Richard William Butler, (born 13 May 1942) is a retired Australian public servant, United Nations weapons inspector, and a former Governor of Tasmania. Early life and career Butler was born in Coolah in rural New South Wales. He grew up in Sydney and was educated at Randwick Boys High School, the University of Sydney and the Australian National University, Canberra. He married Susan Ryan in 1963 and they had a son and a daughter; they divorced in 1972. Butler joined the Australian Department of External Affairs in 1965, and served in a number of postings until 1975, when he resigned to become Principal Private Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition, Gough Whitlam, who had recently been dismissed as prime minister. In 1983 the next Australian Labor Party Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, appointed him as Australia's Permanent Representative on Disarmament to the United Nations in Geneva. He was next appointed Australian Ambassador to Thailand, and played a major part in the Cambodian peace settlement, working closely with then Foreign Minister Gareth Evans. He was Australian Ambassador to the United Nations from 1992 to 1997. His term was ended by the new Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, after Butler's intensive lobbying had failed to win Australia a seat on the Security Council in 1996. In a 2000 memoir The Greatest Threat, Butler acknowledged that his "high-energy, high-visibility activities ... had served as a distraction and clearly alienated some nations whose votes we might otherwise have won". Butler is currently a Global Diplomat in Residence and Clinical Professor at the Center for Global Affairs at the New York University School of Continuing and Professional Studies; and is also a professor at the School of International Affairs at Penn State University in State College. Butler at UNSCOM In 1997 Butler was appointed Chairman of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), the UN weapons inspection organisation in Iraq, in succession to Rolf Ekéus. In this role he antagonised both the Iraqi regime and the United States, and was frequently described as arrogant and aggressive. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan rebuked him for using "undiplomatic" language about then Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein. While at UNSCOM Butler frequently argued that Saddam had undisclosed weapons of mass destruction. In a 1999 speech he said: He also accused Iraq of actively concealing its weapons and obstructing UNSCOM's work: In a 1999 interview he said: In 1998 Iraq accused Butler and