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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... to me that if Italian politics continued on its present course , the Italian Com- munists would be in the government within a decade . Our political section was headed by an astute officer named Samuel Gammon ,. Rome and Prague 41.
... political section , under a canny and hardworking political counselor whom I much admired , Robert Barbour . While I still followed Italy's far Left , I now became as well the primary embassy contact with the dozen or so geographic ...
... political officer , 40-44 , 159 ; Bridges's second assignment as deputy chief of mission ( DCM ) , 1–6 , 56–58 ; Director- ate General of Political Affairs , 44 ; Ital- ian Communist Party ( PCI ) , 41-42 ; L'Unita , 42 ; Piazza Navona ...
Contents
Scholar Soldier Someday Diplomat | 7 |
From Foggy Bottom to the Isthmus | 13 |
The Moscow Hand | 26 |
Copyright | |
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