Cyrus Vance

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In 1957, Senator Lyndon B. Johnson asked Vance to leave Wall Street to work for the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services, where he helped draft the National Aeronautics and Space Act, leading to the creation of NASA.

In 1961, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara recruited Vance to become General Counsel of the Department of Defense. He was then made the Secretary of the Army by President John F. Kennedy. He was Secretary when Army units were sent to northern Mississippi in 1962 to protect James Meredith and ensure that the court-ordered integration of the University of Mississippi took place.

In 1964, Vance became the United States Deputy Secretary of Defense and now-President Johnson sent him to the Panama Canal Zone after student riots. After the 1967 Detroit riot, Johnson sent him to Michigan. Vance next attempted to delay the Cyprus dispute. In 1968, Johnson sent him to South Korea to deal with the USS Pueblo hostage situation.

Vance first supported the Vietnam War but by the late 1960s changed his views and resigned from office, advising the president to pull out of South Vietnam. Vance served as a deputy to W. Averell Harriman during the Paris Peace Accords, which were a failure due to the duplicity of the South Vietnamese. Vance called the failed peace talks "one of the great tragedies in history". He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in January 1969.

In May 1970, Vance was appointed to serve as a commissioner in a landmark panel known as the Knapp Commission, which was formed and tasked by New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay with investigating systemic corruption at the New York Police Department. The Knapp Commission held televised hearings into police corruption and issued a final report of its findings in 1972. The work of the Knapp Commission led to the prosecution of police officers on charges of corruption and culminated in significant, if short-lived, reforms and oversight in respect of the police department, including the appointment of a temporary special prosecutor to investigate and prosecute corruption committed by NYPD officers, district attorneys, and judges.

From 1974 to 1976, Vance served as president of the New York City Bar Association. Vance returned to his law practice at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in 1980, but was repeatedly called back to public service throughout the 1980s and 1990s, participating in diplomatic missions to Bosnia, Croatia, and South Africa. Vance helped negotiate the dispute over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

President Jimmy Carter initially wanted to nominate George Ball to become Secretary of State, but, fearing Ball was too liberal to be confirmed, nominated Vance instead. Vance played an integral role as the administration negotiated the Panama Canal Treaties, along with peace talks in Rhodesia, Namibia and South Africa. He worked closely with Israeli Ministers Moshe Dayan and Ezer Weizman to secure the Camp David Accords in 1978. Vance insisted that the President make Paul Warnke Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, over strong opposition by Senator Henry M. Jackson.

Vance also pushed for closer ties to the Soviet Union, and clashed frequently with the more hawkish National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. Vance tried to advance arms limitations by working on the SALT II agreement with the Soviet Union, which he saw as the central diplomatic issue of the time, but Brzezinski lobbied for a tougher more assertive policy vis-a-vis the Soviets. He argued for strong condemnation of Soviet activity in Africa and in the Third World as well as successfully lobbying for normalized relations with the People's Republic of China in 1978.

As Brzezinski took control of the negotiations, Vance was marginalized and his influence began to wane. When revolution erupted in Iran in late 1978, the two were divided on how to support the United States' ally the Shah of Iran. Vance argued in favor of reforms while Brzezinski urged him to crack down – the 'iron fist' approach. Unable to receive a direct course of action from Carter, the mixed messages that the Shah received from Vance and Brzezinski contributed to his confusion and indecision as he fled Iran in January 1979 and his regime collapsed.

Vance negotiated the SALT II agreement directly with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, bypassing American Ambassador Malcolm Toon, who then criticized the agreement. In June 1979, President Carter and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev signed the treaty in Vienna's Hofburg Imperial Palace, in front of the international press, but the Senate ultimately did not ratify it.

After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on December 27, 1979, Vance's opposition to what he had called "visceral anti-Sovietism" led to a rapid reduction of his stature. His attempt to surreptitiously negotiate a solution to the Iran hostage crisis with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini through the Palestine Liberation Organization failed badly. Believing that diplomatic initiatives could see the hostages safely returned home, Vance initially fought off attempts by Brzezinski to pursue a military solution. Vance, struggling with gout, went to Florida on Thursday, April 10, 1980, for a long weekend. On Friday, the National Security Council held a newly scheduled meeting and authorized Operation Eagle Claw, a military expedition into Tehran to rescue the hostages. Deputy Secretary Warren Christopher, who attended the meeting in Vance's place, did not inform him.

Furious, on April 21 Vance handed in his resignation on principle, calling Brzezinski "evil". The only Secretaries of State who had previously resigned in protest were Lewis Cass, who resigned in the buildup to the Civil War, and William Jennings Bryan, who resigned in the buildup to World War I.

President Carter aborted the operation after only five of the eight helicopters he had sent into the Dasht-e Kavir desert arrived in operational condition. As U.S. forces prepared to depart from the staging area, a helicopter collided with a transport plane, causing a fire that killed eight servicemen. Vance's resignation was confirmed several days later, and he was replaced by Senator Edmund Muskie. A second rescue mission was planned but never carried out, and the diplomatic efforts to negotiate the release of the hostages were handed over to Deputy Secretary Christopher. The hostages were released during the first inauguration of Ronald Reagan, after 444 days in captivity.

Later career in law and as Special Envoy

In 1991, he was named Special Envoy of the Secretary-General of the United Nations for Croatia and proposed the Vance plan for solution of conflict in Croatia. Authorities of Croatia and Serbia agreed to Vance's plan, but the leaders of SAO Krajina rejected it, even though it offered Serbs quite a large degree of autonomy by the rest of the world's standards, as it did not include full independence for Krajina. He continued his work as member of Zagreb 4 group. The plan they drafted, named Z-4, was effectively superseded when Croatian forces retook the Krajina region (Operation Storm) in 1995.

In January 1993, as the United Nations Special Envoy to Bosnia, Vance and Lord David Owen, the EU representative, began negotiating a peace plan for the ending the War in Bosnia. The plan was rejected, and Vance announced his resignation as Special Envoy to the UN Secretary-General. He was replaced by Norwegian Foreign Minister Thorvald Stoltenberg.

In 1997, he was made the original honorary chair of the American Iranian Council.

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