Contributions by Pennsylvanians in the Foreign Service

Born and raised in Columbia in Lancaster County, William P. Kiehl entered the Foreign Service in 1970 as a member of the U.S.Information Agency. In the late 1970s he traveled around the Soviet Union with an exhibit on American agriculture, explaining the efficiencies of a free market system and collecting information for the embassy in Moscow on the economic situation in the distant reaches of the USSR. Learn more in his full oral history in ADST’s collection.

Wayne White was born and raised in Philadelphia and joined the Foreign Service in 1973. After serving as a consular officer in Niger and Haiti and as a UN observer in the Sinai, he became a longtime intelligence analyst in the State Department. After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, he was a lone voice in the intelligence community warning of the danger of a Sunni uprising. Read White’s full ADST oral history.

Born and raised in South Philadelphia, Raymond F. Smith served as a radio intercept operator in the U.S. Army in Eritrea, returned for studies at Temple University, and then joined the Foreign Service in 1973. He was political counselor in Moscow during the 1991 coup attempt against Gorbachev, and his insightful reporting shaped the White House’s reaction to these tumultuous developments. His full story is in our collection.

Michael Metrinko was born in Scranton and raised nearby in Olyphant. After serving in the Peace Corps in Turkey and Iran, he joined the Foreign Service in 1974. As principal officer at the consulate in Tabriz, Iran, he reported on anti-Shah attitudes and air force resignations in the months before the Iranian revolution. He was detained when the consulate was overrun in 1978. After his release, he moved to Tehran as a political officer only to become part of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, held in solitary confinement for much of his 444 days of captivity. Read the rest of his story in ADST’s collection.

Robert Barry was born in Pittsburgh, attended high school in Philadelphia, and joined the Foreign Service in 1962. He became a Cold War expert and negotiated a conventional forces treaty with the Soviet Union in 1986 through the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe that for the first time allowed onsite inspections of military exercise and facilities. He later managed the overhaul of U.S. immigration process for Jewish emigrés from the Soviet Union, speeding up the process while saving taxpayer funds. He served as U.S. Ambassador to Bulgaria and Indonesia. His full oral history is in ADST’s collection.

Margaret Ruth Alexander graduated from Bryn Mawr College with a degree in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology and earned her law degree from the University of Pennsylvania. She joined the U.S. Agency for International Development in 1987. Alexander’s final post was as deputy mission director in Kathmandu, Nepal, where she helped guide a project to develop a national park at Kanchenjunga, the third-highest mountain in the world. She and 23 others died on September 24, 2006, in a helicopter crash while returning from the ceremony to hand the park over to local authorities.