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81. Reflecting on Vietnam: A Young Diplomat goes to War

Author:
Allen Keiswetter
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
I knew Vietnam would be my first tour when I joined the US Foreign Service fifty years ago this coming June at age 23. I served there for 18 months (April 1968 to October 1969) as part of Civilian Operations for Revolutionary Development Support. Known as CORDS, it was a US civilian military organization assisting South Vietnamese pacification programs.I had an uneasy beginning; things both at home and in Vietnam seemed to be unravelling. The Tet offensive in early 1968 delayed my departure from Washington for two months. En route, I transited Honolulu where I saw LBJ on TV in the airport lounge announcing that he was not going to run for reelection. On arrival in Saigon, I learned that Martin Luther King had been assassinated and that rioting was rocking Washington D.C.
Topic:
Diplomacy, War, and Memoir
Political Geography:
South Asia, Vietnam, and United States of America

82. Cuban Missiles and Operation Dragon Rouge

Author:
Robert Baker
Publication Date:
04-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
The 1962 Cuban missile crisis and 1964’s Belgian paratroop drop from U.S. C-130s in the Congo were the most interesting events in my five year intelligence career. Lowly intelligence analysts like me working for the U.S. Information Agency had to sit in the Director’s chair about three weekends every year as part of the job. Our building near the White House was almost empty on weekends. Nobody else was on duty except the front door guards and the cable/code room guys. If some critical action telegram came in during Saturday or Sunday, my job was to phone the Director on his red, secure phone immediately, wherever he might be.
Topic:
Cold War, Diplomacy, Nuclear Weapons, and Memoir
Political Geography:
Soviet Union, Cuba, Caribbean, North America, and United States of America

83. Ambassador John Gunther Dean

Author:
John Gunther Dean and Charles Stuart Kennedy
Publication Date:
06-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project Information Series. Ambassador John Gunther Dean Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial Interview date: September 6, 2000
Topic:
Cold War, Diplomacy, Memoir, and Oral History
Political Geography:
Vietnam, Cambodia, Southeast Asia, Laos, and United States of America

84. A US Citizen by Surprise

Author:
June Kunsman
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
Consular officers at posts abroad face a range of difficult duties including informing relatives of a death abroad, counseling and helping victims of crime (do NOT go into Moscow’s underground street crossings late at night), visiting citizens arrested and jailed, refusing visas and dealing with the angry losing parent in a child custody fight. Still, we get a generous share of delightful duties like issuing passports and certificates of birth abroad, issuing adoption visas that give a child a route out of an orphanage to a family in the United States and informing an individual of an unknown claim to American citizenship.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Immigration, Citizenship, and Memoir
Political Geography:
Russia and United States of America

85. Valentine’s Day Murder of U.S. Ambassador

Author:
Bruce K. Byers
Publication Date:
02-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
Thirty-seven years ago in Kabul, Afghanistan U.S. Ambassador Adolph “Spike” Dubs, a career diplomat and U.S. Navy war veteran, was abducted on his way to the embassy in Kabul and taken to a cavernous old hotel in the center of the city. There he was taken by his abductors to a second floor room and bound to a chair while his embassy driver was sent back to the embassy to alert officials of the abduction. I was the embassy press and information officer in Kabul at the time and had worked often with Ambassador Dubs, introducing him to visiting American and third-country journalists interested in gaining his views on the Marxist Afghan regime under Nur Mohammed Tariki and the progress of the Saur Revolution.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Violence, and Memoir
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, South Asia, Kabul, and United States of America

86. Uganda—and triggered observations

Author:
Robert Baker
Publication Date:
03-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
Rajat Neogy declared himself referee and demanded a formal exchange of insults contest between Paul Theroux and me. It was the fag end of a very Scotch evening in Rajat’s cluttered, dusty living room up in the green hills of Kampala. Brimming ashtrays and empty beer bottles lay on tables and chairs. Everyone was gone except the three of us. Rajat grinned a brilliant grin as he scribbled down his insult scores as Paul and I exchanged jibes. He grinned and goaded us on. We drank some more. Rajat declared that I had won. Paul was briefly sullen but we had another drink and he came around. Paul is smarter than I but had likely drunk more. We staggered out, leaving Rajat as the rising sun peeped through his windows. Rajat in 1966 was the Indian editor of Transition, Africa’s only literary magazine in English, not run by Europeans. Rajat published most of Africa’s leading writers and many from Europe and the U.S. Paul was then an impecunious English teacher living in a bachelor flat at Makerere University and a commercially unsuccessful novelist. I was Assistant Cultural Affairs Officer at the dusty, run-down American Cultural Center and Library on Kampala Road.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Media, Colonialism, and Memoir
Political Geography:
Uganda, Africa, and United States of America

87. Tijuana: First Assignment—The Good, the Bad, the Bizarre

Author:
Keith C. Smith
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
During my long career, I heard many colleagues reflect on their first Foreign Service assignment—usually recalling it as a highly positive experience. Unfortunately, my first post left me disillusioned by the Foreign Service and vowing to leave it as soon as feasible. Many of us who have served in Mexican border posts encountered work and management issues quite different from those who witnessed the full range of foreign service life in a large or medium-sized capital. For slightly more than one year (April 1963-May 1964) I decided the futures of large numbers of poor Mexicans anxious to move to the U.S., observed the human tragedy encountered by a duty officer on the border and participated in a sub-rosa rebellion by junior staff against the imperial management style of the Consul-General (CG). Fortunately, the following 36 years in the Foreign Service were very different. The people I worked with and the intellectual challenges offered were sufficient to keep me from walking away from what turned out to be a satisfying career.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Immigration, Borders, and Memoir
Political Geography:
North America, Mexico, and United States of America

88. Pushing Cookies at the Coal Face

Author:
Bob Baker
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
Nothing but a bunch of “cookie pushers” is an ancient slur against diplomats who are thus seen as simply sitting at fine tables sipping tea and offering cookies to equally insipid, wealthy and powerful guests abroad. In fact, diplomatic receptions, lunches, dinners, or simple wine and cheese works are intricate payoffs or seductions and very hard work. The pit face of cookie pushing is when the President visits. Everyone at the Embassy turns out to make sure he and his retinue meet or greet in the right order, time and place everyone of use to American interests. The Ambassador works hardest as any slipups are his responsibility. Even the wealthy, politically appointed Ambassador needs to make the President and his visiting staff happy. The career Ambassador’s next post may be in a steaming jungle if mistakes are made or in an important country if all goes well during the “king’s progress”.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Government, and Memoir
Political Geography:
Africa, United States of America, and North America

89. Old Times on the Soviet Desk

Author:
Peter Bridges
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
Back in the late 1950s, when Stalin was not long gone and the Soviet state remained our militarily powerful and dangerous adversary, the State Department’s basic office for dealing with the Russians was a Soviet desk composed of just four members of the Foreign Service and four from the Civil Service, the latter including an archivist and two stenographers. There were of course other Washington offices that had to do with the USSR, in State as well as in CIA, Commerce, the FBI, the Pentagon, and USIA; but we were the primary interface wth the two embassies, the Soviet in Washington and ours in Moscow. Shortly before Christmas in 1957 I became the junior Foreign Service officer on the Soviet desk, after completing the then three-month orientation course for new FSOs at the Department’s Foreign Service Institute.
Topic:
Cold War, Diplomacy, and Memoir
Political Geography:
Russia, Soviet Union, and United States of America

90. Getting Sick in Africa

Author:
Bob Baker
Publication Date:
03-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
Malaria was like having a pain X-ray of all your bones, but after a fever bout, shaking chills diverted attention from your aching bones. I had taken all the anti-malaria pills but had evidently bumped into a new strain upcountry in Mali, West Africa. Catching bugs was also easy in Liberia, and Congo.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Health, Memoir, and Peace Corps
Political Geography:
Africa, Mali, and United States of America