On the day of his arrival in 1968 as the U.S. ambassador to Bonn, West Germany, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. dropped a
bombshell. Lodge said he believed everybody was entitled to one idiosyncrasy, and his was that at the end of the workday, all papers on his desk, including classified documents, should remain undisturbed until he returned the next morning.
At the time, I was a State Department special agent assigned to Bonn as part of a three-person team of regional security officers providing personnel and physical security for the embassy, all U.S. consulates in West Germany and the U.S. Mission in West Berlin.
We had good reason to be stunned.
West Germany in the 1960s was near ground zero in the Cold War. Few European countries had been more penetrated by foreign spies. American diplomatic missions were key targets.
Lodge, nonetheless, prevailed.
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