As a student of diplomacy, I have been somewhat skeptical of oral history. To be sure, it has done wonders to retrieve testimonies of value to social historians, such as those of former slaves or of the downtrodden during the Great Depression. What oral history can do for diplomacy is another matter.
Diplomats are far from illiterate.
They can also be prodigious talkers, but collections of oral histories, like those stored at U.S. presidential libraries, often offer little more than a rehashing of previous statements. The three interviews I conducted in August and September 1998 addressed these concerns in a specific historical context. The former U.S. foreign service officers I interviewed had worked each on one country where I am studying cases of anti-U.S. sentiment and U.S. reactions to it. Ambassador Max Vance Krebs traveled to Cuba in the 1950s and was Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of State and Special Assistant to the Secretary of State around the time of the Cuban Revolution. Arthur Plambeck served as a political officer in Panama in the 1950s, a few years before fatal riots erupted between Panamanians and U.S. citizens living on the Canal Zone.