John N. Gatch, Jr.

Comedians don't tell jokes to each other because they all know the same funny stories. Rather, drolleries are assigned numbers and, in an intimate shorthand, one comedian may, in an appropriate situation, excite laughter from other comedians simply by voicing a particular number. Or so they say.

Foreign Service Arabists, such as John Newton Gatch, Jr., do not employ numbers as an insider's language in their small, highly specialized fraternity. Nevertheless, two years of intensely demanding language study in the swirling tides of the Middle East creates a private language understood only by Arabists. John Gatch combined that language, a virtually limitless fund of his own droll stories, and a wry sense of humor to become one of the famous raconteurs of the U.S. Foreign Service.

John Gatch's background (Ohio public schools, Phillips Exeter Academy, Princeton University and U.S. Air Force service in Europe in World War II) seemed ideal for the diplomatic life, and he entered the U.S. Foreign Service in 1947. As a junior officer he heard a series of compellingly fascinating lectures on the Middle East at the Foreign Service Institute in Washington, the State Department's own university. Dr. Edwin M. Wright, who was born in Iran; spoke Arabic, Turkish and Farsi; and talked with easy familiarity about Baghdad, Tehran and a dozen other Middle Eastern cities, so fired up Foreign Service Officer Gatch that he requested Baghdad as his first overseas post.

To John's surprise the State Department granted his request, and from then on his life and career were linked to Baghdad. His first tour in Baghdad from 1947 to 1949 saw the first Arab-Israel conflict. He experienced the 1956 Suez War while studying Arabic at the Foreign Service Institute's Arabic Language school in Beirut. During his second assignment to Baghdad from 1957 to 1959 John Gatch saw the overthrow of young King Faisal and the destruction of the Hashemite Monarchy. During his last tour in Iraq in 1974 he was Chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Baghdad. (This peculiar kind of American Embassy had flown the Belgian flag since the Iraqis expelled all American diplomats during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.)

In addition to Baghdad assignments F.S.O. Gatch served in Hong Kong, Warsaw (where he met and married Anne Schmidt, who was also in the Foreign Service), Libya, Lebanon, Kuwait and Bahrain. In Kuwait he served as Deputy Chief of Mission (i.e., deputy Ambassador) from 1964 to 1968 under the late and much beloved Ambassador Howard Cottam. John and Anne Gatch helped start and nurture the International School, now the American School, of Kuwait, which started with only 70 students and has developed into a highly-regarded institution with over 1500 students. Other highlights of John's career included opening the first U.S. Embassy in Manama, Bahrain and helping to found, under Ambassador Armin Meyer, the Cabinet Committee to Combat Terrorism.

John and Anne Gatch have five children, four daughters and a son who is following John into the Foreign Service. When he retired in 1980 John established the Sitra Corporation, named after one of the principal islands of Bahrain, to help Americans do business in the Middle East and Middle Easterners do business or invest in the United States. John contributes articles to publications on the Middle East, including the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and plays an active role in Washington-based organizations such as the Middle East Institute. He maintains a continuing interest in the affairs of Princeton University and is a member of the Exeter Alumni Council.

There are severe tests in serving the Department of State, USIA, AID and other Government agencies overseas, as John Gatch and other officers who have seen the Foreign Service from the inside know. It is an honor and privilege to represent the United States abroad, but in controversial situations such as China in the late 1940s, Vietnam in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Central America in the 1980s and the Middle East for the past three decades, public perceptions in the United States differed radically from reality as viewed from overseas posts.

Holding prestigious positions in U.S. Embassies, officers have easy access to talented, well-informed and highly-placed persons in the countries of their assignments. Reports and analyses based on many conversations with these contacts may be carefully drafted and tightly reasoned, but this by no means assures them a favorable reception in Washington. No matter how "true" to reality these are, they may well run afoul of powerful domestic political lobbies and interests, or presidential, congressional or media bias back home. In that case careers can suffer.

The answer to this dilemma is to keep one's sense of humor, stick to one's basic convictions, and find less confrontational but equally effective means of presenting points of view that are being rejected by the system. John Gatch, like other Arabists who survived and got ahead, remembered these rules. His humor in advancing politically unpopular views about the Middle East always got him a better than usual hearing, to the benefit of the Service and of the United States.

—Andrew I. Killgore