Images of the U.S. military in Vietnam are part of the American consciousness. But these images are only part of…
Fighting LGBT Discrimination, and Fighting to Stay in the Foreign Service
Up until the late 1990s, Foreign Service careers were denied to openly gay men under the pretense of security concerns.…
Rich in Oil and Rich in Corruption — Nigeria in the Early 1970s
Oil boomed. Revenue skyrocketed. So did political corruption, economic dependency, and environmental degradation. The dramatic spike in oil production in…
Freezing in the Dark: the First Years of the USAID Mission in Ukraine
Using candles for light, huddling into the warmest room, tapping into government telephone lines to make calls—these were the conditions…
Frank Carlucci and the Last Days of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo
Long before he was President Reagan’s Secretary of Defense, Frank Carlucci was a young State Department political officer in Kinshasa,…
Lessons Learned: USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance and the 1985 Mexico City Earthquake
USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) is perhaps the world’s premier international disaster assistance agency. It was not always…
Frank Carlucci: Helping Block the Communists in Portugal
After decades of right-wing dictatorship, Portugal faced a threat of a takeover by communists in the mid-1970s. Ambassador Frank Carlucci,…
Cooperating with the Taliban to Fight Opium Production in Afghanistan Before 9/11
Fighting opium production in Afghanistan before 9/11 meant working with the Taliban. Veteran foreign service officer James P. Callahan found…
Witness to the Start of Sri Lanka’s Brutal Civil War
The Sri Lankan Civil War was one of the bloodiest conflicts in recent times, claiming the lives of nearly 100,000…
Cold War Cover Stories: The U-2 Incident
On May 1, 1960, at the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union brought down an American U-2 spy…