The man who tore strips off the president

Novelist created own plot line with future US leader
John Timlin
August 29, 2011
WILLIAM BRIDSON GREEN WRITER 2-5-1940 - 15-8-2011

BILL Green, the author of 13 books, screenplays and theatre pieces, who had the unique distinction of tearing the coat off the back of a future United States president in a scuffle at the Australian embassy in Beijing, has died in an ambulance following a heart attack at his home in Talbot, central Victoria. He was 71.

The fiery left-winger, though never a member of a political party, had been press secretary to Dr Jim Cairns, deputy prime minister in the Whitlam government, and took umbrage at being asked to leave the embassy by a lanky American following a kerfuffle with two Australian businessman at the embassy bar in the early 1970s.


In the flare-up that ensued, Green ripped the leather coat off the man's back: he happened to be chief of the US Liaison Office in China (de facto ambassador appointed by president Gerald Ford before the US had embassy status), whose next appointment in 1976 was as chief of the CIA, and then the 41st US president (1989-93), George H. W. Bush snr.


http://www.theage.com.au/national/obituaries/novelist-created-own-plot-line-with-future-us-leader-20110828-1jgl0.html#ixzz1WQ5X67MO