Diplomat worked to free U.S. hostages

David D. Newsom, who as the third-ranking official at the State Department was a central figure during the Iran hostage crisis of 1980, died March 30 of respiratory failure at the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville. He was 90.

From the first moments after Washington was alerted that the Tehran embassy was being overrun by Islamic fundamentalists, Newsom orchestrated the behind-the-scenes efforts in the Carter administration to negotiate an end to what became a 444-day crisis.

Working through the diplomats of other countries, Newsom negotiated for the release of the Americans. He also was involved in expelling Iranian diplomats from the United States, freezing Iran’s overseas assets and embargoing its oil.

Those and other efforts were unsuccessful, and most of the hostages were not released until the day President Carter left office.

Considered by his peers to be a consummate diplomat with an ability to solve complex problems, Newsom described himself as “the all-purpose infielder on the seventh floor” of the department. Officially, he was undersecretary of state for political affairs.

Holding that job from 1978 to 1981, he fielded many other difficult issues: The Soviets invaded Afghanistan; Pakistan began building a uranium enrichment plant that could be used to produce nuclear material; the first of about 100,000 Cuban refugees left the port of Mariel for Key West, Fla.; fighting erupted in Yemen; and the U.S.-Soviet relationship deteriorated precipitously.

After Secretary of State Cyrus Vance resigned to protest Carter’s decision to attempt a military rescue of the hostages in Iran, “David was continuity factor,” said Casimir A. Yost, director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University. “All that was built on a very distinguished career as a diplomat in hot spots around world. I think that was a pivotal moment in American history, and David was right at the center of it.”

Years after leaving government service, Newsom was one of the 27 retired diplomats and military officers who signed a statement in June 2004 criticizing the Bush administration’s conduct of foreign policy. In October 2001, he was one of 28 former ambassadors and envoys who asked President Bush to continue working with Arab and Muslim allies in the war against terrorism.

The author of six books, a regular columnist for the Christian Science Monitor and founder-editor of the Diplomatic Record annual, he recently completed his memoirs.

David Dunlop Newsom was born Jan. 6, 1918, in Richmond, Calif., and graduated from UC Berkeley. He worked briefly as a newspaper reporter, then spent a year on a traveling fellowship in 1940, sailing to Japan, China, India, Africa and South America.

He returned to reporting for the San Francisco Chronicle before entering the Navy in 1942 and was stationed in Hawaii during World War II. After the war ended, he and his wife published a small newspaper in California until Newsom entered the Foreign Service in 1947.

In 1950, he received a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University in New York.

Newsom served in Karachi, Pakistan, Oslo, Baghdad, London and Washington. In 1965, he was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to be ambassador to Libya. He helped evacuate 6,000 Americans from Libya when the Six-Day War broke out in 1967.

Four years later, he returned to Washington as assistant secretary of state for African affairs. From 1973 to 1977, when he was ambassador to Indonesia, he was able to persuade the Indonesians to release most of their political prisoners. But it was also the period when President Ford and Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger gave Indonesian President Suharto the go-ahead for Indonesia’s 1975 invasion of East Timor, which left at least 200,000 dead, documents declassified in 2001 showed.

For six months in late 1977 and early 1978, he was ambassador to the Philippines. Newsom then became undersecretary of state for political affairs.

He retired from the State Department in 1981, at the rank of career minister, the highest regular senior Foreign Service rank, and turned to academia.

Survivors include his wife of 65 years, Jean Newsom; five children and nine grandchildren.