Charles S. Whitehouse
Charles S. Whitehouse | |
|---|---|
| Personal details | |
| Alma mater | Yale University |
| Occupation | Diplomat |
Charles Sheldon Whitehouse was a much admired career Foreign Service Officer who in his younger years was an officer of the Central Intelligence Agency. He was U.S. Ambassador to Laos and Thailand in the 1970's.
Mr. Whitehouse was born November 5, 1921 in Paris France, the son of Sheldon Whitehouse (1883-1965) and Mary Alexander Whitehouse. His father was a Foreign Service officer, and served as U.S. Minister to Guatamala, 1930-33, and to Colombia, 1933-34. He was a great-grandson of Charles Crocker, and a grandson of Charles Beatty Alexander. He was raised in Europe and South America.
In 1942, he interrupted his studies at Yale University, where he was a classmate of William F. Buckley, to join the Marine Corps. He attended Navy flight School and became a dive bomber pilot. A decorated member of the United States Military in the Pacific war zone, Mr. Whitehouse received 21 Air Medals and was awarded 7 Distinguished Flying Crosses. After his separation from the Marine Corps in 1946, he reentered Yale University to graduate in 1947. In 1947 he joined the C.I.A. and worked in the Congo, Turkey, Belgium and Cambodia. He moved over to the State Department in 1956 to serve as Assistant to the Undersecretary for Economic Affairs, and in 1959, he became a regular Foreign Service Officer. He later served as the State Department's Congo Desk Officer, and also served on the staff of the Department's Office of Personnel. He attended the National War College, and graduated in 1966.
Following a tour to Guinea, Mr. Whitehouse served two tours of duty in Vietnam. During his first tour, he was Deputy for Civil Operations and Rural Development Support. He returned to Washington in 1971 to become Acting Assistant Secretary for East Asian Affairs and returned to Vietnam in 1972 as Deputy Chief of Mission under Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker.
In September 1972, Mr. Whitehouse became Ambassador to Laos, his first of two ambassadorships. In Laos he oversaw decreasing American military aid to Hmong who had been fighting a proxy war against Communist forces (Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese Army troops) in northern Laos. Eight months after Mr. Whitehouse left Vientiane to take up his new post as Ambassador to Thailand in Bangkok in April 1975, the Communists seized power and proclaimed the Lao People's Democratic Republic.
Mr. Whitehouse's arrival in Bangkok coincided with a crisis in United States-Thai relations caused by the Marine recapture of the Mayagüez, the American ship that Cambodian gunboats had seized near Tang Island in the Gulf of Thailand. The United States had been reducing the extensive network of air and naval bases it had established in Thailand during the war in Vietnam. But the Mayagüez capture made the remaining military presence increasingly controversial, and Mr. Whitehouse presided over the closing of the last American bases in Thailand in 1976, an action the Thais had requested.
After his retirement from the Foreign Service in August 1978, Mr. Whitehouse served as President of the American Foreign Service Association and Chairman of Lycee Rochambeau of Bethesda, Maryland. He later became Chairman of the Piedmont Environmental Council in Warrenton, Virginia and was instrumental in blocking the Disney Corporations efforts to build an amusement park and other developments on and near historic lands in Northern Virginia.
In 1988, Mr. Whitehouse was called out of retirement by Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci, to become the first assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low density conflicts, with the assignment of strengthening cooperation among Army, Navy and Air Force special forces after a series of disagreements and botched operations. He served in this position until 1989.
Mr. Whitehouse was tall, elegant and regal-looking, and in 1966, the Washington Post named him one of the "Ten Most Attractive Men in Washington." He was an excellent off the cuff speaker and raconteur, and he had a flair for the theatrical that continued into his retirement. He played George Washington in a documentary on the general, and once played the Marquis de Lafayette in a Fauquier County Historical Society ceremony commemorating Lafayette's 1825 visit to Warrenton, Virginia.
In addition to his military decorations, Mr. Whitehouse received the State Department's Superior Honor Award, the Agency for International Development Distinguished Honor Award, and the State Department's Distinguished Honor Award. He was also a member of the French Legion of Honor.
Mr Whitehouse first marriage to Molly Rand ended in divorce. From this marriage, he had two sons, Sheldon Whitehouse and Charles Whitehouse, and a daughter, Sarah Whitehouse Atkins. He married a second time, to Janet K. Greyson. He died June 25, 2001 at the age of 79 of cancer at his home near Marshall, Virginia.