Vernon Walters, who died on February 10th aged 85, spent five decades fulfilling the fantasies of the world's diplomatic conspiracy theorists. Without his repeated arrival in the right place at the wrong time, they would have been left with neither straw nor bricks for their elaborate conceits.
Until the end of his life, this sociable, often garrulous man refused to discuss many of the missions that he had undertaken. Among them were rumoured to be the delivery of a strong warning to Pakistan about its building of a nuclear weapon, and discussions with Pope John Paul II to engineer the collapse of General Jaruzelski's regime in 1980s Poland.
One of the early high points of his service came when he accompanied President Truman to Wake Island in 1950 to see General MacArthur receive a presidential drubbing for insubordination during the Korean War.
He was injured in vice-president Nixon's car in 1956 when it was stoned by Venezuelans. As military attaché in Rio de Janeiro, he was accused of plotting to overthrow the reformist Brazilian regime of João Goulart in 1964.
He helped smuggle Henry Kissinger into France during the secret early stages of the US peace negotiations with Vietnam in 1969, and his web-spinning nearly precipitated a diplomatic crisis. He had arranged to borrow President Pompidou's private plane for Kissinger's journeys to Paris. He then leaked a fabricated story that the French plane's flights had been organised to transport a presidential mistress. He then had to placate Madame Pompidou by telling her the real story.
Vernon Walters was the youngest son of a British-born insurance agent who had returned to Europe from America when his child was six. He went to school at a French lycée and then on to higher education in France and Britain. He showed a remarkable aptitude for languages, and was fluent in French, Italian, Spanish and German by the age of 16.
He then had to return to the US because his father's insurance business was so badly affected by the Depression that he was obliged to work as a claims adjuster in New York.
During the second World War he enlisted as a private, but because of his language skills was soon selected for officer training. He joined an intelligence unit and was rapidly promoted to become a confidential aide to General Mark Clark. He came into contact with young soldiers and civilians who later took up leading positions in their own countries. He was to trade fruitfully on these connections throughout his career.
His rise up the postwar governmental ladder began when General George Marshall took him to help the negotiations for massive American aid to war-ravaged Europe under what became known as the Marshall Plan. Marshall recommended him to President Truman, for whom he acted as interpreter at international meetings. Thereafter he was assigned to help Truman's special representative in Europe, the millionaire ambassador Averell Harriman.
With General Eisenhower's accession to the presidency, he seamlessly became the new leader's assistant in the White House, and then took diplomatic appointments as a military attaché. His move to the centre of political power came in 1972 when President Nixon (with whom he had maintained a close friendship) appointed him deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
In his new role, he faced thinly disguised hostility from his boss, Richard Helms. And within weeks he became embroiled in the Watergate affair. After meeting with Bob Haldeman, Nixon's chief of staff, he warned FBI chief Patrick Gray that continued investigation of the break-in at the Democratic Party offices could jeopardise various CIA operations.
It wasn't true, and he later withdrew the claim, threatening to resign if the issue was pressed. He survived repeated congressional questioning on the affair, and was eventually awarded a CIA medal for resisting outside pressure on the agency.
He ran into further trouble a few years later after agents of the Chilean secret police assassinated one of Chile's leading opposition figures in Washington - they had used Vernon Walters as a referee for their visa applications. He denied all involvement, and no evidence against him was discovered.
His appointment as US ambassador to the United Nations in 1985 was greeted with dismay in the organisation, which assumed that he would bang the final nails in its coffin. But, far more placatory than his predecessor, Jeane Kirkpatrick, he became widely respected.
His final posting was as US ambassador to Bonn, where he arrived shortly before the collapse of the Berlin Wall. He had little impact on US policy, but blotted his copybook with the State Department by speculating in public (and, worse, accurately) that Germany would be reunited within five years. That, and his fluency in German, made him a popular guest on local television shows.
He was given to flag-waving nationalism in many of his public comments, but could also be a shrewd private assessor of international affairs. To this he added a nice line in self-mockery, once commenting, "It's been said that I'm a guy who speaks a half-dozen languages - and thinks in none." He never married.
Vernon Anthony Walters: born 1917; died, February 2002