Otto Reich
| Otto Reich | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| United States Ambassador to Venezuela | |
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In office June 6, 1986 – July 17, 1989 |
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| President |
Ronald Reagan George H. W. Bush |
| Preceded by | George W. Landau |
| Succeeded by | Kenneth N. Skoug, Jr. |
| Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs | |
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In office January 11, 2002 – November 22, 2002 |
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| Preceded by | Peter F. Romero |
| Succeeded by | Roger Noriega |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
October 16, 1945 Cuba |
Otto Juan Reich (born October 16, 1945), is an American former senior official in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush. Among other positions held, he has been the President's Special Envoy for the Western Hemisphere; Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs; United States Ambassador to Venezuela; and Assistant Administrator of the US Agency for International Development, a recess appointment. In 2003, Bush appointed him US Special Envoy to the Western Hemisphere. Since leaving the White House in 2004, he has headed his own international consulting firm, Otto Reich Associates, LLC, based in Washington, D.C..
During the Nicaraguan Revolution, Reich was in charge of the U.S. Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean, which was involved in lobbying efforts for the contras.
In July 2012, Reich received the Walter Judd Freedom Award, which is awarded yearly by the Fund for American Studies to recognize "individuals who have advanced the cause of freedom in the United States and abroad, are devoted to the preservation and expansion of freedom, influential in world and national affairs, and are outspoken voices against tyranny and oppression, while embodying the characteristics of self-sacrifice and patriotism."
Reich was born in Cuba to a Cuban Catholic mother and an Austrian-Jewish father, Walter Reich. His father, who fled the Nazis in 1938, traveled to Cuba with the intention of continuing on to the United States but decided to settle in Havana, where he married and sold furniture. According to a profile of Reich in the New York Times, his father's experiences with Hitler made the elder Reich “immediately suspicious of Castro, prompting him to flee with his family to North Carolina in 1960, when Mr. Reich was 15.” Reich told the Times, “When my father first heard Castro...he said, 'I've heard this speech before. This man is a demagogue.'”
In 1966, Reich received a B.A. in International Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. From 1967 to 1969, as a paratroop officer, he served as a Civil Affairs officer in the US Army in the Panama Canal Zone. He was awarded the US Army's Commendation Medal.
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