In December 2010, Tunisian fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi proved that it can take just a single moment to spark a…
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,…
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…
A Diplomat Recalls Escape From a Kidnapping in Uruguay
Kidnappings, particularly those of high-ranking political officials, were not uncommon in 1970s Uruguay given the prominence of an urban guerilla…
Whistle-Blowing on American Corruption in Russia
USAID unearthed a major corruption scandal in Russia in the late 1990s involving Harvard University’s Institute for International Development. Dr.…
Keeping Kissinger Current at the Outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War
Ted Feifer wrote daily briefs for Secretary of State Henry Kissinger at the outbreak of Lebanon’s civil war in 1975. …
The United States and South Africa: The Binational Commission in the Years Following Apartheid
Directly following the election of Nelson Mandela as President of South Africa in 1994, the U.S. government began to work…
Human Rights and USAID: Remembering the Turbulent 1990s in Indonesia
Political and economic crises abroad have a dramatic impact not only on American personnel at our embassies, but on locally-employed…
Bill and Hillary Clinton’s Visit to France for the 50th anniversary of the D-Day Invasion
In 1994 Avis Bohlen, the Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Paris, was made Hillary Clinton’s Control…