Cooper, Chester L. 1917–2005

(Chester Lawrence Cooper)

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born January 13, 1917, in Boston, MA; died of congestive heart failure, October 30, 2005, in Washington, DC. Diplomat, government official, and author. From the 1940s through the 1960s, Cooper was involved with various U.S. government departments as an official working on sensitive international issues. Just before World War II, he earned his B.A. in 1939 and an M.A. in business administration in 1941 from New York University. He then enlisted in the U.S. Army, where he was assigned to work in China with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). After the war, when the OSS evolved into the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Cooper continued his work there and was stationed in Washington, DC. From 1953 to 1955, he was staff assistant for the National Security Council and, from 1955 to 1958, liaison officer for the U.S. Embassy in London. During this time, Cooper was involved with the delicate relations between the United States and Great Britain when the latter country invaded Egypt. Returning to Washington in 1958 to work for the Office of National Estimates, he found himself again involved with international diplomacy when Secretary of State Dean Acheson sent Cooper to England with evidence that the Soviets were building missiles in Cuba. A senior staff member of the National Security Council from 1962 to 1966, and with the U.S. Department of State from 1966 to 1970, Cooper worked on the challenge of negotiating with North Vietnam during the Vietnam War, including attending delicate negotiations in Hanoi. He left government service in 1970 to become director of the international division of the Institute for Defense Analysis for two years. During the rest of the early 1970s, he was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. From 1975 to 1983, Cooper was deputy director of the Institute for Energy Analysis in Tennessee. He then spent two years in Laxenburg, Austria, as deputy director and then acting director for the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. His work on environmental and energy issues continued as coordinator of international programs for Resources for the Future in Washington, DC, from 1985 to 1992, and as deputy director of Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratories at the University of Maryland from 1992 to 2001. Cooper also had a number of interesting avocations during his lifetime. These ranged from his youthful musical endeavors in the 1930s, when he played with Chet Cooper and His Melodians, a group for which Leonard Bernstein also sometimes played. In later life, he was fascinated with creating miniature circuses that included hundreds of tiny clay figures and scale models of tents and other circus paraphernalia. Over the years, he created three complete, detailed circus scenes, which are now displayed at the Cleveland Clinic, the National Institutes of Health, and at Children's Hospital. Cooper was also the author or editor of several books, including The Lost Crusade: America in Vietnam (1970), The Lion's Last Roar: Suez, 1956 (1978), Science for Public Policy (1987), and the memoir In the Shadows of History: Fifty Years behind the Scenes of Cold War Diplomacy (2005).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

BOOKS

Cooper, Chester L., In the Shadows of History: Fifty Years behind the Scenes of Cold War Diplomacy, Prometheus Books, 2005.

PERIODICALS

New York Times, November 7, 2005, p. A23.

Washington Post, November 3, 2005, p. B8.