    • 

CHAPTER 12

Duty with Ambassador Gregg

L

illey’s departure left a gap in the U.S. Embassy leadership for almost
a year. Stan Brooks, who had been deputy ambassador under James
Lilley, was placed in charge of the embassy until Donald Gregg
could be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Normally this process is fairly
routine, but in Gregg’s case it was not. Some Democratic senators believed
that Gregg had been involved in some illegal activities involving support for
the Nicaragua “contra” movement, and he also was accused of involvement
in the “Irangate” scandal. Gregg had been in the CIA for many years, and
following his retirement from that agency, he became Vice Pres. George
Bush’s national security advisor. His problems receiving timely confirmation
were probably related more to politics than to any previous wrongdoing,
but for whatever reason, he was unable to be confirmed for quite some time.
Gregg’s nemesis in his Senate confirmation hearing was Sen. Alan
Cranston of California. Cranston considered himself somewhat of an Asian
expert and really gave the ambassador-designate a hard time. Gregg was
not confirmed as ambassador until September , , and then only by a
- vote.^1 Because of his background and the fact that he had been the
CIA station chief in Seoul on a previous assignment, Gregg’s appointment
was also controversial among some Koreans.^2 He turned out to be an excel-
lent ambassador. Standing well over six feet tall and possessing a warm, open
personality, he was very popular among Koreans by the time he left. I be-
lieve he was the best of the five ambassadors under whom I served, going
all the way back to Ambassador Philip Habib in the early s.
The initial opposition to Gregg by some Koreans was probably due to a
misunderstanding of the role of the U.S. CIA. For many years, the Korean
CIA had had both an international and domestic function and sometimes
tended to concentrate on the domestic role to excess. In , for instance,
it kidnapped Kim Dae Jung in Japan and would have killed him had it not
been for speedy U.S. intervention.^3 (Ironically Gregg was the U.S. CIA sta-
tion chief at the time and was actively involved in resolving the case.) The
KCIA was widely criticized or feared in Korea, even after the democratic