Veteran U.S. diplomat a senior Arabist
Laurence Pope, a veteran diplomat and counterterrorism expert who came out of retirement to serve as the top U. S. envoy to Libya, weeks after the 2012 attack that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi, died at home in Portland, Maine, of pancreatic cancer. He was 75.
In his 31 years as a diplomat, Pope helped shape Iran and Iraq policy at the State Department, was appointed ambassador to Chad by President Clinton and served as political adviser to Gen. Anthony Zinni, head of Central Command, which manages U.S. forces in the Middle East.
He had been retired for more than a decade when Islamist militants attacked the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012.
It inspired Pope to return to the Foreign Service, which he had joined in 1969 partly to avoid fighting in Vietnam. Pope often championed diplomacy above military action.
“I remember I heard the news that Stevens was killed and ran into the living room to tell him,” his wife recalled. “He sort of thought, ‘ How could I help?’ and I spent about 20 minutes thinking about it. His parents were dead, our daughters were grown, and I came back in and told him, ‘ You should volunteer to go.’ ”
Pope was fluent in Arabic and had served as a political officer in Libya in the 1970s, early in dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s four- decade rule. He was named chargé d’affaires to Libya in October 2012. Pope remained in Libya for only three months but by many accounts was a stabilizing force, at a time when the State Department had few senior Arabists.
“He was part of the cavalry,” said David Mcfarland, who was then deputy chief of mission in Tripoli. He added that Pope “spent several months delivering on his pledges, with compassion and a dry sense of humour.”
Zinni, who retired in 2000 as a four- star Marine general and recently served as a special envoy in the Persian Gulf, said, “Our ambassadors would constantly tell me how lucky I was to have (Pope) as an adviser. … In my 40 years’ experience in the military, I didn’t see a finer political adviser.”
Laurence Everett Pope II was born in New Haven, Conn., on Sept. 24, 1945.
He served in the Peace Corps, part of his semi- successful effort to avoid Vietnam. His first posting in the Foreign Service was as a vice-consul in Saigon.