fc188 Richard W. Murphy, Roving Diplomat in World Hot Spots, Dies at 95

Updated:2024-12-19 02:01    Views:85

Richard W. Murphy, a diplomat whose colorful career included serving as ambassador to three Arab countries and as an assistant secretary of state in the 1980s — when he was the top Mideast expert in the State Department and helped end a long civil war in Lebanon — died in Manhattan on Nov. 22. He was 95.

Recognizing the extraordinary dangers of a president seeking not just to weaponize the criminal justice system for political ends but trying as well to assume personal control over who should be investigated and charged, the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, sought to stall.

His son, Richard M. Murphy, confirmed his death, at a hospital.

Early in Mr. Murphy’s career, he observed the military forces of Israel, Egypt, France and Britain entangled in the 1956 Suez Crisis and concluded that a Mideast specialist would never lack for good postings or excitement. Soon after, he began to learn Arabic.

Mr. Murphy was among the last of a post-World War II generation of State Department officials known as Arabists — experts steeped in the language, cultures and eternally shifting politics of the Middle East.

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As assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs from 1983 to 1989, he relished hopping on a plane to conduct diplomacy in one of the foreign capitals he had come to know intimately. “Where’s Murphy?” was an inside joke at State Department press briefings referring to his frequent, often secretive travel.

Conversant in Arabic and French, Mr. Murphy mentored a number of future Mideast experts, including William J. Burns, the current director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

“With a wry sense of humor and infinite patience, he taught me and a whole generation of diplomats the best in tradecraft and integrity,” Mr. Burns said in an email.

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