[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 74 (Thursday, May 23, 1996)] [Senate] [Pages S5558-S5562] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] TRIBUTE TO CHARLES MEISSNER Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, the tragic plane crash in Croatia last month that took the life of Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown also took the lives of other outstanding officials in the Department of Commerce, including Charles F. Meissner, who was Assistant Secretary for International Economic Policy and who was also the husband of Doris Meissner, the Commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. During the 1970's, he had served with great distinction for several years on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Our hearts go out to the Meissner family in this time of their great loss. In the days following that tragedy, a number of eloquent tributes to Charles Meissner described his extraordinary career, his dedication to public service, and his contributions to our country and to peoples throughout the world. I believe these tributes will be of interest to all of us in Congress and to many others, and I ask unanimous consent that they be printed in the Record. There being no objection, the tributes were ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: Tribute to Charles Meissner (By Stuart E. Eizenstat) Doris, Christine, Andrew, family and friends of Chuck Meissner. I feel doubly blessed by my association with the Meissner family. In the Carter Administration it was my good fortune to work closely with Doris on immigration issues--to see directly her intelligence, her calm amidst the pressures of policymaking, her quiet dignity, her dedication to public service. It was then that I first came in contact with Chuck. But it was during the past 2\1/2\ years, with me in Brussels and Chuck in Washington, that we formed an intense professional and personal bond which profoundly influenced me. We worked together on every important trade and commercial issue involving the European Union and its member states. During Chuck's frequent travels to Brussels, he stayed with Fran and me, and had many meals with us. Chuck and I attended innumerable meetings together. When my appointment to my current position at Commerce became known, I spent a great deal of time talking and meeting with Chuck, seeking his advice and counsel and telling him of my plans to beef-up the International Economic Policy unit he so ably led. Our last conversation came only a few days before his trip to Bosnia and Croatia. During Chuck's all-too-brief tenure as Assistant Secretary, there was hardly a continent that did not benefit from Chuck's sterling efforts. Chuck used his extensive financial experience at Chemical Bank and the World Bank to encourage private sector investment in the border regions in Mexico, as chair of the U.S.-Mexico Border Economic Development task force. He helped to expand economic contacts between the West and Central Europe and the states of the former Soviet Union by his work to invigorate the Economic Forum of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and by the drive and leadership he gave to the West-East Economic Conferences. Chuck was inspiring in his work with large and small American companies. He had a flair for dealing with CEOs. They empathized with him and understood his global vision. Nowhere was this better exemplified than in the Transatlantic Business Dialogue. Secretary Brown initiated the idea that U.S. and European business should take the lead in helping government design future transatlantic commercial policy. But it was Chuck that made this idea work. The success of the historic conference in Seville, Spain, last November that brought a 100 leading American and European CEOs together was due in large part to Chuck. Following on his deep conviction that trade was the best force for peace, Chuck used his boundless energy to bring American companies together with companies in emerging democracies and in reforming countries. He was the leading force behind President Clinton's White House Conference on trade and investment in Eastern Europe, held in Cleveland last year. That conference exposed America's top companies to the genuine opportunities to build commercial bridges to Central Europe. He poured his heart into using commercial policy to support the peace process in Northern Ireland. He was particularly proud, and justly so, of bringing scores of companies there to support our efforts and those of the British government to bring peace to that troubled land. When peace finally comes to Northern Ireland, as it surely will, Chuck Meissner will have played a major role in being a midwife. He was just beginning to do the same in Haiti. It was on another such venture to undergird a fragile peace, that took Chuck and Ron Brown to Croatia and Bosnia. He died doing what he loved, using the resources of the American private sector to strengthen the forces of peace and democracy abroad. The terrible conflict in Bosnia has now claimed several friends, earlier Bob Frasure, and now Chuck, Ron and our other colleagues at the Commerce Department. Chuck maintained a punishing travel schedule, as he was driven to extend our commercial diplomacy round the world. He joked to me that he only saw Doris, with her own demanding schedule, as their planes criss-crossed in the sky! And Doris, his love for you and the children was evident in the fond ways in which he talked about you. But all of this was a continuation of a life devoted to public service, with a particular emphasis on expanding America's economic relationships abroad, relationships which are the very essence of our efforts to expand democracy and prosperity around the globe. He served in senior positions in the Treasury Department, on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he was Staff Director of the Subcommittee on Foreign Relations, and in the State Department where he was Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Finance and Development and Ambassador and U.S. Special Negotiator for Economic Matters. Chuck's service to the United States was not limited to civilian positions. He was a Vietnam veteran, decorated on several occasions for his bravery in combat as a Captain in the United States Army. But will all of these accomplishments, I will most remember Chuck with genuine love and affection for something more personal. Few people have touched me the way Chuck did. He had a wonderful joy of life and sense of humor. He made me laugh--not always easy to do! When I told Doris at her home Friday about this, she said, ``You [[Page S5559]] know, one of the reasons I married Chuck was that he made me laugh too!'' When Chuck came into a room his radiance lit it up. That beautiful smile and almost cherubic face--like a grown-up version of one of Raphael's endearing child angels--never failed to touch me deeply and to the core. I was drawn to Chuck, as I know all of you were, by not only his obvious competence but by his basic decency, his goodness, his wonderful humanity. Chuck believed in causes but he never forgot the people who were to benefit from them. Just as we all feel blessed by Chuck's friendship, and by his caring, all of us also feel, in our own way, cheated by his tragic death--for myself, deprived of an opportunity to work even closer together on the causes he so believed in, deprived of more time to nurture our friendship, deprived of the chance to simply feel so good in his presence. But all of this pales in comparison to the loss for Doris and the children of a husband, a father, a companion. There is an old saying, that ``men and women plan, but God laughs at our plans and has his own for us.'' None of us can possibly explain this tragedy. All one can say is that God on High must have been particularly lonely and needed Chuck's companionship and laughter; as those who knew him on this imperfect earth so reveled in it. Chuck, we loved you as you loved us. Our memories are sweet as the fragrances of Spring will surely come. They did not die with you. All of your friends will always be the better for you having come into our lives with your wonderful countenance. Doris, we hope that our prayers and the heartfelt feelings of your colleagues in the Justice Department, the Commerce Department and throughout the Administration will strengthen you in these dark and difficult days, and will sustain you as you continue to service the country so well for which Chuck gave his life. ____ Reflections on Charles Meissner (By Michael Ely) Today it is my honor briefly to talk to you about Charles Meissner and the central theme of his working life, service to his government and, more broadly, service to his nation and to the world. Chuck might have been embarrassed by this discussion. His sense of personal responsibility and commitment was so deep and integrated into his life that it became part of his personality. It went right down to his toenails. He felt that devotion to the public good was normal and natural behavior, even if not widely shared in a world full of people in futile pursuit of private gain and satisfaction outside of and divorced from the public good. Indeed, his concept of the good was universal, comparable to what we might think of as the inner vision of a saint, but tempered by years of experience in addressing complex issues of public policy where the path to the good is unmarked and has to be discovered or even created. Here was an area that must have drawn Doris and Chuck together: their willingness, even eagerness, to grapple with policy issues with difficult tradeoffs, no easy solutions and multiple painful outcomes. Chuck sought to reconcile commercial affairs with broader national interests; Doris deals with the terrible tensions between social decency and justice and conflicting economic and social problems. Our paths first came together in the State Department almost two decades ago. From a senior staff position with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee he had been parachuted in, as it were, as Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Economic Affairs, then a powerful and aggressive organization with entirely State personnel. Chuck used to joke, with some reason, that I was brought in as his principal deputy to keep an eye on him. We ended up mentoring each other, he with his broad Treasury and Senate background, I a decade older with depth in overseas diplomatic service and State bureaucratic background. Our relations, warmed by Chuck's openness, honesty and obvious ability, deepened into mutual trust and ripened into friendship. It was in retrospect an exciting and creative period. In the wake of the first oil shock and the world economic slowdown many countries in Latin America, Africa and eastern Europe could not repay to the US hundreds of millions in official debts contracted in better times. It was Chuck's labor of Hercules to sort out the economic implications and the sticky foreign and domestic politics to come up with a set of US government responses. A thankless business--he specialized, like Doris, in thankless tasks--with infinite opportunity for offending the Congress, the Treasury, the debtor countries and the other creditors. It was in this thicket of problems that he encountered Michel Camdessus, then a very senior officer of the French Treasury, and like him an official of extraordinary breadth and ability. Their initial adversarial relations were transformed by mutual appreciation into a partnership that defined the rules for handling sovereign debt, and lived on through the years that followed. The dozen years Chuck spent sorting out the debt problems of the Chemical Bank and experiencing the institutional culture of the World Bank were stepping stones to his policy position in Commerce; all of us confidently expected his star to mount in the coming years, the years that have been taken from him. As a negotiator he was matchless. He won, of all things, by being straight! To begin with, Chuck was deeply uninterested in the social luxuries of diplomatic life (I finally got him to recognize the difference between red and white wines) and skipped the cocktail parties unless he had a diplomatic chore to do there. For another, he neither bluffed nor threatened, nor did he respond to such tactics; while he could sense the hidden agenda of his adversary, he had none of his own; and his attention never wavered nor temper flared. His physical vitality and a Churchillian ability to snatch catnaps equipped him to outlast the most tenacious adversary. And his patience had no end. This perhaps gives one insight into the secret of Chuck's consistent success as a public servant: a unmatched combination of selflessness, honesty, self control, and hunger for the public good that set him apart and armored him against any accusations of personal advantage. All this was matched by easy good humor, modesty, natural courtesy and a radiant smile that made this man, in some respects really most formidable, one of the least threatening I have ever known. The biggest occupational hazard of diplomacy is vanity and it increases with rank. Chuck's ambassadorial title, conferred to increase his negotiating prestige, never impressed him; he laughingly liked to suggest he be called Ambassador Chuck. Yet he was a true intellectual--he would not have liked the term--with an original, searching mind that looked so broadly and deeply as to go quite beyond the reach of most of us. Because of this he was, I think, sometimes quite alone--very few could stay with him at the vertiginous level of conceptualization that he felt was--is--urgently needed to think out tough problems. It was to help in this endeavor that he asked me to join him as an advisor. In particular, Chuck was convinced that the age calls for new and creative ways to use the dynamism and power of the American private sector as an instrument for peace, stability and democracy. In his two years at Commerce he wrestled with the challenge of integrating foreign commercial policy with its materially-driven bottom-line goals with broader foreign policy to find how they could be used to energize and reinforce each other. The breakthroughs for reconciliation in Ireland, which Chuck created almost single handedly, were propelled by his vision of economic growth and development based on cooperative measures to induce private investment by American enterprises. Underlying all of his endeavors--his efforts in Ireland, his attempts to strengthen the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, his approach to the problems of the big emerging markets--was a great long-term vision. He believed that the essential task of the post-Cold War era was to structure incentives and institutions for bringing all the Russias, Chinas and Bosnias--all the reforming and emerging countries--into the world economic order. Chuck dreamed of a world of peace, stability and democracy built upon irreversible global interdependence: all nations would have more to gain by cooperating, by participating in an open world system based on the rule of law, than by resort to traditional unilateral attempts to seek advantage. He saw the vast American commercial structure as a central instrument in this great scheme. He was working on how to articulate this broad concept into a series of strategies when he was taken from us. A week ago Stuart Eizenstat led a gathering of Commerce employees in reflection on the loss of Chuck and his colleagues. In that moving ceremony one of the respondents from the audience declared that the finest memorial for the perished would be to continue to work toward the goals they believed in. So be it with Charles Meissner, visionary, public servant, man of honor--and husband, father and friend. His memory will strengthen and sustain us as we continue his gallant search. ____ The Honorable Charles F. Meissner Charles Meissner was sworn in as the Assistant Secretary for International Economic Policy at the Department of Commerce on April 4, 1994 following confirmation by the United States Senate. As Assistant Secretary, Mr. Meissner was responsible for international commercial policy development, including country and regional market access strategies, multilateral and bilateral trade issues, and policy support of Secretary of Commerce Ronald Brown on international issues. Since 1992, Mr. Meissner had served at the World Bank as manager of the Office of Official Co-financing and Trust Fund Management. Mr. Meissner was responsible for maintaining the Bank's financial relationships with official co-financiers who co-finance approximately $10 billion in projects annually with the World Bank. Previously, Mr. Meissner served as Vice President at Chemical Bank where he coordinated sovereign debt restructuring policy within the bank and represented Chemical in negotiations with debtor countries. In 1980, Mr. Meissner was appointed Ambassador and U.S. Special Negotiator for Economic Matters. Mr. Meissner has also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Finance and Development in the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. In 1973, he accepted a professional staff appointment to the Committee on Foreign Relations of the U.S. Senate where he served as [[Page S5560]] an economist. In his final year with the committee, he also served as staff director to the Subcommittee on Foreign Assistance. He began his career in 1971 at the U.S. Department of Treasury in the Office of International Affairs where he worked as the Japan desk officer and as special assistant to the Assistant Secretary for International Affairs. A native of Wisconsin, Mr. Meissner is a three-time graduate of the University of Wisconsin, including a BS in 1964, an MS in Economics in 1967, and a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics with a minor in Latin American Studies in 1969. He served in the Vietnam War as a Captain in the United States Army during 1969 and 1970 and received for his service the Army Commendation Medal, the Joint Service Commendation Medal and the Bronze Star. Doris and Chuck met during their freshman year at the University of Wisconsin and were married in 1963. They have two children, Christine, 31, and Andrew, 27. Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. President, I rise with my colleague from Massachusetts to mourn the loss of Charles F. Meissner, the Assistant Secretary for International Economic Policy at the Commerce Department. He was a man who devoted his life to furthering America's economic strength; our Nation is the better for his service. His close friends--leaders from the public and private sector--have eulogized Chuck Meissner more ably than I could ever hope to do. I want to share their moving statements with my colleagues and with others of our Nation, so all Americans may know and understand how deeply America misses his service and his leadership. I ask unanimous consent that these tributes to the life and accomplishments of Chuck Meissner be printed in the Record. There being no objection, the tributes were ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: Tribute to Charles Meissner (By Michel Camdessus) Having had the privilege for 18 years to be one of the innumerable colleagues and friends of Chuck Meissner in the international community, let me try to tell you what sort of man he was for all of us. Let me tell you first how we became friends, something, I must say, which changed my life. When I first met Chuck in 1978, he was the highly respected and seasoned head of the U.S. delegation to the Paris Club-- this group of industrialized countries dealing with the payment difficulties of the debtor countries--and I its newly appointed and totally unprepared Chairman. It was there, as Chuck tactfully guided me through the intricacies of developing country debt, that I first came to know the fine qualities that we all admired so much in him. I must say, from the first he impressed me very much. He was one of those people whose mere presence transformed a group's life, focusing its purposes, adding to its creativity, making it congenial and enthusiastic. What was the secret of this? Was it his charm, his persuasiveness, his distinction and natural nobleness, sense of humor, the fun he found in working, his selfishness, his own sense of purpose and dedication? All of these things, and more! The fact that behind the opposite member at the negotiating table he saw a person, and behind the problems, people; men, women, children, whose opinion had to be sought given their responsibility for their own destinies, people whose suffering had to be alleviated, people who had to be given a new chance . . . And more again, but you had to know him well to perceive this and to be prepared to read it in his eyes, his smile, his jokes, or in his silences, the extraordinary way in which love was the unifying factor of his life. He loved his family, he loved his friends, he loved his country, the values of his country and to work for them, knowing pretty well since his experience in Vietnam that this could imply the ultimate sacrifice. Let me mention a few of these values: the sense of responsibility for leading the way toward a better world, confidence that it is always worthwhile to help people stand again on their feet, to work with them to build peace through solidarity. I said solidarity; perhaps the proper word should be brotherhood throughout the world ``from sea to shining seas.'' This was, I think the professional secret of Chuck, the fact that in one way or another, even in the most adverse situations, he was always giving something of himself, putting his mind and heart into achieving a better agreement, in finding a more constructive solution. I witnessed this many, many times, as the debt crises multiplied the clients of the Paris Club, making Chuck a regular customer on the transatlantic flights between Washington and Paris. Let me tell you that I particularly admired him on the occasion of an UNCTAD meeting in Manila where, leading the American delegation, his role was decisive in transforming an occasion which could have been confrontational and rhetorical into an opportunity for solidly laying down the basic principles (the so-called ``features'') which since then have governed public debt rescheduling operations. This could seem somewhat esoteric to you, but if I tell you that since then, on the basis of these principles, more than 250 billion dollars of public debt has been generously rescheduled * * * and 65 countries have been given a new chance, you will have some idea of the contribution Chuck made in making the world a better place. No more of this. In the days since that terrible tragedy on the hillside outside Dubrovnik, Chuck's many friends, colleagues and admirers around the world have recounted the many other instances in which Chuck tried to make a difference--and succeeded. In Belfast, where he had traveled many times to assist in building economic bridges across the political divide, and where, as I read in a message from the West Belfast Economic Forum director: The community activists working towards economic and social regeneration in West Belfast came to know Charles Meissner. It was, however, to Chuck Meissner's own credit as an individual, that we came to also regard him as a friend. Over the past two years, Charles Meissner returned to West Belfast on several occasions. Always, he ensured that grassroots activists from the disadvantaged communities were consulted and kept informed. He understood that if there was to be a ``Peace Dividend'' then any economic intervention from the USA must be targeted specifically as those communities which have suffered most from exclusion and marginalisation. Chuck recognised that more than straightforward economic investment is required to bring about economic regeneration. He valued the work of the community organizations and the opinions of those with firsthand experience of dealing with the problems in our community. Chuck gave freely of his own time and expertise and encouraged others, both within his department and among the American business community to support locally based economic initiatives. Chuck's action was similar at the US-Mexican border, where he worked to improve the economic and environmental conditions. And most recently, in Bosnia where Chuck was seeking to secure a fragile peace with the promise of a better future through economic development and trade. Suffice it here for me to quote his last declaration in Bosnia, I quote the wire agencies: `` `We want to build confidence in investing and reestablish the internal confidence' between the Serbs, Croats and Muslims, said Charles Meissner, assistant secretary of commerce for international economic policy. ``Development `gives a common ground that you re-establish economically, developing the basis for interdependency,' he said.'' This was Chuck, my friends, this is Chuck: a great man, a great friend, a great American, a great builder of peace, one of those ``God will call his children'' (Mat. 5-9), one of those who can tell the Lord with a joyful assurance ``your house will be my home.'' (Ps. 23). ____ Memorial Service for Charles F. Meissner (By Ted Crabb) I came to know Chuck Meissner in the early '60's when I was working, as I still do, at the Wisconsin Union, the student- led community center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Like his brother David, Chuck came to the Union not only to take part in the social, cultural and recreational activities the Union provided, but to help plan, develop and promote those activities. It tells you something about Chuck Meissner that in choosing to become active at the Union as a student, he was not deterred by the fact that his older brother had already made his mark there, first as a committee chair and then as president of the Union's student-faculty-alumni governing board. Another person, less comfortable with himself, might have chosen a different activity, or even a different college in the first place. Not Chuck. If the Union was the place to mix with students of diverse backgrounds, to meet informally with professors, to debate the issues of the day, to encounter new and provocative ideas, to get involved, then that's where Chuck wanted to be. It may have been at the Union that Chuck learned the patience that would enable him to cope with the vagaries and uncertainties of government service. Two years in a row, Chuck was responsible for a lecture to be given by Werner von Braun. Two years in a row, he made posters, distributed notices to university classes, made arrangements for a special dinner for the honored guest, even produced little table tents resplendent with glittering rocket ships. Two years in a row, von Braun canceled his appearance at the last minute. Certainly, Chuck learned at the Union how to deal with dashed hopes. In his senior year, he was a candidate for president of the Union but lost out to his good friend, Carol Skornicka. It tells you something about Chuck that this defeat was no permanent setback to their lifelong friendship. Chuck left the university after he finished his graduate work in Agricultural Economics, but he retained his interest in the university and in the Wisconsin Union. For the last eleven years, he served in an advisory role to the Union, most recently as a member of the board of trustees of the building association. In that role, he was the kind of board member that a president or director both loves and fears. Chuck didn't just attend meetings. He engaged himself in them totally, asking tough questions, goading everyone to more effort. And when he left the annual meeting after an intense day and a half session, I knew that within a few days, I'd get a letter from him. It wouldn't be one of those innocuous, [[Page S5561]] ``Thank you very much, you're doing a great job and enclosed are my expenses'' letter. No. It would be two or three single-spaced, tightly packed pages of ideas for the future and suggestions for implementation. ``What is the Union doing to prepare for a decline in funding when undergraduate enrollment is cut back? What can you learn and put into practice from the recent Carnegie Foundation report on higher education? What is the Union doing to serve the community in continuing education and to broaden the life experiences of students?'' In one letter in 1990, Chuck focused on the role and image of Union South, a second Union building, located on the Engineering Campus and long seen by some as a sort of afterthought, or as Chuck called it, ``the second child who has to share his parents' love and always perform up to the older sibling's standards.'' Chuck had a dozen different ideas for upgrading its image, including the possible rededication of the building to honor those who have promoted civil and human rights in Wisconsin as a means of promoting greater campus community feeling in the cause of a shared heritage among blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans on campus. At the 1991 meeting of the trustees, Chuck proposed the establishment of a permanent endowment for the Union trustees, to provide a stable source of funding for the programming efforts of the Union and the upkeep and renovation of the physical structures. He followed up his suggestion with a three-page draft of a funding statement that the board of trustees adopted at its next meeting, with almost no changes, and which it has since implemented. All directors of organizations should have members like Chuck to prod and nudge. The Wisconsin Union is a tiny entity in the world that Chuck occupied. It tells you a lot about Chuck Meissner that he gave it the same kind of focused attention he gave to the global issues that made up his work day. Just last fall, he was calling to ask me to send him information about the Wisconsin Union that he could take to a person he'd met on a trade mission, who was trying to build a campus community center at his own college in Ireland. The goals and the purpose of the Wisconsin Union as a unifying force in a diverse community were not just words to Chuck. He believed in the worth of student volunteer activities. He never wavered from the view that the Union's primary mission was to provide opportunities for volunteering and to help students develop the skills that would make them effective volunteers and contributors to their communities-- to become persons who were concerned not just with getting something out of life but with putting something into life. Chuck had great faith in students. He believed there was little they could not accomplish if given the opportunity. His constant question was, ``What is the student role in this program or this function?'' To those of us who worked with Chuck at the Union, it was no surprise that his last effort would be leading a group of volunteer business leaders to Bosnia. Again, he had persuaded others to apply their skills and talents to doing a job that needed to be done. The scope of the job was mammoth: beginning the healing of the unimaginable wounds of a civil war and the rebuilding and revitalizing of an entire society. But Chuck had seen that there was a role to be played by volunteers who were willing to put their unique talents and resources to work to help their larger community. As he had done throughout his life, he was putting into practice the Union ideal that the foundation of democracy is the individual efforts of citizens, working together to solve their common problems. Many people say that heroism has vanished from America. We in this audience know better. We know that Chuck Meissner was a hero. Not only because he gave his life for his country or because he took great risks in the service of his country or flew dozens of hazardous and uncomfortable flights to remote places, all of which he did, but also because he lived the values to which many people give lip service. He honored his commitments. He gave generously of himself, not for self- aggrandizement or private fortune but for the worth of the undertaking. He did what he did because it was the right thing to do. And in the end he left the world a better place for his having been here. We think of Chuck and we remember that broad smile, that gentle spirit, the way he could walk into a room of strangers and put everyone at ease, his enjoyment of the rich and varied experiences his jobs offered him, and that sense of irony that helped him maintain his perspective in the heady and unreal world of Washington politics. We think of the love and pride that were so evident whenever Chuck talked about Chris and Andrew. We think of his marriage to Doris: a marriage in which each partner provided the ballast that allowed the other to soar. And when we think of all these things we can only be grateful that we knew Chuck and that he was our friend. ____ [From the National Journal, Apr. 13, 1996] Here Was a Public Servant (By Ben Wildavsky) The way a friend of Charles F. Meissner's tells the story, Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown was once leading an American delegation to Bonn when high-profile diplomat Richard C. Holbrooke joined him in the head car of the U.S. motorcade. Not long after the vehicles got under way, the motorcade stopped. Holbrooke walked back to find Meissner in another car and told him that Brown had requested that the two of them trade places. ``I understand you're the guy who tells him what to say before the meeting,'' Holbrooke told Meissner. Meissner, the assistant Commerce secretary for international economic policy, was one of the best of that unsung yet indispensable Washington class: the people who tell other people what to say before the meeting. While he was a distinguished international negotiator in his own right, Meissner was fulfilling a key behind-the-scenes role for Brown when he was killed in the April 3 plane crash that took the lives of the Commerce Secretary and more than 30 other Americans. Those who knew Meissner say the 55-year-old international economics expert showed by example what it means to live a life of public service. ``He was a civil servant in the best tradition of the European civil service, where it carries much more prestige,'' said Jeffrey E. Garten, former Commerce undersecretary for international trade and now dean of the Yale School of Management. ``When I was nominated to go to the Commerce Department, he was about the first person I went to, to see if he would come with me.'' With the new Clinton Administration eager to give the Commerce Department an active role in combining commercial and foreign policy, Meissner's extensive background in government and in international banking was tailor-made for the department's mission. ``Chuck had the ideal profile in that he had worked in the State Department but he had all this private-sector experience,'' Garten said. ``Most importantly, he knew how to deal with the bureaucracy--and in the State Department, he was known for being very, very tough in pursuing his goals, It was kind of a joke that when he headed toward Treasury, they all left their offices because they didn't want to spend the next three days arguing with him. He was extremely tenacious.'' Charles William Maynes, editor of Foreign Policy magazine, said Meissner deserves a share of the credit for the changed role of the Commerce Department under Brown. In the Administration's first three years, ``there was more foreign policy coming out of the Commerce Department than any other division,'' Maynes said. ``You can quarrel with it, but they had a specific strategy and certain countries they targeted. That is Chuck and Garten and Brown who did that--that's where that came from.'' A graduate of the University of Wisconsin, where he earned a doctorate in economics, Meissner received the Bronze Star for his Army service during the Vietnam war. He began his Washington career at the Treasury Department in 1971. Following a five-year stint as a Senate Foreign Relations Committee economist, he joined the State Department as a deputy assistant secretary and later gained ambassadorial rank as the lead U.S. negotiator on international debt rescheduling. Meissner spent nine years as a Chemical Bank vice president, then moved to a senior World Bank post in 1992 before joining the Administration in April 1994. His wife, Doris, became commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service in 1993. Meissner was known among colleagues and friends for an engaging sense of humor and for his basic decency. In the days after Meissner's death, a colleague spoke of the strong interest he took in advancing the careers of the people who worked for him. Another recalled the ``extraordinary''--and successful--efforts Meissner made to help a Vietnamese woman escape her country just before the fall of Saigon. Many remembered his personal warmth. ``He was splendid in every aspect of his personal and professional life,'' said Richard M. Moose, undersecretary of State for management, who first met Meissner around 1970 at the U.S. military headquarters in Vietnam. Moose was then a staff member of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Meissner was an Army Intelligence officer. Meissner helped brief the visiting Capitol Hill aides and impressed Moose right away. ``He found a way not to go along with the convention of misleading congressional delegations,'' Moose said. Later, when Meissner went to the Foreign Relations Committee, the two became partners, taking numerous trips together to Vietnam and Cambodia. ``It was like a traveling seminar in macroeconomics,'' Moose said. ``He was terribly good at taking his knowledge of economic theory and applying it to very practical kinds of situations.'' Maynes said Meissner had a rare understanding of the real- world intersection of politics and economics. ``He was an out-standing economist and a devoted public servant,'' Maynes said. ``But the most notable thing about him was that he was an excellent negotiator.'' He observed that Meissner's negotiating skills were ``so extraordinary'' he was asked to stay at State in the Reagan Administration even though he was a Democrat. Other testimonials to Meissner's qualities abound. W. Bowman Cutter, former deputy director of the National Economic Council, said Meissner's high-level experience in government and business made his judgment ``something you could really rely on.'' Messiner ``obviously loved his work, and he was good at it,'' said former Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell, D-Maine, who [[Page S5562]] worked side by side with Meissner in the U.S. effort to promote economic development in Northern Ireland and called him ``a good friend.'' In the end, another friend said, Meissner stood out for his love of substance. ``The higher you go in government, the more you come in touch with sharks or political animals who really aren't interested in policy but who want to do favors for people on the Hill, or do what looks good in tomorrow's press stories,'' said Ellen L. Frost, a former trade official now with the Institute for International Economics in Washington. ``And Chuck was never one of those. He cared about sound policy.'' ____________________