Do embassies still matter? Donna Oglesby, a senior official at the United States Information Agency (before it was incorporated into…
Hurricane Mitch Devastated Nicaragua, But Helped Improve Relations With the U.S.
Slow-moving, coast-hugging Hurricane Mitch devastated Nicaragua in October 1998. The United States organized a massive disaster response, and President Clinton…
Responding to Terrorism in Saudi Arabia: Memories of a Public Affairs Officer
When terrorists struck Americans in Saudi Arabia in 2004, Washington and a global public wanted answers. In June, Al-Qaeda kidnapped…
Witness to the Arab Spring in Tunisia
In December 2010, Tunisian fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi proved that it can take just a single moment to spark a…
Folk Songs in Georgetown With JFK: A Memory from a Different Era
Nicholas Platt was a distinguished American diplomat, who served as ambassador to Zambia, the Philippines, and Pakistan. In the first…
Duty and Danger: A Diplomatic Spouse Targeted for Assassination in Algeria
When they learned they were marked for assassination, Parvaneh Limbert and her husband John — the political section chief at…
Duty and Danger: A Diplomatic Spouse Recounts Narrow Escapes from Uganda and Cambodia
Louise Keeley waited and worried in neighboring countries when her husband, American diplomat Robert V. “Bob” Keeley, faced the encircling…
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,…
Long Before He Headed the CIA, James Woolsey Challenged Paul Nitze Over the Vietnam War
For a young lieutenant to challenge the number two man in the Department of Defense over Vietnam policy in 1969…
Helping Reunite Germany with Tennis
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 ushered in a fraught time in the lives of East and West…