Wind in the Chancelleries

Tattle, the high wind of diplomacy, blew hard through Brazil. It blew His Excellency Monsieur Baron General Franc,ois Pierre Raoul d'Astier de la Vigerie, Ambassadeur Extraordinaire et Plenipotentiaire, right out of the French embassy. In less than a year De Gaulle's white-haired, one-legged, chain-smoking wartime air chief had been linked by gossip with three Brazilian society women, not to mention a French mistress. Such dedication to Franco-Brazilian amity won the gallant ambassador the added title of "Ambragador." Worst of all in Quai d'Orsay eyes, the Ambragador had entertained too lavishly, overdrawn his expense account. For the honor of France, he was ordered home.

Tattle blown from Spain told how a veteran Brazilian femme fatale, Rosalina Coelho de Lisboa Larragotti, recently saw Dictator Francisco Franco, persuaded him that his ambassador in Brazil, Career Diplomat Pedro Garcia Conde, was "not politically reliable." Franco thereupon shipped ace Falangist Eduardo Aunos to Rio, switched Garcia Conde to Peru.

But before the SS Cabo de Buena Esperanza could deliver Don Eduardo to Rio, the U.S. State Department Blue Book on Argentina bombshelled him as the go-between in a 1942 Nazi-Argentine munitions deal. Brazil's Foreign Minister Joao Neves da Fontoura, as an oldtime diplomat, knew he could not overlook the tattling. "The mere publication of the accusation . . ." he intoned, "made it necessary that Senor AunOs should not arrive in Brazil as ambassador." Angrily, Don Eduardo resigned, declared he would stay on the ship in Rio Harbor, ride diplomacy's perverse wind back to Spain.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.