[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 15 (Friday, February 7, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1124-S1125]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       TRIBUTE TO PAMELA HARRIMAN

  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, all of us in this country were deeply 
saddened by the tragic death of Pamela Harriman in Paris a few days 
ago. Regardless of party or political persuasion, this was a remarkable 
woman who spent a lifetime, from the basement of 10 Downing Street with 
that most revered of leaders of the 20th century, Sir Winston 
Churchill, to representing the United States in the Embassy in Paris. 
Hers was a remarkable life in many ways.
  As we have been reading about the legend of Pamela Harriman over the 
past few days not enough attention, in my view, is being paid to her 
profound legacy to this country. Most of us--I think all of us, maybe 
with some exception in this Chamber--were born in this country. We did 
not make the choice to be Americans. We were fortunate enough that our 
parents or grandparents or great-grandparents came to this country, and 
we were the beneficiaries of those decisions.
  I have always thought it was somewhat different for people who made 
the choice, the conscious choice to become an American. Pamela Harriman 
made that choice to be an American and contributed mightily to this 
country. She was engaged in the political process. She was a partisan. 
And I say to my friends on the other side, I think that is healthy when 
people become engaged and not only have ideas and values and beliefs, 
but are willing to act on them. And for those of us who are Democrats, 
we will be eternally grateful for her support and her willingness to be 
engaged in the political life in this country. For people, regardless 
of political persuasion, she was a great individual who represented our 
country in Paris with great distinction.
  There was a column presented the other day, Mr. President, by Richard 
Holbrooke in the Washington Post which I think captured in many ways 
the feelings of many of us about Pamela Harriman's service.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that that column by Richard 
Holbrooke be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed to 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the Washington Post, Feb. 6, 1997]

                     Pamela Harriman's Last Mission

                          By Richard Holbrooke

       If, as Soren Kierkegaard said, ``Life is lived forward but 
     understood backward,'' then the arc that Pamela Harriman 
     traveled can best be understood by beginning at its end, with 
     her ambassadorship to France. The four years she spent in 
     Paris in service to her adopted nation gave a different 
     meaning to what had gone before it, not only to her 
     biographers but also to herself. In retrospect, everything 
     that preceded Paris will look different because, after a life 
     in which she was identified closely with a series of 
     important men, she did something important so splendidly on 
     her own.
       She spent her last hours before she fell ill in a 
     characteristic whirlwind of activity. Less than an hour 
     before her fatal attack, she was discussing on the telephone 
     with her friend Undersecretary of State Peter Tarnoff some 
     highly technical problem concerning the Treaty on 
     Conventional Forces in Europe. This was not the public Pamela 
     Churchill Harriman, the one the press always described as 
     ``beautiful and glamorous,'' but the intensely serious public 
     servant, handling personally a matter most ambassadors would 
     have left to someone else. Then, after discussing the CFE 
     with Tarnoff, she went swimming at the Hotel Ritz and, as she 
     got out of the pool, collapsed without warning.
       Because Pam was the daughter of a Dorset baron, I often 
     asked her, teasingly, how she had managed to overcome the 
     disadvantages of her birth. But in a sense, I meant it; had 
     she followed the normal trajectory for a girl of her 
     generation and limited education, she would perhaps have 
     lived out the last few years of a fairly predictable life as, 
     say, a duchess dowager in some stately English home. Instead 
     she began a 57-year voyage almost continuously in the public 
     eye.
       The standard stories always emphasize the men in each phase 
     of Pam's life, and there was truth in this; she herself 
     talked of it occasionally with her close friends. But the 
     role men played in her life can be misunderstood. It is true 
     that she loved, and was loved by, an extraordinary group of 
     men. But Pam absorbed more than the luxuries of life from her 
     close proximity to men in power. From each of them she 
     learned something new and gave something back. It was with 
     Averell Harriman, a major figure in both foreign policy and 
     the Democratic Party for half a century, that she returned to 
     the world of public affairs, this time not as the British 
     daughter-in-law of Winston Churchill but as a proud new 
     American citizen. She became increasingly involved in 
     Harriman's two major concerns: the Democratic Party and 
     American foreign policy. Thus, when President Clinton made 
     the decision to send her to Paris in 1993, she was more 
     prepared than either she or most of us realized.
       Unlike many political appointees, she was determined to 
     understand the most complex details of her job. At the same 
     time, she remained a perfectionist, equally determined to 
     present a flawless facade. When, as her ``boss,'' I tried to 
     get her to take more time off, to relax more, to do less, she 
     simply said, ``I can't do that. I'm not built that way.''
       Her efforts produced results not only for her personally 
     but for the nation. In the famously difficult relationship 
     between Washington and Paris, Pam achieved a level of access 
     to the highest levels of the French government that was 
     unique. While the press focused on the strains in the 
     relationship, these were never as serious as reported, and in 
     any case they would have been far greater without Pam's 
     ability to bring officials of both nations--most of them 
     younger than her son Winston--together under her roof to work 
     things out. It was one of her enduring beliefs that if she 
     could get the right people together in a room she could get 
     them to agree, or at least reduce their disagreements. That 
     she was so often right, in the face of the usual bureaucratic 
     passivity or pessimism, was a tribute to her determination 
     and tenacity.

[[Page S1125]]

       Almost exactly 28 years ago, on January 19, 1969, a group 
     of us went to Orly airport in Paris to say goodbye to Averell 
     Harriman, who was leaving his post as chief negotiator to the 
     Vietnam Peace Talks on the day before Richard Nixon's 
     inauguration. Harriman was 76 years old, and that day in 
     Paris was to be his last as a U.S. government official. Now, 
     at the same age and in the same city, his widow has gone out 
     as she would have wanted to, just as she was ending a 
     successful mission for her nation.

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