Career
Born in Chicago, Gerald Sutton moved to Los Angeles, later graduating from Venice High School and then University of California, Los Angeles in Political Science (with honors) in 1956. He did postgraduate work at the National University of Mexico in 1956. Gerald Sutton was assigned during his diplomatic career to seven countries (Spain, Cuba, Japan, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Jamaica, Colombia) developing an expertise on Northeast Asia and Latin America.
Notable assignments included Director of the Office of Terrorism and Narcotics Analysis (86-90), Deputy Director of Japanese Affairs (1979-1981), staff director of Kissinger Commission on Central America (84-85), Principal Officer of American Consulate Fukuoka,Japan (69-70), and political counselor in Ecuador (76-79) and Nicaragua (74-76).
He was also charge"d"affaires (acting chief of mission) of the United States Embassy in Quito, Ecuador during May 1979, and chief of the State Department"s intelligence watch unit (85-86). A well-traveled senior inspector under the Inspector General toward the end of his service, he eventually visited over 110 countries during his career.
He also served as deputy chairman of the Inter-agency Committee on Terrorism Reporting. Notable points in Sutton"s career include: the negotiation of a joint communique with the Japanese side (1981)which employed the word "allies" to mutually characterize -officially and publicly for the first timethe singular United States-Japan bilateral relationship.
. his initiative which resulted in President Carter sending a stiff—and ultimately successful—note to the Ecuadorean junta admonishing it to refrain from blocking a return to democratic civilian government (1979). his conclusion that Libya was responsible for the bombing of a G.I.-frequented discothèque in Berlin—a finding which directly led to the United States retaliatory bombing of the Libyan capital in April 1986.. his intelligence analysis leading to the apprehension of the Arab hijackers of the Achille Lauro cruise ship (1986).
According to a voluntary submission to Wikipedia by thrice chief of mission and thrice deputy assistant secretary of State Francis McNeil, who collaborated closely with him through the years, Sutton played significant role in moving Latin America to a region consisting of almost completely democratically elected governments in the 1980s.
Sutton married former Japanese juvenile radio actress Shigeko Kawahara—scion of a prominent Western Japan media/cultural family—in 1970. At the time, Sutton was personal assistant to the Western Japan resident vice president of Japan Steel Corporation. She flew two dozen missions ferrying allied troops to entry points to the war zone and was assigned the protocolary military rank of first lieutenant.
Retired from the State Department in 1998, he lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he was a quondam precinct captain for Barack Obama in the 2008 Nevada Democratic primary.
Sutton has long been an avid sports fan (currently Redskins, Lakers, and Dodgers) and a collector of modern and folk art
