The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was, among other things, a horrible political miscalculation, lasting nine bloody years and resulting in the…
Egos and Architecture — The Joys of Embassy Building in the 1980s
The design of U.S. embassies has swung through varying phases over the past several decades. Some embassies, such as the…
The Embassy Moscow Fire of 1977
Diplomats working in the USSR had to contend with a wide range of difficulties – poor bilateral relations, KGB surveillance,…
PTSD in the Foreign Service — The Embassy Beirut Bombing
In an unprecedented suicide attack on Americans, the U.S. Embassy in Beirut was bombed on April 18, 1983. The tragedy…
The Dramatic Hostage Crisis and Daring Rescue at the Japanese Embassy in Peru
It sounds like something out of a novel: a group of rebels, helped by an American, seize an embassy in…
Life at Embassy Tokyo After Pearl Harbor
Despite getting extremely close to agreeing to negotiations to avert hostilities, the U.S. and Japan failed to make peace and…
József Mindszenty: The Cardinal who Lived in Embassy Budapest
József Mindszenty was a Roman Catholic cardinal ordained shortly after World War II who staunchly resisted the fascist and later…
Microwaving Embassy Moscow — Another Perspective
ADST’s post on Microwaving Embassy Moscow brought back a flood of memories to James Schumaker, who served most of his…
War of the Waves: Combating Espionage in Embassy Moscow
U.S. relations with Moscow through the decades have been problematic at best while the embassy itself has been the subject…
Murder in an Embassy, Part II — Paranoid Psychotic or Faked Insanity?
On August 30, 1971, Alfred Erdos murdered his assistant, Donald Leahy, at the small American embassy in Equatorial Guinea. Delusional…