The State Department is not exactly known for its jocularity but once in a while, it can have its fair…
Moscow Gets Torched — The Boycott of the 1980 Summer Games
The Olympic Games, despite their lofty ideals, have since their inception in ancient Greece intertwined the best of athletic competition…
The Final Days of Paraguaya’s Alfredo Stroessner
On February 3rd, 1989 tanks rolled into Paraguay’s capital Asuncion, led by General Andres Rodriguez. Briefly bullets and bombs rattled…
Evacuating Somalia
Codename: Operation Eastern Exit. In January 1991, violence due to the Somali Civil War had escalated so much that Ambassador…
New Year’s Eve with the Roosevelts
For most of us, New Year’s Eve means watching the ball drop in Times Square on TV. For a lucky…
Memoirs of a Foreign Service Arabist
Back to Diplomats and Diplomacy Memoirs of a Foreign Service Arabist Available in January 2014 “Among Parker’s fascinating insights into…
Oral Histories: Search Our Collection
Welcome! It’s easy to search our collection: For an Advanced Search of transcripts of over 2600 oral histories, see below.…
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…
A Day That Will Live in Infamy
December 7, 1941 will forever be one of the most memorable dates in American history. The attack on Pearl Harbor, a preemptive…
The Burning of the JFK Library in Cairo — Thanksgiving Day, 1964
On November 28, 1964 — Thanksgiving Day — several hundred students from the Congo and elsewhere set fire to the…