[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 74 (Thursday, May 23, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5558-S5562]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TRIBUTE TO CHARLES MEISSNER
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, the tragic plane crash in Croatia last
month that took the life of Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown also took
the lives of other outstanding officials in the Department of Commerce,
including Charles F. Meissner, who was Assistant Secretary for
International Economic Policy and who was also the husband of Doris
Meissner, the Commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization
Service. During the 1970's, he had served with great distinction for
several years on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Our hearts go out to the Meissner family in this time of their great
loss. In the days following that tragedy, a number of eloquent tributes
to Charles Meissner described his extraordinary career, his dedication
to public service, and his contributions to our country and to peoples
throughout the world. I believe these tributes will be of interest to
all of us in Congress and to many others, and I ask unanimous consent
that they be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the tributes were ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Tribute to Charles Meissner
(By Stuart E. Eizenstat)
Doris, Christine, Andrew, family and friends of Chuck
Meissner. I feel doubly blessed by my association with the
Meissner family. In the Carter Administration it was my good
fortune to work closely with Doris on immigration issues--to
see directly her intelligence, her calm amidst the pressures
of policymaking, her quiet dignity, her dedication to public
service. It was then that I first came in contact with Chuck.
But it was during the past 2\1/2\ years, with me in
Brussels and Chuck in Washington, that we formed an intense
professional and personal bond which profoundly influenced
me. We worked together on every important trade and
commercial issue involving the European Union and its member
states.
During Chuck's frequent travels to Brussels, he stayed with
Fran and me, and had many meals with us. Chuck and I attended
innumerable meetings together. When my appointment to my
current position at Commerce became known, I spent a great
deal of time talking and meeting with Chuck, seeking his
advice and counsel and telling him of my plans to beef-up the
International Economic Policy unit he so ably led. Our last
conversation came only a few days before his trip to Bosnia
and Croatia.
During Chuck's all-too-brief tenure as Assistant Secretary,
there was hardly a continent that did not benefit from
Chuck's sterling efforts. Chuck used his extensive financial
experience at Chemical Bank and the World Bank to encourage
private sector investment in the border regions in Mexico, as
chair of the U.S.-Mexico Border Economic Development task
force. He helped to expand economic contacts between the West
and Central Europe and the states of the former Soviet Union
by his work to invigorate the Economic Forum of the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and by
the drive and leadership he gave to the West-East Economic
Conferences.
Chuck was inspiring in his work with large and small
American companies. He had a flair for dealing with CEOs.
They empathized with him and understood his global vision.
Nowhere was this better exemplified than in the Transatlantic
Business Dialogue. Secretary Brown initiated the idea that
U.S. and European business should take the lead in helping
government design future transatlantic commercial policy. But
it was Chuck that made this idea work. The success of the
historic conference in Seville, Spain, last November that
brought a 100 leading American and European CEOs together
was due in large part to Chuck.
Following on his deep conviction that trade was the best
force for peace, Chuck used his boundless energy to bring
American companies together with companies in emerging
democracies and in reforming countries. He was the leading
force behind President Clinton's White House Conference on
trade and investment in Eastern Europe, held in Cleveland
last year. That conference exposed America's top companies to
the genuine opportunities to build commercial bridges to
Central Europe.
He poured his heart into using commercial policy to support
the peace process in Northern Ireland. He was particularly
proud, and justly so, of bringing scores of companies there
to support our efforts and those of the British government to
bring peace to that troubled land. When peace finally comes
to Northern Ireland, as it surely will, Chuck Meissner will
have played a major role in being a midwife. He was just
beginning to do the same in Haiti.
It was on another such venture to undergird a fragile
peace, that took Chuck and Ron Brown to Croatia and Bosnia.
He died doing what he loved, using the resources of the
American private sector to strengthen the forces of peace and
democracy abroad. The terrible conflict in Bosnia has now
claimed several friends, earlier Bob Frasure, and now Chuck,
Ron and our other colleagues at the Commerce Department.
Chuck maintained a punishing travel schedule, as he was
driven to extend our commercial diplomacy round the world. He
joked to me that he only saw Doris, with her own demanding
schedule, as their planes criss-crossed in the sky! And
Doris, his love for you and the children was evident in the
fond ways in which he talked about you.
But all of this was a continuation of a life devoted to
public service, with a particular emphasis on expanding
America's economic relationships abroad, relationships which
are the very essence of our efforts to expand democracy and
prosperity around the globe. He served in senior positions in
the Treasury Department, on the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, where he was Staff Director of the Subcommittee on
Foreign Relations, and in the State Department where he was
Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Finance and
Development and Ambassador and U.S. Special Negotiator for
Economic Matters. Chuck's service to the United States was
not limited to civilian positions. He was a Vietnam veteran,
decorated on several occasions for his bravery in combat as a
Captain in the United States Army.
But will all of these accomplishments, I will most remember
Chuck with genuine love and affection for something more
personal. Few people have touched me the way Chuck did. He
had a wonderful joy of life and sense of humor. He made me
laugh--not always easy to do! When I told Doris at her home
Friday about this, she said, ``You
[[Page S5559]]
know, one of the reasons I married Chuck was that he made me
laugh too!''
When Chuck came into a room his radiance lit it up. That
beautiful smile and almost cherubic face--like a grown-up
version of one of Raphael's endearing child angels--never
failed to touch me deeply and to the core. I was drawn to
Chuck, as I know all of you were, by not only his obvious
competence but by his basic decency, his goodness, his
wonderful humanity. Chuck believed in causes but he never
forgot the people who were to benefit from them.
Just as we all feel blessed by Chuck's friendship, and by
his caring, all of us also feel, in our own way, cheated by
his tragic death--for myself, deprived of an opportunity to
work even closer together on the causes he so believed in,
deprived of more time to nurture our friendship, deprived of
the chance to simply feel so good in his presence.
But all of this pales in comparison to the loss for Doris
and the children of a husband, a father, a companion. There
is an old saying, that ``men and women plan, but God laughs
at our plans and has his own for us.'' None of us can
possibly explain this tragedy. All one can say is that God on
High must have been particularly lonely and needed Chuck's
companionship and laughter; as those who knew him on this
imperfect earth so reveled in it.
Chuck, we loved you as you loved us. Our memories are sweet
as the fragrances of Spring will surely come. They did not
die with you. All of your friends will always be the better
for you having come into our lives with your wonderful
countenance.
Doris, we hope that our prayers and the heartfelt feelings
of your colleagues in the Justice Department, the Commerce
Department and throughout the Administration will strengthen
you in these dark and difficult days, and will sustain you as
you continue to service the country so well for which Chuck
gave his life.
____
Reflections on Charles Meissner
(By Michael Ely)
Today it is my honor briefly to talk to you about Charles
Meissner and the central theme of his working life, service
to his government and, more broadly, service to his nation
and to the world. Chuck might have been embarrassed by this
discussion. His sense of personal responsibility and
commitment was so deep and integrated into his life that it
became part of his personality. It went right down to his
toenails. He felt that devotion to the public good was normal
and natural behavior, even if not widely shared in a world
full of people in futile pursuit of private gain and
satisfaction outside of and divorced from the public good.
Indeed, his concept of the good was universal, comparable
to what we might think of as the inner vision of a saint, but
tempered by years of experience in addressing complex issues
of public policy where the path to the good is unmarked and
has to be discovered or even created. Here was an area that
must have drawn Doris and Chuck together: their willingness,
even eagerness, to grapple with policy issues with difficult
tradeoffs, no easy solutions and multiple painful outcomes.
Chuck sought to reconcile commercial affairs with broader
national interests; Doris deals with the terrible tensions
between social decency and justice and conflicting economic
and social problems.
Our paths first came together in the State Department
almost two decades ago. From a senior staff position with the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee he had been parachuted in,
as it were, as Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of
Economic Affairs, then a powerful and aggressive organization
with entirely State personnel. Chuck used to joke, with some
reason, that I was brought in as his principal deputy to keep
an eye on him. We ended up mentoring each other, he with his
broad Treasury and Senate background, I a decade older with
depth in overseas diplomatic service and State bureaucratic
background. Our relations, warmed by Chuck's openness,
honesty and obvious ability, deepened into mutual trust and
ripened into friendship.
It was in retrospect an exciting and creative period. In
the wake of the first oil shock and the world economic
slowdown many countries in Latin America, Africa and eastern
Europe could not repay to the US hundreds of millions in
official debts contracted in better times. It was Chuck's
labor of Hercules to sort out the economic implications and
the sticky foreign and domestic politics to come up with a
set of US government responses. A thankless business--he
specialized, like Doris, in thankless tasks--with infinite
opportunity for offending the Congress, the Treasury, the
debtor countries and the other creditors.
It was in this thicket of problems that he encountered
Michel Camdessus, then a very senior officer of the French
Treasury, and like him an official of extraordinary breadth
and ability. Their initial adversarial relations were
transformed by mutual appreciation into a partnership that
defined the rules for handling sovereign debt, and lived on
through the years that followed.
The dozen years Chuck spent sorting out the debt problems
of the Chemical Bank and experiencing the institutional
culture of the World Bank were stepping stones to his policy
position in Commerce; all of us confidently expected his star
to mount in the coming years, the years that have been taken
from him.
As a negotiator he was matchless. He won, of all things, by
being straight! To begin with, Chuck was deeply uninterested
in the social luxuries of diplomatic life (I finally got him
to recognize the difference between red and white wines) and
skipped the cocktail parties unless he had a diplomatic chore
to do there. For another, he neither bluffed nor threatened,
nor did he respond to such tactics; while he could sense the
hidden agenda of his adversary, he had none of his own; and
his attention never wavered nor temper flared. His physical
vitality and a Churchillian ability to snatch catnaps
equipped him to outlast the most tenacious adversary. And his
patience had no end.
This perhaps gives one insight into the secret of Chuck's
consistent success as a public servant: a unmatched
combination of selflessness, honesty, self control, and
hunger for the public good that set him apart and armored him
against any accusations of personal advantage. All this was
matched by easy good humor, modesty, natural courtesy and a
radiant smile that made this man, in some respects really
most formidable, one of the least threatening I have ever
known. The biggest occupational hazard of diplomacy is vanity
and it increases with rank. Chuck's ambassadorial title,
conferred to increase his negotiating prestige, never
impressed him; he laughingly liked to suggest he be called
Ambassador Chuck.
Yet he was a true intellectual--he would not have liked the
term--with an original, searching mind that looked so broadly
and deeply as to go quite beyond the reach of most of us.
Because of this he was, I think, sometimes quite alone--very
few could stay with him at the vertiginous level of
conceptualization that he felt was--is--urgently needed to
think out tough problems. It was to help in this endeavor
that he asked me to join him as an advisor.
In particular, Chuck was convinced that the age calls for
new and creative ways to use the dynamism and power of the
American private sector as an instrument for peace, stability
and democracy. In his two years at Commerce he wrestled with
the challenge of integrating foreign commercial policy with
its materially-driven bottom-line goals with broader foreign
policy to find how they could be used to energize and
reinforce each other. The breakthroughs for reconciliation in
Ireland, which Chuck created almost single handedly, were
propelled by his vision of economic growth and development
based on cooperative measures to induce private investment by
American enterprises.
Underlying all of his endeavors--his efforts in Ireland,
his attempts to strengthen the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe, his approach to the problems of the
big emerging markets--was a great long-term vision. He
believed that the essential task of the post-Cold War era was
to structure incentives and institutions for bringing all the
Russias, Chinas and Bosnias--all the reforming and emerging
countries--into the world economic order. Chuck dreamed of a
world of peace, stability and democracy built upon
irreversible global interdependence: all nations would have
more to gain by cooperating, by participating in an open
world system based on the rule of law, than by resort to
traditional unilateral attempts to seek advantage. He saw the
vast American commercial structure as a central instrument in
this great scheme.
He was working on how to articulate this broad concept into
a series of strategies when he was taken from us.
A week ago Stuart Eizenstat led a gathering of Commerce
employees in reflection on the loss of Chuck and his
colleagues. In that moving ceremony one of the respondents
from the audience declared that the finest memorial for the
perished would be to continue to work toward the goals they
believed in. So be it with Charles Meissner, visionary,
public servant, man of honor--and husband, father and friend.
His memory will strengthen and sustain us as we continue his
gallant search.
____
The Honorable Charles F. Meissner
Charles Meissner was sworn in as the Assistant Secretary
for International Economic Policy at the Department of
Commerce on April 4, 1994 following confirmation by the
United States Senate. As Assistant Secretary, Mr. Meissner
was responsible for international commercial policy
development, including country and regional market access
strategies, multilateral and bilateral trade issues, and
policy support of Secretary of Commerce Ronald Brown on
international issues.
Since 1992, Mr. Meissner had served at the World Bank as
manager of the Office of Official Co-financing and Trust Fund
Management. Mr. Meissner was responsible for maintaining the
Bank's financial relationships with official co-financiers
who co-finance approximately $10 billion in projects annually
with the World Bank.
Previously, Mr. Meissner served as Vice President at
Chemical Bank where he coordinated sovereign debt
restructuring policy within the bank and represented Chemical
in negotiations with debtor countries.
In 1980, Mr. Meissner was appointed Ambassador and U.S.
Special Negotiator for Economic Matters. Mr. Meissner has
also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for International
Finance and Development in the Bureau of Economic and
Business Affairs at the U.S. Department of State.
In 1973, he accepted a professional staff appointment to
the Committee on Foreign Relations of the U.S. Senate where
he served as
[[Page S5560]]
an economist. In his final year with the committee, he also
served as staff director to the Subcommittee on Foreign
Assistance. He began his career in 1971 at the U.S.
Department of Treasury in the Office of International Affairs
where he worked as the Japan desk officer and as special
assistant to the Assistant Secretary for International
Affairs.
A native of Wisconsin, Mr. Meissner is a three-time
graduate of the University of Wisconsin, including a BS in
1964, an MS in Economics in 1967, and a Ph.D. in Agricultural
Economics with a minor in Latin American Studies in 1969. He
served in the Vietnam War as a Captain in the United States
Army during 1969 and 1970 and received for his service the
Army Commendation Medal, the Joint Service Commendation Medal
and the Bronze Star.
Doris and Chuck met during their freshman year at the
University of Wisconsin and were married in 1963. They have
two children, Christine, 31, and Andrew, 27.
Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. President, I rise with my colleague from
Massachusetts to mourn the loss of Charles F. Meissner, the Assistant
Secretary for International Economic Policy at the Commerce Department.
He was a man who devoted his life to furthering America's economic
strength; our Nation is the better for his service.
His close friends--leaders from the public and private sector--have
eulogized Chuck Meissner more ably than I could ever hope to do. I want
to share their moving statements with my colleagues and with others of
our Nation, so all Americans may know and understand how deeply America
misses his service and his leadership. I ask unanimous consent that
these tributes to the life and accomplishments of Chuck Meissner be
printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the tributes were ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Tribute to Charles Meissner
(By Michel Camdessus)
Having had the privilege for 18 years to be one of the
innumerable colleagues and friends of Chuck Meissner in the
international community, let me try to tell you what sort of
man he was for all of us.
Let me tell you first how we became friends, something, I
must say, which changed my life.
When I first met Chuck in 1978, he was the highly respected
and seasoned head of the U.S. delegation to the Paris Club--
this group of industrialized countries dealing with the
payment difficulties of the debtor countries--and I its newly
appointed and totally unprepared Chairman. It was there, as
Chuck tactfully guided me through the intricacies of
developing country debt, that I first came to know the fine
qualities that we all admired so much in him.
I must say, from the first he impressed me very much. He
was one of those people whose mere presence transformed a
group's life, focusing its purposes, adding to its
creativity, making it congenial and enthusiastic. What was
the secret of this? Was it his charm, his persuasiveness, his
distinction and natural nobleness, sense of humor, the fun he
found in working, his selfishness, his own sense of purpose
and dedication? All of these things, and more! The fact that
behind the opposite member at the negotiating table he saw a
person, and behind the problems, people; men, women,
children, whose opinion had to be sought given their
responsibility for their own destinies, people whose
suffering had to be alleviated, people who had to be given a
new chance . . . And more again, but you had to know him well
to perceive this and to be prepared to read it in his eyes,
his smile, his jokes, or in his silences, the extraordinary
way in which love was the unifying factor of his life. He
loved his family, he loved his friends, he loved his country,
the values of his country and to work for them, knowing
pretty well since his experience in Vietnam that this could
imply the ultimate sacrifice. Let me mention a few of these
values: the sense of responsibility for leading the way
toward a better world, confidence that it is always
worthwhile to help people stand again on their feet, to work
with them to build peace through solidarity. I said
solidarity; perhaps the proper word should be brotherhood
throughout the world ``from sea to shining seas.'' This was,
I think the professional secret of Chuck, the fact that in
one way or another, even in the most adverse situations, he
was always giving something of himself, putting his mind and
heart into achieving a better agreement, in finding a more
constructive solution.
I witnessed this many, many times, as the debt crises
multiplied the clients of the Paris Club, making Chuck a
regular customer on the transatlantic flights between
Washington and Paris. Let me tell you that I particularly
admired him on the occasion of an UNCTAD meeting in Manila
where, leading the American delegation, his role was decisive
in transforming an occasion which could have been
confrontational and rhetorical into an opportunity for
solidly laying down the basic principles (the so-called
``features'') which since then have governed public
debt rescheduling operations. This could seem somewhat
esoteric to you, but if I tell you that since then, on the
basis of these principles, more than 250 billion dollars
of public debt has been generously rescheduled * * * and
65 countries have been given a new chance, you will have
some idea of the contribution Chuck made in making the
world a better place. No more of this.
In the days since that terrible tragedy on the hillside
outside Dubrovnik, Chuck's many friends, colleagues and
admirers around the world have recounted the many other
instances in which Chuck tried to make a difference--and
succeeded. In Belfast, where he had traveled many times to
assist in building economic bridges across the political
divide, and where, as I read in a message from the West
Belfast Economic Forum director: The community activists
working towards economic and social regeneration in West
Belfast came to know Charles Meissner. It was, however, to
Chuck Meissner's own credit as an individual, that we came to
also regard him as a friend. Over the past two years, Charles
Meissner returned to West Belfast on several occasions.
Always, he ensured that grassroots activists from the
disadvantaged communities were consulted and kept informed.
He understood that if there was to be a ``Peace Dividend''
then any economic intervention from the USA must be targeted
specifically as those communities which have suffered most
from exclusion and marginalisation. Chuck recognised that
more than straightforward economic investment is required to
bring about economic regeneration. He valued the work of the
community organizations and the opinions of those with
firsthand experience of dealing with the problems in our
community. Chuck gave freely of his own time and expertise
and encouraged others, both within his department and among
the American business community to support locally based
economic initiatives.
Chuck's action was similar at the US-Mexican border, where
he worked to improve the economic and environmental
conditions. And most recently, in Bosnia where Chuck was
seeking to secure a fragile peace with the promise of a
better future through economic development and trade. Suffice
it here for me to quote his last declaration in Bosnia, I
quote the wire agencies:
`` `We want to build confidence in investing and
reestablish the internal confidence' between the Serbs,
Croats and Muslims, said Charles Meissner, assistant
secretary of commerce for international economic policy.
``Development `gives a common ground that you re-establish
economically, developing the basis for interdependency,' he
said.''
This was Chuck, my friends, this is Chuck: a great man, a
great friend, a great American, a great builder of peace, one
of those ``God will call his children'' (Mat. 5-9), one of
those who can tell the Lord with a joyful assurance ``your
house will be my home.'' (Ps. 23).
____
Memorial Service for Charles F. Meissner
(By Ted Crabb)
I came to know Chuck Meissner in the early '60's when I was
working, as I still do, at the Wisconsin Union, the student-
led community center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Like his brother David, Chuck came to the Union not only to
take part in the social, cultural and recreational activities
the Union provided, but to help plan, develop and promote
those activities.
It tells you something about Chuck Meissner that in
choosing to become active at the Union as a student, he was
not deterred by the fact that his older brother had already
made his mark there, first as a committee chair and then as
president of the Union's student-faculty-alumni governing
board. Another person, less comfortable with himself, might
have chosen a different activity, or even a different college
in the first place. Not Chuck. If the Union was the place to
mix with students of diverse backgrounds, to meet informally
with professors, to debate the issues of the day, to
encounter new and provocative ideas, to get involved, then
that's where Chuck wanted to be.
It may have been at the Union that Chuck learned the
patience that would enable him to cope with the vagaries and
uncertainties of government service. Two years in a row,
Chuck was responsible for a lecture to be given by Werner von
Braun. Two years in a row, he made posters, distributed
notices to university classes, made arrangements for a
special dinner for the honored guest, even produced little
table tents resplendent with glittering rocket ships. Two
years in a row, von Braun canceled his appearance at the last
minute.
Certainly, Chuck learned at the Union how to deal with
dashed hopes. In his senior year, he was a candidate for
president of the Union but lost out to his good friend, Carol
Skornicka. It tells you something about Chuck that this
defeat was no permanent setback to their lifelong friendship.
Chuck left the university after he finished his graduate
work in Agricultural Economics, but he retained his interest
in the university and in the Wisconsin Union. For the last
eleven years, he served in an advisory role to the Union,
most recently as a member of the board of trustees of the
building association. In that role, he was the kind of board
member that a president or director both loves and fears.
Chuck didn't just attend meetings. He engaged himself in
them totally, asking tough questions, goading everyone to
more effort. And when he left the annual meeting after an
intense day and a half session, I knew that within a few
days, I'd get a letter from him. It wouldn't be one of those
innocuous,
[[Page S5561]]
``Thank you very much, you're doing a great job and enclosed
are my expenses'' letter. No. It would be two or three
single-spaced, tightly packed pages of ideas for the future
and suggestions for implementation. ``What is the Union
doing to prepare for a decline in funding when
undergraduate enrollment is cut back? What can you learn
and put into practice from the recent Carnegie Foundation
report on higher education? What is the Union doing to
serve the community in continuing education and to broaden
the life experiences of students?''
In one letter in 1990, Chuck focused on the role and image
of Union South, a second Union building, located on the
Engineering Campus and long seen by some as a sort of
afterthought, or as Chuck called it, ``the second child who
has to share his parents' love and always perform up to the
older sibling's standards.'' Chuck had a dozen different
ideas for upgrading its image, including the possible
rededication of the building to honor those who have promoted
civil and human rights in Wisconsin as a means of promoting
greater campus community feeling in the cause of a shared
heritage among blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asians and Native
Americans on campus.
At the 1991 meeting of the trustees, Chuck proposed the
establishment of a permanent endowment for the Union
trustees, to provide a stable source of funding for the
programming efforts of the Union and the upkeep and
renovation of the physical structures. He followed up his
suggestion with a three-page draft of a funding statement
that the board of trustees adopted at its next meeting, with
almost no changes, and which it has since implemented.
All directors of organizations should have members like
Chuck to prod and nudge.
The Wisconsin Union is a tiny entity in the world that
Chuck occupied. It tells you a lot about Chuck Meissner that
he gave it the same kind of focused attention he gave to the
global issues that made up his work day. Just last fall, he
was calling to ask me to send him information about the
Wisconsin Union that he could take to a person he'd met on a
trade mission, who was trying to build a campus community
center at his own college in Ireland.
The goals and the purpose of the Wisconsin Union as a
unifying force in a diverse community were not just words to
Chuck. He believed in the worth of student volunteer
activities. He never wavered from the view that the Union's
primary mission was to provide opportunities for volunteering
and to help students develop the skills that would make them
effective volunteers and contributors to their communities--
to become persons who were concerned not just with getting
something out of life but with putting something into life.
Chuck had great faith in students. He believed there was
little they could not accomplish if given the opportunity.
His constant question was, ``What is the student role in this
program or this function?''
To those of us who worked with Chuck at the Union, it was
no surprise that his last effort would be leading a group of
volunteer business leaders to Bosnia. Again, he had persuaded
others to apply their skills and talents to doing a job that
needed to be done. The scope of the job was mammoth:
beginning the healing of the unimaginable wounds of a civil
war and the rebuilding and revitalizing of an entire society.
But Chuck had seen that there was a role to be played by
volunteers who were willing to put their unique talents
and resources to work to help their larger community. As
he had done throughout his life, he was putting into
practice the Union ideal that the foundation of democracy
is the individual efforts of citizens, working together to
solve their common problems.
Many people say that heroism has vanished from America. We
in this audience know better. We know that Chuck Meissner was
a hero. Not only because he gave his life for his country or
because he took great risks in the service of his country or
flew dozens of hazardous and uncomfortable flights to remote
places, all of which he did, but also because he lived the
values to which many people give lip service. He honored his
commitments. He gave generously of himself, not for self-
aggrandizement or private fortune but for the worth of the
undertaking. He did what he did because it was the right
thing to do. And in the end he left the world a better place
for his having been here.
We think of Chuck and we remember that broad smile, that
gentle spirit, the way he could walk into a room of strangers
and put everyone at ease, his enjoyment of the rich and
varied experiences his jobs offered him, and that sense of
irony that helped him maintain his perspective in the heady
and unreal world of Washington politics. We think of the love
and pride that were so evident whenever Chuck talked about
Chris and Andrew. We think of his marriage to Doris: a
marriage in which each partner provided the ballast that
allowed the other to soar. And when we think of all these
things we can only be grateful that we knew Chuck and that he
was our friend.
____
[From the National Journal, Apr. 13, 1996]
Here Was a Public Servant
(By Ben Wildavsky)
The way a friend of Charles F. Meissner's tells the story,
Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown was once leading an
American delegation to Bonn when high-profile diplomat
Richard C. Holbrooke joined him in the head car of the U.S.
motorcade. Not long after the vehicles got under way, the
motorcade stopped. Holbrooke walked back to find Meissner in
another car and told him that Brown had requested that the
two of them trade places. ``I understand you're the guy who
tells him what to say before the meeting,'' Holbrooke told
Meissner.
Meissner, the assistant Commerce secretary for
international economic policy, was one of the best of that
unsung yet indispensable Washington class: the people who
tell other people what to say before the meeting. While he
was a distinguished international negotiator in his own
right, Meissner was fulfilling a key behind-the-scenes role
for Brown when he was killed in the April 3 plane crash that
took the lives of the Commerce Secretary and more than 30
other Americans.
Those who knew Meissner say the 55-year-old international
economics expert showed by example what it means to live a
life of public service. ``He was a civil servant in the best
tradition of the European civil service, where it carries
much more prestige,'' said Jeffrey E. Garten, former Commerce
undersecretary for international trade and now dean of the
Yale School of Management. ``When I was nominated to go to
the Commerce Department, he was about the first person I went
to, to see if he would come with me.''
With the new Clinton Administration eager to give the
Commerce Department an active role in combining commercial
and foreign policy, Meissner's extensive background in
government and in international banking was tailor-made for
the department's mission. ``Chuck had the ideal profile in
that he had worked in the State Department but he had all
this private-sector experience,'' Garten said. ``Most
importantly, he knew how to deal with the bureaucracy--and in
the State Department, he was known for being very, very tough
in pursuing his goals, It was kind of a joke that when he
headed toward Treasury, they all left their offices because
they didn't want to spend the next three days arguing with
him. He was extremely tenacious.''
Charles William Maynes, editor of Foreign Policy magazine,
said Meissner deserves a share of the credit for the changed
role of the Commerce Department under Brown. In the
Administration's first three years, ``there was more foreign
policy coming out of the Commerce Department than any other
division,'' Maynes said. ``You can quarrel with it, but they
had a specific strategy and certain countries they targeted.
That is Chuck and Garten and Brown who did that--that's where
that came from.''
A graduate of the University of Wisconsin, where he earned
a doctorate in economics, Meissner received the Bronze Star
for his Army service during the Vietnam war. He began his
Washington career at the Treasury Department in 1971.
Following a five-year stint as a Senate Foreign Relations
Committee economist, he joined the State Department as a
deputy assistant secretary and later gained ambassadorial
rank as the lead U.S. negotiator on international debt
rescheduling. Meissner spent nine years as a Chemical Bank
vice president, then moved to a senior World Bank post in
1992 before joining the Administration in April 1994. His
wife, Doris, became commissioner of the Immigration and
Naturalization Service in 1993.
Meissner was known among colleagues and friends for an
engaging sense of humor and for his basic decency. In the
days after Meissner's death, a colleague spoke of the strong
interest he took in advancing the careers of the people who
worked for him. Another recalled the ``extraordinary''--and
successful--efforts Meissner made to help a Vietnamese woman
escape her country just before the fall of Saigon. Many
remembered his personal warmth.
``He was splendid in every aspect of his personal and
professional life,'' said Richard M. Moose, undersecretary of
State for management, who first met Meissner around 1970 at
the U.S. military headquarters in Vietnam. Moose was then a
staff member of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Meissner
was an Army Intelligence officer. Meissner helped brief the
visiting Capitol Hill aides and impressed Moose right away.
``He found a way not to go along with the convention of
misleading congressional delegations,'' Moose said. Later,
when Meissner went to the Foreign Relations Committee, the
two became partners, taking numerous trips together to
Vietnam and Cambodia. ``It was like a traveling seminar in
macroeconomics,'' Moose said. ``He was terribly good at
taking his knowledge of economic theory and applying it to
very practical kinds of situations.''
Maynes said Meissner had a rare understanding of the real-
world intersection of politics and economics. ``He was an
out-standing economist and a devoted public servant,'' Maynes
said. ``But the most notable thing about him was that he was
an excellent negotiator.'' He observed that Meissner's
negotiating skills were ``so extraordinary'' he was asked to
stay at State in the Reagan Administration even though he was
a Democrat.
Other testimonials to Meissner's qualities abound. W.
Bowman Cutter, former deputy director of the National
Economic Council, said Meissner's high-level experience in
government and business made his judgment ``something you
could really rely on.'' Messiner ``obviously loved his work,
and he was good at it,'' said former Senate Majority Leader
George J. Mitchell, D-Maine, who
[[Page S5562]]
worked side by side with Meissner in the U.S. effort to
promote economic development in Northern Ireland and called
him ``a good friend.''
In the end, another friend said, Meissner stood out for his
love of substance. ``The higher you go in government, the
more you come in touch with sharks or political animals who
really aren't interested in policy but who want to do favors
for people on the Hill, or do what looks good in tomorrow's
press stories,'' said Ellen L. Frost, a former trade official
now with the Institute for International Economics in
Washington. ``And Chuck was never one of those. He cared
about sound policy.''
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