Just minutes after returning from his three-year exile, former Philippine Senator Benigno Aquino Jr. was assassinated at the Manila airport…
Johnny Young – From Abject Poverty to Chief of Mission
Johnny Young, who served in the Foreign Service from 1967 to 2005, was born into abject poverty in the Deep…
The Failed Attempt to Get a Terrorist Mastermind
Imad Mughniyah, Chief of Hezbollah International Operations, was one of the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists and was sought by authorities…
Yemen and the War on Terror
The ongoing political tumult in Yemen threatens to undermine the country as well as American counterterrorism efforts in the region.…
A Dream Deferred
What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a…
Returning the Crown of Saint Stephen to post-Cold War Hungary
For centuries, it was the national symbol of a nation. For decades, it was kept in Fort Knox for safekeeping.…
The Afghan Invasion as Seen from U.S. Embassy Moscow
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was, among other things, a horrible political miscalculation, lasting nine bloody years and resulting in the…
The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan — December 1979
It was to last nearly a decade and would plant the seeds for the rise of the Taliban and Islamic…
“Like Star Wars and Fiddler on the Roof” — Life with the Sinai Field Mission
The relative peace between Israel and Egypt, particularly on the Sinai, has been one of the few bright spots in…
The Bhopal Chemical Disaster
On December 3, 1984, a gas leak began at a pesticide plant owned by Union Carbide located in Bhopal, India. …