The Foreign Service Journal, July/August 2018

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2018 51 DAR ES SALAAM, TANZANIA We Will Not, and Cannot, Forget John E. Lange Chargé d’Affaires, Embassy Dar es Salaam I heard a low, rumbling sound a second before the office windows blew in over my head and landed on the people in front of me. As I would later learn, a bomb with the equivalent of 1,500 to 2,000 pounds of TNT had exploded, killing 11 people and injuring more than 85. The American embassy in Dar es Salaam was in ruins. Our community—about 50 American employees, a few hundred Tanzanian For- eign Service National staff and all the fam- ily members—was in a state of shock. Yet we were united: in our grief for the dead, in caring for and supporting the survivors, in resurrecting embassy operations, and in welcoming the VIP visitors and hundreds of temporary duty employees who came to assist. As I wrote in the March 2001 Foreign Service Journal , abso- lutely everyone—Foreign Service generalists and specialists, Foreign Service Nationals, family members, Foreign and Civil Service employees in Washington, and many, many others—was critical to our recovery. Everyone mattered. Two months later, when the FBI no longer needed the bombed-out building for evidentiary purposes, we offered all employees the opportunity to return to the embassy to see the devastation they had escaped in the minutes after the bombing. Interestingly, roughly half declined the opportunity and never wanted to go inside that building again, while the other half were eager to revisit their old offices and talk to others about what happened. Those feelings continue today: some wonder why we keep discussing that horrible day and feel it needs to be left in the past where it belongs, while others find discussion of the bombing, and the lessons we have subsequently learned, to be therapeutic. I am in the latter category, and in the decade after the bomb- ing I gave numerous speeches on the event and on leadership in a crisis. Once, after I addressed participants in the deputy chief of mission course, the Foreign Service Institute instructor told me that it seemed as if I was visualizing my actions minute-by- minute in the immediate aftermath of the bombing. She was right. Everyone who was in Dar es Salaam on Aug. 7, 1998—even those miles away from the embassy—heard and felt the blast, and they remember it to this day. I’ve had conversations in which people such as scientist Jane Goodall (who was in her home in Dar es Salaam at the time) and former Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete (who was foreign minister in 1998) described exactly where they were, and how they reacted, when the bomb went off. Even for those survivors who prefer never to talk about the bombing, reminders are frequent. I still remember sitting in my State Department office with a window, years after the bomb- ing, and hearing the low, rumbling sound of the president’s helicopters—only to be reminded of Aug. 7, 1998. I once told a U.S. military officer that every time the media mention “the East Africa bombings,” I recall my experience in Dar es Salaam. He compared us to “war widows,” whose spouses were killed while in the armed forces during a war; every mention of the war serves as a reminder. Osama bin Laden’s simultaneous 1998 attacks were the Foreign Service’s wake-up call on terrorism, but the 9/11 attacks three years later were a wake-up call for the United States as a nation. When 9/11 occurred, many of the Dar bombing “alumni” were very upset that bin Laden had not been captured earlier. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at the memorial in front of Embassy Dar es Salaam honoring those who lost their lives in the Aug. 7, 1998, attack on the embassy. This photo was taken in 2006 when Albright, who was Secretary of State at the time of the East Africa bombings, made a private visit to the memorial. DEPARTMENTOFSTATE