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Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Gen. Vernon Walters
VERNON A. WALTERS
Awarded by
President George Bush
November 18, 1991
As a soldier and statesman, General Vernon Walters has made service to his country his life's work. He served six Presidents with distinction during a half century of kaleidoscopic change, from World War II through the long Cold War to the fall of the Berlin Wall. He has served on the battlefields of Europe and in the councils of NATO, at the UN and CIA, as Ambassador and aide to Presidents. This extraordinary adventurer and intellectual has offered his diplomatic, linguistic, and tactical skills to the cause of world peace and individual liberty. America honors this steadfast defender of our interests and ideals, this true champion of freedom.
Biography
Vernon Walters, Legend of Diplomacy, Dies at 85
He was at Nixons' side during Caracas riot
February 14, 2002
The Nixon Foundation was deeply saddened to learn of the death of a great American and friend of President and Mrs. Nixon, Lt. Gen. Vernon A. Walters.
Below are obituaries of Gen. Walters from the Associated Press and Reuters news agencies.
Walters Served Seven Presidents
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- Retired Lt. Gen. Vernon A. Walters,
an aide to seven presidents and a
Vernon Walters, center, interprets during meeting between Special Assistant to President Truman Averell Harriman and Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, 1951.
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and Germany, has died. He was 85.
Walters died Sunday of undisclosed causes at Good Samaritan Medical Center in West Palm Beach.
The internationally decorated Army veteran had a long career in public service. He helped shape the Marshall Plan after World War II, served as deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency during Watergate, briefed Henry Kissinger on the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War and became a member of the NATO Standing Group.
"He rose to excellence in every profession he entered -- soldier, intelligence officer, diplomat," CIA Director George Tenet said Thursday.
"With his remarkable knowledge of the world, and his passion to see it changed for the better, he will remain for us an example of what the very best in our field must always be," Tenet said.
Walters remained involved in government service into the early 1990s. Asked in an interview with The Associated Press in 1991 what kept him going after 50 years of service, the longtime Cold Warrior replied: "My perception that the United States was the only real chance freedom had to survive in the world."
Longtime friend Gen. Alexander Haig called Walters "a man of towering integrity" and "one of the most remarkable public servants I have ever known."
Born in New York City, Walters' family moved to Europe when he was 6. There he learned in French, Spanish, Italian and German. He later became fluent in Portuguese, Chinese and Russian.
Walters' linguistic skills and photographic memory opened doors for him during his 35-year military career and later diplomatic work.
His translation of one speech by President Nixon drew the attention of French President Charles De Gaulle.
"He said to the President, 'Nixon, you gave a magnificent speech, but your interpreter was eloquent,'" Haig said.
In the 1991 interview, Walters said one of his most memorable moments was a 1957 tour with then-Vice President Nixon to South America.
Walters and RN at a press conference in Venezuela
While driving past anti-U.S. protesters in Caracas, Venezuela, Nixon's car was attacked by a shower of stones. One of the projectiles smashed Walters' window, spraying him with glass and cutting him in the mouth.
According to Walters, Nixon told him, "Spit that glass out -- you are going to have a lot more talking to do in Spanish for me today."
Walters also worked for President Eisenhower as a staff assistant, arranged trips abroad for President Kennedy and served President Reagan as a diplomatic troubleshooter.
As an aide to President Truman, he was the note-taker when the president fired Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War.
He was in Tehran in 1953 when the CIA staged a coup in support of the shah of Iran and in Brazil when a group of generals staged a coup in 1964.
During secret negotiations between the United States and North Vietnam, he had the task of smuggling Kissinger, then Nixon's national security adviser, into Paris.
Walters was deputy director of the CIA from 1972 to 1976 and acting director for a period in 1973.
From 1981 to 1985, he was ambassador at large in the Reagan administration, visiting more than 100 countries. He was ambassador to the United Nations from 1985 to 1988 and then ambassador to Germany until 1991.
Walters, who never married, is to be buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery early next month.
Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
He Served As U.S. Ambassador at Bonn, UN
 WEST PALM BEACH (Reuters) - Retired Army Lt. Gen. Vernon Walters, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and globe-trotting envoy for presidents since World War II, has died. He was 85.
Walters died on Sunday at Good Samaritan Medical Center in West Palm Beach, Florida.
A former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency and an accomplished linguist, Walters spent nearly four years under former President Ronald Reagan as the chief U.S. representative at the United Nations.
He was later tapped by former President George H.W. Bush to head the U.S. Embassy in Bonn, a key appointment at a time when new Kremlin policies threatened to loosen ties between Washington and some of its traditional European allies.
"I was deeply saddened to learn of the death of Vernon Walters," CIA director George Tenet said in a press release. "An honest patriot of enormous talent, his was an exceptionally rich life of service to country and humanity."
Walters, whose memoirs were appropriately titled "Silent Missions," met many of the world's heads of state and government but the sessions were almost always held behind closed doors and their results classified.
Even after taking up his U.N. post in May 1985, he made unpublicized trips, including several to Damascus to try to win the release of Americans held hostage in neighboring Lebanon.
Working for almost every U.S. administration over more than four decades, "Dick" Walters, as he was known to friends, was close to events in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and South and Central America.
Walters paid at least one secret visit to Cuba's President Fidel Castro and was an undercover envoy for then-Secretary of State Henry Kissenger in peace negotiations with the North Vietnamese in the early 1970s.
A big, bluff man with a rapid-fire delivery, Walters was perhaps best known for his ability to speak seven foreign languages -- French, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch and Russian
UNDERGROUND RAILWAY BUFF
It was once reported that Walters liked to slip into a country unannounced before important discussions in order to ride the buses and brush up on local slang and intonations.
One life-long hobby was the study of underground railway systems -- appropriate for one who spent much of his career in the subterranean world of secret diplomacy. He owned a large collection of maps of the subway networks that snake beneath many of the world's major cities.
Walters was born in New York Jan. 3, 1917, the son of an immigrant British insurance salesman. He lived in Britain and France with his family between the ages of six and 16 before returning to the United States and going to work as an insurance claims adjuster and investigator.
With the onset of World War II, he joined the U.S. Army and in 1942, due to his proficiency in German, was given his first intelligence assignment -- infiltrating a group of suspected Nazi spies.
He entered Rome in 1944 as an aide to Gen. Mark Clark and once gave a ride on a tank to a 13-year-old boy who later became Morocco's King Hassan II.
Walters later served as an aide to W. Averell Harriman at the Marshall Plan headquarters in Paris. And in 1951, as a lieutenant colonel, he returned to Paris with Gen. Dwight Eisenhower to help set up the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in Europe.
In the 1950s, his linguistic abilities brought him special assignments as an aide and interpreter to Presidents Truman, Eisenhower and Nixon. He interpreted for Truman at key meetings with South American allies and traveled with him to the Pacific in 1950 as the president sought to make peace with Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commander of United Nations forces in Korea.
When Eisenhower became president, Walters served as an aide at a series of summit conferences.
President Richard M. Nixon appointed Walters deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency in May 1971.
A lifelong bachelor, Walters was a devout Roman Catholic and frequent churchgoer. As a teetotaler, he made his way through endless diplomatic cocktail parties nursing nothing more potent than a soft drink or glass of club soda.
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Medal History
