The files of the Department of State (RG 59) do not include a great number of documents with doodles. Perhaps that means government officials do not scribble on the documents that get filed. Alternatively, they do not file the documents on which they have scribbled. Recently, while undertaking ad hoc maintenance work on some records, … Continue reading Doodled!
This is the third in a series of occasional blog posts. This and the next posts will track the progress of the flight by presenting a few of the reports of U.S. diplomatic and consular posts along the route. After departing Seattle on April 6, flying through Canada and across Alaska (losing one of the … Continue reading Around the World in 175 Days, 1924: Department of State Contributions to the U.S. Army Flight Around the World: Part III: Japan
The term “ugly American” was popularized by the 1958 book of the same name by William Lederer and Eugene Burdick. It referred to certain types of behavior exhibited by some Americans in foreign lands. These included being self-absorbed, arrogant, demeaning, thoughtless, and ignorant of local customs. An early example of such behavior is found in … Continue reading An Ugly American, 1924
This is the second in a series of occasional blog posts. Even as the Department of State’s work on securing approval from Japan for the preliminary work on the Army’s around-the-world flight (see Part I), the Department of State was moving into the second phase of its work on the around-the-world flight: securing approval … Continue reading Around the World in 175 Days, 1924: Department of State Contributions to the U.S. Army Flight Around the World: Part II
This is the first in an occasional series of blog posts. In September 1924, in an aerial trip reminiscent of the voyage of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet (also known as the “Great White Fleet”) around the world between December 1907 and February 1909, a team of U.S. Army airmen completed the first successful aerial circumnavigation … Continue reading Around the World in 175 Days, 1924: Department of State Contributions to the U.S. Army Aerial Circumnavigation: Part I
Today’s Federal work environment features the flextime and flexplace policies that have evolved over the past several decades. As a result, few current U.S. Government employees remember when agencies had fixed work hours. Before the flex policies went into effect, start and end times for offices in Washington, DC, were staggered to spread out the … Continue reading When Will You Be In The Office (1959)?
On February 8, 1967, famed American author John Steinbeck, then in Bangkok, Thailand, sent Secretary of State Dean Rusk a letter. In it, Steinbeck excoriated the performance of the press in Vietnam and criticized anti-war protesters. Steinbeck is the author of major American literary classics such as Tortilla Flat (1935), Of Mice and Men (1937), … Continue reading The Wrath of Steinbeck: John Steinbeck on the Press in Vietnam, 1967
Employees in a bureaucracy do not always receive recognition for their contributions to the success of their institutions. This is especially true in large agencies facing a constant barrage of activities such as the Department of State. There are occasional exceptions to that rule. One of those came about in early 1952 after the mid-January … Continue reading Recognition for a job well done, 1952
During the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, communications personnel in the Department of State and at U.S. diplomatic posts overseas handling telegraphic communications went into overdrive. In addition to the standard day-to-day telegrams flowing back and forth between the Department and its diplomatic and consular posts overseas, the communicators had to take care of … Continue reading Recognition for a job well done, 1962
By late December 1960 and early January 1961, the last 30 days of the Eisenhower presidency, the U.S. relationship with Fidel Castro-led Cuba had deteriorated to the point where formal relations were about to be severed. On December 31, 1960, the U.S. embassy in Havana reported that the Cuban “revolutionary press” was carrying stories that … Continue reading “Nuts” Redux
