John A. Scali – U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations News Correspondent

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John Scali, the ABC News reporter who became an intermediary in the Cuban Missile Crisis and later a part of the Nixon Administration, passed away on October 9. 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 a KGB Colonel 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.

Longtime ABC News correspondent John Scali, 77, died on October 9 in Washington of heart failure. While covering the State Department in 1963, Scali's behind-the-scenes negotiations with the Soviets on behalf of the U.S. helped resolve the Cuban missile crisis. He later served as a consultant to President Nixon (1971-73), then spent two years as U.S. Representative to the U.N. before returning to ABC.

Scali, John A. Correspondent, ABC News. 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 w 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.

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