Frederick E. Nolting Jr.; Former U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam

Frederick E. Nolting Jr., 78, a career diplomat and former U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam. Nolting joined the U.S. Department of State in 1946 and then entered the foreign service. Before being sent to Saigon, he was a political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Paris, deputy U.S. representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and alternate U.S. representative to the Atlantic Council. President John F. Kennedy named him ambassador to South Vietnam in April, 1961. He served in Saigon until he was replaced by Henry Cabot Lodge in August, 1963. Three months after Nolting left the country, South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother were assassinated in an American-backed coup. Nolting was an ardent defender of Diem and called U.S. involvement in the overthrow “stupid” and “dishonorable.” In 1971, Nolting became a diplomat in residence at the University of Virginia and then a professor of business administration. When the White Burkett Miller Center for Public Affairs opened at the university in 1975, he was named first director. In Charlottesville, Va., on Thursday of an aneurysm.