PERSONALITY IN THE NEWS : Pragmatic Eagleburger Takes Over as Secretary of State

Lawrence S. Eagleburger, who moved up to become acting secretary of state Thursday, is one of the country’s most-experienced and best-liked diplomats, a barrel-waisted, chain-smoking, wisecracking workaholic who has been a longtime sidekick of Henry A. Kissinger.

Eagleburger’s pragmatic erudition, combined with his unpretentious, direct and informal style, have gained him widespread friendship and respect in the State Department, on Capitol Hill and in international diplomatic circles.

As deputy secretary of state under the departing James A. Baker III for the last three years, Eagleburger, 61, managed most of the day-to-day business as well as handled tricky diplomatic assignments.

A memorable newspaper photo during the Persian Gulf War showed Eagleburger surveying bombed-out rubble in Tel Aviv, supporting his portly frame (and bum knee) with a cane. He was on a successful mission to persuade the Israelis not to retaliate against Iraqi Scud missile attacks, a response that could have shattered the U.S.-led coalition against Saddam Hussein.

Eagleburger, a 30-year veteran of diplomatic life, has been the point man in defending controversial Administration policies on Iraq and Yugoslavia. He also has monitored ambassadorial appointments, smoothed over rocky relations with congressional leaders and served as the State Department’s lead negotiator in Administration-wide policy disputes.

“Larry doesn’t have the political clout” that Baker has with Bush, “but I think he has a solid grasp of policy issues,” said Helmut Sonnenfeldt, who, like Eagleburger, was an aide to Kissinger, the former national security adviser and secretary of state under former presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford.

While Eagleburger was not in Baker’s inner circle, Sonnenfeldt said, “he was very often relied on to conduct policy because of Baker’s preoccupations.”

Recently, Eagleburger has been subjected to Democratic charges of conflict of interest in U.S. policy on Iraq and Yugoslavia, stemming from his days as head of Kissinger’s Washington consulting firm, which has international clients.

But his reservoir of goodwill is so deep in Congress that one committee chairman decided not to call Eagleburger as a witness in further hearings on the Administration’s pre-Persian Gulf War policy of seeking friendship with Iraq’s Hussein. The reason, an aide said, was that the chairman “likes him too much.”

“I’ve always been impressed with him,” Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the National Journal recently. “He is Kissinger without his warts, in my view. Kissinger with a clearer moral compass.”

Biden vividly recalls a luncheon party he attended in the late 1970s at the Adriatic villa of Marshall Josip Broz Tito, the late president of Yugoslavia. Tito and American elder statesman W. Averill Harriman were seated at a table, discussing dramatic events during and after World War II. Eagleburger, a career Foreign Service officer serving as U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia, was the translator--and also interjected his own ideas into the conversation.

“What impressed me was Eagleburger’s absolute command of the political situation, as well as his command of the language,” said Biden.

Since then, the senator has helped guide Eagleburger past Senate confirmation obstacles thrown up by one of his only congressional enemies, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), a conservative ideologue who distrusts Eagleburger’s pragmatism.

Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), another member of the Senate foreign policy panel, attributes Eagleburger’s bipartisan popularity to “his great experience, his great wisdom and his very pleasant personality in dealing with difficult situations.”

Occasionally, Eagleburger’s wry hyperbole goes awry. In a speech at Georgetown University following the collapse of communism in Europe, he suggested that the world might some day be nostalgic for the Cold War because in a bipolar world it was easier to understand where nations stood. The point was made for effect with a degree of humor, but some critics hammered him for it.

A native of Stevens Point, Wis., Eagleburger received an undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1952. He then served two years as a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army before returning to the school to earn a graduate degree. He entered the Foreign Service in 1957 and has served in Honduras and Belgium in addition to numerous posts in the United States.

He has married twice and is the father of three sons, all of whom are named Lawrence.

“First of all, it was ego,” he explained about the names in an interview with the Washington Post. “And secondly, I wanted to screw up the Social Security system.”

Each son goes by his middle name.