Following the Chinese Civil War and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China on the mainland, a “Bamboo Curtain,”…
The Inspector General — Rooting Out Fraud and Abuse in the State Department
With thousands of employees from dozens of countries spread across the globe, the U.S. Department of State sometimes falls victim…
A Crack in the Iron Curtain: Freeing Sharansky
As General Secretary of the Communist Party, Mikhail Gorbachev authorized the release of thousands of Soviet Jews who wanted to leave the…
Combining Forces to Counter Terrorism — The Birth of S/CT
U.S. inter-agency coordination on countering terrorism was limited, for bureaucratic and technical reasons, prior to the mid-1980s. As hijackings and…
The Canadian Caper, Argo, and Escape from Iran
The years leading up to the autumn of 1979 in Iran proved to be turbulent, resulting in a radical transformation…
From Victim of Nuremberg Laws to “Kissinger’s Kissinger”
The Nuremberg Laws were introduced by the Nazi government in Germany on September 15, 1935 to ostracize and impoverish its…
Little Boy Lost: The Case of Elian Gonzalez
In early 2000, the custody case surrounding Cuban child Elian Gonzalez dominated the American news cycle. Combining U.S.-Cuba immigration policies,…
Freeing American Hostages in the First Gulf War
Shortly after Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, Saddam Hussein and his Republican Guard forces took hundreds of Americans…
The Greek Debt Crisis — How Did It Get Here?
The ongoing Eurozone crisis has taken on the dimensions of a long, repetitive Greek drama. After years of imposed austerity,…
Dangerous Roads – Carjacking and the Foreign Service
Foreign Service officers are trained to handle and adapt to any number of highly dangerous situations. One such situation is…