In the Iran-Contra Affair, Colonel Oliver North and others within the National Security Council and CIA used back channels and…
Pablo Escobar and the Siege of Colombia’s Palace of Justice
Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, the wealthiest criminal in history once responsible for 80 percent of the cocaine entering the…
A Tale of Two Countries — and One Bizarre Hostage Situation
If you think your relationships are complex, consider the convoluted ties among Ghana, Guinea, and the United States in the…
The PFLP Hijacking of TWA Flight 840
Thomas Boyatt was on his way to Cyprus to resume his post as political officer on August 29, 1969 when…
Freeing American Hostages in the First Gulf War
Shortly after Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, Saddam Hussein and his Republican Guard forces took hundreds of Americans…
Dangerous Roads – Carjacking and the Foreign Service
Foreign Service officers are trained to handle and adapt to any number of highly dangerous situations. One such situation is…
Jordan’s Black September, 1970
In 1972, a group of Palestinian terrorists shocked the world by kidnapping eleven Israeli athletes during the Summer Olympics in…
Terror in the Sky — Hezbollah Seizes TWA Flight 847
The summer of 1985 was a particularly gruesome one for terrorist incidents. One of the more memorable was the hijacking…
The Iran-Contra Scandal
One of the biggest foreign policy scandals of the last half-century was the Iran-Contra affair, in which the Reagan Administration,…
The Risk of a Lonely Drive: The U.S. Consul General in Guadalajara Describes His Kidnapping
Mexico has often been a dangerous place, particularly in the 1970s with the heightened activity of organized crime syndicates and…