Frederick W. Flott, Foreign Service Officer, 85

[DGH]

.

Frederick W. Flott, a retired Foreign Service officer who had a long
career as a consultant to government and business on Central Asian
affairs, died August 14, 2006, at Sibley Memorial Hospital, in the
metropolitan Washington DC area, of complications from a fall a few
days earlier, at the age of 85.

Mr. Flott, a Washington DC resident, joined the State Department in
1947 after World War II Army service in Italy, North Africa and
France.

He had early State Department assignments as a political officer in
Paris, Tehran, Bonn and Geneva. He became fluent in French, German,
Spanish, Russian, Portuguese and Italian.

In 1955, he was a Russian interpreter for U.S. Supreme Court Justice
William O. Douglas on his trip through Central Asia and the Soviet
Union.

From 1963 to 1966, Mr. Flott was first secretary to Ambassador Henry
Cabot Lodge in Saigon. That period coincided with a massive buildup of
U.S. military forces in Vietnam.

Mr. Flott advised and worked as an interpreter for top officials,
including Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara and Gen. Maxwell D.
Taylor, who was briefly ambassador to South Vietnam in 1964 and became
a top military consultant to President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Mr. Flott was a special assistant for East Asian affairs at the State
Department in the early 1970s and retired in 1978 as deputy chief of
mission at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia.

He turned his interest in Soviet Central Asia into a consulting career
for law firms and major corporations, including Aramco, the Saudi
Arabian oil company.

He also was an unofficial adviser to U.S. ambassadors in the Central
Asian republics, particularly Uzbekistan. He also helped advise
diplomats from those countries.

Frederick William Flott was a Chicago native and a 1942 graduate of
Carlton College in Minnesota.

After Army service, he received a master's degree from the Johns
Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

He did volunteer work for the American Uzbekistan Chamber of Commerce.

Survivors include a brother, Fleming Flott of Belvidere, Illinois.

Washington Post