Nathaniel Davis was a career diplomat who served in the United States Foreign Service for 36 years.
20 Facts About Nathaniel Davis
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Nathaniel Davis's father, Harvey Nathaniel Davis, taught at Harvard University and his mother, Alice Rohde Davis, was a research medical doctor.
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Nathaniel Davis attended the Stevens Hoboken Academy and graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy, in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1942.
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Nathaniel Davis attended Brown University, where he served in the Navy Reserve.
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Nathaniel Davis graduated from Brown and obtained a commission as an ensign in the US Navy in September 1944, but as a member of the Class of 1946.
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Nathaniel Davis earned a master's degree and ultimately a doctorate from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University in 1960.
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Nathaniel Davis began his Foreign Service career with an assignment in Prague in 1947, followed by postings in Florence, Rome and Moscow, before returning to the US in 1956 to work at the Soviet Desk at the State Department in Washington, DC His next foreign assignment was in Caracas, Venezuela, from 1960 to 1962.
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Nathaniel Davis left the Peace Corps in 1965 to serve as the United States Envoy to Bulgaria.
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Nathaniel Davis was ambassador in Chile during the presidency of Salvador Allende and through the coup that deposed him.
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Nathaniel Davis wrote a history of that period called The Last Two Years of Salvador Allende.
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Nathaniel Davis resigned from the latter post over a policy difference with then-Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, regarding covert action in Angola.
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Two days prior to the program's approval Nathaniel Davis told Henry Kissinger, the Secretary of State, that he believed maintaining the secrecy of IA Feature would be impossible.
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Nathaniel Davis correctly predicted the Soviet Union would respond by increasing its involvement in Angola, leading to more violence and negative publicity for the United States.
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John Stockwell, the CIA's station chief in Angola, echoed Nathaniel Davis' criticism saying the program needed to be expanded to be successful, but the program was already too large to be kept out of the public eye.
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Nathaniel Davis warned that supporting UNITA would not sit well with Mobutu Sese Seko, the ruler of Zaire.
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In 1977, Nathaniel Davis moved to Newport, Rhode Island, where he taught at the Naval War College for six years as Diplomat in Residence.
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When Costa-Gavras's film Missing was released by Universal Studios in 1982, Nathaniel Davis, who had been the United States Ambassador to Chile from 1971 to 1973, filed a US$150 million libel suit against the director and the studio.
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Nathaniel Davis wrote a second edition of the book in 2003.
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Nathaniel Davis was a skier and had awards and accomplishments in white water canoeing and mountain climbing, most notable of which was a "first ascent" of Mount Abanico in the Venezuelan Andes with George Band.
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On May 16,2011, Nathaniel Davis died, aged 86, in Claremont, California.