On November 22nd, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas while traveling with his wife in a…
Sorry Mao: It’s Pronounced “Truman”, not “Too-Lu-Mun”
In 1944, John Service, Colonel David Barrett, and a small group of diplomats and military staff went to Yenan to…
Radio Free Europe: An Insider’s View
Back to Diplomats and Diplomacy Radio Free Europe: An Insider’s View Veteran RFE insider J. F. Brown’s story of the…
The Fall of the Berlin Wall — November 9, 1989
At the end of World War II, Germany was partitioned into four separate areas, each controlled by the four allied…
Bikini Bombshell: The First H-bomb Test on the Eniwetok Atoll
On November 1st, 1952 the United States detonated the world’s first hydrogen bomb on a large atoll called Eniwetok in…
444 Days: Memoirs of an Iran Hostage
More than thirty years later, the Iran Hostage crisis still ranks as one of the most traumatic diplomatic events in…
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956
The early 1950s witnessed a thaw in the Communist monolith. Stalin’s death in 1953 led to Khrushchev’s “secret speech” in…
Establishing Ties with Pakistan — 1947
It was the end of one era and the beginning of another. In August 1947 the British Empire, which had…
Frank Carlucci, Cold Warrior
Frank Carlucci III is best known for his tenure as Secretary of Defense under the Reagan administration, yet in his…
Khrushchev Visits America – A Cold War Comedy of Errors, Act II
In September of 1959, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev visited the United States on an unprecedented goodwill trip spanning several days,…