This section recognizes the dedication and sacrifices of foreign affairs personnel who have faced particularly dangerous conditions during their service abroad.
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In Memoriam
To honor those killed in the line of duty or under other heroic or inspirational circumstances, the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) maintains two Memorial Plaques in the main lobby of the Harry S Truman building of the State Department. Starting with William Palfrey, “lost at sea” in 1780, and including a grim catalogue of death by natural disaster, tropical disease, murder, fatal effort to save others and stories defined by place and year (e.g., Vietnam 1968, Beirut 1983, Kenya 1998), the 222 names inscribed on the list as of June 2006 can be found at “Names on AFSA Memorial Plaques.”
On Foreign Service Day, May 5, 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice honored the four individuals killed during the previous year: Barbara Heald, Keith Taylor and Stephen Sullivan in Iraq, and David Fox in Karachi, Pakistan. She said:
“Dedicated Americans who choose to join our Foreign and Civil Service understand the mission on which they embark and they freely accept the sacrifices entailed by service in dangerous and difficult and distant locations. It is fitting that we honor them on this day, a time to renew our commitment to our fellow citizens serving abroad and a time to reflect on the sacrifices of our fallen comrades. It is with great sadness that we add the names of four fallen heroes to the Memorial Plaque today.”
Diplomats at Risk
Following are just some of the many of the stories of U.S. diplomats and foreign employees of American missions who have faced great danger in crisis situations. An excellent reference on incidents before 1995 is Joseph G. Sullivan’s Embassies Under Siege: Personal Accounts by Diplomats on the Front Line, published by Brassey’s in 1995. Unfortunately, that volume has not been updated to chronicle the heroism and sacrifice of those serving in later years.
- Allan Wendt (Saigon 1968)
- Terry McNamara (Can Tho, Vietnam 1975)
- FSN Jackie Bong Wright (Saigon 1975)
- Bruce Laingen (Tehran 1979-81)
- John Limbert (Tehran 1979-81)
- Bruce Flatin (Kabul 1979)
- Diego Asencio (Bogota 1980)
- Robert Dillon (Beirut 1983)
- James Bishop (Mogadishu 1990-91)
- Prudence Bushnell (Nairobi 1998)
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Allan Wendt (Saigon 1968)
FSO Allan Wendt was the overnight duty officer at the U.S. embassy in Saigon at 2:30 a.m. on January 31, 1968 (during the Lunar holiday of Tet), when Vietnamese Communist forces stormed the compound and other U.S. installations throughout South Vietnam. Awakened by a loud explosion and automatic weapons fire, he called the Marine Guard on the ground floor, who advised him that while the Viet Cong had not yet penetrated the embassy building itself, they were inside the compound and a second Marine had been wounded in an exchange of fire. During the six-hour assault, Wendt helped move the injured Marine to the embassy roof and maintained regular contact with the White House Situation Room, the State Department Operations Center and the U.S. Military Command Center at Tan San Nhut airport (which also came under heavy attack). By the time paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division landed to secure the compound, most of the Communist guerrillas had been killed by U.S. forces firing on them from nearby buildings. At the end of the siege, 19 Viet Cong, one U.S. Marine and several U.S. Military Police (MPs) were dead. The attackers did not enter the embassy building at any time.
E. Allan Wendt later served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Energy and Resources Policy (1981-1986) and as the first U.S. ambassador to Slovenia (1992-1995).
Terry McNamara and Jackie Bong Wright—South Vietnam 1975: The Fall
Terry McNamara
As North Vietnamese forces swept southward during the first months of 1975, capturing Danang by the end of March and forcing the evacuation by sea of remaining Americans on the staff of the consulate there, plans for evacuation of U.S. personnel from Saigon and the Mekong Delta consulate of Can Tho were moving forward rapidly.
In Can Tho, Consul General Terry McNamara was advised to evacuate his post and depart the country from Saigon, leaving behind his Vietnamese employees. Instead, using well-honed planning skills, a deep commitment to rescue as many Vietnamese coworkers as possible along with his American staff and exceptional personal courage, on April 29 McNamara led 300 Vietnamese, 18 Americans and six Filipino employees on a perilous 70-mile river journey to safety.
Terry McNamara later served as ambassador to Gabon and Sao Tome and Principe (1981-1984), as Deputy Chief of Mission in Lebanon during its civil war and as ambassador to Cape Verde (1989-1992).
McNamara, Francis Terry. Escape with Honor: My Last Hours in Vietnam. Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1997
Jackie Bong Wright
In Saigon during those weeks before the final rooftop evacuation from the American Embassy on April 29, U.S. and Vietnamese employees, especially those working in high-visibility facilities such as the U.S. Information Service-sponsored Vietnamese American Association (VAA), were instructed to continue normal operations in order to prevent panic and unnecessary bloodshed. Jackie Bong Wright was employed in a senior position at the VAA and was the widow of a promising Vietnamese political figure assassinated by the Communists in 1971. Although her story was exceptional in many ways, she, like other Vietnamese employees, was torn between institutional loyalty and a desperate need to save herself in the face of a conquering army likely to treat U.S. embassy employees with particular severity. Considered a prime target for special retribution because of her murdered husband, Bong Wright and her children were able to escape Saigon a few days before April 29 due to the personal intervention of Ambassador Graham Martin.
There is no way of knowing exactly how many Vietnamese who worked for the U.S. Embassy as employees of the State Department, the U.S. Information Service (USIS), the CIA, USAID or other American agencies escaped during those final days and in subsequent weeks. Through misinformation and logistical difficulties on April 29, many were left waiting and vulnerable for buses or helicopters that never arrived.
Bong-Wright, Jackie. Autumn Cloud: From Vietnam War Widow to American Activist. Washington, DC: Capital Books, 2001.
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Video: Laingen—Tehran 1979- Video: Laingen—Response
- Video: Laingen—Personal Qualities
- Video: Laingen—Advice
L. Bruce Laingen, "Tie a Yellow Ribbon," Inside a U.S. Embassy, American Foreign Service Association, 2005- Video: Limbert—Tehran 1979
- Video: Limbert—Response
- Video: Limbert—Personal Qualities
- Video: Limbert—Advice
Bruce Laingen and John Limbert—Iranian Hostage Crisis: 1979-81
On November 4, 1979, during the chaos of the Iranian revolution and following President Jimmy Carter’s October 22 decision to admit the Shah of Iran into the United States for medical treatment, Iranian student demonstrators invaded the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held American personnel there hostage for the next 444 days. At the hour of attack, Charge d’Affaires Bruce Laingen, Deputy Chief of Mission Victor Thomseth and Security Officer Mike Howland were at the Foreign Ministry, where they became “semi-hostages” until captured by the militants and put into solitary confinement in a prison near the end of the crisis. While in the Foreign Ministry, the three were sometimes able to speak with officials in Washington as well as with diplomats representing other foreign embassies still open in Tehran, but otherwise faced many of the hardships of other hostages. Laingen’s wife, Penelope (“Penne”), became the leader of hostage family members in the United States and popularized the use of a yellow ribbon to signify solidarity with loved ones or fellow citizens in danger abroad.
Meanwhile, at the embassy, 66 American hostages (their numbers later were reduced to 52) suffered severe privations at the hands of their captors. Political Officer John Limbert, who had previously lived and taught in the country and was probably the most fluent Farsi speaker of the group, was just one among that courageous and resilient band.
Bruce L. Laingen served as ambassador to Malta (1977-1979).
John W. Limbert served as ambassador to Mauritania (2000-2003) and was President of the American Foreign Service Association (2003-2005).
Laingen, L. Bruce. Yellow Ribbon: The Secret Journal of Bruce Laingen. Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1992.
Thomseth, Victor L. “Crisis after Crisis: Embassy Tehran, 1979,” Embassies under Siege. Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1995.
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Bruce Flatin – Kabul 1979: Assassination of an Ambassador
On February 14, 1979, as the Soviet Union was emerging as a much stronger force in Afghanistan in the months prior to its December invasion of that country, Ambassador Adolph “Spike” Dubs was on his way to the U.S. Embassy when his car was stopped and he was taken at gunpoint to the Kabul Hotel. Learning of the ambassador’s abduction, political counselor Bruce Flatin sped over to the hotel, where he encountered Soviet and Afghan officials who claimed that the assailants were terrorists demanding the release of political prisoners. Throughout the four-hour stand off, Flatin repeatedly emphasized the U.S. insistence (relayed from Secretary of State Cyrus Vance) that no precipitous action be taken that could threaten Dubs’s life. However, despite the assurances received from officials on the spot, troops located in a building across the street and inside the hotel suddenly began to fire on the room where the ambassador was held. Then, after a lull and the entry of Afghan police into the room, more gunshots were heard by the Americans forced to wait outside in the hotel corridor. When he finally was allowed inside, Flatin found the ambassador dead, slumped over in a chair. It has never been discovered precisely why Ambassador Dubs was killed on that day or by whom.
Taylor, James E. “The Murder of Ambassador Dubs, Kabul, 1979,” in Embassies under Siege. Sullivan, Joseph G., Ed. Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1995.
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Diego Asencio – Bogota 1990: Hostage to the M-19
On February 27, 1980, Ambassador Diego Asencio was attending a diplomatic reception at the Dominican Embassy in Bogota when terrorists from a Colombian guerrilla group called the M-19 entered the building, started firing and took scores of diplomats and others hostage. Once the 61-day stand off with Colombian forces got under way, Asencio became the key figure in securing its successful resolution. Using his exceptional negotiating skills and native-speaker Spanish, he successfully enlisted some of his fellow anbassadors in an unprecedented (and definitely unauthorized by Washington) involvement in the tense negotiations between the guerrillas and the Colombian government. Ultimately, a compromise was worked out that permitted all the hostages to be released unharmed.
Diego Asencio later served as Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs (1980-1983) and Ambassador to Brazil (1983-1986).
Asencio, Diego and Nancy Asencio. Our Man Is Inside. Boston: Little Brown and Co., January 1983.
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Robert Dillon – Beirut 1983
In the early afternoon of April 18, 1983, Ambassador Robert Dillon was preparing to leave his eighth- floor office of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut when a suicide bomber in a pickup truck swerved into the embassy compound from the busy roadway outside. The driver reached a point next to the building before detonating his deadly cargo, killing 17 Americans, 32 Lebanese employees and 14 embassy visitors and passersby. Once colleagues had removed debris that had fallen on him, Dillon made his way down the side of the hollowed-out structure. He immediately set to work trying to reestablish a functioning but much truncated embassy, while Lebanese and Americans worked desperately to meet emergency medical needs and rescue any survivors. U.S. Marines, deployed at the Beirut International Airport in response to the tumultuous events in Lebanon during the previous year, rushed to the scene and provided security.
Dillon, a veteran of a 1975 crisis in which the Japanese Red Army took over the U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and held it for five days, kept his staff in Beirut focused on the immediate tasks before them, secured much-needed psychological as well as material assistance from Washington and with his wife gave emotional support to Lebanese and Americans whose friends and family members had been killed or severely injured.
(Six months after the embassy bombing, on October 23, 1983, a suicide bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut claimed the lives of 241 Marines, sailors and soldiers.)
Gannon, Richard M. “The Bombing of Embassy Beirut, 1983” in Sullivan, Joseph G., Ed. Embassies Under Siege. Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1995.
James Bishop – Mogadishu 1990-91
As 1990 came to a close in Somalia, the embassy headed by Ambassador James Bishop had 37 American staffers, having been through successive draw downs as civil war and mob violence spread through the country. Though the embassy attempted to conduct basic operations, gunfire was heard outside the compound and some of it was aimed inside. Asserting his ambassadorial authority, Bishop refused to allow the Marines – either those assigned to the embassy or those who came later aboard the rescue helicopters – to return fire from the Somalis. Given the extreme volatility of the mobs, that policy proved a very sound one.
The final rescue occurred on January 5, 1991, when two CH-53s from the USS Guam were sent to evacuate the remaining Americans and nationals of 30 countries who had sought refuge in the compound. As the last helicopters left Mogadishu, intruders came over the walls, killing several Somali embassy workers and, probably inadvertently, destroying the warehouse containing food supplies that might have brought some relief to embassy Foreign Service Nationals (FSNs) left behind. At the end of the evacuation, 281 people, including eight ambassadors, 61 Americans and 39 Soviets, had been brought to safety.
James K. Bishop also served as ambassador to Niger (1979-1981) and Liberia (1987-1990)
Prudence Bushnell – Nairobi 1998
On August 7, 1998, Ambassador Prudence Bushnell was meeting with the Kenyan Minister of Commerce in a bank building near the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi when a truck driver detonated a 2,000-pound bomb that destroyed an adjacent building and everything in the embassy. Casualties totaled over 5,000, with 213 dead. The same Al-Qaida operation included a simultaneous attack on the U.S. embassy in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania
After recovering consciousness, quickly descending the bank’s 21 flights of stairs and exiting the building, Bushnell was whisked away to safety, but she quickly returned to the scene of the carnage, where she began directing rescue operations. A veteran of earlier crises, both in the field and in the State Department Operations Center, she had an excellent sense of what Washington needed to know and what steps were required by leaders on the ground.
In the immediate aftermath of the bombing, American and Kenyan survivors worked to free their fellow citizens and FSN employees from the ruins of the embassy, while others searched morgues, hospitals and private homes for those who were missing. Under Ambassador Bushnell’s leadership over the ensuing weeks and months, embassy personnel and reinforcements sent by the State Department provided what assistance they could to traumatized employees and their families, dealt with myriad issues raised by Kenyan citizens affected by the bombing and carried out essential functions from the cramped quarters of a new makeshift embassy.
Prudence Bushnell later served as ambassador to Guatemala (1999-2002).