John Gunther Dean (born February 24, 1926 in Germany) is a distinguished career United States diplomat. From 1974-1988, Dean served as the United States Ambassador to five different nations under four different U.S. Presidents.
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Early years [link]
Dean was born in Breslau, Germany, into a prominent Jewish family. As a child, he attended the exclusive Von Zawatzki Schule in Breslau. Escaping the rise of Nazism, the family left Germany in December 1938 and arrived in the U.S. in February. In March 1939, the family changed its name from "Dienstfertig" to "Dean" before the City Court of New York. They eventually arrived in Kansas City, Missouri, where his father briefly lectured at the University of Kansas. Graduating from high school in Kansas City at the age of 16, he went on to Harvard University. In 1944, John Gunther Dean became a naturalized United States citizen. Mr. Dean interrupted his education and served in the United States Army from 1944–1946, utilizing his language skills with the Office of Military Intelligence. He then returned to Harvard and obtained his undergraduate degree (B.S. Magna Cum Laude, 1947). He received his doctorate in law from the Sorbonne (1949), and returned to Harvard again to obtain a graduate degree in international relations (M.A., 1950).
In 1950, John Gunther Dean worked in government service as an economic analyst with the European Headquarters of the Economic Cooperation Administration in Paris, France. From 1951-1953 he was an industrial analyst with ECA in Brussels, Belgium. From 1953-1956 he was assistant economic commissioner with the International Cooperation Administration in French Indo-China with accreditation in Saigon, Phnom Penh, and Vientiane.
Foreign Service career [link]
Mr. Dean passed the Foreign Service Examination in 1954. He formally began his service as an officer with the U.S. Department of State in the spring of 1956. From 1956-1958 he served as a political officer in Vientiane, Laos, and then from 1959-1960 he opened the first American consulate in Lomé, Togo. From 1960-1961 he was Chargé d'affaires in Bamako, Mali, and then became the officer in charge of Mali-Togo affairs in the Department of State from 1961-1963. In 1963 Mr. Dean was an adviser to the U.S. delegation to the 18th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, and during 1964-1965 he was an international relations officer in the NATO section of the Department of State. Dean went to Paris in 1965 as a political officer and served there until 1969. From 1969-1970 he was a fellow at Harvard's Center for International Affairs in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was then detailed to the U.S. military as Deputy to the Commander of Military Region 1 in South Vietnam where he served as Regional Director for Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS) until 1972. While in Da Nang, South Vietnam, he helped to protect the famous Cham Museum for which he was officially thanked in 2005 by the Vietnamese and French authorities. From 1972-1974 he was the deputy chief of mission/Chargé d'affaires in Vientiane, Laos. He is credited for having helped the establishment of a coalition government which saved thousands of lives after the Fall of Saigon in 1975. Dean was appointed Ambassador to Cambodia in March 1974 and he served in that posting until the Embassy was closed and all US personnel were evacuated on 12 April 1975, 5 days before the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh.
Career as Ambassador [link]
- 1974-1975 United States Ambassador to the Khmer Republic
- 1975-1978 United States Ambassador to Denmark
- 1978-1981 United States Ambassador to Lebanon
- 1981-1985 United States Ambassador to Thailand
- 1985-1988 United States Ambassador to India
Ambassador Dean retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 1989. Dean's freelancing efforts to get the Reagan Administration to reverse its policies on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India angered high administration officials, and he left government service soon thereafter.
Dean and Israel [link]
In August 1980, while serving as ambassador to Lebanon, where he had opened links to the PLO, Dean was the target of an assassination attempt, which he believes was directed by Israel.[1] According to him:
"Weapons financed and given by the United States to Israel were used in an attempt to kill an American diplomat!"
"Undoubtedly using a proxy, our ally Israel had tried to kill me."
Dean's suspicions that Israeli agents may have also been involved in the mysterious plane crash in 1988 that killed President of Pakistan, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, led finally to a decision in Washington to declare him mentally unfit, which forced his resignation from the foreign service after a thirty-year career. Later he was rehabilitated by the State Department, given a distinguished service medal and the insanity charge was confirmed to be a phony by a former head of the department's medical service.[2]
Notes [link]
Dean speaks four languages: English, French, German and Danish. He was the first U.S. Ambassador to Denmark who learned and spoke Danish, thus gaining significant respect from its people. He is married to the French-born Martine Duphenieux, and they have three grown children. He now lives in Switzerland and France but remains active on foreign affairs issues and comes to the U.S. often.
While stationed in Paris (1965–69), Dean played a major role in bringing the U.S.-North Vietnam peace talks to Paris in 1968.
In Lebanon, Dean was helpful in obtaining the release of the first American hostages in Teheran.
In India, Dean helped bring about the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan according to an agreed time table.
In the film The Killing Fields, Dean is portrayed by Ira Wheeler. The evacuation of Phnom Penh scene was filmed near Bangkok in 1983 and Wheeler met Dean, who was then the U.S. Ambassador to Thailand.[3]
Bibliography [link]
Book published 2009 DANGER ZONES: A Diplomat's Fight for America's Interests, published by the Association for diplomatic studies and training.
External links [link]
- "John Gunther Dean's Oral History". Jimmy Carter Library. Archived from John Gunther Dean's Oral History the original on 2009-06-01. https://web.archive.org/web/20090601133900/https://jimmycarterlibrary.org/library/oralhistory/clohproject/dean.phtml.
- John Gunther Dean's Oral History
- John Gunther Dean's Inventory. 11 linear feet of documents he donated to the U.S. National Archives in 2004 and 2005 are partially available to the public at the Jimmy Carter Library.
- List of U.S. Ambassadors to Thailand, 1882 to present
References [link]
- ^ https://www.thenation.com/article/us-envoy-writes-israeli-threats
- ^ https://www.thenation.com/article/us-envoy-writes-israeli-threats
- ^ Gray, Spalding (1986). Swimming to Cambodia. Pan Books. pp. 41–42. ISBN 0-330-29947-6.
| Diplomatic posts | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Colby Swank |
United States Ambassador to the Khmer Republic 1974 – 1975 |
Succeeded by None (Diplomatic ties temporarily severed in 1975) |
| Preceded by Philip K. Crowe |
United States Ambassador to Denmark 1975 – 1978 |
Succeeded by Warren Demian Manshel |
| Preceded by Richard B. Parker |
United States Ambassador to Lebanon 1978 – 1981 |
Succeeded by Robert Sherwood Dillon |
| Preceded by Morton I. Abramowitz |
United States Ambassador to The Kingdom of Thailand 1981 – 1985 |
Succeeded by William Andreas Brown |
| Preceded by Harry G. Barnes, Jr. |
United States Ambassador to India 1985 – 1988 |
Succeeded by John Randolph Hubbard |
https://wn.com/John_Gunther_Dean
John Gunther
John Gunther (August 30, 1901 – May 29, 1970) was an American journalist and author whose success came primarily through a series of popular sociopolitical works known as the "Inside" books (1936–1972), including the best-selling Inside U.S.A. in 1947. He is best known today for the memoir Death Be Not Proud about the death of his teenage son, Johnny Gunther, from a brain tumor.
Personal life
Gunther was born in the Lakeview district of Chicago, growing up on the North Side of the city. He was the first child of a family of German descent. His father was Eugene Guenther, a traveling salesman and his mother was Lizette Schoeninger Guenther. During World War I the family changed the spelling of its name from Guenther to Gunther in order to avoid having a German-sounding name.
In 1922, he was awarded a Bachelor of Philosophy degree from the University of Chicago, where he was literary editor of the student paper.
He worked briefly in the city as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News, but soon moved to Europe to be a correspondent with the Daily News's London Bureau, where he covered Europe, the Balkans, and the Middle East.
Gunther
Gunther (Gundahar, Gundahari, Latin Gundaharius, Gundicharius, or Guntharius, Old English Gūðhere, Old Norse Gunnarr, anglicised as Gunnar) is the German name of a semi-legendary king of Burgundy of the early 5th century. Legendary tales about him appear in Latin, medieval Middle High German, Old Norse, and Old English texts, especially concerning his relations with Siegfried (Sigurd in Old Norse) and his death by treachery in the hall of Attila the Hun.
History
In 406 the Alans, Vandals, the Suevi, and possibly the Burgundians crossed the Rhine and invaded Gaul. In 411 AD, the Burgundian king Gundahar or Gundicar set up a puppet emperor, Jovinus, in cooperation with Goar, king of the Alans. With the authority of the Gallic emperor that he controlled, Gundahar settled on the left or western (i.e., Roman) bank of the Rhine, between the river Lauter and the Nahe, seizing Worms, Speyer, and Strasbourg. Apparently as part of a truce, the Emperor Honorius later officially "granted" them the land. Olympiodorus of Thebes also mentions a Guntiarios who was called "commander of the Burgundians" in the context of the 411 usurping of Germania Secunda by Jovinus. (Prosper, a. 386)
Albert Günther
Albert Karl Ludwig Gotthilf Günther FRS, also Albert Charles Lewis Gotthilf Günther (3 October 1830 – 1 February 1914), was a German-born British zoologist, ichthyologist, and herpetologist. Günther is currently ranked the second-most productive reptile taxonomist (after George Albert Boulenger) with more than 340 reptile species described.
Early life
Günther was born in Esslingen in Swabia (Württemberg). His father was a Stiftungs-Commissar in Esslingen and his mother was Eleonora Nagel. He initially schooled at the Stuttgart Gymnasium. His family wished him to train for the ministry of the Lutheran Church for which he moved to the University of Tübingen. A brother shifted from theology to medicine, and he, too, turned to science and medicine at Tübingen in 1852. His first work was "Ueber den Puppenzustand eines Distoma". He graduated in medicine with an M.D. from Tübingen in 1858, the same year in which he published a handbook of zoology for students of medicine. His mother moved to England, and when he visited it in 1855, he met John Edward Gray and Professor Richard Owen at the British Museum. This led to an offer to work at the British Museum in 1857, where his first task was to classify 2000 snake specimens. After the death of John Edward Gray in 1875, Günther was appointed Keeper of Zoology at the Natural History Museum, a position he held until 1895. The major work of his life was the eight-volume Catalogue of Fishes (1859–1870, Ray Society). He also worked on the reptiles and amphibians in the museum collection. In 1864, he founded the Record of Zoological Literature and served as editor for six years.
Günther (singer)
Mats Söderlund is a Swedish musician and fashion model, best known under his stage name Günther.
Career
Before he started working as an artist, he worked part time in a clothing store. Gunther's 2004 smash hit "Ding Dong Song" brought him country-wide recognition in his homeland, Sweden. The campy, silly, and titillating track, "Ding Dong Song" topped the Swedish charts the year of its release thanks to an inescapable hook and a sexually charged video featuring Günther's backup singers, the Sunshine Girls. A year later the campy phenomenon spread across Europe as indie rockers Franz Ferdinand were heard performing the song acoustically on Dutch radio. In 2006, his song "Like Fire Tonight" was accepted into Melodifestivalen, a Swedish music competition. However, Günther and the Sunshine Girls finished sixth in the semi-final round and did not make the finals.
Günther announced on his website that he is currently working on a new album with the working title Dirty Man Swedish Sex Beast. In 2011, the first single, "Pussycat", became available on Günther's web site.
