1 The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign ...

Symington was one of the key people in Congress on defense and foreign policy matters.
Senator Fulbright was an anomaly. He listened to the Iranian students and believed they
were right. The majority in Congress, however, saw the shah as an ally in the Cold War.
The Cold War was the test of loyalty to the United States. The Iranians had good relations
with India and Pakistan, and relatively speaking, fell on the right side of the Cold War
equation. Increasingly, as the Iranian students demonstrations had their presence felt,
there was some change in attitude in Congress, the dominant view was determined by the
Cold War equation. The nationalist aspirations and the democratic movements were
secondary to that first concern, right up to the end, right up until the revolution, which
took place in 1979, well before the period of perestroika between 1985 and 1991 – the
Gorbachev era – and before the formal end of the Cold War.
Q: I’m looking at the time and this is probably a good place to stop. Should we move on
to what happened when you left Iran? You left there in ’65. Just to put at the end, where
did you go?
MILLER: The first assignment that I had in Washington was in INR (Bureau of
Intelligence and Research), to write a political dynamics paper on Iran. That was a sixmonth
project. Then I was assigned to the Peace Corps. That was the time when the State
Department was encouraging assignments for junior officers in other agencies. I was head
of Middle East programs for the Peace Corps for six months or so. That was followed by
assignment to the Secretary of State’s staff as a line officer.
Q: Okay. We’ll pick this up in ’65. We’ll talk about the INR and the Peace Corps and
then go on.
MILLER: To Dean Rusk’s staff.
Q: Today is the 25 th of November 2003. Bill did you go to INR first and then Peace
Corps?
MILLER: No it was Peace Corps first.
***
Q: All right, well let’s talk about the Peace Corps. What were you up to?
MILLER: Assignments were being made from the Department of State to other agencies,
in order to give familiarity to junior Foreign Service officers to some other parts of the
government that were involved in foreign affairs. The Peace Corps being a favorite of the
Kennedy administration, it was very vigorous and had considerable funding and political
support within the White House and in Congress. It was well funded, and as an idea for
creative foreign policy, had great currency – that is, the idealistic youth of working with
counterparts in countries less fortunate would build lasting bonds through mutual efforts
of improving the lot of those countries.
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