TALIM Director's Blog

Lafayette, We Are Here In Morocco's Rif

L'Escadrille Chérifienne

Recently Moroccan satellite TV audiences tuned in to ARTE, the Franco-German cultural channel, to see Daniel Cling's excellent new documentary, Abdelkrim et la Guerre du Rif.  For many, it was the first time footage on this war from Morocco's colonial past was seen on TV.

The war was important in many ways - a short-lived "Republic of the Rif" with its own banknotes; a groundbreaking Spanish  amphibious landing decades before D-Day; and one of the first times chemical weapons were used against civilians.  The Third Rif War, 1921-26.

But what caught our attention was the silent-film sequence on the steps of the French Prime Minister's residence, when France proudly paraded its special recruits in the war against a tribal rebellion: the American pilots of the Lafayette Escadrille, of World War I fame, now back to fly for France, this time in North Africa.

The romantic notion of American flyboys so eager to fight Germans that they enlisted in the French forces is enshrined in films like this 1958 Tab Hunter vehicle (image from MoviePoster.com).

But the idea of American mercenaries recruited to bomb and strafe in what was one of the twentieth century's first wars of national liberation is perhaps less appealing.  Little has been written about this episode, but we have found two excellent articles, both in French.  El-Mostafa Azzou of Morocco's University of Oujda has written this article carried by Cairn.info, and William Dean, of the US Air Force Air Command and Staff College (ACSC), whose article "Americans in the Rif Rebellion" is featured in the French Revue Historique des Armées.

Writes William Dean:

July 1925: an American colonel named Charles Sweeney, who had served with the Foreign Legion in World War I and later in the US Army, proposed to Prime Minister Painlevé to create an escadrille of American pilots who were veterans of the Escadrille Lafayette.   [T]he Painlevé government foresaw that there would be some political difficulties.  To avoid upsetting the isolationist government of President Coolidge, these American mercenary aviators were to technically be in the service of the Sultan (or Chérif) Yusef of Morocco, who was the de jure ruler of the country.  This was the reason why the unit was called the Escadrille Chérifienne... also referred to in documents as the Escadrille Américaine.

William Dean and El-Mostafa Azzou both describe the motivation of the French authorities to create a propaganda coup with the Escadrille, helping to counter pro-Riffian sentiment in the United States ("the American Friends of the Rif").  American newspapers carried editorials against the war, and against involvement by Americans on the side of the French and Spanish colonizers.  The American Legation in Tangier warned the American aviators that US law prohibited fighting in a war against people with whom the US had no quarrel ("Enlistment of American citizens for military service in Morocco").

In the end, US government concerns about violations of neutrality and hostile public opinion brought the chapter of the Escadrille Chérifienne to a close after only six weeks of combat operations.  France's new Moroccan warlord, Maréchal Philippe Pétain, lauded the pilots for their "devotion to the French cause."

In one of the ironies of history, a bare twenty years later, OSS agent and anthropologist Carleton S. Coon worked out of the Tangier American Legation in the lead up to the November 1942 Operation Torch landings in North Africa.  His job: should Spain join the Axis powers, Coon was to spark a rebellion by the Rif tribes as a diversion to help shield the Allied landing force.

In the end, Spain remained officially neutral, and the tribes kept their powder dry.  Evidently, the bombs dropped by the Lafayette Escadrille two decades before hadn't created any lasting animosity against Americans in the Rif mountains.

Medina Diplomats: December 7, 1797 - October 16, 1961

"On October 9, the new office building of the Consulate General was completed, and on October 16 the move from the old buildings was completed."

The laconic entry of the anonymous diplomat or consular clerk, writing in his or her best "Palmer Method" penmanship, belies its historic importance.  What is being described above, from one of our research library's precious "Miscellaneous Record Books," is the end of close to two centuries of American diplomatic and consular presence in the medina of Tangier.

That was exactly fifty years ago today.

We rerun the tape to December 7, 1797, when the first American Consul, James Simpson, arrives in Tangier to establish the first American Consulate in the Arab world, in a Muslim country, and on the continent of Africa.  A trilogy of firsts.

Others precede Simpson on the State Department's list of Tangier Principal Officers - Thomas Barclay, the "Emissary to Barbary" who in 1786 traveled to Morocco to negotiate America's first treaty with an Arab, African, or Muslim head of state, was the first named as Consul, but he died en route to post.  So the honors must go to Simpson, who managed to arrive here, stayed for more than twenty years in sometimes rudimentary conditions, and died at post.

Simpson died the year before Sultan Moulay Slimane gave the current Legation property to the United States in 1821. Tangier was to remain the only overseas diplomatic property owned by the United States through most of the 19th century.

I'm not sure when the State Department started the practice of its consuls, consuls general, diplomatic agents, ministers, and ambassadors keeping a running log of everything they and their staff did in Miscellaneous Record Books, but when I served in the Foreign Service, starting in 1979, I believe the practice had already ended.

Embassies had already become sprawling domains of many different US Government agencies, and gone were the quaint days when the marriage of US citizens by the Consul General merited mention in the handwritten record book.  And now, things are so universally electronic that the closest thing would be the ephemeral email inbox.  Not quite as romantic as the leather-bound books of the American Consular Service.

So what happened after October 16, 1961?  The US Consulate General in Tangier moved to its new quarters in modern Tangier, into a building that featured glass and concrete, the antithesis of the Old Legation, as our building is sometimes still called.

Some day, we'll revisit the story of that new building, which lasted a quarter of a century.  But that's another story.  Today, we think back fifty years, when America's oldest diplomatic building saw its last consuls and ministers, and started on a journey that we continue today. 

Rives Childs: Remembering the Righteous on Yom Kippur

Our post on J. Rives Childs, Chargé d'Affaires at the Tangier American Legation during World War II, has elicited a fascinating comment from a friend of his.  We repeat David Meyer's letter below to give it proper attention, as Mr. Meyer begins to answer one of the questions we raised in January: does J. Rives Childs deserve "Righteous" recognition at Yad Vashem for his role in saving Jewish lives during the Holocaust?  Mr. Meyer's letter adresses one of the key Yad Vashem criteria: "Righteous" designation is reserved for people who not only saved Jews, but also risked their own lives in doing so.

Images from Toledo sword cane inscribed to J. Rives Childs

TALIM Museum, Tangier American Legation

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


"Rives Childs was a close personal friend of mine for many years, from 1971 until his death in 1987. Childs was promoted to the rank of Ambassador soon after the war and was the U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia and then Saudi Arabia in the post-war years that proved pivotal for both the creation of Israel and the resulting conflicts. Childs worked diligently to keep the Arab states, especially the Saudis, from engaging in war with Israel. His rapport with the Saudi King was critical in this regard.

When Senator McCarthy began his campaign alleging that there were Communists in the State Department, Childs had just turned 60 years old and was elgible for retirement. His wife, whom he had married in 1922 in Moscow, was from a formerly prominent, aristocratic Russian family, but had of course had her assets seized by the Bolsheviks. Childs was in Russia at the time, helping Herbert Hoover address the widespread famine that was occuring in Russia, when he met his wife-to-be. Childs told me that he was concerned in the early 1950s that he may become a target of McCarthy, because his wife was Russian. He told me that if he was ever called before the Senate committee, he was prepared to defend himself, in part by reading the letter from Renee Reichmann.

Childs was a native of Virginia, and his family lineage was long and prominent. He told me that he probably could have asked the U.S. Senator Harry Byrd (Virginia) to support him, but he did not want to put his wife through such an ordeal. Consequently, he decided to retire. He lived in Nice, France for the next 20 years (1953-1973) before returning to the United States after his wife's death.

Note also that Childs was awarded the Medal of Freedom by Harry Truman (*see note at bottom of page) after the war for his contribution to the North African invasion by providing intelligence early and continuously to the Allies before Operation Torch began. At one point, the Nazis had targeted him for assassination. The Allies had discovered this (because they had broken the Nazi's code) but did not tell Childs. For whatever reason, the assassination never occurred. Childs discovered this later after the war.

I have in the past thought, like you, that Childs ought to be considered for recognition for his actions regarding the Hungarian Jews he helped save. He told me that there were other diplomats who said, in essence, "Why bother? You are putting yourself at risk." (Evidently, he WAS at risk, but did not realize how much so until after the war. My hunch is that the Nazis wanted him dead because they suspected him of spying for the Allies more than his actions regarding the Jews in Budapest, but who knows for certain?).

I met Childs in 1971 when I was 19 years old and a freshman at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia. Childs was a 1912 graduate of Randolph-Macon (subsequently received his M.A. from Harvard) and would regularly visit the school for several months in 1971 and 1972. In my senior year, he left Nice, France and returned to the U.S. permanently.

We maintained a close friendship for the many years following my graduation in 1974 - in fact, he introduced me to a woman who became my wife (we have been married for 31 years). I told him that it was remarkable that he could still at the age of 85 have such a profound influence on people's lives by such simply "match making." He was always a modest person, but he found that humorous whenever I reminded him.

Obviously, he was one of many unsung heroes from that horrible time. While I sometimes wish that these types of persons would be able to live forever, I take solace in the fact that there are children and grandchilden alive today, making contributions to this world in ways we will never fully know, because Rives Childs saved those Budapest Jews from certain death in the concentration camps. I write this narrative on Yom Kippur as a testimony of one person's courage long ago that is an example of Atonement for all of us."

David Meyer

Fairfax, Virginia USA

* Note: James Cockfield, in his book on J. Rives Childs' work in famine relief in post-WW I Russia, says that Childs "was belatedly awarded the Medal of Freedom in 1946 for his work in cryptography" [in World War One].  Obviously, Childs (also a renowned expert on Casanova, and a prolific author) was quite a Renaissance man, in addition to being an unsung hero.

Peace Corps 50th Anniversary in Morocco

As the site of the Peace Corps Morocco training center in the 1970s, and as home to the Legation's "Cistern Chapel" of Peace Corps disco fame, TALIM is happy to help spread the word about the "Call for Memories" project below.

Minister Gummere & Teddy Roosevelt's Big Stick In Morocco

Samuel R. Gummere, First American Minister to Morocco (Tangier, 1898 - 1909)

Note: This guest post by Mehdi Zainoune, summer intern en route to studies at Sciences Po in Paris, is part of our series of vignettes from the history of Morocco-United States relations.  Samuel René Gummere (February 19, 1849 - May 28, 1920) was posted to Tangier at a particularly complex time in relations between Morocco, the United States, and Europe.  Gummere, who spent 1898 through 1905 as Consul General and then was elevated to Minister when diplomatic relations were established, presided over the Tangier American Legation during a time of gunboat diplomacy triggered by the kidnapping of Ion Perdicaris.  His long experience in Morocco was key to his selection as adviser to the US delegation at the 1906 Algeciras conference, which was to decide the fate of a Morocco increasingly prey to European colonial intentions.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"A diplomat of polish and ability, a brilliant conversationalist and raconteur." 

Entry on Samuel René Gummere, Dictionary of American Biography, 1932

1898: Samuel R. Gummere, appointed U.S. Consul General in Tangier, starts a uniquely event-filled 11-year assignment, during which Gummere was named the first American Minister to Morocco, and his Tangier Consulate General elevated to the status of Legation, the mark of diplomatic relations.

As one of a handful of Americans in Tangier, Gummere was a frequent guest of the wealthy and controversial Ion H. Perdicaris.  Earlier, in the 1880’s, the relationship between the two Trenton New Jersey natives had already touched politically charged topics when Samuel Gummere joined Ion Perdicaris in protesting to the Secretary of State against the practice of issuing certificates of American citizenship or protection as carried on profitably but illegally by the United States Consulate in Tangier (also known as the Protégé System).

Perdicaris is a name that might be familiar to film buffs.  John Milius’ 1975 Hollywoodian epic The Wind and the Lion revealed both Gummere and Perdicaris to the American public.

However distorted the film’s historical details may have been (Perdicaris, an elderly male, was played by a young Candice Bergen; US Marines shooting at Moroccans and Germans - sorry, it never happened, though Marines did wind up guarding the Belgian Legation), it highlighted the crucial position of Tangier in the early 20^th century, when European nations were jockeying for influence in and power over a chaotic Moroccan kingdom.

The original May 1904 event, where Perdicaris was kidnapped for ransom by Moroccan warlord Raisuli, revealed how tense the relations between Morocco and “the Powers” had become, and came to be known as the “Perdicaris Affair.”

In this highly politicized incident, President Theodore Roosevelt, already known for his “Big Stick” through actions in Latin America (Venezuela, Santo Domingo, and the Panama Canal), was handed another opportunity to exert his robust foreign policy, backed up by the threat of military force – the US Navy and Marines – if required.

Roosevelt dispatched seven warships from the Atlantic fleet to Tangier – followed by the stirring telegram “Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead” – despite the fact that Gummere's quiet diplomacy was on the verge of securing the captive's release. This high-profile incident, among others, like the puzzling 1901 “Ezegui Affair” – when the Moroccan government threatened to keep moving the kingdom’s capital (!) if Gummere (backed up by an earlier use of an American cruiser) insisted on visiting the Sultan for apologies over the accidentally assassinated American citizen Marcus Ezegui – proved Gummere’s diplomatic worth.

Gummere was rewarded by appointment as the first Minister of the United States to Morocco in March 1905, reflecting the two countries’ establishment of diplomatic relations after more than a century of consular and commercial relations.

Gummere’s presence at the Algeciras conference in 1906 - which aimed to settle European differences regarding Morocco - was due to his wide knowledge of the local situation and was appreciated by the other American commissioners.

Roosevelt, despite his saber-rattling reputation, feared a continental war and the disruption it would cause to American trade, and ensured that America played an important role in reaching a successful conclusion in Algeciras. Through Gummere and his other mediators, he offered a compromise plan which the European powers accepted. The proposal granted Morocco a greater deal of autonomy and allowed for all European nations to trade with Morocco.

Alas, it was to be short lived, as France and Spain declared their respective Protectorates over Morocco in 1912.  A non-career appointee, Gummere returned to private life after Tangier.

The Tangier Option

When (or if) I get to be his age, I want to be at least half as creative as Harold (Hal) Malt.

This World War II veteran (he was a fighter pilot), who has been spending good parts of every year in Tangier for upwards of a decade, appeared last night at the Librairie des Colonnes for a signing of his novel, The Tangier Option.

Though I haven't yet read it, it will be a nice addition to our Legation bookshop, especially when we open up a new exhibit that features Operation Torch, the November 1942 landings that brought the United States into the European Theatre of WW II.

Hal has exercised the historical novelist's license to embroider a bit ("action-packed thriller... nest of Axis spies... a romance develops" ... blurbs from the jacket).  But this story telling is based on research in our own archives here at the Legation.

Hal Malt and Carol Malt at July 4th Legation party

The facts actually need little embroidery.  The American Legation in Tangier was ideally situated to play a crucial role in preparing the Allied (mostly American) landings in North Africa.  Surrounded by Spanish Morocco, Tangier's International Zone maintained links with French Morocco, one of the targets of Operation Torch, and was a short ferry ride over to Gibraltar, a key British base for commando operations.

The Tangier American Legation was home to some of the first agents of the Office of Strategic Services.  The OSS, precursor to the CIA, was staffed with people who knew the region that they operated in.  People like Carlton Coon, an anthropologist who had studied the peoples of the mountainous Rif in northern Morocco.  His contacts among Riffian nationalists would be crucial, should Spain's General Franco enter the war on the Axis side.

Carlton Coon's own account of his wartime experience, A North Africa Story, certainly would have been among Hal Malt's references.  There's enough factual material in there - designing authentic-looking donkey turd roadside mines against German vehicles, nighttime rendezvous with Moroccan agents with code names like "Tassels," the Spanish fascists chasing down Spanish Republican Communists sympathetic to the Allies - to provide material for an imaginative novelist.

Just when it seems like World War II, even its most obscure incidents, has spawned every imaginable history book,  documentary film, or novel, here comes along someone like Hal Malt to give the story another twist.  Not bad for that eager young P-39 Airacobra pilot, a few decades later!

(right: 1943 photo of Hal Malt from the jacket of The Tangier Option)

TALIMblog - The Kindness of Readers

"My family arrived in Tangier in June 1947 and thanks to your blog, seven years worth of memories have come flooding back. Until we were able to get a space heater, the humidity and/or rain caused everything to mold--leatherbound books, shoes, even some cake flour sent by a relative in the U.S.  We lived with erratic electric service and water turned off from midnight until 9 a.m.  I feel very fortunate that relatives saved letters sent by my mother in those early days before we came to think of these things as normal. 

My daughter and I are considering visiting Tangier [and thought] that you might be able to use a few days assistance from someone who had familiarity with the American Legation during the International Zone period."

So began an email early this year, which led to a new friendship with the Long family.  Margery King (née Long) and her daughter Jennifer did visit Tangier earlier this spring, and wowed us with stories from the time when Tangier was the International Zone, and when this building was still the American Legation, responsible for US diplomatic relations with soon-to-be-independent Morocco.

Marge and Jen did more than tell stories, they provided a unique glimpse into the world of post-war diplomacy in the Tangier International Zone.  They brought along a veritable treasure trove of invitations that Marge's parents received as the head of an important Cold War era project, the establishment of the RCA Tangier Relay Station (read a 1953 article from RCA Review magazine, and recent photos of the former relay station, both from "Coldwar-c4i" website).

Look closely (click to enlarge) at the scan of the Longs' invitation cards, and you'll see a wealth of period detail.

The Administrator of Tangier International Zone, one J.L. Archer, invites the Longs to a cocktail.  But instead of some Foreign Office official who didn't make it to Gibraltar accross the Strait, this happens to be José Luis Archer of Portugal, one of the last foreigners to hold sway in Tangier before independence in 1956.

Then Mr. and Mrs. Long need to go "black tie" for a dinner at the American Legation, at the invitation of Minister John Carter Vincent.  Presumably this was before Vincent's 1952 forced retirement from the Foreign Service after Senator McCarran's infamous "Who Lost China?" witch hunt.  From the Association for Diplomatic Studies & Training:

John Carter Vincent, forced to retire in 1952 by Secretary of State Acheson, was serving as “diplomatic agent” in Tangier at the time that he was excoriated during hearings by Senator McCarran’s Subcommittee on Internal Security.  Having served as a senior member of the staff in Chungking, he was well known as a sharp critic of the government of Chiang Kai-shek...

The Senator was a defender of the Nationalist Chinese generalissimo, as well at the Spanish one, Francisco Franco, whose Nationalist forces had occupied Tangier during the years of World War II.  The era came to be known by the name of McCarran's Senate colleague - McCarthy.  Maybe John Carter Vincent's invitation to the Longs was a farewell to Tangier?

The generosity of the Long family continues.  Marge has made a generous contribution to the TALIM endowment, and her sister Phyllis has contributed two watercolors (photo at top) of the Cape Malabata and Cape Spartel Lighthouses, the latter of which was the object of an landmark international treaty.

Phyllis Long's watercolors should be of interest to invitees at our upcoming "Paint the Legation" fund raising and July 4th event.

It all started with a random landing on TALIMblog.  Someday I'll tell you about the US Marine security guard who lived here in the late 1950s.  He too was a blog commenter.

Social networking - who would have thought that it could stretch back a half century?

Open for Business, In Tangier and Washington

Have I become accustomed to living in historic landmarks?  En route to a week in Washington for meetings, I have decided to set up shop at DACOR Bacon House, one of Foggy Bottom's few remaining historic homes, now the home of DACOR, which organizes a lively calendar of activities for foreign affairs professionals.

I've stayed at Bacon House before, and wrote about their display of one of the Tangier American Legation's cedar gates.  You can see it at their museum dedicated to American diplomacy.  One of the reasons I feel at home there.

So I was relieved, jet-lagged and watching the breaking news from the US in the wee hours of the April 8/9 European morning, that Congress and White House managed to avert a shutdown of the United States Government.  Which for me would have been inconvenient, given that TALIM's landlord is the USG.  Now I can meet our landlord's representatives and discuss the many important historic preservation initiatives that depend on the State Department's office of Culturally Significant Properties.

Anticipating the now-averted government shutdown, I had already begun to concentrate on arranging appointments with a number of non-governmental organizations in the many areas that TALIM is active.  A good number of these organizations are headquartered in Washington.  Perhaps a reflection of the fact that many depend on government funding, but also simply because proximity to the Federal government is essential for organizations active in education, historical preservation, and international exchanges.

Washington.  Where the money is.  Which is why I'm going there, but also because lobbying shouldn't be left to the lobbyists.  There are programs to learn about, grants to be pursued, and people to meet.  Every day in Washington creates a multiplier effect for our operation in Tangier.

Meanwhile, TALIM is very much open for business.  Coming to Tangier in May?  Check out the Legation stand at the International Book Fair, our second foray into the world of book fairs in six months.

In D.C., as President Obama just reminded us, the Washington Monument will be open.  Maybe I'll go check out some museums.  Washington is a museum Mecca, and most of them are not only free but world-class.  I'll have to check out those display cases...

Le-ga'tion, Defined

People often ask "what is a legation?"  So I provide the above photo of a page from a dictionary that was published when countries still had legations.  And ministers, the people (well, at the time, the men) who headed them.  Wikipedia has a limited or stub page on legations.

In Tangier, the American Legation and all the other legations ceased to be in 1956, the year of Morocco's independence.  The buildings continued, usually reverting to the status of consulate or consulate general (the case of the US ConGen).

Over the years since Moroccan independence, the old legations and the consulates that replaced them gradually faded away.  Just like the Dar Niaba, the office of the Naib or representative of the Moroccan foreign ministry, now a dilapidated administrative building for local government, whose occupants may be unaware of the fact that they are in a historically valuable building.

The American Legation, circa 1976. could have gone the same way.  Fortunately, far-sighted people saw the significance of our building, and our current status as a US government-owned but privately run institute seems to be the kind of public-private hybrid that works.

History Detected, Flag Restored

Okay, folks, I think we have solved the mystery of the American flag carpet, or at least placed it in time.  First, the link to our plea to readers for photo interpretation of this picture:

Now, analysis provided by Mark Smith, architect and former Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco (and former resident of the American Legation in Tangier!).

It’s possible that the gentleman standing behind the star field is Cavendish W. Cannon who was ambassador to Morocco from 1956 to 1958.  He is the person on the left of the photo I have attached.

Other than that I note that the flag has 48 stars so probably predates the change in our flag to 49 stars when Alaska became a state on January 3, 1959.  I also note that the person third from the left has a hair style that places this photo after about 1953.  Also, several Moroccans are in the photo which implies to me that it is at or after the time of independence in 1956.

Mark gets 10 out of 10 for his keen analysis and identification of Cavendish W. Cannon, the first U.S. Ambassador to Morocco after its independence.  CWC appears in this 1948 Life/Getty photo, and is listed thus on the State Department's roster of Chiefs of Mission to Morocco:

Name: Cavendish W. Cannon
State of Residency: Utah
Foreign Service Officer
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment: Jul 21, 1956
Presentation of Credentials: Oct 6, 1956
Termination of Mission: Relinquished charge, Jul 1, 1958

Okay, now that we've established that our flag is from the Eisenhower - Mohammed V era (both leaders met in Morocco in 1959), we can show you how the flag looks today, after its recent refurbishing:

Though the colors have faded a bit over the years, it's cleaner than it's ever been since Ambassador Cannon's time, and it has taken pride of place in a part of the American Legation that is closest to the spirit of its Moroccan weavers, flying over the classes of women learning to read and write, so that they can take their rightful place in Moroccan society.