The Foreign Service Journal, December 2022

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | DECEMBER 2022 13 Share your thoughts about this month’s issue. Submit letters to the editor: journal@afsa.org As for the opening of the mission in Conakry, Chargé Rinden was certainly in place. What took eight months was the arrival of an ambassador, the fault of the Eisenhower administration. I should have clarified that for our FS readership. Eight months without a chief of mission may not seem like an extended period in today’s Foreign Service, but it infuriated the thin-skinned Touré, who considered the presence of an ambas- sador the respectful sign of a full embassy and the prolonged absence of one a purposeful insult. Ambassador John Morrow belatedly arrived; he himself didn’t take lightly what he perceived as hostile and racist U.S. staff attitudes toward himself as a Black political appointee. He walked into a chief-of-mission residence in disarray despite the many months to prepare, the details of which he spelled out in his memoir. The Edward Kennedy visit presents another curious episode, whose symbol- ism was not lost on the family-centered Guineans. Due to FSJ word limits, this and the Morrow anecdote were deleted frommy article. However necessary, the editor’s cut- ting knife can be imperfect. In any case, there’s ample scholarship on Kennedy’s Africa policy once he entered the White House, where I would argue the tale of little brother’s brief adventure more appropriately belongs. These are exactly the stories the Jour- nal is in a position to dig up from the likes of us and that enrich our under- standing of the past as a nation. I hope you’re ready for more. Three cheers for the FSJ ’s work! Greg Garland FSO, retired Washington, D.C. n