JAMES F. LEONARD

(James Fulton Leonard Jr.)


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James F. Leonard

It is our responsibility not to make charges we can't substantiate
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The original charge of biological weapons was made by the Afghan Mudhjadeen, who had retrieved a substance from an area the Russians had shelled. Some Americans echoed the charges and upon inspection, the substance turned out to be bees wax and droppings. Some CIA officials thought that true of not, the charge amounted to good propaganda eliciting the ambassador’s response.

James F. Leonard

Any verification (or confidence-building) apparatus. It will almost always be heavily dependent on the sincere desire of a government to demonstrate that it is not cheating on an agreement. Even in a relatively open society, a government has considerable powers of concealment. The United States, for example, has successfully concealed large, "black" weapons programs, and India denied having chemical weapons stockpiles for years before finally acknowledging them. A tyrannical regime … therefore has almost total ability to defeat on-site inspection systems.
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James F. Leonard

Drafting a treaty is much like drafting a law, and I doubt if the members of this committee could point to a single law whose text they would all agree is absolutely perfect, totally without a flaw. The successive drafts of a treaty get better and better …. Even the final text that is signed and ratified will have flaws, but it will be accepted if it is seen by a strong consensus as substantially better than no treaty at all.
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  • Born: May 30, 1920
  • Died: August 29, 2020
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Biography

James Fulton Leonard Jr. was an American diplomat who served as Foreign Service Officer and United States Ambassador to the United Nations (1977–1979). He was born in Osborne, Pennsylvania in May 1920. He served in the United States Army Corps of Engineers during World War II. He was a member of the American Academy of Diplomacy. He was educated at Princeton University (B.S. 1942), Harvard University (1952–53), and Columbia University (1963–64). He married Eleanor Martha Hanson, and they raised five daughters together, as well as a son from Eleanor's previous marriage. He died in August 2020 at the age of 100.