[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 6 (Monday, January 12, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S303-S304]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

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                  TRIBUTE TO AMBASSADOR KENNETH QUINN

 Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, during a long and distinguished 
career in many fields of public service, Ambassador Kenneth Quinn has 
received countless awards and honors. But I daresay that the award he 
will receive tomorrow from the Department of Defense is the longest 
delayed and hardest earned of his distinctions. Ambassador Quinn will 
become the first civilian ever to receive the Air Medal for Combat 
Service, an award created during World War II to honor courageous and 
meritorious service in aerial combat.
  From November 1968 to June 1973, Kenneth Quinn served as a Foreign 
Service officer in Vietnam. For his first 2 years in that country, he 
was assigned to Advisory Team 65 in Sa Dec Province, replacing an Army 
major as senior adviser to the team. In that capacity, he took part in 
the same military activities and combat operations as his military 
predecessors. All totaled, he participated in some 250 hours of 
helicopter combat operations. He served in night helicopter patrols 
over Viet Cong-held sectors and took part in helicopter operations to 
insert and extract troops from the battlefield. On other occasions, he 
directed helicopter gunship operations from a command-and-control 
helicopter flying just several hundred feet above the battlefield, 
repeatedly coming under enemy fire. On still other occasions, he 
participated in ground combat operations, night ambushes, and brown 
water naval combat operations.
  This is just one chapter in the remarkably accomplished career of 
this Dubuque, IA, native. He served for more than three decades in the 
Foreign Service, becoming one of the most decorated and respected 
American diplomats of his generation. Ambassador Quinn was one of the 
U.S. Government's top experts on Indochina, having written his doctoral 
dissertation on Pol Pot's regime in Cambodia. Indeed, he is widely 
acknowledged to have been the first westerner to discover and report on 
the holocaust being perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge. Later, while 
serving as Ambassador to Cambodia, he played a key role in the 1999 
capture of the last remaining Khmer Rouge general. Upon his retirement 
as Ambassador to Cambodia, he was presented the Secretary of State's 
Award for Heroism and Valor for protecting Americans citizens exposed 
to danger in Cambodia and for his participation in four lifesaving 
rescues in Vietnam.
  The common theme in Ambassador Quinn's career has been his commitment 
to serving causes higher than himself. He has undertaken humanitarian 
missions that have saved countless thousands of lives. In 1978, under a 
special exchange program with the Foreign Service, he was allowed to 
return to Iowa to join the staff of Governor Robert Ray. He played a 
lead role in the Governor's program to resettle Indochinese refugees in 
Iowa, and he served as executive director of the 1979 Iowa SHARES 
Program, which sent Iowa medical personnel, supplies, and food to 
Cambodia during a period of mass starvation there.
  Following his retirement from the State Department 8 years ago this 
month, Ambassador Quinn returned to Iowa to assume leadership of the 
World Food Prize Foundation, the Des Moines-based organization 
dedicated to ending hunger around the world by promoting the 
sustainable production and distribution of an adequate and nutritious 
food supply. The World Food Prize--created by Nobel Peace Prize-winner 
and Iowa native Dr. Norman Borlaug and supported for many years by Iowa 
business leader and philanthropist John Ruan--is the most prestigious 
international award recognizing exemplary work in improving the 
quality, quantity, or availability of food in the world.

[[Page S304]]

  Mr. President, Ambassador Quinn has served our Nation as a diplomat, 
a soldier, and a passionate humanitarian. At every stage of his 
brilliant career in public service, he has embodied America's highest 
ideals, and he has earned renown for his courage, initiative, and 
selfless dedication. I join with my colleagues in the Senate in 
congratulating Ambassador Quinn as he becomes, tomorrow in Washington, 
the first civilian ever to be awarded the Air Medal for Combat 
Service.

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