The Foreign Service Journal, November 2012

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2012 79 IN MEMORY O n Sept. 14, the remains of the four American diplomatic personnel who died in the terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11 returned to American soil. Their coffins, each draped with an American flag, arrived aboard a military aircraft at Andrews Air Force Base, where they were solemnly received by President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, other government offi- cials, family members, friends and State Department colleagues. AFSA President Susan Johnson, AFSA Governing Board members and staff were also in attendance at the cer- emony. “Four Americans, four patriots,” President Barack Obama said in formal remarks on the occasion. “They had a mission, and they believed in it. They knew the danger, and they accepted it. They didn’t simply embrace the Ameri- can ideal; they lived it, they embodied it: the courage, the hope and, yes, the idealism—that fundamental American belief that we can leave this world a little better than before.” n John Christopher Stevens , 52, a career FSO who had been confirmed as the U.S. ambassador to Libya in May, was on his third tour in that country when he was killed. Christopher Stevens was born in 1960 in Grass Valley, Calif., and grew up in the East Bay community of Piedmont. He was an American Field Service Inter- cultural Programs exchange student in Spain during the summer of 1977. After graduating from Piedmont High School the next year, he went on to earn a B.A. degree in history at the University of California, Berkeley in 1982. In 1983 he undertook his first over- seas service, teaching English as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco for two years. “In our Peace Corps training in Morocco, there was a tall, blond kid who was known, among other things, as the one with the unfail- ing old-school courtesy toward all,” Valerie Staats, now Peace Corps director in Sierra Leone, states in a tribute to her slain colleague on Stevens’ Facebook page. Mr. Stevens, she recalls, “always said he wanted to be an ambassador, and we didn’t doubt him.” Returning to the United States, he entered law school, graduating with a J.D. from the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco in 1989. He received an M.S. degree from the National War College in 2010. Mr. Stevens joined the Foreign Ser- vice in 1991, after working for two years as an international trade attorney in Washington, D.C. Fluent in Arabic and French, he focused on the Middle East during his 21-year diplomatic career. His overseas assignments included service as consular/economic officer in Riyadh, consular/political officer in Cairo, politi- cal officer in Damascus, and deputy principal officer and political section chief in Jerusalem. In Washington, he served as director of the Office of Multilateral Nuclear and Security Affairs, a Pearson Fellow with the Senate Foreign Relations Commit- tee, a special assistant to the under sec- retary for political affairs, an Iran desk officer and a staff assistant in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. Prior to his appointment as the first U.S. ambassador to post-Qadhafi Libya, Amb. Stevens had already served in the country twice. From 2007 to 2009, fol- lowing the resumption of U.S. diplo- matic relations with Moammar Qad- hafi’s government when the mercurial leader was trying to mend relations with Washington, Stevens was deputy chief of mission in Tripoli. Later, from March to November 2011, during the uprising that eventu- ally overthrew the Qadhafi regime, he served as a special representative to the National Transitional Council. Dur- ing that assignment, Stevens displayed the qualities of courage, commitment, resourcefulness and unflappability for which he had become known. With a civil war in progress in Libya, Ambassador Stevens and his team arrived at post in an unconventional manner: on a Greek cargo ship from Malta. Describing the experience in a talk at Diplomats and Consular Officers, Retired, on May 3, he downplayed the obvious dangers of his work, as he did routinely, to focus on the mission: sup- port for a democratic transition in Libya. “It’s especially tragic that Chris Stevens died in Benghazi, because it is a city that he helped to save,” President Barack Obama said in a brief tribute at the While House on Sept. 12. “He worked tirelessly to support this young democracy.” “Funny and charming, with a broad smile and wide curiosity” is the way col- leagues described Mr. Stevens to Wash- ington Post correspondent Anne Gearan, pointing out that he made friends easily and kept them. He was candid and had a direct style of speaking, they added, a trait that won him fans among Arabs and a following among journalists who covered Middle East hot spots. Stevens was well-known for haggling at the shops of the Old City in Jerusalem and lingering over coffee in the walled Old City in Tripoli. He enjoyed mingling with Arabs and sought a street-level view of events, often chafing at the post-9/11 security measures that sometimes con-