John A. Scali

Infobox US Ambassador
name=John Scali


image_width=
order=
ambassador_from=United States
country= the United Nations
term_start =1973
term_end = 1975
president= Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford
predecessor = George H.W. Bush
successor = Daniel Patrick Moynihan
birth_date = April 27, 1918
birth_place = Canton, Ohio
death_date=death date and age|1995|10|19|1918|4|27
death_place= Washington, D.C.
religion=
spouse=
party=Republican
profession= Journalist
religion=
footnotes=

John Alfred Scali (April 27, 1918 - October 19, 1995) was the United States Ambassador to the United Nations from 1973 to 1975.

Scali was an ABC News reporter who became an intermediary in the Cuban Missile Crisis and later a part of the Nixon Administration. Scali gained fame after it became known in 1964 that in October 1962, a year after he joined ABC News, he had carried a critical message from KGB Colonel Aleksandr Fomin to U.S. officials. He left ABC in 1971 to serve as a foreign affairs adviser to President Nixon, becoming U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations in 1973. Scali re-joined ABC in 1975 where he worked until retiring in 1993.

Scali was contacted by Soviet embassy official (and KGB Station Chief) Aleksandr Fomin about a proposed settlement to the crisis, and subsequently he acted as a contact between Fomin and the Executive Committee; however, it was without government direction that Scali responded to new Soviet conditions with a warning that a U.S. invasion was only hours away, prompting the Soviets to settle the crisis quickly.

References

* [http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/jascali.htm Arlington National Cemetery biography]
* [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/books/review/Holbrooke-t.html NYTimes Book Review about Cuban Missile Crisis]