Oberdorfer '52 tells stories of the Cold War

Former Washington Post reporter Don Oberdorfer '52, who covered many of the defining moments of the Cold War, returned to campus yesterday to discuss life as a diplomatic correspondent.

Speaking in Robertson Hall in a lecture sponsored by the Wilson School, Oberdorfer focused much of his attention on the 17 years he spent covering the Cold War. Smiling broadly, he noted, "It breaks the record for covering one beat, but it was a fascinating beat."

Chairman of The Daily Princetonian during his senior year at the University, Oberdorfer went on to work as a journalist for the next 38 years, including 25 at the Post. The author of thousands of newspaper articles and four books, Oberdorfer has received numerous awards for his work, including Princeton's Woodrow Wilson award for exemplary service to the nation. He is now a professor at Johns Hopkins University.

Oberdorfer chronicled many of his travels with heads of state in a journal that eventually came to span 15 spiral-bound notebooks. The notebooks kept highly personal records of Oberdorfer's travels around Asian and Russia with then U.S. secretaries of state George Shultz '40 and James Baker '52, as well as encounters with Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev and KGB leaders.

While dealing with major political figures, Oberdorfer frequently grappled with inaccurate information and usually had to rely on his instinct to distinguish biases from hard facts.

After the White House announced the discovery of a Soviet brigade in Cuba, one that appeared to have been installed in the island nation for years, Oberdorfer approached the secretary of state saying, "Secretary, I just don't believe it!" The administration later recapitulated and admitted to having sounded "a false alarm."

The same instinct was to prove useful throughout his career. When a newly elected Gorbachev first met with Shultz in preparation for an upcoming summit with Reagan, it was announced that, "Deep differences remain, and there can be no narrowing of the gaps."

Oberdorfer said that, after the statement, he believed nothing would ever be resolved between the two superpowers, and wrote a deeply pessimistic article about the meeting. Upon encountering Shultz on the return trip to Washington, however, he noted that Shultz seemed very pleased with himself, and Oberdorder changed the tone of his article accordingly.

History would later remember the meeting as one that established the candor and contention that would categorize the relationship between the USSR and the United States at the close of the Cold War.

Some of Oberdorfer's most optimistic anecdotes, however, didn't involve major historical leaders. He recalled being asked, "Does Madonna have AIDS?" by a woman in poverty-stricken North Korea. He also remembers being told by an administrator at Kim Il-Sung University that not all its students worshipped their ruler and wanted to join the military; some, in fact, wanted to go into business.

To Oberdorfer, these tiny signs of freedom were endlessly more promising than any of the conferences between the United States and the USSR.

Looking back on his career, Oberderfer said, "It was one hell of a ride."