[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 18461-18462]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



               RECOGNIZING AMBASSADOR DOUGLAS P. PETERSON

  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that 
the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Senate Resolution 
167, submitted earlier today by Senators McCain, Kerry, Gramm, and 
myself.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the resolution by title.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A resolution (S. Res. 167) recognizing Ambassador Douglas 
     ``Pete'' Peterson for his service to the United States as the 
     first American ambassador to Vietnam since the Vietnam War.

  There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the 
resolution.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, on behalf of the other 
Senators--and I know they are in various negotiations on other 
legislation; in Senator McCain's case, the Airline Security Act, and in 
the case of Senator Gramm, he is involved in the Intelligence Committee 
right now--I say on behalf of all of them, and for me, what a great 
privilege it is to recognize a public servant, Ambassador Pete 
Peterson, who served as a Member of Congress prior to being named by 
President Clinton as the first United States Ambassador to Vietnam.
  We bring forth this resolution commending Ambassador Peterson because 
of his extraordinary leadership in helping bring about the Vietnam 
Trade Act, which this Senate passed earlier today. What is so poignant 
about this story of Douglas Pete Peterson is the fact that when he 
first went to Vietnam during the Vietnam war as an Air Force pilot, he 
was shot down and captured and held in captivity for over 6 years. He 
was able to return to that country as Ambassador and has won the hearts 
of the people of Vietnam.
  I remember reading a story that absolutely gripped me about a few 
days before Pete Peterson departed as Ambassador to Vietnam, he had a 
reunion with one of his captors. This was a captor who, at a time of 
great stress, after Pete had been beat over and over again to the point 
of unconsciousness, and he did not know if he was going to live or die 
at that particular point, in his stupor of coming in and out of 
consciousness, he motioned to one of his captors that he was thirsty, 
and his captor brought him a cup of tea.
  A couple of days before Pete was to depart as the first Ambassador 
from America to Vietnam, and a very successful Ambassador, he had a 
reunion with that captor, and that Vietnamese gentleman offered him a 
cup of tea again.
  How times had changed and what a great leader for us to have 
representing America where he held no grudge; he did not want revenge. 
He offered the best of America showing that we are a forgiving people. 
After serving six distinguished years as a Member of Congress from the 
State of Florida, for Pete, a Vietnam POW, to return to that country 
that had held him captive the longest as one of the POWs, then to come 
back extending the hand of friendship with no malice in his heart, was 
to win the hearts of the Vietnamese people. In the process, he 
negotiated and tweaked and nurtured the Vietnam trade bill, which we 
passed earlier today.
  It is with a great deal of humility that I speak on behalf of so many 
others, including Senator McCain. Although he was not in the same POW 
camp with Ambassador Peterson, he clearly knew of him and thinks the 
highest of him. My words are inadequate to express the thoughts of all 
these other Senators.
  I want to say one thing in closing about Pete Peterson. He is not 
only a hero to so many in his public and professional life --his 
professional life as a military officer, as a Member of Congress, and 
as our first Ambassador to Vietnam--but he is also a role model as a 
human being. After he returned from Vietnam, he suffered through the 
years of a long and torturous process of cancer with his first wife, 
finally claiming her life, but Pete Peterson was right there with her 
the whole way. He had the joy in Vietnam of meeting an Australian 
diplomat's daughter of Vietnamese descent, his present wife Vi. They 
make an engaging and attractive couple.
  Mr. President, I offer these comments of appreciation as we pass this 
resolution.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, four years ago, I rose in this body to 
encourage my colleagues to confirm the nomination of my friend Pete 
Peterson to serve as the American ambassador to Vietnam, the first 
since the end of the Vietnam War. When we confirmed Pete for this 
important assignment in 1997, many of us could not have foreseen his 
success in building a normal

[[Page 18462]]

relationship between our two countries.
  Indeed, the best measure of Pete's success is the fact that it seems 
quite normal today for the United States to have an ambassador resident 
in Hanoi to advance our array of interests in Vietnam, which range from 
accounting for our missing service personnel to improving human rights 
to cooperating on drugs and crime to addressing regional challenges 
together. That normalcy is due largely to the superb job Pete did as 
our ambassador to Vietnam.
  As a former fighter pilot shot down and held captive for six and a 
half years, some would have assumed it was not Pete's destiny to go 
back to Vietnam to restore a relationship that had been frozen in 
enmity for decades. Indeed, there was a time in Pete's life when the 
prospect of voluntarily residing in Hanoi would have been unthinkable. 
Much time has passed since then. Our relationship with Vietnam has 
changed in once unthinkable ways.
  Pete rose to the occasion and helped us to build the new relationship 
we enjoy today. Pete's willingness, after having already rendered many 
years of noble service to his country, to answer her call again and 
serve in a place that did not occasion many happy memories for him, was 
an act of selfless patriotism beyond conventional measure. I am 
immensely proud of him.
  I know of no other American whose combination of subtle intuition and 
steely determination, whose ability to win over both former Vietnamese 
adversaries and skeptics of the new relationship here at home, could 
have matched the success Pete had in transforming our relations. Pete 
did this in service to America, and as an acknowledgment that the range 
of our interests in Vietnam, and the values we hope to see take root 
there, called for such an approach.
  Our nation is better off for Pete's service. So are the Vietnamese 
people. So are those Americans who learned the grim but whole truth 
about the fate of their loved ones who had been missing since the war 
as a result of Pete's unending commitment to a full and final 
accounting. After the number of POW/MIA repatriation ceremonies over 
which he presided--each flag-draped coffin containing the hopes and 
dreams of a lifetime--Pete can confirm that providing final answers to 
all POW/MIA families is alone ample reason for our continuing 
engagement with the Vietnamese.
  Pete Peterson has built a legacy that serves our nation and honors 
the values for which young Americans once fought, suffered, and died, 
in Southeast Asia. I can think of no higher tribute than that.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, the Senate is considering a resolution in 
recognition of the outstanding service of our former U.S. Ambassador to 
Vietnam, Mr. Pete Peterson. I will comment briefly on the exceptional 
life of Mr. Peterson.
  Mr. President, Pete Peterson is an American in our proudest 
tradition. Throughout his adult life, he has served America as a career 
officer in the United States Air Force, serving with bravery during the 
Vietnam war, including a period of over 6 years of incarceration in a 
Vietnam prison after having been shot down in combat.
  Pete Peterson returned to the United States and to Marianna, FL, 
after his long period of incarceration in Vietnam and, as a civilian, 
established his own business but continued his commitment to service, 
service in the form of being a volunteer at the State's principal 
school for boys who have the most difficult experience of delinquency.
  Pete Peterson served as a role model to these young men who were at 
the point in life where they either were going to recapture a sense of 
personal responsibility and values or they were likely to spend their 
own adult life in another form of prison for periods of longer than 6 
years, even, that Pete Peterson spent in Vietnam.
  He performed great service to these young men and, in the course of 
that service, became aware of the role that service in elective office 
might have in terms of furthering his interest in America's youth. And 
so, in 1990, Pete Peterson, in what many considered to be almost a 
cause without hope, announced that he was going to run for the U.S. 
Congress. He did, and by the end of the campaign had managed to rally 
such public support that he defeated an incumbent Member of Congress--a 
rare feat in these days.
  He then served 6 years of very distinguished service in the House of 
Representatives. Having announced in 1990, when he first ran, that he 
would only serve three terms, at the end of his three terms, in 1996, 
he indicated he was going to return home to Marianna, having completed 
that congressional phase of his public career. Little did he know there 
was yet to be another important chapter before him. And that chapter 
developed as a result of the Congress and the President--President 
Clinton--reestablishing normal diplomatic relations with our previous 
adversary, Vietnam.
  President Clinton asked Pete Peterson to be the first United States 
Ambassador to Vietnam in the postwar era. Of course, Pete accepted that 
challenge to return to the service of the Nation that he so deeply 
loved.
  He was an exceptional Ambassador. You can imagine the emotion he 
felt, as well as the people of Vietnam--to have a man who had spent 
years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam now returning as the first United 
States Ambassador.
  Any sense of bitterness, any sense of loss that Pete may have felt 
evaporated. He represented our Nation and reached out to the people of 
Vietnam with unusual ability and warmth.
  A testimony to his great service is the legislation that this Senate 
today approved, which is a trade agreement with Vietnam. This is 
symbolic of the new relationship that will exist between the United 
States and Vietnam as we rebuild our relationship based on our common 
interest in advancing the economic well-being of both of our peoples. 
This trade agreement would not have been before the Senate today but 
for the exceptional skills, as our Ambassador to Vietnam, which were 
exercised by Pete Peterson.
  So, Mr. President, I join those who are taking this opportunity, as 
we enter into a new era of relationship with Vietnam, to recognize the 
particular role which our former colleague in the House of 
Representatives, Pete Peterson, played in making this possible.
  He is truly an exceptional American, but in the mold of so many 
generations of exceptional Americans. We are fortunate, as Americans, 
and those of us who know him also as a Floridian, to have served with 
and to have lived at the same time with such a special human being as 
Pete Peterson.
  I commend him for his many contributions to our Nation, and wish him 
well, as I am certain he will be pursuing further opportunities for 
public service.
  Mr. Nelson of Florida. I ask unanimous consent the resolution and the 
preamble be agreed to en bloc, the motion to reconsider be laid upon 
the table, and that any statements relating thereto be printed in the 
Record.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The resolution (S. Res. 167) was agreed to.
  The preamble was agreed to.
  (The resolution, with its preamble, is printed in today's Record 
under ``Resolutions Submitted.'')
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. BIDEN. Are we in morning business?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
  Mr. BIDEN. I ask unanimous consent to proceed up to 22 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Nelson of Florida). Without objection, it 
is so ordered.

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