Life in the Foreign Service certainly has its advantages – working in often exotic locales, meeting fascinating people, being a…
The Chile Burn Victims Case: Containment vs. Human Rights under Pinochet
During a 1986 protest in Santiago, Chile against the human rights abuses of Augusto Pinochet’s regime, teenagers setting up barricades…
A U.S.-Chinese Mid-Air Collision and “The Letter of Two Sorries”
A collision in the air, a destroyed Chinese fighter jet and a U.S. ‘spy’ plane forced to make an emergency…
Ping Pong Diplomacy, April 1971 — Opening the Road to China
Following the Chinese Civil War and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China on the mainland, a “Bamboo Curtain,”…
The Inspector General — Rooting Out Fraud and Abuse in the State Department
With thousands of employees from dozens of countries spread across the globe, the U.S. Department of State sometimes falls victim…
The Immigration Game — Visas and the Mexican Border
Illegal immigration remains a hotly contested issue within the United States, as evidenced by the subject’s repeated appearance in American…
Combining Forces to Counter Terrorism — The Birth of S/CT
U.S. inter-agency coordination on countering terrorism was limited, for bureaucratic and technical reasons, prior to the mid-1980s. As hijackings and…
The 1989 Romanian Revolution and the Fall of Ceausescu
1989 was the year of remarkable popular uprisings throughout the world, most notably Tiananmen Square, the fall of the Berlin…
The Yom Kippur War — An Evacuation of the Ungrateful
Consular officers must sometimes go to extraordinary lengths to ensure the safety and well-being of Americans overseas. One such officer…
Little Boy Lost: The Case of Elian Gonzalez
In early 2000, the custody case surrounding Cuban child Elian Gonzalez dominated the American news cycle. Combining U.S.-Cuba immigration policies,…