閱讀弗農·阿·沃爾特斯 Vernon A. Walters在小说之家的作品!!! | |||
弗農·阿·沃爾特斯，美國人。美國中央情報局前副局長。
作者從五十年代起，曾擔任美國歷屆總統翻譯，並陪同他們多次參加首腦會議和其它重要出訪活動，還曾陪同馬歇爾、哈裏曼等政界重要人士參加一些外交活動。一九六八年至一九七二年，在他擔任駐法國武官期間，奉尼剋鬆總統和總統國傢安全事務助理基辛格之命，負責安排美國與中國、越南的秘密談判。
《秘密使命》本書是美國中央情報局前副局長弗農·阿·沃爾特斯的回憶錄。選擇了本書中有關外交活動及其它重要事件的章節，輯錄翻譯出版。書中所描述的都是歷史上關鍵時刻的情況，作者以其親身經歷提供了背景情況、側面材料以及外交場合的趣聞、秘聞等，具有一定的史料參考價值。
六年戰爭使整個歐洲陷於癱瘓。德國的長期占領，盟軍的轟炸和解放前夕的激戰，幾乎把這個大陸摧毀殆盡。一九四八年，籠罩着歐洲的氣氛衹是一片絶望。歷屆政府接踵倒臺，持續不斷幾個嚴鼕，特別是歐洲人深感不能從這個泥潭中自拔的心情，嚴重地動搖了歐洲各國人民復興本國的决心。
歐洲工業設施被摧毀，大批熟練工人由於戰爭而四處分散；經歷了六年緊張的戰時生産，機器設備已經破料不過，而且缺乏零件；所有這些問題使歐洲各國無法自行補充機床，更新設施或生産足夠的商品來償付恢復工業所需要的原料。可以作為新的投資或用以重建工廠的資金少得可憐。大部分歐洲貨幣不是不能兌換，就是按完全不合理的匯率兌換。對貨幣流通實行財政限製的情況幾乎普遍存在。各國都企圖關起門來自己搞建設，對於鄰國在幹些什麽都不很關心。戰爭已結束三年，食物還幾乎到處都實行配給。由於交通中斷和分配制度失靈，農業機械化不足和肥料短缺，歐洲各國經濟的生産率普遍下降。
Background
Walters was born in New York City. His father was a British immigrant and insurance salesman. From age 6, Walters lived in Britain and France with his family. At 16, he returned to the United States and worked for his father as an insurance claims adjuster and investigator.
His formal education beyond elementary school consisted entirely of boarding school instruction at Stonyhurst College, a 400-year-old Jesuit school in Lancashire, England. He did not attend a university. In later years, he seemed to enjoy reflecting on the fact that he had risen fairly high and accomplished much despite a near-total lack of formal academic training.
He was fluent in French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese as well as his native English. He also spoke German fluently but, as he joked, inaccurately, and knew the basics of several others. His simultaneous translation of a speech by United States President Richard Nixon in France prompted French President Charles de Gaulle to say to Nixon, "You gave a magnificent speech, but your interpreter was eloquent."
Military career
1940s and 50
Walters joined the Army in 1941 and was soon commissioned. He served in Africa and Italy during World War II. He served as Link Official Between the commands of Brazilian Expeditionary Force and U.S. Fifth Army, earning medals for distinguished military and intelligence achievements.
His served as an aide and interpreter for several Presidents. He was at President Harry S. Truman's side as an interpreter in key meetings with America’s Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking Latin American allies. His language skills helped him win Truman's confidence, and he accompanied the President to the Pacific in the early 1950s, serving as a key aide in Truman's unsuccessful effort to reach a reconciliation with an insubordinate General Douglas MacArthur, the Commander of United Nations forces in Korea.
In Europe in the 1950s, Walters served President Dwight Eisenhower and other top US officials as a translator and aide at a series of NATO summit conferences. He also worked in Paris at Marshall Plan headquarters and helped set up the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in Europe. He was with then-Vice President Nixon in 1958 when an anti-American crowd stoned their car in Caracas, Venezuela. Walters suffered facial cuts from flying glass. The Vice President avoided injury.
1960
In the 1960s, Walters served as a U.S. military attaché in France, Italy, and Brazil. Two decades later he was a high-profile U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. From April 1989 until August 1991, during German Reunification, he was Ambassador to West Germany. He also served as a roving ambassador, performing sensitive diplomatic missions that included talks in Cuba, Syria, and elsewhere. He was sent to Morocco to meet discreetly with PLO officials and warn them against any repetition of the 1973 murders of two American diplomats in the region. (In a much earlier visit to Morocco, he had given a ride on a tank to a young boy who later became King Hassan II.)
While serving as a military attaché in Paris from 1967 to 1972, Walters played a role in secret peace talks with North Vietnam. He arranged to smuggle National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger into France for secret meetings with a senior North Vietnamese official, and then smuggle him out again. He accomplished this by borrowing a private airplane from an old friend, French President Georges Pompidou.
1970
President Nixon appointed Walters as Deputy Director for Central Intelligence (DDCI) in 1972. (Walters also served as Acting DCI for two months in mid-1973.) During his four years as DDCI, he worked closely with four successive Directors as the Agency—and the nation—confronted such major international developments as the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, the subsequent oil crisis, the turbulent end of the Vietnam conflict, and the Chilean military coup against the Allende government. According to a close colleague, Walters also "averted a looming catastrophe" for the CIA in connection with the Watergate scandal:
Despite numerous importunings from on high, [Walters] flatly refused to...cast a cloak of national security over the guilty parties. At the critical moment, he... refused to involve the Agency, and bluntly informed the highest levels of the executive [branch] that further insistence from that quarter would result in his immediate resignation. And the rest is history.
Walters himself reflected on those challenging days in his 1978 autobiography, Silent Missions:
I told [President Nixon’s White House counsel] that on the day I went to work at the CIA I had hung on the wall of my office a color photograph showing the view through the window of my home in Florida…When people asked me what it was, I told them [this] was what was waiting [for me] if anyone squeezed me too hard.
Diplomatic career
Beginning in 1981, Walters served under Ronald Reagan as roving ambassador. He was then United States Ambassador to the United Nations from 1985 to 1989 and ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany from 1989 to 1991. Here he was responsible on behalf of the United States for the preparations of the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany.
Retirement and death
During the 1990s, after he had retired from public life, Walters worked as a business consultant and was active on the lecture circuit. He wrote another book, The Mighty and the Meek (published in 2001), which profiled famous people with whom he had worked during his life. In 2001, he gave an interview (in French language) in the mockumentary Dark side of the Moon by William Karel.
On November 18, 1991, he was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George H. W. Bush.
Walters died in 2002. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.
In popular culture
Walters was portrayed by Garrick Hagon in the 2002 BBC production of Ian Curteis's controversial The Falklands Play.