If a little learning is a dangerous thing, a lot of it can also get a man into trouble. Specimen: handsome, polished Career Diplomat Charles Eustis Bohlen, 55, U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines. Tabbed back in 1929 to become a Russian expert, "Chip" Bohlen got to be so fluent in Russian that he was picked to be Franklin Roosevelt's interpreter at the wartime meetings with Stalin. As a result, Bohlen had to carry around the never-quite-erasable mark of Yalta, and grievances about Yalta stirred strenuous Republican opposition on Capitol Hill in 1953 when President Eisenhower named Bohlen Ambassador to the U.S.S.R.
In...