with Jack McCloy who was trying to resolve differences between Britain, the United States and Germany over ‘offset costs’ (paid by West Germany to help cover the foreign exchange costs of British and US troops based there). Bruce was able to get an idea of McCloy’s terms of reference, the likely time-scale of the talks and the political problems surrounding them.30 Time in Washington also reinforced Bruce’s close relationship with key policy-makers. During a long visit in September– October 1961, dominated by the Berlin Wall crisis, Bruce had meetings with – among others – Rusk, Ball, Bundy and the CIA Director, Allen Dulles. The experience did nothing to tempt him back into the Department. ‘The pace is a killing one, and the effect is apparent in many faces’, he noted. Dean Rusk was said to work more than 16 hrs a day.31 Such trips also kept him updated

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with longer-term problems, as in September 1962, when the future of the Congo and Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) were key items. While he was there, Home came over and Bruce fulfilled a hope of seeing the Foreign Secretary and President ‘in some degree of intimacy, so that those two strong characters might reach, not in substance but in sympathy, some appreciation of each others exceptional merits’.32 This highlights another purpose of visits home: to be present at high-level bilateral meetings. He had been over at the start of the year, for example, for exchanges between the State Department and a British team on Macmillan’s application to join the European Economic Community (EEC).33 Many of Bruce’s visits were tied into summit conferences with British premiers, for which he was almost always in Washington beforehand to brief the President. In fact, his first flight home was only eighteen days after he had arrived in London, when he talked to Kennedy about meeting Macmillan. The Ambassador also joined in sessions between the two foreign ministers, Rusk and Home, and was on hand for the summit itself.34 More will be said about summits in Chapter 8, but it is important to note here the opportunity they provided for the Ambassador to make his views felt. With Johnson, perhaps more than Kennedy, the conversations could be wide-ranging. On 17 November 1965, Johnson talked with Bruce about nuclear sharing in NATO, anti-Americanism in the British press, crises in the Dominican Republic and Rhodesia, the possible withdrawal of France from NATO and the Vietnam War. On 14 January 1966, Bruce met the President again and managed to expose the latter’s latest thinking on nuclear sharing in NATO, which had become a mystery to key advisers. In particular, it was clear that Johnson wanted to keep negotiations going with the British rather than trying to force the pace with them. Bundy felt this significant enough to send a report to Rusk.35 There were other excuses for being in Washington. In the early 1960s, Bruce usually returned home for a family Christmas in Virginia, combining this with a sojourn in the capital. In 1961–2, he attended a Kennedy–Macmillan summit on Bermuda just before the Christmas festivities and joined some Anglo-American talks, on trade and labour questions afterwards.36 He spent a month in early 1963 working in the department, after Kennedy asked him to prepare a paper on the future of US-European relations in light of de Gaulle’s veto of EEC enlargement and of the US proposal to form a nuclear ‘Multilateral Force’ within NATO.37 He was back in the capital again for much of September to take part in a selection board for the Foreign Service, trying to decide on which of 300 officers should be promoted to Career Minister. Inevitably, this work was accompanied by meetings on pressing political issues, including a session with Kennedy who, as well as reviewing world

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affairs, asked Bruce to remain in London until the end of his first presidential term.38 Along with a stay in his Virginia home dealing with personal matters, Bruce was away from London on that occasion from 24 August to 5 October. Despite such long absences from London, Bruce could not be in Washington for every important meeting. He was not present in June 1968, for example when, unusually, the National Security Council devoted part of a meeting to Anglo-American relations. Rusk, however, based his analysis in part on a recent telegram from Bruce.39 Some of the Washington meetings that Bruce did attend could be quite dramatic. Most remarkable of all, on 19 May 1966, he was present at a White House session to discuss the future of NATO after French withdrawal when an argument flared up between the President and Dean Acheson, the former Secretary of State, about handling de Gaulle. ‘The fat sizzled in the fire for quite a time … It was an unpleasant experience’. Then again, Johnson had a habit of making Bruce uncomfortable. When they met on 10 February 1965, the President was obsessed with Vietnam and, despite the Ambassador’s attempts to plead ignorance, ‘insisted on my expressing an opinion on certain contingencies’. Perhaps wishing to avoid an argument Bruce ‘told him I hoped American ground troops would not be used in North Vietnam … but that we would be able to attain our objectives by air strikes’. This fitted the consensus of the administration.40 But the very fact that he was asked to express a view suggests the President really believed a remark he once made to Senator Stuart Symington: ‘every time I am with that David Brice, I learn something.’41 Bruce and other American ambassadors in Europe would keep in contact via regional meetings, held about once per year, which allowed them to discuss particular challenges but also gain a fuller grasp of State Department thinking. His first such gathering as Ambassador to London was in August 1961, in Paris, which focused on the Berlin crisis.42 In Bonn, during 24–26 October 1963, there were thirty-three ambassadors (or their seconds), ‘a hefty Washington delegation’ and, on the last day, they were joined by Dean Rusk. Bruce found that such a gathering ‘conduces to a coordination of effort on the part of us all’ and suggested (in vain) that the next meeting should include the topic, ‘the function of an Ambassador under existing conditions’.43 The regional meetings could be supplemented, when necessary, with bilateral meetings. On 28 March 1962, the Ambassador to Brussels, Doug MacArthur, came over to London and they discussed the continuing instability in the Congo, a former Belgian colony, while in March 1966 Bruce went to see ‘Chip’ Bohlen in Paris to discuss about de Gaulle’s impending departure from NATO.44 Incidentally, Ambassadors were not the only ones to hold regional meetings. In November 1961, the London Embassy hosted a week-long gathering of American commercial officers from Western Europe, which Bruce opened.45

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Telephone or telegram? While he mixed with Presidents and Prime Ministers, Bruce was not above thinking about mundane matters, such as the most appropriate means of making diplomatic communications. By the 1960s, the telephone was the quickest means of keeping in touch over long distances. Soon after Bruce arrived in London, his old mentor, Averell Harriman, who was involved in talks about Southeast Asia in Geneva and wanted closer support from the British, called him. The ambassador could not afford to be long out of reach even when socializing. A dinner in Oxford in August 1961 was interrupted by another call from Washington.46 It could be difficult to avoid calls even when relaxing. On 9 March 1965, on a trip to Rome, Bruce was hastily contacted from Washington to see the British Foreign Secretary, Michael Stewart (who was in the Italian capital for a meeting), about the latest developments on Vietnam. Just before he was due to speak at a Pilgrims dinner on 23 November 1964, Bruce was called by George Ball, who wanted to issue a statement about the MLF, after Harold Wilson had seemed to criticize the proposal in the Commons. On this occasion, the Ambassador was able to dissuade the Under-Secretary from acting precipitately, pointing out that a close reading of Wilson’s language showed it to be equivocal. It was a good example of the way rapid communication could be a two-way street, allowing the Ambassador to shape Washington’s behaviour. There were other examples as well. A telephone call from Harlan Cleveland, the Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, in September 1961 allowed Bruce to argue against the State Department’s desire to issue a statement about Britain’s EEC application, which would have set out areas of US concern and, the Ambassador feared, disrupted the talks.47 Nor did he have to wait for Washington to contact him. In July 1962, he and Ormsby Gore again became concerned that Washington might issue a public statement on British entry to the EEC. Bruce not only sent a telegram to Rusk arguing that ‘it would be most injudicious to inject ourselves at this stage into the affair’, but made his view ‘even more vehemently known’ by telephone.48 Yet, however easy the telephone might seem as a method of communication, it had its problems. One was the time differences at transAtlantic distances. Returning home from a dinner at 11.00 p.m. on 26 April 1961, Bruce was surprised to receive a call from President Kennedy about the worsening civil war in Laos. As Bruce commented: ‘The six hour difference in time between Washington and here does not make for convenience in trying to reach accord on common policies.’ That night, since business required a meeting with Macmillan and a return call to the White House, the Ambassador did not get to bed until 3.00 p.m. On 23

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March 1964, Bruce faced a comical but tiring challenge of trying to arrange a trans-Atlantic telephone call for the following day between Rusk (who was currently appearing on CBS and due before a Congressional committee in the morning) and Foreign Secretary Butler (who was currently unwell and due in the House of Commons in the morning). Bouncing messages between the State Department Operations Room and the resident clerk at the Foreign Office, Bruce was only able to resolve the issue at 11.00 p.m. ‘I was mentally exhausted as if I had finished a difficult task in higher mathematics’, he complained. Sometimes, the time difference between London and Washington was ignored at the US end. On 16 August 1968, Ron Spiers, the Political Counsellor, was telephoned at 2.00 a.m. and ordered to deliver an ‘urgent’ telegram to the Foreign Office about the problem of food aid to the beleaguered enclave of ‘Biafra’ in war-torn Nigeria. Since it was the middle of the night, the best Spiers could do was leave the message with the FO’s duty clerk, who promised that ministers would see it in the morning. ‘This is another of the all too frequent instances where we are ordered to make immediate … representations on subjects which cannot be handled on an emergency basis’, Bruce complained, ‘The result is the British, although polite about it, often think some of our actions smack of hysteria’.49 Even more dangerous was that in contrast to letters and telegrams, which took time to draft and were generally reasoned documents, tempers might flare during telephone conversations. The most dangerous example in this period was Harold Wilson’s call to the White House on the night of 10–11 February 1965, when he hoped to arrange a meeting to discuss the escalating conflict in Vietnam. As Bruce put it, Johnson ‘made short shrift’ of the idea, bluntly telling the Prime Minister not to intrude on Vietnam. Thereafter, the two leaders tended to communicate through letters and telegrams with very few telephone calls.50 It may have been Bruce who convinced Wilson of the wisdom of this. On 16 February he talked to the Prime Minister about communications with Johnson and ‘tried as tactfully as I could to advise he not do so at the present time, but use as a channel his Embassy in Washington’. Richard Neustadt, who was over in London a few months later, reinforced the message on instructions from Washington that Wilson would do best to use Bruce as a channel of communication, rather than trying to establish a direct link with Johnson.51 Bruce later told the journalist Henry Brandon, that he (Bruce) had convinced Wilson ‘it was better to communicate with the President by teletype, because a man like Johnson, to whom reaching for the telephone was second nature and principally an instrument to pressure people, did not like others using it to put him on the spot’.52 This advice in favour of caution seemed to work. On 3 March 1966, Bruce noted that he

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received ‘almost daily copies’ of telegrams between Wilson and Johnson, which were ‘cordial to the point of being on both sides effusive … ’. The telephone also suffered from technical problems. One attempt to talk to Rusk over the Ambassador’s private line was barely intelligible because ‘the special contrivance did not function’. (The ‘special contrivance’ was probably the scrambler installed for security purposes.53) Again on 1 February 1964, as a crisis in Cyprus worsened, Bruce noted that the Embassy was able to maintain ‘constant’ telephone contact with Washington but only ‘over open wires, since the secret line functions by fits and starts’. This does not seem to have been a rare event, at least in the early 1960s. A telephone call between Johnson and the Prime Minister, Alec Douglas-Home, about Cyprus on 10 August 1964, also ‘broke down quickly because of mechanical failure’. In such circumstances, there was a clear advantage in using telegrams, which were encoded to stop unwelcome eavesdropping. For particularly sensitive messages from Washington to the Prime Minister, there was also a ‘secure Downing Street wire’. Bruce used this on New Year’s Eve 1967 when, with the Prime Minister vacationing on the Scilly Islands, the White House urgently sent messages about how it intended to address America’s balance of payments deficit. Not that Bruce was convinced that any system was entirely secure. During the final phase of the nuclear Test Ban negotiations in July 1963, there was a ‘welter of telegrams’, given the designation ‘Mum’, which only the Ambassador could see and upon which the decoding clerks had to write their names so that any leak could be traced. The Ambassador caustically remarked, ‘If there is anything in precedent, a leak will shortly occur in Washington’.54 This did not prevent him from sending highly secret messages of his own, direct to the White House. When, on 19 June 1963, he telegrammed Washington about the danger of Macmillan losing office over the Profumo scandal, he sent it to Bundy alone, explaining that, ‘I am not sending this message … via State, since I think there should be no danger of dissemination, except as you might direct’. There were particular reasons for such discretion: it seemed possible Macmillan might lose office just before he was due to meet Kennedy for a summit. Yet, however secure they might be and whatever time they allowed for careful reflection, there were good reasons for trying to restrict the use of telegrams. The Embassy received ‘strict admonitions from Washington to cut down on telegraphic traffic’ and Bruce believed ‘that telegrams should be reserved for really urgent cases’. (Interestingly, among these he included the need for consular staff to resolve visa issues.) What ‘clutters up the wires’, Bruce told the Jackson Committee, were inquiries ‘which are addressed to the field at random, and often on a wholesale basis’, from officials in Washington who imagined the issue was urgent when in fact it was not. Such requests

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often generated long documents, even though they sometimes asked for information available in newspapers. He recalled, as a junior diplomat in Rome, being asked to produce a report on the Italian market in corsets for the Department of Commerce, a market that turned out to be non-existent. ‘But that request was addressed to every American diplomatic and consular post around the world’, presumably generating hundreds of hours of work. ‘The essential has to be separated from the non-essential, by a proper process of screening, and non-essential traffic should be sent by letter or airgram’, he advised. He felt his own embassy had succeeding in holding the volume of telegrams down.55 In September 1961, Bruce reported concern over the volume of telegrams leaving the Embassy,56 and in January 1962 he received a report that, while the Embassy had despatched 8,011 telegrams in the months April–December 1961, it had received 25,963.57 Wilson Beale, the Embassy’s Economics Minister, noted, ‘cable traffic has been voluminous’ in January 1963, when de Gaulle vetoed the first British attempt to enter the EEC.58 Visiting the message centre on 16 December 1963, Bruce commented that its members ‘work with the greatest vim long hours on what always seems to be an endless task’. But the number of telegrams was a concern in Washington too, where the State Department received over 300,000 words via telegraphic traffic every day – yet felt itself poorly informed when some decisions were required.59 The number of telegrams received by the Embassy tended to rise, unevenly, over the following years, totalling 34,241 in 1962 and 45,199 in 1968. But the telegrams sent by the Embassy were a different picture, rising from 12,601 to 15,220 in 1962–3, then falling below 10,000 for each of the next three years, before climbing back to 12,695 in 1968. Thus, the Embassy seems to have fulfilled Washington’s admonition to keep the volume of telegraphic traffic under control.60 Indeed, the Jackson Committee specifically praised Bruce for his attitude towards reporting.61 Then again, a ‘spike’ in numbers was unavoidable when particular crises blew up, as in October 1967, when tension mounted again between Greeks and Turks in Cyprus. London was at the centre of the diplomatic exchanges and the volume of incoming telegrams rose from a ‘normal’ level around 3,000 a month to 4,300, a large number being marked ‘Flash’ or ‘Immediate’, indicating they had to be processed quickly. Afterwards, Bruce sent a message around the communications unit to thank them for coping with the strain.62 One final problem for the Ambassador was that the ease of trans-Atlantic communications allowed him to be bypassed easily, not least in exchanges between the White House and Downing Street. While many ‘summit’level telegrams were copied to the Ambassador,63 and Kennedy sometimes specifically asked that this be done,64 it was not always the case. Wilson may

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have been put off using the telephone to Johnson in 1965, but Kennedy and Macmillan used it when it suited them. This was most notably the case during the Cuban Missile Crisis (discussed more fully in Chapter 5) although their key conversation on 22 October was rather one-sided, with ‘the President largely holding a monologue’, and both men apparently found it difficult to operate the ‘press to speak’ buttons so that ‘the transcripts make slightly comic reading’.65 When writing to Bruce in October 1964, soon after taking office, Wilson acknowledged that he and Johnson had already talked over the phone and exchanged written messages.66 This was not the only occasion when the British seemed keener than Washington to keep the Ambassador informed about such communications. Bruce only found out the contents of one of Johnson’s messages to Wilson, in August 1966, thanks to being shown a copy by Gore-Booth.67 Philip Kaiser once commented that, whenever there was a summit, the Embassy usually got an account of it from the British before one arrived from Washington, ‘reflecting the fact, we thought, that 10 Downing Street was … more sensitive to the obligations of the special relationship’.68

Washington comes to London It has been said that one reason for the survival of the Embassy is because of the ‘valuable support it is able to provide … to temporary … guests’, including ‘the new high-level visitors whose new, airborne mobility was supposed to render it obsolete’.69 In Bonn, during 1963–8, Ambassador George McGhee, entertained 14,875 people over 526 occasions, the purpose of such entertainments being ‘largely to enable important visiting US officials to meet high German officials, other German dignitaries and our embassy staff ’. Yet, Bonn was ‘a small, provincial city with little social life like that of London, Paris or Rome’, so McGhee saw comparatively few Congressional visitors.70 London was a far more attractive destination for them and Bruce was therefore much busier. The first statistics Bruce received on the matter, for July–September 1961, showed 572 visitors to the Embassy, 369 of them on official business, with 41 from Congress. (This was a conservative figure, excluding ‘routine’ US visitors to the Commercial Section, reckoned to number about 240, and the Consular Division, reckoned at 9,200.) Of the visitors, 38 had appointments with Bruce and 93 had had lunch or dinner at Winfield House so that both the Embassy and the Residence were affected by such demands. Other burdens on the Embassy included meeting visitors on their arrival (68 cases), providing them with transport (83), making hotel reservations (288) and arranging appointments for them (105).71

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On 31 March 1962, Bruce commented in his diary that, ‘American officials alone, or in delegations ranging from three to twenty, are thick as thieves around here’. Paul Nitze, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, had just rung to say he was coming over the following week. Bob Schaetzel of the Bureau of European Affairs and Under-Secretary Ball were both due before then.72 The list is evidence that Bruce kept in touch with US policy not only through his trips to Washington but also thanks to the numerous American officials who flew into London. Lyndon Johnson may never have visited Britain, but Kennedy did so twice as President and the Secretaries of State and Defense, Rusk and McNamara, came over on several occasions. It was while he was on one of his visits in May 1967 that McNamara handed Bruce the memorandum on future policy in Vietnam, discussed earlier. During 1966, there were 133 high-ranking ‘distinguished’ visitors of Deputy Assistant Secretary rank or above from the State Department and 88 from other government departments; while lower-ranking ‘distinguished’ visitors totalled 580. Other non-official VIPs crossed the 2,000 mark. Of these, 131 Congressional, government or other VIPs either had appointments with or briefings from Bruce himself, while they ran up 780 meetings with other embassy staff. In fact, calls on Bruce by visiting US government officials totalled 992 between April 1961 and December 1968 (ignoring an unusually large USAF delegation in 1964). Most (358) were from the State Department, but other significant numbers came from the Navy (99), Army (56), Pentagon (41), White House (23), USIA (22) and Treasury (21).73 On 6 December 1962, Bruce noted of his head of administration: ‘Poor Findlay Burns, in spite of his ebullient temperament, is beginning to look harassed, as a result of streams of official visitors, including Congressmen, making often outrageous demands for services.’ But sometimes, the Ambassador himself felt harassed. ‘I feel faint each day’, he wrote on 25 May 1966, ‘when I read the list of incoming visitors for whom particular attention has been requested by the President, the Department, or Congressmen. They devour the meagre resources of our motor-pool, and the time of our officers’. Some were literally flying visits. On 30 May 1961, Ball jetted in from Paris, lunched at Winfield House (where he discussed British relations with the EEC) and left for Heathrow immediately afterwards. But sometimes considerable paperwork was necessary. Ahead of Jackie Kennedy coming over in March 1962, the Embassy received numerous enquiries from all sorts of quarters, ranging from the protocol of a First Lady meeting the Queen to which hairdresser Jackie was likely to visit.74 Ahead of a visit by the Secretary of Commerce, John Connor, in November 1966, there were over a thousand applications for the dinner he was to have at the American Chamber of

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Commerce.75 Sometimes the pressures on the Ambassador were intense. Protocol dictated that he had to meet certain visitors at the airport himself, as with Vice-President Hubert Humphrey on 2 April 1967. That was just the start of three days dominated by his visit. It involved Bruce in an overnight stay at the Prime Minister’s country home, Chequers; meetings with the Foreign Secretary, George Brown, and Leader of the Opposition, Edward Heath; a session with newspaper owners and editors; dinners in Downing Street and with the Queen at Windsor Castle; and an afternoon in the House of Commons. When Humphrey flew out on the 5th, Bruce, who had hardly focused on anything else while the Vice-President was over, commented on ‘the note of relief, although of jubilation, at the office; a visit of this sort is a strain on the time, attention, and patience of all the people involved … ’. But the Ambassador’s involvement had a practical purpose. Aside from introducing visiting officials to their British counterparts, he could also provide advice on local customs. When Navy Secretary John Connally was over, in August 1961, for example, Bruce prevented him from smoking during lunch until the toasts to the President and Queen were complete. Connally ‘was unaware of this British custom, strictly enforced here, whenever the Queen’s health is drunk’.76 Undoubtedly, visits could be useful for allowing Bruce to argue his own case with US officials. In March 1962, for example, when Arthur Schlesinger, Kennedy’s Special Assistant for Latin American Affairs, was over, the Ambassador seized the opportunity to criticize Washington’s policy on British Guiana. He argued that ‘our Government is making a mistake in attempting so fully to participate in decisions affecting that British dependency’ and that, with the White House, State Department and Congress all involved, ‘there are too many cooks stirring this broth’.77 (It cannot be said, however, that this advice was heeded.) Visits by officials also helped Bruce update his own understanding of US foreign policy. When William Bundy, the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, met ‘Rab’ Butler and key FO figures about Southeast Asia, on 28 May 1964, Bruce grasped that key decisions were looming on whether to use US combat forces in Vietnam and Laos. On particularly important but delicate issues, a team might fly over from Washington to brief the Ambassador. This happened with the proposed Strategic Arms Limitation Talks in September 1968, when a three-man group led by Raymond Garthoff arrived, before travelling on to the Bonn, Paris and Rome embassies.78 Again, the workload these represented was a real burden, as can be seen from periodic entries in the Ambassador’s diary. On 14 September 1962, Bruce wrote of being ‘imposed upon, sometimes to an almost intolerable degree’ by a mix of official and unofficial visitors, some of them ‘charged with relatively important duties, others, taking

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advantage of jet travel, are here for frivolous reasons’. On 19 November 1963, he reckoned, ‘I can almost count on at least one government official a day from Washington or posts other than our own coming to this Embassy’, adding that ‘Many of them … have no business of mutual interest to transact; whether they drop in from curiosity or to “make their number” is usually unclear’. Of course, the burden did not only fall on him. On 1 February 1964, he noted that the Embassy was treated like ‘a bar room and restaurant for jet-borne countrymen’.79 Bruce’s diary is sparse on any negative criticism of particular individuals, but it is clear that sometimes the practical burden of visitors was worsened by personal differences. When Mennen Williams, Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, arrived in July 1961 Bruce uncharacteristically described him as ‘a ham’. Williams’ desire to overthrow the Salazar dictatorship in Portugal and eradicate all traces of colonialism in Africa jarred against Bruce’s more diplomatic, gradualist approach. Williams ‘may be correct from a long-range policy standpoint, but not realistic in the short term’.80 But even visits by welcome guests became bothersome. When Harriman was over, in March 1964, Bruce complained that ‘This kind of thing constitutes one of the greatest problems for a modern Embassy; these perambulating officials necessarily take up a good deal of time’.81

Congressmen and others In contrast to McGhee’s experience in Bonn, many visitors to London were from Congress – 121 in 1966 alone, bringing a total of 208 staff and other dependents with them. Most were met on arrival, provided with transport and had hotels reserved and travel schedules organized by the Embassy. They might be given help with transport, secretarial work and, perhaps more remarkably, sightseeing and shopping. Bruce’s office also handled 1,170 communications with members of Congress that year.82 Sometimes large delegations arrived from Congress, delving into some aspect of policy. They could be both time-consuming and unrewarding. In May 1968, the Embassy prepared policy papers for a subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee and made sure that key staff were present for a 9.00 a.m. meeting with them. But Bruce recorded, the ‘conversation was finally confined to a long discourse by myself, and to my answering a lot of questions. As usual with such committees, some of the questions were entirely irrelevant’. One particularly naïve Congressman asked whether it had been right to create the state of Israel: ‘I avoided stepping into that quicksand.’ In this case, however, Bruce at least felt the subcommittee was doing potentially valuable work to the extent of US military commitments and the lack of support

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from many allies.83 One issue he was alive to was the need to ensure that the Embassy and State Department told Congressmen the same story. Thus, when Senator Tom Keating asked the Embassy for statistics on British civilian aircraft sales to China, Bruce referred the request to Washington arguing that, to avoid any danger of discrepancies, it was best that any figures should come from one source.84 As one 1963 study noted, diplomats treated Congressional visits ‘philosophically’, doubting the value of many but keeping any criticisms private. But some visits to London were downright embarrassing. In November 1963, a nine-strong Congressional delegation led by Wayne Hays and visiting NATO allies was beset by accusations of money-wasting, having brought three aircraft, six armed escorts and the head waiter from the House of Representatives. In London, the Embassy had to provide fifteen cars for them.85 The numbers from Congress grew in the wake of the November 1968 elections, when Bruce and his staff expected ‘a veritable flood’, knowing that some visitors would be ‘lame ducks … making their last free tour of Europe’ before losing office.86 Of course the sense that Congressional visits were a waste of money was not unique to London. Galbraith described one large delegation to India as an ‘unalloyed junket so far as I could tell. They seemed annoyed that we had not provided automobiles and a special air trip to Jaipur’.87 Not all diplomats were negative about Congressional visits. William Macomber, who became ambassador to Jordan in 1961, argued that it was in a diplomat’s interests to treat them seriously, because Congress had a real influence on foreign policy and its members needed experience abroad, where they could feel part of an American ‘team’.88 But most of the remarks in Bruce’s diary on the subject tend to be negative. Given the already-considerable burdens that such visits represented, Bruce was dismayed when, in January 1962, a State Department circular arrived insisting that all members of Congress should be met at the airport by the Ambassador personally. ‘Even when a plane is on time, this entails a loss of about three hours from work to carry out this chore’, he complained, ‘In the case of this embassy, the burden would be almost intolerable’.89 Bruce and his staff composed a lengthy response. They argued that ‘it would be an unproductive use of time’ for the Ambassador to meet every Congressional visitor, though exceptions could be made for some (such as the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee) and all ‘Congressional travellers about whom we have received advance notice are invariably met by an American Embassy representative … ’.90 Thankfully, similar arguments were made by the Paris embassy and the State Department backed off, allowing Bruce to maintain his existing practices.91 Even without making a physical appearance, members of Congress could add to the workload of Bruce and his office. By February 1962, less than a year into his posting, he had

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already ‘received a total of 277 letters from Congressmen, all requiring an answer, and all asking favours of one kind or another’.92 On 21 July 1962, he recorded that, ‘Introductions of deserving constituents flow in by thousands from Congressmen’. These could lead to yet more time-consuming meetings of little value. When a Mr and Mrs Bloom saw Bruce on 5 May 1967 bringing a letter of introduction from a Senator, ‘Foreign affairs was the last thing on their minds’. Instead they ‘carried on a vigorous conversation about Pennsylvania politics and business … ’.93 Significantly, when he felt it appropriate to press a British visitor – Horace King, the Speaker of the Commons – on State Department colleagues, Bruce assured them that he was ‘a most undemanding person, and I think would be anything but a burden to those who might welcome him in Washington’.94 It was not only the US government and Congress that were responsible for the burden of hospitality thrust on Bruce. ‘One of the penalties of age is the amassing of numerous acquaintances’, he once wrote, ‘When they say they want to pay “their respects”, a phrase that automatically provokes shudders, they mean that, having nothing else to do, they wish to settle down for an hour to talk about themselves, or their tribulations in respect to hotel or transportation requirements’.95 Even eminent Americans who were not among his acquaintances felt the need to call on the Ambassador when they were in Britain. They could be an interesting and eclectic group: in 1961–2 they included the Christian evangelist, Billy Graham, former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt (who Bruce complained ‘has no humour’) and the jazz musician Benny Goodman (who spoke in the Embassy theatre).96 It was an ambassadorial duty to mix with the expatriate community in London. Soon after arriving Bruce met the leaders of several US organizations based in the capital and ‘agreed to assume the offices in their societies traditionally held by the American Ambassador’. They included the American Chamber of Commerce, the American Club and the American Society in London.97 Bruce also noted that, ‘every few days matters having no relationship to Embassy operations require attention’, simply because some expatriates expected Bruce to help them sort out some problem that involved the United States. In November 1968, for example, the authoress Marthe Bibesco asked him if he could get an advance payment for her from the University of Texas for her offering them a collection of private papers.98

Two-way communication? Clearly, apart from problems created by time differences and technological glitches, there was generally little difficulty in communicating with Washington. Sometimes the contact was almost too regular. Bruce wrote

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in September 1961 of ‘an absolute barrage of telegrams and telephone calls from Washington about British Guiana’. On another occasion, he noted that ‘The volume of US officials, correspondents, and telegrams from the Department and foreign posts never diminishes’.99 Compared to the early nineteenth century, ambassadors may have lost a degree of personal initiative; certainly, they were no longer isolated, having to take (or avoid) decisions ‘on the spot’ when it came to major crises. Yet Bruce was sometimes allowed discretion over whether to carry out instructions. In July 1968, for example, a year into the Nigerian civil war, he was given authority to tell the Foreign Secretary that Washington supported the British on arms supplies to the federal Nigerian government. Bruce, however, decided not to take advantage of this. He judged that word might ‘be leaked, and involve us unnecessarily and a dangerously in a situation regarding which, up to now, we have kept our skirts clear … ’.100 Compensating for any loss of initiative, better communications not only allowed ambassadors to be more fully updated about thinking at home but also meant they could travel home and become directly involved in policy debates, as well as letting their views be known by telephone and telegram. Yet that does not mean that Bruce was always informed even about issues that could seriously impact on Anglo–American relations. His diary comment, when tackled by Harold Wilson about the secret US attempt to contact North Vietnam via a Polish diplomat, Janusz Lewandowski, is telling: ‘I am without knowledge of the details of these talks, or whether they are important.’ A few days earlier he had actually passed on a message from Rusk to Brown on the matter but this ‘did not … illuminate it’. It is an example of how ambassadors could find themselves knowing a few fractured points about issues, but unable to grasp the whole picture, and also at the way they could be at the mercy of what their home governments chose to tell them. In this instance, Bruce was at a severe disadvantage because Wilson ‘said he felt he had been treated in respect to this alleged negotiation as a second-class citizen … He expressed his feelings about this matter in stronger terms than I have heard him use for a long time’. All Bruce could do was promise to send a telegram to Rusk on the matter.101 Forming policy towards Britain was a two-way process closely linking the Embassy and Washington. Sometimes they seem to have worked smoothly together. In late 1961, for example, Rusk asked all the State Department’s desk officers dealing with the ‘Free World’ to draw up a two page memorandum summing up their particular country’s basic foreign policy. The result was a pithy analysis of Britain’s desire to play ‘an influential and responsible role in … world affairs’ against a background of declining power (emphasized by the Suez crisis) and economic problems (low growth and balance of payments deficits). It concluded, among other points, that Britain was ‘more

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unequivocally’ on Washington’s side ‘than any other ally’. The memorandum was sent to the London Embassy, where the Political Section redrafted some of it, but largely approved its contents.102 On other occasions, exchanges were far less smooth. Even at such a delicate point as the Cuban Missile Crisis, Bruce felt information from Washington to be ‘messy’ and ‘ill coordinated’.103 Crossed wires were also possible. In May 1965, Bruce received an ‘all too frequent late Friday afternoon telegram’ asking him to see Michael Stewart urgently to keep the UN from involving itself in a crisis in the Dominican Republic, which the United States had invaded. However, the Ambassador subsequently discovered that the State Department had also made its views known directly to Britain’s UN Ambassador, Lord Caradon, and that this approach had already led to a change in the latter’s instructions. ‘This places our Embassy in an awkward and somewhat humiliating position’, wrote Bruce, adding that ‘similar lapses have, I am sorry to say, been far from unknown … ’.104 Compared to most US ambassadors, then, Bruce was in a privileged position when it came to being heeded in Washington, which perhaps explains why it is difficult to find him deliberately sabotaging or ignoring instructions. Unlike many, he could have a real impact on policy up to the presidential level. Certainly his case shows communication was a two-way process, giving ambassadors the potential to shape decisions rather than being mere marionettes. In any case, he had been a diplomat so long that he had a far more positive view of the State Department than had a recent political appointee like Galbraith. True, Bruce had his differences with Washington, as can be seen from his dislike of Mennen Williams’ opinions, but they were on specific issues rather than general practice. The fact that he made regular visits home and that many senior officials visited London (albeit absorbing a considerable amount of embassy time), helped keep him informed of US policy. He even succeeded in fulfilling Washington’s desire to keep the volume of telegrams under control – arguably doing a better job than the State Department itself. Yet miscommunications were clearly a regular part of his life, sometimes for technical reasons but often, as he told the Jackson committee, because of confusion and insensitivity at the Washington end.

Notes  1 Virginia Historical Society, David Bruce Diary (DBD), 12 September 1962.  2 Christopher Meyer, DC Confidential (London: Phoenix, 2005), 63.

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 3 Douglas Busk, The Craft of Diplomacy (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967), 43.  4 Henry Jackson, The Secretary of State and the Ambassador (New York: Praeger, 1964), 68–73.  5 Morton Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1974), chapter 14.  6 J. K. Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal: A Personal Account of the Kennedy Years (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1969), 199, and Letters to Kennedy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 80.  7 John Harr, The Professional Diplomat (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969), 301.  8 US Senate, Committee on Government Operations, Subcommittee on National Security Staffing and Operations, hearing of 18 September 1963 (hereafter ‘Senate Hearing’), 238 and 245.  9 DBD, 5 September 1964. 10 DBD, 22 October 1962 and 14 September 1964; Lyndon B. Johnson Library (LBJL), National Security File (NSF), Country File, United Kingdom (CFUK), Box 210, London to State, 27 November 1966. Then again, this was unusual: Bruce was often asked to deliver messages from Rusk to the Foreign Secretary and knew of their contents: LBJL/NSF/CFUK, Box 211, State to London, 7 July 1967. 11 Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1964–8, Volume XIII: Western Europe Region, document 84. Available at: http://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1964–68v13/d84. 12 FRUS, 1964–8, Volume XIII, document 35. Available at: http://history.state. gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964–68v13/d35. 13 DBD, 13 April 1962. 14 DBD, 10 and 11 May 1967; Draft memorandum, McNamara to Johnson, 19 May 1967, FRUS, 1964–8, Volume V, 1967, document 177. Available at: http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964–68v05/d177. 15 DBD, Bruce to McNamara, 11 May 1967. JFKL, Robert Eastabrook papers, Box 1, memorandum of meeting, 23 February 1962, has Bruce saying it would be a mistake to become involved in Vietnam: ‘Getting bogged down with large numbers of men but without confronting the real enemy is the way to suffer real attrition.’ 16 John F. Kennedy Library (JFKL), Oral History Program (OHP), Bruce statement. 17 JFKL/OHP, McGeorge Bundy interview, 25. 18 Kenneth Weisbrode, The Atlantic Century (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2009), 154. 19 Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Arlington, Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection, Sheldon Krys interview. 20 JFKL/NSF/CFUK/170, London to State, 2, 4 November, and 9 December 1961, all signed off by Bruce.

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21 Nelson Lankford, The Last American Aristocrat: The Biography of Ambassador David Bruce (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1996), 312. 22 JFKL/NSF/CFUK/170, Bundy to Kennedy, 7 April 1961. 23 JFKL/NSF/CFUK/170, Bundy to Kennedy, 9 June 1961. 24 LBJL/NSF, Memoranda to the President, Box 5, Bundy to Johnson, 3 June and 16 November 1965. 25 Philip Kaiser, Journeying Far and Wide (New York: Scribner’s, 1992), 222; The National Archives (TNA), Kew, FO 371/179615, Gore-Booth to Dean, 21 July 1965. 26 James Ellison, The United States, Britain and the Transatlantic Crisis, 1963–8 (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2007), 42 and see 39–49; DBD, 8 March 1966. 27 LBJL/NSF, Country File, Vietnam, Boxes 252–8, ‘Sunflower folder’, Memoranda of telephone conversations (9.30 a.m. and 10.12 a.m.) and Bruce to Rusk, with reply, 11 February 1967. 28 LBJL/NSF, Memoranda to the President, Box 13, vol. 21, Rostow to Johnson, 13 February 1967. 29 Busk, Craft, 43; Jackson, Ambassador, 74. 30 DBD, 12 October 1966. 31 DBD, 25 September–6 October 1961 (quote from 28 September). 32 See especially DBD, 20, 21 and 30 September 1962. 33 DBD, 6 January 1962. 34 DBD, 28 March–12 April 1961. 35 FRUS, 1964–8, Volume XIII, document 124. Available at: http://history.state. gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964–68v13/d124. 36 DBD, 20–22 December 1961 and 6 January 1962. 37 FRUS, 1961–3, Volume XIII, Western Europe and Canada, document 72. Available at: http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961–63v13/d72. 38 DBD, 11 and 17 September 1963. 39 LBJL/NSF, NSC Meetings File, Box 2, summary notes of 587th meeting, 5 June 1968. 40 FRUS, 1964–8, Volume II, document 96. Available at: http://history.state. gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964–68v02/d96. 41 Lankford, American Aristocrat, 327. 42 DBD, 7–10 August 1961. 43 DBD, 27 October 1963. 44 DBD, 2 March 1966. 45 DBD, 20 November 1961. 46 DBD, 29 May and 30 August 1961. 47 DBD, 7 September 1961. 48 JFKL/NSF/CFUK/170, Bruce to Rusk, 27 July, and Ball to Bruce, 27 July 1962. 49 DBD, 16 August 1968. 50 DBD, 11 February 1965; Jonathan Colman, A Special Relationship? Harold Wilson, Lyndon Johnson and Anglo–American relations (Manchester:

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Manchester University Press, 2004), 54–7; Sylvia Ellis, Britain, America and the Vietnam War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004), 49–51. 51 DBD, 1 August 1965. 52 Henry Brandon, Special Relationships: A Foreign Correspondent’s Memoirs (London: Macmillan, 1988), 210. 53 DBD, 28 October 1961. 54 DBD, 20 July 1963. 55 Senate Hearing, 240–2. 56 DBD, 8 September 1961 and appended statistics, 16 August. 57 DBD, Memorandum to Ambassador, 25 January 1962. 58 Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Wilson Beale Papers, Beale to Darling, 26 January 1963. 59 Jackson, Ambassador, 23. 60 DBD, ‘Ambassador’s Statistics, 1961–8’, 31 December 1968. 61 Jackson, Ambassador, 72–3. 62 DBD, 7 December 1967. 63 For example, Johnson to Wilson, 2 July, 1 September and 1 October 1966. 64 For example, JFKL/NSF/CFUK/174, Bundy to de Zulueta, 28 May 1963, with undated note showing JFK requested that messages, sent by ‘private wire’ to Downing Street, should be seen by Bruce and Gore. 65 Horne, Macmillan, 367. 66 DBD, Wilson to Bruce, 21 October 1964. 67 DBD, 31 August 1966. 68 Kaiser, Journeying, 224–5. 69 G. R. Berridge, The Counter-Revolution in Diplomacy (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011), 5. 70 George McGhee, At the Creation of a New Germany (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 18 and 269. 71 DBD, 1 December 1961, and see 23 July 1962 for statistics. 72 DBD, 31 March 1962. 73 DBD, ‘Ambassador’s Statistics, 1961–8’, 31 December 1968. 74 DBD, 23 March 1962. 75 DBD, 16 November 1966. 76 DBD, 24 August 1961. 77 DBD, 1 March 1962. 78 DBD, 10 September 1968. 79 See also Lankford, Aristocrat, 302–5. 80 DBD, 20 July 1961. 81 DBD, 3 September 1961 and 12 March 1964. 82 DBD, ‘Ambassador’s Statistics, 1961–8’, 31 December 1968. 83 DBD, 9 May 1968. 84 JFKL/NSF/CFUK/170, Bruce to Rusk, 6 December 1961. 85 DBD, 11 November 1963. 86 DBD, 24 October 1968.

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 87 Galbraith, Journal, 497–8.  88 William Macomber, The Angels’ Game (New York: Stein and Day, 1975), 205.  89 DBD, 6 February 1962.  90 DBD, Bruce to Jones, 8 February, appended to DBD, 12 February 1962.  91 DBD, 27 February 1962, with appended Paris to Washington, 10 February 1962.  92 DBD, 6 February 1961.  93 DBD, 5 May 1967.  94 DBD, Bruce to MacArthur, 11 February 1966.  95 DBD, 21 July 1962. DBD, 21 July 1962.  96 DBD, 21 June 1961, 21 February and 11 July 1962.  97 DBD, 23 March 1961 and (on the American Club), 11 January 1965.  98 DBD, 21 November 1968.  99 DBD, 17 September 1961 and 13 April 1962. 100 DBD, 20 July 1968. 101 DBD, 10 January 1967. 102 National Archive and Record Administration, College Park, RG84, Great Britain, London Embassy, 1937–61, Box 482, 350 Britain November– December 1961 folder, Sweeney to Jones, 21 November, and reply, 5 December 1961. 103 DBD, 22 October 1962. 104 DBD, Bruce to Acting Secretary, and Diary entry, 21 May 1965.

4

Engaging British Government and Society However well respected ambassadors were in their own Embassy and however good their relations were with leaders at home, the main arena in which they displayed their skills was in dealings with the host government. In the nineteenth century it was assumed that ‘the value of a diplomat lay not in any specialist knowledge he might possess, but in his ability to communicate, negotiate and persuade’.1 In the twentieth century of course the need for specialist knowledge grew, hence the growth of experts in fields like economics, agriculture or labour relations and the vast array of US agencies based in London. Nonetheless, the ability of diplomats to win the trust of the host government remained a valuable asset, to be exploited when it came to lobbying in favour of some policy or negotiating an agreement. The 1961 Vienna Convention declared one of an embassy’s purposes to be the promotion of ‘friendly relations’. In a sense this was easier in London than many capitals because the British and Americans shared an array of interests – in promoting liberal democracy, resisting Soviet communism, expanding global trade – and there was a habit of close consultation going back to the War. Although Bruce sensed a degree of jealousy from the British people about US success and fears that Washington might use its nuclear arsenal unwisely, ‘between this Embassy and Whitehall … relationships seem intimate and excellent’.2 The trust between governments was such that Foreign Office (FO) officials might even show Americans briefing papers for summit meetings with third powers.3 As a British memorandum said in July 1968, ‘We are so bound up with each other that we cannot avoid an intimate relationship … our close association over the years has created habits of consultation and a sub-stratum of mutual confidence’.4 Such a close relationship between allies made for a frequency of contact that placed a real burden on US diplomats, not least the Ambassador who was expected to handle high-level meetings with the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary. This chapter investigates how successful Bruce was at engaging the British government. As part of his promotion of friendly relations it also considers his engagement with British society more generally, asking whether he became too obsessed with elite groups, neglecting the bulk of the British people.

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Macmillan and Douglas-Home However busy they might be, British ministers had good reasons to engage regularly with the representative of their most significant ally. Understandably, after his arrival Bruce had frequent meetings with FO ministers, like Edward Heath, who handled the first European Economic Community (EEC) application.5 But Bruce had easy access to other ministers, like Colonial Secretary Iain Macleod, worth cultivating because he was tipped to become premier.6 The key political figures however were the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary. When Bruce arrived in London, the relationship between London and Washington was at a potential turning point. Macmillan, premier since 1957, was close to Dwight Eisenhower, having worked with him in North Africa during the War, and did not at first welcome the arrival of the young John F. Kennedy. A meeting with Bruce’s predecessor Jock Whitney, in November 1960, had also left the Prime Minister concerned about the possible negative influence of the president-elect’s father, Joe (a former ambassador to London), and about JFK’s ‘strange character – according to J. W. obstinate, sensitive, ruthless and highly sexed’.7 Yet, when they met for the first time in March 1961 the relationship proved far warmer than expected. Macmillan found the President ‘courteous, quiet, quick, decisive – and tough’. Kennedy seemed in control of his military advisers and eager to see David Ormsby Gore become the next British ambassador in Washington. After they met again in June 1961 Macmillan felt a ‘personal friendship beginning to grow into something like that wh[ich] I got with Eisenhower … ’.8 A week after presenting his credentials, Bruce met Macmillan for the first time. The British had specially arranged an early meeting before the premier left for a visit to colonies in the West Indies.9 Bruce found the Prime Minister Edwardian in appearance, careful in speech, and with a slow, deliberate step, ‘as if thoroughly fatigued’.10 The Ambassador recognized that the Conservative government was ‘dominated’ by Macmillan and that ‘Power, in this country, resides in its government’. He also felt that, despite a ‘promising comeback’ by the opposition Labour Party in the opinion polls, Macmillan was likely to win any ‘snap’ election.11 The Ambassador was soon working closely with Downing Street on the political instability in Laos, being part of a group that sat up with Macmillan in his bedroom on 6–7 April waiting for a presidential telephone call about the crisis.12 Bruce held a dinner for Macmillan in December 1961, partly to discuss another upcoming summit with President Kennedy.13 On occasion Bruce was asked to contact the Prime Minister urgently and directly, as on 17 February 1962, after Kennedy sent a message complaining that an imminent British White Paper on defence

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did not bolster conventional forces in Europe sufficiently. Perhaps their most dramatic meeting occurred on 22 October 1962, when Bruce gave Macmillan details of the CIA’s discovery of Soviet missiles on Cuba, discussed more fully in the next chapter. At other times the Ambassador might be called in by the British to explain US policy. Most famously, Macmillan quizzed Bruce on 10 December 1962 about reports Washington was about to cancel the Skybolt inter-continental ballistic missile, which Britain had agreed to purchase in 1960, to carry nuclear weapons. The Skybolt episode is worth dwelling on because it was the occasion for a subsequent report to the President by Richard Neustadt on why there was such a serious Anglo-American misunderstanding. Bruce helped Neustadt when he was researching the report in London in mid-1963, providing him with a workplace and helping set up interviews with British policy-makers.14 But the question had to be asked whether Bruce himself could have done anything to prevent the crisis in bilateral relations. Skybolt lay at the heart of Macmillan’s hopes for an ‘interdependent’ relationship with Washington, but some in the State Department wanted its cancellation to end British hopes of an independent nuclear deterrent (whose existence might encourage others to want such systems). The US Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara, had warned Ormsby Gore on 8 November that Skybolt might be cancelled, but then the Americans dithered on the question. Meanwhile, no one told Kennedy that London was likely to be upset by the cancellation if it were not accompanied by some equivalent offer.15 It did not help that the Skybolt episode coincided with planning for another summit with Macmillan or with remarks by Dean Acheson, the former Secretary of State, to students at West Point, that ‘Britain has lost an Empire and not yet found a role’ – remarks that provoked outrage in the British press and worried Macmillan. The State Department pointed out that Acheson had spoken as a private individual, an argument echoed by Bruce in London (though he privately felt some of the speech ‘unnecessary, unproductive and tactless’).16 Nonetheless, the fact that Acheson spoke on 5 December and that word of the Skybolt cancellation leaked in the press only two days later made it a difficult time for AngloAmerican relations. Bruce could be criticized for contributing to the confusion, because he was one of those who ought to have warned Kennedy that the Skybolt cancellation would embarrass Macmillan, even threatening his political survival. Then, again, Ormsby Gore and even Macmillan failed to make their worries known to the President. As Neustadt’s later report pointed out, Bruce was only warned of a possible cancellation on 12 November in an ‘eyes only’ telegram from the Defense Secretary, McNamara, with no further instructions following from Washington. Bruce was not even sure that the

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State Department knew what was happening and, since McNamara declared that further action would be taken at ministerial level, it seemed prudent to the Ambassador to stay out of the matter. Indeed, Henry Brandon argues that Bruce was effectively instructed to do this.17 The Ambassador was, in any case, struck down by influenza in mid-November, cancelling a number of appointments. But Neustadt also felt that the Embassy staff in general had their weaknesses. In particular, ‘The inner politics of the bureaucracy in Britain is not studied by our Mission there. Nor are its members men with who their British counterparts (outside the Foreign Office) feel professional affinity, trade intimate “shop talk” ’. Neustadt felt that only Bruce could have talked to Macmillan or the Defence Secretary, Peter Thorneycroft, but the Ambassador ‘would not’ do so. Only on 21 November, pressed by one of his Politico-Military officers, Raymond Courtney, did Bruce finally sign off a message to State advising that the British government ‘should be afforded maximum amount of time possible to make its own consequent decisions’ if Skybolt were cancelled.18 Then again, Neustadt put most blame for the confusion on individuals in Washington who were strongly committed to non-proliferation, with the State Department and even the White House at fault for approving cancellation with insufficient thought for the consequences.19 As late as 10 December Bruce recorded in his diary that he still ‘did not know’ whether Washington really would cancel Skybolt and, as Andrew Priest points out, the London embassy felt it necessary at that juncture to remind Washington that the cancellation was highly important to London.20 Good bilateral relations were then saved at the Nassau summit, where Kennedy agreed to provide Polaris missiles to Britain in return for Macmillan’s promise to commit British nuclear forces to a proposed multilateral nuclear force in NATO.21 McGeorge Bundy noted that this formula (which seemed to satisfy the British while limiting the independence of their nuclear deterrent) was ‘much influenced by the advice of Ambassador Bruce’, who argued that ‘since we had told the world we would not help national nuclear forces … we should relate any assistance to the British … to a large-scale solution of the problem of the Atlantic nuclear deterrent’.22 Bruce, then, had been placed in a difficult position by all the machinations in Washington; he could have acted more swiftly on the rumours of a Skybolt cancellation, but ultimately he did not suffer too much from the Neustadt report. In early 1963, as Bruce told Washington, the Skybolt episode was quickly forgotten as new developments – de Gaulle’s veto of the EEC application and the sudden death of the Labour leader, Hugh Gaitskell – dominated the news.23 Macmillan continued to consult Bruce at critical points, such as de Gaulle’s veto of Britain’s first EEC application in mid-January. The

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Prime Minister, ‘cool as a cucumber’, was determined to persevere with the ideal of community membership and the deal to purchase Polaris missiles, which had provided de Gaulle – critical of London’s close relationship with Washington – with the excuse for his veto.24 On 4 March 1963, after spending a month in Washington reviewing US-European relations, Bruce spent about two hours with Macmillan and Foreign Secretary Home. Macmillan’s diary complains that Bruce had ‘little to report except talk, more talk, and still more talk’, but the official record shows a wide-ranging discussion on a host of matters, from Berlin and nuclear tests to JFK’s future plans for foreign visits and US consultation with its allies.25 On some occasions Bruce would see the Prime Minister as part of a larger US negotiating team. On 13 March 1963, for example, Bruce and other officials talked to Macmillan about the US proposal for a multilateral nuclear force, which the Prime Minister, despite signing up for the scheme at Nassau, feared was designed ‘to satisfy Germany and depress the power of Britain’.26 Bruce would also accompany eminent American visitors to meetings at 10 Downing Street. On 27 March 1963, he accompanied Adlai Stevenson, US Ambassador to the UN, to lunch with Macmillan. There were more meetings between the Ambassador and Prime Minister in April, because of Macmillan’s eagerness to see a Test Ban Treaty signed.27 But when they met on 29 May 1963, Macmillan ‘expressed himself as being desperately tired’ and it was increasingly clear that, beleaguered by policy failures and old age, his days as premier might be numbered. Bruce’s friendship with the next Prime Minister, Alec Douglas-Home, had been formed while the latter (then Lord Home) was Macmillan’s Foreign Secretary. The Ambassador’s diary shows they met on at least twenty-two occasions in 1962, sometimes quite frequently (four meetings in April and five in November). There was no regular pattern, however, and not all were business meetings. Ten were one-to-one, official encounters and four involved Bruce accompanying other American official delegations. But two were at the airport when, for reasons of protocol, both Bruce and Home had to see the Duke of Edinburgh off on a visit to the United States and then welcome him back. Another conversation was at a diplomatic reception; one was at a lunch for the Mayor of Berlin, Willy Brandt; one occurred at an embassy ceremony; and they also met at the Epsom races.28 Despite the mutual respect between the pair, not all their meetings were relaxed. In February 1962, Home was ‘polite, but cold as Arctic’, when asked for an answer to a US message about the colony of British Guiana.29 But such tension was exceptional. In a meeting on 11 January 1963, Bruce ‘was under no instructions to take up particular matters with him, so we had tea and a cheery talk’, during which Home reflected on various world trouble spots. The sense of informality

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was maintained when Douglas-Home succeeded Macmillan as premier. On Sunday, 17 May 1964, while Bruce and his wife were on a weekend in Scotland they were invited for tea at the Prime Minister’s family seat, The Hirsel. Ten days later Bruce had lunch with him at Downing Street.

Wilson and Brown Relations were not quite so relaxed with Labour’s Harold Wilson, after October 1964, especially with Lyndon Johnson in the White House. Nonetheless meetings between the Ambassador and Prime Minister were still frequent30 and Bruce now played a vital role as a kind of safety valve in bilateral relations, allowing each side to ‘blow off steam’ without the principals becoming directly involved. In March 1965, Bruce got a frank insight into Wilson’s thinking about Johnson’s growing involvement in Vietnam. The Prime Minister said he could not be expected to support an escalation about which he had not been consulted, that he would not be treated like a ‘51st State’ and that if Washington did not seek a negotiated settlement, it ‘could well lead to the biggest difficulty between Britain and the United States for many years … ’.31 Johnson would hardly have listened to such a statement as patiently as did Bruce. But Washington continued to make matters difficult. In December 1965, over the telephone Rusk made the remarkable request to Bruce that, on his forthcoming visit to the UN, Wilson should not make any embarrassing references to Vietnam. Bruce spoke to Wilson’s Private Secretary, Oliver Wright, about the matter but admitted it was ‘somewhat difficult to handle … I am not sure if President Johnson were making a speech to the UN he would welcome advice from the British as to what its contents should be’. Wright did his job however, later promising that there would be no embarrassments in New York.32 (Incidentally, this episode also reveals the importance of cultivating a good relationship with the Downing Street Private Secretary, which Bruce fully recognized.33) Perhaps the most difficult challenge that Bruce had to manage over Vietnam was when Wilson decided he must publicly ‘dissociate’ Britain from the US bombing of targets close to the North Vietnamese cities of Hanoi and Haiphong in mid-1966. Bruce reported the US plan to Wilson on 23 May and the Prime Minister immediately said he would have to dissociate, while ‘continuing his general support of American policy in Vietnam … ’. Bruce subsequently tried to placate both sides. When Wilson, on 2 June, sounded the Ambassador about a possible summit with Johnson, Bruce supported the request, because Wilson was generally ‘steadfast’ in support of US policies.

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Then, on 4 July Bruce won assurances from the Prime Minister that, when questioned about ‘dissociation’, he would simply refer to his parliamentary statements and avoid any embarrassment for Johnson. Bruce supported going ahead on this basis, ‘since I regard his assurances … as sincere and determined’.34 After all the problems, it was ironic that the July summit, which Bruce had helped organize, witnessed Johnson’s most fulsome praise for Wilson, comparing him to Churchill. Even Bruce thought that ‘the language used was cornily exuberant’.35 It was not the end of his problems over Vietnam however. In January 1967, he was the witness to Wilson’s anger over the so-called ‘Marigold’ peace initiative on Vietnam, about which Washington failed to inform London. The Prime Minister called in Bruce, complained he had been treated as ‘a second-class citizen’ and lambasted US behaviour as ‘intolerable’. However, having vented his fury at the Ambassador he was then able to write to President Johnson in more measured tones, noting that ‘as I have told David Bruce privately, I am seriously concerned at a matter which is … pretty fundamental to our relationship’.36 It did not help ambassadorial nerves that, during 1966–8, he also had to face an unusually volatile relationship with the latest Foreign Secretary, George Brown. Relations with Wilson’s earlier Foreign Secretaries had been good. Patrick Gordon Walker had been in office only a few months in 1964–5, while his successor Michael Stewart proved all too ready to play second fiddle to Wilson: Bruce was surprised, at his first meeting with Stewart, to have to make the running with the conversation, commenting that ‘the so-called “silent American” became verbose’.37 The larger-than-life Brown was a radically different prospect. On 7 September 1966, Bruce was received by the new Foreign Secretary at the FO, for an embarrassing meeting in which Brown not only kept other ambassadors waiting outside but also pressed a half tumbler of whisky on him and told him he was one of only three people in the world he trusted.38 Brown’s arrival at the FO ought to have been a welcome event, since he was strongly pro-American and had close links to the CIA. On 22 September 1966, the CIA’s Sherman Kent saw Bruce, who told him ‘of George Brown’s desire to talk to his associates in Washington … ’ adding that, ‘George attaches great importance to preserving his former friendships in the Agency’. On 3 November 1967, over lunch, Sir Dick White, the head of MI6, told Bruce that Brown was also ‘a helpful and emphatic supporter’ of his own organization. But, despite his undoubted loyalty to the Atlantic alliance, Brown proved highly unpredictable. At the Labour Party conference in October 1966, he suddenly launched a six-point plan for peace in Vietnam without consulting the Americans. He also embarrassed Bruce at a Washington dinner shortly afterwards by describing him as ‘the best

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Ambassador Great Britain had ever sent to Washington’. Bruce feared this was ‘likely to be misconstrued by some of the Senators and officials present, to say nothing of Pat Dean’, the British ambassador.39

Officials and MPs Whatever the passing problems with Brown (who resigned as Foreign Secretary in March 1968), the excellence of bilateral relations below ministerial level can be illustrated by a story from Sheldon Krys, one of Bruce’s special assistants. Krys sometimes had to visit the FO during the night with urgent messages, but there were always British officials ready to see these reach the appropriate level. They would discuss whether to wake some senior figure up, not even sparing the Prime Minister, and they allowed access to sensitive parts of the office like the communications centre. ‘I had the same pass as a Foreign Office official’, Krys recalled, then asked, ‘Can you imagine someone walking into our Operations Center?’40 There was even an element of working behind ministers’ backs to achieve some common aim. Thus in May 1966, a British official asked if the Americans could make it clear to a visiting British minister that Britain should remain part of the European Launcher Development Organisation, which Labour considered abandoning. State Department officials duly obliged.41 Bruce himself made a point of cultivating good relations with Britain’s diplomats. Annually he invited new entrants to the British Diplomatic Service to the US Embassy, giving them a briefing on its operations.42 The meetings stuck in the minds of attendees for years afterwards. One recruit at the 1965 session recalled that Bruce ‘was extremely nice to us all and fascinating with his anecdotes and stories of US diplomacy. He had a reputation of being a top grade American diplomat … and I am very privileged to have been able to meet him in such an intimate fashion’.43 Bruce was known to give personal advice sessions to British diplomats. When Edward Tomkins was appointed Minister at the British Embassy in Washington in 1967, he came round to see Bruce to discuss key issues and also the ‘individuals in the State Department with whom he could most appropriately transact business’.44 Bruce found it wise to cultivate a number of key civil servants including the Permanent Under-Secretary of the FO, its leading official. When Harold Caccia took up this post in January 1962 he was already well known to Bruce, having just completed a posting as British Ambassador to Washington. Bruce attended a Pilgrims’ dinner for Caccia in mid-January and made an early official visit to him.45 They met again on 10 February when, with Lord Home away in Scotland, the Ambassador delivered a message from Dean

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Rusk about Jordan, and yet again on 15 February. So it went on. They were together on 14 January 1963 when the unwelcome news about de Gaulle’s veto of the EEC membership bid came over the tickertape machine. In July 1963, they spent a Sunday afternoon analysing the results of the Kennedy– Macmillan summit at Birch Grove.46 On 4 September 1964, Bruce described Caccia in flattering terms in his diary: ‘his mind is incisive; his judgement excellent; he is resourceful, honourable, able, dependable, frank and loyal.’ Their frequent conversations continued into the Labour government until in May 1965 Caccia handed over to Paul Gore-Booth, with whom Bruce met less frequently.47 After a meeting on 21 April 1966 Bruce recorded that, while he liked Gore-Booth, he did not think him ‘as incisive as Caccia’. From 1966, Bruce started to record rather more meetings with the Prime Minister’s Private Secretary, Michael Palliser, considering him ‘a jewel’ and commenting ‘I trust this man unreservedly’.48 Another regular contact, given US concern about the British economy, was the Governor of the Bank of England ‘Rowlie’ Cromer. They had their first lunch together at the Bank of England on 4 May 1961. In February 1965, after Cromer publicly declared that Britain was living beyond its means, Bruce described him as ‘a fine fellow, and also an able one’.49 But as with Caccia’s passing, the Ambassador seems to have been less close to Cromer’s successor, Leslie O’Brien, who became Governor in 1966 and is barely mentioned in the diary. Bruce sometimes attended meetings with backbench MPs too. One gathering at St. Stephen’s Tavern near Parliament in July 1961 allowed him to sound out their views on the Berlin Wall crisis and possible entry to the EEC.50 On occasion, he would sit in on debates in the House of Commons. He did this, for example, when the Congo was debated in December 1961, when Macmillan defended his conduct over the Profumo scandal in June 1963 and when Vietnam was debated in July 1966.51 Another element of ambassadorial work was to make connections with opposition leaders. This was especially important at a time when the balance between the two main parties was close and either could win the next election. In the early 1960s, Bruce had a good relationship with the moderate Hugh Gaitskell, despite the latter’s opposition to EEC membership.52 When Gaitskell died in January 1963 Bruce quickly established contact with his likely successor, Wilson.53 As seen earlier, the Ambassador was also friendly with Labour’s deputy leader, Brown, whose propensity for embarrassing antics began long before he became Foreign Secretary. When Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963 Brown, who appeared to have been drinking, gave a television interview in which he claimed the President was ‘a very great friend of mine’, though actually they had rarely met. Afterwards he sent an apologetic letter to Bruce who said he was ‘not inclined to dwell on’ the episode.54 After Labour took

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office Bruce kept contacts with Conservative politicians, continuing to meet Douglas-Home socially for example,55 then establishing links with Edward Heath, who took over as Leader of the Opposition in September 1965.56

Negotiating, lobbying and clarifying Such contacts, carefully cultivated, were designed to smooth the way when it came to the practical challenges of negotiating agreements, lobbying the British and clarifying the positions of both sides. Geoffrey Berridge has argued that one reason for the survival of the resident embassy has been that, ‘it expedites secret negotiation – albeit usually only on matters of secondary importance … ’.57 Certainly Bruce commanded an embassy that was large and efficient enough to be trusted with a range of negotiations. As he once pointed out, some of the negotiations carried out by the Embassy were ‘almost endless. Take, for example … civil aviation. The discussions never seem to terminate’. Indeed he believed that negotiations were more important than the Embassy’s role in political reporting.58 Many minor, yet delicate issues required bilateral negotiation. In May 1961, a problem of protocol arose with Buckingham Palace. Jacqueline Kennedy’s sister, Lee Bouvier had divorced a few years earlier to marry a Polish prince, Stanislaw Radziwill, himself twice divorced. Their child was due to be christened in London and the Kennedys were coming over for the ceremony, staying at the Radziwills’ home not far from Buckingham Palace. Yet, apparently because divorcees were not yet received at the Palace, the Radziwills had not been invited to a dinner for the President hosted by the Queen. The issue was in the hands of the Embassy’s Chief of Protocol, ‘Angie’ Duke, but he needed to call on Bruce for support in dealing with the Palace. Within a few days the Radziwills had their invitation though, in the interim, President Kennedy was gracious enough to say that it was up to the Queen who she invited to dinner and he would attend in any circumstances.59 Some bilateral negotiations were largely in Bruce’s hands. In November 1961, after a briefing from a visiting team, he pursued talks with the FO on the addition of new nuclear facilities to those already based on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean.60 More often the Ambassador was part of a larger team, as on 15 September 1961 when he became involved in talks between a visiting team and the Colonial Office about the future of British Guiana. At other times he would smooth negotiations being carried on at a higher level. In December 1961, for example, the British were concerned over the failure to reach an agreement in talks at defence ministers’ level on the US Navy’s use of Holy Loch in Scotland, so Bruce sent off a telegram to Washington about

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this.61 Often he also had a side role in larger multilateral negotiations, when he would pass details of British positions to Washington. In May 1967, he was called to the FO by Gore-Booth to discuss the final details of the Kennedy Round of tariff reductions. Wilson had considered raising the points directly with LBJ, but ‘felt he had been communicating on so many subjects with the President that he would prefer to have it handled through Foreign Office channels’.62 One of the best examples of Bruce leading the US side in secret talks was a three-way exchange with the British and Belgians in London in May 1962, when they tried to work out a joint approach to the civil war in the Congo. National Security Adviser Bundy said that one reason for giving this job to the Ambassador was that the British were likely to ‘do more for Bruce than they will for anyone else’.63 Bruce might be asked to represent the United States at less significant, multilateral talks that took place in London, such as the meeting of the European Conference on Satellite Communications during 6–8 April 1964. At the close of negotiations he was also useful for signing treaties. On 18 March 1966, he signed a taxation agreement with the United Kingdom and on 22 December 1966, an International Sugar Treaty. But he also signed more significant multilateral treaties, where these had simultaneous ceremonies in different capitals. On 10 October 1963, at the FO, he signed the Certificate of Deposit for the Test Ban Treaty on behalf of the United States, seizing the opportunity to talk to Home about Macmillan’s impending resignation. On 1 July 1968, he signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, alongside representatives of over twenty other states, with Wilson present. Despite the many shared interests between London and Washington, reinforced by friendly personal relations, there were plenty of occasions when Bruce had to lobby the British to try to persuade them to follow a particular line. A particular bugbear for Washington was trade with the Eastern bloc where the British, their national wealth largely reliant on international trade, took a less restrictive attitude. In Bruce’s early years Washington was consistently concerned about the sale of buses to Cuba by the British firm Leyland, though it was not clear what particular threat the buses could pose to America.64 Later the Ambassador was involved in lobbying against the supply of a fertilizer plant to Cuba, but he warned that the British saw this item too as lacking in ‘strategic significance’, adding that, ‘our Cuba policy has few adherents in Europe’.65 In December 1966, Bruce advised the FO that Washington opposed the sale of a computer to Communist China but again did not expect the appeal to succeed. Finally, in December 1968 he lobbied the British against selling a computer to Romania only to be told by Gore-Booth that if Britain did not sell one France would.66

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There was rather a different story when it came to lobbying the British over the future of British Guiana. Here Washington feared that independence under the radical Prime Minister, Cheddi Jagan, would provide an ally for Cuba’s Fidel Castro. As Bruce summed up the problem, ‘Our objective is to have the British … remove the Jagan government prior to granting independence. The British wish to grant early independence and be quit of the whole matter. We feel the latter course would land another Caribbean Communist on our doorstep’. There was some irony in London wishing to press ahead with decolonization only to have supposedly anti-colonialist Washington advocate delay, especially when the British (rightly) doubted Jagan’s supposed links to Castro. But the Conservative government introduced a new electoral system in the colony based on proportional representation, designed to reduce Jagan’s chances of re-election ahead of independence (which came in 1966).67 As events over British Guiana moved in America’s favour, the Vietnam War also led to some extraordinary efforts at lobbying by Washington to control what the British government said. An early example was when Dean Rusk personally took charge of efforts to shape a prime ministerial statement to the House of Commons on 9 March 1965, after the United States began combat operations. At first the State Department lobbied Britain’s Washington embassy about Wilson’s statement but on the day itself it became essential to communicate quickly and, only an hour before Wilson was due to speak, Rusk sent a telegram to Phil Kaiser, urging the Prime Minister to blame any ‘aggression’ on North Vietnam. Under such pressure, which was backed by the FO, Wilson re-drafted his statement.68 When it came to clarifying intentions, Bruce found he had to act in both directions, sometimes trying to discover British intentions at others explaining US behaviour. An example of the former was when, following the 1964 election, he sought to clarify the new Labour government’s outlook on West Germany, current problems at the United Nations and intelligence co-operation over British Guiana.69 An example of Bruce clarifying US policy to Britain included his repeated statements to Wilson in late 1964 that Johnson was determined to see London accept membership of the proposed Multilateral Force (MLF). He warned Wilson that this was the case ahead of the first summit with Johnson in December. Then, after the President failed to press the Prime Minister as firmly as expected in their face-to-face talks in Washington, Bruce made it clear to Wilson that Washington was still determined to secure British membership of the MLF.70 Another example of Bruce clarifying policy was his reassurance of US support for Wilson’s ‘second try’ at EEC membership. This was less easy than it might appear, because Washington was keen not to give de Gaulle an excuse to veto the application.71 While avoiding any

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public endorsement of Wilson’s application and quietly reassuring the British of their support, the Americans also tried to undermine alternative policies such as the idea of a North Atlantic Free Trade Area (NAFTA), proposed by a US Senator, Jacob Javits.72 Yet again Bruce was part of this clarification of the US position, telling the FO that Britain was right to seek EEC membership and that NAFTA was not an option.73

British society Bruce’s engagement with British ministers and officials was reinforced by social events, especially meals that he attended. He had always made time for the best food and wines – even in the straitened circumstances of post-war Paris, where he made ‘nightly forays to chic restaurants, recorded in loving detail in his diary’. When he was Ambassador to West Germany his rather hedonistic approach had gone down badly in certain quarters and his inability to speak the language hindered his attempts to strike up relationships with elite figures.74 But he had no such problems in Britain, of which he once noted, ‘I suppose this is the country in which diplomatic business is transacted at social gatherings more than anywhere else in the world’. On that occasion the twenty-four guests at a dinner included the Foreign Secretary Butler, with whom Bruce spent about 90 minutes talking about a range of issues, which were later the subject of a report to Washington. On another occasion after meeting Caccia at a lunch hosted by the publisher, Hamish Hamilton, Bruce commented that, ‘One of the conveniences of dealing with British officials is that in connection with social functions … one has an opportunity to discuss office matters informally with them’.75 He was concerned that the official statistics of his personal office (see Appendix 1) only reflected ‘official’ appointments and not these supposedly informal, yet extremely valuable, social events. At a dinner at the residence of Conservative MP Norman St. John Stevas on 7 February 1966, where Lord Longford, Secretary for Colonies, was one of the other guests, he was able to gather intelligence on their attitude towards the Vietnam War. While all three MPs present said they would support US policy in public, they felt the position was deteriorating and that LBJ’s popularity must eventually suffer. It proved again that in London ‘one establishes a relationship with politicians at lunches and dinners, and receives information from them more freely than if one sees them in their offices … ’. It was especially beneficial that diplomats, politicians, even Cabinet ministers, might say things over dinner that they would never say in an official setting. On 16 June 1963, during a visit to Chatsworth House, in Derbyshire, Bruce found himself seated next

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to Dorothy Macmillan at dinner and was able to have ‘a frank and interesting talk with her about the Prime Minister’s present ordeal’ in the Profumo scandal (discussed later). More remarkably at a dinner with Denis Healey on 26 October 1966, the Defence Secretary was critical of the appointment of Jack McCloy to head a US team in ‘offset’ negotiations with Britain and Germany. Healey argued that McCloy was pro-German, an accusation Bruce firmly tried to rebut. Bruce and Evangeline regularly hosted dinners at the Residence. As a later ambassador, Raymond Seitz, explained: ‘The object of the dinner party is to bring together interesting people, of whom London seems to have limitless supply, and, over time, to appreciate the mood of the country, its preoccupations worries and foibles’.76 A list of Bruce’s meals for the week beginning Monday, 1 July 1968, gives an idea of the mix of major occasions, working lunches, farewell receptions, family occasions and even the odd occasion when he was left to himself, that characterized the ambassadorial life. It also draws out the range of people with whom he would lunch or dine: Monday, 1 July: lunch with Evangeline and their children at a Japanese restaurant; garden dinner hosted by the publisher, George Weidenfeld. 2 July: lunch at the Residence for former Cabinet minister Reginald Maudling, historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, journalist Peregrine Worsthorne and others; dinner at London Zoo, hosted by Solly Zuckerman, former UK Chief Scientist. 3 July: lunch with Sir Alexander Spearman (member of the British– American Parliamentary Committee), David Harlech (former Ambassador to Washington), John Freeman (Ambassador-designate to Washington), Derick Amory (Conservative MP) and others; evening farewell reception for Admiral John McCain as C-in-C Naval Forces Europe. 4 July: annual Independence Day reception from noon until 2.00 p.m., attended by most heads of diplomatic missions and various political figures; dinner with the American Society, Dorchester Hotel. 5 July (in Paris): lunch at the Hotel Vendôme with Jean Monnet, Chair of the Action Committee on a United Europe; dinner at the Travellers’ Club. Of course, Bruce’s social commitments stretched to far more than meals of different descriptions. He enjoyed the cultural life of the capital, attending Covent Garden Opera House on 1 March 1962, for example, to see the ballet ‘Giselle’ danced by Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev. As a personal friend of the author Ian Fleming, Bruce generally saw James Bond films as soon as they appeared, beginning with the premiere of Dr. No at the London

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Pavilion, Piccadilly Square, on 5 October 1962. Bruce attended the preview of the film From Russia with Love on 10 October 1963 and generally saw later Bond films as soon as they appeared.77 In 1968, he was impressed by the play Hadrian the Seventh at the Mermaid Theatre, on 26 June; thought Jacques Tati’s Playtime ‘overlong’ on 30 August; was confused by the musical Hair on 2 October 1968, and disappointed by the film Star! the following day. He attended horse races at Ascot, which he considered ‘a must for diplomats’,78 and Epsom. He also had ‘a considerable traffic in … supporting candidates for clubs’. Most of those he sponsored were Americans, but he sometimes supported some British applicants. One in January 1967 was Nigel Lawson, editor of The Spectator (later one of Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet ministers), who wanted to join the Garrick.79 Bruce himself was a member of twentythree London clubs, generally as an honorary member.80 Once again, such social commitments sometimes brought professional gains. As John Kent has pointed out, it was partly through visits to such clubs that he picked up the views of right-wing Conservatives on the Congo crisis in the early 1960s (where they were sympathetic to the Katangan secession and critical of UN peace efforts).81 Raymond Seitz later commented that London was ‘the omnipotent, all-knowing, unassailable hub of the nation’, rather like ‘Washington, New York and Los Angeles rolled into one’.82 Bruce did make attempts at public engagement outside London, but they were hardly a major part of his schedule. During his first year he spent eighty-four days outside London on official business, but only ten of these were within the United Kingdom. The rest were absorbed in three visits back home and no less than five forays to Paris.83 On 19 May 1961, he flew down to Exeter for the Devon county show, where he viewed a tent-pegging display and a parade of cattle, presented trophies and made the inevitable speech.84 This was quickly followed during 22–24 May by a rather more elevated, three-day visit to Edinburgh where he stayed at Holyrood House, attended a service at St. Giles’ Cathedral and delivered a speech to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. There was a similar visit to Northern Ireland on 15–16 September 1964. A few months later he was in Durham for the annual Miners’ Gala, a major event for the Labour movement, its centrepiece being a four-hour procession through the city of colliery associations, banners and brass bands, including a band from the US Air Force.85 Certain visits outside London particularly served to underline Anglo-American friendship. A trip to Plymouth on 18–19 May 1965 allowed Bruce to visit the Mayflower steps. But generally speaking, he was more likely to leave London to mix further with the British elite, not least at stately homes. In just a few months in 1962 these included Mereworth Castle in Kent (which he reckoned ‘about the best

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house, architecturally, in England’), Chatsworth in Derbyshire, Woburn Abbey (with its large private zoo), Stansted Park, Sussex, Blenheim Palace, near Oxford, and Saltwood Castle, Kent (once home to Thomas Becket).86 He also spoke several times at Cambridge or Oxford University, beginning in March 1962 with a talk on ‘American Foreign Policy’ at Cambridge that was followed by hostile questioning about nuclear weapons, Cuba ‘and, in fact, our general incompetence and bad policies everywhere … ’.87 Less lofty universities seem to have escaped his attention. Social commitments were obviously a major call on the Ambassador’s time, but so was the challenge of organizing them. On 22 April 1964, Bruce recorded his amazement at ‘how much time daily is taken up with social problems … The flood of invitations to lunch, dine or make speeches is unending, but does not equal the numbers of letters and telephone calls about the entertainment of our own travelling compatriots’, the burden of which often fell on Evangeline.88 Together they kept ‘a card index system about as large as that of a business corporation’ on the invitations they received and sent out but he complained in 1966 that, ‘no matter how conscientiously and laboriously one tries to arrange social life … it is a labor of Sisyphus … ’. This was not helped by minor but time-consuming commitments, such as arranging entertainment for eminent visitors and dealing with daily requests from US citizens for tickets to Royal garden parties or the Trooping of the Colour at Buckingham Palace. Reflecting on all this and facing numerous demands for meetings Bruce complained that he felt like ‘a one-legged man running after a horse’.89 Horse races also proved a burden in terms of other Americans wanting to attend. On 18 June 1964, Bruce complained that, for Ascot Gold Cup Day, ‘Our country people engage annually in a wild stampede to be admitted to the Royal Enclosure, at a price of ten guineas per head. They telegraph, they write, they telephone. Even … after I have successfully submitted two hundred or more names, belated applications … come in’. Indeed the social whirl never eased. In May 1968, he commented that, ‘it would be easy to lunch and dine out on every working day, as well as to make a minimum of 365 speeches per annum’.90 Speeches seem to have been a particular burden for him. He noted on 14 May 1961 that he ‘worked most of the day’ on two of them. He wrote another pair on 18 June and yet two more on the 24th.91 But the number of speeches he delivered came down from twenty-seven in 1962 to an average of about fifteen per year during 1964–7 (Appendix 2). Bruce had so many potential commitments that it was hard to avoid double booking. On 25 June 1961, he was unable to attend a Pilgrims’ dinner because he was already committed to one with the English-Speaking Union. There were compensations for these pressures however, and not only in

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the form of the best food and wine. Given their position, the Bruces could draw almost anyone they liked to entertainments at the Residence. On 20 June 1968, Evangeline organized a party for their three children, where the guests included some of the most famous names from the ‘Swinging Sixties’ generation in fashion and entertainment, including the models Jean Shrimpton and Penelope Tree, photographer David Bailey, actors James Fox and Terence Stamp and TV presenter David Frost.

An elitist ambassador? The pattern of Bruce’s social commitments raises the question of whether he was too elitist, not so much promoting friendly relations with British society as networking with the rich and privileged, who gave him a warped view of what the country was like. Such a strategy had its compensations, at least when the Conservatives were in office, in that he dealt easily with the political elite. But by the middle of the decade Britain was changing fast. The media was increasingly questioning about upper-class manners, Labour triumphed in the 1964 election and the ‘permissive society’ came into being. The leftwing Cabinet minister Barbara Castle, seeing Bruce arrive at the Queen’s diplomatic reception in November 1968, commented ‘Not for the first time I was able to see at first hand the secret of the British ruling class in action: they survive by just assimilating their enemies socially’. Another left-wing Cabinet member, Richard Crossman, wrote Bruce off as a ‘very stiff, reactionary New England banker’.92 It would be easy to pluck examples from his diary of meals dominated by the upper classes. In May 1961, one lunch included the eminent socialites Diana Cooper (widow of one of Churchill’s Cabinet ministers) and Nancy Lancaster (a designer both of gardens and house interiors), the photographer Cecil Beaton, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin, the head of Sotheby’s auction house Peter Wilson and choreographer Frederick Ashton.93 Actually many of the dinners attended by Bruce mixed politicians and officials from different backgrounds. One hosted by Anne Fleming on 26 May 1964 included the Liberal leader Jo Grimond, Conservative MP Bob Boothby and Nicholas Henderson of the FO. And Bruce did sometimes host the odd session with trades unionists.94 But, even among the Labour movement, he tended to be drawn to right-wingers and bon viveurs like Roy Jenkins, who, despite his origins in the South Wales coalfields, relished fine food and witty conversation at society dinners.95 Actually, given his age, wealth and Southern upbringing Bruce was a man of quite liberal opinions. He was upset at home in the United States in early 1964, for example, to hear ‘the most dreadful bilge daily on the local radio

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stations against the integration of negroes in public schools’, including a ‘diatribe’ from a clergyman who characterized the Roman Catholic church as ‘The Great Whore’.96 Yet, with his love of fine food, expensive wines and antique collecting Bruce, a millionaire in his own right, naturally gravitated towards wealthy, cultured individuals. At a lunch with the ageing Winston Churchill in June 1961, they ‘smoked some of his cigars … and drank a couple of glasses of superb cognac’. One of his American friends who visited the Embassy in 1963 was over in London to buy a second Rolls Royce.97 Given his position as US Ambassador he could hardly have avoided high society, even had he wanted. He was automatically invited to such events as the annual dinner of the Royal Academy of Arts where in April 1961 he was seated between two of the most eminent British leaders of the 1940s, Field Marshal Montgomery and former premier Clement Attlee.98 But Bruce was clearly at ease with the social elite including the aristocracy, many of whom he had known for decades, and he chose to mix with them. Only days after arriving in Britain, Bruce was off for lunch at Hatfield to meet an old friend, Lord Salisbury, whose reactionary views on colonialism had increasingly distanced him from the Conservative Party that his grandfather had once led.99 Bruce also had no compunction about operating what the British called ‘the old boy network’: on 20 June 1968, he talked to Bundy about ‘finding connections’ for Patrick Dean after he retired as Ambassador to Washington. The desire to mix easily with the British aristocracy lay behind Bruce’s determination to polish his shooting skills. He had done plenty of hunting in the past, shooting antelope and even a leopard in East Africa in 1939.100 He had already found that he could exploit his experience as Ambassador to Paris,101 but he was a little rusty when he arrived in London. So he began sessions at the London Shooting School. The first session, in August 1961, left him with a bruised shoulder because he had not mounted his guns properly but by late October he had made four more visits.102 The reason was that in early August he had been invited by Lord Home to go shooting on the latter’s Scottish estate. The shoot took place over three days in early November, when ‘we shot grouse, pheasant, partridge, blackgame, ducks, geese [and] hares’. On the last day no less than 1,500 grouse were bagged. The Ambassador felt he shot badly. He also gashed a leg and dislocated a thumb while climbing a fence. But there were compensations in getting on close terms with the Foreign Secretary and being able to discuss international problems, like tension with the Soviets over Berlin.103 Bruce’s shooting endeavours continued. On 17 October 1963, visiting the shooting school once more, he tried his hand at simulated hare shooting, finding it ‘tricky work, since there are all sorts of bumps and eccentric turns’. On the 21st he tried shooting for the first time at clay pigeons launched from a 40 feet tower. These efforts

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were followed by shoots in Hertfordshire, where Bruce and his wife stayed with Lady Bowes-Lyon (15–16 November 1963), in North Yorkshire, where Stash Radziwill had rented an estate near Helmsley (19–21 November) and at Hatfield House, with Lord Salisbury (2 December 1963). A pattern had by now developed whereby Bruce would annually sharpen his skills before the season. But as the years passed, he found that he had to refuse many shooting invitations or cancel them at short notice, because of professional business. In November 1967, he decided he must drop out of one syndicate because he had missed too many of its shoots.104 The Ambassador was not alone among US diplomats in mixing mainly with the upper classes. Although Phil Kaiser had close links to the Labour Party and trades unions, he was a rarity. Krys remembered that ‘friends and contacts in those years were people who were more conservative … It isn’t a matter of snobbism; it’s just the way it was. You didn’t meet people who were [lower class] or you just didn’t … come into contact with them’.105 Then again, Bruce greatly admired British traditions and his attitudes had a distinct conservative, if not Conservative, streak. He once commented that it would be a mistake to abolish the House of Lords – an unelected body, still made up in part by those who had simply inherited wealth – because, ‘Without much legislative power, it provides, nevertheless, a balance to the more impetuous Commons. Moreover, many of its active members are … of outstanding distinction and character, freed from the necessity of catering to popular pressure’.106 Speaking at the Mayfair Association on 15 October 1963 he lamented the recent loss of a number of aristocratic palaces in the vicinity, remarking that ‘The power of tax has proved to be the power to destroy such great private dwellings’. Although outwardly neutral in British political debates, then, his personal sympathies are clear enough. On 3 November 1967, he complained in his diary about Britain’s ‘penal taxation’ system, that was driving able individuals abroad. In December 1967, he feared that, despite the devaluation of the Pound, British recovery could be ‘thwarted by Socialist dogma’.107 He was both bemused and impressed by British pomp. After a dinner given by the Worshipful Company of Saddlers on 4 March 1964 he was intrigued to find officials dressed ‘in knee breeches, wearing lace jabots and ruffles at their wrists’. On 13 June 1961, when he delivered a short speech to the Society of Middle Temple, the Ambassador was given two-and-a-half typed pages of instructions about the dinner and how he should conduct himself, including when and in what direction to make various bows. Another challenge was understanding the rules of cricket. Fortunately, when he attended a match at Lord’s in May 1962, Don Smith, ‘a devoted cricketer’ was on hand to explain ‘the finer points’. Some British traditions were more than welcome. Bruce

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discovered that when travelling by train foreign ambassadors were ‘usually met at the station by an individual in a frock coat and black silk hat, who leads him to a reserved compartment on the train’. Sometimes, ‘as an added courtesy’, there was another official on the journey, ‘who commanded tea and cakes for us, kept us abreast of the schedule [and] furnished us with meteorological observations’.108 Bruce could usually be relied upon to carry himself with aplomb on ceremonial occasions, but near the end of his posting he made a rare error. Ahead of the Queen’s annual reception for the diplomatic corps he dined with her Assistant Private Secretary, Martin Charteris, who the Ambassador ‘only learned afterwards’ was ‘famously unpunctual’. The meal went ‘swimmingly and delightfully’, Bruce remained even after another guest headed off for the reception and, when he finally followed, he discovered that the Queen had already been introduced to the US staff headed by Stan Cleveland. When they eventually met, the Queen said ‘she was happy to see us, because she feared perhaps we had a new Ambassador’. Bruce tried to brush the matter off in his diary: ‘I made my apologies, and she thought the incident diverting.’ But Charteris complained of being in the ‘doghouse’.109 It could all have been far worse because the event was filmed for a documentary. Embarrassingly, on transmission the Queen was even seen having an exchange with Prince Philip about the American ambassador’s absence. By that time Bruce was high in the list of precedence and therefore one of the first due to be introduced to her, so that his lateness made for particular difficulties. Fortunately for Bruce, however, filming of the documentary continued for some time and, by the time it was broadcast, the way it was cut meant that the ‘late’ American ambassador appeared to be not Bruce but his successor, Walter Annenberg!110 There was one other, potentially more embarrassing episode that might be blamed, in part at least, on Bruce’s desire to associate with the British elite, and that was the Profumo scandal of 1963, an event that rocked the British establishment. John Profumo, Macmillan’s Secretary for War, had become involved with a call girl, Christine Keeler, who had also been intimate with a Soviet official. The scandal proper broke in June, when Profumo admitted lying to the House of Commons about his relationship with Keeler. Bruce immediately recognized that ‘this will entail his disgrace, since the telling of a falsehood in the House is considered even more serious than cheating at cards in a gentleman’s club’. The Ambassador did not believe that Macmillan had colluded in the lie, but within a few days it was clear that ‘the initial repercussions have been severely adverse’ for the Prime Minister, who seemed to have been naïve for trusting Profumo. By 13 June Bruce felt he had been questioned so much about Keeler, it was ‘as if I had lived under, if not in, her bed’. A few days later he sent an ‘eyes

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only’ telegram to Kennedy and Rusk, reporting a marked deterioration in the position of Macmillan who faced a hostile press and a crisis of public confidence. Bruce correctly guessed that the Prime Minister would cling onto power, but could not rule out a swift collapse of his position.111 Kennedy might have been more interested because of fears that his own sexual indiscretions might somehow be brought to light. He asked to be sent all Bruce’s reports on the matter.112 By 20 June, Bruce too had become a potential victim of the scandal. Two days earlier an article appeared in the French newspaper Libération linking him, among others, to Dr Stephen Ward, who ran the call girl ring of which Keeler was part.113 Bruce was certainly uncomfortably close to some of the major figures in the saga. He had stayed with the Secretary for War in June 1962, even commenting that ‘Nothing could be more attractive than the atmosphere surrounding the Profumos’.114 Worse was to follow. On 21 June he sent word to Washington via the CIA station chief, Archie Roosevelt, that he had never met Ward. Roosevelt, who was making his own daily reports to the CIA about the scandal (dubbed ‘the Director’s daily pornography bulletin’), had specifically been asked by Washington to investigate rumours about Bruce. After his denial, doubts immediately began to gnaw the Ambassador and a search through his diary by his secretary confirmed that, in fact, Bruce had met Ward. Bruce was sketched by Ward for the Illustrated London News, back in June 1961, this being one of his varied commitments. Bruce immediately admitted the meeting to Roosevelt.115 Soon, the Ambassador was the unwelcome focus of attention for both the American Federal Bureau of Investigation and Britain’s Lord Denning, who was investigating the affair for Macmillan.116 Nothing was ever proved against Bruce, there were plenty of others who fell under suspicion and the attention died down over summer, but it was an unpleasant experience. Then again, it did nothing to deter him from continuing to socialize with the privileged rich.

Notes  1 Keith Hamilton and Richard Langhorne, The Practice of Diplomacy (London: Routledge, 1995), 232.  2 Virginia Historical Society, David Bruce Diary (DBD), Bruce to Washington, 6 December 1962.  3 For example, National Archives and Record Administration (NARA), College Park, MD, RG59, State Department Central Policy Files 1964–6, Political and Defence, Box 2777, POL7UK, London to State, 26 March 1965, when a US official saw a briefing paper for a meeting between Wilson and de Gaulle.

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 4 The National Archives (TNA), Kew, PREM13/2158, ‘Longer-Term Elements in Anglo/US Relations’, attached to Donald to Palliser, 23 July 1968.  5 DBD, 22 May, 8 August and 2 December 1962.  6 DBD, 26 April 1961.  7 Peter Catterall (ed.), The Macmillan Diaries, 1957–66 (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011), 337–8.  8 Catterall, Macmillan, 367–9, 372–3 and 389–91.  9 TNA/FO371/156511, FO minute, 17 March, and Zulueta to Meade, 18 March 1961. 10 DBD, 23 March 1961. 11 John F. Kennedy Library (JFKL), National Security File (NSF), Country File, United Kingdom (CFUK), Box 170, Bruce to Rusk, 15 and 17 July 1961. 12 Catterall, Macmillan, 377. 13 DBD, 7 December 1961. 14 Richard Neustadt, Alliance Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), 56, 72 and see 132–4, and Report to JFK: The Skybolt Crisis in Perspective (New York: Cornell University Press, 1999), 4–5. 15 On the background see Nigel Ashton, Kennedy, Macmillan and the Cold War: The Irony of Interdependence (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2002), 165–71. 16 See Douglas Brinkley, ‘Dean Acheson and John Kennedy’, in Brinkley and Richard Griffiths (eds), John F. Kennedy and Europe (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999), 288–96; DBD, 7 and 13 December 1962. 17 Henry Brandon, Special Relationships (London: Macmillan, 1988), 166. 18 Neustadt, Skybolt, 63–4; David Nunnerly, President Kennedy and Britain (London: Bodley Head, 1972), 141–2. 19 Neustadt, Skybolt, 114–19. 20 Andrew Priest, Kennedy, Johnson and NATO: Britain, America and the Dynamics of Alliance, 1962–8 (London: Routledge, 2006), 41 and see 44–5; DBD, 10 December. 21 Ashton, Cold War, 174–85. 22 Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–3, Volume XIII, document 401. Available at: http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961– 63v13/d401. 23 Priest, NATO, 58–9. 24 DBD, 16 January 1963. 25 Catterall, Macmillan, 543; TNA/PREM11/4581, record of meeting, 4 March 1963. 26 Catterall, Macmillan, 547–9. 27 DBD, 1 and 23 April 1963. 28 DBD, 11 January, 19 and 27 February, 2, 5, 12 and 28 April, 7, 8 and 24 June, 3, 9 and 17 July, 3 August, 13 and 30 September, 22 October (with Macmillan, re Cuba), 2, 7, 12, 14 and 20 November 1962. 29 DBD, 27 February 1962.

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30 DBD, eight meetings in the first half of 1966: 20 January, 3 March, 11 and 23 May and 2, 10, 23 and 27 June. 31 TNA/PREM13/3021, record of conversation, 12 March 1965; and see Jonathan Colman, A Special Relationship? Harold Wilson, Lyndon Johnson and Anglo-American relations (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 59–62. 32 DBD, 11 and 14 December 1965. 33 DBD, 19 February 1966. 34 DBD, Acting Secretary to Bruce, 2 and 3 July, and replies, 3 and 4 July 1966. 35 DBD, 1 August 1966. 36 DBD, 10 January 1967; TNA/PREM13/1917, record of conversation, 10 January 1967; James Hershberg, Marigold: The Lost Chance for Peace in Vietnam (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2012), 506–10. 37 DBD, 29 January 1965. 38 DBD, 7 September 1966. 39 DBD, 8 and 15 October 1966. 40 Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Arlington, Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection (FAOHC), Sheldon Krys interview. 41 NARA/RG59, State Department Central Policy Files 1964–6, Political and Defence, Box 2779, POL7UK, State Department to London, 18 May 1966. 42 DBD, 21 August 1963, 10 September 1964, 22 September 1965, 8 November 1966, 2 November 1967 and 4 December 1968. 43 E-mail to the author by a former official who wishes to remain anonymous, 6 November 2012. 44 DBD, 17 May 1967. 45 DBD, 10 and 16 January 1962. 46 DBD, 7 July 1963. For other meetings see: 21 July, 21 and 23 August and 11 December 1963. 47 In Gore-Booth’s first year, DBD shows them meeting on 24 May, 9 July and 10 December 1965 and 5 and 8 March 1966. 48 DBD, 21 January 1968. 49 DBD, 19 February 1965. 50 DBD, 12 July 1961. 51 DBD, 14 December 1961, 17 June 1963 and 7 July 1966. 52 See especially, DBD, 22 June 1961, 6 December 1962. 53 See DBD, 24 January 1963. 54 Peter Patterson, Tired and Emotional: The Life of Lord George Brown (London: Chatto and Windus, 1993), chapter 9, quotes from 151 and 161. 55 DBD, 30 March and 6 July 1965. 56 Bruce pressed the White House to agree to a presidential meeting with Heath: DBD, 16 February 1966. 57 G. R. Berridge, The Counter-Revolution in Diplomacy (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011), 4–5.

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58 US Senate, Committee on Government Operations, Subcommittee on National Security Staffing and Operations, hearing of 18 September 1963, 245. 59 DBD, 29 and 31 May 1961; Sally Bedell Smith, Grace and Power: The Private World of the Kennedy White House (London: Aurum, 2011), 210–11. 60 DBD, 7 November 1961. 61 DBD, 9 December 1961. 62 DBD, Bruce to Rusk, 3 May 1967. 63 Quote in Richard Mahoney, JFK: Ordeal in Africa (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 130. See also: Ashton, Cold War, 120–2; John Kent, America, the UN and Decolonisation: Cold War Conflict in the Congo (London: Routledge, 2010), 91–2. 64 George Lambie, ‘Anglo-Cuban Commercial Relations in the 1960s’, in Alastair Hennessy and Lambie (eds), The Fractured Blockade: West EuropeanCuban Relations During the Revolution (London: Macmillan, 1993). 65 DBD, Bruce to Rusk, 6 and 11 January 1967. 66 DBD, Bruce to Rusk, 20 December 1966 and 30 December 1968. 67 DBD, 24 June 1963. On British Guiana situation see: Stephen G. Rabe, US Intervention in British Guiana: A Cold War Story (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005); Cary Fraser, ‘The New Frontier of Empire in the Caribbean: The Transfer of Power in British Guiana, 1961–4’, International History Review, Vol. XXII, No. 3 (September 2000), 583–610. 68 Sylvia Ellis, Britain, America and the Vietnam War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004), 63–5. 69 NARA/RG59, State Department Central Policy Files 1964–6, Political and Defence, Box 2777, POL7UK, London to State Department, 21, 22 and 23 October 1964. 70 Harold Wilson, The Labour Government, 1964–70 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971), 46; DBD, 27 November, and Bruce to Ball, 15 December 1964. 71 Helen Parr, Britain’s Policy Towards the European Community, 1964–7 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), 72–4 and 86–7. 72 Melissa Pine, Harold Wilson and Europe: Pursuing Britain’s Membership of the European Community (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2007), 76–7. 73 TNA/FCO30/225, Gore-Booth to Chalfont, 4 December 1967. 74 Nelson Lankford, The Last American Aristocrat: The Biography of David Bruce (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1995), 184, 283–4 and see 225–7. 75 DBD, 29 June 1964 and 26 February 1965. 76 Raymond Seitz, Over Here (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998), 68. 77 For example, From Russia with Love, 10 October 1963, and You Only Live Twice, 9 July 1967. 78 DBD, 20 June 1963. 79 DBD, 20 March 1966 (quote) and 6 January 1967. 80 DBD, 2 September 1968.

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 81 Kent, Congo, 77.  82 Seitz, Over Here, 115.  83 DBD, 8 March 1962.  84 DBD, 19–20 May 1961.  85 DBD, 14 July 1961.  86 DBD, 15 April, 25 May, 17 June, 7 July and 13–15 July 1962.  87 DBD, 2 March 1962.   88 DBD, 22 April 1964.  89 DBD, 25 May 1966.  90 DBD, 3 May 1968.  91 DBD, 14 May 1961.  92 Barbara Castle, The Castle Diaries, 1964–70 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1984), 559; Richard Crossman, The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister: Volume Three, 1968–70 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1977), 393.  93 DBD, 7 May 1961.  94 DBD, 28 June 1963.  95 Lankford, Aristocrat, 327–8.  96 DBD, 2 January 1964.  97 DBD, 1 June 1961 and 15 July 1963.  98 DBD, 26 April 1961.  99 DBD, 12 March 1961. 100 DBD, 18 November 1963. 101 Lankford, Aristocrat, 215. 102 DBD, 14, 22 and 28 August and 14 and 28 October 1961. 103 DBD, 4–6 November 1961. 104 DBD, 19 November 1967. 105 FAOHC, Krys interview. 106 DBD, 6 July 1963. 107 DBD, 17 December 1967. 108 DBD, 21 May and 25 May 1962. 109 DBD, 27 November 1968. 110 FAOHC, Krys interview. 111 DBD, 6, 9 and 15 June; Alistair Horne, Macmillan, 1957–86 (London: Macmillan, 1989), 403. 112 Robert Dallek, An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–63 (New York: Back Bay Books, 2004), 175–6. 113 DBD, 24 June 1963. 114 DBD, 4 June 1962. 115 Archie Roosevelt, For Lust of Knowing (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988), 469–70; DBD, 30 June 1961 and 22 June 1963. 116 DBD, 3 July 1963. For a fuller account see Lankford, Aristocrat, 320–5.

5

The London Embassy in Anglo-American Relations Bruce clearly established a trusting relationship with both his own government and that of the British, but how well did he deal with the challenges to the Anglo-American alliance in the 1960s and how important was the Embassy to bilateral relations? Jules Cambon, a long-serving diplomat under the French Third Republic, once said that an ambassador ‘informs, enlightens, warns, and occasionally exercises a restraining influence upon his Government’, adding that ‘an ambassador who confines himself to playing the part of a postman is a positive danger to his Government’.1 Some would go beyond this and argue that an ambassador can help to shape policy, especially towards the government to which he is assigned. Ellis Briggs, an American career diplomat who chalked up seven ambassadorships, argued that the ‘raw material of policy’ was found in an ambassador’s ‘interpretation of events’ and that these were sent to Washington, ‘for use in arriving at policy’. William Macomber who was Kennedy’s ambassador to Jordan felt it ‘in the national interest for the professional diplomatic establishment to be deeply involved in the policy-making process’, because it was able to provide ‘an exhaustive, in-depth dispassionate analysis of the nation’s wide-ranging problems and opportunities in the foreign affairs area’.2 Bruce always took the view that he was not a policy-maker and that any ambassadors who believed they could be one were making a mistake. Rather, he believed their role was to advise ‘those who finally are going to form the policy as to his views on the subject derived from experience in the country to which the policy is going to be applied’.3 Yet, it was partly because he wanted to have a real impact on the policy-makers that he concentrated on quality rather than quantity in his correspondence with home. A good example of his style was a telegram to the Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, in July 1962 about Britain’s negotiation for entry to the European Economic Community (EEC) in which Bruce stated that ‘it would be most injudicious to inject ourselves at this stage into the affair’. It is a short telegram, only twelve lines long but subdivided into four numbered points of one sentence each, all expressed in a firm, clear and simple style, ending with the remark, ‘anything we further say will not influence, but will only offend’.

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It can be read in seconds yet makes a forthright, direct case – exactly the sort of message that a busy official would appreciate – and of course it was aimed at one of the most senior officials of all.4 At the other end of the scale Bruce was involved in advising state and municipal bodies in the United States on such matters as the impossibility of involving the royal family in promotional ventures.5 This chapter will explore his significance as an advisor to Washington about British politics and foreign policy (what is often called ‘political reporting’), and how to react to these (what may be called ‘policy advice’). However, a major initial question is the extent to which the British Embassy in Washington was more significant to the so-called ‘special relationship’ than was Grosvenor Square, limiting Bruce’s significance.

Britain’s Washington embassy The United States and Britain were close allies and often London was quite happy to share information with Washington, making the job of political reporting much easier than it was in other bilateral relationships. This was clearly a positive point for Bruce, yet such intimacy could have its drawbacks from the ambassadorial perspective. For one thing, it was remarkably easy for the two governments to contact each other at various levels, not just that of the Embassy. In May 1967, near the end of the Kennedy Round trade negotiations when the British suddenly toughened their stance on certain issues, the Americans ‘went to London on every channel’. Besides asking Bruce to see Wilson, Rusk sent a message directly to the Foreign Secretary, while Francis Bator, the Deputy National Security Adviser, telephoned both Burke Trend, the Cabinet Secretary, and Michael Palliser, the Prime Minister’s Private Secretary.6 It was a telling reminder that embassies were only one means of diplomatic communication. Potentially more worrying for Bruce was that when it came to sharing information, Britain’s Washington embassy was much more significant than his own operation, for several reasons. One compelling factor was that Britain needed to influence US policy at its heart where the key decisions were made, so that the British chose to share information directly with decision-makers in Washington. Another factor still operating in the early 1960s was that memories of close wartime cooperation lingered, so that British diplomats could readily open doors in the American capital. Besides, Washington and London were close allies in the Cold War and therefore shared intelligence and military information on a regular basis often out of the sight of the professional diplomats. Patrick Wright, Private Secretary to Britain’s Washington ambassadors during 1960–5, once said that ‘the wartime alliance, and still the intelligence

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and defence relationship, has actually given the British embassy in Washington a status, leaving aside personalities, which no other Embassy in Washington has ever had or is ever likely to have’. Under Ormsby Gore, who took up his post in October 1961, this was even more the case. Wright described Gore’s partnership with President John F. Kennedy as ‘a quite extraordinary, if not unique, relationship’ in which the Ambassador was even able to comment on US domestic problems.7 Gore had been a friend of the new President and his brother Robert since the late 1930s, when their father Joseph was Franklin Roosevelt’s Ambassador to London. Gore was also well versed in British foreign policy, having served as a junior minister at the Foreign Office (FO); he was related to Macmillan by marriage and his easy-going, goodhumoured personality was calculated to appeal to Americans. As soon as he arrived in Washington, the President ‘rang up … to ask us how we were getting on’ and, as the Ambassador told Douglas-Home in November, ‘he has been on the telephone at odd hours of the day and night frequently since’.8 Gore’s close relationship with Kennedy meant the two sides could talk to each other in a way that was simultaneously straightforward and relaxed. But such a close relationship carried potential costs. Not least, it upset other ambassadors in Washington, notably France’s Hervé Alphand. It led to alternate complaints either (from Americans) that Gore had too much influence on US policy or (from Britons) that he was in Kennedy’s pocket. Furthermore, it probably led the British to exaggerate their own importance in American eyes. Bruce’s reaction could easily have become another negative because, since Gore also had friendly relations with Rusk and Bundy, the significance of the London embassy seemed much diminished. Yet Bruce proved secure and mature enough to respect Gore, rather than resent him, once calling him ‘Britain’s best export for many years’. An early study of the Kennedy–Macmillan years recognized that their relationship was so good partly because the British premier also knew he could trust Bruce – and knew, too, that Bruce was trusted in Washington.9 Looking back on the Kennedy years, Bruce said he was ‘delighted’ that the President’s ‘intimate friendship’ with Gore helped create a ‘unique’ bilateral relationship. ‘The President’s confidence in David Gore was fully justified by the transcendent qualities and unimpeachable character of the British Ambassador’.10 That both embassies could play an important role, even if the UK’s Washington operation was the more significant, was brought out by the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. This again highlights how embassies were part of a wider network of communications that included personal messages and telephone calls between the two leaders. Kennedy was told of evidence of Soviet nuclear missiles on Cuba on 16 October 1962. British officials in Washington became aware that something was afoot on

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19 October, but the full details of a possible US-Soviet confrontation only came two days later when Kennedy discussed the issue with Gore and sent a message to Macmillan.11 In this the President said he would employ Bruce to provide fuller details of US thinking, which he did on the 22nd having sent a team to Europe to help brief America’s allies. It was at this point that Bruce was mysteriously instructed from Washington to arm himself with a gun and, accompanied by the CIA station chief Archie Roosevelt, drive to Greenham Common airfield. There they were surprised to meet Dean Acheson, the former Secretary of State, and the CIA’s Sherman Kent, who briefed them on the missile discovery before flying on to Paris. Bruce and Roosevelt then provided an escort back into London for the NSC’s Chester Cooper, who had accompanied Acheson and was appointed to brief Macmillan on the details of the discovery.12 Along with Cooper, another letter from Kennedy and a dossier of evidence, Bruce saw the Prime Minister at noon and explained the decision to initiate a naval ‘quarantine’ of Cuba. As noted in Macmillan’s memoirs, the Prime Minister did not want to make any final decisions on Britain’s position until he had ‘Gore’s report, on which I knew I could rely for accuracy and full understanding of the President’s mind’. After reading that, the Prime Minister felt more confident about talking to Kennedy over their secure scrambler line.13 When Bruce called at Downing Street with the dossier of evidence he added his own interpretation of how decisions had been taken by Kennedy. This meeting, as recorded by the Prime Minister, illustrates how a capable ambassador could win a foreign leader’s sympathy. For one thing, Macmillan liked Bruce’s ‘detached and quiet manner’; he ‘did not attempt to conceal the excited, almost chaotic, atmosphere in Washington’ and he expressed doubts about whether Kennedy’s policy of blockading Cuba would either satisfy the Washington ‘hawks’ or avoid a showdown with Moscow. Finally, Bruce also joined the Prime Minister in discussing the likely Soviet response.14 Later at Archie Roosevelt’s house Bruce and Cooper briefed the Labour leaders, Hugh Gaitskell and George Brown, on the situation as part of an effort to keep the Labour movement sympathetic to US actions. This was only half successful: while Brown gave strong support to the United States, other Labour MPs doubted the legality of Kennedy’s decision to blockade Cuba, announced on the 22nd, and there was an upsurge of demonstrations outside the Embassy.15 Bruce and Cooper were also concerned about the need to win over the British media and popular opinion to support American action and, while the evidence on the point is confused, they apparently persuaded an official in Washington, on 23 October, to allow them to release photographic evidence of the Soviet missiles. This drew complaints from American journalists. It also embarrassed senior figures in the Department of Defense, who had

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earlier resisted calls for photographs to be released. The President himself feared the episode might suggest his administration was disorganized, but the publication did help convince the British public of the American case. Bruce was subsequently upset that Washington did not deny a press report that he had released the photographs on his own initiative.16 Bill Clark, the Counsellor for Public Affairs (who was accused in some newspaper stories of behaving in an ‘errant’ way by releasing the photographs), later insisted that Cooper had contacted ‘some sleepy-head in the Pentagon [who approved] the release, but … this was then made an issue by his superiors’.17 As tension mounted in the Caribbean, the most important direct contacts between London and Washington were handled by Gore, who saw the President four times during the key week of 21–28 October, and the Prime Minister, who talked to Kennedy several times by telephone, as well as communicating via telegrams.18 But Bruce had undoubtedly played a vital role in the early stages. Macmillan’s biographer, Alistair Horne, saw Bruce as an important, positive element in the Anglo-American partnership at this time, helping to counter the potentially negative influence of characters like George Ball and Walt Rostow who were critical of the ‘special relationship’ and hoped to reduce Britain’s nuclear status in favour of greater equality for other European allies, not least West Germany. Horne talks of Bruce and Gore as ‘the two Davids’, who ‘provided the third and fourth sides in the very remarkable new rectangle of the special relationship, with Kennedy and Macmillan at each end’.19 Bruce was kept informed by the State Department of at least some of Gore’s meetings with them20 and the ambassadors would, at times, meet one another. Over in Washington for a visit in June 1963, Bruce had dinner at the British Embassy, where the key issues were the NATO nuclear weapons and the Profumo scandal, which had just broken. He and Gore also crossed paths the following evening at a dinner hosted by Joe Alsop, where Kennedy briefly called in.21 They were together again a few weeks later on the other side of the Atlantic, for the Kennedy–Macmillan summit at Birch Grove.22 Bruce’s biographer, Nelson Lankford, argues that only when Johnson became President in November 1963 ‘did Bruce come into his own as Ambassador to Britain’.23 This was largely because Johnson had a distant relationship with Ormsby Gore and his successor Patrick Dean.24 Indeed, Macmillan, who had relied on having a close friend of the President to represent Britain in Washington, noted soon after the assassination that, ‘Poor David Gore will now no longer have the privileged position [which] he has enjoyed so long and used so well’.25 When Dean presented his credentials on 13 April 1965 he did so alongside two other ambassadors, from Denmark and Chile, and suffered an embarrassing lecture from Johnson about the

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need for British support on Vietnam.26 Yet, despite such an apparent fall from grace, the Washington embassy was bound to continue having an important role for all the reasons outlined earlier. A look at the relationship from Bruce’s perspective suggests that, while LBJ may not have been as intimate with the British embassy as JFK had been, its position was not much changed. Whatever difficulties he may have had in dealing with Johnson personally, Dean, for example, took the lead in securing talks between the two countries on a new departure in the nuclear arms race, the development of anti-ballistic missiles during 1965–6 (where Bruce seems to have had little role).27 Dean was also in close consultation with Rusk in the build-up to the Arab–Israeli War of 1967,28 while in 1968 he was involved in sounding out the Secretary of State on US attitudes to the gathering Czechoslovakian crisis.29 On leaving Washington in February 1969, Dean told Michael Stewart, ‘I think that Anglo-American relations are in pretty good shape and I have no doubt at all that my successor will be able to build up an excellent relationship with the new Administration’.30 Of course, the Ambassador had every reason to create the impression that all was well as he retired and some may trace a note of irony in his prediction. His successor, John Freeman, selected months earlier (when a Nixon victory seemed unlikely), was an ex-journalist who had criticized the new President in the past. Noting the fact, one leading US magazine talked of ‘the slow decay and virtual dissolution of the ancient [sic] Anglo-American alliance’.31 Nonetheless, Dean’s prediction proved true: Freeman did establish a close relationship with Nixon and, in particular, with his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger. Some months later Bill Galloway the Embassy’s Political Counsellor told a British colleague that he ‘did not believe that the US Embassy here could ever take the place of Washington for the day-to-day business of Anglo-American relations’.32 Bruce seems to have established just as good a relationship with Dean as he had with Gore, but the Johnson–Wilson years presented a difficult challenge. When Bruce was in Washington in June 1965 Dean especially asked to see him and they discussed the current predicament of the Pound, the American expressing grave doubts about Wilson’s optimism for a rapid rebirth of confidence on the money markets. The two ambassadors reviewed current problems when Bruce was in Washington in January 1966, Bruce commenting that Dean was ‘exceptionally intelligent, frank [and] honourable’.33 In June 1966, when Wilson dissociated Britain from the US bombing of targets close to Hanoi and Haiphong, both Dean and Bruce were closely involved in trying to prevent a rift partly by allowing Washington to tone down what Wilson said.34 A few months after that Dean again asked Bruce to call on him during a visit to Washington, when they discussed how to prevent the volatile George Brown from ‘lecturing’ LBJ on Vietnam.35

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To forestall confusion there were accepted diplomatic conventions about when each embassy should act. In January 1963, for example, when Wilson, then a leading member of Labour’s shadow cabinet, asked Bruce to arrange a meeting for him with President Kennedy, the Ambassador replied that all such requests must go via the British embassy in Washington. Furthermore, when Wilson became Prime Minister, the Ambassador continued to advise using the Washington embassy to communicate with the White House.36 In February 1965, when Wilson became concerned over the dangers of US involvement in Vietnam, Bruce was in Washington and unable to provide personal advice. Instead, Gore told Wilson that Johnson was opposed to a visit and that a telephone call to the President might be better as a first step.37 It proved terrible advice since, as seen in the previous chapter, the President subsequently browbeat Wilson over the telephone into giving up on the whole idea of a summit. There were a few cases nonetheless when, for security reasons, Bruce did not want to share information with the British embassy in Washington. In October 1966, he was involved in talks with the FO and Britain’s Chief Scientific Officer, Solly Zuckerman, over the seismic detection of nuclear tests and hoped to keep word of this restricted. He then found out that confidential telegrams on the subject to the State Department had been revealed to Britain’s Washington embassy. ‘This is disgraceful’, he commented angrily, ‘but the kind of thing that happens too often and results in compromising our sources’.38

Post-colonial problems: Cyprus and Rhodesia However important the British embassy in Washington was, there were some specific questions where America’s London mission could hope to play the more significant role in contacts between the two sides. As Carl Watts has pointed out, Bruce recognized that, especially in Africa, Asia and Latin America, responsibility in the British government was divided three ways. Until 1966, the Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO)was responsible for policy towards Commonwealth states, the Colonial Office (CO) was responsible for what remained of the British Empire and the FO was responsible for policy towards the rest of the world. Since Britain’s Washington embassy was primarily an FO operation it could not adequately deal with this three-way split; so, it made sense for the London embassy to take the initiative on these issues dealing directly with the three ministries in Whitehall.39 It is arguable that during 1963–4 the tough and ambitious Duncan Sandys, who combined control of the CRO and CO, outmatched the significance of the Foreign Secretary, ‘Rab’ Butler (who had just lost the

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battle for the Conservative leadership to Douglas-Home). This was a time when certain residual problems of Empire – such as Rhodesia, Malaysia and Cyprus – were especially important for Britain’s international policy. Americans had no choice but to deal with the FO, CRO and CO in various combinations, depending on the precise subject. So, when Averell Harriman visited London on 20 March 1964 for talks on Afro-Asian problems, he held one series of talks with Butler (on Libya, S.W. Africa, Indonesia and Cambodia), then walked to the CO to see Sandys about Ghana and East Africa. Over the following years the situation became simpler: in 1966 the CO and CRO merged into a new Commonwealth Office, which in turn merged with the FO in 1968 to become the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. But until that point, the fact that there were two or three ministries in London dealing with external issues created a niche for the US embassy to be a leading player where post-colonial conflicts were concerned. A good example of this was Cyprus, where tension broke out between the Greek and Turkish communities in early 1964, remaining a concern for most of the year. Britain was the former colonial power and London became the focus of diplomatic attempts to resolve the problem. This gave Bruce’s embassy the opportunity to be at the centre of policy-making on a potentially explosive topic and to gather intelligence on the various parties who met in London. The United States was especially interested in preventing a rift between Greece and Turkey, who were both NATO allies, and Bruce had his first meeting with their representatives on 27 January 1964. The following day he had meetings with the British in the morning, trying to reach a united Anglo-American position and in the afternoon had a string of telephone conversations with officials in Washington, not getting to bed until 3.00 a.m. Yet the Cyprus example also exposes the reality that, even when Bruce was given a major role, he could not possibly hope to direct US policy or singlehandedly overcome the problems of a fractured policy-making process. By early February he reported that the Embassy was ‘in a somewhat chaotic state’ thanks to the pressures of coping with the affair. Helped by one of the senior political officers, Hermann Eilts, Bruce was not only doing much to coordinate Anglo-American policy but also trying to persuade the Greek and Turkish governments to cooperate. However, the US and UK heads of mission in Cyprus were best placed to press any solution on one of the key figures, the Cypriot President Archbishop Makarios III. At the same time many important exchanges took place at the United Nations.40 Also, any proposals drawn up between Bruce and the British had to be approved at the Washington end before they could be acted upon.41

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The difficulties caused by having a range of actors, different time zones and poor communications is well brought out by Bruce’s diary for 7 February 1964, as is his own attempt to keep tabs on what was unfolding: It was evident … that there is no chance of our receiving a final reply today from the Turks and the Greeks, thanks to a foul-up in Washington’s communications. I telephoned to Ray Hare [US ambassador] in Ankara and Harry Labouisse [US ambassador] in Athens. Ray’s visit to the [Turkish] foreign office had been postponed by a Washington instruction to await a further telegram from home. It seems idiotic, but the reason for the telegram, as it later became evident, was to change the word ‘task’ to … ‘mission’. In Athens … Labouisse had not even then received a telegram from the Department authorizing him to proceed. We repeated ‘flash’ from here all documents bearing on the subject, but given the difference of time with that in those capitals, two hours in advance of our own, there is little likelihood of our completing this phase of the negotiation today.

Small wonder that, the following day, Bruce expressed himself ‘glad’ that Washington was sending Under-Secretary George Ball to visit the principal capitals involved in the dispute. In any case, Bruce could not have continued to play a key role. He could no longer delay flying to Washington for a longplanned summit between LBJ and Douglas-Home. By 18 February, when he had returned to London, the centre of attention in the dispute had shifted to the UN in New York, though only for several days. On 8 March instructions arrived from Washington for all relevant staff in London to be available to deal with Cyprus over the weekend. Cyprus continued to dominate Bruce’s life throughout June, with regular consultations with the British and further visits from Ball. In August the issue was still so pressing, with intensified fighting on the island, that he was unable to accompany his family for a holiday in Scotland. On the 10th there was particularly intense activity, with a meeting at the FO, telephone calls to Ball in Washington and Acheson in Geneva, a session with Premier DouglasHome and a briefing for the Labour leader, Wilson. On the 20th, Bruce was ‘snowed under by telegrams about Cyprus’. At that time morning meetings between Bruce, Eilts and the FO became a regular occurrence. Among other points of course he had to keep US and British thinking in line, reminding Washington that there were limits to how far Britain could go on Cyprus because of the island’s Commonwealth status and the terms of the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee, which had accompanied independence and to which

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Britain was a party.42 Incidentally, the Cyprus issue also presents one case where (presumably to reduce the risks of a ‘leak’) Bruce was told something that Gore was not. This was on 21 September 1964 when, as one possible means of resolving the crisis, the FO suggested they could help establish a secret link between the US government and King Constantine of Greece. One challenge for Bruce was that like many of those interested in international relations he could not simply focus on one issue at a time and it was often difficult to judge what issue would be most important next. Following a lunch at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, on 9 April 1964, in the midst of the Cyprus crisis he was asked to answer questions on a range of other issues. Most of these concerned the lessdeveloped world including China, Cuba and Vietnam, and many of them also involved the residue of Empire including British Guiana, Zanzibar, the armed ‘confrontation’ between Malaysia (an amalgamation of several former imperial possessions) and neighbouring Indonesia and the Yemen (where Egypt supported action against British protectorates in neighbouring South Arabia). Such issues spilled over into his dealings with the British government throughout the year and he was expected to report on all of them. Revolutionary unrest broke out in Zanzibar in early 1964, coinciding with the onset of the Cyprus crisis. On Zanzibar, Bruce was soon at odds with the African Bureau in the State Department, which he accused of ‘the most confused and amateurish attempts at backseat driving I have ever known in diplomacy’. He was exasperated that rather than addressing the ‘human passions’ at work, Washington felt the best option was to offer educational aid. On the other hand he doubted that the island was in such danger of a Communist takeover as some in the Department feared.43 In fact 1964 generated a plethora of problems for Britain and America scattered across the globe. On 19 May 1964, Bruce was involved in talks with FO on Laos where there were renewed advances by the communist Pathet Lao. In late August the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which led to US air strikes on North Vietnam, coincided with renewed instability in the Congo.44 It was also essential to consult the British regularly about the future of British Guiana, where Washington was keen to ensure that independence from London did not lead to a pro-Castro government.45 Then in September, as the Cyprus issue at last began to ease, the British were enraged by an Indonesian attack using parachutists against Malaysia and wanted US support to condemn this at the UN.46 (Nor, despite something of a détente in East–West relations after the 1961 Berlin Wall crisis, did controversies disappear in Europe: considerable time was absorbed during 1962–5 on the idea of a multilateral nuclear force for NATO, which ultimately came to nothing.)

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All of this helps to put in context Bruce’s reaction to another post-colonial crisis, that which followed the illegal declaration of independence by a white-supremacist regime in Rhodesia. Despite good personal relations and a shared general policy on this issue, differences grew because, though it was a priority for the British government, it was only a subsidiary question for the Americans. Johnson and his advisers wanted to avoid deep involvement, hoped the British could handle the problem and were disappointed when London failed to do so. Carl Watts argues both that Britain’s Washington embassy failed to keep itself informed of US thinking and that Bruce, with his relaxed managerial style, did not read enough of the correspondence that went from the Embassy to Washington.47 He certainly did not predict that by late 1965 it would come to be ‘of almost obsessive importance in governmental circles’.48 A year earlier, Rhodesia just seemed one problem among many and Bruce sometimes treated it as an unwelcome addition to his many burdens. Instructed by Washington on 3 September 1964 to express concern about the prospect of a unilateral declaration of independence (UDI), reassure London of America’s desire to be helpful and acknowledge British leadership on the issue, the Ambassador wrote ‘I wonder who in the Department writes such telegrams; we have sung this tune until the record is almost worn out’. He nonetheless saw British officials about the matter that same day, being reassured that UDI was far from imminent. In any case, 3 September proved a busy one, with Rusk asking Bruce to tell the British not to take US support on Malaysia for granted, while Butler pressed the Ambassador for progress in establishing an Anglo-American group on the Yemen. On both of these issues, there were signs of frayed nerves. Told of Rusk’s attitude on Malaysia, Sandys remarked ‘politely but wanly that it was scarcely necessary to warn the British whom we always took for granted not to expect the same from us’. Bruce himself feared that US policy in the Yemen ‘reflected pious platitudes and muddled ideology, another too frequent illustration of being ready to sacrifice friends in a vain attempt to placate enemies’. As if the day was not crowded enough, it also included a visit from Acheson to update the British on the latest negotiations in Geneva about Cyprus. The point is that Bruce had to keep his eye on many issues not just Rhodesia and, while it is not really a defence of his performance on that matter, the events of 3 September 1964 perhaps show that he deserves a degree of sympathy. Then again, when UDI finally occurred, Bruce’s political reporting was tinged by over-optimism that could only raise Washington’s hopes of a quick, successful outcome. He evidently relied on his deputy, Philip Kaiser, to keep up with developments on the issue as UDI approached and, once independence was announced on 11 November 1965, to have taken the consensus opinion in London on the matter. Thus, he argued that Wilson had

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‘done everything possible to avert this disaster’, that military action should be ruled out (since some British officers might refuse to take part) and that ‘drastic penalties will be immediately effective’ in bringing UDI to an end. He relayed such views to LBJ when they met in Washington a week later.49 By late November Rhodesia was ‘occupying the attention of many of our staff ’, but Bruce continued to support Wilson’s policy, backing the idea of sending a Royal Air Force squadron to Zambia as a way to prevent tougher action by African states.50 His moderation may have been influenced by his friend Lord Cromer, Governor of the Bank of England, who told him on 28 November that, while the position of Sterling was currently stable, this might not last if Rhodesia burst into violence. At that point Bruce certainly devoted a lot of time to Rhodesia. He sent a long telegram to Washington, declaring the issue to be ‘probably the most explosive political issue in Great Britain since the Suez adventure’ and urging sympathy for the government, though not unconditional support. He even hoped for ‘negotiations with constructive and reasonable elements’ in Rhodesia. The basic message was that Rhodesia was primarily a British problem.51 On 21 January 1966, Bruce still believed that economic sanctions against Rhodesia were ‘working effectively’ on the basis of reports reaching the Embassy, but by mid-April it was clear that this was not the case, partly because Rhodesia could receive supplies from neighbouring South Africa and the Portuguese colony of Mozambique. Sanctions against South Africa, much as they would please most African states, would severely damage the British economy; military action was still unlikely; so Bruce correctly predicted that Wilson would seek talks with Rhodesian premier Ian Smith. Indeed, the Ambassador wanted Washington to ‘urge upon the British the desirability of a negotiation. The “quick kill” has failed; the wounded animal is dripping blood, but can still run out of sight’. Nor was Bruce keen to offend Portugal, a NATO ally, over its support for the Rhodesian regime. But he and his officials also realized that it was very difficult to visualize a settlement that could satisfy both Smith and the African members of the Commonwealth, who were offended by the existence of a White supremacist state in their midst.52 In this analysis he had indeed summed up the dilemma facing Wilson himself, the necessity for negotiations and the likelihood that these would fail. A number of unsuccessful attempts at a negotiated settlement unfolded over the following years and it is reasonable to ask whether some of the problems should not have been clearer at the outset. Overall, as Watts says, Bruce’s performance on Rhodesia was hardly a success. The best that can be argued, again, is that for him it was only one problem among many and that, if he made an error, it was in believing the British when they said they could handle the problem.

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Explaining British policy: East of Suez Perhaps Bruce’s greatest challenge in terms of explaining British policy to his own government came over the Vietnam War, especially as it escalated during 1965–7 under President Johnson. Bruce was caught between the need to defend US involvement in the war to London, while explaining Britain’s refusal to become involved to Washington. With President Johnson himself these arguments had little success but they did not go unnoticed. In early June, when the National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy sent a memorandum to Johnson about Britain and Vietnam, it noted that ‘every experienced observer from David Bruce on down has been astonished by the overall strength and skill of Wilson’s defense of our policy in Vietnam … ’. It was clear from Bundy’s tone that he was among those who shared the Ambassador’s views, advising Johnson that, if he simply kept the British informed of American thinking, Wilson would continue his public support.53 The worst episode involving Vietnam (as seen in Chapter 4) was Wilson’s decision to ‘dissociate’ Britain from the US bombing of fuel installations around Hanoi and Haiphong in June 1966, when the Prime Minister also wanted a summit with the President.54 But Bruce backed the idea of a summit, arguing that, whatever Wilson’s view of Vietnam, he was a firm ally on other issues.55 Once the Prime Minister had made his ‘dissociation’ statement, in the House of Commons on 29 June, Bruce wrote an analysis of Wilson’s predicament to Washington explaining that he had to balance his desire for cooperation with Washington against those Labour MPs who feared he was an American puppet.56 In fact, Bruce had warned Washington about Britain’s likely dissociation from any bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong for at least a year before this crisis occurred. He noted in his diary on 30 May 1965, ‘I have stated this view frequently to the Department, but do not know how it is viewed there’.57 Given their own growing involvement in Vietnam, the Americans were anxious that Britain should continue its security commitments ‘East of Suez’ – in the Persian Gulf and Singapore-Malaysia.58 In September 1965, Bruce accompanied Under-Secretary of State George Ball to a meeting with Wilson, where Ball ‘pointed out in detail the disastrous consequences if the word should be spread that Western power might be withdrawn or diminished’. According to the US record, Ball even said that ‘the American effort to relieve Sterling was inextricably related to the commitment of the UKG to maintain its commitments around the world’.59 A reluctance to offend the Americans helps explain why, during his summit meeting with Johnson in December, Wilson, while hinting at an eventual withdrawal from Southeast Asia, also said Britain would remain a force in the Indian Ocean, perhaps

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operating from a base in Australia.60 Bruce was also personally reassured by Wilson that he was an ‘East of Suez man’ and even the realization that the Prime Minister was ‘determined to curtail foreign exchange expenditures’ did not lead to any expectation of a withdrawal from the Indian Ocean. Rather, Wilson talked in terms of savings on the British army in Germany.61 In August 1965, Bruce did talk about making US financial support for Britain conditional on maintenance of the presence East of Suez, so he cannot have been entirely confident of their determination to remain there.62 Some months earlier, Kaiser had talked to Deputy Premier George Brown and found him keen to cut overseas defence commitments, including bases East of Suez, to safeguard the balance of payments.63 Generally speaking, however, down to April 1967, Bruce was optimistic about British policy and, rather like the Rhodesia question, this optimism eventually turned to disappointment. When talks were held with a British team in Washington in January 1966, Bruce flew over to attend and recorded that the delegation ‘allayed American fears that they would no longer, in view of diminished economic and financial resources, play a global political and military role’. Although the British said they did not feel they could stay in Singapore in the long term and that they would give up the Aden base around 1968, they also talked of developing a base in Australia and strengthening their presence in the Persian Gulf.64 But there is evidence that the British were being disingenuous at this point and that a complete withdrawal from Southeast Asia was being planned, even if an announcement was delayed for the moment.65 Furthermore, Bruce could readily obtain statistics that showed defence expenditure to be ‘by far the largest item in Britain’s overseas spending’, with about a third of this going on the Far East. In the face of the July 1966 Sterling crisis Wilson talked to Bruce about some cuts East of Suez, but added that ‘this would take considerable time to accomplish’ and depended on whether the ‘confrontation’ between Malaysia and Indonesia could be brought to an end.66 Six months later it was certain that the confrontation was over and a report from Kaiser of 1 March 1967 warned that the Labour government’s ‘policy on East of Suez … still holds heavy hints of retrenchment and ultimate withdrawal’ from Southeast Asia. However, Kaiser also noted that Wilson and Defence Secretary Healey believed that ‘Britain does have a contribution to make in the area and that in any event this presence gives Britain a degree of influence on US policy which it would otherwise not have’.67 Yet only weeks later, on 16 April, the journalist Henry Brandon – an expert on AngloAmerican relations – revealed in the Sunday Times that Britain would indeed quit the region.68 This was highly embarrassing for the US embassy because on 14 April, warned of the Brandon story, it reported only ‘circumstantial evidence’ in support of the journalist’s claim before arguing that ‘on balance’

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the story was unlikely; if plans for a withdrawal did exist the British ‘have been at considerable pains to keep them from us’. Only on 18 April – with Foreign Secretary Brown in Washington, where he unveiled Britain’s real intentions – did the Embassy concede that the British Cabinet was indeed planning to leave East of Suez by the mid-1970s.69 A journalist seemed better informed of the full scale of British intentions than did the Embassy. Rusk fired a message off to Brown asking that Britain delay any announcement of a withdrawal from the Far East, at least until the Vietnam situation was resolved.70 Ironically, Brown seems to have suspected that the Americans had leaked the story to Brandon; Bruce and his officials felt it more likely that Brown, who was known to make careless remarks, had been the journalist’s source.71 Bruce shared the dismay felt in Washington, telling Rusk that ‘the appearance of our being deserted … in the midst of our Vietnamese involvement, by a Government assumed to be our most loyal ally, headed by a Prime Minister who had repeatedly declared himself an “East of Suez Man”, would seem to me unwise, provocative and absolutely unacceptable … ’.72 Even the British embassy in Washington seemed to be sympathetic to the US case: in an extraordinary outburst, John Killick, one of the counsellors, told a State Department colleague that Johnson should ‘really hit Wilson hard’ on East of Suez.73 Yet Bruce was professional enough to try to understand British thinking and explain it to Washington. ‘Important as the Far East and Middle East are, for the British they are less compelling than domestic economics and politics … ’, he told Rusk in a further message. He added that ‘An announcement in July of substantial savings in [the East of Suez] area … commends itself in both budgetary and foreign exchange savings … and it appeals to the growing number who, for doctrinal or emotional reasons, want to reduce Britain’s world role’.74 The cuts went ahead in mid-July and resulted in a muted crisis in Anglo-American relations. In mid-August, Kaiser told Palliser that they probably explained LBJ’s renewed reluctance to keep Wilson informed about developments in Vietnam.75 The Embassy proved much more effective in January 1968 when the British decided to accelerate the rate of their withdrawal from East of Suez. This would now be completed by the end of 1971, rather than in the mid1970s. In December 1967, Bruce had already recognized that in the wake of the recent devaluation of the Pound, there would be strong pressures to cut defence spending. An acceleration of the withdrawal from East of Suez, while it would anger Britain’s allies in the region, would please the Labour left and buy ‘support for tougher domestic cuts’.76 By 4 January Bruce was aware of a rift in the Cabinet between those who wanted to withdraw from East of Suez in 1970 and those opposed to such a retreat. On the 5th, Brown wrote to Rusk about a likely withdrawal from the Persian Gulf and on the 6th Bruce was

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at a meeting with Wilson, who said that Britain would not focus its defence efforts on Europe. Disaffected individuals in the British Cabinet, including the Healey and Brown, helped the Embassy. In a ‘rather extraordinary conversation’ with the Political-Military Counsellor, Ron Spiers, Healey expressed his fear of ‘lunatic’ decisions, and complained that Wilson had ‘led the pack’ in favour of cuts. In reporting this Bruce kept a rather cooler head than the Defence Secretary. The Ambassador doubted Washington could change the British decisions, and wanted to avoid any threats to Wilson and merely felt it ‘essential … we remain on record as still believing they should continue to honor their present obligations’.77 In his diary, Bruce wrote that ‘It looks as if the jig is up for any real British military activity after 1970 in the Far East, and probably in the Middle East. The Cabinet … seem to have decided Great Britain cannot have both guns and butter’.78 He was still angered by the decisions, calling them ‘calamitous, destructive, selfish, myopic, and threatening to world orderliness … They constitute, perhaps, the most deplorable resolve, except for Munich, that any British Government has taken during the last 150 years’. However, he was also able to exploit what had happened to justify his own previous reports: This Embassy has, I realize, for a long time been viewed in some Departmental quarters at home as over pessimistic in its assessment of the probable course of British foreign policies, especially as concerns defense commitments. The truth is, we have been witnessing the gradual, now accelerated, decline of a formerly great power … 79

And he was full of praise for the ‘wonderfully efficient’ way the Embassy gathered intelligence on British decision-making at this point, adding that ‘it is quite remarkable how forthcoming, on the basis of personal trust and friendship, some of their British counterparts have been in keeping them advised of what is going on behind the scenes’.80 The British embassy in Washington also remained concerned over the direction of its own government’s policy. Patrick Dean almost echoed Bruce in warning London that if the cuts were made, ‘we shall have crossed a watershed in our ability to influence world affairs and above all in AngloAmerican relations, which have been our … lifeline for the last fifty years’.81 By 17 January, however, despite appeals from LBJ to Wilson for a re-think, the situation was settled and at the US Embassy’s weekly staff meeting there was general gloom as ‘All agreed the scheduled departure of British armed forces from the Middle East and Far East represented a watershed in UK history’. At the end of a review of the crisis and its impact on the Wilson

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government, Bruce warned that the British would not ‘again be, as far as I can presently foresee, the stout and useful allies on whom we have often depended for support’.82

British politics Aside from its engagement with colonial and Commonwealth problems and its reporting on British intentions in foreign and defence policy, the other obvious area where the US embassy in London had a role was in monitoring political events and developments in Britain. Even a brief exchange with an eminent figure could be revealing. In January 1964, one Cabinet Minister – the Leader of the House of Commons, Selwyn Lloyd – told Bruce that, contrary to what many were expecting, there would not be a general election in March.83 There was a host of other potential sources for Bruce. He was at a dinner with a Conservative MP, Aidan Crawley, the historian John Wheeler-Bennett and others in July 1963, for example, when the conversation reinforced the impression that Macmillan might retire soon so as to give his successor a chance to win the next election.84 In September 1966, Bruce’s sceptical view of the British economy was confirmed at a long lunch with directors of the Anglo-Dutch Shell group.85 Throughout his ambassadorship he considered that ‘Conversation on political, economic and financial affairs at The Economist is … the best in London’.86 Of course Bruce was not the only person reporting from London. Most of the thousands of telegrams that went to Washington from London were drafted by junior staff. It is clear, for example, that a report on the 1961 Labour Party conference was actually written by a US official sent to observe proceedings, even though it was signed off by Bruce.87 The Deputy Chief of Mission Philip Kaiser signed off an unusually detailed 17-page report on US–UK relations in May 1966, acknowledging that it was a ‘composite embassy effort’ led by Al Irving of the Political Section.88 A more interesting example comes from late March 1961, as Bruce arrived in London, when Malcolm Toon, one of the First Secretaries drafted a letter for John McSweeney, head of the State Department’s Office of Soviet Union Affairs. The letter warned that Macmillan seemed to believe that the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, was only taking a tough line abroad in order to placate critics in the Politburo. Toon feared that this ‘old chestnut’ could lead to Macmillan making concessions to Khrushchev in order to keep him in office. Toon also sounded out the Foreign Office’s Northern Department and discovered that the Prime Minister ‘either doesn’t read Foreign Office memoranda or ignores their contents’. The letter is a good example of how embassy diplomatic staff

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were networking in Whitehall, uncovering differences within the British government and relaying information back home.89 What then, did the Ambassador himself write? As noted earlier, Bruce was known for being very selective in what he put to paper, recognizing Washington would not react well to being bombarded with information and arguments. His diary provides a good general idea of the kind of telegrams he composed himself. Many involved specific meetings in which he was involved, mostly on foreign policy rather than domestic political questions. On 2 June 1961, he records himself sending off a telegram about British Guiana to Washington after talking to a British minister. Six days later (8 June), following ‘an urgent message from Secretary Rusk’, the Ambassador quickly went to see Lord Home, writing a telegram about the meeting afterwards. After that Bruce notes a number of occasions when he drafted telegrams on meetings with Home, but he would report back on meetings with other leading ministers. Thus, on 1 November 1961, he wrote up a report during a lunch with the Lord Privy Seal, Edward Heath, where the EEC entry bid was discussed. Sometimes messages could be very urgent and the Ambassador recognized he must make time in his busy schedule for them. He sat up until 2.00 a.m. on the morning of 18 May 1961 writing a telegram for George Ball on the situation surrounding the European Community and possible British entry.90 On 18 August 1961, the need to report to Washington about unspecified ‘confidential business’ with the British intelligence chief, Sir Dick White, made the Ambassador late for a reception. Despite his failings over the April 1967 East of Suez decision, Bruce had his successes in reporting potentially embarrassing steps by the British. In May 1962, for example, he reported that Macmillan and other key ministers might be contemplating the offer of a ‘nuclear partnership’ to de Gaulle, to win him over to British EEC membership. This allowed Bundy to warn Gore that such an arrangement might not be welcome to the Kennedy administration unless it also included a long-term French commitment to NATO.91 Meetings with the Prime Minister were another predictable reason for Bruce to draft telegrams. Such meetings also allowed him to build up a picture of the Prime Minister, which was itself worth reporting to Washington. By December 1961, although he acknowledged that it was difficult to become intimate with Macmillan ‘and his inmost thoughts are seldom open to penetration’, Bruce was able to paint a perceptive image of this key figure. Macmillan, he wrote, was ‘a political animal, shrewd, subtle in maneuver’, who also had ‘charm, politeness, dry humour, self-assurance … , dignity and character’ and whose outward appearance was deceptive. ‘At times, he gives the impression of being shot through with Victorian languor. It would be

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a mistake to infer from this that he is lacking in force or decisiveness’.92 Of course, the Ambassador was expected to keep Washington informed of key British policy-makers. On 15 October 1963, he updated biographical sketches of those senior Conservatives in the running to replace Macmillan as premier. It was a race whose outcome he found difficult to predict. He dealt with Butler first, saying that he ‘Towers above other contenders in experience and creative achievement’. But it is interesting that he put Home second on his list noting that, while he had ‘Never handled complex economic, administrative, industrial, and social problems’ and had ‘little personal experience in roughand-tumble of political in-fighting’, his ‘Olympian independence, clarity of speech, personal simplicity [and] puckish charm … command great respect and liking’. Once Home emerged as the victor, Bruce sent a further analysis ending with the prediction that ‘we can entertain a completely satisfactory relationship’ with his administration.93 When Wilson was elected Premier in October 1964 the Ambassador immediately sent an analysis arguing that he would try to control ‘all important aspects of British policy’, emphasizing his superiority ‘in intellectual ability, adroitness and persuasiveness’ over other Cabinet ministers and concluding that, while he would not be as accommodating to the United States as Conservative leaders, he would be cooperative.94 In a separate analysis for Richard Neustadt, Bruce wrote that despite Wilson’s reputation as a cold, opportunistic and ambitious figure who could not be trusted, ‘In the three years I have known him, I have found him frank, open, discursive, intelligent, agreeable, friendly’.95 In July 1966, after the Prime Minister ‘dissociated’ Britain from US bombing in North Vietnam, Bruce reminded Washington that ‘Wilson is a political animal … a master of infighting … and usually adept at making ambiguous public statements to serve his political aims’.96 One of the Ambassador’s most enthusiastic reports came soon afterwards, when Brown became Foreign Secretary. ‘Certainly, the Foreign Office here has never before been headed by such an unorthodox diplomatist’ he wrote, describing Brown as ‘forceful, courageous, able, indefatigable, mercurial in temperament, unpredictable in behaviour, frank, salty, voluble, entertaining, gregarious, a curious mixture of humility and vanity’.97 Bruce also reported on key political shifts in London. For example, he composed his own full analysis of the ministerial changes that Macmillan made as a result of the July 1962 ‘night of the long knives’, when several leading ministers were suddenly replaced.98 In contrast to his over-optimism about Rhodesia and the British presence East of Suez, Bruce’s reporting on political leaders and their manoeuvrings was generally shrewd and reliable. He even predicted the close outcome of the 1964 election. He reported in July, ‘I have never personally been convinced of the inevitability of victory

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by the Labour Party … ’ and warned the State Department not to ‘take an overwhelming Labour victory for granted’.99 Reporting on the political scene could be particularly delicate during a general election campaign when it was important, first, to provide Washington with an accurate prediction of the likely result and, second, to avoid anything that smacked of favouritism to one of the parties. These were especially difficult challenges in October 1964 when the race between Conservative and Labour was so close. Bruce clearly succeeded with the first challenge in that Labour scraped home by only a handful of seats in the House of Commons, but the success was marred when Bruce faced accusations of favouritism. On 12 October 1964, he woke to find a Daily Telegraph story that he had predicted a Labour victory, a claim that the USIA office swiftly denied and which enraged the Ambassador because he had been very careful to avoid such comments – and had instructed his staff to do the same.100 Bruce was rather less sure-footed when it came to assessing the British economy, but erring this time on the side of pessimism. During the evening of 16 July 1961 he composed a long telegram highlighting the ‘deeply disturbing’ economic situation, the regrettable dithering over an EEC application (which allowed opposition to gather) and the likely unpopularity of austerity measures.101 He became particularly concerned after Labour’s election in 1964, warning that the existing balance of payments problems and reliance on shortterm borrowing, combined with the party’s hostility to private enterprise and desire to improve social security, could lead to a crisis of confidence. This warning was proven correct within weeks and in late November the British needed a $3 billion support package, about a third financed by America, for which ‘absolutely magnificent’ step the Prime Minister expressed fulsome thanks to the Ambassador. But it should be added that the British avoided an alternative means of dealing with their problems – by devaluing the Pound – because this would displease Washington, which knew that speculative attacks on the Dollar might follow.102 During 1965, the situation seemed to stabilize but in July Bruce warned that the UK’s economic position ‘could become critical at any time’. Other states were becoming reluctant to support the Pound and, while the United States wanted to provide aid – ‘to protect the dollar, avoid a drastic cutback in UK defense commitments, and maintain US-UK solidarity’ – this ‘might well turn out to be money down a rathole’.103 In July 1966, when a major financial crisis struck, Bruce warned Washington about the state of the British economy in the starkest terms: The country seems at the mercy of economic drift and unsuccessful improvisation. I think deep changes must occur in the whole complex

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of industry and finance here, and I do not see much prospect of this happening. The changes would necessitate politically distasteful reductions of expenditures in the public sector … I do not conclude that Britain is going down the drain, but every sluice gate is beginning to open.104

But experts in Washington felt such warnings too extreme. Francis Bator, the acting NSA, told Johnson as much.105 At the time of the devaluation of the Pound in November 1967 Bruce again struck a gloomy note, talking of ‘an appreciable political deterioration, the consequence of which is impossible to foretell’.106 In contrast, Embassy staff took an optimistic view of British social and political stability. Following the May 1968 Paris riots Bruce signed off a report to Washington headed ‘Can it happen here?’ This concluded that, ‘unless the economic and financial situation suddenly deteriorated’ there would be no French-style explosion. The British might be discouraged by post-war decline and the ‘stop-go’ economy, ‘But Britain is not France’. The government was responsive to popular opinion, the press was free, Britain’s ‘emancipated “pop” culture’ led the way in Europe, the ‘unarmed British bobby’ was less likely to stir violence than the police of Paris or Detroit, real wages were actually increasing, unemployment was low, only a small proportion of students had been radicalized, the trades unions had no revolutionary leanings and there was a strong political tradition of ‘stability and flexibility’.107 This analysis was better reasoned and less sensationalist than many analyses produced in Britain itself at this point. Indeed, it has to be said that, so far as British domestic politics was concerned, Embassy reporting was sound and insightful. In part, this was due to the good sense of Bruce’s staff, but it was also helped by his own grasp of British personalities and his deep experience of the country. It confirmed that even if Britain’s Washington embassy had a more significant role in trans-Atlantic exchanges, and whatever errors were made in reporting on Rhodesia, East of Suez and the direction of the British economy, the London embassy undoubtedly had an important niche to fill, providing Washington with intelligence and advice designed to serve US, not British, interests.

Notes  1 Jules Cambon, The Diplomatist (London: Philip Allan, 1931), 7.  2 Ellis Briggs, Farewell to Foggy Bottom (New York: David McKay, 1964), 6; William Macomber, The Angels’ Game (New York: Stein and Day, 1975), 60.

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 3 US Senate, Committee on Government Operations, Subcommittee on National Security Staffing and Operations, hearing of 18 September 1963, 243–4.  4 Virginia Historical Society, David Bruce Diary (DBD), Bruce to Rusk, 24 July 1962.  5 DBD, 13 October 1967.  6 Donna Lee, Middle Powers and Commercial Diplomacy: British Influence at the Kennedy Trade Round (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 1999), 125–6.  7 Lord Wright of Richmond, in ‘The Role of HM Embassy in Washington’, seminar, 18 June 1997 (London: Institute of Contemporary British History, 1997), 21. Available at: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/groups/ich/ witness/archives/PDFfiles/Washington.pdf.  8 The National Archives (TNA), Kew, FCO73/154, Gore to DouglasHome, 4 November 1961. On his ambassadorship see Michael Hopkins, ‘David Ormsby Gore’, in Hopkins, Saul Kelly and John Young (eds), The Washington Embassy: British Ambassadors to the United States, 1939–77 (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2009); Christopher Meyer, Getting Our Way (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2009), chapter 3.  9 David Nunnerly, President Kennedy and Britain (London: Bodley Head, 1972), 43–8; DBD, 14 November 1964. 10 John F. Kennedy Library (JFKL), Oral History Program, Bruce written statement. 11 Len Scott, Macmillan, Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 1999), chapter 3. 12 Archie Roosevelt, For Lust of Knowing (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988), 468. 13 Harold Macmillan, At the End of the Day, 1961–3 (Basingstoke: PalgraveMacmillan, 1973), 180–95, quote from 187. 14 Peter Catterall (ed.), The Macmillan Diaries, 1957–66 (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011), 508–9. 15 See Scott, Macmillan, 82–8. 16 Scott, Macmillan, 116–20; Ernest May and Philip Zelikow (eds), The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the Kennedy White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1997), 340–1; Roosevelt, Knowing, 468–9; Bruce to Rusk, in DBD, 9 December 1962. 17 JFKL, Robert Eastabrook papers, Box 1, memorandum of luncheon meeting, ‘late October/early November 1962’. 18 Scott, Macmillan, 94–100, 113–16 and 153–9; Peter Catterall, ‘At the End of the Day; Macmillan’s Account of the Cuban Missile Crisis’, International Relations, Vol. 26, No. 3 (September 2012), 272–8. 19 Alistair Horne, Macmillan, Volume II, 1956–87 (London: Macmillan, 1989), 306 and 308. 20 For example, JFKL, National Security File (NSF), Country File, United Kingdom (CFUK), Box 170, State to London, 20 April 1962.

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21 DBD, 9 June 1963. 22 DBD, 28 June 1963. 23 Nelson Lankford, The Last American Aristocrat: The Biography of Ambassador David Bruce (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1996), 312. 24 Hopkins, ‘Ormsby Gore’, 143–5, and Jonathan Colman, ‘Patrick Dean’, 163–4, in Hopkins, Kelly and Young (eds), Washington Embassy. 25 Catterall, Macmillan, 618. 26 TNA/PREM13/694, record of meeting, 13 April 1965. 27 National Archives and Record Administration (NARA), College Park, RG59, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Politico-Military Affairs, Subject Files 1961–8, Box 23, Lot 70D274, file headed ‘Air Defense ABM-UK 1965–6’, passim. 28 NARA/RG59, Executive Secretariat, Middle East crisis files 1967, Box 5, Lot 68D135, ‘Chronological File, Top Secret/Nodis London Telegrams’, 21–31 May. 29 For example, NARA/RG59, General Records of the State Department, Bureau of European Affairs, Office of Northern European Affairs, Records relating to UK, 1962–74, Box 4, POL – Czechoslovakia 1968 folder, Bohlen to Rusk, 24 July, and Rusk-Dean conversation, 25 July 1968. 30 TNA/FCO63/348, Dean to Stewart, 5 February 1969. 31 Newsweek, 6 January 1969. 32 TNA, Kew, FCO7/1445, Hayman to Greenhill, 27 August 1969. 33 DBD, 27 June 1965 and 13 January 1966. 34 Sylvia Ellis, Britain, America and the Vietnam War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004), 160–77. 35 DBD, 11 and 14 October 1966. 36 DBD, 11 January 1963 and 17 February 1965. 37 TNA/PREM13/692, Wright minute, 11 February 1965. 38 DBD, 2 and 4 November 1966. 39 Carl Watts, Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2013), chapter 6, footnote 162. 40 DBD, 1–2 and 4–5 February. 41 DBD, 6 February. 42 DBD, Bruce to Ball, 25 August 1964. 43 DBD, 4–5 February 1964. 44 DBD, 30–31 August 1964. 45 DBD, 1 July 1964. 46 DBD, London to State, 2 September 1964. 47 Watts, Rhodesia, chapter 6. 48 As he reported in NARA/RG59, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1964–6, Political and Defence, Box 2778, London to State, 13 December 1965. 49 DBD, 11 and 18 November 1965. 50 DBD, 27 November 1965. 51 DBD, Bruce to Rusk, 1 December 1965.

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DBD, Bruce to Rusk, 16 April 1966. LBJL/NSF/CFUK, Box 208, Bundy to Johnson, 3 June 1965. For background see Ellis, Vietnam War, 160–79. LBJL/NSF/CFUK, Box 209, Rusk to Johnson, 2 June 1966. LBJL/NSF, Rostow files, Box 12, Bruce to Ball, 11 July, and see CFUK, Box 209, London to State, 12 July 1966. 57 DBD, Bruce to Rusk, 3 June 1965. 58 I have explored this issue more fully in ‘The US Embassy in London and Britain’s withdrawal from East of Suez’, in John W. Young, Effie Pedaliu and Michael Kandiah (eds), Britain in Global Politics, Volume 2: From Churchill to Blair (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2013). 59 LBJL/NSF/CFUK, Box 208, London to State, 10 September 1965; TNA/ PREM13/2450, record of meeting, 9 September 1965. 60 LBJL, Francis Bator papers, Box 2, Notes of president’s meeting with Wilson, 16 December 1965. 61 DBD, 27 November 1964 and 24 June 1965. 62 DBD, Bruce to Ball, 6 August 1965. 63 NARA/RG59, State Department Central Policy Files 1964–6, Political and Defence, Box 2777, POL7UK, London to State Department, 6 February 1965. 64 DBD, 27 January 1966. 65 See Saki Dockrill, Britain’s Retreat from East of Suez (Basingstoke: PalgraveMacmillan, 2002), 148–9 and 155–6; P.L. Pham, Ending East of Suez (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 74–7. 66 DBD, 7 February and 21 July 1966. 67 LBJL/NSF/CFUK, Box 210, London to State Department (signed Kaiser), 1 March 1967. 68 Henry Brandon, Special Relationships (London: Macmillan, 1988), 213–15; Pham, Ending, 151–4. 69 LBJL/NSF/CFUK, Box 210, London to State, 14 and 18 April 1967; and see James Ellison, The United States, Britain and the Trans-Atlantic Crisis, 1963–8 (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2007), 140–3. 70 DBD, Rusk to Brown, 21 April 1967. 71 DBD, 26 April 1967. 72 DBD, Bruce to Rusk, 6 May 1967. 73 Ellison, Crisis, 156. 74 DBD, Bruce to Rusk, 30 May 1967. 75 TNA/PREM13/2459, Palliser to Wilson, 15 August 1967. 76 DBD, Bruce to Johnson, 21 December 1967. 77 DBD, 9 January 1968, with telegrams. 78 DBD, 12 January 1968. 79 DBD, Bruce to Bundy, 15 January 1968. 80 LBJL/NSF/CFUK, Box 211, London to State Department, 16 January 1968; DBD, 16 January 1968.

The London Embassy in Anglo-American Relations  81  82  83  84  85  86  87  88  89  90  91  92  93  94  95  96  97  98  99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107

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TNA/PREM13/1999, Dean to Brown, 14 January 1968. DBD, Bruce to Rusk, 23 January 1968. DBD, 27 January 1964. DBD, 17 July 1963. DBD, 13 September 1966. DBD, 3 May 1968. The telegram begins, ‘Embassy observer submits following impressions’: RG84, Great Britain London Embassy, 1937–61, Box 482, 350 Britain, July–December 1961 folder, London to State, 11 October 1961. NARA/RG59, State Department Central Policy Files 1964–6, Political and Defence, Box 2786, POL1UK-US, ‘US-UK Relations’, 23 May 1966. NARA/RG84, Great Britain, London Embassy, 1937–61, Box 482, Toon to McSweeney, 29 March 1961. DBD, 17 May 1961. See Stuart Ward, ‘Kennedy, Britain and the European Community’, in Douglas Brinkley and Richard Griffiths (eds), John F. Kennedy and Europe (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999), 327–8. JFKL/NSF/CFUK, Box 170, Bruce to Rusk, 13 December 1961. DBD, Bruce to Rusk, 15 and 20 October 1963. DBD, Bruce to Rusk, 16 October 1964. LBJL/NSF/CFUK, Box 214, Bruce to Neustadt, 6 December 1964. NARA/RG59, Central Policy Files 1964–6, Political and Defence, Box 2779, POL7UK, London to State, 11 July 1966. LBJL/NSF/CFUK, Box 210, London to State, 26 September 1966. JFKL/NSF/CFUK/170, Bruce to Rusk, 14, 17 and 19 July; DBD, 18 July 1962. DBD, Bruce to Rusk, 20 July 1964. DBD, 12 October 1964. DBD 16 July 1961; NARA/RG84, Great Britain, London Embassy, 1937–61, Box 482, 350 Britain, Bruce to Washington 229, 17 July 1961. Jonathan Colman, A Special Relationship? Harold Wilson, Lyndon Johnson and Anglo-American Relations (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 23–5. Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Acheson Papers, PostAdministration Files, Box 87, ‘Consultants’ Discussion of Atlantic Affairs’, 7 July 1965. DBD, London to State, 11 July 1966. LBJL, Francis Bator papers, Chronological File, Box 3, Memorandum for the President, 26 July 1966. LBJL/NSF, Memoranda to the President, London to State, 16 November 1967. DBD, Bruce to Rusk, 4 June 1968.

6

The Diplomatic Corps Hitherto, this study has focused on Bruce’s relations with his own government and that of the British. But he was also part of a much wider diplomatic network, not least thanks to the existence of the diplomatic corps. While the diplomatic system has been described as ‘the master institution of international relations’,1 the diplomatic corps has been called ‘the most tangible expression of international society that exists’.2 Wherever diplomats are posted they find themselves in a schizophrenic position, on the one hand defending their state’s interests, on the other forming a professional group with their fellows. As one former British ambassador put it, within the diplomatic corps ‘they are … colleagues, with certain interests in common. Together they protect the immunities and privileges necessary for their work more effectively than when they act alone’.3 As such, and particularly for those scholars in the ‘English School’ or for those who take a ‘constructivist’ view of international relations – believing that states forming a society, rather than ‘structural realists’ who see each state pursuing its own national interest in an anarchical world – the diplomatic corps is a living microcosm of that society. The corps simultaneously reveals both the diversity of states and their need to live together. Yet, surprisingly little detailed research has been done on it.4 A particular area of neglect is ‘the internal dialogue among diplomats, the informal part of their interaction, which is seldom recorded nor reported’.5 The aim of this chapter is to look into this ‘internal dialogue’ by surveying Bruce’s experience of both the ceremonial and social sides of the corps.

The diplomatic corps The diplomatic corps may be defined as ‘The body of diplomats of all states … who are resident at one post’.6 In 1716 François de Callières advised that ‘when an ambassador arrives at a Court and has notified this to the Prince, he ought to give notice of it to all the ambassadors who are at the same Court … ’, so that they would exchange visits with him.7 By then, clearly, the concept of a ‘diplomatic corps’ was well understood even if the term itself was not used for some decades. The corps was itself a product of particular historical circumstances, emerging in the fifteenth century at the same time

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as resident embassies. Its first evidence has been traced to Rome, a city to which several permanent ambassadors were appointed because it lay at the centre of Italian politics. ‘The papal practice of addressing them collectively, of assigning them places together at all important ceremonies, and of issuing, from time to time, regulations for their common governance … ’ reinforced the esprit de corps among this group. In his seminal study of Renaissance diplomacy Garrett Mattingly saw this new feature of diplomacy as acting in a distinct way: ‘developing a rudimentary sense of professional solidarity, exchanging social courtesies, codifying their mutual relationships and even, in certain emergencies, acting together as a body.’8 G.R. Berridge has looked at another early example of a diplomatic corps at work, in Constantinople during the 1620s. He highlights the way this small body, only four ambassadors, was drawn together by common insecurities as Christians in an Islamic world, the need for united action to defend their countries’ trading rights and a sharing of services, including the communication of messages back home.9 Today one of the prime unifying forces behind the corps – the need to defend its rights and codify relationships – has tended to become less pressing, simply because centuries of codification have left only limited areas of dispute. In 1961, under the auspices of the United Nations, the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations set out the immunities and privileges of resident missions. This may help explain why the subject has attracted such little interest from scholars. Nonetheless, those who have paid attention to it see it as significant. Sasson Sofer considers that the Corps demonstrates the commitment of governments to ‘the diplomatic norms of international society’. It represents a separate ‘diplomatic culture’ in the world, a body with its own values, thought patterns and collegiality.10 However, it has also been said that ‘A diplomatic corps in a particular location … must be studied in situ, in relation to the actual situation in which its members find themselves … ’. The diplomatic corps may be a permanent international institution, but each capital city is different, each government represented in that capital has a particular relationship with the receiving state, each ambassador brings different attributes to the job and the make-up of the corps is forever changing.11 It is therefore appropriate to focus an essay on the role of the diplomatic corps in one particular ambassadorial posting. If nothing else, Bruce justifies the claim that each ambassador is unique. He was in a privileged position, an experienced diplomat representing a major ally in a liberal-democratic state, where the rights of the Corps were well established and where it comprised some of the world’s ablest diplomats. He was also posted to a city where the cohesion of the diplomatic corps was

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undermined by the very existence of a liberal political system. Whatever the differences between particular capitals, it is valid to ask what each example reveals about the unity of the diplomatic corps, the frequency with which it meets, how far it is institutionalized, the combinations within it, how it is led and the purposes it serves. This is true of any capital in the world, even one that has such a long-standing role in diplomatic life as London: for there has only been one study done of the London diplomatic corps and it focuses on the experience of Commonwealth countries.12 Furthermore, while few diplomatic memoirs say much about the corps,13 Bruce’s diaries allow quite a full study of the inner workings of the Corps in 1960s London, including the officials associated with it, the ceremonies at which its existence was made manifest and such practices as ‘calls’ and national days.

Officials The official leader of the diplomatic corps in any location is the dean (sometimes called the doyen or doyenne). In most cases this is ‘the longestserving member of the highest class of diplomat accredited to the country in question’ with the length of service timed from their presentation of credentials.14 But, however easy it may be to identify this individual, their precise power and influence can clearly vary greatly depending on their character and experience, and the state they represent. They will usually play a role in ceremonies that involve the diplomatic corps, and can speak on behalf of it at public events. But they are likely to have a public profile only when the receiving government creates problems for diplomats in general, forcing them to unite under the leadership of the dean, who will then present their complaints to the authorities. Action can only be taken on behalf of the corps when its members ask for this.15 In London there were no such problems. The dean’s position involved them mostly in speaking on behalf of the corps at social events (such as the annual Queen’s birthday dinner16), providing advice to new colleagues and organizing the corps for some formal event. The latter might include buying a joint gift for the Queen on the birth of a child17 or organizing a farewell reception for the FO Permanent Under-Secretary.18 Nonetheless, an early meeting with the dean was a social priority for any newly arrived ambassador and it was a mere four days after presenting his credentials to the Queen and before calling on any other ambassadors that Bruce met the London doyen, Sweden’s Gunnar Hagglof.19 He had been in London since 1948, was particularly noted as a speaker and stayed until 1967 when he was succeeded by Luxembourg’s André Classen.

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Bruce was concerned about the change because Classen had only a small staff and his government was reported to be ‘sticky’ about providing him extra resources.20 But there is no evidence in the diary of Classen’s role actually being any less effective than Hagglof. In most countries the diplomatic corps deals with the host government via a protocol department in the foreign ministry. In Washington the Office of the Chief of Protocol plays the major role in dealing with the corps and supervising its ceremonies. Though the office is based in the State Department, the Chief of Protocol is generally a political appointee with close links to the President.21 In London there is an even greater emphasis on the role of the head of state, the key figure being the Marshal of the Diplomatic Corps who among other duties supervises the presentation of new ambassadors’ credentials at Buckingham Palace and arranges the representation of the diplomatic corps on State occasions. The Marshal has been described as ‘the authoritative exponent of the local etiquette’ for diplomats posted to London. There is also a Vice-Marshal and various Assistant Marshals, but these were based in the Foreign Office’s Protocol Department rather than at the Palace.22 One British diplomat recalled that Foreign Office officials tended to be concerned: with low-level protocol – dealing with the appointment of foreign ambassadors – but when it came to the top stuff – the presentation of letters of credence by an Ambassador to the sovereign – it all passed out of our dusty office to that of the Vice-Marshal of the Diplomatic Corps … Eventually it ended with the Marshal himself, with his plumed cocked-hat and scarlet tunic, in a state coach … 23

Within a week of Bruce’s arrival as ambassador, Dugald Malcolm, ViceMarshal of the Diplomatic Corps since 1957 (who became, concurrently, Head of the Protocol Department in 1961), ‘steered’ him around the Foreign Office, introducing him to key officials. The following day Bruce was introduced to the Marshal of the Diplomatic Corps, Major-General Sir Guy Salisbury-Jones, who had held the post for more than a decade. He returned a few days later with three heavily gilt royal coaches to pick Bruce for his first audience with the Queen. Sir Guy accompanied Bruce on the 15-minute procession to Buckingham Palace and later ‘ushered in our staff one by one in order of precedence’ for the Ambassador to present them to the Monarch.24 Salisbury-Jones also introduced Bruce and other ambassadors to the Queen at Buckingham Palace receptions.25 Bruce’s diary never suggests that there was any tension in relations between the corps and the Marshal or indeed on any issues of protocol and after Bruce’s early days in London the Marshal

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of the Corps is barely mentioned. As an example of the amicable relations between the corps, its dean and the Palace is – when Dugald Malcolm ended his period as Vice-Marshal, the corps gathered at the Swedish Embassy and presented him with two T’ang vases.26

Ceremonies The most obvious place for outsiders to ‘see’ the diplomatic corps as an entity – as represented by the Chiefs of Mission – is at one of the great ceremonial occasions. In London these included the annual State Opening of Parliament by the Queen in late October or early November (which always inspired a full description of the pomp and ceremony in Bruce’s diary27) and the Trooping of the Colour at Buckingham Palace in early June. Bruce considered the last to be ‘the best exhibition in the way of pageantry in the world’ but by 1965, having attended ‘so many … over a period of years’ even he decided to ‘skip’ it.28 Later in June many ambassadors and their wives would attend the annual horse racing at Ascot, which, if not a formal state ceremony, was certainly a major social event, especially on Gold Cup day. Bruce considered it ‘a must for diplomats’ and that it was ‘skimpy to attend only one day in the week’. Yet he missed it in 1965 (due to pressing events in Vietnam), 1966 (due to a family illness) and 1967 (feeling unwell himself).29 These occasions were regular events in the calendar but there were also impromptu gatherings like funerals or memorial services that drew the diplomatic corps together, such as that for UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld in 1961 where the ambassadors sat facing British Cabinet members in Westminster Abbey.30 When Winston Churchill died in 1965 a time was set aside for the corps to attend his lying in state at Westminster Hall and ambassadors were seated prominently at the funeral in St. Paul’s Cathedral.31 Large numbers of diplomats would also attend other events such as royal film premieres. At the premier of The Fall of the Roman Empire, attended by the Duke of Edinburgh in March 1964, the Italian Ambassador was on hand to point out various historical inaccuracies in the film to his colleagues.32 The diplomatic corps was also part of the spectacle during State visits to the British capital, of which there were about two a year. On 11 July 1962, Bruce was among seventy ambassadors to be received by President William Tubman of Liberia at Buckingham Palace in the morning and he attended another reception at Lancaster House in the evening. As Bruce noted on another occasion, when King Constantine II of Greece made a State visit, the actual process of being received was ‘brief, each Ambassador lingers

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a moment on the doorstep … , makes a bow, moves forward, exchanges handshakes and sometimes a few words, before going onward to take his automobile’. Not all ambassadors found this a valuable use of their time. One complained that State visits were only intended to ‘shake hands. And that took most of the day each time’. But Bruce seems to have exploited them to do business. Thus, while waiting to shake hands with King Constantine he had a few words with the Soviet Ambassador about the prospects for a Test Ban Treaty.33 (His example was later emulated by Raymond Seitz, who found it especially useful to be placed between the Chinese and South African Ambassadors as they approached the Queen and her visitor.34) More impressive and potentially useful for political talks were the State banquets held during visits. Bruce, who was much given to hyperbole, described that for King Hussein of Jordan in 1966 as ‘about the finest show on earth’ though he also noted that for all the conversations he had that night, only one involved serious politics. It was rather different when King Faisal of Saudi Arabia made a State visit the following year, when Bruce was able to hold brief talks with Prime Minister Wilson, Foreign Secretary Brown and the Leader of the Opposition, Edward Heath before the State banquet got underway. Afterwards Bruce was granted a private audience with the King, who complained that the United States was not doing enough to counter the Soviet and Egyptian threat to Arabia. Again, when President Cevdet Sunay of Turkey visited in November 1967, Bruce was able to meet the guest, Wilson, Brown, Heath and Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe. This event drew the comment from Bruce that ‘It is extraordinary how frequently in British social gatherings one has opportunities to discuss matters of diplomatic substance, not only with colleagues, but more importantly with politicians’.35 It was evidently the combination of the diplomatic corps and leading British politicians, together with the fact that State banquets allowed real opportunities for conversation, that made them of practical as well as ceremonial use. Of some practical value, too, were parties and receptions at Buckingham Palace. The Queen gave three garden parties a year to which ambassadors were invited, with each embassy being allowed to suggest a list of visitors for one of these. For the United States, falling towards the end of the alphabet, this was the third of the series held in July. At the July 1961 Queen’s garden party the ambassadors were also joined by the Foreign Secretary, Lord Home. At the same event in 1964 Bruce’s diary gives details of conversations, including conversations with the Soviet Ambassador (who was concerned about the Republican Party’s nomination of the right-wing Barry Goldwater as its Presidential candidate), the French Ambassador (about the likely contents of General de Gaulle’s next press conference) and the Labour leader, Wilson (also concerned about Goldwater).36

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There was also an annual diplomatic reception at Buckingham Palace in November attended by hundreds of diplomats, where only selected senior figures could be presented to the Queen. This event sometimes allowed Bruce to carry out useful political business: in 1967, before the Queen arrived, he spoke to Harold Wilson about how best to time the next summit meeting with President Johnson.37 It is evident that one striking feature of the diplomatic corps in London is the centrality of the royal family to its existence. The influence of the monarchy may have declined in terms of any meaningful impact on the world’s crises and conflicts, but in terms of ceremony and protocol it remained the focus of diplomatic life. In early 1964 when the Queen Mother needed her appendix removed, ‘somewhat to my surprise I learned that even such events in the lives of members of the Royal Family were acknowledged in the Diplomatic Corps by signatures [of books expressing good wishes]’. A happier occasion shortly afterwards was the birth of Prince Edward, which led to Bruce joining a line of colleagues at Buckingham Palace to sign another book. It was at this point that the corps also agreed to subscribe five pounds each for an item of silverware to be selected by the doyen and presented to the Queen.38 There was, then, a mutually beneficial attitude between the Palace and the corps, with the former able to demonstrate its unity at major ceremonies while simultaneously expressing its respect for the royal family.

The cocktail circuit The diplomatic corps gained much of its cohesion from ambassadors and their staff attending an endless list of social functions. J.K. Galbraith, after two years as Ambassador to India, was caustic about claims that the social round helped deliver ‘useful information’, declaring ‘I never learned anything at a cocktail party or dinner that I didn’t already know, needed to know or wouldn’t soon have learned in the normal course of business’.39 Galbraith however was no professional diplomat and many who were would have disagreed with him. On arriving at the Bonn embassy in May 1963, Bruce’s friend, George McGhee, noted there ‘soon began the interminable receptions and dinner parties that … constitute a great burden for a busy diplomat’, but he acknowledged that these were ‘usually pleasant and undoubtedly helpful in establishing personal contacts’.40 For most ambassadors selecting which invitations to dinners to accept was a serious business. Christopher Meyer, British Ambassador to Washington a generation after Bruce, noted, ‘This was not a social whirl for its own sake. It was a means of meeting as many movers and shakers as possible … ’.41 Back in 1853, soon after arriving in London as ambassador, James Buchanan found it prudent to break his usual habit

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and wear court dress, because otherwise he might be excluded from balls and dinners. This in turn, he feared, ‘may deprive me of the opportunity of cultivating friendly and social relations with the Ministers and other courtiers which I might render available for the purpose of obtaining important information and promoting the success of my mission’.42 Foreign ministers, too, often appreciated the value of social occasions. Austen Chamberlain, British Foreign Secretary in the 1920s, told Winston Churchill, ‘Much of the most valuable information I get comes in letters which recount conversations held when some foreign minister receives hospitality from a member of the Embassy staff or offers … hospitality in return’.43 Numerous parties were hosted at embassies. In May 1961, soon after Bruce arrived, the Austrian Ambassador invited him to join British politicians and society figures at a dinner along with the German and Spanish Ambassadors. Some social events were huge and drew together most of the corps. Bruce estimated that a thousand people attended a reception at the Jamaican Embassy in June 1961.44 In June, too, and indeed annually, a dinner was organized for the whole corps by the Foreign Secretary to celebrate the Queen’s official birthday which fulfilled the function of the United Kingdom’s ‘National Day’.45 Of course, parties and dinners at the US Embassy or ambassadorial residence also frequently involved other ambassadors46 and dinners might be held in honour of foreign diplomats, as when Bruce hosted one for the German Ambassador on 31 October 1962, and another for the French on 25 March 1963. One form of entertainment that was central to the life of the corps deserves special comment. ‘National Day’ celebrations at embassies came around regularly but were an onerous commitment for participants. Satow’s Guide to Diplomatic Practice underlined the expectation that all ambassadors would attend as an ‘official obligation’ for which ‘no social pretext will be accepted as an excuse for absence’.47 One diplomat commented that, ‘You entertain and you have to go to other people’s functions or they will draw conclusions about you and your relations with their country. People get insulted very easily’.48 Yet, at least one ambassador in London found a way to avoid national days altogether: France’s Jean Chauvel said that on Bastille Day he only ever invited French nationals to the Embassy celebrations. ‘Consequently, he felt under no obligation to attend his colleagues’ yearly celebrations’.49 This was a rather different coping strategy to that adopted by Chester Bowles in India who attended all national days as a way of compensating for his general avoidance of ‘long, dreary diplomatic dinners’.50 Bruce once commented that, with over a hundred embassies in London, ‘For those Ambassadors who attend National Days with any degree of regularity, it would require at least four weeks, of 40 hours each, to meet such obligations in the course

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of a year’. This was clearly a burden to all concerned because Bruce added that, ‘Members of the Diplomatic Corps frequently discuss ways of cutting down on the time required for these functions, but have never been able to reach any accord on how to do so’.51 It is interesting that in this, one of Bruce’s rare references to potential joint action by the corps, he did not talk of action to preserve its existence but in order to prevent it being damaged by its own success. Bruce did not go as far as Chauvel in missing national days, but he admitted, ‘Normally I do not attend these … unless they are in the nature of a farewell’. However, he made an exception for Luxembourg’s National Day in 1968, attending the celebration ‘in deference to our esteemed Doyen’ and he went to the reception at the Czechoslovakian embassy, apparently because this was the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Republic.52 Figures for 1961 reflect just how selective Bruce could be with such commitments. From 262 invitations to receptions that year, including about ninety national days, he attended only thirty-two.53 During most other years in London, he attended even less than that (see Appendix 2). When he arrived, Bruce had his worries about America’s own Independence Day celebrations. Having served in Paris this was not surprising because, between the wars, the Embassy there had become notorious for turning 4 July into ‘a monstrous free-loading operation to which even tourists temporarily in France flocked with or without invitation and often the number of guests reached several thousand’. Rather than avoid such an expense, other US posts were felt to have emulated it in a desire not to be outdone.54 When he arrived in London, Bruce was informed that the 1960 party had involved 3,000 people and cost his predecessor two-and-ahalf times the Ambassador’s annual entertainment allowance. Bruce did not relish the thought of paying out of his ‘private funds to provide food and drink for strangers’. However, in trying to cut back on the event he was determined to keep all the chiefs of diplomatic missions on the guest list. Fortunately, the State Department issued instructions that fitted what Bruce wanted.55 In 1962 it was possible to restrict numbers to about 400, including most ambassadors, with a similar picture the following years.56 It is ironic that by 1965, with the leading capitalist nation having cut back so much, Bruce’s diary includes a note that the ‘Soviet Embassy National Day parties are the largest in London … ’.57 Galbraith was evidently better placed in New Delhi, where Premier Jawaharlal Nehru was known to oppose lavish national days. Galbraith found that the 4 July celebration had been ‘reduced … to a picnic and fireworks display at the staff quarters to which American residents come at their own cost. The profits from the sale of beer and hot dogs are used, in turn, to relieve the Ambassador of the cost of the Christmas party. Altogether, a noble arrangement’.58

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It is clear that even if Bruce avoided the national days he could, he continued to attend a great number of diplomatic gatherings. Sometimes they came along so regularly that he attended two events in a day, as on 13 March 1968, when there was lunch at the French Embassy and dinner at the Chilean. Sometimes the pressure was such that parties clashed with one another. Bruce was unable to attend a farewell reception for the Laotian Ambassador in October 1967 because he did not want to be late for the farewell dinner arranged for the outgoing doyen, Hagglof. Bruce’s reflections on this last occasion are instructive of the intensity of social life within the corps, but perhaps more significant for questioning its value: The multitude of invitations from colleagues of the Diplomatic Corps is impressive … There is scarcely a day in the year when, if one wished to do so, he could not attend a diplomatic cocktail party. The proliferation of diplomatic establishments is astounding, when it is considered how few existed until after the last war. The majority of Ambassadors here have little substantive work to do, but seek compensation in rounds of entertainment.59

This echoes McGhee’s complaint, based on experience of Bonn, that many envoys from smaller countries having little meaningful business with the German government ‘had little to do except entertain and be entertained and were sticklers for protocol’. McGhee also complained that he ‘usually ended up sitting between the same few wives of diplomats in my same relative position of rank’ in the diplomatic corps.60 Despite the many details in his voluminous diary, it is a pity that Bruce does not often comment on the value of social life in the diplomatic corps. He makes the tantalizing comment about a ‘farewell reception’ for an ambassador in April 1964 that ‘I saw and talked to many colleagues there’ but the precise value of the conversations is unclear.61 Very similar is his remark about a party at the French Embassy in 1967, that this was ‘the pleasantest way to see one’s diplomatic colleagues … and we had cordial conversations with several of the Ambassadors and their wives’.62 But, ultimately, the diary suggests that he found the meals and parties more professionally rewarding than did McGhee, because social events sometimes helped him to glean valuable information. At a dinner in the Chilean Embassy in June 1964 Bruce talked to the Foreign Secretary about Cyprus. Some weeks later, at the Spanish Embassy’s National Day celebration, he talked to Conservative ministers about their chances in the forthcoming general election. And, at the Queen’s diplomatic reception in 1966, Bruce was purposely sought out by Harold Wilson for a discussion

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about the illegal declaration of independence by Rhodesia.63 Sometimes several ambassadors gathered together specifically to share thoughts on key developments: for example, a number were part of a large gathering at the Savoy Hotel in March 1966 to listen to the first results of the general election.64 Quite often ambassadors would eat together one-to-one. A regular lunching partner in 1963–4 was the Pole, Witold Rodzinski (actually born in America), who Bruce once described as ‘a great deal more knowledgeable and entertaining than many of the Western ambassadors … ’.65 Then again, while some names crop up repeatedly in the diary, especially the Spanish, French, German and Canadian heads of mission, many more do not. As Douglas Busk commented, ‘A Head of Mission soon discovers who are the wiser among his diplomatic colleagues … Many of the rest will be valueless and sometimes a social incubus’.66 One danger of the cocktail circuit was the impact on the participants’ health of alcohol and rich food. The British novelist Lawrence Durrell, writing about his time as a diplomat in post-war Belgrade, recalled part of the role as being, ‘To drink vodka with Russians, champagne with the French, slivovitz with Serbs, saki with Japs, whisky and Coca-Cola with the Yanks … the list seems endless. I’ve seen many an Iron Constitution founder under the strain’.67 Back in 1950, when serving in Paris, Bruce had told his hosts after one wine-tasting, ‘I have sacrificed my liver to France’.68 He had continued to sacrifice his liver thereafter and he noted how others did the same. A fellow ambassador became ‘inarticulate after excessive drinking’; another fell ‘into the deplorable habit of offering sherry to his morning guests!’69 Bruce would also make fun of his own predilection for the best food and wine. Asking Washington whether he should attend the National Day celebrations at the Soviet Embassy in 1962 (following a boycott the previous year owing to the Berlin Wall Crisis), he added, ‘My recommendation not connected with any personal addiction Soviet caviar and vodka. Prefer Iranian in former category, and Polish in latter’.70

Calls The idea that some diplomats engaged in entertainments for the sake of them is reinforced by a rather different practice, that of making ‘calls’ on each another. One analyst in the 1960s noted that, ‘When he first arrives at his post, the ambassador can spend weeks doing almost nothing but making formal calls and receiving callers’.71 In Bruce’s case this was something of an exaggeration. His diaries show him doing far more in those early months

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than making and receiving calls. Nonetheless, the significance of the practice to heads of mission is highlighted in his diary entry of 16 March 1962: During my first year in London, I have called on 71 Ambassadors, and received calls from 70 Ambassadors or Ministers. There are still about 15 Ambassadors to whom I must repay return visits. All of them arrived after I did. At a rough guess, I figure I have spent about 160 hours in twelve months, making and receiving such calls. This becomes quite a formidable undertaking, if one also reckons the time spent on other occasions with colleagues.

Charles Thayer described the tradition of calling on every other ambassador in a capital and receiving calls from them in return as ‘probably the most burdensome of all diplomatic functions’. He felt it ‘anachronistic’ and, especially in a large capital where there were dozens of calls to make, ‘an empty ritual which only consumes precious time’.72 Galbraith was even blunter, dismissing calls as ‘an incredible waste of time’. Within a few weeks of arriving in India he was so impatient with ‘this stupid business’ that he decided to restrict his calls to one per day ‘and take forever to complete my rounds’.73 Eric Clark, too, was dismissive of calls as ‘perhaps the most obviously ludicrous of the traditions and trappings of the protocol of ambassadors’, yet he noted that some diplomats considered it useful, that most persevered with it and that it was difficult to reduce the number of calls made. As one ambassador commented, ‘If one is too selective in the process of choosing which countries to call on, it may be taken amiss’.74 Certainly, at first Bruce treated the practice as anything but an anachronism. A striking feature of his diary is the number of accounts he gives of such calls. They do not make for a scintillating read. In a typical entry, Bruce dryly records an envoy’s age, education and diplomatic career, adding a few general (usually positive) impressions of their character, sometimes with a brief comment on what was discussed.75 There might be several calls per day as on 17 April 1961 when Bruce visited the Danish, German and French Ambassadors, or three days later, when he called on the Ambassadors of India, Luxembourg and Nepal.76 In the early months of his ambassadorship calls were particularly frequent and he certainly made no attempt to discriminate between his fellow envoys in terms of their country’s international significance. As time passed, the frequency reduced. After a few years he simply had to meet new arrivals, although, given the size of the London corps, that was not a negligible commitment. In 1966, he still called on 26 ambassadors and was called upon by 38 (see Appendix 2). The turnover of ambassadors is illustrated by the fact

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that at the time of the Queen’s diplomatic reception of November 1966, Bruce had risen to number six in seniority. Around that time Bruce noted there was ‘a bog shift in the resident Diplomatic Corps’, with the representatives from Iran, India, Canada and Switzerland leaving in quick succession.77 Calls were sometimes more than mere formalities. Bruce does not always say how long they lasted but one of his early meetings, with his Canadian colleague, lasted 90 minutes.78 He also talks of spending an hour with the Netherlands’ Herman van Roijen, in 1964 discussing European unity and nuclear cooperation and another hour with the new Pakistani High Commissioner, Samiulla Khan Dehlavi, in 1967.79 Incidentally, Jean Chauvel, who was quite frustrated by a practice that often seemed to involve no more than exchanges of small talk, reckoned that even short calls took up at least an hour because of traveling times around London.80 But in contrast to his practice with national days, which he avoided, the French Ambassador does not seem to have avoided making his calls. Given the power of the United States in world affairs, it is not surprising that ambassadors exploit calls to try to influence Washington’s policy. Thus, when the Nigerian High Commissioner called in April 1961 he complained about French policy in the Cameroons, while in June 1967 the Indonesian Ambassador tried to influence US policy on the price of tin.81 But there can be little doubt that many calls were quite swift, with little of substance to discuss. At a return call to the Tanzanian High Commissioner, ‘we discussed chiefly the wild game in his country, the susceptibility of its rich soil to erosion, and my own visit three years ago for shooting’; and, when the ambassador of Cameroon made a call, ‘he talked mostly about the deficiencies of education in African states, and the lack of civil servants and teachers’.82 This may explain why in 1967 Bruce took drastic action and, while he continued to receive calls, he no longer made any.83 It is clear from the diaries that making calls was not an outdated fashion. But some ambassadors were keener to engage in the practice than others. Early on the Australian High Commissioner advised Bruce that ‘one of the ways to curtail the length of time spent in calling on colleagues is to request them not to return one’s initial call. Unfortunately, this does not often work, since the majority of them insist on the double play’. Soon afterwards Bruce received a call from the Austrian Ambassador who had ‘politely insisted he would not heed the injunction not to return my recent visit’. Six days later even Chauvel insisted on visiting Bruce ‘as a matter of protocol, although we are dining with him tonight’.84 Some ambassadors added to the burden by making farewell calls before leaving London.85 One who certainly took the process very seriously was Prince Pierng Nobadia Rabibhadana of Thailand. He told Bruce over a glass of sherry, ‘He has been here a year, in the course

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of which he has attended every National Day and called on every colleague, a remarkable feat, but one, according to his account, leaving him little time for other duties or distractions’.86

Benefits On the basis of Bruce’s diaries, what were the benefits of engaging with other members of the diplomatic corps? It is clear that engagement with the corps took up a considerable amount of his time when all the calls, national days and meals with other ambassadors are considered. Was the effort worth it? On the face of it, the answer should be negative. Bruce’s engagement with his fellow ambassadors had only a tenuous link to the main purposes of a diplomatic mission such as protecting US national interests, negotiating agreements or reporting on conditions in Britain. A trawl through Bruce’s high-level telegrams to Washington during his tenure at the Embassy reveals few references to meetings even with individual ambassadors, let alone broader gatherings of the corps.87 His numerous calls on other ambassadors had little impact on his reports home, though he did sometimes report points of interest to relevant staff in the London Embassy itself.88 Even when Bruce did grab the chance to talk at major State occasions, the conversation would be incredibly mundane. Thus, at the Opening of Parliament in 1965 he and Soviet Ambassador Alexander Soldatov ‘had an exchange on the manner in which pheasants are shot in England compared with the pursuit of partridges in Northern Russia’.89 When dealing with his colleagues Bruce was only too aware of the limits to his own influence, expressing amusement that the Nepalese Ambassador, ‘a nice fellow … is under [the] misapprehension as to my having been responsible for the US government’s decision to help Nepal’ with military aid.90 Nonetheless, while his diary does not always provide details of discussions at receptions or meals and while many meetings with his colleagues probably served nothing more than a social purpose, it is possible to discern several advantages from the hours expended. As noted earlier, meals and parties sometimes provided opportunities for exchanges of view on diplomatic matters and even conversations with key individuals, like the Prime Minister or Foreign Secretary. Some one-to-one meetings with fellow ambassadors involved Bruce in serious business, as in June 1961 when the West Indian Minister in June 1961 brought a formal protest over a delay in negotiations over aviation routes, for transmission to Washington. London was also the centre for certain international negotiations, of course, including a working group on coffee quotas, an issue Bruce discussed with the Dominican

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Ambassador in 1965.91 More significantly, in 1964 when Bruce was involved in efforts to resolve Greek–Turkish tensions over Cyprus, one-to-one meetings with colleagues could have real value. In March, for example, he discussed the problem and possible solutions to it with the Turkish ambassador; and, in April, Bruce made a ‘return call’ on the new Canadian High Commissioner, where they discussed the role of Canada’s peacekeeping troops on the island.92 Mentioned more frequently in the diary are occasions when ambassadors simply kept themselves informed about international questions. Not that all ambassadors were well informed, even on issues about which they ought to be expert. During a call in 1966, the Ambassador of Burundi told Bruce ‘of his belief there would be a long period of stability at home’. Actually, there was a coup d’état that same afternoon.93 But from the outset Bruce records exchanges of view on the latest political issues. On 18 April 1961, for example, a month after arriving in London, he called on three other ambassadors. In the first meeting, with Ricardo Rivera Schreiber of Peru, he was able to gauge reactions to the ill-fated CIA-sponsored landing by anti-Castro Cubans at the Bay of Pigs. In the others, with Austria’s Prince Johannes Schwarzenberg and Italy’s Count Vittorio Zoppi, the main topic was the anticipated British application to join the European Economic Community, with Zoppi correctly predicting ‘objections from the French when the British posed their conditions’.94 As one would expect, meetings with the representatives of key allies like West Germany were especially valuable. It was useful in 1965, in the run-up to a conference of US Ambassadors to Western Europe, for Bruce to discuss the latest German thinking on ‘nuclear sharing’ in a one-to-one meeting with their ambassador to London, Herbert Blankenhorn and in March 1966 the pair took advantage of a dinner at the German Embassy to discuss France’s withdrawal from NATO.95 Of course, there were limits to how open even allied ambassadors could be. When the Italian Ambassador visited Bruce in July 1963 to try to discover what had ‘really’ gone on at a recent summit meeting between Kennedy and Macmillan, the American was evasive.96 Adam Watson noted another role of the diplomatic corps: it allowed an ambassador to provide an understanding of his own country’s policies to other heads of mission.97 This was especially the case in Bruce’s engagement with ambassadors from the Communist world, though it is not clear that there were any breakthroughs in mutual sympathy. Bruce first met his Soviet colleague, Soldatov, at a ballet in July 1961, where they were able to talk between acts. The Russian ‘seemed to me more polished than any previous Soviet Foreign Service officer I have ever met’. When the American made his first call on the Ambassador, ‘He detained me for an hour, talking about the differences between our Governments, and explaining how wrong our

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policy was on Berlin’. When Soldatov returned the call, ‘For an hour and a quarter we agreed to disagree on all subjects except the desirability of effective disarmament’.98 In 1964 Bruce had a similar experience with the Czechoslovakian Ambassador with whom he exchanged arguments about creating a multilateral nuclear force in NATO, in which West Germany would be involved.99 Yet relations continued to be friendly enough. It has already been noted how the Polish Ambassador became a regular luncheon partner for Bruce and, when Mikhail Smirnovsky succeeded Soldatov in 1966, Bruce found the new arrival to be ‘the most conversable Soviet diplomat I have ever met’. But he also commented, on another occasion, that ‘there seems to be little use, in view of how his authority is restricted from Moscow, to try to draw him out into substantive discussions’.100 Back in the eighteenth century, de Callières advised that the Ambassador might enlighten himself through conversations with other ambassadors, ‘for as they all labour to discover what is happening there, they commonly communicate to one another very freely several advices which may concern their common interests … ’.101 More recently, in similar terms Kishan Rana has written that the diplomatic corps provided ‘the framework that facilitates quick learning for the new envoy. The professional ethos permits him to seek and obtain useful advice from his counterparts, through the medium of courtesy calls … ’, so long as vital national interests were not compromised.102 Certainly the London corps does seem to have functioned as a kind of mutual support network for its members. Soon after Bruce arrived in London one ambassador, who was about to leave for another post, offered him the services of his chef, a Spanish maid and an Italian kitchen boy.103 The ways ambassadors might help one another were varied. Some were quite mundane. Bruce once supported his Indonesian colleague by attending a hastily called party for the visiting Foreign Minister, Subandrio, who had arrived at short notice; on another occasion, he offered to help the El Salvadoran Ambassador secure places for his sons at Groton School; while from the Turkish Ambassador he once ‘cadged a package of cigarettes … made of Ismet tobacco, with the promise of more to come’.104 Others were more unusual. To help the Chilean Ambassador, Victor Santa Cruz, Bruce agreed to talk to the British Prime Minister about opening the London financial market up to capital issues by a Latin American bank.105 Bruce also exploited a call on his Tunisian opposite-number to raise the dilemma faced by a personal acquaintance, Leo d’Erlanger, whose farms had recently been nationalized by the Tunisian government.106 There is evidence that Bruce’s lengthy diplomatic experience led less-experienced colleagues to ask his advice. In 1966 the Jordanian Ambassador came to him ‘non-plussed’ because he had written a letter to The Times, whose contents he had subsequently discovered to be

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untrue. Should he write another letter, retracting the first? Bruce advised his colleague to ‘let this uncertain affair rest in limbo unless it became a matter of dispute … ’.107 The ease of dealing with other members of the corps was helped by the fact that Bruce had often met his fellow ambassadors in earlier postings. He knew Chauvel because the latter had been Secretary-General of the French foreign ministry in the late 1940s, when Bruce was in Paris.108 When Pietro Quaroni took up the post of Italian Ambassador to London in June 1961, it was the third time that he and Bruce had overlapped in postings.109 The diplomatic corps also provided an opportunity for meetings between ambassadors from particular regions of the world. The principal subset to which Bruce became attached was that of the Latin American Ambassadors, who held monthly meetings, chaired by their own dean. He first joined them in October 1961, for ‘a jolly occasion, [though] not much of substance was expressed’ and he was present again in November, noting that ‘These are essentially goodwill occasions, but the diplomats present speak with great frankness to each other’. In March 1962 the group did discuss setting a formal agenda for their meetings but decided ‘to continue them … on a purely social basis’.110 Aside from these monthly meetings the Latin Americans joined together at other events. It was a tradition of the Spanish Embassy to host an annual dinner for the Latin Americans on Columbus Day, which also included the Portuguese Ambassador. Bruce, too, was invited to join them.111 The only other subgroup of the corps in which Bruce seems ever to have become involved was of those fighting in Vietnam. In July 1967 South Vietnamese Ambassador Chan called together his colleagues from Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, South Korea, Thailand and the United States to discuss improvements in propaganda. But, while the American and Thai Ambassadors appeared in person, the other allies all sent lower-level representatives. Even Bruce – usually blandly positive in his comments about human beings – dismissed Chan as ‘foolish’ for suggesting that they try to hold a rally to condemn the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. Bruce argued that anti-war protesters ‘would rapidly sweep us away, and attendant demonstrations precipitate a riot’.112

Conclusion A study of the present-day Washington diplomatic corps has suggested that its value has become ‘less than the sum of its parts’, in that it has no real function even when it does come together at ceremonies. It ‘is not the primary identification of diplomats’ in the city and the dean has no real influence. Its

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members have different agendas and their efforts focus, not on each other, but on bilateral dealings with the US government.113 The decline of the corps has apparently accelerated in recent decades, thanks to the growing number of independent states. ‘This means that the old courtesies of envoys making formal calls on colleagues, soon after their arrival in the capital, are now truncated … ’, with ambassadors in large capitals choosing to call on certain colleagues only. The diplomatic corps meets seldom as a group, more often in regional groups such as those held by ambassadors from the European Union countries.114 That does not necessarily mean it is an anachronism. Even if the corps does not meet together it self-evidently continues to exist as a distinct group of professionals in a foreign city and, while diplomats themselves may not recognize it, its very existence reflects the existence of an international society.115 However, the current study of the Bruce mission to London has shown the corps to have been in a healthier state in the 1960s, perhaps reflecting the existence of an international society more clearly than its successor today. Most heads of diplomatic missions in 1960s London did gather together at major ceremonies – Buckingham Palace garden parties and significant national days. The dean may not have been a major figure, and the corps never had to meet together, but that was largely because the rights of the corps were respected. When it had to, the corps could act together under the dean even if only to buy a gift for the Queen or sign a book of congratulations. Despite the large number of diplomats in the capital, ambassadors continued to make time to call upon one another with great, almost obsessive, regularity. Certainly, Bruce seems to have tried to meet every other head of mission in the city, including new appointees as they arrived. This cannot have been easy when he had so many other commitments. Yet, despite all the diary references to meetings with fellow ambassadors, Bruce could even complain about not seeing some enough.116 He would call at other embassies to sign books of condolence when, say, a Head of State died.117 He also showed a real interest in the health of the corps. In February 1966 he talked to the doyen, Hagglof, about encouraging meetings among its younger members. ‘The idea would be to have a Junior Diplomats’ Club … It is thought a series of functions to be paid for on an ad hoc basis might at least serve to increase friendships and acquaintanceships amongst this group’.118 The study of one ambassador’s experience can reveal only a certain amount about the diplomatic corps. Bruce was working in one place at a particular point in time when the corps functioned in different ways from other periods. In other capitals and at other times heads of mission might gather together to issue a protest to the host government about their treatment, or they might have acted together to address some controversial political subject.

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A few years after Bruce left London, thousands of miles away in El Salvador, the diplomatic corps formed a committee to demand the release of former President José Napoleon Duarte, who had been forcibly abducted from the Venezuelan Embassy, whence he had fled following a coup d’état.119 It was unthinkable that such events could happen in London. Bruce was operating in a capital that had one of the oldest diplomatic corps in the world, where rules were well established and the liberal nature of government meant that most embassies could function freely. Relations with the host government were excellent. There is evidence that, in the same period, ambassadors in other locations faced a very different experience. Adam Watson, posted to Fidel Castro’s Cuba in the 1960s, found not only that the corps had to act together to protect the right of embassies to bring in documents unexamined by the authorities, but also that the dean of the corps was a North Korean, whose state was not even recognized by Westerners.120 What is needed to establish a fuller picture of this institution and its value is further study of its operation at other locations and times. The main challenge for a full exploration of the diplomatic corps will be to find rich and informative sources equivalent to Bruce’s diary.

Notes  1 Martin Wight, Power Politics. 2nd ed. (London: Penguin, 1986), 113.  2 James Mayall, ‘Introduction’, in Paul Sharp and Geoffrey Wiseman (eds), The Diplomatic Corps as an Institution of International Society (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2007), 5.  3 Adam Watson, ‘Foreword’, in Sharp and Wiseman (eds), Corps, xi.  4 Much of it in one collection, Sharp and Wiseman (eds), Corps.  5 Sasson Sofer, ‘The Diplomatic Corps as a Symbol of Diplomatic Culture’, in Sharp and Wiseman (eds), Corps, 32.  6 G.R. Berridge and Alan James, A Dictionary of Diplomacy (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2001), 65.  7 François de Callières, The Art of Diplomacy (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1994), 124.  8 Garrett Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy (London: Jonathan Cape, 1955), 106.  9 G.R. Berridge, ‘The Origins of the Diplomatic Corps’, in Sharp and Wiseman (eds), Corps, 15–38. 10 Sofer, ‘Culture’, 35–6. 11 Alan Henrikson, ‘The Washington Diplomatic Corps’, in Sharp and Wiseman (eds), Corps, 41. 12 Peter Lyon, ‘The London Diplomatic Corps’, in Sharp and Wiseman (eds), Corps, 75–82.

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13 Two exceptions are: Henry E. Catto, Ambassadors at Sea (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998) and Jacques Dumaine, Quai d’Orsay, 1945–51 (London: Chapman and Hall, 1958). 14 Berridge and James, Dictionary, 78. 15 Lord Gore-Booth (ed.), Satow’s Guide to Diplomatic Practice. 5th ed. (London: Longman, 1979), 161–2. 16 For example, Virginia Historical Society, David Bruce Diary (DBD), 13 June 1966. 17 As happened on the birth of Prince Edward: DBD, 11 March 1964. 18 DBD, 28 January 1969. 19 DBD, 21 March 1961. 20 DBD, 1 October 1967. 21 Henrikson, ‘Washington’, 64. 22 Lyon, ‘London’, 80; Gore-Booth (ed.), Satow’s Guide, 97 (including quote). 23 Henry Colyton, Occasion, Chance and Change (Wilby: Michael Russell, 1993), 65, refers to the situation around 1930, but holds good a generation later. 24 DBD, 13, 14 and 17 March 1961. 25 DBD, 1 November 1961. 26 DBD, 10 November 1965. 27 DBD, 31 October 1961, 30 October 1962, 3 November 1964, 21 April 1966 and 31 October 1967; and see Raymond Seitz, Over Here (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998), 243–7. 28 DBD, 11 June 1965. 29 DBD, 21 June 1962, 20 June 1963 (including quote), 18 June 1964, 17 June 1965, 16 June 1966, 22 June 1967 and 20 June 1968. 30 DBD, 23 October 1961. 31 DBD, 27 and 30 January 1965. 32 DBD, 24 March 1964. 33 DBD, 11 July 1962 and 10 July 1963; Eric Clark, Corps Diplomatique (London: Allen Lane, 1973), 126. 34 Seitz, Over Here, 242. 35 DBD, 19 July 1966, 9 May 1967 and 1 November 1967. 36 DBD, 21 July 1961 and 21 July 1964. 37 DBD, 28 November 1967 and see 7 November 1962. 38 DBD, 7 February and 11 March 1964. 39 J.K. Galbraith, A Life in Our Times (London: André Deutsch, 1981), 392. 40 George McGhee, At the Creation of a New Germany (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 17. 41 Christopher Meyer, DC Confidential (London: Phoenix, 2005), 83. 42 Quoted in Beckles Willson, America’s Ambassadors to England, 1785–928 (London: John Murray, 1928), 283. 43 Cited in Michael Hughes, British Foreign Secretaries in an Uncertain World, 1919–39 (London: Routledge, 2006), 61.

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44 DBD, 4 May and 15 June 1961. 45 DBD, 12 June 1961, 17 June 1963, 15 June 1967 and 17 June 1968. 46 DBD, 17 February 1965. 47 Gore-Booth, Satow’s Guide, 167. 48 Clark, Corps, 89–90. 49 DBD, 19 April 1961. 50 Chester Bowles, Promises to Keep (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), 461–2. 51 DBD, 16 March 1962. 52 Diary, 26 June and 28 October 1968. 53 DBD, Memorandum to the ambassador, 25 January 1962. 54 Charles Thayer, Diplomat (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1959), 234. 55 DBD, 25 April and 4 July 1961. 56 DBD, 4 July 1962, 4 July 1963 and 4 July 1966. 57 DBD, 5 November 1965 and see 7 November 1967. 58 J.K. Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1969), 147. 59 DBD, 25 October 1967. 60 McGhee, Germany, 17–18. 61 DBD, 7 April 1964. 62 DBD, 13 July 1967. 63 DBD, 11 June and 20 July 1964, and 23 November 1966. 64 DBD, 31 March 1966. 65 JFKL, Robert Eastabrook papers, Box 1, memorandum of meeting, 2 November 1961; and see DBD, 27 May 1963, 9 July 1963, 25 August and 10 September 1964. 66 Douglas Busk, The Craft of Diplomacy (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967), 37. 67 Lawrence Durrell, Esprit de Corps (London: Faber and Faber, 1957), 53. 68 Dumaine, Quai, 234. 69 DBD, 22 June 1961 and 8 April 1963. 70 John F. Kennedy Library, National Security File, Country File, United Kingdom, Box 170A, Bruce to Rusk, 31 October 1962. 71 John Harr, The Professional Diplomat (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969), 296. 72 Thayer, Diplomat, 228–9. 73 Galbraith, Journal, 90–2, and see 154. 74 Clark, Corps Diplomatique, 125–6; Busk, Craft, 30–1. 75 See, for example, his three paragraphs each on the Spanish (21 April 1961), Greek (3 May 1961) and El Salvadorean (12 May 1961) ambassadors. 76 DBD, 17 and 20 April 1961. 77 DBD, 23 November and 15 December 1966. 78 DBD, 24 March 1961. 79 DBD, 20 August 1964 and 8 February 1967. 80 Jean Chauvel, Commentaire, III: de Berne à Paris, 1952–62 (Paris: Fayard, 1973), 146.

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DBD, 14 April 1961 and 6 July 1967. DBD, 17 May 1965 and 8 March 1966. Appendix 2. The diary gives no reason why he took this decision. DBD, 19 April, 4 and 10 May 1961. DBD, 12 March 1962, 7 February 1967 and 24 May 1968. DBD, 16 March 1964. But see, DBD, London to State, 15 February 1965, following a meeting with the Swedish ambassador.  88 DBD, 18 April 1961, for a report to the embassy’s Political Section after meeting the Peruvian ambassador.  89 DBD, 9 November 1965.  90 DBD, 6 March 1964 and see 1 February 1968.  91 DBD, 22 June 1961 and 22 September 1965.  92 DBD, 2 March and 16 April 1964.  93 DBD, 7 February 1966.  94 DBD, 18 April 1961.  95 DBD, 22 October 1965 and 10 March 1966.  96 DBD, 2 July 1963.  97 Watson, ‘Foreword’, in Sharp and Wiseman (eds), Corps, xi.  98 DBD, 17 July 1961 and 24 August.  99 DBD, 16 October 1964. 100 DBD, 22 June 1966 and 7 November 1967. 101 Callières, Art, 112–13. 102 Kishan Rana, ‘Representing India in the Diplomatic Corps’, in Sharp and Wiseman (eds), Corps, 132. 103 DBD, 17 April 1961. 104 DBD, 16 and 25 October 1961, and 5 April 1963. 105 DBD, 12 December 1963. 106 DBD, 1 July 1964. 107 DBD, 1 December 1966. 108 DBD, 16 April 1961. 109 Quaroni had been Ambassador to France and Germany: DBD, 23 June 1961. 110 DBD, 12 October and 24 November 1961, and 27 March 1962. 111 DBD, 12 October 1964 and 12 October 1967. 112 DBD, 7 July 1967. 113 Henrikson, ‘Washington’, 64–5. 114 See Rana, ‘Representing India’, 126–8. 115 ‘Conclusion’, in Sharp and Wiseman (eds), Corps, 265–77. 116 See his remarks about Canada’s George Drew: DBD, 29 January 1964. 117 DBD, 8 December 1967. 118 DBD, 15 February 1965. It seems nothing came of this. 119 Catto, Ambassadors, 72–4. 120 Watson, ‘Foreword’, in Sharp and Wiseman (eds), Corps, xii.

7

Elements of Embassy Work: Consular Affairs, Intelligence, Defence and Culture Having looked, in previous chapters, at Bruce’s activities in what might be described as the ‘political–diplomatic’ field, this chapter takes a closer look at his involvement in other categories of work, some of which lay outside direct State Department responsibility, but all of which built on previous experiences in his life. These include intelligence and military operations, cultural work, consular affairs and trade promotion. Such a survey demonstrates that despite his own admission that he did not like to get ‘involved in too many things’,1 he was seriously engaged in a broad range of activities. These helped him fulfil such aims as defending US interests, maintaining friendly relations with the British and supervising a range of agencies who worked in the British capital or beyond. Even the supposedly dull world of consular relations attracted his attention, perhaps because his short time as a professional diplomat in 1926 was spent in Rome where he was a Vice-Consul.2 While the chapter includes a discussion of his involvement with the US Information Agency (USIA) on the cultural affairs side of its work, his efforts to shape media reporting – the other major element in the Agency’s activities – is discussed in the next chapter, which deals with supposed threats to the position of the Embassy.

Consular affairs and trade promotion Consular work is a relatively neglected area of diplomatic studies yet it has long been appreciated that, not least because governments may maintain several of them in individual states, consulates can play a diverse role by, for example, attracting investment, handling public relations and even gathering intelligence. Jan Melissen argues that rather than being some distinct activity, ‘the consular function has always been enmeshed with diplomacy’. By focusing on such areas as trade promotion, issuing visas and passports or protecting citizens abroad, it links the foreign and domestic environments, working with individual citizens. Furthermore, consular services have recently become more significant due to increased transnational links and a key change has been a broadening from commercial and (in some parts of the world) judicial work to helping individuals travelling, working and

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living overseas who have come to expect a range of assistance from their government, treating it as a kind of alternative travel agency.3 It has also been argued that something so routine as visa issuance can have a real impact on interstate relations, not least when visas are refused to key figures in a foreign regime.4 Consular work has often been perceived as a second-class activity, a perception that has affected practitioners themselves. In Britain consular work was called the ‘Cinderella service’, its focus on passports, immigration and criminal cases being seen as bureaucratic and mundane.5 It was a similar case on the US side. When the State Department was established in 1789, the diplomatic and consular services were separate and perceived very differently: ‘diplomats were regarded as effete, ineffectual and snobbish, whereas consuls had a reputation for uninspired drudgery.’ The two services were only merged in 1924.6 Although all Foreign Service officers might now expect at least one consular posting and all officers were equally eligible for promotion, an early visitor to Bruce commented on the low morale of the consular service, whose members felt there was discrimination in favour of the political and economic staff.7 Yet Bruce did engage with consular staff and their work, which was growing in significance as jet transport led to greater numbers of tourists and business travellers. Indeed the former Vice-Consul advised that every diplomat should have experience of consular work; ‘it is the best discipline in the world, and also it is a broadening experience’.8 He was not unique in his interest in consular matters. Clare Boothe Luce, as Ambassador to Italy in the mid-1950s, used to make a point of meeting American tourists: ‘During the heavy season, I try to set aside a half hour between four and five in the afternoon … I go out into the lobby and shake hands with anyone who wants to see me’.9 A conference of principal consular staff in the United Kingdom was held at the Embassy weeks after Bruce arrived. He opened it and, while he does not seem to have taken any active part in the business meetings, held a reception in Winfield House for participants at the end. He also expressed the hope that these might be held twice yearly, though financial limits meant that another was not held until 1965, with another in May 1967.10 Like most ambassadors Bruce visited consulates around the country to get a grasp of their work, beginning with a trip to Edinburgh in May 1961. During 1962 there were visits to Liverpool, Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester (where he noted ‘several startlingly beautiful girls carrying on the routine business’ in October), Southampton and Cardiff.11 On 23 November 1966, he made a point of walking around the Consular Section in London talking to every single employee, American or British. He also kept an eye on the statistics, noting in August 1961 a marked rise in the number of non-immigrant

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visas issued, compared to 1959 – visa issuance, along with passport work and protection of American citizens being the main work of the consulates. Though Bruce did not yet speculate on why this was so, it undoubtedly reflected the rising volume of tourist traffic. Actually this phenomenon was far from new. In 1851 one of Bruce’s predecessors, Abbott Lawrence, had noted that ‘a greater number of Americans are visiting Europe’, as a result, whereas a mere 170 passports had been issued to such travellers in 1831, this had risen to 1,167 by 1850.12 Bruce had a far larger number of staff available, of course, with 56 employed in the Consular Section in 1961 (see Appendix 1), but the numbers of travellers were also ever expanding. Statistics in July 1964 showed that 47,273 visitor visas were processed in the first half of the year, almost doubling the 24,495 figure for the first half of 1962. Small wonder that Bruce was ‘worried about the immense burden imposed on the members of our Consular Section … ’.13 More American travellers meant more people losing their passports, running out of money or getting into legal difficulties. On the other side of the coin, easier transport meant more people trying to enter America and their cases had to be screened. In fact, while few Americans might have any contact with diplomats in the Chancery, more and more citizens were dealing with consular services, hence the argument that ‘The consular officer is the face of the embassy to most Americans travelling or residing abroad and to most foreigners seeking to visit the United States’.14 Nor were tourists and business travellers the only factor. The Consular Section was also mailing about 108,000 payments for pensions, social security and the like to US citizens living permanently in the United Kingdom.15 This was an era when information technology had not yet been developed to process such numbers efficiently. Faced by a mass of paper files, ‘Consular sections were often overwhelmed, and the work was repetitive and exhausting’.16 Yet despite all the statistics Bruce was part of an effort to encourage travel to the United States to help its balance of payments. He could not adopt the attitude of Richard Rush who, back in 1818, commented, ‘I receive many letters from persons in England, on emigrating to the United States. The writers seek information and advice. I afford neither. The bad subjects of Britain we do not want; the good, it is no part of my province to be instrumental in drawing away’.17 Bruce opened a US Travel Center, the first in Europe, in October 1962.18 On 19 March 1964, he noted that the amount spent by US visitors to the United Kingdom was now three times that of UK citizens travelling the other way. Efforts to encourage greater travel to the United States paid off. Travel Service figures showed that in 1965 the total number of business and tourist travellers was almost double the figure for 1961 with the largest group (nearly 175,000) coming from the United Kingdom.19 In

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1967, British visitors to the United States topped the quarter-million mark.20 Bruce recognized the strains this imposed on his staff. In May 1962 he wrote to the State Department to underline the increasing importance of consular work in promoting tourism to (and trade with) the United States while also protecting Americans residing in the United Kingdom, and he complained that consular staff had been reduced by six since 1959. With the US Travel Service predicting a major increase in tourism in the coming years and with constant pressure to boost US exports, ‘there appears to be a widening gap between available manpower and our dynamic policies’.21 In 1962 when the State Department was aiming at budget cuts, Bruce remarked that ‘An effective Consul is more valuable … than most of our propaganda in his locality’ and pointed out that consulates were cheap to run because they charged visa fees that generated income. Nonetheless, he expected to lose this particular battle because the Secretary of State himself, Dean Rusk, was behind the drive to close establishments in the United Kingdom, partly to help pay for an expanding US diplomatic presence in Africa.22 The Ambassador’s fears were well founded. Of the eight consulates operating outside London when he arrived, Cardiff and Manchester closed in 1963, while Birmingham, Glasgow and Southampton followed two years later. Yet, London and the three remaining posts – Belfast, Edinburgh and Liverpool – processed a total of 203,678 visas for financial year 1967, as compared to 112,458 by the eight consulates in West Germany (including Berlin), 81,147 by six consulates in Italy and 59,979 by eight consulates in France. Whereas there were 42 American, and 130 local staff employed in America’s US consulates in June 1961, by June 1967 this fell to 32 American, and 100 local staff. Commenting on such figures, Jack Herfurt, the Counsellor for Consular Affairs, noted that ‘astounding rate of increase of visa issuance’ and the growing productivity of staff, and further staff cuts could ‘result in denying services required by law or in … causing serious and justifiable complaints from the public … ’. Nor did the pressures ease in Bruce’s time. A new, more restrictive Immigration and Nationality Act was due to come into force on 1 July 1968, which would undoubtedly reduce demand for immigrant visas but would add to pressures on the non-immigrant side. Ahead of the 1 July deadline immigration applications shot up, forcing the consular staff to work over 4,000 hrs of overtime.23 On some occasions the Ambassador might directly involve himself in a particular consular case, generally because of the status of those involved – or because they were friends. Examples of both arose in July 1963. First he tried to sort out an entry visa for the wife of his good friend and eminent public figure, the actor Douglas Fairbanks. Only days later, Bruce became embroiled in the unusual case of a communist, William Gallacher, whose visa to the

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United States had first been agreed, then revoked. Gallacher was 81, his sister was seriously ill in America and fifty MPs had sent a petition on the matter. In this case, Bruce was able to reverse ‘the stupid decision to revoke this visa’.24 More frequently he was faced by more ordinary citizens who forced themselves on him. On 21 June 1964, he related two cases, one of a father who rang from Idaho at 7.00 a.m. London time, demanding that his daughter (who had not rung home for two days) be located, another of the nephew of a diplomat who rang to see if Bruce could find him accommodation. ‘This kind of thing happens almost daily’, he commented. The following month there was an ‘extremely unpleasant’ experience with another American visitor, Mrs Sheen, the god-daughter of a Senator, who asked to meet the Lord Mayor of London (who was on holiday), visit Buckingham Palace (not open to the public) and attend a sitting of the Commons (which had adjourned for the Summer). She threatened to complain to Washington about the Ambassador’s supposed poor treatment of her when all three requests proved fruitless. ‘Many of our compatriots, especially if supported by congressional letters, expect to use Embassy facilities as their own’, noted Bruce, ‘and often demand appointments with British officials, from the Prime Minister down’.25 Aside from the efforts at boosting tourism the Embassy was involved in a range of trade promotion activities from monitoring the state of the British market, through organizing trade exhibitions, to providing advice to particular companies. Sometimes, Bruce would take part in briefings on these. On 31 January 1962, for example, he attended a meeting between consuls and a Commerce Department official outlining an upcoming export drive. A large number of Bruce’s personal visitors were from US business, involving him in a range of commercial discussions. He was already familiar with this world having had a particular role in winning it over the business world to the Marshall Plan in the late 1940s.26 On 24 August 1961, he talked to a delegation from the Pan-American Commission of Tampa about ways to increase imports specifically from Florida. On 20 November 1961, he met a group of six company presidents who were jointly trying to boost clothing sales; while, on 15 October 1963, Joseph Frank of Ford was over to improve sales from the company’s European car plants. Bruce was also regularly lobbied on particular concerns by US businessmen about British foreign, commercial and economic policies. A Vice-President of Gulf Oil dropped by on 10 July 1961, when the conversation was about how the Macmillan government could best protect the independence of Kuwait, a former British protectorate menaced by neighbouring Iraq. On 7 June 1963, John Kelly of Pan American Airlines pressed him on the need to open more routes to the Bahamas (a British colony) and Bruce took the matter up with Washington. And on 10 April 1964, he met a group of US steel producers who were

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concerned that an incoming Labour government would nationalize the British industry. The Ambassador would help secure British investment in America too. On 18 November 1963, he met the merchant banker Evelyn de Rothschild and agreed to smooth the way for a visit by the Chair of the US Federal Power Commission to discuss investment in US public enterprises. On 14 April 1964, representatives of the Port of New York Authority asked him to help with their drive to get the British to rent space in the World Trade Center, which was then being built. Bruce’s activities in this area were not restricted to selling US goods in Britain. On 10 February 1966, he met Charlie Adams of Raytheon, who was involved in a syndicate with British firms for a large deal with the Saudi government. Sometimes he would also back British ventures in the United States. In January 1969, he argued that Washington should not use antitrust legislation to stop the BP oil giant acquiring an American company. He was concerned that this had aroused negative press comment in Britain and also that Washington seemed to be denying itself a chance for inward investment.27 Another commitment for Bruce was attending trade fairs to support American efforts. At an agricultural show, hosted by the US Trade Center on 2 March 1964, he had to talk about distilling grain. On 25 May 1964, he was at the American pavilion at the Electronics Trade Mission show at Olympia when it was visited by Prince Philip. At a similar event on 13 May 1968, he was fascinated by a computer against which it was possible to play Blackjack, losing a game against it. The scale of activity on the trade front could be very demanding. On 23 September 1964, he recorded that no less than fourteen different US trade missions were due in the United Kingdom over the next six weeks. It led him to make the telling remark that ‘It is unquestionable that the bulk of the time of our staff is occupied in meeting requests of one kind or another from our own citizens, rather than in transactions with the British’. Bruce’s experience of consular affairs confirms that this was an important and growing part of embassy activity, showing that diplomats had to combine the elite work of international representation and a more ‘serviceoriented’ relationship with numerous ordinary citizens. Then, again, public expectations about what consular relations should deliver had not yet reached the intensity that they would by the twenty-first century. Terrorist activity did not yet necessitate frequent travel warnings, while Britain was never likely to generate the sudden demand for consular services heralded by a hurricane, earthquake or a military coup. As a result, apart from individual complaints from the likes of Mrs Sheen, there was little danger of a major crisis arising over failings in the consular area.28 The worst that the London operation experienced in Bruce’s time were accusations of taking a harsher

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line than other US consulates when it came to dealing with Czechoslovak refugees wishing to enter the United States after the 1968 Prague Spring.29

Intelligence While Bruce had served as a Vice-Consul for weeks, he also had several years experience as an intelligence officer. J. K. Galbraith, appointed Ambassador to New Delhi at the same time as Bruce went to London, had a sceptical view of operations by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) designed to undermine the appeal of communism in non-aligned India. He tried to wind most of their operations down, doubting they would achieve much and fearing that, if exposed, they could prove highly embarrassing.30 Bruce’s attitude, perhaps because of his familiarity with the intelligence world, was very different. In any case, Britain was a trusted ally in the Cold War and its own intelligence services worked closely with the United States. The CIA had been active in Britain since its formation in 1947, not least in trying to undermine support for communism among trades unionists and members of the Labour Party. When these activities were revealed they looked to many like unwelcome American interference in the domestic life of a friendly state. But the truth was complex. The CIA operated indirectly, through private organizations like the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), founded in Berlin in 1950 by left-wing opponents of Josef Stalin. The most celebrated CIA operation in the United Kingdom was its indirect control of Encounter, via the CCF, which was long kept secret even from many of those who managed and wrote for the magazine. The CIA also kept the British intelligence service, MI6, and the counter-intelligence service, MI5, informed of its anti-communist activities and even operated alongside British government efforts, notably the propaganda campaigns of the Information Research Department, which was part of the Foreign Office. It has even been argued that ‘Far from feeling themselves to be the victims of aggressive ideological colonisation, many on the British left positively welcomed the US intervention because they naturally shared its values and goals’. So, CIA activities can be seen as part of a joint AngloAmerican effort to prevent communism from taking root in the United Kingdom. True, the Agency was involved in more than an anti-communist campaign. It also tried to foster other US aims such as support for European integration. However, on this front, whatever money it spent it could not always win British politicians over to its views. The Labour leader, Hugh Gaitskell, for example, was pro-American in many respects and an ardent anti-communist but he always opposed British entry to the EEC.31

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Bruce’s Embassy was a vital part of the effort to undermine the appeal of communism, partly because of the USIA’s information campaigns and the work of the labour attachés (who had a particularly important role in forging links with Labour politicians and trades unionists), but mainly because the building housed the CIA station.32 It was common practice for CIA staff to be provided with diplomatic ‘cover’ stories as supposedly ordinary Foreign Service officers, often as members of the Political Section, although their real status could easily be guessed by insiders (not least because CIA officers had ‘exotic locks on office doors’).33 Aside from keeping Britain loyal to the Western cause and maintaining links to politicians, the military, student groups, trades unionists and the media, the CIA office under its Chief of Station maintained cooperation with the British intelligence services. Despite a string of spy scandals that shook American confidence in the British after 1950, the ties with them remained close. US intelligence had been reinvigorated during the War partly with the help of the British. There were also some notable successes for MI6, especially the recruitment of a Soviet spy Oleg Penkovsky in 1960. Furthermore, the British had a worldwide presence, with intelligence gathering facilities from Hong Kong to Cyprus that could be exploited by the CIA. Indeed, it has been claimed that ‘the agency’s extensive activities’ in Britain were ‘aimed principally at Third World countries’.34 Certainly, the Agency had a profound interest in the fate of certain British colonies, most notably British Guiana where Washington was determined that independence not give power to the current Prime Minister, Cheddi Jagan, because he was felt to be too close a friend of Cuba’s Fidel Castro. In May 1961, following a botched attempt to overthrow Castro in the Bay of Pigs operation, the Kennedy administration instructed Frank Wisner, the CIA Station Chief in London, to organize activities designed to undermine Jagan in Guiana.35 (One of Bruce’s first tasks when Labour came to office in October 1964 was to ensure they maintained cooperation with the CIA on this issue.36) The Agency also prepared analyses of key aspects of British policy based largely on both open and secret information, as with a report on the state of the economy in mid-1965 or on the prospects of British entry into the EEC in 1967.37 It was not the only intelligence outfit based in the Embassy. The National Security Agency (NSA) Liaison Officer, who worked with Britain’s eavesdropping and codebreaking operation, Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ), was based in Room 452 of the Embassy, a floor above the CIA.38 The ‘special’ nature of relations between the NSA and GCHQ was reflected in the fact that Britain was the only ally to be given raw American signals intelligence. Britain’s value to the NSA in collecting some types of intelligence on the Soviet bloc increased in the mid1960s, thanks to US involvement in Vietnam. Britain also remained useful

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for providing bases for intelligence gathering (with the Americans paying for much of the actual equipment), from Bude in Cornwall to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, both developed in the 1960s.39 A 1974 study argued that many ambassadors ‘because of a lack of forcefulness or a lack of interest, give the CIA a free hand and do not even want to know what the agency is up to, while even those who do insist on being told of its operations do not interfere in them’. Those ambassadors who exerted ‘close supervision’ of CIA activities, in accordance with Kennedy’s 1961 directive, tended also to be ‘staunch advocates of extensive clandestine operations’.40 Bruce’s links to the world of intelligence went back a long way. Before America entered the Second World War, he had been part of a secretive group of distinguished Americans who met monthly in ‘The Room’, a New York apartment, and who have been described as ‘essentially a private intelligence service that worked in collaboration with the British secret service’.41 In October 1941 he began work for ‘Wild’ Bill Donovan, founder (the following year) of the Office of Strategic Services, whose London office Bruce headed in 1943–5.42 By the time he returned to London as Ambassador he had known Allen Dulles, the then CIA Director, for forty years – though this had not stopped Bruce from co-authoring a 1956 report criticizing the Agency for its indiscriminate political involvements and tendency to undermine the work of embassies.43 Perhaps it was the work on this report that made Bruce determined to work closely with the CIA in London rather than risk harmful competition with it. Then, again, he knew the CIA Station Chief, Frank Wisner, very well: the latter had been another OSS member and the pair had worked together a decade before in support of early efforts at European integration.44 Bruce’s diary shows their relationship to have been a warm one. On 23 March 1961, Bruce, only days into his new post, received his first briefing from Wisner about the Laotian civil war. They lunched together on 22 April and had drinks on 14 May 1961. They even went out buying antiques and their children played with each other.45 Formerly a high-flying lawyer, Wisner after 1948 had taken charge of the CIA’s covert operations, heading the so-called Office of Policy Coordination with many officers working abroad under diplomatic cover. He once boasted with undoubted exaggeration that his network was ‘a Mighty Wurlitzer’, on which he could play whichever tune he liked, manipulating world opinion to suit US interests.46 But he suffered an emotional trauma compounded by an attack of hepatitis when the Soviets crushed the 1956 Hungarian revolution. Two years later he had a nervous breakdown and was subjected to electric shock therapy.47 The London station, though eminent in itself, was therefore a regression in a once-promising career. Furthermore, his bad nerves persisted. Henry Brandon relates a story about the Labour

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politician, George Brown – an ‘uninhibited and provocative’ character, who ‘did not hold his alcohol well’ – baiting Wisner – ‘a surprisingly vulnerable man’ – at a dinner party. Wisner ‘left … in a huff and would not be smoothed … ’.48 On 13 March 1962, Bruce was told by Wisner that he would soon be returning to Washington to become Special Assistant to the new CIA Director, John McCone. But a few weeks later Wisner’s doctors ordered him to take a month’s rest because he was suffering from high blood pressure.49 He eventually left on 4 June and Bruce saw him a few times over the following years before, on 29 October 1965, he shot himself. Wisner’s successor as head of the ‘Political Liaison Section’, as it was euphemistically called, was Archibald Roosevelt, a grandson of President Theodore, and cousin of President Franklin Roosevelt. ‘Archie’ had been an intelligence officer since 1942, mainly specializing in the Middle East, including a spell working for Voice of America radio. Among other activities, he had worked closely with MI6 to overthrow the regime of Mohammed Mossadeq in Iran in 1953. Unfortunately, his memoirs mainly focus on his Middle East experiences and have relatively little to say about his time in London.50 Tantalizing references to his work appear at times in Bruce’s diary, but he is not mentioned as often as Wisner. In July 1963, Roosevelt and the Information Counsellor, William Clark, worked together to try to minimize the damage caused by a story in Newsweek which accused the British intelligence services of incompetence.51 Even if he was not as personally close to Roosevelt as he had been to Wisner, Bruce’s meetings with the Station Chief were evidently quite frequent. The Ambassador noted on 16 July 1963, ‘I had, as I so often do nowadays, a long talk with Archie Roosevelt about spies’. Roosevelt stayed until October 1966 and was succeeded by Bronson Tweedy, who had already served as London Station Chief in 1956–9. Bruce was pleased that the pair overlapped by ten days, so that Tweedy was well briefed on his job.52 Members of the British Joint Intelligence Committee as well as the CIA Station and Bruce attended the farewell luncheon for Roosevelt.53 By the end of the month, Bruce was recording that, ‘Although I was sorry to lose Roosevelt when his time was up, I am pleased by his replacement’. Bruce’s diary is understandably coy on intelligence matters. Ambassadors were expected to be. Galbraith felt that ‘adventuresome and spooky enterprises’ could not even safely be discussed in letters to the President.54 ‘Frank Austin, representing the National Security Agency, came to see me at the office’, reads one bone-dry entry by Bruce of 31 May 1961. Another, for 1 February 1966, simply reads ‘Thomas Hughes, Director of Intelligence at State, came to see me’. Yet the following day Bruce was rather more forthcoming about a naval intelligence briefing, which showed a US build-up in the Mediterranean to match the ‘stupendous’ growth of Soviet naval power. More surprisingly

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perhaps, the diary for 19 November 1964 shows Bruce was privy to an FBI report on Martin Luther King that exposed the latter’s sexual infidelities and links to communist organizations. It is also clear that Bruce’s meetings with those in the intelligence field could be frequent, although many seem to have been retired colleagues from his own days as a ‘spook’. On 24 October 1967, he spent part of the morning with William Graver, reputedly one of the tallest men in the CIA and onetime Station Chief in Berlin; in the afternoon he met an old MI6 friend, Walter Bell; and the following morning his appointments included Hubert Will, yet another wartime colleague from US counterintelligence. Also, some episodes did elicit details from the Ambassador. In early 1962, Donovan himself passed through London en route to one of the most famous Cold War ‘spy swaps’ – that of captured spy plane pilot Gary Powers and KGB Colonel Rudolf Abel. ‘The security attached to this affair has been excellent’, Bruce recorded, ‘Wisner arranged Donovan’s transit of England through his British counterparts, and his journey went unremarked’.55 Less satisfactory was the case of Robert Soblen, a Soviet spy who tried to flee to Israel. He was being flown from there to America via London, when, despite being guarded by US Marshals, he tried to commit suicide. He had to be taken to a British hospital and the Embassy inevitably became involved in the question of what to do with him – with trans-Atlantic calls between Bruce and Dean Rusk – before the situation was resolved by his suicide.56 When Bruce arrived in London there were ructions over the exposure of George Blake, an MI6 officer, as a Soviet agent. The Ambassador, perhaps because he felt that US secrets were not seriously compromised by Blake, seems to have left this matter to Wisner.57 In December 1961 Blake was sentenced to 42 years in prison. As noted earlier, the British did have their successes in the spy business, most notably with the recruitment of Oleg Penkovsky, of Soviet military intelligence, whose reports were shared with the CIA.58 But this coup was outweighed, at least in the public eye, by many negatives. The Profumo scandal, which dominated the British media in early 1963, had an espionage dimension to it because Christine Keeler, with whom John Profumo the Minister of War had become involved, was also seeing a Soviet official. Even without fresh scandals, old humiliations had a habit of rearing their heads. Memories of the Cambridge spy-ring, which had penetrated to the heart of MI6 and the Foreign Office and shaken American faith in British security when it was exposed in 1951, were raised when another member of the group, Kim Philby, was finally exposed in January 1963. Through an incredible display of incompetence he was allowed to flee to Moscow, where he was joined soon after by his wife. There was a complication here because she was an American citizen. To help dampen

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press interest, Bruce issued a simple statement on 29 October that she had a valid passport for the journey. Three years later came more embarrassment for the British when Blake escaped from Wormwood Scrubs and, like Philby, managed to reach Moscow. Bruce could only comment about how the affair ‘reflects sadly on British Security … ’.59 A 1965 CIA report had already concluded that MI5 was badly organized and poorly led.60 Then again the Americans had their own failures to deal with, including the defection in late 1960 of two NSA officers (who exposed some GCHQ operations) and the following year’s CIA failure to overthrow Cuba’s Fidel Castro at the Bay of Pigs.61 Within a few months of Blake’s escape, the CIA faced another embarrassment. In February 1967 the clandestine links between the CIA’s International Organizations Division and a number of bodies were exposed by the New York Times. The links included Radio Free Europe, the CCF and Britain’s Encounter magazine. In many countries the exposures proved highly damaging to America’s standing.62 Yet, most British literary and political figures were quite forgiving of the CIA. Encounter had effectively been used to voice social democratic opinions, designed to undermine the appeal of more hard-line Marxists and this suited the interests of many moderate left-wingers in Britain. Indeed, some felt that they had used the CIA as much as it had used them. Neither Roy Jenkins, nor Denis Healey – both Cabinet Ministers at the time – were too concerned by the revelations, or regretful of their own links to the magazine.63 Despite the repeated spy scandals and the Encounter revelation, personal relations between the CIA and British intelligence seem to have been very good. Philip Kaiser says that the relationship was close because of continuing cooperation in such areas as intelligence, nuclear weapons and US bases in the United Kingdom, all of which meant that both sides had a stake in friendship. He comments: In the intelligence field our two countries gave each other more information than either gave to any of its other allies. We exchanged information on both overt and covert sources for the preparation of joint estimates. The weekly report of the Joint Intelligence Committee … was the product of a combined effort with the chief of our CIA station responsible for the American contribution.64

Bruce played his part in bringing the two sides together at the highest level. On 26 May 1961, he hosted a lunch for eleven US and British intelligence officers headed by Wisner and the MI6 Chief, Sir Dick White. There was a similar event in October, when Allen Dulles came to London on a farewell visit accompanied by the incoming CIA Director, John McCone. An entry

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in Bruce’s diary about Dulles’ retirement hints at just how closely the two sides cooperated. After a special courier arrived from Washington in August with a message about the change of Director, the Ambassador noted that the issue ‘requires close consultation with officials in the security departments of the British Government’. The following day Bruce saw White, presumably on the same subject.65 Towards the end of Bruce’s ambassadorship, AngloAmerican cooperation was further strengthened by exploratory talks about maintaining communications between the two countries during a nuclear war.66

Defence and embassy security The two largest US defence bodies in Britain were the headquarters of the Third Air Force, based at Ruislip, and the office of the Commander-in-Chief, Naval Forces Europe (CINCNAVEUR), based at 20 Grosvenor Square. Both commanders were part of Bruce’s country team. Besides liaising with these commands, the Embassy staff included three service attachés (for the army, navy and air force) and, until it was wound up in early 1965, a Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG). In addition, there were no less than fourteen other specialized units responsible to the Department of Defense (DOD) based in their own building in London. They included the NATO Military Standardization Center, the Air Force Purchasing Center and the Army Transportation Terminal Unit (responsible for processing cargo). In 1963–4, Bruce successfully pressed that administrative support for these units should no longer fall on the Embassy.67 Both the Navy and more particularly the Air Force operated numerous base and support facilities scattered across the United Kingdom.68 In September 1963, there were about 28,250 Americans in UK-based military units outside London (27,500 of them from the Air Force), who also employed about 4,700 local British staff (4,400 of these with the Air Force). But, despite such numbers, Bruce reported that ‘so far as the conduct of a satisfactory overall relationship with the British … is concerned, this multifarious US Government representation has not been detrimental’.69 One issue he took an interest in was good community relations between the US military and the British, knowing that this was vital if popular tolerance of the American presence were to be retained.70 In June 1961, he toured three US air bases, receiving at each a briefing on their relations with the local community.71 Other visits to military facilities took place fitfully throughout the ambassadorship. Alongside discussions at the country team meetings they helped keep him up-to-date on military thinking and capabilities.72

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During one such incident, on 8 September 1964, he flew with the Air Attaché Colonel Newton to Upper Heyford, where the USAF put on a mock alert, getting twenty nuclear bombers fitted out and on the runway in eight minutes. In 1967, he was flown to the US European Command headquarters in Stuttgart for an overview of their operation.73 Bruce sometimes became involved in military questions that involved working with the British, such as the provision of adequate housing for military families.74 He also took an interest in the way various defence bodies fitted into the overall US operation in London, generally preferring to see State Department officers keeping the upper hand. In August 1963, for example, when the DOD proposed the establishment of a new position, a ‘Senior Defense Representative, United Kingdom’ with their own staff, Bruce grew concerned. He knew only too well that ‘the representatives of agencies other than State, although on paper subject to complete control [by the Ambassador], can in practice operate relatively independently’, particularly where they controlled their own communications systems. The Representative would ‘confuse the British Government as to just who does conduct one of the most important elements in US-UK relations’, especially since the proposed new position would deal with political and economic, not just military issues. Bruce went all the way to the top, arguing with Rusk that the post would also undermine State–Defense liaison relations in Washington and could be used as a precedent for establishing similar positions elsewhere around the world. He preferred to strengthen political–military links by assigning one or two additional officers.75 Later, after MAAG was wound up, he was keen that the main responsibility for military arms sales to Britain should rest with the Embassy’s Politico-Military Affairs section, given its ‘extremely high policy content … ’.76 But on rare occasions he might approach the DOD directly about a pressing issue. In July 1967 he wrote to Paul Nitze, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, arguing that, with Britain closing down its bases on Malta and the Soviets threatening to establish a presence there, it would make sense for the United States to pre-empt such a move with an offer of their own. This message was sent on ‘a personal basis’, with no copy to the State Department.77 Another aspect of work that involved put Bruce in direct contact with a military contingent of about fifteen Marine Guards that was responsible for the security of the building itself, although in practice when it came to most problems in the 1960s, the heaviest burdens fell on London’s Metropolitan Police. Grosvenor Square was a magnet for those objecting to American policies. Often, protests were perfectly peaceful and sometimes groups would simply present petitions or letters. Bruce would send these on to Washington, where they seem to have had negligible impact. When the Ambassador

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forwarded a petition from a parliamentary group against nuclear tests in April 1962, for example, the National Security staff felt it could be ignored as not representing the official views of major political parties.78A few months later Bruce promised the eminent philosopher Lord Bertrand Russell to send one of his letters to the White House, but added in a covering letter, ‘I suggest it be ignored there’. Bruce treated Russell carefully, given his high profile in Britain’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and his international stature. On this occasion the Ambassador also sent his own reply to Russell’s letter, explaining to Bundy that, ‘I thought it well to acknowledge receipt of his abusive communication, rather than … be publicly accused by him of discourtesy’.79 At other times Bruce decided it was best to meet Russell, as in September 1961, when he received the philosopher and other members of the ‘Committee of One Hundred’ to discuss nuclear weapons. He ‘thought them earnest, sincere, ignorant, and hopelessly disputatious’, but his attempts at counter-arguments had no more impact on them than their arguments had on him.80 Other protests were more serious. In August 1961, there was a bomb scare when a ticking parcel, bearing the slogan ‘Viva Castro!’ was found outside the building. It turned out to contain nothing more than an alarm clock.81 A more regular problem was large-scale demonstrations, the largest (and best remembered) of which concerned the Vietnam War. But the potential for targeting the Embassy was clear before the escalation of US involvement in Southeast Asia. The first serious event was what Bruce called a ‘dig sit down’ on 6 September 1961, when a number of nuclear protesters were bodily removed by the police. There were more demonstrations when the United States revived nuclear testing in the atmosphere in July 1962 after a long break.82 On 23 October 1962, as the Cuban Missile Crisis began a crowd of 2,000 mounted what Bruce called ‘a massive assault’ on the Embassy but were held off by 300 police. The Embassy was inundated with messages, mainly from left-wing groups protesting against US policy, and a number of bomb threats were made by telephone.83 During this crisis, Bruce had to consider what to do if protestors actually entered the Embassy. A supply of tear gas was requested and, although the Marines were instructed not to use their handguns if they were attacked, the Ambassador wondered ‘whether for the protection of the code room we should not, as a last resort, open fire’.84 In this he may have been guided by a similar case from the previous December when there were anti-nuclear protests at USAF bases around Britain. The Commander of the Third Air Force, General John Ives, ‘agreed on the importance of the US … personnel not using weapons or force against the demonstrators unless they threatened to overrun the most restricted areas’.85

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The reluctance to resort to arms was persistent. In March 1968 when a massive anti-Vietnam War demonstration was expected, the Country Team agreed that ‘it would be a grave mistake for our Marines … to use firearms against demonstrators who might break into the building’.86 But it was obvious from experience abroad that protests could become seriously threatening. On 4 March 1964, Bruce recorded that the USIA office in Rhodes had been assaulted by Greeks, who accused Washington of siding with Turkey over Cyprus. A week later, the US and British embassies in Phnom Penh, Cambodia were sacked. The Embassy’s Security Officer kept Bruce updated with the latest predictions for protests outside the Embassy, making arrangements to secure both Grosvenor Square and Winfield House via different means (such as deploying Marines, either in or out of uniform). The Security Officer also liaised with the Metropolitan Police about measures they might take including deploying’ plain clothes’ detectives from Scotland Yard’s anti-subversion wing, Special Branch.87 Bruce was never convinced that Winfield House was a secure location, situated as it was in the middle of a public park. He commented in 1967 that ‘it would be easy for anyone to climb over the wire fence and effect an entry, despite the patrol made at night by a watchman with an Alsatian dog … ’.88 Yet the Residence was never seriously targeted by protesters, who preferred to remain focused on Grosvenor Square. Thanks to Vietnam, the challenge from demonstrations became chronic in the mid-1960s. In August 1964, the first US bombing of North Vietnam, following the Gulf of Tonkin incident, brought only 500 protesters to the Embassy without any serious incident.89 But the onset of the ‘Rolling Thunder’ bombing campaign in 1965 heralded a real sense of threat. On 11 March nine protesters padlocked themselves to railings and doors at the Embassy. On 24 March a crudely written message arrived, threatening ‘an attempt to kill your ambassador’ because of recent ‘atrocities’. Rather less intimidating was a letter from the actress Vanessa Redgrave, refusing the Bruces’ invitation to meet the cast of Blues for Mr. Charlie, because of ‘horrifying’ US behaviour.90 On 7 July Bruce, Kaiser and others discussed possible measures to strengthen the Embassy against bomb attacks, including fitting the ground floor windows with shatter-proof glass. The size of demonstrations continued to grow, a rally in Trafalgar Square on 11 April 1966 attracting 15,000 protesters. In mid-1967 protestors planned to paint over all the street signs around Grosvenor Square to read ‘Genocide Square’. By October 1967, Bruce was sometimes reduced to leaving the building by the back door to avoid protestors.91 On 22 October 1967, a march by about 5,000 people from Trafalgar Square culminated in an attempt to storm the Embassy. This was held off by the police but several windows were broken.

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It was not just the building that was attacked; so were individual staff. In November 1967, Bruce himself was the focus of bitter denunciation and attempted physical assault while speaking in Cambridge.92 When one Embassy officer spoke at Sussex University, in February 1968, he had paint thrown on him and the Stars and Stripes was burnt by students. It led Bruce to ask what had become of Britain’s ‘spirit of fair play’, especially when newspaper coverage of such incidents tended to reflect negative light on the United States.93 That same month security at Winfield House was, in a sense, ‘breached’ when one of the Bruces’ dinner guests posted stickers about a forthcoming anti-war march in the toilets.94 The march itself, on 17 March 1968, resulted in twenty embassy windows being smashed and 200 demonstrators arrested. Between January and October 1968 the Embassy faced no less than 37 demonstrations and 31 bomb hoaxes.95 The biggest rally of all, numbering about 30,000, came on 27 October 1968 when a group of 5,000 attacked the Embassy, which was defended by 1,000 police. But even this failed to break into the building.

Information and cultural affairs In the US system, during the Cold War, dealings with the media (often called information or public affairs work) and cultural affairs, which are managed separately by most other states, were drawn together under the USIA, whose overseas posts are known as the US Information Service, or USIS. Theirs has been described as ‘the biggest information and cultural effort ever mounted by one society to influence … attitudes … beyond its borders’, its overall aim being ‘to win hearts and minds of foreign audiences about the United States in general and its international policies in particular’, a field now generally known as ‘public diplomacy’.96 Founded in 1953 under the Eisenhower administration but built on efforts begun in the Second World War, the USIA was an integral part of the global ideological struggle against the Soviet Union, seeking to undermine communism while shaping foreign opinion in America’s favour, a subject that has been of growing interest to academics in recent decades. Its activities included exchange programmes between students, academic and other professionals (most famously the Fulbright programme, launched in 1946), mounting exhibitions about US culture, distributing books and running libraries, fostering the teaching of English as a foreign language, producing magazines and films and operating the Voice of America radio station. It therefore ran ‘open’ operations designed to shape opinion over the long term, in contrast to the CIA (which ran clandestine operations, such as funding the magazine Encounter, but

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could not use the USIA as a ‘cover’) or the Department of Defence (which conducted ‘psychological warfare’ campaigns against enemy states).97 When Kennedy became President, he appointed a new USIA Director, Ed Murrow, best known for his radio broadcasts from London in the dark days of the blitz. Murrow came over to London to see Bruce in August 1961 as part of a broader tour.98 By 1961 earlier tensions had eased between diplomats, with their tendency to elitism and secrecy, and the media professionals of the USIA whose role was to cultivate the masses. In any case, Kennedy’s May 1961 directive made clear that the USIS post was, along with other non-diplomatic elements, under the local authority of the Ambassador. It has been said that ‘USIS effectiveness within the embassy depended heavily on the ambassador’s interest in information and cultural operations’, but also that political appointees like Bruce were likely to demonstrate ‘a better understanding of the value of public relations than many career ambassadors’. Certainly, J. K. Galbraith was eager to improve the management and output of the USIS in India.99 In Bruce’s case – as with consular affairs, intelligence work and military service – he had some direct experience of propaganda efforts himself, being one of the Americans who broadcasted from London in 1940 about the blitz, and he was an old friend of Murrow.100 The Ambassador met the USIS team on 18 May 1961 and worked closely with the Counsellor for Public Affairs, William Clark, who, being responsible for influencing local opinion and reporting on it to the ambassador, would often accompany him on visits to newspapers.101 The pair would sometimes jointly compile reports on British Press coverage of key issues.102 However, Bruce seems to have become less enamoured of the USIS over time. After the Cuban Missile Crisis, he was full of praise for them; they were ‘remarkably effective in explaining American policy at a period when the atmosphere was initially hostile’.103 He also told the incoming European Director of the USIA, Robert Lincoln, on 3 April 1964, ‘I am well content with the work’ of the London office. But in 1966 he was critical of a grand but ‘ill-conceived’ scheme for a month of celebrations of American culture which put pressure on embassy staff, not least himself, to attend even more functions than usual. He also found ‘obscure’ the benefits of a scheme to show ‘old but still famous’ US films to selected audiences in the Embassy’s theatre.104 More seriously, he became deeply concerned over US propaganda failings during the Vietnam War. More will be said on propaganda work, including Vietnam, and on Bruce’s engagement with the press in the next chapter. For the moment the focus will be on the other half of USIA activities, cultural affairs. That the Ambassador recognized the significance of this was seen in his determination to create

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the proper conditions in which the Cultural Attaché could operate, including the provision of proper secretarial support and an adequate entertainment allowance.105 Bruce became directly involved in some cultural work, such as the doings of the American School in London, which was partly funded through the State Department. Such schools existed in about fifty capitals, being attended by the children of US officials serving abroad as well as by those hoping to study at US universities.106 Bruce’s involvement was mainly in terms of ensuring the American School’s survival as when, in May 1967, it seemed that they must leave their current premises, which were due to be redeveloped. Subsequently, a new site was identified in St. John’s Wood.107 Bruce also showed an interest in developing American Studies degrees in British universities. From the beginning of his ambassadorship Bruce was acquainted with David Adams, a young historian at Keele University, who had used a US-funded lectureship to found the first American Studies degree programme in the United Kingdom. Adams came to know Bruce quite well and, when his graduate Centre for American Studies was established at Keele in 1969, Bruce, then at the end of his ambassadorship, bestowed his name upon it.108 A regular ambassadorial commitment in the cultural field was chairing local meetings of the Fulbright Commission and being introduced to new Fulbright Scholars.109 In September 1965, the Fulbright Program celebrated its 25th anniversary. By then, as Bruce recorded, almost 5,000 US students had been to the United Kingdom under the scheme and over 6,000 Britons had gone the other way.110 In 1968, when a cut in funding was threatened for the scheme, Bruce wrote to Senator William Fulbright arguing that the ‘Program is perhaps the most useful thing which I have encountered during my service abroad’.111 Much USIA activity went on away from Bruce’s oversight. He had nothing to do it seems with one of the post’s greatest coups of these years, selecting a Conservative MP called Margaret Thatcher to make her first trip to the United States in 1967. This was under the ‘International Visitor Program’ targeted at those who wielded influence or were likely to do so in future, which included thirty Britons that year.112 But as with consular affairs and trade promotion, the Ambassador did become involved in a surprisingly wide range of activities in the cultural field. Sometimes he was drawn into promoting particular American cultural enterprises in Britain. In June 1961 he was approached by Jack Heinz, of the HJ Heinz food company, who wanted the American Wind Symphony Orchestra to deliver a performance while sailing down the Thames, having already performed similar river concerts in America. Later in the month Bruce attended the opening of an American Museum in Bath.113 These showed that not all ‘public diplomacy’ efforts were channelled via the USIA, nor were they all organized from

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Washington. Throughout the Cold War a significant feature of America’s projection of itself was through private bodies and individuals, a fitting feature of a society that prided itself on individual freedom, pitted in a struggle against communist totalitarianism. There was a whole network of citizen groups that had informal links to the US government and who, sharing its world view, were happy to project US values and interests. (It has already been seen that the CIA also operated in tandem with sympathetic citizen groups in the running of Encounter magazine.) The most obvious example was the way the USIA’s efforts were supplemented and outspent by the private enterprise of the Hollywood film industry, not least the Disney studios.114 On occasion Bruce was linked to the Hollywood enterprise. On 11 October 1963, Ellis Arnall, President of the Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers, came to see the Ambassador while in London to negotiate with the British on copyright. Another ‘state-private’ link was the support from Christian evangelism for American values. The best known evangelist of the 1960s, Billy Graham, once said, ‘if you want to be a loyal American, then become a loyal Christian’, a quote that highlights the reciprocal nature of the relationship between Uncle Sam and supposedly private groups.115 Bruce attended a rally by Graham at Wembley on 2 July 1966. The main limiting factor on embassy involvement in the cultural field, Bruce said, was that ‘we do not patronize any functions unless they are of an Anglo-American nature’.116 But joint Anglo-US activities still left him with various commitments, including attending functions by various trans-Atlantic institutions. One of the first rites of passage for a new US Ambassador to London was to make his first public address to The Pilgrims Society, founded early in the century by leading Americans and Britons who believed good relations between the two countries were vital for world stability.117 Bruce talked to them at the Savoy Hotel on 2 May 1961. On 4 June 1963, the Ambassador attended a round table on Anglo-American Relations, organized by the English-Speaking Union, which included eminent figures from both sides of the Atlantic. Then on 14 November 1963, he attended a dinner by the Ends of the Earth Club, which had been founded sixty-years before in New York by two famous authors, Britain’s Rudyard Kipling and America’s Poulteney Bigelow. On this occasion, held in honour of General Lyman Lemnitzer, Supreme Commander of NATO, hundreds of guests were present. There were also intermittent award ceremonies that were wise for the US ambassador to attend. One on 28 June 1961 was held by the American Academy of Arts and Letters to honour the sculptor Henry Moore, the author Graham Greene and other eminent Britons. At a lower-key occasion on 3 December 1963 the Ambassador presented a Certificate of Fellowship in the American College of Cardiology to a doctor from Guy’s Hospital. If

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anything, Anglo-American institutions seemed to grow in number. Along with Roger Makins (a former Ambassador to Washington) and others, Bruce became a member of the Kennedy Memorial Committee, set up after the President’s assassination which in 1965 set up a memorial at Runnymede, site of the signing of Magna Carta.118 The site was a reminder that Britain and America had a shared history of individual rights as they fought the Cold War together.

Notes  1 Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Arlington, Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection (FAOHC), Vance Armstrong interview.  2 Nelson Lankford, The Last American Aristocrat: The Biography of Ambassador David Bruce (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1996), 78–85.  3 Jan Melissen, ‘The Consular Dimension of Diplomacy’, in Melissen and Ana Mar Fernandez (eds), Consular Affairs and Diplomacy (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2011), 1–3; also Martin Herz (ed.), The Consular Dimension of Diplomacy (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1983).  4 See Kevin Stringer, ‘Visa Diplomacy’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, Vol. 15, No. 4 (2004), 655–82.  5 D. C. M. Platt, The Cinderella Service (London: Longman, 1971); also John Dickie, The British Consul (London: Hurst, 2007).  6 Robert D. Schulzinger, The Making of the Diplomatic Mind: The Training, Outlook and Style of the US Foreign Service Officers, 1908–31 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1975), 5; and see Charles Kennedy, The American Consul (New York: Greenwood, 1990).  7 Virginia Historical Society, David Bruce Diary (DBD), 9 May 1961.  8 US Senate, Committee on Government Operations, Subcommittee on National Security Staffing and Operations, hearing of 18 September 1963 (hereafter ‘Senate Hearing’), 253.  9 Quoted in Charles Roetter, The Diplomatic Art (Philadelphia, PA: Macrae Smith, 1963), 18. 10 DBD, 11 May 1961, 1 March 1965 and 4 May 1967. 11 DBD, 22–23 May 1961, 8 and 16 February, 17 April, 10–11 October and 8 and 23 November 1962. 12 Beckles Willson, America’s Ambassadors to England, 1785–928 (London: John Murray, 1928), 263–4. 13 DBD, 13 July 1964. 14 Donna Hamilton, ‘The Transformation of Consular Affairs: The United States Experience’, in Melissen and Fernandez (eds), Consular Affairs, 146. 15 DBD, 5 March 1964. 16 Hamilton, ‘Transformation’, 152.

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17 Richard Rush, A Residence at the Court of London (London: Century, 1987), 58. 18 DBD, 10 October 1962. 19 DBD, 14 February 1966 and see 12 September 1967, with Travel Service statistics. 20 DBD, 22 March 1968. 21 DBD, Bruce to State Department, 9 May, appended to DBD, 14 May 1962. 22 DBD, 29 September and 5, 6 and 8 October 1962. 23 DBD, Herfurt to Bruce, 1 February 1968, and entries for 13 and 28, June 1968. 24 DBD, 15 and 18 July 1963. 25 DBD, 31 July 1964. 26 Lankford, Aristocrat, 191. 27 DBD, Bruce to Rusk, 29 January 1969. 28 Melissen, ‘Consular Dimension’, 6–8. 29 National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), College Park, MD, RG59, General Records of the State Department, Bureau of European Affairs, Office of Northern European Affairs, United Kingdom 1962–74, Box 4, POL – Czechoslovakia 1968 folder, Goldstein to Herfurt, 6 November 1968. 30 J. K. Galbraith, A Life in Our Times (London: André Deutsch, 1981), 396–7. 31 Hugh Wilford, The CIA, the British left and the Cold War: Calling the Tune? (London: Cass, 2003), 2–3 and see chapter 2. 32 Wilford, Left, 164–7. 33 Anonymous, ‘Chiefs of Station’ in Philip Agee and Louis Wolf (eds), Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe (London: Zed Press, 1978), 46–7. 34 Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (London: Coronet Books, 1974), 369. 35 Stephen G. Rabe, US Intervention in British Guiana (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 83–3 and see 99. 36 DBD, Bruce to Rusk, 23 October 1964. 37 Lyndon B. Johnson Library (LBJL) National Security File (NSF), Country File, United Kingdom (CFUK), Box 208, ‘British Economic Problems’, 12 July 1965, and Box 210, ‘Britain and the EEC’, 16 January 1967. 38 James Bamford, The Puzzle Palace: America’s National Security Agency and its Special Relationship with Britain’s GCHQ (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1982), 326. 39 Richard J. Aldrich, GCHQ: The Uncensored Secret Story of Britain’s Most Secret Intelligence Agency (London: Harper, 2010), 269, 334–5 and 342. 40 Marchetti and Marks, CIA, 370. 41 Anthony Cave Brown, The Secret Service: The Life of Sir Stewart Menzies, Churchill’s Spymaster (London: Michael Joseph, 1988), 123–4. 42 Lankford, Aristocrat, chapters 7 and 8. 43 Peter Grose, Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles (London: Andre Deutsch, 1995), 445–8. 44 Aldrich, The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War intelligence (London: John Murray, 2001), 350 and 354.

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45 DBD, 18 and 25 June 1961 and 12 January 1962. 46 Wilford, Left, 85–6 and 113. 47 See Grose, Gentleman, 463. 48 Henry Brandon, Special Relationships (London: Macmillan, 1988), 162. 49 DBD, 30 March 1962. 50 Archie Roosevelt, For Lust of Knowing (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988), 468–70. 51 DBD, 9 July 1963. 52 DBD, 20 September 1966. 53 DBD, ‘Ambassador’s Lunch’, 29 September 1966. 54 J. K. Galbraith, Letters to Kennedy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 71. 55 DBD, 10 February 1962. 56 DBD, 3 July, 1, 7, 10 and 11 August and 6, 7 and 11 September 1962. 57 DBD, 5 May 1961. 58 Gordon Corera, MI6: Life and Death in the British Secret Service (London: Phoenix, 2011), chapter 4. 59 DBD, 25 October 1966. On the Philby and Blake exposures, see Corera, MI6, 86–90 and 142–3. 60 Corera, MI6, 204. 61 Aldrich, Hidden Hand, 636; Aldrich, GCHQ, 176. 62 In India, for example: Chester Bowles, Promises to Keep: My Years in Public Life, 1941–69 (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), 468–9. On the CCF, see Giles Scott-Smith, The Politics of Apolitical Culture: The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA and Post-War American Hegemony (London: Routledge, 2002). 63 Wilford, Left, 288–9. 64 Philip Kaiser, Journeying Far and Wide (New York: Scribner’s, 1992), 224–5. 65 DBD, 17–18 August 1961. 66 RG59, Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs, US-UK Crisis Communications 1968–77, Box 1, Farley to Leddy, 24 October 1968. 67 DBD, Bruce to Rusk, 19 August 1963. In general on the US defence presence overseas, see Vincent Barnett (ed.), The Representation of the United States Abroad (New York: Prager, 1965), chapter 4. 68 For a critical outline of their presence, see Duncan Campbell, The Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier: American Military Power in Britain (London: Michael Joseph, 1984). 69 Senate Hearing, 234–5. 70 DBD, 11 March 1966. 71 DBD, 29 June 1961. 72 DBD, 6 June 1968. 73 DBD, 8 September 1964 and 27 September 1967. 74 DBD, Bruce to Rusk, 6 January 1967. 75 DBD Bruce to Rusk, 19 August, and see 19 September 1963. 76 DBD, Bruce to Kohler, 27 October 1967.

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 77 DBD, Bruce to Nitze, 14 July 1967.  78 John F. Kennedy Library (JFKL), NSF/CFUK/170, Bruce to Rusk, 11 April, and Battle to Bundy, 26 April 1962.  79 JFKL/NSF/CFUK/170, Bruce to Bundy, 7 June 1962.  80 DBD, 7 September 1961.  81 DBD, 13 August 1961.  82 DBD, 10 July 1962.  83 NARA/RG 84, Great Britain, US Embassy, London, General Records 1936–63, Box 530, 350 Cuba 1962–3 folder, London to State, 25 October 1962.  84 DBD, 24 October 1962.  85 DBD, 9 December 1961.  86 DBD, 6 and 15 March 1968.  87 DBD, Kemp to Bruce, 23 June 1966.  88 DBD, 18 April 1967.  89 DBD, 10 August 1964.  90 Richardson to the Bruces, 20 April, with DBD, 3 May 1965.  91 DBD, 30 June and 17 October 1967.  92 DBD, 14 November 1967.  93 DBD, 25 February 1968.  94 Daily Express, 27 February; DBD, 28 February 1968.  95 DBD, 16 October 1968.  96 Wilson Dizard, Inventing Public Diplomacy: The Story of the US Information Agency (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2004), 4 and xiii. On how the USIA fits into embassy work, see Wendell Blancké, The Foreign Service of the United States (New York: Praeger, 1969), 159–65.  97 On CIA activities, see Francis Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (London; Granta, 1999); and, on State Department efforts, Richard Arndt, The First Resort of Kings: American Cultural Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century (Washington, DC: Potomac, 2005).  98 DBD, 17 August 1961. On the Agency in the 1960s see Nicholas J. Cull, The Cold War and the US Information Agency (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), chapters 4–6.  99 Dizard, Diplomacy, 156; Galbraith, Letters, 71–3. 100 Lankford, Aristocrat, 118. 101 See, for example, DBD, 22 June and 11 July 1961. 102 For example, on de Gaulle’s recognition of Communist China: Joint Embassy-USIS Message, 18 January, with DBD, 24 January 1964. 103 DBD, Bruce to Washington, Deptel 2957, appended to DBD, 6 December 1962. 104 DBD, 13 April, 25 May and 19 October 1966. 105 DBD, 19 January 1966. 106 William Hansen, USIA. 2nd ed. (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1989), 165–6. 107 DBD, 17–18 May and 29 September 1967, and 10 March 1968. 108 Author’s interview with Professor David Adams, 13 July 2013. 109 DBD, 1 December 1966, 18 February 1963 and 2 February 1967.

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110 DBD, 21 September 1965. 111 DBD, Bruce to Fulbright, 14 November 1968. 112 Giles Scott-Smith, ‘ “Her Rather Ambitious Washington Program”: Margaret Thatcher’s International Visitor Program visit to the United States, 1967’, Contemporary British History, Vol. 17, No. 4 (2003), 65–86. 113 DBD, 1 and 27 June 1961. 114 The key study is Helen Laville and Hugh Wilford (eds), The US Government, Citizen Groups and the Cold War: The State–Private Network (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006). 115 On American Studies and evangelism see the essays by Ali Fisher and Axel Schafer, in Laville and Wilford (eds), Citizen Groups (Graham quote, 178). 116 DBD, 11 March 1966. 117 John G. Winant, A Letter from Grosvenor Square (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1947), 27. 118 DBD, 31 March and 1 July 1964.

8

Threats to the Embassy? The Media, Summits and Special Missions A reasonably full picture has now been painted of Bruce’s work as Ambassador to London, but in this final chapter consideration must be given to the fundamental issue of whether the days of ambassadors and embassies were numbered. Around 1970 the very value of the resident embassy as a diplomatic institution was questioned by some eminent figures in US foreign policy making such as Zbigniew Brzezinski (later Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser), who wrote that ‘The diplomat is an anachronism’. Similarly, as noted in the Introduction, George Ball believed that ‘jet planes and telephones … largely restricted ambassadors to ritual and public relations’.1 Key threats to the Embassy as a diplomatic institution included frequent summit meetings where leaders could now communicate directly, ‘special missions’ carried out by officials from home and the work of the mass media, who could report the main items of news from abroad as quickly as any embassy could. It was seen in Chapter 5 that an insightful and well-connected reporter, like the Sunday Times’ Henry Brandon, might even appear better informed about British government policy than was Bruce. In April 1967 Brandon’s report that the British would quit their bases East of Suez proved highly embarrassing for the Ambassador, who initially described the story as ‘unlikely’.2 Two decades earlier the use of personal communications, special envoys and the odd summit meeting between Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill had helped to sideline John Winant, when he was Ambassador to London.3 Bruce himself noted in November 1967 that critics ‘dwell upon the rapidity of communications, the airborne mobility of Cabinet ministers, and even of Chiefs of State’ as arguments for reducing the role of embassies. However, he believed that ‘such vital functions as reporting and negotiation can only be handled on a local and continuing basis’.4 His argument is similar to one used in an academic study of modern diplomacy that summits, special missions and multilateral conferences ‘are no substitute for that continuity of communication, negotiation and representation which is the great virtue of the permanent mission’.5 This chapter will argue that despite the Brandon episode and the tendency of some summit-level communications to bypass the Embassy, diplomats could work alongside the supposed threats to their existence and, far from

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becoming anachronistic, actually found extra responsibilities because of them. The discussion will focus on the media, summits and special missions. But it is worth noting at the outset that another supposed threat to the role of the resident embassy – the rise of multilateral, international organizations, like the United Nations, NATO and the European Economic Community – also tended to generate work for ambassadors and need not be seen as a threat to them. In April 1962, for example, when the Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, was in London for a ministerial meeting of the Central Treaty Organization (a Western alliance, covering the Middle East), Bruce was involved in the meetings and contributed to social events, including a lunch for the Turkish Foreign Minister at Winfield House.6 The intensity of multilateral gatherings in London is well illustrated by events in Spring 1965. During 3–5 May 1965, Bruce accompanied Ball to a South-East Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO) conference, which was quickly followed during 11–12 May by a NATO Council meeting in London, attended by Rusk. Bruce noted that these meetings generated ‘an infinity of administrative details’ for the Embassy. Then in June came an important Commonwealth Conference, a meeting at which the United States was not represented but which nonetheless needed careful observation because it discussed pressing international problems like Vietnam and Rhodesia. Bruce was especially involved in clarifying Wilson’s approach to a possible Commonwealth peace mission on Vietnam. He was also instructed by Washington to lobby for ‘more flags’ from Commonwealth members to fight alongside the Americans in Vietnam. It was especially hoped he could help win over the Pakistani President, Ayub Khan.7 Interconnections with multilateral organizations are not a major feature of Bruce’s time in London, but he certainly showed no signs of seeing multilateral organizations as a threat. He was a keen supporter of the EEC and later became US Ambassador to NATO.

The media The relationship between diplomats and journalists is a complex one. They can easily be seen as rivals in terms of relaying the latest news back home. Reporters may see diplomats as a potential source of information, while the diplomats themselves may wish, above all, to keep their sources of information secret. Yet, it has also been argued that the skills needed by a foreign correspondent are similar to those needed by an ambassador, able ‘to report discriminatingly and objectively’, for example, and having ‘an intimate knowledge of the host country’.8 In 1967 Douglas Busk advised the aspiring diplomat to ‘realize from the outset of his career that the Press is

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not a dragon to be feared, but an ally with whom cordial relations should be established’. So long as a careful balance is struck between an openness that builds up confidence with journalists, and a respect for confidentiality that safeguards essential secrets, a fruitful situation with mutual benefits might develop.9 A well-connected journalist like Brandon might ‘scoop’ Bruce on the April 1967 East of Suez decision but the press lacked the continuous, high-level access to policy-makers that the Ambassador built up. In return for information on such high-level doings, journalists, with their access to thousands of readers, can help publicize policy, win over critics and shape public opinion. In any case, in a democratic society like 1960s Britain, it was impossible to avoid dealing with the media, especially since America’s critics there were ready to exploit issues like the nuclear arms race and the Vietnam War against it. So, the media was both a potential ally and competitor. In embassies, much of the day-to-day burden of dealing with the press rested on information officers or, in the American case, on members of the USIA. Also, as in the military and intelligence fields, many Anglo-American exchanges in this field went on without close ambassadorial attention. There was, for example, an annual US-UK meeting ‘to discuss information problems of mutual concern’. When officials from the two sides met in September 1966 they reviewed general problems like Communist propaganda, the Western alliance and possible future danger spots, before reviewing the world’s regions in turn, looking at developments in the media (including cooperation on television programmes) and considering where research might be shared between the United States and Britain (with a specific look at ‘future media technology’).10 Nonetheless, Bruce himself found that dealings with the media used up a good amount of his time. The claim that the mass media have usurped the role of the Embassy in reporting is a simplistic one, but should not be lightly brushed aside. It may be true that ‘an occasional exclusive interview with one of the world’s high and mighty is no substitute for the continuous contact an ambassador enjoys with the top people in the government … ’.11 However, not all ambassadors enjoy such ‘continuous contact’, especially if they are from one of the less significant states, whereas some overseas correspondents can be remarkably well informed about the country in which they are based. Bruce thought about this problem and conceded that ‘in some of the larger capitals where some … newspapers have allowed their correspondents to remain for years, they are better informed on general conditions … than any embassy officer could be who is there on a temporary basis’. He knew journalists of the New York Times who had been in situ for a decade or more: ‘They had access to everyone.’ But he also believed that part of the problem was that ‘in the majority of instances our people probably do not stay long enough’. In any

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case, ‘Embassy representatives have … sources of information, some of which are not available to newspaper correspondents … ’. Also, journalists were unlikely to involve themselves in the business of negotiating everyday issues like aviation rights, or such ‘unceasing’ work as dominated the consular service.12 Bruce was prepared to rely on newspaper reports himself. When Harold Wilson became Premier in 1964, the Ambassador recommended the State Department study an article on him by Peregrine Worsthorne in the Sunday Telegraph.13 Bruce also listened to experienced journalists, sounding them on their view of contemporary events: in June 1962 he and Drew Middleton talked about the chances of Britain entering the EEC and the likely result of the next general election.14 But he also recognized the potential flaws in journalistic, as opposed to diplomatic, reporting. Following a meeting with Joe Kraft on 23 November 1966, the Ambassador commented, ‘I am more than ever concerned by the enormous influence people of his reputation have on political thinking at home. Such journalists … are engaged most of the time in finding something sensational to present as comments on current events’. In this case, Bruce was concerned about the ‘speculative reasoning’ being devoted to Wilson’s readiness to join the EEC. Bruce was also only too aware of the problems that journalists could cause for diplomats by revealing sensitive information, such as the fact that in January 1967 the United States and USSR were discussing the terms of a non-proliferation treaty, a leak that set the Germans and other NATO allies clamouring for information. He had to deny that the particular story came from his own staff.15 More specifically, he was worried about the potential damage to official relations with the British government. In July 1963, for example, reporting about the Profumo scandal created the impression London and Washington ‘were at daggers drawn with each other’, even though ‘Personally, I don’t think they have suffered to any considerable extent … ’.16 In March 1965, with greater justification, press reports suggested that differences over Vietnam were causing real friction between the White House and Downing Street.17 In October 1967, Bruce was angered by an article in the International Herald Tribune about Wilson’s political secretary, Marcia Williams, which repeated rumours of a sexual relationship between them. The Prime Minister was ‘said to be in [a] white heat state of indignation and resentment’. Bruce subsequently became involved in attempts to secure an out-of-court settlement of damages for Wilson, in preference to the issue becoming more serious and damaging trans-Atlantic relations.18 However, Wilson himself became something of a problem in that he liked ‘almost none of the American journalists here, but least of all Henry Luce III’

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(of Time-Life), an attitude which, Bruce feared, was reciprocated in negative American reporting about Britain.19 The Ambassador was at the centre of some potentially damaging stories, not least when he was accused of interfering in British politics. The first was when he made remarks in favour of Britain’s EEC membership in Birmingham in April 1962. The second was when he was accused of wanting a Labour victory in the 1964 general election.20 Then, on 19 June 1968, the Evening Standard published a story claiming that he wanted to leave London, having become ‘less than enamoured with Harold Wilson’s performance as Prime Minister … ’. Subsequently, Wilson, well used to being the target of inaccurate reporting, told the Ambassador not to worry about the report.21 There were also periodic worries of a more general anti-Americanism in the British press, especially over nuclear matters. This was reflected in May 1961 in ‘cartoons and articles in the British papers lampooning our naval personnel at [the submarine base of] Holy Loch for driving off the antinuclear [protestors] … with streams of hose water’.22 In late 1961, following the Berlin Wall Crisis, the Embassy was consistently troubled by the British public’s apparent unwillingness to risk war over Germany. A Gallup Poll suggested that only about a fifth of Britons were ready to defend West Berlin militarily and very few wanted to risk nuclear war for it.23 In June 1963, Bruce felt some newspapers to be ‘uncommonly severe in opposition to the Multilateral Force’ in NATO, with the Daily Express greeting Admiral Claude Ricketts, the Vice Chief of Naval Operations, who was over for talks with the Ministry of Defence, with the stark headline, ‘Send this Polaris Pedlar Back’.24 The sense of British decline, when compared to US power, did not help. Dean Acheson’s speech of December 1962, in which he said Britain had lost an Empire and not yet found a role, caused a furore, the Evening Standard describing it as a ‘most savage and candid attack on this country’, while the Daily Sketch called it an ‘ill-timed and offensive insult’.25 But the sense of decline was reinforced by the Nassau summit, when Macmillan had to plead for Polaris missiles from Kennedy.26 Another, rather unusual issue was the British fondness of animals. The pet-loving public were deeply offended in 1964 by photographs of President Johnson ‘lifting his beagles by the ears until they barked’.27 In January 1968, a triple blow on this front hit Bruce. Not only had the media learnt of a US plan to parachute elephants into central Vietnam to help clear forestry, but also a USAF sergeant, based at Mildenhall, was found to have tied his dog to the back of a car and pulled it at speed, ‘in order to discourage [it] from chasing automobiles’. Then came a report that an American automobile manufacturer was using baboons as crash test dummies. All three incidents generated angry letters about American cruelty from appalled Britons.28

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Long before then, the most important reason for anti-Americanism was the Vietnam War. Bruce and the Embassy kept Washington fully briefed on British reactions to the Vietnam War both at official and public levels, with regular reports on newspaper articles for example. But, however well informed about its critics, the US propaganda campaign on Vietnam failed to convince people that the ideological aims were worth the human cost, and this proved a major concern for Bruce. The problems began as the war escalated with US bombing of North Vietnam early in 1965. When Oxford University organized a ‘teach-in’ in June, to be attended by the Foreign Secretary, Michael Stewart, Bruce opposed any official US involvement. He realized students were likely ‘to assail the British Government for being allegedly subservient to the American Government’s actions’. Initially he hoped that a journalist might defend the US position but when ‘a number of friendly broadcasters and journalists’ were approached, ‘their home offices refused to let them appear’. It was hardly a vote of confidence in Johnson’s policy of escalation. To make matters worse, pressure mounted from the same journalists for an official to defend the President at the teach-in. They ‘intend to criticize the Government heavily if its point of view is not advanced’, Bruce noted. After frantic telephone calls to Washington and even discussion with the President, Cabot Lodge, a former Ambassador to Saigon, was sent over. He put on a singularly unconvincing performance before heckling students and had to be rescued by Stewart, a former school teacher, whose toughness as a public speaker – belying his otherwise modest persona – was renowned. Bruce was determined after that not to send any more representatives to ‘teach-ins’.29 By January 1967, he was complaining that ‘Our public affairs people in Washington and Saigon seem to have no feel whatever for presenting our Government’s case’. He was appalled when ‘one of our officials in Saigon took it upon himself to inform [a British] reporter that for the first time defections from the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Forces rose in 1965 proportionately above the South Vietnamese army desertion rate … ’, as crass statement that simply drew attention to the high rate of such desertions. Bruce also acknowledged the difficulties created by television access in Vietnam. He saw one BBC programme that ‘showed a young American soldier, clearly under strain, who told the interviewer that he would shoot Viet Cong children because if he did not, they would grow up and shoot him’.30 The Ambassador did not think failings on his own side were solely to blame for losing the propaganda war. He also believed that the British media was too one-sided in its reporting on Vietnam, perhaps influenced by the anti-American sentiments and jealousy of US power noted earlier. It was unjust, he felt, to condemn American bombing, while playing down

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‘the calculated use of terror by the Viet Cong in South Vietnam’.31 To try to stem the tide, the USIA office recruited American students to ‘sell’ the war in British universities after 1965, but this experience only exposed the problems of defending the US government’s position.32 Perhaps because of such failures, Bruce took some initiatives of his own. On 16 May 1967, aided by some US officials with experience of the conflict, he talked to a group of eminent Americans living in London, including executives from such major companies as General Motors, Mobil, Pan American Airways and the Chase Manhattan Bank. It was hoped that, subsequently, they would be ready ‘to answer questions from Britishers and others with whom they come into contact’ about Vietnam. Later in the year, Bruce took an interest in a pamphlet produced by The Economist entitled ‘Vietnam, why it matters’, which took a broadly positive view of US policy. At first the USIA decided to buy 1,000 copies, but he urged them to take more. Although the pamphlet was ‘not universally favourable to us’, he felt this was offset by the fact of it ‘having no American sponsorship’, and because of ‘the great prestige’ of the London-based journal. Within a few weeks, the USIA agreed to purchase another 6,000 copies for distribution.33 A focus on particular challenges, like Vietnam, fails to draw out Bruce’s regular engagement with the press. Between April 1961 and December 1968, 439 American and 191 foreign journalists called upon him (see Appendix 2). It has been said of his time as Ambassador to Paris that ‘he spent a great deal of time with journalists and genuinely enjoyed them (and they him)’, helping win the American press over to the ideal of European unity.34 He was closely acquainted with a number of US newspapermen like Joe Alsop, one of Washington’s best-known columnists, who stayed at Winfield House for a few days in May 1961, and Cyrus Sulzberger, who stayed for a whole week the following month.35 Immediately following his Presentation of Credentials on 17 March, Bruce went for lunch with the American Correspondents’ Association and over the following days quickly established contact with leading figures in the British press. He met Michael Berry, owner of the Daily Telegraph, at a dinner on 20 March and, the following day, accompanied by the Counsellor for Public Affairs, Bill Clark, went to a meeting at the Daily Mirror offices, where he met Cecil King, head of the International Publishing Corporation, and the editors of four of its newspapers. On 24 March, the Ambassador lunched alone with William Haley, editor of The Times.36 Nor was it just the national press with which he engaged. On 11 July, an extended lunch included the editors of the Birmingham Post, Yorkshire Post and Glasgow Herald. Considerable effort was devoted to keeping the media happy. One tactic was to invite their representatives to see visiting dignitaries. When Ed Murrow, the USIA Director, came to London in August 1961, ‘a galaxy

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of British newspaper owners’ and editors attended a lunch in his honour.37 About fifty US and British journalists were invited to a reception for Senator Edward Kennedy on 28 May 1964. Social events for journalists were a regular feature of embassy life. Bruce held a lunch for diplomatic correspondents of British newspapers on 28 April 1961 and 27 February 1962. Careful to cultivate links with both sides of the Anglo-American relationship, he also periodically had drinks with groups of US journalists.38 Some meetings with the press were for specific purposes. Bruce was asked by Washington in March 1966, for example, to hold a meeting with British journalists to explain US policy on French withdrawal from NATO.39 But often he seems simply to have been keen to build friendly relations with key figures in the media. Bruce built a particularly close relationship with Cecil King, Chair of the International Publishing Corporation (the world’s largest newspaper group in the mid-1960s), who had strong views on a range of issues, like the inevitability of Chinese domination of Southeast Asia and the need for Britain to close its bases East of Suez.40 He could be quite insightful, predicting in April 1966 that there would soon be another Sterling crisis; but he was also severely critical of Wilson, who he considered ‘an opportunist, lacking in ability to plan for the future … ’. Then again, Bruce could be equally frank in these meetings, once telling King that the United States was ‘desperate to get out of Vietnam’.41 One reason Bruce may have cultivated King was that the latter agreed to take over the publication of Encounter magazine which, as seen in the last chapter, was secretly funded by the CIA. When revelations about CIA involvement led to two of the co-editors resigning in May 1967, Bruce advised leaving the matter in the hands of King (who was ‘stout about the whole matter’) and Hugh Cudlipp, the Daily Mirror’s editor.42 But a year later, King went too far, attacking Wilson on the front pages of the Daily Mirror and saying Britain was threatened by further financial crisis – a claim which, as Bruce noted, could only harm the Pound. While Bruce avoids all mention of it in his diary, King was also involved in talks about launching a coup against the Labour government.43 When he was sacked from the International Publishing Corporation board soon after, Bruce did not disagree with George Brown that King’s megalomania brought his own downfall.44 Then again, Bruce continued to see him, recognizing that ‘Crusty King’ was ‘given to dire forebodings’, but that his views also commanded respect. In December 1968, they had an extended lunch at the Embassy after which, unusually, Bruce conducted his visitor to the front door.45 Overall, despite some unwelcome press reports, Bruce’s investment in media relations bore out Busk’s argument that journalists could be valuable allies. Sometimes a friendly journalist could help improve relations at a difficult point. In February 1963, ‘reliable Embassy contacts among

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American … correspondents’ provided US officials with the outline of what the new Labour leader, Harold Wilson, had said in an off-the – record briefing.46 In July 1963, the Ambassador was present when Brandon (who, despite his embarrassing coup of April 1967, was generally counted a friend by Bruce) had a two-hour trans-Atlantic telephone interview with McGeorge Bundy, which helped rectify the impression of Anglo-American differences in the wake of the Profumo revelations. The Ambassador considered Brandon’s subsequent newspaper report ‘very timely and constructive’.47 Another example of the dividends of friendly relations was planning for US bases on Indian Ocean islands governed by the United Kingdom, which both governments hoped to keep secret. The scheme became know to Bob Estabrook of the Washington Post in June 1964, but the Embassy persuaded him not to publish the story right away. (He only did so after The Economist revealed it some months later.) Bruce subsequently thanked Estabrook for his restraint and wrote to his boss, Kay Graham, ‘to tell her of our appreciation of his conduct’.48 But the basic difference between the aims of the diplomat and the journalist were well brought out by the Profumo affair. In June 1963, Bruce wrote to JFK’s press Secretary, Pierre Salinger, to try to persuade the US journal Newsweek not to make Christine Keeler, the woman at the centre of the scandal, a cover story. ‘I would regard such a display as distinctly harmful to the US public interest’, he said ‘It will undoubtedly be fiercely resented here … ’.49 However much the media may have usurped the envoy’s role for gathering news, it could never replace the Embassy as an institution because their interests were too different. While the media hoped to grab public attention and increase sales thanks to scandals, diplomats were keen to minimize such stories for the sake of good international relations.

Summits If ambassadors and journalists had different aims, the use of summits and special missions were a more serious threat to the Embassy as an institution, because they sought to carry out diplomatic work by alternative means. A century earlier, when a visit to London was mooted by Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William Henry Seward, the idea was scotched by his opposite number, Lord John Russell, who remarked, ‘These visits of Great Personages seldom have more than a transient effect; they form no real and solid relation of friendship between nations … ’.50 In the 1930s, Harold Nicolson, a leading British expert on diplomatic method, even argued that ‘It is a terrible mistake to conduct negotiations between Foreign Ministers … Diplomacy is not the art of conversation. It is the

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art of the exchange of documents in a considered and precise form … ’.51 But, for better or worse, the world was clearly moving against Nicolson. During the First World War personal diplomacy between leaders and their Foreign Ministers became commonplace. In December 1918, John Davis had the unique experience, when sailing to take up the London Embassy, of travelling aboard the same ship as Woodrow Wilson, who was about to attend the Paris Peace Conference, the first major involvement of a President in ‘summit diplomacy’.52 The advent of the airliner speeded the process and, while Lyndon Johnson may not have been a keen summiteer, his successor, Richard Nixon, would make no less than forty-two visits abroad.53 Meetings at leaders’ level seemed to carry certain advantages in diplomacy, partly because they were high profile events. They underlined the significance of particular agreements, provided an opportunity for major breakthroughs in negotiations, ensured that whole governments were committed to the agreements made and reinforced particular relationships with a personal element at the top, as in the Kennedy–Macmillan years. Certainly, there were potential dangers. Most Presidents and Prime Ministers lacked professional diplomatic experience, they might not understand all the technicalities in negotiation, their coolness of judgement could be marred by vanity, the effects of jet lag or a desire to play up to the media and domestic audiences. Furthermore, if two leaders did not get on well, their meeting might prove a negative factor in interstate relations.54 But, by the 1960s the summit had come to stay. The National Security Adviser, McGeorge Bundy, told President Johnson that there was ‘just no way in the world’ of avoiding such meetings with the British: ‘Winston Churchill made it so’.55 Just as he was happy to work with international organizations and the media, so was Bruce a supporter of summits, commenting that ‘the best way to reach understanding and to harmonize policies between our two governments is to have the President and Prime Minister meet informally about twice a year’.56 Then again, he recognized that they had to be organized in a particular way to be effective. He was aghast, for example, to learn that Harold Wilson planned to take about thirty people to his first summit with Lyndon Johnson in 1964. ‘I think the fewer the better, for the more freely the President and Prime Minister can talk intimately, excluding flapping ears and blabber mouths, the more likely are tolerable compromises to be reached’.57 He also realized that the value of such conferences lay as much in their public impact as in their diplomatic achievements. On 16 December 1965, when briefing Johnson ahead of the latest summit with Wilson, the Ambassador was asked to explain ‘why the Prime Minister was so set on making trips across the Atlantic … ’. He replied that ‘such visits were useful to the PM in terms of his domestic politics, and he was anxious to establish

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with the President something like the close relationship … which existed between Harold Macmillan and President Kennedy’. Bruce attended all the summits between JFK and Macmillan, though not necessarily all the sessions. In April 1961, for example, he did not attend their initial sessions at Key West, but he was at the continuation of the summit in Washington.58 Bruce later recalled that it was Kennedy’s practice, not only to give his ambassadors ‘in unusual degree, a sense of participation in decisions affecting the Governments to which they were accredited’, but also to consult Bruce, ahead of summits, about ‘the subjects likely to be discussed’.59 In early June, Kennedy stopped overnight in London on his way back from a more famous summit with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna. This involved the Embassy in a considerable amount of work, simply because it took place on their side of the Atlantic. Bruce had to deal with the British government on the preparations, though these went smoothly enough. At Buckingham Palace, he and the Queen’s staff ‘had a good many laughs over the complicated arrangements’ for the visiting head of state.60 Bruce met Kennedy at Heathrow airport and accompanied him on the drive into London, passing crowds who alternatively wielded placards protesting against Polaris missiles or shouted out eagerly for ‘Jack and Jackie’. On the second day, the Ambassador introduced the President to embassy staff, took him to meet the Prime Minister (but did not sit in on the meeting) and joined him in the evening at Buckingham Palace.61 Clearly, on this occasion, Bruce’s role was one of fulfilling the demands of protocol rather than becoming involved in any issues of substance, but there were elements of public relations, morale building in the Embassy and cementing relations with the UK government, all of which were significant for his role as Ambassador. This was understandable when the President visited London. The fact that the next summit, in December 1961, was located in Bermuda, meant that Bruce was less involved on the protocol side and could take a fuller role in the meetings.62 Bruce felt that, under Kennedy, the ‘team work’ between London and Washington was ‘exceptionally satisfactory’, partly because of British Ambassador David Ormsby Gore’s friendship with the President and because of the ‘mutual esteem and trust’ that quickly developed between Kennedy and Macmillan.63 Sometimes, Bruce played a major role in keeping hopes of a summit alive and smoothing out potential disagreements. In June 1963, for example, the planned summit at Birch Grove seemed in danger because of the Profumo crisis, which threatened an early end to the Macmillan government. Bruce wrote to Bundy, on 19 June, warning that the visit might coincide with a parliamentary crisis but advising that ‘the President play it cool, and evidence no curiosity about Macmillan’s fate’. If Kennedy tried to cancel his trip it

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could only play into the hands of Macmillan’s enemies; if he went ahead and there were a sudden Prime Ministerial resignation, then the summit could be called off at that point – or it might go ahead with Macmillan’s successor.64 Ahead of Birch Grove, too, Bruce became involved in an absurd dispute over what car Kennedy should use to drive from Macmillan’s house to a nearby Catholic church. The British wanted him to use a Rolls Royce, but the Americans favoured a bubble-top Cadillac, flown from Washington. It was not even certain, until the last minute, that the Cadillac could squeeze between the Birch Grove gateposts.65 In June 1966, the Prime Minister’s desire for another summit was complicated by his public dissociation from the US bombing of targets near Hanoi and Haiphong, but Bruce did his best to moderate both sides.66 He argued with Washington that, whatever Wilson’s view of Vietnam, he was a firm ally on many other issues.67 At the same time, in London, he urged Wilson not to be dissuaded by the frosty tone of the President and he secured a promise from the Prime Minister that he would do nothing to embarrass the President while in Washington.68 When meetings were held in London the Embassy and ambassadorial residence provided a base for the visiting team. Ahead of the JFK–Macmillan summit at Birch Grove in June 1963, Rusk, Bundy and others stayed at Winfield House, which, while it allowed Bruce to have some long talks with the Secretary of State, was less welcome in other respects. It meant ‘an army of guards, telephonists, secretaries, briefcase carriers … Already, a half score of unknowns are wandering about the house, inimical to any privacy, doing Heaven knows what … ’. This came on top of an already busy schedule for the Embassy, with several senior visitors due in from Washington, whose business had nothing to do with the summit itself, but on defence, intelligence and colonial matters. Furthermore, Bruce had other people to see, old friends, journalists and literary figures. ‘This is not conducive to lowering one’s temperature’, he complained on 21 June.69 A week later the situation was no better. Winfield House was ‘in a state of almost complete disruption. For days, people tore in and out, bugging the rooms, laying special telephone lines, setting up switchboards’.70 Bruce was present to meet the President at Gatwick airport on 29 June and attended the plenary meetings over the next two days, as well as separate exchanges between Rusk and British Ministers. Even when Anglo-US summits were held on the other side of the Atlantic, which was always the case under Johnson, Bruce had plenty to do with the preparations. For example, he was usually involved, right at the start of the process, in sounding out either side on possible dates.71 LBJ’s only full-scale summit with Alec Douglas-Home was in Washington. Bruce helped pave the way for the practical side by suggesting the best ways to entertain the wives of the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary Butler, advising against drawing

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serious attention to Douglas-Home’s landed wealth (which was ‘a minor political topic’ in the United Kingdom) and asking whether the British guests should wear their decorations for the White House dinner. It was a minor example of the way the role of embassies on either side of the Atlantic might differ, when Bruce told Washington to sound out the British Embassy about which eminent US-based Britons to invite to the White House.72 Bruce flew to Washington in advance, to be on hand to meet the British party on 12 February, and was satisfied that it went well. He noted afterwards that ‘the views of our two Governments on most international problems are remarkably harmonious’.73 But the fact is that the summit was overshadowed, not only by the arrival in America of The Beatles, but also by differences over a deal to sell British Leyland buses to Castro’s Cuba. On 20 February, Bruce noted that ‘sharp differences’ on this question were the ‘chief concern’ at an informal press conference he held for British journalists. In November 1964, ahead of the first Wilson–LBJ summit,74 the Ambassador flew over to Washington to discuss key issues. Returning to London, Bruce continued to advise Washington on tactics. He warned them, for example, not to prejudge Wilson’s likely view of the NATO Multilateral Force. Bruce knew the British referred to this as the ‘multilateral farce’,75 but Wilson ‘must placate or confuse various elements in his Cabinet on defense subjects’ and his real views might only be revealed to the President himself. Bruce also liaised with Wilson and officials, like Harold Caccia, ahead of the summit, continuing to sound out their views.76 Then he flew over to Washington on 3 December, sitting in on three meetings with the President and key advisers about how best to approach Wilson on the MLF. While the records do not suggest Bruce said much, he was the one who, on 5 December, told the President that ‘the cardinal point’ was to demand British membership of a mixed-manned surface fleet. At this Johnson, ‘looking uncomfortable, said, “I don’t want to get out on a limb unless I’m sure how to get back off it” ’.77 On 7 December, Bruce was on the south lawn of the White House as the British arrived, attended the meetings and meals of the following days, and helped see Wilson off from Andrews Field on the 9th. He then returned to London himself and became involved in the important work of following up the summit, not least by repeating to Wilson the seriousness with which the United States viewed the MLF.78 Johnson never looked forward to meetings with the Prime Minister and came to judge Wilson largely on his refusal to send troops to Vietnam. George Ball even felt that ‘Johnson took an almost instant dislike’ to his British opposite number.79 In fact, the President disliked meeting his foreign counterparts in general.80 But, as Bundy said, summits could not be avoided and they continued to provide employment for Bruce, who was also in

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Washington for the next summits of April and December 1965, as well as a one-day meeting in June 1967.81 Ahead of the February 1968 summit, the Embassy researched what gift would be most suitable for the President to give to Wilson, before deciding on a set of golf clubs.82 The only Wilson–LBJ meeting that Bruce missed was an informal one, arranged at short notice, for the funeral of Australian premier Harold Holt in December 1967. Even here, however, he had a role to play. Holt was an American ally in Vietnam, so Johnson decided he should attend the funeral. At the same time, Wilson had just devalued the Pound, was planning swingeing spending reductions and needed US support on the money markets. Michael Palliser, Wilson’s Private Secretary, told Bruce that his chief wanted to see the President in Australia and that, ‘unless an appointment for them to meet privately can be arranged, the Prime Minister probably will not go’. The Ambassador immediately sent a ‘flash’ to Washington and received a quick reply that LBJ was ready to meet.83 The importance of the Embassy for supporting summits was confirmed, at the very end of Bruce’s ambassadorship, by Richard Nixon’s visit to London. Indeed, this particular summit probably demanded more ambassadorial time than most. Washington liaised with the Ambassador for weeks beforehand, with him passing on British suggestions of how best to organize the visit. It was largely to ensure that the summit went well that he was asked to stay in post until mid-March.84 By 16 February the ‘messages flowing back and forth between here and Washington are almost mountain high, covering every conceivable aspect of [Nixon’s] stay here. Many of our staff are on duty all day trying to cope … ’. Bruce also had to liaise with Palliser in Downing Street, about how Wilson best wanted to exploit the trip, and with Buckingham Palace, about who exactly should dine with the Queen. It did not help that Washington kept introducing new expectations only days before the President arrived, or that there were evident differences between the State Department and the White House. On the 21st, Bruce had to send a personal message to the Secretary of State, William Rogers, to force a resolution of matters.85 Bruce came to believe that the key problem was the new National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger: I doubt whether State is being consulted as it should be … Previously it would be impossible to have the President and the Secretary attend to the multifarious details of this complicated European trip. On the other hand, I begin to suspect that Dr Kissinger does not find this a difficult task. His … hand appears discernible in trying to bring his personal friends abroad … Kissinger is not as well known in public circles here as is the President of the United States, a fact of which Kissinger, as has been indicated to me by people who know him well, is not fully conscious.86

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Bruce accompanied Nixon to his various meetings during 24–25 February and saw him off at the airport on the 26th. Briefing the President about Wilson’s personality, Bruce even exhibited a cheeky sense of humour, declaring, ‘Some people, Mr. President, think he’s tricky’. He told this to Kaiser later, adding, in a rare example of vanity, ‘I’m a great ambassador, Phil, I’m a great ambassador’.87

Special missions Before the development of the resident embassy in renaissance Italy, special missions – that is temporary missions, sent out for some specific purpose – were the usual means of diplomatic contact between political entities. Despite the advantages that permanent embassies brought, in terms of continuous contact between governments, knowledge of local conditions and the ability to react swiftly to challenges, special missions never entirely disappeared and, like summits (which were actually an elevated form of special mission), they grew in number during the twentieth century. American Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt particularly liked to employ their own envoys, bypassing the State Department. But, as with summits again, professional diplomats questioned their value. One US ambassador, Ellis Briggs, complained that ‘Of all the special envoys encountered in nearly four decades of Foreign Service, I can think of only two who accomplished anything that could not have been done as efficiently or economically by the regular ambassador … ’. He had no faith in summits either and, as to foreign ministers’ meetings, believed that ‘the Secretary of State ought to remain home and tend the store’ rather than travel abroad so much. In rather more moderate language, the 1963 Jackson Committee agreed with him that ‘the practice of commuter-trips by special emissaries is now clearly overdone and a serious consequence is to erode the Ambassador’s prestige … ’.88 Yet, special missions were not just a US phenomenon and it was clear that they were not going to disappear. The issue was about using them efficiently as part of a broader diplomatic machine. The 1963 Plowden Report on British diplomacy advised that [A]lthough the frequency with which Ministers now travel abroad may take away some of the prestige of the role of an Ambassador … these visits do not reduce the need for an Ambassador or the burden and importance of his work. The necessity for him to be in touch with local personalities and sources of informed opinion is all the greater because reliable advice is required from him much more quickly and on a vastly increased range of subjects.89

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Yet again, Bruce’s experience with this supposed threat to his existence suggests that in fact it placed additional burdens on him and made his Embassy even more vital to the execution of US foreign policy. Special missions to London from Washington were so frequent as to be routine. In mid-October 1963, for example, Bill Burdett and a group from the State Department were over for talks about the future of British Guiana, followed by Franklin Roosevelt, Jr., the Under-Secretary of Commerce, a few days later.90 They ranged from minor matters to significant negotiations at Foreign Ministers’ level and the degree of Bruce’s involvement in them varied widely, including accommodating visitors overnight. In July 1963, when Averell Harriman arrived for discussions with the British on the Test Ban Treaty, before flying on to Moscow, he stayed with the Bruces at Winfield House and the Ambassador accompanied him to meetings with Lord Hailsham, Home and Macmillan.91 Basically, the Embassy’s tasks were to help prepare such meetings, providing advice and, quite often, sit in on meetings with the British. When George Ball proposed a visit to London in late 1963, the Ambassador recognized that it might be interpreted in the press as an attempt to pressurize the new Douglas-Home government; he therefore recommended that either Ball wait until after Parliament met in mid-November or he meet the EEC Minister, Edward Heath, in Paris.92 Ball eventually decided on a mid-November visit, when Bruce accompanied him to both a wide-ranging review of Anglo-American differences with Foreign Secretary Butler and a discussion of Britain’s EEC application with Heath.93 There could be difficulties in handling press coverage of visits by some eminent figures. When Robert Kennedy, the Attorney-General, visited London in January 1964, as part of an attempt to resolve the Malaysia– Indonesian ‘confrontation’, he was preceded by considerable negative newspaper coverage suggesting he was sympathetic to Indonesia, which the Embassy tried to correct. Then, when he arrived, the ‘impetuous, over self-assured, and  …  insensitive’ Kennedy himself undermined Bruce’s efforts, being ‘arrogant almost beyond belief ’ in meetings with the British.94 Sometimes, the Embassy felt it best not to publicize them at all. In early April 1965, for example, Johnson sent the Director of the Bureau of the Budget over to London to discuss the forthcoming British budget. The Embassy feared that if it became known publicly, the visit might suggest that America had dictated the budget, so the visit was kept secret.95 The Embassy would help pave the way for British special missions to Washington. So, when Heath planned a visit in December 1961, Bruce was asked by the State Department to discover which other British officials would accompany him, what topics he wanted to discuss other than the EEC and the precise timetable of the visit.96 Bruce might also accompany

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significant British missions to Washington, such as that by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, James Callaghan, in June 1965, to discuss the position of the Pound. Ahead of this, the Ambassador talked to Wilson, Callaghan and the Governor of the Bank of England, Lord Cromer, about their views. Then he crossed over to Washington and met British Ambassador Patrick Dean, Treasury Secretary Joe Fowler and Bundy, before sitting in on the meetings with Callaghan. These included one at the White House with Johnson, which went on for over an hour, well over schedule, even though the President largely reminisced about his wartime service in Australia. Deeply troubled by Callaghan’s warnings that Britain might be forced to devalue, Bruce stayed in Washington afterwards to review the situation with Fowler and others.97 The amount of time special missions might potentially absorb is well brought out by an admittedly high profile example – Dean Rusk’s visit of June 1962, where a timeline draws out the key points: 24 June: Bruce holds morning discussion in the Embassy about arrangements for Rusk. Bruce meets Rusk at Northolt airport and accompanies him to a meeting with Macmillan and Home. Rusk and his wife, Virginia, stay at Winfield House. 25 June: Bruce is part of morning and afternoon discussions between Rusk and Home. He entertains them and their officials to lunch at the Embassy and, with Evangeline, has an evening dinner for the Rusks. 26 June: Bruce sees Rusk off on the train to Oxford, where he is to receive an honorary degree. 27 June: Bruce and Evangeline see the Rusks off at the airport. It is possible to see here the mix of protocol, social entertainment and hardheaded discussion in which the Ambassador might become involved. The Embassy provided a base for the Secretary of State and his staff, Winfield House provided the most senior of them with a hotel and the Ambassadress played an important supporting role. There was a similar process during Rusk’s visit of 18–19 December 1963, except that Rusk was without his wife, Home was then Premier and Bruce was able to join the American party on the flight home, for his Christmas break. Rather than seeing special missions as a threat, Bruce appreciated their value. When Ball flew over in February 1964 to deal with the Cyprus crisis, the Ambassador expressed his relief, ‘for it is unsatisfactory to reconcile differences of view between the British, ourselves, Greeks and Turks by ordinary methods of communication, especially since there is such a variation in time between the capitals’.98 In September 1966, when asked by Washington to intervene with the British on proposed reductions in the British Army of

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the Rhine, Bruce recommended they talk directly with Callaghan, who was due in Washington the following week.99 Bruce was even ready to propose special missions. In July 1965, he suggested to Wilson that he might send the Secretary of the Cabinet, Burke Trend, for talks in Washington to review the shape of Anglo-American relations.100 And, in September 1967, he supported an appeal by Wilson for the Vice-President, Hubert Humphrey, to visit London to discuss US political problems as an election year approached. Bruce agreed with Wilson that ‘such a conversation with you would be far more useful than attempting to deal with these problems through … bureaucratic channels’.101 Special missions clearly helped the Ambassador, then, in terms of explaining policy, emphasizing particular messages and reassuring the British of US support. Even when missions did not demand that Bruce accompany them, they might report valuable information back to him. Bill Benton, a US member of UNESCO’s Executive Board, saw Wilson in April 1967 and wrote a long letter to Bruce afterwards about Wilson’s approach to the EEC application and the withdrawal from East of Suez. On the latter issue, after being briefed by the Ambassador, Benton had pressed the US view that the withdrawal must be done in a low-key way so as not to worsen the Vietnam situation. Benton also reported that Wilson ‘is devoted to you. He says he trusts you absolutely … ’.102

Case study: The Cooper mission, February 1967 Bruce’s integral importance to visiting missions is well illustrated by the ‘Sunflower’ talks on Vietnam, in February 1967, when negotiations took place in London about a possible Vietnam ceasefire, against the background of a halt in US bombing of the North. In order to brief the British on American thinking ahead of Wilson’s meeting with Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin, Washington sent over one of the National Security staff, Chester Cooper. This was partly at the behest of Bruce, who began a long series of meetings with Cooper and the British on 4 February. Originally, Cooper was meant to depart before Kosygin arrived, but Wilson asked that he remain. He became ‘a link between the Prime Minister and President Johnson throughout the whole week of intensive discussions’ that followed. Far from seeing Cooper as a threat, Bruce pressed Washington to allow him to stay, telling Rusk on 5 February that his ‘grasp of the matters under consideration, the esteem and confidence with which he is viewed by British officials, make him, especially at this juncture, almost invaluable … ’. As a detailed Foreign Office post-mortem on the talks points out, Cooper relied on the US Embassy to provide a base and on Bruce to give him

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support, even though the Ambassador was currently dealing with the deep emotional trauma of his eldest daughter’s death. Cooper ‘hardly ever [left] the Ambassador’s Office in the … Embassy except to enter No. 10 Downing Street by the back door or to snatch a few hours of sleep at Brown’s Hotel’, after which he would often return in the early hours, ‘bleary-eyed and obviously exhausted’, so that the staff took him for some kind of play-boy. At the Downing Street meetings, ‘he was almost always accompanied by the United States Ambassador, who alone in his Embassy was privy to the close, and indeed almost constant, consultation across the Atlantic’. The two Americans would slip into Downing Street indirectly, via the Cabinet Office. On 8 February, Bruce was called to Number Ten for a long talk about the tactics just as he was about to go to bed. He finally retired at 2.30 a.m., at which point Cooper was still seeing Wilson. To add to the tension, there were obvious disagreements between the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, Bruce noting on 10 February that he had to ‘tread warily between them’. There were also media rumours of a ‘White House emissary’ being in London, rumours that Bruce had convincingly to fend off and yet, throughout the talks, Bruce also continued his other duties, attending meetings, receiving calls from other ambassadors, dealing with embassy staff and hosting dinners. On the final day, 12 February, at the Prime Minister’s country house, Chequers, Cooper became ‘a lone operator’, hidden in the aptly-named Prison Room, where he was supplied with ‘food, sufficient alcoholic stimulants, periodic confidential visitors, situation reports … and draft proposals’. But even here he was provided with a telephone link to the Embassy and the State Department. Despite the ultimate failure of the talks to secure a ceasefire in the Vietnam War, the FO certainly saw merit in this particular special mission: aside from the detailed exposé he provided on the latest thinking in Washington, ‘It is doubtful whether without Mr Cooper’s presence … we could have made such progress with Mr Kosygin. The consultative process across the Atlantic would have been slowed down’. Then again, it was a telephone call on 11 February from the National Security Adviser, Walt Rostow, direct to Downing Street, quickly followed by a telegram, that revealed a sudden hardening of the US position and, in British eyes, did much to undermine the talks. In the wake of this message, according to the official British account, Bruce and Cooper ‘seemed somewhat bewildered’, but they then put British criticisms to Washington themselves – an undertaking that dissuaded Wilson from complaining directly to the President. Bruce’s telegram (accompanied, according to his diary, by ‘an orgy of telephone conversations’) helped secure an undertaking that Washington would not resume its bombing of the North before Kosygin left London, despite US fears that North Vietnam was using the ‘bombing pause’ to increase its infiltration into the South. On the 12th,

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however, ‘officials at home [were] becoming testier and testier’; there were ‘rather angry interchanges’ with Rostow, who seems to have been far less useful an ally for Bruce than had been his predecessor Bundy. Kosygin did promise to send a message to Hanoi, embodying the latest US proposal, but there was no response. While Bruce and Cooper could not pave the way for peace talks – as Bruce, at one point, hoped might be possible – they had managed to reduce the dangers of an Anglo-American rift.103 The Ambassador and the envoy on special mission were, then, quite capable of working together and Bruce’s experience suggests that – as with media relations and summits – supposed ‘threats’ to the role of the Embassy in fact gave it more work to do, in a world where the challenges for diplomats seemed ever-expanding.

Notes  1 George Ball, The Past has Another Pattern (New York: Norton, 1982), 452; Washington Post, 5 July 1970. See also, J. Robert Schaetzel, ‘Modernizing the Role of the Ambassador’, in Elmer Plischke (ed.), Modern Diplomacy: The Art and the Artisans (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1979), 262–76.  2 See pp. 106–7 above.  3 See David Mayers, ‘John Gilbert Winant, 1941–6’, in Alison Holmes and Simon Rofe (eds), The Embassy in Grosvenor Square (Basingstoke: PalgraveMacmillan, 2012), 53–4.  4 Virginia Historical Society, David Bruce Diary (DBD), 2 November 1967.  5 Keith Hamilton and Richard Langhorne, The Practice of Diplomacy (London: Routledge, 1995), 233–4.  6 DBD, 30 April and 1 May 1962.  7 DBD, 24–25 June, and Bruce to Acting Secretary, 9 July 1965.  8 Thomas Bailey, ‘Advice for Diplomats’, in Plischke (ed.), Diplomacy, 223.  9 Douglas Busk, The Craft of Diplomacy (New York: Praeger, 1967), 88. 10 Lyndon B. Johnson Library (LBJL), Whites House Central Files, Confidential File, Countries, Box 12, CO301, Donnelley to Moyers, 25 August 1966. 11 Charles Roetter, The Diplomatic Art (Philadelphia, PA: Macrae Smith, 1963), 247. 12 US Senate, Committee on Government Operations, Subcommittee on National Security Staffing and Operations, hearing of 18 September 1963, 245. 13 DBD, Bruce to Rusk, 16 October 1964; ‘A Man with Fire in His Belly, But … ’, Sunday Telegraph, 11 October 1964. 14 DBD, 7 June 1962. 15 DBD, 12 January 1967. 16 DBD, 16 July 1963.

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17 Sylvia Ellis, Britain, America and the Vietnam War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004), 61. 18 International Herald Tribune, 12 October 1967; DBD, Bruce to Rusk, 13 October, Bruce to Whitney, 2 November, and entries of 1 and 6 November 1967. 19 DBD, 27 February 1968. 20 DBD, 17–18 April 1962 and 12–13 October 1964; National Archives and Record Administration (NARA), College Park, RG84, US Embassy London, General Records 1936–63, Box 537, 631 Press 1962 folder, Bruce to Rusk, 18 April 1962. 21 DBD, 19 and 24 June 1968; Evening Standard, 19 June 1968; The National Archives (TNA), Kew, PREM13/2447, Palliser to Wilson, 20 June 1968. 22 DBD, 31 May 1961. 23 NARA/RG84, Great Britain, London Embassy, General Records 1936–61, Box 527, 350 Britain 1961 folder, London to State, 4 November 1961. 24 DBD, 6 June 1963. 25 NARA/RG84, Great Britain, US Embassy, London, General Records 1936–63, Box 530, 350 Britain, London to State, 7 December 1962. 26 NARA/RG84, Great Britain, US Embassy, London, General Records 1936–63, Box 530, 350 Britain, London to State, 22 December 1962. 27 DBD, 1 June 1964. 28 DBD, 16, 22 and 26 January 1968. 29 DBD, 14–17 June 1965. In general see Caroline Page, US Official Propaganda During the Vietnam War, 1965–73: The Limits of Persuasion (London: Leicester University Press, 1996), 108–20 and 150–75. 30 DBD, 4 January 1967; NARA/RG59, Bureau of European Affairs, Office of Northern European Affairs, United Kingdom, 1962–74, Box 5, POL – Political Affairs Vietnam 1967, Bruce to Leddy, 9 January 1967; Daily Telegraph, 4 January 1967. 31 DBD, 6 January 1967. 32 Nicholas Cull, The Cold War and the US Information Agency (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 285–7. 33 DBD, Bruce to Rusk, for Marks, 7 December 1967. 34 Kenneth Weisbrode, The Atlantic Century (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2009), 104. 35 DBD, 24–27 May and 12 June 1961. 36 DBD, 20, 21 and 24 March 1961. 37 DBD, 17 August 1961. 38 DBD, 9 March, 16 April and 7 August 1962. 39 DBD, 24 March 1966. 40 DBD, 12 November and 9 December 1963, 5 October 1964 and (perhaps most interesting) 15 March 1965; Cecil King, The Cecil King DBD, 1965–70 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1972), 33–4. 41 DBD, 4 April 1966; King, Diary, 65.

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42 DBD, 4 May 1967. 43 See Stephen Dorril and Robin Ramsay, Smear! Wilson and the Secret State (London: Grafton, 1991), chapter 24; Ruth Dudley Edwards, Newspapermen (London: Pimlico, 2004), 350–93. 44 DBD, 10 and 31 May 1968. 45 DBD, 13 December 1968; King, Diary, 222–3. 46 John F. Kennedy Library (JFKL), National Security File (NSF), Country File, United Kingdom (CFUK), Box 171, London to State, 12 February 1963. 47 DBD, 20 July; JFKL/NSF/CFUK/171, London to State, 22 July; Sunday Times, 21 July 1963. 48 DBD, 2–3 September 1964. 49 DBD, Bruce to Salinger, 25 June 1963. 50 Russell to Lyons, 2 October 1863, reproduced in Lord Newton, Lord Lyons: A Record of British Diplomacy, Volume 1 (London: Edward Arnold, 1913), 118. 51 Hansard, House of Commons Debates, Fifth Series, Vol. 307, column 2080; Harold Nicolson, Diplomacy (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1939), 100–1. 52 Davis and Dolores Fleming (eds), The Ambassadorial Diary of John W. Davis (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 1993), 4–14. 53 Available at: http://www.sate.gov/r/pa/ho/trvl/pres/ lists Presidents’ overseas visits. And see: Elmer Plischke, Diplomat in Chief: The President at the Summit (New York: Praeger, 1986); Henry Wriston, ‘The Secretary of State Abroad’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 34 (1956), 523–40. 54 Arguments ‘for’ and ‘against’ summitry are provided by: G. R. Berridge, Diplomacy: Theory and Practice. 4th ed. (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2010), chapter 10; David Dunn, Diplomacy at the Highest Level: The Evolution of International Summitry (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 1996), 247–65. 55 Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–8, Volume XIII: Western Europe Region, document 63. Available at: http://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1964–68v13/d63. 56 DBD, 7 July 1963. 57 DBD, 14 November 1964. 58 DBD, 27 March to 8 April 1961. 59 JFKL, Oral History Program (OHP), Bruce written statement. 60 DBD, 1 June 1961. 61 DBD, 4–5 June 1961; Sally Bedell Smith, Grace and Power: The Private World of the Kennedy White House (London: Aurum, 2011), 210–11. 62 DBD, 20–22 December 1961. 63 JFKL/OHP, Bruce written statement. 64 JFKL/NSF/CFUK/171, Bruce to Bundy, 19 June 1963. 65 DBD, 25 June 1963. 66 For background see Ellis, Vietnam War, 160–79. 67 LBJL, NSF, CF, UK, Box 209, Rusk to Johnson, 2 June 1966.

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68 TNA/PREM 13/1083, Maclehose to Palliser, 15 June 1966; LBJL/NSF, Files of Walt Rostow, Box 12–13, London to State, 4 July; NARA/RG59, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1964–6, Political and Defence, Box 2779, London to State, 11 July 1966. 69 DBD, 21, 26 and 27 June 1963. 70 DBD, 28 June 1963. 71 DBD, 11–12 December 1967, for dates about a summit not eventually held until February 1968. 72 DBD, Bruce to Knox, 1 February 1964. 73 DBD, 14 February 1964. 74 But they had met in March, before Wilson became Prime Minister: LBJL/ NSF/CFUK, Box 213, memorandum of Conversation, 2 March 1964. 75 DBD, 9–16 and 25 November 1964. 76 DBD, Bruce to Rusk, 26 November 1964, and entry of 27 November 1964. 77 LBJL/NSF/CFUK, Box 214, Memorandum of Conversation, 5, 6 and 8 December 1964. 78 DBD, Bruce to Rusk, 15 December 1964. 79 Ball, Pattern, 336. 80 See Elmer Plischke, ‘Lyndon Johnson as Diplomat in Chief ’, in Bernard Firestone and Robert Vogt (eds), Lyndon Baines Johnson and the Uses of Power (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 265–9. 81 Jonathan Colman, A Special Relationship? Harold Wilson, Lyndon Johnson and Anglo-American Relations (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 64–71, 91–5 and 138–9. 82 DBD, 8 February 1968. 83 DBD, 19 December 1967. 84 DBD, Bruce to Rogers, 1 February 1969. 85 DBD, 17–21 February, including Bruce to Rogers, 21 February 1969. 86 DBD, 22 February 1969. 87 Philip Kaiser, Journeying Far and Wide (New York: Scribner’s, 1992), 256–9. 88 Ellis Briggs, Farewell to Foggy Bottom (New York: David McKay, 1964), 297–8; Henry Jackson, The Secretary of State and the Ambassador (New York: Praeger, 1964), 71. 89 CMND 2276: Report of the Committee on Representational Services Overseas, 1962–3 (London: HMSO, 1964), 6. 90 DBD, 16 and 22 October 1963. 91 DBD, 11 and 12 July 1963. 92 DBD, Bruce to Ball, 28 October 1963. 93 DBD, 14 and 15 November 1963. 94 DBD, 20–27 January 1964. 95 Colman, Relationship, 63–4; Kaiser, Journeying, 226–7. 96 JFKL/NSF/CFUK/170, Ball to Bruce, 8 December 1961. 97 DBD, 24 June to 2 July 1965. 98 DBD, 8 February 1964.

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David Bruce and Diplomatic Practice DBD, 21 September 1966. TNA/PREM13/672, record of meeting, 26 July 1965. DBD, Bruce to Humphrey, 15 September 1967. DBD (at 4 May), Benton to Bruce, 29 April 1967. The talks are most easily followed via the DBD, 4–12 February 1967, and TNA/FCO73/137, ‘The Kosygin Visit: A Study in Anglo-American Relations’, February 1967. For an academic discussion see John Dumbrell and Sylvia Ellis, ‘British Involvement in Vietnam Peace Initiatives, 1966–7’, Diplomatic History, Vol. 27, No. 1 (January 2003), 113–49.

9

Conclusion By November 1968, Bruce was the longest serving US representative ever to London, but he remained in post only a few months after Richard Nixon became President. In early December the Ambassador received a letter, declaring it ‘customary for chiefs of diplomatic missions, whether career or non-career and regardless of the length of time at post, to submit to a new President their formal resignations’. Bruce, like others, was asked to submit a letter by the New Year, post-dating it to inauguration day, 20 January. Although the message was expected, Bruce initially felt harassed by it. He hoped that he might at least be able to ‘stay on for a short while’ after that date, ‘in order to terminate my days properly here and to pack our belongings without being over-hurried’.1 In fact, he was allowed to stay until after Nixon’s first visit to London: it would have been challenging to manage that event without an ambassador in place. And, as the weeks passed, rather than feeling rushed into leaving, Bruce showed a keen desire to settle matters and be on his way, hoping that a handover to his successor could take place in late February.2

Leaving London By mid-January it was correctly rumoured in the press that Bruce’s successor would be a millionaire Philadelphia newspaper owner, Walter Annenberg, who had no experience of diplomacy but was a major donor to the recent Nixon campaign.3 In reporting the rumours, Patrick Dean told the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) that ‘Annenberg is a man about whom, to say the least, opinions differ’. Some saw him as a hard, vindictive character, from a controversial background, his father having been imprisoned for tax evasion. However, as well as being a friend of Nixon, he had a reputation for generosity, energy and anglophilia.4 The so-called ‘special’ relationship had already been tested by Wilson’s appointment of John Freeman (a bitter critic of Nixon when editor of the New Statesman) the other way. Britain’s Daily Express had even suggested that the choice of Annenberg might be some kind of ‘tit-for-tat’ move. ‘But there is no evidence that this is true’, the FCO’s

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North American Department noted, once Annenberg’s nomination was confirmed.5 One of Bruce’s duties was to submit the name of his successor to the British government, a process known as agréation.6 Told in advance by the State Department that a telegram about the appointment was on its way, Bruce forewarned both Michael Stewart, the Foreign Secretary, and Michael Palliser, the Prime Minister’s Private Secretary, sent off the relevant letter on 3 February and secured British assent a week later.7 Meanwhile, the Bruces separately telephoned Annenberg and his wife to make practical arrangements for the ambassadorial handover.8 At first, the transition seemed to go smoothly enough but, when Annenberg’s wife, Lee, arrived at Winfield House on 11 February with two interior decorators and Nixon’s carte blanche for remodelling the Residence, tensions seem to have sparked, with Evangeline resentful of the implied criticisms of her tenure.9 Bruce and Annenberg talked, apparently amicably, over telephone in late February, when Annenberg agreed to Bruce’s wish to resign on 18 March and Bruce advised his successor to resist State Department changes of embassy staff until he had been in post for some time.10 Nonetheless, something of a feud developed between the two families. Rather than leaving London altogether to let his successor settle in, Bruce took a flat in London and made it something of a social centre to rival Winfield House.11 In June 1969 the Dutch Ambassador, Herman van Roijen, wondered ‘whether it was very tactful of Bruce to show up’ again in London, especially when ‘poor Annenberg is having a hard time already’.12 Evangeline was said to disparage the Annenbergs, and Phil Kaiser, the Deputy Chief of Mission, who left the Embassy several months later, joined in the criticisms. Some British figures, too, were aghast at the new Ambassador. Cecil King, who had got on well with Bruce, was ‘appalled’ on first meeting his successor, dismissing him as ‘a totally unsuitable appointment’.13 Bruce faced his last anti-Vietnam War demonstration at the Embassy on 9 March 1969, went for his farewell reception with the Queen on the 13th and had his last reception at the Embassy the following day. His final official commitment was lunch with Foreign Secretary Stewart, at the latter’s official residence in Carlton Gardens on the 17th. The FCO pressed Stewart to make a special case of Bruce by holding this, because he had served longer than any of his predecessors as Ambassador to London.14 The following day he handed over responsibility for the Embassy to Kaiser, who presided until Annenberg arrived. Yet, when Bruce returned to Washington he discovered that, for some reason, his resignation did not take effect until the 28th, on which day the Secretary of State, William Rogers, awarded him and Evangeline passports for life. Three of Bruce’s most eminent friends – Averell Harriman,

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and two former Secretaries of State, Dean Acheson and Dean Rusk – made speeches. ‘Thus ended, as far as I can foresee, my diplomatic career’, he noted in his diary.15 In actual fact, he would be back, leading the US negotiating team in the Paris peace talks on Vietnam for a year (1970–1), heading the ‘liaison office’ in Communist China (1973–4) and serving as Ambassador to NATO (1974–6). For a time at least, he also continued to visit Britain, attending parties with Stephen Spender, Diana Phipps and other luminaries, with whom he and Evangeline would also holiday in Italy.16 He died of a heart attack in December 1977.

The task of ambassador Bruce knew that many questioned the value of diplomats. They lacked ‘political support at home, for the nature of their work is not appealing to domestic constituencies’; in trying ‘to reconcile disagreements with other countries, they become unfairly suspect as being too soft on foreigners at the expense of the national interest’. The American public saw them as ‘enjoying luxurious lives abroad at the expense of the taxpayers … ’ and the Foreign Service was subjected to spending cuts, although ‘the entire annual appropriation of the State Department … is less than the cost of a single aircraft carrier’.17 Even a fellow Ambassador, J. K. Galbraith, ended with a jaundiced view of their work: ‘No one should suppose that this is either intellectually demanding or physically taxing.’18 The importance of Bruce’s own post was questioned, soon after he vacated it, by a British journalist, who wrote dismissively, ‘The task of the American ambassador in London is mostly non-existent. He does not have to woo the British government; it is the British that have to do the persuading and this is done at the Washington end’.19 But academic studies have already suggested that the truth may be rather different. In defending the record of Joseph Kennedy, as pre-war Ambassador to Britain, and William Bullitt, as Ambassador to France, William Kaufman noted that ‘Their duties were diverse, imposing, and never-ending. In the constant stream of reports, speeches, social calls and receptions there was little opportunity for reflection and analysis. The demands upon their time were already enormous’.20 One can make a similar argument that, while Bruce might have performed better on particular issues (like Skybolt, Rhodesia and Britain’s withdrawal from East of Suez), any criticisms need to be tempered by an awareness that he was surrounded by other commitments and had to keep an eye on several potential crises at once. On 28 January 1964, Bruce summed up his work in

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London in an ill-tempered, but revealing, telegram, worth reproducing at length. He was unable to reply to a lengthy memorandum at short notice, he said, because he also had to cope with: the distractions of internal administrative and personnel problems, receiving visits from peripatetic and fidgeting Federal officers, giving cocktail parties for compatriots, addressing British audiences seemingly tolerant of endless flows of banal oratory, carrying out instructions to make representations to the British Foreign Office, all too often duplicatory of conversations already held with the efficient British Embassy in Washington, liverish representational lunching and dining, attending meetings of Anglo-American goodwill organizations, running a bar-room and restaurant for jet-borne countrymen, turning night into day in an unceasing effort to cope with trivia, crippling my wrist with correspondence, attempting to preserve security with inquisitive journalists, maintaining courteous relations with 100 odd Ambassadorial colleagues … .21

Around the same time the Jackson Committee noted that an Ambassador’s role had greatly expanded in terms of dealing with the press, business and visiting congressmen, as well as in managing budgets and staff, while traditional duties linked to protocol and entertainment remained.22 The last element alone absorbed hours of time. Bruce once commented, ‘If I had a thousand tongues, I could not satisfy invitations to speak, nor could any digestive apparatus dispose of the innumerable lunches and dinners so generously proposed’.23 Nor were his duties discharged solely in London. He also did a formidable amount of travel, including travel around Britain, journeys back to Washington and attendance at regional meetings of American Ambassadors in Europe. The thematic structure of this book may have obscured the full range of activities in which Bruce became involved. The intensity of the potential pressures is well illustrated by the events of November 1967. The Ambassador got to bed at midnight on 8 November, only to be called to Downing Street thirty minutes later, where the Prime Minister said he was so concerned about backbench attacks on his Vietnam policy that he should meet Johnson. Trans-Atlantic telephone calls and messages could win no agreement from Washington for this but, on the 12th, following another talk with Wilson, Bruce wrote to Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, hoping he would come to London. This would aid Wilson who was ‘in more political trouble than at any other time’, not only because of Vietnam, but also because of recent by-election losses, the troubled second application for European Economic

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Community (EEC) membership and renewed pressure on the Pound. On the 14th, the Ambassador was given a rough reception by a student audience at Cambridge University. Partly because of this, he advised that Humphrey should not come to Britain after all. Then, on the 18th, he was called back to London from a shooting expedition to find that the Pound could no longer be propped up on the money markets and must be devalued. That same day the Ambassador correctly predicted, in a telephone call to Washington, that the Prime Minister ‘would be fiercely assailed but would remain in power’. One minor implication of the devaluation, discussed at the staff meeting on the 22nd, was its impact on the salaries of British employees of the Embassy. Meanwhile, there was a steady flow of telegrams concerning a UN Resolution on the Middle East and the threat of renewed violence in Cyprus. On the 28th there came news not only that the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, was to become President of the World Bank (news that reached Bruce from The Times rather than his own government), but also that French President Charles de Gaulle had vetoed Britain’s EEC application. Finally, on the 29th, there was a Cabinet reshuffle, when Bruce’s friend Roy Jenkins replaced Callaghan as Chancellor of the Exchequer. The very structure of the book, divided as it is on the line of themes, can also blunt the complexity of ambassadorial life. During a dinner on 22 June 1961, for example, Bruce combined engagement with the press (the host being Frank Giles, foreign editor of the Sunday Times), with meeting a fellow ambassador (Austria’s von Schwarzenberg), political business (the Labour leader, Hugh Gaitskell, was there and they discussed the Berlin crisis), contact with the Foreign Office (Fred Warner, head of the Southeast Asia department being another guest) and simple socializing with friends (Ian Fleming and Diana Cooper). The thematic structure also makes it difficult to draw out some of the clashes in Bruce’s busy timetable. It would have made sense, for example, for him to accompany General Maxwell Taylor to meetings with Macmillan and Home in March 1962. Taylor, the President’s Military Representative, was in London to discuss such significant issues as nuclear cooperation, Berlin and the future of NATO. But Bruce could not do so because he was too heavily focused on another visit, by the First Lady, Jackie Kennedy.24 On 13 November 1962, he noted in his diary that, while at Grosvenor Square, ‘I tried to tackle arrears of office work, but was interrupted so frequently that I thrust all unclassified papers into an envelope with the hope of reading them late tonight at home’. Then again, some of the commitments, diverse in one sense, were mutually reinforcing in others. As Christopher Meyer, a later British Ambassador to Washington, noted when asked about what contacts to prioritize, the question made little sense, because it was ‘all a single piece of elaborate machinery … If you knew the top

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politicians, it helped get in with the business leaders, and vice versa’; while media contacts also helped establish political and business contacts. It was also necessary to keep in touch with Parliament, defence, intelligence and a host of other areas.25 To such predictable commitments had to be added the unexpected. In late 1963, one shocking event – the Kennedy assassination – suddenly added to Bruce’s workload. He had hastily to issue a press statement, saw Lee Radziwill (Jackie Kennedy’s sister) off on a flight home, dealt with messages of regret from fellow Ambassadors and cancelled various entertainments that had been planned for what was now a thirty-day period of mourning. The cancellation of so many commitments presumably helped compensate for the unexpected new burdens on Bruce’s time, although he continued to hold small lunches and dinners, and to attend functions outside the Embassy. Aside from dealing with the media, the Embassy was inundated with messages of condolence and crowds queuing to sign several books that were opened. Staff had to be apportioned to attend numerous memorial services, with Bruce himself attending them in Westminster Abbey, the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral, the US Protestant Chapel, the Marble Arch Synagogue and, finally, St. Paul’s Cathedral, as well as listening to homages delivered in the House of Commons. On a foggy 27 November, several days after the assassination, he ‘spent most of the day answering letters of sympathy’ and there were more to write on the 28th. By 5 December statistics showed that nearly 17,000 signatures had been made at the Embassy, while nearly 5,000 letters and telegrams had been processed (sixty of them from ‘cranks’). Bruce himself had written 72 replies to messages of condolence and had signed 148 others (22 November to 5 December 1963). The compensation was that events helped strengthen relations, Bruce telling Washington that ‘Great Britain has never before mourned a foreigner as it has President Kennedy’.26 Kennedy’s was not the only demise that intruded on routine business. The last week of January 1965 became ‘Churchill week’27 for Bruce, as he dealt with a range of issues about the great man’s death, from lowering official flags to half mast to consulting with Washington over whether the President (himself unwell) would attend the funeral, before hosting Rusk, Senator Fulbright and a host of others. There was further disruption on 14 July 1965 when Adlai Stevenson, US Ambassador to the UN and a former Democratic presidential candidate, collapsed and died near the Embassy. Rapid decisions had to be made about dealing with Stevenson’s belongings, arranging undertakers, dealing with the media, notifying friends and family, then flying the body back home. By 16 July, Bruce was ‘appalled at the accumulation of unfinished business, postponed because of Adlai’s death’. But the unfortunate event

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continued to trouble him over the coming years, as discussions dragged on with the British over how best to put up some memorial in Stevenson’s honour.28 True, his life was not all work and some periods were less busy than others. 14 August 1964 was ‘An unproductive day at the office with almost nothing substantive to deal with’, while he greeted 8 September 1967 as ‘the end of a dull week, in the course of which I had almost no strictly professional duties’. He had a family life, (although his three children with Evangeline were at boarding school most of the time and Bruce always had a somewhat aloof relationship with them29), he took generous holidays (often to Venice), had long Christmas breaks in the US and, if he wanted, was wealthy enough to arrange weekends away at the best possible locations. On 27 August 1966, he ‘disliked the idea of spending the weekend idly in London … [so] I decided to go to Paris, and put up at the Ritz’. He also collected antiques, developing a passion in 1963 for narwhal tusks, of which he soon had three30 and noting, on 7 September 1964, ‘I no longer have space for new acquisitions; the closet in my office is jammed with porcelain, a narwhal tooth, a leopard head … ’. He was also a voracious reader. In March 1962 he complained that his health was in danger from staying up to 3.00 a.m., three nights running, reading James Bond novels.31 But usually his selection was more serious. On 6 July 1963, he began Henry James’ Washington Square, but the following day finished a book on Louis Napoleon and also hastily went through Gilbert Phelps’ Short History of English Literature, while on the 8th he was enjoying Montaigne. Then again, even his choice of reading sometimes had a practical side. In 1968, he spent several days reading memoirs by British diplomats and civil servants, and then looked at Beckles Willson’s book about US Ambassadors to London.32 Even when there was a chance to relax, Bruce would mix it with business. Noting 21 July 1962 as ‘the first day, during a crowded period, when I have had sufficient time for reading and reflection’, he then spent some hours catching up on Kennedy’s press conferences, speeches by Home and Rusk and the latest Economist. He would spend Sundays writing speeches.33 Even the holiday season might easily be disrupted by a sudden crisis. On 14 August 1968, Bruce recorded that ‘The Foreign Office is almost deserted, because of the number of officers on leave’. But on 21 August, the day after he left for his own holiday in Venice, he was rung by Kaiser and told of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. The USAF hastily flew the Ambassador back to London, to which Wilson and Michael Stewart also returned from their vacations. The flood of ensuing business was such that Bruce was unable to return to Venice. This, of course, was towards the end of his ambassadorship, when there were signs that age, health problems and, perhaps, the impact of his eldest daughter’s death (in January 1967) led him to reduce some of

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his commitments. Certainly, there was less travelling back to Washington, less holidaying abroad, less exchanging of calls with fellow ambassadors. Right down to the end, however, with Nixon’s early visit to London, it was difficult to relieve the workload. Those who criticize Bruce’s performance on particular issues need to bear in mind the full range of pressures that were acting on him at any given point.

Summing up Drawing general conclusions about the value of ambassadors from one example must be a tentative process. A study of any individual ambassadorship can only possibly provide a snapshot of one particular diplomat, at one particular post, at one point in time. For one thing, diplomacy is ever evolving and even two ambassadorships at the same post may be very different. When Richard Rush arrived as US Minister in 1817, he had almost a month’s sea voyage behind him, had to find his own house and was expected, as a priority, to make calls upon about a dozen senior members of the Royal family. Yet, some elements of the Ambassador’s role persist. Rush’s presentation of credential to the Prince Regent bore striking similarities to Bruce’s experience, as did the endless round of dinners with ministers, fellow diplomats and other eminent figures in society. Rush once commented about the demands on ambassadors’ time in similar terms to Bruce: ‘Invitations crowd upon them. If they did not decline more than they accept, there would be a poor account of their public business.’34 By 1918, when John W. Davis arrived, it still took ten days to make the Atlantic crossing and the number of other ambassadors in London was so small that he completed his initial calls on them within a month. However, his diaries suggest a routine quite similar to Bruce. Davis had easy access to ministers, right up to the Prime Minister, hosted receptions, attended numerous dinners, had weekends at country homes and was seen at major social events like the Ascot horse races.35 The differences appear more stark when one shifts forward to the generation after Bruce, when the actors had already changed quite profoundly. The European Union had become a diplomatic entity in its own right, the number of multilateral meetings at summit level had mushroomed, there was a greater emphasis on the need for ‘public diplomacy’, the significance of non-governmental organizations had grown and the Internet had revolutionized diplomatic communications.36 In all areas of embassy work, there had been profound changes. On the consular side, for example, website and call centres now helped meet the public demand for information, while the issue of visa issuance became central to protecting the United States from

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terrorism after 9/11.37 Yet, the permanent Embassy has not only survived but it has also grown in numbers. Indeed, G. R. Berridge has argued that the years since 1970 have seen ‘the revival of the resident mission’, which continues to provide opportunities for discreet, secret exchanges between states, provides bases for high-level (and low-level) visitors and can engage in public diplomacy.38 Even if one considers Bruce’s American contemporaries in the diplomatic arena, it is apparent that there is no such thing as a ‘typical’ embassy. (Looking beyond American examples, the differences would be even starker.) Bonn, for example, had a similarly large US embassy in the 1960s, but this was partly because, in addition to handling relations with the West German government, it was responsible for Berlin, on the front line of the Cold War, and for a quarter of a million military personnel.39 The US Embassy in Saigon was larger still but, of course, that was because of the Vietnam War that raged around it – and, at the time of the 1968 Tet offensive, literally invaded it. London was a far more desirable posting than Moscow, where Llewellyn Thompson, a highly able career ambassador, found himself isolated, bored and, partly thanks to Vietnam, unable to achieve much in talks with the Soviets.40 Yet, whatever the comparisons and contrasts between ambassadors’ experiences, the key issue is whether they fulfil a valuable purpose as a diplomatic institution. In his study of US ambassadors to the Soviet Union, David Mayers has argued that they do and, indeed, that the Ambassador’s role could be crucial. Poor quality reporting after the Bolshevik Revolution was harmful to Woodrow Wilson’s policy towards the nascent Soviet Union but, during 1988–91, Ambassador Jack Matlock helped manage the end of the Cold War peacefully.41 This conclusion has been echoed in previous studies that touch on Bruce’s work in London. At the end of her study of Britain and the Vietnam War, Sylvia Ellis judged that he, along with Patrick Dean in Washington, helped establish a good understanding between the two countries. They were ‘instrumental in maintaining cordiality and cooperation’ even on the vexed question of war in southeast Asia.42 Jonathan Colman, in a study of the Johnson–Wilson relationship, concludes that Bruce won the Prime Minister’s trust and, while dismayed by such actions as the withdrawal from East of Suez, helped Washington to understand why Britain took the decisions it did.43 True, there was undoubtedly a decline in the value to the United States of the ‘special relationship’. Britain had long since lost any claim to equality of power with America, but by 1968 its economic and military influence were in steep decline. Nonetheless, it is important to note the distinction, as made by Alan Dobson, between this decline in the importance of the relationship and the continuing good quality of bilateral relations on the ground.44 Furthermore, in 1969 Britain remained a nuclear power and one of the world’s largest economies, with a scattered residue of

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Empire and a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Besides, as Henry Kissinger said in a February 1969 memorandum, ‘we do not suffer in the world from such an excess of friends that we should discourage those who feel that they have a special friendship for us’.45 Personal relations between Johnson and Wilson may have lacked warmth, but friendly cooperation survived lower down. True, the British embassy in Washington was probably more important in bilateral exchanges than the US Embassy in London, but the Ambassador there was able to clear up differences on a range of issues (especially regarding former colonies), keep Washington informed about British thinking and maintain friendly relations with British leaders. Compared to ambassadors from other countries, Bruce was clearly in a privileged position when it came to contacts with the British. Despite antinuclear protests and worries around the time of the Cuban missile crisis, he felt in 1963 that ‘there is less anti-Americanism in the United Kingdom than in any other country with which I am familiar’.46 But what really mattered were his intimate relations with the government. Only he and the Canadian High Commissioner were invited along to a ‘working lunch’ with a British team headed by Lord Home, and Prince Souvanna Phouma of Laos, on 17 October 1963, which discussed the country’s uneasy neutrality and the instability in neighbouring Vietnam. Bruce summed up his sense of intergovernmental ties near the end of his ambassadorship when quizzed by a British academic: cooperation between the Governments of the US and the UK has become so close over a period of time that it is practically institutionalised at many levels. [These] Governments probably have a fuller exchange of information than any other two governments in the world … Our continuous consultation on … problems ranging all over the globe is taken for granted by both parties.

The Embassy, of course, lay at the centre of those institutional links, providing a base not just for political, economic, defence and intelligence ties, but also for a wide range of other contacts, represented by the numerous US government agencies in London. Britain’s Washington Embassy was an important competitor for his own, but Bruce’s mission had a significant niche in trans-Atlantic cooperation and this could not be replaced by such developments in diplomatic practice as the rise of summitry and special missions: While there have undoubtedly been more direct contacts between heads of government in the last two decades, the increased frequency of

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direct contacts applies at all levels … As far as the role of an ambassador is concerned, he is in much more frequent and close touch with his government than was the case a generation or two ago. He is more involved in a wider range of contacts between his government and the government to which he is accredited. The ambassador today may not be given as much blanket authority as was his predecessor some years ago, but he does receive full authority on specific subjects as they arise. Furthermore, as a result of modern communications, he is able to act on more complete and accurate information and on more comprehensive and current instructions from his government.47

Summits and special missions might deal with certain questions at certain times, but links between the American and British governments were so wide and complex that no amount of special missions could have maintained them. In any case, summits and special missions needed the Ambassador to advise them in order to be fully effective. It is not surprising then that the US Embassy in London survives. In his closeness to the British, Bruce sometimes seemed to go beyond what Washington would have liked, not least when he encouraged Wilson’s idea for a Commonwealth peace mission on Vietnam in June 1965 (an initiative that, perhaps fortunately for Bruce, proved stillborn).48 Arguably, he was taken in by Wilson when it came to both his confidence in dealing with Rhodesia’s unilateral declaration of independence and the Prime Minister’s intentions of remaining East of Suez. But Bruce’s ultimate loyalty was never in doubt and he was quite prepared to be critical of the British when he believed US policy demanded this. In late 1964, for example, after Labour took office, he told George Ball that Washington should be ‘tough with the British’ over the idea of a NATO nuclear force.49 Three years later, when Wilson and Johnson met at Harold Holt’s funeral in Australia, Bruce advised the President to offer the Prime Minister no more than ‘a sympathetic hearing’ when they discussed Britain’s economic problems. With Wilson’s position so eroded in the wake of the devaluation, there was no point buying a ‘pig in a poke’.50 Sometimes, Bruce’s doubts about the British may even have erred on the pessimistic side, especially as regards the economy. Then again, he was right to be concerned and he was often correct in his judgements. He predicted, for example, that the measures taken by Labour in July 1966 would be ‘insufficient to avoid another Sterling crisis’.51 Arguably, his greatest fault was not that he became either too sympathetic to British policy at times, or too sympathetic to them at others, but that he failed to see, objectively, the overall direction of events by the mid-1960s, which was tending towards a marked retrenchment of British power. This is not to judge Bruce simply

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in retrospect. Some key figures in Washington did argue that Britain’s many burdens were becoming too much and that it might do better to focus its efforts more narrowly. In July 1965, Francis Bator argued that London could not be expected to maintain the Pound, bases East of Suez and a large army in Europe.52 In September 1965, Dean Acheson described Britain as a ‘wizened island … expected to bear world-wide burdens’, partly because Washington wanted it to do so.53 In October 1966, John Leddy of the Bureau of European Affairs saw ‘no further mileage [in] belabouring the world responsibility … at the cost of Britain’s responsibilities in Europe’.54 Bruce, especially given his concerns about the economic situation and his hope that London would join the EEC, ought logically to have shared these views. Had he done so, and had he put the argument clearly in his reports home, Washington might have been better prepared for the withdrawal from East of Suez, the devaluation of the Pound and a British focus on EEC entry. Instead, until well into 1967, he continued to hope it would retain a world role. Bruce, then, was not without his flaws. Aside from his misreading, at times, of the direction of British policy and signs that, in his later years in London, age and ill-health began to get the better of him, he also had an elitist approach when dealing with British society and an aloof one in dealing with many of his staff. Nonetheless, he escaped many of the flaws that an ambassador might demonstrate. His reporting was honest. He was trusted by his hosts and fellow diplomats. He did not suffer from ‘localitis’ – ‘the belief that one’s post is the navel of world affairs’, as one study puts it. Nor did he allow his views to be coloured too much by the British and he had a sound grasp of the domestic political scene. He was even-tempered and affable, while able to keep secrets and, if necessary, take on tough assignments.55 Arthur Schlesinger summed up Bruce’s abilities well, when quizzed by Kennedy about his credentials as a possible Secretary of State: ‘I said that David was able and high-minded, that he would have the confidence of the [State] Department and would surround himself with able people, but that he wouldn’t bring great personal imagination or initiative to the job.’56 Certainly, in London, he showed little initial enthusiasm for innovations like regular Country Team meetings, although he soon learnt to appreciate their value. He surrounded himself with promising staff, even if the British (and the Neustadt Report into the Skybolt crisis) felt they could have networked better in Whitehall. And he was trustworthy, hard-working and competent in dealing with the diverse challenges of the job. In fact, he amply proved that a non-career ambassador can be a success. In a sense, as envoy to a key European ally, he was not unusual in this. As one commentator wrote in 1963, ‘no-one has come forward to suggest that the American amateur ambassadors in London or Paris, over the last twenty or thirty years have

Conclusion

203

been less effective and successful at their jobs than their British or French professional counterparts in Washington’. But Bruce was certainly of a higher calibre than Maxwell Gluck, the owner of a group of chain-stores who, when nominated to Sri Lanka (then known as Ceylon) in 1957, admitted to the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee that he could not name the current Prime Minister.57 While complaining that key diplomatic posts were often distributed on the basis of wealth, Raymond Seitz, still the only career diplomat to become Ambassador to London, called Bruce ‘the pre-eminent example of a political appointee who served so well in so many posts … that he became, in effect, a professional statesman’.58 By the time he arrived in London, of course, Bruce had a prior experience of senior diplomatic posts, as well as intelligence work and a spell as Under-Secretary of State, that most professional diplomats would envy. But he would not have been given such a series of appointments if he had not also had a basic fund of ability, honesty, stamina and sound judgement. These he reinforced with a willingness to master his instructions and even study diplomacy itself. He would refer to the seven essential qualities of a diplomat as set out by Harold Nicolson – truthfulness, precision, calm, good temper, patience, modesty and loyalty – and added his own point that ‘It must be assumed that the possessor of these virtues is also intelligent, and knowledgeable about domestic and international affairs’.59 Elitist he may have been, but his very social standing – the capital that Bourdieu would say he accrued in terms of wealth, education, social contacts and mastery of the rules of diplomacy – meant that he could also deal easily with a range of key figures, from politicians and intelligence officers, to business leaders and journalists. As Kissinger wrote, ‘Handsome, wealthy, emotionally secure, [Bruce] was free of that insistence on seeing their views prevail through which lesser men occasionally turn public service into an ego trip’.60 His patrician background, political moderation, wealth, trans-Atlantic connections and good taste were particularly well suited to London and, whatever the decline in Britain’s value as an ally at the time, it could not be said that personal relations were worse in 1969 than they had been in 1961. Indeed, Lord Home believed, ‘It is difficult to exaggerate the role which David Bruce played in maintaining trust and confidence at a juncture which was critical for both countries. His capacity to be totally professional whilst looking like an amateur was almost unfair’.61 While it may not be possible to draw too many general conclusions about the value of ambassadors from focusing on one example, Bruce’s case suggests they were a valuable diplomatic institution, not easily eclipsed by summits, special missions or permanent international organizations, especially when it came to close allies like America and Britain, between which there existed such complex ties.

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Notes  1 Virginia Historical Society, David Bruce Diary (DBD), 7 December, with Rimestad to Bruce, 2 December 1968.  2 The National Archives (TNA), Kew, FCO63/376, Gore-Booth to Dean, 15 January 1969.  3 DBD, 16 January 1969.  4 TNA/FCO63/376, Dean to Gore-Booth, 21 January 1969.  5 TNA/FCO63/376, Sewell to Private Secretary, 4 February 1969.  6 On the process see Paul Gore-Booth (ed.), Satow’s Guide to Diplomatic Practice. 5th ed. (London: Longman, 1979), 89.  7 DBD, 31 January, 3 and 10 February; TNA/FCO63/376, Bruce to GoreBooth, 3 February, and Stewart to Bruce, 11 February 1969.  8 DBD, 3 February 1969.  9 Christopher Ogden, Legacy: A Biography of Moses and Walter Annenberg (Chicago, IL: Little, Brown, 1999), 410–11. 10 DBD, 28 February, and see Bruce to Hillenbrand, 1 March 1969, warning of ‘the disorder bred in other Embassies by abrupt changes made in personnel’ as one ambassador succeeded another. 11 DBD, shows him first investigating a flat on 7 September 1966 and moving possessions there on 15 July 1968. 12 Van Roijen papers, by courtesy of his biographer, Rimko van der Maar, Van Roijen’s weekly letter to his children, 27 June 1969. 13 Cecil King, The Cecil King Diary, 1965–70 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1972), 260, but see 301, which shows that King later adopted a more positive view. In fact, Annenberg eventually proved a popular ambassador, not least because he was generous with his vast fortune. By the time he left in 1974, thanks to his philanthropy he was probably better known to the general public than Bruce had ever been. James Cameron, ‘Walter H. Annenberg, 1969–74’, in Alison Holmes and Simon Rofe (eds), The Embassy in Grosvenor Square; American Ambassadors to the United Kingdom, 1983–2008 (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2012), chapter 9; Ogden, Legacy, 432–8. 14 TNA/FCO63/376, Sewell to Private Secretary, 4 March 1969. 15 DBD, dated 19 March 1969, but clearly later. 16 Roy Strong, Diaries, 1967–87 (London: Phoenix, 1998), 41 and 93. 17 DBD, 2 November 1967. 18 J. K. Galbraith, A Life in Our Times (London: André Deutsch, 1981), 391. 19 Eric Clark, Corps Diplomatique (London: Allen Lane, 1973), 134. 20 William Kaufman, ‘Two American Ambassadors: Bullitt and Kennedy’, in Gordon Craig and Felix Gilbert (eds), The Diplomats, 1919–39 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1953), 678. 21 DBD, London to State, 28 January 1964. 22 Henry Jackson, The Secretary of State and the Ambassador (New York: Praeger, 1964), 62–6. 23 DBD, 27 March 1965.

Conclusion 24 25 26 27 28 29

205

DBD, 29 March 1962. Christopher Meyer, DC Confidential (London: Phoenix, 2005), 62–4. DBD, London to State, 1 December 1963. DBD, 31 January 1965. DBD, 10 May, Bruce to Ives, 16 May 1967, and Bruce to Day, 9 October 1967. Nelson Lankford, The Last American Aristocrat: The Biography of David Bruce (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1995), 234–5. Bruce’s daughter Alexandra had a particularly troubled life: Joan Mellen, Privilege: The Enigma of Sasha Bruce (New York, NY: Dial Press, 1982). 30 DBD, 26 November, 4 and 11 December 1963. 31 DBD, 5 March 1962. 32 DBD, 1 May 1968. 33 DBD, 14 and 28 January 1962. 34 Richard Rush, A Residence at the Court of London (London: Century, 1987), 3–5, 30 and 41–7. 35 Davis and Dolores Fleming (eds), The Ambassadorial Diary of John W. Davis (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 1993), passim. 36 For reviews of such changes see: Geoffrey Allen Pigman, Contemporary Diplomacy: Representation and Communication in a Globalized World (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010); Kishan Rana, 21st Century Diplomacy: A Practitioner’s Guide (London: Continuum, 2011). 37 Donna Hamilton, ‘The Transformation of Consular Affairs: The United States Experience’, in Jan Melissen and Ana Mar Fernandez (eds), Consular Affairs and Diplomacy (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2011), chapter six. 38 G. R. Berridge, The Counter-Revolution in Diplomacy (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011), 4–8. 39 George McGhee, At the Creation of a New Germany (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 268. 40 David Mayers, The Ambassadors and America’s Soviet Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 219–21. 41 Mayers, The Ambassadors and America’s Soviet Policy, 4. 42 Sylvia Ellis, Britain, America and the Vietnam War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004), 278. 43 Jonathan Colman, A Special Relationship? Harold Wilson, Lyndon Johnson and Anglo-American Relations (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 174–5. 44 Alan Dobson, Anglo-American Relations in the Twentieth Century (London: Routledge, 1995), 138. 45 Henry Kissinger, The White House Years (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1979), 91. 46 DBD, 16 December 1963. 47 DBD, Notes for conversation with David Nunnerly, 5 December 1968. 48 See Colman, Special Relationship, 88–90. 49 Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1964–8, Volume XIII: Western Europe Region, document 46, note 2. Available at: http://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1964–68v13/d46.

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50 FRUS, 1964–8, Volume XII, Western Europe, document 282. Available at: http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964–68v12/d282. 51 DBD, 6 September 1966. 52 Bator memorandum, 29 July 1965, FRUS, 1964–8, Volume XII, document 247. Available at: http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964– 68v12/ch6. 53 Sterling Library, Yale University, Dean Acheson papers, draft memorandum to Robert Schaetzel, 10 September 1965. I am grateful to Prof. Donna Lee of Birmingham University for pointing out this source. 54 National Archive and Record Administration (NARA), College Park, Maryland, RG59, POL1UK-US, Box 2786, Leddy to Rusk, 13 October 1966. 55 See Charles Thayer, Diplomat (New York: Harper, 1959), chapter 21, quote from 242. 56 Arthur Schlesinger, Journals, 1952–2000 (London: Atlantic Books, 2012), 96. 57 Charles Roetter, The Diplomatic Art (Philadelphia, PA: Macrae Smith, 1963), 56–8. 58 Raymond Seitz, Over Here (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998), 41. 59 DBD, 10 September 1964. 60 Henry Kissinger, Ending the Vietnam War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003), 179. 61 Lord Home, The Way the Wind Blows (London: Collins, 1976), 245.

Appendix 1 US Embassy and Consulate Staff in the UK, 1961 (a) Authorized State Department Positions in the UK, March 1961 Officers

Clerks

Locals

Office of the Chief of Mission

4

5

1

Political Section

25

11

6

Economic Section

13

8

14

Consular Section

18

2

56

Administrative Section

10

38

157

Others

–

–

17

Belfast

3

–

10

Birmingham

2

–

5

Cardiff

2

–

5

Edinburgh

2

–

5

Glasgow

4

–

14

Liverpool

4

–

17

Manchester

3

–

11

London-based staff

Consular staff outside London

Southampton

2

–

7

Totals

92

64

325

Marine guards

15

Appendix 1

208

(b) US Agencies with UK Programs US staff

Locals

47

15

Atomic Energy Commission

4

–

Army Attaché

14

3

Army Standardization Group

11

9

Coast Guard

3

1

Customs Bureau (Treasury)

5

1

Federal Aviation Agency

4

1

Foreign Agricultural Services

4

4

Foreign Broadcast Information Service

1

1

Foreign Buildings Office

1

3

Foreign Buildings Regional Office

1

8

International Broadcasting Service

1

–

International Cooperation Administration

2

2

International Finance (Treasury)

3

1

Internal Revenue Service (Treasury)

2

–

Legal Attaché (Justice)

4

–

Air Logistics Office

24

40

Military Assistance Advisory Group

17

–

Maritime Administration

1

2

Military Agency for Standardization

6

2

Naval Attaché

28

6

Naval Research Office

48

6

Operations Research Group

5

–

Ordnance Industrial Liaison Office

3

5

Senior Liaison Officer

6

–

Special Investigation Office

1

–

Submarine Port Headquarters

21

–

Army Reserve Advisor Office

1

–

US Information Service

16

69

Air Attaché

Public Health Service

1

6

Totals

288

185

Grand totals

459

510

Source: Virginia Historical Society, David Bruce diary, 9 March 1961. No figures are given for intelligence agencies. The Foreign Service List (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, see 1961 and 1962) gives names and rank of US appointees in London, subdivided by Embassy section, including some from beyond the Foreign Service.

Appendix 2 Selected Ambassador’s Statistics, for Full Years, 1962–8 Activity

1962

1963

1964

1965

1966

1967

1968

Total receptions to which invited

228

227

254

273

277

193

212

Receptionsa actually attended

29

19

21

24

48

31

27

Receptions held at residence

32

18

25

21

26

38

34

1817

1583

2468

2804

3986

2620

2852

Lunch invitations accepted

33

21

16

23

41

69

36

Lunches hosted

61

30

34

26

41

64

74

Dinner invitations accepted

31

16

19

25

47

41

43

Dinners hosted at residence

33

29

27

21

22

31

21

Days out of London on business

87

83

48

96

70

33

22

Miles travelled on ditto

26562

27314

27997

58369

39309

18595

9372

Guest numbers at ditto

Speeches given

27

7

16

12

15

17

20

Calls by non-embassy US officials

105

89

328

107

118

203

145

Calls by foreign ambassadorsb

28

24

32

29

38

35

37

Calls on foreign ambassadors

16

22

23

20

26

0

0

Calls by US journalists

68

66

62

46

72

47

34

Calls by foreign journalists

30

47

22

5

21

14

14

Overnight guests at residencec

66

67

82

59

71

56

64

a  Figures for receptions in the first two columns include National Days at other embassies. b Bruce had been called on by 52 foreign Ambassadors from March to December 1961 and called on 66 of them. c Some stayed more than one night: the 64 guests in 1968 stayed a total of 222 nights, some overlapping. Source: ‘The Ambassador’s Statistics, 15 March 1961–31 December 1968’, in Diary, 31 December 1968. Only official (not personal/private) functions are included. Lunches and dinners were typically for around ten guests.

Select Bibliography A. Primary sources 1. Official (a) United States (i) National Archives and Record Administration, College Park, Maryland Record Group 59, State Department, Central Files and Lot Files. Record Group 84, State Department, Records of Foreign Service Posts. (ii) John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts National Security File. Robert Estabrook papers. (iii) Lyndon B. Johnson Library, Austin, Texas National Security File. White House Central Files: Confidential File and Countries Series. (iv) Published Documents Foreign Relations of the United States – available on the State Department website: http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments. May, Ernest and Philip Zelikow (eds), The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the Kennedy White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1997).

(b) United Kingdom: The National Archives, Kew CRES35 Crown Estate Office Papers FO371 Foreign Office Correspondence FO800 Foreign Office Private Papers FCO Foreign and Commonwealth Office Series PREM 11 Prime Minister’s Office (to 1964) PREM 13 Prime Minister’s Office (after 1964)

2. Private papers Bodleian Library, Oxford: George Brown (by kind permission of Mrs Frieda Warman-Brown), Paul Gore-Booth, Harold Wilson Churchill College, Cambridge: Patrick Gordon Walker, Michael Stewart Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, MO: Dean Acheson, Wilson Beale, Philip Kaiser

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Library of Congress, Washington, DC: Averell Harriman Lyndon B. Johnson Library, Austin, TX: George Ball, Francis Bator Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, VA: David Bruce

3. Oral histories Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Arlington, VA: Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection Churchill Archive Centre, Cambridge: British Diplomatic Oral History Project Institute of Contemporary British History, Witness Seminar, 18 June 1997, ‘The Role of HM Embassy, Washington’, available at: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/ innovation/groups/ich/witness/archives/PDFfiles/Washington.pdf John F. Kennedy Library, oral history program Lyndon B. Johnson Library, oral history program

4. Memoirs and diaries Ball, George, The Past Has Another Pattern (New York: Norton, 1982). Bowles, Chester, Promises to Keep: My Years in Public Life, 1941–69 (New York: Harper and Row, 1969). Brandon, Henry, Special Relationships: A Foreign Correspondent’s Memoirs (London: Macmillan, 1988). Briggs, Ellis, Farewell to Foggy Bottom: Recollections of a Career Diplomat (New York: David McKay, 1964). Castle, Barbara, The Castle Diaries 1964–70 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1984). Catterall, Peter (ed.), The Macmillan Diaries: Prime Minister and After, 1957–66 (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011). Cooper, Chester, The Lost Crusade: America in Vietnam (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1970). Crossman, Richard, The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister. 3 vols (London: Hamish Hamilton and Jonathan Cape, 1975–7). Davis, Julia and Dolores Fleming, (eds), The Ambassadorial Diary of John W. Davis: the Court of St. James, 1918–21 (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 1993). Galbraith, J. K., Ambassador’s Journal: A Personal Account of the Kennedy Years (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1969). ———, A Life in Our Times (London: André Deutsch, 1981). ———, Letters to Kennedy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). Gore-Booth, Paul, With Great Truth and Respect (London: Constable, 1974). Home, Lord, The Way the Wind Blows (London: Collins, 1976). Johnson, Lyndon Baines, The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency 1963–9 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971). Kaiser, Philip, Journeying Far and Wide (New York: Scribner’s, 1992).

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King, Cecil, The Cecil King Diary, 1965–70 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1972). Macmillan, Harold, At the End of the Day, 1961–3 (London: Macmillan, 1973). McGhee, George, At the Creation of a New Germany: From Adenauer to Brandt, an Ambassador’s Account (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989). Neustadt, Richard, Report to JFK: The Skybolt Crisis in Perspective (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999). Roosevelt, Archie, For Lust of Knowing: Memoirs of an Intelligence Officer (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988). Roy, Raj and John W. Young (eds), Ambassador to Sixties London: The Diaries of David Bruce, 1961–9 (Dordrecht: Republic of Letters, 2010). Rush, Richard, A Residence at the Court of London (London: Century, 1987). Rusk, Dean, As I Saw It (New York: Norton, 1990). Seitz, Raymond, Over Here (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998). Wilson, Harold, The Labour Government 1964–70 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971).

B. Secondary works Abramson, Rudy, Spanning the Century: The Life of W. Averell Harriman (New York: Morrow, 1992). Aldrich, Richard J., The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Intelligence (London: John Murray, 2001). ———, GCHQ: The Uncensored Secret Story of Britain’s Most Secret Intelligence Agency (London: Harper, 2010). Ashton, Nigel, Kennedy, Macmillan and the Cold War: The Irony of Interdependence (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2002). Barnett, Vincent (ed.), The Representation of the United States Abroad (New York: Prager, 1965). Berridge, G. R. ‘The Resident Ambassador: A Death Postponed’, Diplomatic Studies Programme, Discussion Paper 1 (University of Leicester: Centre for the Study of Diplomacy, 1994). ———, Diplomacy: Theory and Practice. 4th ed. (Basingstoke: PalgraveMacmillan, 2010). Berridge, G. R. and Lorna Lloyd, The Palgrave-Macmillan Dictionary of Diplomacy. 3rd ed. (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2012). Blancké, Wendell, The Foreign Service of the United States (New York: Praeger, 1969). Busk, Douglas, The Craft of Diplomacy (New York: Praeger, 1967). Clark, Eric, Corps Diplomatique (London: Allen Lane, 1973). Colman, Jonathan, A Special Relationship? Harold Wilson, Lyndon Johnson and Anglo-American Relations (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004). ———, ‘The London Ambassadorship of David Bruce during the Wilson– Johnson years, 1964–8’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, vol. 15, no. 2 (2004), 327–52.

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Corera, Gordon, MI6: Life and Death in the British Secret Service (London: Phoenix, 2011). Cull, Nicholas J., The Cold War and the US Information Agency; American Propaganda and Public Diplomacy, 1945–89 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Dizard, Wilson, Inventing Public Diplomacy: The Story of the US Information Agency (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2004). Dockrill, Saki, Britain’s Retreat from East of Suez (Basingstoke: PalgraveMacmillan, 2002). Dumbrell, John and Sylvia Ellis, ‘British Involvement in Vietnam Peace Initiatives, 1966–7’, Diplomatic History, vol. 27, no. 1 (January 2003), 113–49. Ellis, Sylvia, Britain, America and the Vietnam War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004). Ellison, James, The United States, Britain and the Transatlantic Crisis: Rising to the Gaullist Challenge, 1963–8 (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2007). Gore-Booth, Paul, Satow’s Guide to Diplomatic Practice. 5th ed. (London: Longman, 1979) – the edition closest following Bruce’s time in London. Halperin, Morton, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1974). Harr, John, The Professional Diplomat (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969). Hershberg, James G., Marigold: The Lost Chance for Peace in Vietnam (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2012). Holmes, Alison and Simon Rofe (eds), The Embassy in Grosvenor Square; American Ambassadors to the United Kingdom, 1983–2008 (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2012). Hopkins, Michael, Saul Kelly and John W. Young (eds), The Washington Embassy: British Ambassadors to the United States, 1939–77 (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2009). Jackson, Henry, The Secretary of State and the Ambassador: Jackson Subcommittee Papers on the Conduct of American Foreign Policy (New York: Praeger, 1964). Jones, Matthew, Conflict and Confrontation in South East Asia, 1961–5 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Kahn, E. J., Jock: The Life and Times of John Hay Whitney (New York: Doubleday, 1981). Kent, John, America, the UN and Decolonisation: Cold War Conflict in the Congo (London: Routledge, 2010). Lankford, Nelson, The Last American Aristocrat: The Biography of Ambassador David K. E. Bruce (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1996). Laville, Helen and Hugh Wilford (eds), The US Government, Citizen Groups and the Cold War: The State-Private Network (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006). Lee, Donna, Middle Powers and Commercial Diplomacy: British Influence at the Kennedy Trade Round (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 1999).

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Loeffler, Jane, The Architecture of Diplomacy: Building America’s Embassies. 2nd ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010). Macomber, William, The Angels’ Game: A Handbook of Modern Diplomacy (New York: Stein and Day, 1975). Mahan, Erin, Kennedy, de Gaulle and Western Europe (Basingstoke: PalgraveMacmillan, 2002). Mayers, David, The Ambassadors and America’s Soviet Policy (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1995). Melissen, Jan and Ana Mar Fernandez, (eds), Consular Affairs and Diplomacy (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2011). Milne, David, America’s Rasputin: Walt Rostow and the Vietnam War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2008). Nunnerly, David, President Kennedy and Britain (London: Bodley Head, 1972). Ogden, Christopher, Legacy: A Biography of Moses and Walter Annenberg (Chicago, IL: Little, Brown, 1999). Oliver, Kendrick, Kennedy, Macmillan and the Nuclear Test Ban Debate (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 1998). Page, Caroline, US Official Propaganda During the Vietnam War, 1965–73: The Limits of Persuasion (London: Leicester University Press, 1996). Pham, P. L., Ending East of Suez: The British Decision to Withdraw from Malaysia and Singapore (Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010). Pigman, Geoffrey Allen, Contemporary Diplomacy: Representation and Communication in a Globalized World (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010). Plischke, Elmer, United States Diplomats and Their Missions (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1975). ——— (ed.), Modern Diplomacy: The Art and the Artisans (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1979). Priest, Andrew, Kennedy, Johnson and NATO: Britain, America and the Dynamics of Alliance, 1962–8 (London: Routledge, 2006). Rana, Kishan, 21st Century Diplomacy: A Practitioner’s Guide (London: Continuum, 2011). Roetter, Charles, The Diplomatic Art: An Informal History of World Diplomacy (Philadelphia, PA: Macrae Smith, 1963). Schwartz, Thomas, Lyndon Johnson and Europe: In the Shadow of Vietnam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). Scott, Len, Macmillan, Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 1999). Sharp, Paul and Geoffrey Wiseman (eds), The Diplomatic Corps as an Institution of International Society (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2007). Watts, Carl, Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence: An International History (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2012). Weisbrode, Kenneth, The Atlantic Century: Four Generations of Extraordinary Diplomats Who Forged America’s Vital Alliance with Europe (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2009).

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Wilford, Hugh, The CIA, the British Left and the Cold War: Calling the Tune? (London: Cass, 2003). Willson, Beckles, America’s Ambassadors to England, 1785–928 (London: John Murray, 1928). Wolfe, Robert, ‘Still Lying Abroad? On the Institution of the Resident Ambassador’, Diplomatic Studies Programme, Discussion Paper 33 (University of Leicester: Centre for the Study of Diplomacy, 1998). Young, John W. The Labour Governments, 1964–70: Volume 3, International Policy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003). ———, Twentieth-Century Diplomacy: A Case Study in British Practice, 1963–76 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

Index Abel, Rudolf 151 Acheson, Dean 50, 69, 96, 101, 103, 171, 193, 202 Adams, Charles 146 Adams, David 159 Adams, John 17 Adams, John Quincy 17 Aden 11, 106 agréation 192 Alphand, Hervé 95 Alsop, Joe 97, 173 American Museum, Bath 159 American School in London 159 American Studies programs 28, 159 Amory, John 80 Anderson, Robert 28 Annenberg, Walter 9, 25, 34, 86, 191–2 anti-ballistic missiles 98 Armed Services Committee, House 58 Armstrong, Willis 17, 20 Arnall, Ellis 160 Ascot horse races 26, 81–2, 123, 198 Ashton, Frederick 83 attachés 19, 21–3, 27–8, 30, 148, 153–4, 158–9 Attlee, Clement 84 Austin, Frank 150 Australia 105–6, 131, 135, 180, 183, 201 Austria 126, 131, 133 Ayub Khan, Mohammad 168 Bailey, David 83 Ball, George 4, 7, 45, 48, 51, 56, 97, 101, 105, 110, 167–8, 179, 182–3, 201 Bank of England 75, 104, 183 Barbour, Walworth 27

Bator, Francis 94, 113, 202 Bayard, Thomas 17 Beale, Wilson 54 Beatles, The 179 Beaton, Cecil 83 Belgium 77 Bell, Walter 151 Benton, William 184 Berlin crises 38, 50, 71, 75, 84, 102, 129, 133–4, 171, 195 Berlin, Isaiah 83 Berridge, G. R. 4–5, 76, 120, 199 Bibesco, Marthe 60 Birmingham Post 173 Blake, George 151–2 Blankenhorn, Herbert 133 Bohlen, Charles 20, 46, 50 Bond, James 7, 80–1, 197 Boothby, Robert 83 Boswell, James 27 Bourdieu, Pierre 6–7, 203 Bowles, Chester 21, 126 Box, Clyde 27–8 Brandon, Henry 35, 52, 70, 106–7, 149–50, 167–9, 175 Brandt, Willy 71 Briggs, Ellis 24, 31, 93, 181 British Army of the Rhine 106, 183–4 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) 172 British Guiana (Guyana) 57, 61, 71, 76, 78, 102, 110, 148, 182 Brown, George 45, 57, 61, 73–5, 96, 98, 106–8, 111, 124, 149–50, 174 Brown, Grover 21 Bruce, Evangeline 1, 7–9, 34–5, 80, 82–3, 183, 192–3, 197 Brzezinski, Zbigniew 167

218

Index

Buchanan, James 17, 125 Bullitt, William 193 Bundy, McGeorge 17, 20, 46–9, 53, 70, 77, 84, 95, 105, 110, 155, 175–80, 183, 186 Bundy, William 57 Burdett, William 182 Bureau of the Budget 31–3, 182 Burns, Findley 17, 37, 56 Burundi 133 Busk, Douglas 36, 43, 129, 168 Butler, Richard (‘Rab’) 52, 57, 79, 99–100, 103, 111, 178–9, 182 Caccia, Harold 8, 74–5, 179 Callaghan, James 27, 183–4, 195 Cambridge University 82, 157, 195 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament 155 Canada 129, 131, 133, 200 Caradon, Lord 62 Carter, Jimmy 167 Castle, Barbara 83 Castro, Fidel 78, 137, 148, 152, 155, 179 Central Intelligence Agency 6, 22, 48, 69, 73, 87, 96, 147–53, 157–8 Central Treaty Organization 168 Chamberlain, Austen 126 Charteris, Martin 86 Chauvel, Jean 126–7, 131, 135 China 59, 77, 102, 193 Christmas Island 76 Churchill, Winston 3, 34, 73, 84, 123, 126, 167, 176, 196 Claridges Hotel 9 Clark, Eric 130 Clark, William 21, 97, 150, 158, 173 Classen, André 121–2 Cleveland, Grover 17 Cleveland, Harlan 51 Cleveland, Stanley 23, 86 Colman, Jonathan 199 Colonial Office 76, 99

‘Committee of One Hundred’ 155 Common Market see European Economic Community Commons, House of 51–2, 57, 60, 75, 78, 85–6, 105, 109, 112, 145 see also Lords; Parliament Commonwealth 19, 99–101, 104, 109, 121, 168, 201 Commonwealth Office (1966–8) 100 Commonwealth Relations Office (to 1966) 99–100 ‘confrontation’, between Malaysia and Indonesia 3, 12, 102, 106, 182 Congo (Zaire) 3, 32, 49–50, 75, 77, 81, 102 Congress, US 52, 55–60, 145 see also Jackson Committee Congress for Cultural Freedom 147 Connally, John 57 Constantine II of Greece 123–4 consular relations 2, 5, 18, 23, 25, 31, 53–5, 141–7, 158, 170, 198 Cooper, Chester 96–7, 184–6 Cooper, Diana 35, 83, 195 Cooper, Duff 35 Country Team 22–3, 31, 153, 156, 202 Courtney, Raymond 70 Crawley, Aidan 109 credentials, presentation of 1 Cromer, Lord 75, 104, 183 Crossman, Richard 83 Crown Estate Office 36 Cuba 78, 137, 148, 152, 179 Cuban Missile Crisis 2–3, 44, 55, 62, 95, 155, 158, 200 Cudlipp, Hugh 174 cultural affairs 141, 157–61 Cyprus 22, 53–4, 99–103, 128, 133, 148, 183, 195 Czechoslovakia 98, 127, 134, 146–7, 197 Daily Express 171, 191 Daily Mirror 173–4

Index Daily Sketch 171 Daily Telegraph 9, 112, 173 Davis, John 176, 198 De Callières, François 119, 134 De Gaulle, Charles 3, 11, 45, 47, 49, 50, 54, 70–1, 75, 78, 110, 124, 195 Dean of the Diplomatic Corps 121–2, 135–6 Dean, Patrick 10, 74, 84, 97–8, 108, 183, 191, 199 Dehlavi, Samiulla Khan 131 demonstrations 155–6 Denning, Lord 87 Department of Agriculture 28 Department of Commerce 19, 28, 32, 54, 56–7, 145 Department of Defense 29–30, 44–6, 56, 96–7, 153–4 D’Erlanger, Leo 134 devaluation, of Sterling 11–12, 33, 85, 107, 113, 195, 201–2 Diego Garcia 149 Diplomatic Corps 2, 3, 86, 119–37 Disney films 160 Dobson, Alan 199 Dominican Republic 45, 49, 62 Donovan, William 149, 151 Douglas-Home, Alec (Earl of Home) 1, 11, 36, 48–9, 53, 68–72, 74, 76, 84, 95, 100–1, 110, 124, 178–9, 182, 200, 203 Duke, Angie 76 Dulles, Allen 48, 149, 152–3 Durrell, Lawrence 129 Eagleton, William 17 East of Suez position 3, 10–12, 105–11, 113, 167, 169, 174, 183, 194, 199, 201–2 Economist, The 109, 173, 173, 175, 197 economy, British 10–12, 33, 61, 75, 85, 104, 107, 109, 112–13, 148, 195, 201–2

219

Edinburgh, Philip Duke of 71, 86, 123, 146 Edwards, Donald 35 Egypt 102, 124 Eilts, Herman 20–1, 100–1 Eisenhower, Dwight 6, 18, 68, 157 El Salvador 137 Elizabeth II, Queen 1, 8, 56–7, 76, 86, 121–6, 128, 130–1, 136, 177, 180, 192 Ellis, Sylvia 199 Ellison, James 47 Encounter magazine 147, 152, 157–8, 160, 174 English-Speaking Union 160 Epsom horse races 71, 81 Ericson, Richard 20 Estabrook, Robert 175 European Coal-Steel Community 6 European Economic Community (EEC) 2, 3, 10–12, 47, 49, 51, 54, 56, 68, 70–1, 75, 78–9, 93, 110, 112, 133, 147–8, 168, 170–1, 182, 184, 194–5, 202 European Launcher Development Organisation 74 Evening Standard 171 Fairbanks, Douglas 144 Faisal, King 124 Federal Aviation Office 31–2 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 87, 151 Fleming, Ann 83 Fleming, Ian 7, 80, 195 Fonteyn, Margot 80 Foreign and Commonwealth Office (after 1968) 17–18, 100, 191–2, 197 Foreign Office (to 1968) 8, 10, 17–18, 35–6, 44, 47, 52, 67, 70, 74, 77, 95, 100, 109, 111, 122, 147, 151, 184, 194–5, 197

220

Index

Foreign Service, US 5, 17, 19, 23–9, 32–3, 49, 133, 142, 148, 181, 193 Fowler, Joe 183 Fox, James 83 France 3, 6, 10, 47, 49, 77, 95, 113, 126–7, 129, 133, 144, 193 Frank, Joseph 145 Franks, Oliver 8 Freeman, John 80, 98, 191 Frost, David 83 Fulbright Program 157, 159 Fulbright, William 41, 159, 196 Gaitskell, Hugh 70, 75, 96, 147, 195 Galbraith, John Kenneth 24–5, 27, 44, 59, 62, 125, 127, 130, 147, 150, 158, 193 Gallacher, William 144–5 Galloway, William 20, 23, 25, 98 Garthoff, Raymond 57 Germany, West 6, 10, 12, 41, 71, 78–80, 97, 106, 133–4, 144, 171 Ghana 100 Giles, Frank 195 Glasgow Herald 173 Gluck, Maxwell 203 Goldwater, Barry 124 Gordon Walker, Patrick 2, 73 Gore-Booth, Paul 2, 10, 17, 20, 27, 47, 55, 75, 77 Government Communication Headquarters 148, 152 Graham, Billy 60, 160 Graham, Kay 175 Graver, William 151 Greece 100–2, 123 Greene, Graham 160 Grimond, Joseph 83 Hagglof, Gunnar 121–2, 128, 136 Hailsham, Lord 182 Hair, musical 81 Haley, William 173

Hamilton, Hamish 79 Hammarskjöld, Dag 123 Hare, Ray 101 Harlech, Lord see Ormsby-Gore, David Harriman, Averell 7, 51, 58, 100, 182, 192–3 Hartman, Arthur 17 Hayman, Peter 17–18 Hays, Wayne 33, 59 Healey, Denis 27, 80, 106, 108, 152 Heath, Edward 57, 68, 76, 110, 124, 182 Heinz, Jack 159 Henderson, Nicholas 83 Herald Tribune 170 Herfurt, Jack 144 Herter, Christian 29 Holt, Harold 180, 201 Holy Loch 76, 171 Home, Earl of see Douglas-Home, Alec Hong Kong 148 House of Representatives 59 Hoyer Millar, Frederick 1, 8 Hughes, Thomas 150 Humphrey, Hubert 34, 57, 184, 194–5 Hussein, King 124 Hutton, Barbara 34 Indonesia 3, 12, 102, 106, 182 Information Research Department 147 intelligence, secret 2, 5, 147–53 Iran 150 Iraq 145 Ireland, Northern 19, 81 Irving, Al 109 Israel 58, 98, 151 Italy 144, 193 Jackson Committee, of US Senate 5, 22, 29–31, 37, 43–4, 48, 53, 62, 181, 194 Jagan, Cheddi 78, 148 Japan 10

Index Javits, Jacob 79 Jenkins, Roy 27, 83, 152, 195 Johnson, Lyndon 2, 7, 9–11, 33, 46–7, 49–50, 52–6, 72–3, 78, 98–9, 103, 105, 107, 113, 125, 171–2, 176, 178–80, 182–4, 194, 199–201 Joint Chiefs of Staff 30 Joint Intelligence Committee 150, 152 Jones, Lewis 21, 27 Kaiser, Philip 2, 17, 21, 23, 27, 47, 55, 78, 85, 103, 106–7, 109, 152, 156, 181, 192, 197 Keating, Tom 59 Keele University 159 Keeler, Christine 86, 175 Kelly, John 145 Kennedy, Edward 174 Kennedy, John F. 2, 7–8, 11, 18, 24, 29–30, 44–9, 51, 53–6, 68–70, 75, 77, 87, 95–9, 133, 149, 158, 161, 171, 176–8, 196–7, 202 Kennedy, Joseph 18, 193 Kennedy, Robert 182 Kennedy-Onassis, Jacqueline 26, 35, 56, 195 Kennedy Round trade talks 94 Kent, John 81 Kent, Sherman 73, 96 Khrushchev, Nikita 109, 177 Killick, John 107 Kissinger, Henry 24, 98, 180, 200, 203 King, Cecil 2, 173–4, 192 King, Horace 60 King, Martin Luther 151 Kosygin, Alexei 47–8, 184–6 Kraft, Joe 170 Krys, Sheldon 26, 74, 85 Kuwait 145 Labouisse, Harry 101 Lancaster, Nancy 83 Lankford, Nelson 3

221

Laos 32, 51, 57, 68, 102, 149, 200 Lawrence, Abbott 37, 143 Lawson, Nigel 81 League of Nations 3–4 Leddy, John 202 Lemnitzer, Lyman 160 Letters of Credence and Recall 1 Lewandowski, Janusz 61 Liberia 123 Libya 100 Lincoln, Abraham 175 Lincoln, Robert 158 Lloyd, Selwyn 109 Lodge, Henry Cabot 172 Longford, Lord 79 Lords, House of 85 Luce, Clare Boothe 142 Luce, Henry 170–1 Luxembourg 127, 130 MacArthur, Douglas 50 Macleod, Iain 68 Macmillan, Dorothy 79–80 Macmillan, Harold 10–11, 35, 47, 49, 51, 53, 55, 68–72, 75, 77, 86–7, 95–7, 109–11, 133, 145, 171, 176–8, 182–3, 195 Macomber, William 59, 93 Makarios III, Archbishop 100 Makins, Roger 161 Malaysia 3, 10, 12, 102, 106, 182 Malcolm, Dugald 122–3 Malta 154 ‘Marigold’ talks 61, 73 Marine Corps 23, 154–6 Marshall Aid Programme 6, 20, 145 Matlock, Jack 199 Mattingly, Garrett 120 Maudling, Reginald 80 Mayers, David 199 McCain, John 28, 80 McCloy, John 48, 80 McCone, John 149, 152–3 McGhee, George 55, 58, 125, 128

222

Index

McGinnis, Edgar 28 McNamara, Robert 46, 56, 59, 69–70, 195 McSweeney, John 109 media, mass 2–3, 49, 83, 96, 141, 148, 151, 157–8, 167–76, 185–6, 196 Melissen, Jan 141 Mellon, Ailsa 7 Mellon, Paul 7 Metropolitan Police, London 154 Meyer, Christopher 125, 195 MI5 147, 152 MI6 73, 147–8, 150–2 Middleton, Drew 170 Military Assistance Advisory Group 30, 153–4 Ministry of Works 36 Monnet, Jean 6, 80 Monroe, James 17 Montgomery of Alamein, Earl 84 Moore, Henry 160 Mozambique 104 multilateral diplomacy 3–4 Multilateral Force (MLF) 22, 49, 51, 70–1, 77–8, 102, 134, 171, 179 Murrow, Edward 158, 173–4 Myers, De 23 Nassau conference 70–1, 171 National Security Agency 148, 150, 152 National Security Council 50 Nehru, Jawaharlal 127 Netherlands 131 Neustadt, Richard 5, 48, 52, 69–70, 111, 202 New Statesman 191 New York Times 152, 169 New Zealand 135 Newsweek 175 Nicolson, Harold 175–6, 203 Nigeria 52, 61, 131 Nitze, Paul 56, 154 Nixon, Richard 9, 24, 48, 98, 176, 180–1, 191–2, 198

Non-Proliferation talks and Treaty 70, 77, 170 North Atlantic Free Trade Area 79 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) 3–4, 22, 33, 45, 47, 49–50, 59, 70, 100, 102, 104, 110, 133–4, 153, 160, 168, 170–1, 174, 179, 193, 195, 201 North Korea 137 Nureyev, Rudolf 80 O’Brien, Leslie 75 Office of Strategic Services 6–7 ‘offset costs’ 48, 80, 173 Ormsby-Gore, David (Lord Harlech) 10, 37, 46, 51, 68–9, 80, 95, 97, 177 Osgood, Thomas 27 O’Shaughnessy, Elim 21 Oxford University 82, 172 Pakistan 131, 168 Palliser, Michael 75, 94, 107, 180, 192 Parliament, British 26, 123, 132, 182, 196 Pentagon see Department of Defense Persian Gulf 10–11, 105–8 Philby, Kim 151–2 Philippines 135 Phipps, Diana 193 Pilgrims Society 51, 74, 82, 160 Plowden Report 181 Polaris missile 11, 70–1, 171, 177 Portugal 58, 104 Priest, Andrew 70 Profumo scandal 53, 75, 80, 86–7, 97, 151, 170, 175, 177 propaganda 5, 135, 144, 157–61, 169, 172–3, 198–9 public diplomacy see propaganda Quaroni, Pietro 135 Queen Mother, Elizabeth the 125

Index Rabibhadana, Prince Pierng 131–2 Radziwill, Ladislaw 76, 85 Radziwill, Lee 76, 196 Rana, Kishan 134 Redgrave, Vanessa 156 Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) 11, 49, 100–1, 103–4, 106, 111, 113, 128–9, 168, 193, 201 Ricketts, Claude 171 Rodzinski, Witold 129 Rogers, William 180, 192 Romania 77 Roosevelt, Archie 87, 96, 150 Roosevelt, Eleanor 60 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 18, 95, 167, 181 Roosevelt, Franklin, D., Jr. 182 Rostow, Walter 46, 48, 97, 185–6 Rothschild, Evelyn de 146 Rush, Richard 1, 37, 143, 198 Rusk, Dean 7–9, 23, 31, 45, 47–53, 56, 62, 72, 74–5, 78, 86–7, 93–5, 98, 103, 107–10, 144, 151, 154, 168, 178, 183–4, 193, 196–7 Russell, Bertrand 155 Russell, Lord John 175 Saarinen, Eero 18 Salinger, Pierre 175 Salisbury, 5th Marquess of 84–5 Salisbury-Jones, Guy 1, 122 Sandys, Duncan 99–100, 103 Santa Cruz, Victor 134 Saudi Arabia 124, 146 Schaetzel, Robert 45, 56 Schlesinger, Arthur 57, 202 Schreiber, Ricardo 133 Schwarzenberg, Johannes 133, 195 Scotland Yard 156 Seitz, Raymond 24, 80–1, 124, 203 Senate Foreign Relations Committee 43, 59, 203 Seward, William Henry 175

223

Shrimpton, Jean 83 Singapore 10–11, 105–6 Skoufis, Peter 25 Skybolt missile 5, 69–70, 193, 202 Smirnovsky, Mikhail 134 Smith, Don 21, 85 Smith, Ian 104 Smith, Robert 23 Soblen, Robert 151 Sofer, Sasson 120 Soldatov, Aleksandr 132–4 South Africa 104 South Arabia 102 South Korea 135 South-East Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO) 168 South West Africa 100 Souvanna Phouma, Prince 200 Spearman, Alexander 80 Special Branch 156 special missions 3, 167–8, 175, 181–6, 200–1, 203 ‘special relationship’, concept of 2–3, 8, 10–12 Spender, Stephen 193 Spiers, Ronald 17, 52 St. John Stevas, Norman 79 Stalin, Joseph 147 Stamp, Terence 83 State Department 5, 10, 18–19, 22–5, 28–33, 35, 43–6, 49–52, 54, 56–7, 59–62, 69–70, 74, 78, 97, 99, 102, 107, 109, 112, 122, 127, 141, 142, 144, 154, 159, 170, 180–2, 185, 192–3, 202 State visits 123–4 Stearns, Monteagle 17 Stevenson, Adlai 71, 196–7 Stewart, Michael 51, 62, 73, 98, 172, 192, 197 Stoddart, Jonathan 20 Strategic Arms Limitation Talks 57 Suez crisis 5, 35, 61, 104 Sulzberger, Cyrus 173

224

Index

summit (leaders’ level) conferences 3–4, 49, 53–5, 67–70, 72–3, 75, 78, 97, 99, 101, 105, 125–33, 167–8, 171, 175–81, 186, 198, 200–1, 203 Sunay, Cevdet 124 Sunday Telegraph 170 Sunday Times 106, 167, 195 ‘Sunflower’ talks 47, 184–6 Sussex University 157 Switzerland 131 Symington, Stuart 50 Tanzania 131 see also Zanzibar Taylor, Maxwell 195 telegram and telephone communications 51–5 Test Ban Treaty 53, 71, 77, 124, 182 Thailand 131, 135 Thatcher, Margaret 159 Thayer, Charles 130 Thompson, Llewellyn 46, 119 Thorneycroft, Peter 70 Thorpe, Jeremy 124 Time-Life magazine 170–1 Times, The 9, 134–5, 173, 195 Tomkins, Edward 74 Toon, Malcolm 109 tourism 5, 127, 142–5 trade promotion 141, 145–6 trades unions 27, 83, 85, 113, 147–8 Treasury, US 19, 30, 56, 183 Tree, Penelope 83 Trend, Burke 94, 184 Trevor-Roper, Hugh 80 Tubman, William 123 Turkey 100–2 Tweedy, Bronson 150 Tyler, Bill 45 UNESCO 184 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) 18, 47, 67, 69, 84,

86, 95–6, 109, 124, 127, 129, 132–4, 148–51, 154, 157, 170, 177, 184, 197, 199 United Nations 4, 62, 72, 78, 81, 100–2, 168, 195, 200 University of London 28 US Air Force 22, 27–8, 30, 153–4 US Army 19, 27–8, 30, 56, 153 US Information Agency (USIA) 18–19, 32, 56, 112, 141, 148, 156–60, 169, 173–4 US Navy 22, 30, 56–7, 76–7, 81, 153 US Travel Service 143–4 Van Buren, Martin 17 Van Roijen, Herman 131, 192 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations 4, 18–19, 65, 120 Vietnam War 2, 3, 4, 10–12, 26, 33, 46–7, 49–52, 56–7, 61, 72–5, 78–9, 97–9, 102, 105, 107, 111, 123, 135, 148, 155–8, 168–74, 178–80, 184–6, 192–4, 199–201 Villard, Henry 29 Voice of America 150, 157 Ward Stephen 87 Warner, Frederick 195 Watson, Adam 137 Watts, Carl 99, 103–4 Weidenfeld, George 80 Weisbrode, Kenneth 21, 46 Wheeler-Bennett, John 109 White, Dick 73, 110, 152 Whitney, Jock 35, 68 Will, Hubert 151 Williams, Marcia 170 Williams, Mennen 58, 62 Wilson, Harold 8, 11–12, 27, 47–8, 51–5, 61, 72–5, 77–9, 94, 98–9, 101, 103–8, 111–12, 124–5, 128–9, 168–71, 174–6, 178–81, 183–5, 191, 194, 197, 200–1

Index Wilson, Peter 83 Wilson, Woodrow 181, 199 Winant, John 167 Winfield House 1, 5, 7, 34–7, 55–6, 142, 156–7, 168, 173, 178, 182–3, 192 Wisner, Frank 148–52 Worsthorne, Peregrine 80, 170 Wright, Oliver 72 Wright, Patrick 94–5 Wriston, Henry 29

Yemen 102–3 Yorkshire Post 173 Zambia 104 Zanzibar 102 Zoppi, Vittorio 133 Zuckerman, Solly 36, 80, 99

225