Frank G Wisner, Jr.

Frank G. Wisner II, a veteran American diplomat, Washington insider and foreign affairs specialist who relished the prestige of ambassadorial life as much as the back-channel cajoling and arm-twisting of less public influence, died on Monday February 24 2025 at his home in Mill Neck, N.Y., on Long Island. He was 86. Mr. Wisner served as Vice Chairman, External Affairs of American International Group, Inc., an insurance and financial services company, since 1997, following his retirement as U.S. Ambassador to India. Mr. Wisner was also a director of Ethan Allen Interiors Inc. Mr. Wisner, who was also an ambassador to Zambia, the Philippines and India, had experience in delicate diplomacy. In 2006 and 2007, he served as a special envoy for President George W. Bush, negotiating the independence of Kosovo and its recognition as a sovereign state by other countries. Frank George Wisner II was born on July 2, 1938, in Manhattan to Frank Gardiner Wisner and Mary Knowles Wisner. His father was an intelligence operative in World War II who went on to join the Central Intelligence Agency, where he was credited with masterminding coups in Guatemala and Iran. He died by suicide in 1965. The younger Mr. Wisner had two brothers, Graham and Ellis Wisner, and a sister, Elizabeth Gardiner Wisner, who died in 2020. Graham died in January 2025. In 1969, he married Genevieve de Virel, a scion of a noted French family. She died in 1974. They had a daughter, Sabrina. In 1976, he married Christine de Ganay, who was also from an aristocratic French family. She was the former wife of Pal Sarkozy, the father of former President Nicolas Sarkozy of France. David Wisner is their son. She had two children from her previous marriage, Olivier and Caroline Sarkozy. The couple later divorced. Mr. Wisner married Judy C. Cormier, an interior designer, in 2015. He is survived by his wife and children as well as his brother Ellis and 12 grandchildren.