John Dale Blacken (August 26, 1930, Everett, Washington [1] -2015) was an American Ambassador who served as Ambassador to Guinea-Bissau. [2]
Blacken graduated from Washington State University with a B.A. in 1955) after having served in the United States Army from 1950 to 1952. [1]
Before becoming a management analyst in the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture in 1958, Blacken was a salesman with Encyclopaedia Britannica in San Francisco. He entered junior officer training at the Foreign Service Institute in 1961. [1]
While ambassador, Blacken knew convicted American killer and hijacker George Wright, who had eluded the FBI for 41 years despite living in West Africa under his own name, on a social basis. Wright escaped from a New Jersey jail “and was wanted in a 1972 hijacking by the radical Black Liberation Army of a U.S. plane to Algeria.” Blacken claimed the FBI never notified the Embassy about the manhunt. [3]
American Airlines Flight 77 was a scheduled American Airlines domestic transcontinental passenger flight from Washington Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Virginia, to Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles, California. The Boeing 757-223 aircraft serving the flight was hijacked by five Saudi men affiliated with al-Qaeda on the morning of September 11, 2001. They deliberately crashed the plane into the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, near Washington, D.C., killing all 64 aboard and another 125 in the building.
D. B. Cooper is a media epithet used to refer to an unidentified man who hijacked a Boeing 727 aircraft in United States airspace between Portland and Seattle on the afternoon of November 24, 1971. He extorted $200,000 in ransom and parachuted to an uncertain fate over southwestern Washington. The man purchased his airline ticket using the alias Dan Cooper but, because of a news miscommunication, became known in popular lore as D. B. Cooper.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, the FBI is also a member of the U.S. Intelligence Community and reports to both the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence. A leading U.S. counter-terrorism, counterintelligence, and criminal investigative organization, the FBI has jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crimes.
Khalid Muhammad Abdallah al-Mihdhar was a Saudi Arabian hijacker. He was one of the five hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77, which was flown into the Pentagon as part of the September 11 attacks.
Pan Am Flight 73 was a Pan American World Airways flight from Bombay, India, to New York, United States with scheduled stops in Karachi, Pakistan and Frankfurt, West Germany.
The Black Liberation Army (BLA) was an underground Black Power revolutionary organization that operated in the United States from 1970 to 1981. Composed of Black Panthers (BPP) and Republic of New Afrika (RNA) members who served above ground before going underground, the organization's program was one of war against the United States government, and its stated goal was to "take up arms for the liberation and self-determination of black people in the United States." The BLA carried out a series of bombings, killings of police officers and drug dealers, robberies, and prison breaks.
The September 11 attacks, also commonly referred to as 9/11, were a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks by the militant Islamist terrorist group al-Qaeda against the United States on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. On that morning, four commercial airliners traveling from the northeastern U.S. to California were hijacked mid-flight by 19 al-Qaeda terrorists. The hijackers were organized into three groups of five hijackers and one group of four. Each group had one hijacker who had received flight training and took over control of the aircraft. Their explicit goal was to crash each plane into a prominent American building, causing mass casualties and partial or complete destruction of the targeted buildings. Two of the planes hit the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, and a third hit the west side of the Pentagon. A fourth plane was intended to crash into a target in Washington, D.C., but instead crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania following a passenger revolt.
Richard Floyd McCoy Jr. was an American aircraft hijacker. McCoy hijacked a United Airlines passenger jet for ransom in 1972. Due to a similar modus operandi, law enforcement officials named McCoy as a suspect for the still-unidentified "D. B. Cooper", who committed his unsolved crime four-and-a-half months before McCoy.
In the United States a common definition of terrorism is the systematic or threatened use of violence in order to create a general climate of fear to intimidate a population or government and thereby effect political, religious, or ideological change. This article serves as a list and compilation of acts of terrorism, attempts of terrorism, and other such items pertaining to terrorist activities within the domestic borders of the United States by non-state actors or spies acting in the interests of or persons acting without approval of state actors.
The United States has formal diplomatic relations with most nations. This includes all UN member and observer states other than Bhutan, Iran, North Korea and Syria, and the UN observer State of Palestine, the latter of which the U.S. does not recognize. Additionally, the U.S. has diplomatic relations with Kosovo and the European Union.
James Peter Zumwalt is an American diplomat with expertise in trade, economy, and East Asia. On November 19, 2014 he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the U.S. Ambassador to Senegal and to Guinea-Bissau. Previously, he worked as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, covering Japan and Korea. Until December 2011, he was the Deputy Chief of Mission of the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo where he also served as chargé d'affaires ad interim during the absence of an Ambassador from January to August 2009. He coordinated the U.S. Embassy's response to the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.
Janice Lee Jacobs was a United States career Senior Foreign Service Officer who was the Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs, June 2008 to April 2014. She was United States Ambassador to Senegal concurrently accredited to Guinea-Bissau from April 2006 to June 2007.
George Edward Wright is a Portuguese citizen of American origin, known for taking part in the hijacking of Delta Air Lines Flight 841. Originally arrested and convicted for murder in 1962 and sentenced to up to 30 years in prison, George Wright escaped from prison in 1970 and hijacked a Delta Air Lines flight in 1972 with a number of accomplices.
Tulinabo Salama Mushingi is an American diplomat who currently serves a joint appointment as United States Ambassador to Senegal and United States Ambassador to Guinea-Bissau. He previously served as the United States Ambassador to Burkina Faso from 2013 to 2016. He also served in the executive offices of Secretaries of State John F. Kerry and Hillary Clinton. In February 2017, President Donald Trump nominated Mushingi to serve concurrently as United States Ambassador to Senegal and United States Ambassador to Guinea-Bissau. Mushingi had originally been nominated for the position by outgoing President Barack Obama in January 2017. When Trump took office, he withdrew Mushingi's nomination before renominating him for the same position. He was confirmed by the United States Senate by voice vote on May 18, 2017. On April 19, 2021, President Joe Biden nominated Mushingi to be the next United States Ambassador to Angola and United States Ambassador to São Tomé and Príncipe.
Corruption in Guinea-Bissau is among the highest levels in the world. In Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index for 2014, it was ranked 161st out of 175 countries. The previous year, it was at 163rd out of 177 countries. This marked a decline from its 2012 ranking, 150th out of 174 countries. In 2013, Guinea-Bissau scored below the averages for both Africa and West Africa on the Mo Ibrahim Foundation’s Index of African Governance.
Michael Arthur Raynor is an American Foreign Service Officer specializing in relations with Africa. He was the United States Ambassador to Ethiopia until January 2021. He previously served as the Director of the Office of Career Development and Assignments in the Bureau of Human Resources of the United States Department of State. Raynor served as United States Ambassador to Benin from 2012 to 2015 after being nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Prior to his post in Benin, he was deputy executive director and then executive director of the Bureau of African Affairs. On April 19, 2021, President Joe Biden nominated Raynor to be the next United States Ambassador to Senegal and serve concurrently as the United States Ambassador to Guinea-Bissau.