News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Obit

Date: February 07, 2002

"Former CIA Official, U.N. Ambassador Dead at 85

WASHINGTON (AP) - Vernon A. Walters, a former deputy CIA director and United Nations ambassador, has died of undisclosed causes. He was 85.

An Army lieutenant general before turning to civilian government service, Walters died Feb. 10 at Good Samaritan Medical Center in West Palm Beach, Fla.

He spoke French, Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch, Portuguese and Russian and on occasion served as a translater for President Eisenhower and Vice President Richard M. Nixon.

In the 1960s, Walters had assignments as U.S. military attache to Italy, Brazil and France and also served in Vietnam.

He was deputy director of the CIA from 1972 to 1976 and acting director for a period in 1973.

From 1981 to 1985, Walters 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.

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 Henry A. Kissinger, then Nixon's national security adviser, into Paris.

Since retiring from the government he had lived in Palm Beach, Fla. He never married. "