Robert Ellsworth

Robert Fred Ellsworth (June 11, 1926 – May 9, 2011) was an American legislator and diplomat. He served as the United States Permanent Representative to NATO (an ambassadorial-level appointment) between 1969 and 1971. He had previously served three terms as a Republican Member of Congress from Kansas, from 1961 to 1967, and as an Assistant to the President during the presidency of Richard Nixon; under President Gerald Ford, he was Deputy Secretary of Defense. Ellsworth also served as assistant to the chairman of the Federal Maritime Commission.

Ellsworth was born in Lawrence, Kansas, and was educated in the public schools of that city. He served in the United States Navy during World War II and the Korean War. In 1945, he was graduated with a baccalaureate in engineering from the University of Kansas, where he had been a member of the Alpha Nu chapter of the Beta Theta Pi collegiate fraternity. He then studied law at the University of Michigan Law School, from which he was graduated in 1949; he practiced law in Lawrence, Kansas, and in Springfield, Massachusetts.

The retired ambassador was admitted to the Order of Saint John as a knight of honor in 1995.

While serving as a congressman for Kansas's 1st congressional district, Ellsworth voted present for the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. However, during his tenure as representative for Kansas's 3rd congressional district, Ellsworth voted in favor of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

On November 9, 2010, Ellsworth provided commentary to KFMB regarding an unexplained vapor trail in the airspace off the coast of Los Angeles which, at the time, was widely speculated to be a missile launch. He cautioned the news crew to wait for definitive answers from the military, then went on to theorize: "It could be a test firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile from a submarine, an underwater submarine, to demonstrate, mainly to Asia, that we could do that."

Ellsworth died in Encinitas, California: near the small city of Solana Beach, where he had founded and directed a research firm, Hamilton BioVentures.