Thomas Simons

Thomas Simons   (diplomat)
Born	September 4, 1938
Nationality	US
Alma mater	Karachi Grammar School, Sidwell Friends School, Yale, Harvard
Interests	Unocal
US diplomat who was Ambassador to Poland when he attended Bilderberg/1991. Ambassador to Pakistan from 1996 to 1998  US/Ambassador to Pakistan In office 1996 - 1998  US/Ambassador to Poland In office 1990 - 1993

Thomas Winston Simons Jr. is a retired American diplomat and academic. He was Ambassador to Poland when he attended Bilderberg/1991.

Education

Born in Crosby, Minnesota, his parents joined the Foreign Service in 1945, stationed in India and Pakistan until 1949. Simons attended Karachi Grammar School and Sidwell Friends School and is a graduate of Yale and Harvard.

Career

He entered the US Foreign Service in 1963. Simons escorted Duke Ellington during his tour of the Middle East and Pakistan.

In 1969, he worked as a deputy to the U.S. Ambassador to Poland, Walter Stoessel, and assisted in making connections which eventually resulted in President Richard M. Nixon's historic visit to China. He was stationed in Romania 1977-79. He was Political Counselor to London 1979-81.

He was Director of the Office of Soviet Affairs at the State Department from 1981 until 1985. The State Department was as usual wanting to negotiate, and actually the uniformed military were supporters of stability and preserving the structures and negotiations. So now the alliance is between the State Department and the uniformed military, on the one hand, and the Defense Department civilians and the ostensible arms controllers on the other. But there was no adjudicator; there was no natural adjudicator because President Reagan would not adjudicate betweenthese warring factions

1986-1989 he was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Soviet and Eastern European Affairs.

Simons was US ambassador to Poland from 1990 to 1993, and US ambassador to Pakistan from 1996 to 1998.

He told about the Unocal pipeline negotiation with Pakistani PM Benazir Bhutto, who accused him of deposing her because she refused

“And Benazir always felt that I kicked her out because we had an inflammatory meeting in the spring of that year over the gas pipeline project, from Turkmenistan to Pakistan, that was being promoted by Unocal, the American oil company. And we were supporting that. They had a memorandum of understanding from the Turkmen and the Afghans supporting this project. And I went to her office on a very bad day for her I urged her to authorize Pakistani signature of this memorandum of understanding, which would give the seal of approval of the three governments for this pipeline. And she said, "Well, I couldn't possibly do that because that would be a breach of contract." Well, the only contract that she could possibly have been talking about was a contract between her husband and the Argentine competitor for this pipeline project, Carlos Bulgheroni. And I said, "Well, what you just said sounds like extortion."
But after Leghari fired her in November of 1996 and she started her election campaign, I sent our Consul General in Karachi, Doug Archard, in to see her. And he sat there and listened to her tirade about how unjustly she'd been treated and how it was all a conspiracy. He took notes, and then walked out without saying anything on behalf of the U.S.”
Thomas Simons (July 2004) 
US Ambassador to Pakistan 1996-98

He taught at Stanford University upon his retirement from the United States Foreign Service, and holds visiting appointments at Harvard and Cornell. Prior to joining the Foreign Service, Simons was an adjunct professor at Brown University.

 

Event Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Bilderberg/1991	6 June 1991	9 June 1991	Germany Baden-Baden Steigenberger Hotel Badischer Hof	The 39th Bilderberg, 114 guests

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