The Quiet American

During a trip to Pakistan last year with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Warren M. Christopher sat quietly by while the flamboyant National Security Adviser seemed intent on humiliating him. Brzezinski stuck so close to Pakistani President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq that Christopher did not even have a chance to present the Pakistani ruler with the official U.S. gift. While Brzezinski clowned and traded quips with the press, Christopher, whose boss, Cyrus Vance, was Brzezinski's bitterest bureaucratic foe, patiently studied his briefing books. Not once did he betray his annoyance. Staunch discretion and a willingness to let others take credit have been the building blocks of Christopher's career. Those qualities, say admirers, have made him an ideal chief negotiator for the Iranian hostage situation. Quiet and imperturbably dogged, he is the master of thankless tasks.

The son of a small-town banker, Christopher was born in Scranton, N. Dak., 55 years ago. As a teenager, he migrated with his family to California, where he earned a law degree from Stanford. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, then joined the prestigious Los Angeles law firm of O'Melveny & Myers. From the start of his legal career, Christopher was active in Democratic politics. He joined the 1958 gubernatorial campaign of Pat Brown, following Brown to Sacramento as his special counsel. He went off to Washington in 1967 as Deputy U.S. Attorney General. Assignments to help calm the riots in Detroit and Washington brought him into close contact with Lyndon Johnson's personal envoy, Cyrus Vance.

When Vance became Secretary of State in 1977, he lured Christopher back to Washington as his top deputy. "The two were like bookends," says one former colleague. Under Vance, Christopher handled more than his share of delicate diplomatic assignments, some of them at home. He was charged with rallying Senate support for the Panama Canal Treaties, for the sale of F-15 advanced jet fighters to Saudi Arabia and for the lifting of the embargo on arms to Turkey. He was also dispatched to Europe to explain Carter's decision not to deploy the neutron bomb, and last year's Olympic boycott over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

While Vance concentrated on a few major concerns--the SALT negotiations, the Camp David accords--Christopher ran the rest of the State Department. Says Vance: "He really was in every sense an alter ego to me." Christopher intended to resign last April if he was not named to succeed Vance. In the end, however, Carter and the new Secretary, Edmund Muskie, persuaded him to stay on. For the past eight months, some observers assert, Christopher has been the Secretary in all but name, while Muskie has concerned himself chiefly with the public side of the job.

"Unflappable" is the word acquaintances most often apply to Christopher. His manner is methodical, even colorless, and his temper is seemingly nonexistent. That may be his greatest qualification for dealing with the mercurial Iranians. Says former Governor Brown: "I regard him as one of the ablest men I have ever met. He's diplomatic. He's skillful. He's fair." Carter paid a similar compliment last week in awarding Christopher the Medal of Freedom: "He is indeed outstanding." Privately, Carter added that he regrets not having named Christopher to succeed Griffin Bell as Attorney General in 1979.

The Deputy Secretary reportedly has had several lucrative job offers in recent months, but he intends to return soon to his old Los Angeles law firm. One key reason: an agreement with the firm's partners that he will have time for considerable pro bono publico work (cases undertaken gratis for the good of the community). It seems doubtful, though, that Christopher will ever handle a more important, more frustrating or more potentially rewarding pro bono assignment than the case of the American hostages.

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