The Foreign Service Journal, April 2008

One morning shortly after the ar- rests of the staff, a policeman was posted at the door of the embassy. He refused to speak to my father, or to anyone else. The next day, he arrest- ed a messenger from the Gha- naian Embassy who was attempting to deliver a personal note to Father from their chargé. The policeman guarded the embassy door every day after that. The number of visitors dropped. It was all too much. Father became progressively more paranoid, and suffered a mental breakdown. He took the life of Don Leahy, the admin- istrative officer. Following this tragic act, he decided that the American diplomats who were trying to evacuate him from the country were commu- nist agents. He refused to leave. During the impasse, the Nigerian ambassador, with whom he was acquainted, invited Father, Mother and me to the Nigerian residence. The three of us remained in the ambassador’s living room for three days, without a change of clothes. The ambassador patiently stayed up with my father day and night, trying to calm him down, as Father spoke unendingly of plots. I will always be grateful to this man, whom I never saw again. Immediately after the incident, the government of Equatorial Guinea accused Father of “gun-running.” The regime seized the U.S. embassy. Father was finally persuaded that he needed to return to America. But at the airport, he balked; the plane was really a Soviet plane, he said, with the hammer and sickle painted over. After many reassurances, he boarded. Macias allowed the American diplo- mats to evacuate him. The president also relinquished to them the body of Don Leahy, which the regime had kept for three days. Upon landing in Washington D.C., Father was immediately admitted to the psychiatric ward at George Wash- ington University Hospital. All the doctors who examined him agreed: he had experienced a “psychotic epi- sode” as a direct result of the condi- tions on Fernando Po. The trial took place in March 1972 at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. It was known then, and is still known, as the “rocket docket.” Judge Oren R. Lewis was of the old school. He declared before the jury that psychology was “nonsense,” and expedited matters by curtailing the testimony of defense psychiatrists. The doctors produced by the district attorney to rebut Father’s insanity defense admitted that they had never examined the defendant. Depositions from foreign witnesses, such as the Nigerian ambassador, were A P R I L 2 0 0 8 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 47