Richard David Vine (December 10, 1925 – May 14, 2008) was a career diplomat, US Ambassador to Switzerland from 1979 to 1981, and later Director General of the Atlantic Institute for International Affairs.
In the early 1960s, he served as officer in charge of European integration affairs at the State Department in Washington D.C. before taking up a second posting in Bonn in 1963.
In 1984, soon after he had resigned from the Foreign Service and taken up the function, the French left-wing guerilla group Action Directe bombed the Institute’s empty premises which were almost completely demolished by the blast.
Although Institute activities resumed at a new location, Vine was later informed by French police that he personally was on the group’s hit list.
Vine resigned his post, and returned to the United States, spending the last 20 years of his life in active retirement in Millington, and then Chestertown, Maryland.
Richard D. Vine, Editor, Soviet-East European Relations As a Problem for the West, London, New York, Croom Helm, 1987.