William G. Hyland, former deputy national security advisor to President Ford and former editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, died of an aortic aneurysm March 25 at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Virginia. He was 79.
Hyland, an expert on U.S.-Soviet relations during the latter days of the Cold War, worked for the Nixon administration at the National Security Council and the State Department as the head of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. He returned to the NSC during the Ford administration.
"He was one of the best public servants I have known, and one of the finest human beings," said former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. "He was a superb analyst, especially of Russian and European affairs. . . . He was with me at practically every negotiation we conducted during the period. He was an integral part of our group."
As a low-profile aide who was the CIA's Berlin desk officer, Hyland frequently briefed the agency's legendary director Allen Dulles. He later moved to the CIA's Soviet desk, where he learned to estimate the Soviet threat. Those jobs led to the executive branch, which led to several years at think tanks and to the editorship of Foreign Affairs from 1984 until 1992.
Hyland wrote more than half a dozen books on international affairs and popular music. After devoting his career to foreign policy, he "rattled the teacups" of the diplomatic corps in 1991 when he publicly urged the United States to turn inward.
"The U.S. has never been less threatened by foreign forces than it is today," he wrote in an op-ed article for the New York Times.
"We may now be trying to perpetuate something from the past, to give urgency to [international] issues that are no longer all that urgent," he told former Washington Post diplomatic correspondent Don Oberdorfer.
Matters certainly were urgent while Hyland worked at the NSC in the White House and grappled with the collapse of detente, through Moscow summit meetings, the shaping of strategic arms limitations and the formation of the SALT I treaty.
"He was a very sagacious Soviet analyst in a very difficult time during the Cold War," said Brent Scowcroft, national security advisor to Presidents Ford and George H.W. Bush. "Even more than that, he had a very judicious mind and approach, and played a critical role in managing the interagency process in the White House at the NSC."
