The State Department dispatched Richard Bogosian to Somalia to repair political and diplomatic damage following an attempt to rescue crews…
The Sabra and Shatila Massacre
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) had invaded Lebanon in June 1982 with the goal of pushing out the Palestinian Liberation…
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…
The Death of Ambassador Arnold Raphel
U.S. relations with Pakistan have often had a disproportionate importance. In the 1980’s, they were again front and center in…
Haiti, The Bearer of Scars
Haiti is a land of great beauty and of great suffering. The Haitian proverb, bay kou bliye, pote mak sonje…
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…
A Quiet Coup in the Caribbean: The Takeover of T&T
On July 27, 1990, a Muslim organization called Jamaat al Muslimeen instigated a coup against the government of Trinidad &…
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…