Faith Amy Whittlesey ( Ryan; February 21, 1939 – May 21, 2018) was an American Republican politician,

White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800. ...

Senior Staff member, and author. She was noted for her efforts to communicate Ronald Reagan's entire policy agenda to U.S. opinion leaders and for bringing together for the first time in the Reagan White House evangelical, Catholic, and other conservative religious groups who opposed legalized abortion and were concerned about moral and cultural decline and the break-up of the family. These groups became a significant component of the

Reagan coalition The Reagan coalition was the combination of voters that Republican Ronald Reagan assembled to produce a major political realignment with his electoral landslide in the 1980 United States presidential election. In 1980, the Reagan coalition was ...

as they grew more politically self-conscious in the 1980s.FoxNews, "Interview with Faith Whittlesey," June 11, 2004. She organized the White House Central American Outreach Group at the direction of Chief of Staff James Baker to provide information about Reagan's anti-communist policies in the region and was an active supporter of Reagan's defense buildup and the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Whittlesey served twice for a total of nearly 5 years as

U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland This is a list of United States ambassadors to the Swiss Confederation and the Principality of Liechtenstein. History Since 1997, the U.S. ambassador to Switzerland has also been accredited to the Principality of Liechtenstein. Appointed on F ...

and also served for 2 years on the Reagan White House Senior Staff as Assistant to the President for Public Liaison.

Early life and education

Faith Amy Ryan was born in 1939 in

Jersey City, New Jersey Jersey City is the second-most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey, after Newark.Williamsville, New York. Her father was a "Catholic in the Irish tradition" and it was incorrectly assumed that Faith grew up as a Catholic, when her mother's family did not approve of her father's Catholicism. " he left the Catholic Church", Whittlesey wrote in her memoir. "He attended the Methodist Church with my mother and brother, Tom, and me. I was thus raised as a Methodist. As a family we went to the Williamsville, New York, Methodist Church every Sunday. I went to regular Sunday school and sang in the choirs." However, she converted to Roman Catholicism in 2000. She earned a full-tuition scholarship to attend

Wells College Wells College is a private liberal arts college in Aurora, New York. The college has cross-enrollment with Cornell University and Ithaca College. For much of its history it was a women's college. Wells College is located in the Finger Lakes reg ...

in Aurora, New York, where she graduated in 1960. She earned a full-tuition scholarship to the law school at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

Career

To earn money while in law school, Whittlesey became a substitute teacher in the City of Philadelphia (1962–64) because " my last year of law school he female studentswere advised by the law school administration not to even come to the aw firm jobinterviews because we would not be hired". She was admitted to the

bar Bar or BAR may refer to: Food and drink * Bar (establishment), selling alcoholic beverages * Candy bar * Chocolate bar Science and technology * Bar (river morphology), a deposit of sediment * Bar (tropical cyclone), a layer of cloud * Bar (u ...

of Pennsylvania in 1964.

Pennsylvania State Representative

In 1972 she was elected to the

Pennsylvania House of Representatives The Pennsylvania House of Representatives is the lower house of the bicameral Pennsylvania General Assembly, the legislature of the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. There are 203 members, elected for two-year terms from single member districts. It ...

representing the 166th Legislative District in Delaware County. She had canvassed door-to-door for this race while pregnant with her third child, William. In 1974, she was reelected to the Legislature. In 1975, she was elected to the Delaware County Board of Commissioners, now known as the Delaware County Council and reelected in 1979. (Delaware County was at the time larger in population than 5 states of the Union.) She served alternately as Chairman and Vice Chairman. She lost the 1978 Republican primary for Lt. Governor of Pennsylvania. While serving in the Delaware County government, Whittlesey briefly held her first job in the private sector, taking a part-time job at the law firm Wolf, Block, Schorr & Solis-Cohen LLP in Philadelphia.

Ambassador to Switzerland

Whittlesey served as

from 1981 to 83. In her first term as Swiss Ambassador she initiated negotiations in an acrimonious dispute between the U.S. and Switzerland that later led to the signing of a "Memorandum of Understanding on Insider Trading", the first major changing of the strict tradition of Swiss banking secrecy. Of this memorandum, Ambassador Jean Zwahlen, later a Member of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, wrote her: "I still keep a vivid memory of your skill to help delicate negotiations in the 80s."

White House Liaison Office

Whittlesey was named Assistant to the President for Public Liaison in 1983 at the suggestion of

Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...

's Ambassador to Austria and personal assistant

Helene von Damm Helene Antonia von Damm ( Winter; born May 4, 1938) is an Austrian-born American diplomat who served as U.S. Ambassador to Austria, and also worked as an assistant to President Ronald Reagan. Early life Helene Antonia von Damm, born Helene Antoni ...

, and at the urging of White House Chief of Staff James Baker and Deputy Chief of Staff Michael Deaver."Memoirs of Faith Whittlesey", Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University. Her tenure was marked by initiatives to improve the access of conservative religious believers to the American political process and national policymaking. She was considered their most "aggressive ally" in the White House.Martin, William(1996) With God On Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America. New York: Broadway. pg. 235 She wrote a memo in October 1983 that fundamentalist and evangelical groups had done "little organizational work" for "the 1984 election period" and that to maintain

's "credibility" with those groups, Catholics in particular, "the tuition tax credit bill must come up for Senate floor action this fall". She noted that school prayer was "not unlike the tuition tax credit issue. Politically we win if we get votes on the Senate floor". In 1985, she sent the anti-abortion film ''

The Silent Scream ''The Silent Scream'' is a 1984 anti-abortion propaganda film directed by Jack Duane Dabner, narrated by Bernard Nathanson (an abortion-provider-turned-anti-abortion-activist), and produced in partnership with the National Right to Life Committ ...

'', which was a documentary of an ultrasound abortion at three months produced in 1984 by anti-abortion activist and former

NARAL NARAL Pro-Choice America, commonly known as simply NARAL ( ), is a non-profit 501(c)(4) organization in the United States that engages in lobbying, political action, and advocacy efforts to oppose restrictions on abortion, to expand access to ...

founder Bernard Nathanson, to every member of Congress and arranged for a screening at the White House at which Nathanson presented the film. At its height, her office included 38 people. She developed White House outreach to labor leaders, "Reagan Democrats", and Jewish leaders. She clashed with some other members of the Reagan White House senior staff whom she regarded as "largely Washington permanent government party functionaries not very committed to advocating the President's policies in a serious or consistent way." While she was the Director of the Liaison Office (1983–85), there were conflicts with the staff of Reagan's Chief of Staff

James A. Baker III James Addison Baker III (born April 28, 1930) is an American attorney, diplomat and statesman. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the 10th White House Chief of Staff and 67th United States Secretary of the Treasury under President ...

and his deputy Michael Deaver, which led to Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) and others urging her to take a federal judgeship on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. After careful consideration, she declined the nomination. A judicial appointment would have effectively removed her from the public policy and political arena. She had taken the job of Public Liaison because of "a profound sense of obligation to the grassroots voters who had elected Reagan believing him to be a man of deep principle and traditional faith." She returned to Switzerland after

Donald Regan Donald Thomas Regan (December 21, 1918 – June 10, 2003) was the 66th United States Secretary of the Treasury from 1981 to 1985 and the White House Chief of Staff from 1985 to 1987 under Ronald Reagan. In the Reagan administration, he advocat ...

became Chief of Staff, replacing James A. Baker.

Iran-Contra

At the direction of White House Chief of Staff James Baker, Whittlesey spent a great deal of her time as assistant to the President for Public Liaison organizing communication of information about Reagan's policies in Central America and, in particular, the anticommunist "

Contras The Contras were the various U.S.-backed and funded right-wing rebel groups that were active from 1979 to 1990 in opposition to the Marxist Sandinista Junta of National Reconstruction Government in Nicaragua, which came to power in 1979 fol ...

" in

Nicaragua Nicaragua (; ), officially the Republic of Nicaragua (), is the largest country in Central America, bordered by Honduras to the north, the Caribbean to the east, Costa Rica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Managua is the cou ...

. In 1983, she established the White House Outreach Working Group on Central America to help increase private sector understanding of Reagan's policies, including working with, among many other individuals and groups, the

American Security Council Foundation The American Security Council Foundation (ASCF) is a non-profit organization founded by John M. Fisher that seeks to influence United States foreign policy by "Promoting Peace Through Strength". ASCF's current president is Dr. Henry A. Fischer. ...

, to produce anti- Sandinista propaganda (what she would call "truth-telling") films, and the Council for National Policy to produce materials that revealed the Marxist–Leninist orientation of the Sandanista movement. Among the groups that participated in the Outreach Group effort was the AFL-CIO because "the Sandinistas were against free labor unions." Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs

Constantine Menges Constantine C. Menges (September 1, 1939 – July 11, 2004) was an American scholar, author, professor, and Latin American specialist for the White House's US National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency. Menges was born in T ...

cited "the very effective public outreach staff headed by Ambassador Faith Whittlesey" in his reflections on Reagan foreign policy. Despite its effectiveness, Whittlesey says the Outreach Group was shut down in 1985 when Donald Regan took over as Chief of Staff and the White House "started the brown bag operation with Ollie North. What we were doing was completely open and above board. It was an honest effort to change minds and hearts and to provide a forum for truth telling". According to Whittlesey, "the Washington establishment, especially Democratic but also most of the Republican, was opposed to, wanted to downplay, or gave the silent treatment to Reagan's Central American anti-communist policies." Later, when asked about Iran-Contra she said: "I had no knowledge of the Iran-Contras connection. I had no involvement in it, nor was I asked to be a part of it."'' ''The final House report on Iran-Contra concluded that Whittlesey unsuccessfully attempted to help Oliver North obtain a U.S. passport for a fake

Saudi Saudi may refer to: * Saudi Arabia * Saudis, people from Saudi Arabia * Saudi culture, the culture of Saudi Arabia * House of Saud The House of Saud ( ar, آل سُعُود, ʾĀl Suʿūd ) is the ruling royal family of Saudi Arabia. It is c ...

prince who claimed to have knowledge of the locations of hostages being held in

Lebanon Lebanon ( , ar, لُبْنَان, translit=lubnān, ), officially the Republic of Lebanon () or the Lebanese Republic, is a country in Western Asia. It is located between Syria to the north and east and Israel to the south, while Cyprus li ...

. Whittlesey emphatically denied the claim, for which she maintained no proof was produced, as a politically motivated attempt by a Democrat-dominated House to discredit her White House Outreach Group initiative, which had been "a legitimate and in every respect legal attempt to communicate Reagan's anti-communist policy in Central America." Of her association with Oliver North, she asserted, "We worked closely together. That's why I was investigated. That's why I was hauled before a congressional panel and investigated. They were criminalizing policy differences."

Return to Switzerland

She resumed her duties representing the U.S. in Bern for a second term in 1985. After the Democrats took control of the Senate in 1986, giving them control of both Houses of Congress, allegations were made to

Attorney General In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general or attorney-general (sometimes abbreviated AG or Atty.-Gen) is the main legal advisor to the government. The plural is attorneys general. In some jurisdictions, attorneys general also have exec ...

Edwin Meese Edwin Meese III (born December 2, 1931) is an American attorney, law professor, author and member of the Republican Party who served in official capacities within the Ronald Reagan's gubernatorial administration (1967–1974), the Reagan pres ...

that Whittlesey had granted diplomatic favors for private contributions to her State Department-administered representational fund and that she had also obstructed justice. Meese "found no 'reasonable grounds' to pursue allegations that", in contravention of the independent counsel statute, Whittlesey had "mishandled entertainment funds at the embassy or improperly aided contributors to the funds". Hearings into the claims were held by a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee, but the hearings failed to produce substantiation of the charges. Whittlesey resigned as ambassador in 1988.

Post government career

After leaving Switzerland, Whittlesey joined the New York-based law firm of

Myerson & Kuhn Myerson & Kuhn was a New York–based law firm that operated from 1988 to 1990. It was formed by name partners Bowie Kuhn and Harvey D. Myerson, former partner in the defunct Finley, Kumble, Wagner, Underberg, Manley, Myerson & Casey who brought s ...

until its 1990 bankruptcy filing She also served as president of the

American Swiss Foundation The American Swiss Foundation is a private non-profit foreign policy organization headquartered in New York. It was founded in 1945 "to preserve and strengthen the historic friendship between the United States and Switzerland". Conference The mai ...

. Whittlesey's diplomatic career resumed briefly in 2001 when she was named by

President President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) *President (education), a leader of a college or university *President (government title) President may also refer to: Automobiles * Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ful ...

George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...

to be an At-Large Member of the U.S. Delegation to the United Nations Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects. She also founded a consulting firm, Maybrook Associates. She served on several corporate boards, including the U.S. Advisory Board for Nestle. From 1989 through 2012 she served as a board member of Schindler Elevator Corporation. She also served on the board of directors of

Christian Freedom International Christian Freedom International (CFI) is an international human rights organization that "helps those who are persecuted for their faith in Jesus Christ." It is based in Front Royal, Virginia. Christian Freedom International aids, equips, and ad ...

, an organization dedicated to assisting persecuted Christians around the world. For several years she served on the Newsmax International Advisory Board. In 2016, she became a member of the Diplomatic Advisory Board and Special Advisors to the World War I Centennial Commission. On June 17–18, 2017, she participated as a judge of the 2017 Miss District of Columbia Pageant, part of the Miss America competition.

Involvement in Russia-Trump affair

She arranged for convicted

Russian spy Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tangibl ...

Maria Butina to meet Jeffrey Gordon on September 29, 2016, at the Swiss Ambassador's residence. and later, in October 2016, attended J. D. Gordon's birthday party with Butina.

Personal life

In 1963, she married Roger Weaver Whittlesey of

Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania Huntingdon Valley is a village, as well as a suburban mailing address located in Lower Moreland Township, Upper Moreland Township and Abington Township all in Montgomery County, and in small sections of Upper Southampton Township and Lower S ...

. Whittlesey was an advertising executive. They had three children and ten grandchildren. The marriage lasted 11 years, not ending until Roger Whittlesey committed suicide in March 1974. Their son Henry, who was subject to depression, committed suicide in 2012. An enthusiastic gardener, Whittlesey was presented with a new Tea Rose variety named ''Faith Whittlesey'' for her. Whittlesey was also an accomplished classical pianist.

Death

Faith Whittlesey died in Washington on May 21, 2018, aged 79, of

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal b ...

Writings about and by Whittlesey

Quotations

*Regarded as a "conviction conservative", Whittlesey described Reagan's core agenda as "support for the peaceful defeat of the Soviet Union without commitment of U.S. troops in combat, defense of life, opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment with its hidden agenda of tax-funded abortion and same-sex marriage, decentralized government, lower taxes and reduced government regulation of the private sector, school prayer, defeat of Marxism-Leninism in its various permutations and manifestations, individual Second Amendment rights, the establishment of official diplomatic recognition of the Vatican, support for tuition tax credits for parochial schooling." *When working in the Liaison Office she declared that feminism was a "straitjacket" for women because she believed it reduced rather than enhanced legal rights women had previously enjoyed in child custody and marital support cases before states enacted versions of the Equal Rights Amendment. She declared, "Ronald Reagan honored the role of full-time homemaker and her rights in Social Security and income tax in the face of elite feminists' demeaning of full-time mothers." *In 1985, when looking at the trendline that showed that half of all pre-school children had mothers in the workforce, she assured Reagan that once the economy picked up "all those women can go home and look after their own children." *Whittlesey was the first (1984) to formulate and popularize a quote that entered political parlance about Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire that is often attributed to her: "Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, except backwards and in high heels". The officia
Ginger Rogers website
attributes the origin of the quote to Bob Thaves who wrote in a 1982 Frank and Ernest

comic strip A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...

about Fred Astaire: "Sure he was great, but don't forget that Ginger Rogers did everything he did, backwards…and in high heels." *Whittlesey was fond of quoting John Quincy Adams' cautionary admonition to America about foreign entanglements and war: "We do not go abroad for monsters to destroy." *Before crowd at the

Institute of World Politics The Institute of World Politics (IWP) is a private graduate school of national security, intelligence, and international affairs in Washington DC, and Reston, Virginia. Founded in 1990, it offers courses related to intelligence, national securit ...

in Washington, D.C. on October 5, 2012, Whittlesey said, "Listen carefully, read widely, listen to diverse opinions, and be somewhat humble about yourself and our country."

Books and forewords

*Thomas Carty, ''Backwards in High Heels: Reagan's Madam Ambassador in Switzerland and the West Wing'' (Casemate Publishing, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2012); *''Soviet global strategy and the Caribbean: America by the throat? '',

Rockford Institute The Rockford Institute was an American conservative think-tank associated with paleoconservatism, based in Rockford, Illinois. It ran the John Randolph Club and published the magazine ''Chronicles''. In early 2019, the Rockford Institute merged wi ...

, 1984; * Faith Whittlesey, Edson I. Gaylord. ''Straight talk on the economy: The capital goods industry between the great depressions of the 1930s and the 1980s'', Rockford Institute, 1984; *''Sustainable Rose Garden: Exploring 21st Century Environmental Rose Gardening'' edited by Pat Shanley & Peter Kukielski, foreword by Faith Whittlesey (Manhattan Rose Society Publications, 2008) *''Switzerland under siege, 1939-1945 : a neutral nation's struggle for survival'' edited by Leo Schelbert, foreword by Faith Whittlesey (Picton Press, 2000);

Articles

* Faith Whittlesey (March 1, 2009)
America must treat its Swiss friend with care
" ''Financial Times,'' Retrieved July 27, 2009 * Faith Whittlesey (April 18, 2016)

" ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'', Retrieved June 7, 2018 * Faith Whittlesey (May 12, 2016)

" HuffPost, Retrieved June 7, 2018 * Faith Whittlesey (May 20, 2016)

" HuffPost, Retrieved June 7, 2018 * Faith Whittlesey (June 28, 2016)

" HuffPost, Retrieved June 7, 2018 * Faith Whittlesey (July 6, 2016)

" HuffPost, Retrieved June 7, 2018 * Faith Whittlesey (July 29, 2016)
Press 'Spins' DNC Scandal to Divert Attention from Hillary Campaign Offenses: Another Case of Special Treatment
" HuffPost, Retrieved June 7, 2018 * Faith Whittlesey (August 15, 2016)

" HuffPost, Retrieved June 7, 2018 * Faith Whittlesey and Patrick Gleason (January 26, 2017)
'Mr. Apprentice' Can Look to Switzerland for a Model to Help Close U.S. Youth Skills Gap
" ''Forbes'', Retrieved June 7, 2018

Collected papers

Whittlesey's Collected Papers are housed at th
Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center
Boston University.

Notes

References

External links

*
Official State Department Bio
* ttp://www.hossli.com/articles/2009/03/09/die-usa-negieren-abkommen/ "Die USA negieren Abkommen"an interview with Faith Whittlesey (in German) * , - , - {{DEFAULTSORT:Whittlesey, Faith 1939 births 2018 deaths Ambassadors of the United States to Switzerland American people of Irish descent American anti-abortion activists Female critics of feminism The Hague Academy of International Law people Republican Party members of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives Pennsylvania lawyers People from Delaware County, Pennsylvania Politicians from Jersey City, New Jersey People from Williamsville, New York Reagan administration personnel The Philadelphia Inquirer people University of Pennsylvania Law School alumni Wells College alumni Women state legislators in Pennsylvania Writers from Pennsylvania Writers from New Jersey American United Methodists American women ambassadors