Obituaries

He also co-wrote a spy thriller, "The Three-Cornered Cover" (1972), and former CIA director William E. Colby's memoir of Vietnam, "Lost Victory" (1989). He was also ghostwriter for "Men of Responsibility," the 1965 memoirs of Dirk U. Stikker, former secretary-general of NATO.

Mr. McCargar was born in San Francisco and graduated from Stanford University with a degree in Russian language and civilization. He worked briefly for the Oakland Tribune and the now-defunct San Francisco Call-Observer newspaper before joining the Foreign Service in 1942.

Posted to Moscow and then Vladivostok, Mr. McCargar was assigned to the Navy, where he served as a foreign liaison officer in Alaska during much of World War II. In 1946, he became chief of the political section of the embassy in Budapest, with the covert assignment to take over a secret intelligence network. As the communists tightened their grip on Hungary, he set up an escape route that saved more than 60 political and scientific figures and their families, according to his book.

He also drove himself across the border with a hidden escapee -- the Romanian woman who became his second wife.

Mr. McCargar worked in Genoa, Italy, Washington, New York and Paris. He moved to the Free Europe Committee in 1955 and co-founded Americans Abroad for Kennedy. He became a freelance writer in 1961.

By 1978, he returned to government work as special assistant for international relations to the chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. After 1983, he became a consultant.

He was a member of the board of Americans for UNESCO from 1985 until 2005, when the United States rejoined the U.N. agency. He was a member of the Cosmos Club, Diplomatic and Consular Officers, Retired (DACOR), the OSS Society and the Author's Guild.

His marriage to Geraldine Cooper-Kay ended in divorce.

Survivors include his wife, Emanuela Butculescu of Washington, and a sister.

-- Patricia Sullivan