United States Ambassador to Singapore Nomination of Harry E. T. Thayer.

The President today announced that he will nominate Harry E. T. Thayer, of Washington, D.C., to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States to the Republic of Singapore. He would replace Richard F. Kneip, resigned.

Thayer has been in the executive seminar in national and international affairs at the Foreign Service Institute during 1979-80 and has been a Foreign Service officer since 1956.

He was born September 10, 1927, in Boston, Mass. He received a B.A. from Yale University in 1951. He served in the U.S. Navy from 1945 to 1946.

Thayer was a researcher and writer for Newsweek from 1952 to 1954 and a reporter for the Philadelphia Bulletin from 1954 to 1956. He joined the Foreign Service in 1956 and served in Hong Kong and at the State Department. He took Chinese language training from 1961 to 1963 and was economic officer, then political officer, in Taipei from 1963 to 1966.

Thayer was desk officer for China from 1966 to 1968 and Deputy Director of the Office of Asian Communist Affairs at the State Department from 1968 to 1970. From 1971 to 1975, he was Deputy Principal Counselor to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations.

From 1975 to 1976, Thayer was Deputy Chief of Mission in Beijing. He was Director of the Office of the People's Republic of China and Mongolia Affairs at the State Department from 1976 to 1979.