In Hour to Shine, an Envoy Instead Shuns the Spotlight (Amb. to Britain)

[kskiska]

By ELISABETH BUMILLER

Lost in all the white ties and tails, cavalry parades and antiwar protests of President Bush's trip to London last week was a reticent multimillionaire American racehorse breeder, William S. Farish. His day job is the United States ambassador to Britain, and his credentials include very close ties to the Bush family.

How close? Well, not only did Mr. Farish manage the elder George Bush's blind trusts when he became vice president, but he gave him his springer spaniel, Millie, and Mr. Farish later had her mated at his lush Kentucky horse farm. Among the puppies was Spot, the 13-year-old dog of the current President Bush.

How close? Well, for decades the elder Mr. Bush has relaxed at Mr. Farish's fabulous houses. Bush père has fished at Mr. Farish's oceanfront home in Gulf Stream, Fla., shot quail at Mr. Farish's 10,000-acre Lazy F Ranch in Beeville, Tex., and been feted at a fund-raiser at Mr. Farish's Lane's End Farm in Versailles, Ky. Queen Elizabeth has visited the farm, too, where she watched Mr. Farish play polo.

All of which means that Mr. Farish would have been the perfect ambassador to handle the pomp of the Court of St. James had not the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, intervened. That, in any case, is the widespread view of British commentators and reporters, who would like the man they call the quiet American to speak up.

Their view is that now more than ever, when the relationship between the American president and Prime Minister Tony Blair is so crucial, and when anti-Americanism is rife in Europe, the White House needs a strong voice in London. But they say that Mr. Farish, whom American Embassy officials readily describe as "very private," has been largely invisible.

"The Bush administration, so often abrasive in tone, and so sharply different from its predecessor, could do with explanation abroad," wrote Bronwen Maddox, the foreign editor of The Times of London, in a column before Mr. Bush's visit to Britain. "For an ambassador to abandon that attempt is to accept the caricature often given."

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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/24/politics/24LETT.html

[JohnyCanuck]

1. I don't care how skilled a diplomat he might be,

he still can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

[starroute]

2. He's not a diplomat, he an insider's insider

He's the grandson of William Stamps Farish, Sr., who was president of Standard Oil at the start of World War II and got in trouble for doing business with the Nazis. The elder Farish's wife was connected with several prominent Houston families, his daughter married into the Harriman family (which helped establish a connection with the Bushes), and his son married the daughter of a prominent right-winger.

Farish Sr. died in 1942, and his son, William Stamps Farish, Jr., died in an Air Force training accident the following spring, leaving the family fortune to four-year-old William Stamps Farish III. The Bushes were already friends of the Farishes, and George and Barbara Bush became particularly close to Farish Jr.'s widow and her young son.

When I did some research on the Farish family a few months ago, I found that the current W.S. Farish was, except for his connection with the Bushes, almost totally invisible. One online description of him said, "Will Farish grew up a recluse, the most secretive multimillionaire in Texas." Another referred to him as a "Texas mystery man" and said, "Known as one of the richest men in Texas, Will Farish keeps his business affairs under the most intense secrecy. Only the source of his immense wealth is known, not its employment."

Farish's wife is a member of the DuPont family -- her fascist great-uncles were involved in an attempted coup against FDR in 1934. But the DuPonts seem just as secretive.

Farish has been equally invisible as ambassador. One article I found in the Guardian said, ". . . the current US ambassador is one of the most reticent in the 250-year history of the post. It's probably easier to get an interview with Saddam Hussein than with William Farish. . . ."

I don't know whether the ambassadorship is just a payoff for favors received to a man who doesn't have the temperament for it, or whether Farish is actively engaged in conspiring behind the scenes on Bush's behalf. But either way, the man is a major enigma of a sort that makes me definitely uneasy.

[kskiska]

3. He's most likely just another of *'s donor payoffs

The French ambassador he appointed doesn't even speak French. The French hate him.