Paul M. Kattenburg Papers

In 1940, when 17-year-old Paul Maurice Kattenburg fled his native Belgium just prior to the Nazi invasion of Brussels, it is unlikely he could have envisioned a future that would include World War II service in the United States Military Office of Strategic Services, American political fame, close friendships with Southeast Asian heads of state, and an honored, 30-year academic career.

In 1949, after earning a doctorate in International Relations from Yale University, Kattenburg began 23 years with the U.S. Foreign Service, with postings to Washington, Saigon, Manila, Frankfurt, and Guyana. In 1963, Kattenburg attended a National Security Council meeting at which he opposed the U.S. military presence in Vietnam, much to the scorn of several high-ranking members of the Kennedy Administration. This opposition led to Kattenburg’s political fame through the 1971 publication of the Pentagon Papers, but it also meant the sacrifice of his diplomatic career.

Paul Kattenburg was born in Brussels on December 16, 1922. He was enrolled at Brussels’ École Nouvelle at the age of seven. In 1940, with the Nazis on the verge of invading Brussels, Kattenburg left his homeland, just before his graduation. Kattenburg immigrated to the United States by way of Great Britain, and soon found an academic refuge at the University of North Carolina, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Commerce in 1943.

Kattenburg thereafter joined the U.S. Army. His linguistic skills in Dutch, French, English, German, ancient Greek, and Latin made him a prime candidate for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and he became a research analyst for the Southeast Asia Branch, Division of the Philippines. Simultaneously, Kattenburg earned a certificate in the Army Specialized Training Chinese Language Study Program at Harvard University in 1944.

Kattenburg’s active military stint ended in 1945. He immediately enrolled in the Department of Government graduate program at George Washington University. His 1946 master’s thesis was entitled "Indonesian Nationalism: Its Political Evolution and Development." Kattenburg had chosen a career path oriented toward the Far East. While pursuing his master’s degree, Kattenburg married Mary Louise Clark of Escanaba, Michigan, on March 16, 1945. The Kattenburgs had five children.

In 1946, Kattenburg was accepted as a doctoral candidate in International Relations at Yale University. While pursuing his doctorate, Kattenburg’s academic career began with a brief teaching stint as an assistant professor of Government at the College of William & Mary in 1947; he also taught at Yale as an instructing assistant, then instructor, of Political Science from 1947 to 1949. During this time he was also a First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Reserves during the Korean War, serving from 1948 to 1953 on non-active duty. Kattenburg’s 1949 dissertation, The Indonesian Question in World Politics, August 1945-January 1948, plus his year-long post-doctoral fellowship in Indonesia with the Social Science Research Council, affirmed his commitment to the Far East as his field of study.

Upon the completion of his doctorate, Kattenburg was heavily recruited for university teaching posts. However, the federal government was even more desirous of his skills. Kattenburg’s Dutch-language background, and Far Eastern military and education concentration, made him particularly qualified for Indonesian analysis work. As a 1950 State Department memorandum states: “Mr. Kattenburg is one of a very few individuals who have had the training and experience required for this position.”

Kattenburg’s career as a U.S. Foreign Serviceman began in 1950. From 1950 to 1962, the family lived in Washington, Manila, and Frankfurt, as Kattenburg found himself promoted from Research Specialist, to Second Secretary of the American Embassy, to Consul. In 1963, he again moved his family back to Washington, when he was promoted to International Relations Officer for the State Department’s Bureau of Far Eastern Affairs, as well as Chairman of the Vietnam Working Group.

On August 31, 1963, Kattenburg attended a National Security Council meeting which would dramatically alter his Foreign Service career, and, in years to come, would turn him into a national political celebrity. During this NSC meeting, Kattenburg advocated a total U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. As revealed at the time of the publication of the Pentagon Papers, Kattenburg stated that “it would be better for us to make the decision to get out honorably.” Several high-level Kennedy Cabinet and administration officials castigated Kattenburg, yet he would not budge on his position. By the end of the year, Kattenburg was removed as the Chairman of the Vietnam Working Group. Within two more years, he was moved to a post in Guyana, where he became Embassy Counselor.

In 1969, Kattenburg was recruited as Deputy Coordinator of Political Studies at the Foreign Service Institute’s School of Professional Studies (State Department, Washington). For his final three years of diplomatic service, Kattenburg taught incoming U.S. Foreign Service workers the tools of the trade. Though he officially retired from diplomatic and government service in 1973, he performed contract work for the U.S. government for the rest of his life.

In 1971, Kattenburg found himself the subject of media attention with the publication by the New York Times of the Pentagon Papers, a classified Department of Defense report concerning America’s involvement in Vietnam and the government’s rationale and decision-making on behalf of the war effort. Former military analyst Daniel Ellsberg famously leaked the 7,000-page document to the New York Times, and on June 13, 1971, the Times began publishing segments of the report. When the Nixon administration succeeded in obtaining a restraining order against the Times, the Washington Post began publishing where the Times had left off. On June 30, the Supreme Court upheld both newspapers’ rights to publish the materials. As a result, numerous news agencies began investigative probes into the early history of the Vietnam War in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. In the papers and the analysis of them which followed, Kattenburg emerged as, according to the Times, “the first official on record in a high-level Vietnam policy meeting to pursue to its logical conclusion the analysis that the war effort was irretrievable.” [“Shock for Washington,” 1 July 1971]

In the 1950s, Kattenburg began corresponding with Richard L. “Dixie” Walker, professor at the University of South Carolina and founder of the Walker Institute of International Area Studies. Walker invited Kattenburg to become a visiting professor in USC’s Department of Government and International Studies in 1970. Three years later, Kattenburg was hired by USC as a full-time professor.

Kattenburg’s academic career spanned more than thirty years. He was named the Charles L. Jacobsen Professor of Public Affairs in 1980. That same year he published what he considered his most important work, The Vietnam Trauma in American Foreign Policy, 1947-1975, an analysis of U.S. foreign policy in Southeast Asia within the broader scope of worldwide U.S. foreign policy from the end of World War II until the mid-1970s. The book received excellent reviews, many of which are in the collection, including the following from the Washington Post: “The Vietnam Trauma…is an excellent account of our involvement in Vietnam as ‘an intrinsic and inseparable part of our whole approach’ to the post-World War II world….There is plenty in this book to chew on at senior seminars for both civilians and military.”

In 1986, Kattenburg was named Distinguished Professor Emeritus, but continued to teach at USC as well as in several visiting professorships. In addition, Kattenburg served periodically as an instructor for the University of Pittsburgh’s Semester-at-Sea program, an annual, semester-long “floating university” that tours the world with over 500 students. He taught on voyages in 1984, 1988, 1991, and 1997.

Though Kattenburg is most widely remembered as the lone dissenter of Vietnam War policy at the 1963 meeting of the National Security Council, another major claim to fame is his mission to free Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino from the shackles of Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Kattenburg had met Benigno and Corazon Aquino in 1957 on a Foreign Service trip to the Philippines. In 1972, when Marcos took power and declared martial law, he had his main political rival, Ninoy Aquino, imprisoned. In April 1975, Kattenburg received a handwritten plea from Corazon: “Please write about the injustices being perpetrated against Ninoy.”

Kattenburg worked aggressively to aid his friend. His efforts included a scathing July 24, 1974, New York Times editorial as well as a February 1975 letter to Senators John Tunney (D-CA) and Charles Percy (R-IL), Kissinger aide and career diplomat Winston Lord, and the State Department Bureau of East Asian Affairs: “I swear, I’m personally going to set out to blast any further U.S. aid to [the Philippines] if we don’t at last act in this matter!” Aquino was allowed finally to leave the Philippines in 1980. Upon returning to the Philippines in 1983 to try to establish an organized opposition to Marcos, he was assassinated. Following Marcos’ downfall in 1986, Corazon Aquino became the new Filipino President. She remained grateful to Kattenburg for his efforts and visited his Semester-at-Sea students in 1988.

Paul Kattenburg traveled extensively throughout his life, and died during a vacation in Moscow on June 12, 2004.