Safirka: An American EnvoyKent State University Press, 2000 - 241 pages Peter S. Bridges's service as an American ambassador to Somalia capped his three decades as a career officer in the American Foreign Service. Safirka, a frank description of his experiences in Somalia and elsewhere, offers pointed assessments of American foreign policy and policymakers. Bridges recounts his service in Panama during a time of turmoil over the Canal; in Moscow during the Cuban missile crisis; in Prague for bleak years after the Soviet invasion; in Rome when Italian terrorists first began to target Americans; and in key positions in three Washington agencies. In Somalia Bridges managed the largest American aid program in sub-Sahara Africa. He dealt with a postcolonial regime, hobbled both by traditional clan rivalries and by a leader who cared far less about Somalia's people and progress than about maintaining his control over that poverty-stricken, strategic - which soon erupted in civil war. |
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... Rome - our second time there for two and a half years . I was the deputy chief of mission ( " DCM " in Foreign Service lingo ) in the big Rome embassy , with the dip- lomatic title of " minister . " It was the biggest overseas job , and ...
An American Envoy Peter Bridges. five Rome and Prague We were assigned to Rome for a four - year tour of duty . Mary Jane and I had first visited Rome in early 1957 as an American army pri- vate with a young wife , on a vacation we could ...
... Rome , where she had been the secretary to Ambassador Rabb . We made sure no more hunks were about to come down and asked the Department what they could do to speed up the plans for a new embassy . I could not function as ambassador ...
Contents
Scholar Soldier Someday Diplomat | 7 |
From Foggy Bottom to the Isthmus | 13 |
The Moscow Hand | 26 |
Copyright | |
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