Public Diplomacy Association of America

by Michael Schneider

Paul Blackburn’s JOT class, held in connection with the DOS junior officers. USIA officers are in capital letters. FIRST ROW: Dwight Mason; JOEL ROCHOW; Bruce Hirshorn; Edward Richards; Frederick Ashley; Gordon Streeb; Keith Smith; Joseph Lake; Arnold Nachmanoff; LEONARD BALDYGA; James Ragan.
SECOND ROW: Chester Beaman; Linda Irick; JOAN DICKIE; Lauren Jackson; MARY FATTU; Lois Matteson; MARY ANN RANEY; MARJORIE MARILLEY RANSOM; ANNE HENEHAN OMAN; Joan Thielbar; Sandra Gransow; Thomas Duffield.
THIRD ROW: BARRY BALLOW; Bruce Kinsey; John Kelley; Laurence Anderson; Godfrey Harris; CHARLES COURTNEY; LEON LEDERER; Robert Coe; Edward Kreuser; John Boritas.
FOURTH ROW: Arthur Plaxton; Robert W. Smith; ALBERT BALL; Wilfred Declercq; PAUL BLACKBURN; Harry Gilmore; Martin Rosenberg; Alexander Sleght; Arthur Klampert; DALE MORRISON; Leroy Debold; ROBERT MCLAUGHLIN; Robert Kohn; Thomas Rohlen; PETER WOLCOTT.
FIFTH ROW: KENNETH WIMMEL; William Humphrey; William Weingarten; Townsend Friedman; FRANK STARBUCK; John D. Coffman; Ralph Oman; HAROLD RADDAY; Duane Butcher; Lewis Macfarlane; Robert Morley; Richard Greene; TALBOTT HUEY; James Newcomer; ROBERT GEIS.

In almost 60 years since we met as JOTs, I never saw Paul Blackburn miss an opportunity to encounter new ideas, engage others in a discussion, or take on a creative project. He always looked forward through mastery of the traditions and languages of other cultures.

We met in October of ’62. Our class was sworn on the day JFK announced our military embargo on Cuba. Russian ships steamed toward Havana; the world held its breath in a nuclear standoff; and we all wondered what we had signed up for.

Paul and I both went to our first posts at about the same time; he to Bangkok and I to Calcutta. We next worked together in DC in 1968 when he was Special Assistant for Dan Oleksiw, Assistant Director for East Asia and the Pacific. I doubled up as media coordinator for the Vietnam Working Group and special projects officer for the region. Times were fraught – the Tet offensive fundamentally changed the winning-losing calculus in the eyes of publics.

“Big Dan” was a demanding boss and could be blunt, but he also valued and cared for his very talented staff in IAF – Policy officer Mort Smith, then Dave Hitchcock and Ike Izenberg, desk officers Jodie Lewinsohn, Stanton Jue, Len Robuck, Ted Liu, Sandy Marlow, and Otis Hays, Jim Richardson, David Hakim, Patsy Redding, Delores Brabham, and others such as Sandy Bruckner, who started her career in IAF. Paul helped smooth the way for Dan and for the rest of us. He had a whimsical sense of humor and an uncanny capacity to preclude conflict in that pressure cooker office.

There was rebellion across the nation over Vietnam; many in the foreign affairs community also protested an antiquated and rigid bureaucracy. State created the dissent channel; USIA Director Frank Shakespeare created a Young Officers’ Policy Panel in which Paul played a leading role. He always asked why – or why not – depending on the issue. In one instance, he persuaded the Agency leadership to allow us to review a $300,000 contract with Arthur D. Little (in FY ’70 dollars) to examine and propose the reorganization of USIA. Paul’s analysis led to the cancellation of the contract, which we thought would be a waste of precious funds.

We shared academic experience in the Ph.D. program at American University. Paul had a penchant for concepts and a wonderful ability to write quickly and effectively. I saw this skill daily as his colleague in the Agency’s office of policy guidance in the late 70s.

Paul spent most of his 40-year career in four East Asian posts – Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, and China. Bea Camp remembers a time in Paul’s tour as PAO Bangkok (1984-88):

Paul practically bounced into a room. He was outgoing, caring, knowledgeable; he embodied public diplomacy. When I worked for him in Bangkok, USIS Thailand was actively involved in issues ranging from narcotics to refugees, economic development, POW/MIAs, American studies, education, and cultural programs. Paul oversaw it all with verve; working with him was fun.

For all the big diplomatic events we were part of, it’s the off-beat ones that stick with me:

Paul was enthusiastic about USIA’s new WorldNet television channel; we put up a huge TVRO (television receive-only) dish on the USIS compound in Bangkok, with monks coming to bless the installation, and plunged into programs. The one that drew the most attention was a semi-finalist for Miss Universe, a Thai woman living in Los Angeles. Paul describes in his ADST history how this WorldNet program, which was viewed skeptically in Washington for its fluffy content, dominated all the Thai channels that night and the print media the next day, a public affairs coup. I mainly remember how we managed to disguise Miss Pui’s weak Thai language skills via an off-camera interpreter who helped her understand and respond to the questions. Thai audiences reacted very positively to this young woman who movingly described how she missed her homeland while expressing her love and appreciation for the United States.

On another occasion, we arranged a reception on the Chao Phraya River, realizing only after all the guests had boarded and the boat left the dock that there was no liquor on board. Quickly dubbed “the cruise without booze,” the evening was saved from disaster as Paul marshalled the staff to repair the situation. In less than 30 minutes, a fleet of small boats were pulling up to our craft delivering Johnny Walker and other necessities for a diplomatic reception in Thailand. He made things happen.

Long after our time in Bangkok, Paul and I remained connected, sharing an affinity for Thailand. One year, at a Loy Krathong party we hosted at our house in Arlington, Paul and another guest somehow discovered they had met five decades earlier when he was a young USIS officer and she a Thai high school student headed for an AFS year in Alabama. She remembered nervously asking him to show her on the map the small town where she was headed, and her consternation when he couldn’t find it. She later became a State Department interpreter while Paul went on to a long and distinguished diplomatic career.”

One of Paul’s initiatives as PAO in Japan from ’92 to ’96 had regional impact. According to Don Bishop, Paul’s Deputy in Beijing: “…. the Seminar on East Asian Security (SEAS, with a SNEAS sub-initiative) — lasted probably two decades, bringing together leading thinkers on national security from around the region, giving them an opportunity to visit neighboring countries. As the group traveled, visits to US forces in, say, Hawaii, Japan, and Korea, were combined with meetings with regional government people. While I was in Beijing, SEAS and SNEAS came to China, which in earlier years of the Seminar had been omitted from the schedule.”

Paul became Minister-Counselor for Public Affairs in Beijing from 1997 to 2000, three critical years in US-China bilateral relations. Among other challenges, he had to deal with the errant U.S. bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. He recalled in his oral history:

“….As the demonstration got under way that afternoon, I rode my bike to a street corner by the Embassy where I could watch what was going on – all the while trying to look like a harmless senior-citizen foreigner….” Weaving throughout the demonstrators, the city near the embassy a powder keg, Paul was able to gain a sense of the crowd for Embassy reports.

Don Bishop recalls,

After the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade was bombed by a ‘NATO’ aircraft (a B-2 from Missouri) in 1999, there were furious demonstrations in front of the three American Embassy compounds each night for some days. Three ranks of Chinese police with interlocked arms at the chancery gate barely held them back. At the USIS compound, shattered glass filled our offices.

When the danger eased and American and Chinese staff gathered for the first time in our conference room, Paul showed the Chinese copies of the front pages of People’s Daily and the Washington Post, pointing out how different the reporting was. Our local staff, staying at home during the disturbances, were on edge because they had only seen angry Chinese media reports. He told us all that the different coverage showed the distance between nations that we had to bridge with our Public Diplomacy programs. It was effective. That afternoon, he outlined a plan for an immediate series of small conferences with Beijing’s many government, Party, and university institutes, many associated with ministries, all now hesitating over the future of US-China relations. A Foreign Ministry official later told me that it was Paul’s initiative that restored dialog and began easing the tensions.

[Paul believed that] ….working in China was tremendously stimulating. The energy and excitement of the place were palpable. Though it retains many of the unpleasant characteristics of a totalitarian dictatorship, the country is changing so fast and in so many ways that its future directions are one of the great stories of our age, a fact that accounts for the presence of legions of foreign correspondents there. Every day I would wake up expecting – and unusually finding – some mind-blowing and major change occurring right under my nose….

….{I]n USIS, we pushed the envelope in many ways. For instance, with ‘rule of law’ being a priority of the Chinese leadership, our post, our speakers, and Fulbright Lecturers organized conferences on such topics as… legal education in America and the relationship of law and the media….

A recent note from a junior FSO, Chaniqua Nelson, represents Paul’s impact on so many younger professionals:

I had the honor and privilege of working with Dr. Paul Blackburn at the U.S. Department of State in the FOIA office. One thing that was so awesome about Dr. Blackburn was that although he was extremely accomplished, he was so kind, nice, and not pretentious at all. He had a way of making anyone he talked to feel valued, heard, and respected from the interns to the Secretary of State.

During my time in the FOIA office, I would always seek out Dr. Blackburn to be the reviewer in my case because he was such a joy to work with and he always told the best stories. I remember when I found out I was a finalist for the Charles B. Rangel International Affairs Graduate Fellowship, he made sure I knew what the dimensions of the Foreign Service were and I went into the interview more confident than I was before our conversation. Although I didn’t receive the fellowship at that time, I applied a couple of years later and was awarded the fellowship. I am so sad that I wasn’t able to tell him that I ultimately received the fellowship and became a Public Diplomacy-coned Foreign Service Officer. Dr. Blackburn will sorely be missed.

Paul pushed the professional envelope wherever he worked. If anyone wants to follow the evolution of a master public diplomat, go online to the ADST Oral Histories and click on Paul’s name. Savor the honest, thoughtful summary of a career well-lived, and consider Paul’s ideas for the future of public diplomacy, still important in 2020. Cherish his delight in working with others and his care for their well-being. And for another dash of whimsy, picture Paul in one of his wardrobe of colorful shirts – a true son of Honolulu.¤

Michael Schneider is former President of PDAA.

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by Leonard J. Baldyga

Hans N. (Tom) Tuch, an early and persistent advocate of public diplomacy as an indispensable element in the conduct of U.S. foreign affairs, died on September 7, 2020, at his residence in Bethesda, MD. He was 95. The cause of death were complications following a recent fall. His seminal book, Communicating with the World: U.S. Public Diplomacy Overseas, published in collaboration with Georgetown University in 1989, was the first major treatise on the subject written by a practicing public diplomat.

Four America House directors gathered in Wiesbaden with Paul G. Lutzeier, Coordinator of U.S. Information Centers, Hesse, to discuss the most effective presentation of art exhibitions. From left to right: Ned Burford, Darmstadt; Bela Zempleny, Kassel; Hans N. Tuch, Wiesbaden; Lutzeier; and Gibson Morrisey, Frankfurt. The America Houses were libraries and cultural centers that brought American perspectives to German citizens. The United States operated these cultural centers until about 2006. Photo and caption courtesy of Hans Tuch.

Mr. Tuch’s interest in and involvement with public diplomacy started at his first post as a State Department foreign service officer in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1949 where he was director of the Amerika Haus (U.S. Information and Cultural Center), contributing to U.S. efforts to reintegrate Germany into the community of western democratic nations.

He next was assigned to implement President Eisenhower’s international “Atoms for Peace” initiative by building Atoms-for-Peace exhibits in Germany, Japan, and India. This public diplomacy effort resulted in his first book (with Henry Dunlap), Atoms At Your Service, published by Harper & Brothers in 1957. It was translated into seven languages.

Mr. Tuch next served from 1958 to 1961 as the first post-war Press and Cultural Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, where he participated in the implementation of the first U.S.-Soviet Cultural Agreement that marked an initial thaw in the Cold War by opening the Soviet Union to exchanges of students, academics, and specialists in the sciences, as well as American exhibitions, American publications, and the performing arts. Thus, he was the U.S. embassy’s focal point at the 1959 U.S. National Exhibition in Moscow and witness at the famed Nixon-Khrushchev Kitchen Debate. He was consequently inducted into Vice President Richard Nixon’s “Kitchen Cabinet.” He also managed the first tour to the Soviet Union of the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein and the visits of American performing artists Isaac Stern, Roberta Peters, Van Cliburn, and Byron Janis, as well as the American composers Roger Sessions, Roy Harris, Peter Mennin, Ulysses Kay, Aaron Copland, and Lucas Foss.

Upon return from Moscow in 1961, he served under Edward R. Murrow’s directorship of the U.S. Information Agency as Assistant Director for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. When the Soviets violated the Nuclear Test Ban treaty in 1963, Murrow, at Tuch’s suggestion, ordered the massing of all VOA transmitters to blast the Soviet Union for endangering the world.

From 1965 to 1967, Mr. Tuch served as Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d’Affaires ad interim of the U.S. embassy in Sofia, followed by three years as public affairs officer at the U.S. Mission in Berlin.

American playwright Thornton Wilder agreed to participate in program events for the America House in Frankfurt during his trip to Germany in 1954. His lecture filled two adjoining lecture halls at Frankfurt University, where Tuch reports “Wilder’s German was fairly fluent but somewhat ungrammatical.” Wilder (l) and Tuch (r) became friends during several days together. Photo courtesy of Hans (Tom) Tuch

After Portuguese language training in Washington, Mr. Tuch was assigned to Brazil, where he served as the Minister-Counselor for Public Affairs from 1971 to 1973 and as Acting Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d’Affaires ad interim from 1973 to 1975.

He was named the Edward R. Murrow Fellow at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1975, and from 1976 to 1981 he served as Deputy and Acting Director of the Voice of America. On the day the American diplomats in Tehran were taken hostage on November 4, 1979, he ordered the creation of a VOA Farsi language service which went on the air within 10 days.

At his last post, as Minister-Counselor for Public Affairs in Bonn from 1981 to 1985, he participated in the creation of the U.S. Congress – German Bundestag Youth Exchange Program. This exchange program is still going strong today, approximately 23,000 American and German students having participated in it over the last nearly 30-plus years. Upon leaving Germany in 1985, the President of the Federal Republic awarded him its Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Mr. Tuch’s service in Germany with Ambassador Arthur Burns resulted in  another book, Arthur Burns and the Successor Generation, published in 1988.

Mr. Tuch retired from the Foreign Service in 1985 as a Career Minister. He subsequently taught public diplomacy and intercultural communication as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and at the University of Missouri in Kansas City.

His final book was Arias, Cabalettas and Foreign Affairs: A Public Diplomat’s Quasi-Musical Memoir published in 2008, reflecting his life-long love of classical music, specifically opera. He and his wife became active supporters of the Wolf Trap Opera Company in Vienna, VA. For Wolf Trap’s new Center for Education, Mr. Tuch in 2004 donated a collection of some 3,000 programs of opera, theater, concerts, and recitals, all of which he attended over the years, with the earliest dating back to 1938.

Born in Berlin, Germany, on October 15, 1924, Mr. Tuch emigrated to the United States in 1938. From a prominent Jewish family in Berlin, he said his father kept telling him: “Don’t worry. This does not concern you. Never will. I was a front-line soldier, a French POW. I was decorated with the Iron Cross, so this does not concern you.” Mr. Tuch said his father kept maintaining this position until his early death in 1936 and, if he had not died, his mother and he would have succumbed in the Holocaust because they would not have got out until it was too late. He said his mother, intelligent and cognizant of what was going on, sent him to relatives in Kansas City in 1938. She got out of Germany at the last minute in 1940, primarily, she claimed, because she was a widow with close relatives in the U.S.

Writing in the Christian Science Monitor in 1985, Elizabeth Pond wrote: “When ‘Tom’ Tuch retired recently, a whole generation retired with him. He is one of the last of those Europeans who fled to America as refugees from Hitler—then paid back their debt with a lifetime of service to their adopted country.”

He attended Southwest high school in Kansas City, graduating in 1942. He received his B.A. degree from the University of Kansas City in 1947 and an M.A. degree from the School of Advanced International Studies of John Hopkins University in 1948. He also was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Missouri in 1986.

During World War II, Mr. Tuch served as a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne Division in Europe and jumped on D-Day in Normandy and at Eindhoven, Holland, during Operation Market Garden. He was awarded a Bronze Star and Combat Infantry Badge. He was present at the Battle of Bastogne as an interpreter for the headquarters unit and was the GI who translated General Anthony McAulliffe’s “nuts” response to the German surrender ultimatum as “go to hell.” His commanding officer present, a colonel, took credit for the translation.

Mr. Tuch was the recipient of the Presidential Distinguished Service Award, USIA’s Distinguished Honor Award, and the Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Public Diplomacy. He was past-president of the USIA Alumni Association (now the Public Diplomacy Association of America), and was a founding and emeritus member of the board of the Public Diplomacy Council. He served as a member of the Board of Trustees of Youth For Understanding from 1985 to1991 and was an Editorial Board member of the Foreign Service Journal from 1991 to 1994, contributing over 15 articles to the Journal. Until recently, he was still writing letters to the editor and contributing articles. His published articles appeared in a number of journals, including the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and Philadelphia Inquirer.

One of Mr. Tuch’s most cherished activities was his 17 years of volunteer work as manager of the St. Alban’s Opportunity Shop in Washington, D.C., an organization that served some 40 charities in the area.

He was predeceased by his wife, Ruth (Mimi) Lord Tuch, whom he met while they were students at SAIS. They were married in Wiesbaden in 1949.

Mr. Tuch is survived by his son David and his daughter-in-law Helena of São Paulo, Brazil, his daughter Andrea and his son-in-law Patrick Lannan of Santa Fe, NM, and his loyal friend and companion Sylvia Weiss of Bethesda, MD. His family also expresses its sincerest thanks to Zeni Manuzone for the tender care and affectionate attention she provided Mr. Tuch in the last difficult moments of his life.

A memorial celebration will be arranged at a later date. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the Wolf Trap Opera, 1645 Trap Road, Vienna VA 22182.

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