Career diplomat Josip Paro began his appointment as Croatia’s ambassador to the United States in 2012, presenting his credentials to President Barack Obama on May 2.

 

Paro holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and comparative literature from the University of Zagreb.

 

He began his diplomatic career in 1992 as a desk officer for Western Europe in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The following year he served as a political counselor in the Croatian embassy in Madrid, Spain.

 

Paro was promoted in 1996 to head of the Department for Political Planning. From 1997 to 2002, he was assistant foreign minister in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

 

His first ambassadorship was to the Court of St. James’s in the United Kingdom from 2003 to 2009. During this period, he was also his country’s non-resident ambassador to Gambia (2004-2009).

 

In 2009, Paro was appointed Croatia’s permanent representative to the intergovernmental Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, based at The Hague. He also served as ambassador to the Netherlands at the same time.

 

He speaks English and Spanish and has passive knowledge of French, Portuguese, Italian, Slovenian, and Russian.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Josip Paro (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons)

Energy-rich Azerbaijan, strategically located south of Russia and north of Iran, has become accustomed to being wooed by both Russia and the United States, especially when it comes to energy development. With relations hampered by the lack of a full-time U.S. ambassador in Baku since December, President Barack Obama on April 26 announced his intent to nominate Richard L. Morningstar, who has specialized in Caspian basin energy issues for about 15 years, to be the next ambassador. Obama’s first nominee to the post of ambassador to Azerbaijan, Matthew Bryza, was never confirmed by the Senate because of opposition from Armenian-Americans and he served only as a recess appointment.

 

Born in Newton, Massachusetts, in 1945, Morningstar earned a BA at Harvard in 1967 and a JD from Stanford Law School in 1970. He began his career in 1970 as an attorney with Nixon and Peabody in Boston, where he became a partner in 1977. He left the firm in 1981 to become President and CEO of Costar Corporation, adding the title of chairman of the Board from 1990 to 1993. Morningstar also served as a commissioner of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws from 1989 to 1993.

 

Leaving the private sector after the election of President Bill Clinton, Morningstar served as senior vice president of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation from 1993 to 1995. From 1995 to 1998, he served as special advisor to the president and secretary of state on Assistance to the New Independent States of the Former Soviet Union. From 1998 to 1999, he was special advisor to the President and the secretary of state for Caspian Basin Energy Diplomacy.

 

From 1999 to September 2001, Morningstar served as U.S. ambassador to the European Union. During his service from 1995 to 2001, his major achievement was to push through the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline, which became operational in July 2006. The stated commercial purpose of this 1,100-mile-long pipeline is to carry Caspian Sea (Azerbaijani) oil to world markets via a sea terminal on Turkey’s Mediterranean Coast. Geopolitically, the purpose of the pipeline was to cut Russia and Iran out of the loop on Caspian Sea oil.

 

Back in the private sector after the election of George W. Bush in 2000, Morningstar was a senior director for Stonebridge International LLC starting in October 2001, and taught courses at Stanford Law School from 2004 to 2009 and at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government from 2003 to 2009. In April 2009, he returned to government as the secretary of state’s special envoy for Eurasian Energy. He is currently a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

 

A longtime Democrat, since 1990 Morningstar has contributed more than $320,000 to Democratic candidates and causes, including $172,000 to the Democratic National Committee, $12,900 to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaigns, and $4,600 to President Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Morningstar is married to Faith Pierce Morningstar; they have two sons and two daughters.

-Matt Bewig

 

Richard Morningstar: Letter to a Wayward Classmate (by Gilbert Doctorow)

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline: A Retrospective and a Look at the Future (by Richard Morningstar, Central Asia-Caucasus Institute Analyst)

An economist and international development specialist, Paul G. Altidor was named as Haiti’s ambassador to the United States in January 2012 and presented his credentials to President Barack Obama on May 2.

 

Altidor, 39, was born in the port city of Jérémie, Haiti. He was educated in the U.S. after his family moved to Boston when he was a teenager. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Boston College and a master’s in international development from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also did graduate work in economics and law in France at Paris X Nanterre (now known as Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense).

 

Early in his career, Altidor headed a non-profit organization, taught at the École Supérieure Catholique de Droit de Jérémie, a law school in his home town and started a small motorcycle business. Then he went to work at the International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group. In this role he advised foreign governments on public-private partnerships, including a deal involving Vietnam’s government-run telecommunications company, Viettel, investing in Haiti’s state-owned telephone operation.

 

Prior to becoming ambassador to Washington, Altidor served as vice president of programs and investments for the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund. Created in the wake of the devastating earthquake that hit the Caribbean island nation in 2010, the fund was established with the support of President Barack Obama and co-chaired by former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky

 

Official Biography (Embassy of Haiti)

With a New Ambassador at the Helm, Haiti’s Embassy Gets a Facelift (by Manolia Charlotin, Haitian Times)

Haiti’s New Ambassador To U.S. Takes Office (by Jacqueline Charles, Miami Herald)

 

However, during his tenure Munter, who was sworn in on October 6, 2010, has had to contend with a series of incidents that have upset the Pakistani population. On January 27, 2011, CIA contractor Raymond Davis was arrested after he shot to death two people on the streets of Lahore. After difficult negotiations, the Obama administration managed to secure Davis’ release on March 16 of last year. The very next day, a CIA drone strike killed 50 civilians in North Waziristan. Then, on May 2, 2011, U.S. Special Forces entered Pakistan and killed Osama bin Laden, allegedly without consulting the Pakistani government.

 

The son of Helen-Jeanne and Leonard Munter, Cameron Munter was born in Claremont, California, in 1954. Munter attended Claremont High School, where he distinguished himself as a distance runner on the cross-country and track teams. His college education took place at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and universities in Freiburg and Marburg in Germany. He received a doctoral degree in modern European history in 1983 from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. 

 

Munter began his career as a college professor, teaching European history at the University of California, Los Angeles from 1982-1984. He directed European studies at the Twentieth Century Fund in New York (1984-1985) before joining the Foreign Service.

 

His first overseas assignment took him to Warsaw, Poland (1986-1988). He returned to Washington, DC, in 1988 to serve as a staff assistant in the State Department’s Bureau of European Affairs and then as country director for Czechoslovakia. In 1991, he was a Dean Rusk Fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy.

 

The following year he was sent to Prague in the Czech Republic, serving there until 1995. It was then onto Bonn, Germany (1995-1997), before becoming chief of staff in the NATO Enlargement Ratification Office.

 

In 1998, Munter was director of the Northern European Initiative and then executive assistant to the counselor of the State Department (1998-1999). He served as director for Central Europe at the National Security Council until 2001.

 

Beginning in 2002, Munter began taking on larger roles in U.S. embassies, first as deputy chief of mission in Warsaw until 2005 and then in Prague from 2005 to 2007.

 

In 2006, he led the first Provincial Reconstruction Team in Mosul, Iraq.

 

His first ambassador assignment was in Belgrade, Serbia, from 2007 to 2009. The posting was not without difficulties, as Serbian rioters upset over the American position on Kosovo, set fire to the embassy on February 21, 2008. The protests sparked a strong response from Munter, who warned the Serbian government not to allow any more attacks on the diplomatic mission.

 

He returned to Iraq in 2009, this time at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. He served as political-military minister-counselor, then as deputy chief of mission for the first half of 2010, directing strategic planning and American civil-military coordination during the military pullout.

 

Munter’s wife, Marilyn Wyatt, is the author of A Handbook of NGO Governance. She has served as Director of Communications at the Aspen Institute and Director of Global Programs as BoardSource. The couple has a son, Daniel, and a daughter, Anna.

-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky

Official Biography (State Department)

Melvin W. Russell, who created a stir in military circles in January when he proposed moving the Pentagon-funded but editorially independent newspaper Stars and Stripes from downtown Washington, DC, to rural Fort Meade, Virginia, served as acting director of the Defense Media Activity (DMA) from October 2009 until he retired on April 30, 2012.

 

DMA, formerly known as the American Forces Information Service, is the communications media propaganda arm of the Department of Defense, employing 2,400 active duty military, civilian, and contract personnel at 8 U.S. locations and 33 permanent overseas sites.

 

Born circa 1939, Russell earned a B.S. in Chemistry and Secondary Education at Texas A&M University in 1961, and an M.A. in Television and Film Production at the University of Texas in 1970.

 

Commissioned in the U.S. Army through the ROTC program in 1961, Russell served more than 22 years as a Signal Corps officer. Early career assignments included Fort Hood, Texas; Naples, Italy; and Hue, Vietnam. After earning his M.A. in TV and film, Russell was assigned to the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, where he ran the television, film, and radio facilities for the next three years and made the first Army conversion form black-and-white to color.

 

From 1973 to 1975, Russell served in an exchange program with the British Army, where he established the first television facility at the engineering department of the Royal Signals School. After serving two years at the Pentagon as a senior staff officer responsible for Army audio visual activities, in 1977 Russell took command of the Army Audio Visual Activity, which he ran for almost five years. In 1981, Russell became the assistant director of the American Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS), serving in this position until his military retirement in 1983, when he became the operations manager for D-K Associates, an audio-visual firm in Rockville, Maryland.

 

In 1984, Russell returned to AFRTS, this time as director, and became acting director of DMA in October 2009. He also served as the senior manager of Department of Defense visual information, web, print, new media and broadcasting.

 

Russell counts among his most satisfying achievements arranging for members of the military abroad to see live television broadcasts from the United States, including sports events, beginning in the 1980s, eventually reaching Navy ships at sea in 1997. Today AFRTS provide eight TV channels and twelve radio services.

 

“The bottom line for me,” he said in a farewell interview, “is that when you go overseas, you don’t leave the States behind. You need to feel that connection. So if you are in Afghanistan at an outpost, you should be able to watch a live NFL game.”

 

“I’ve been unbelievably lucky in life,” he concluded, “being allowed to do what I love doing and getting paid for it. I don’t see how you can beat that. You just can’t.”

-Matt Bewig, David Wallechinsky

 

A Vietnam Era veteran who started his cemetery career as a day laborer has risen to be the number one man at Arlington National Cemetery, the crown jewel of the national cemeteries, which conducts about 27 funerals per day. Patrick K. Hallinan was appointed acting superintendent of Arlington National Cemetery on June 10, 2010, in the wake of a scandal involving lost remains, mismarked graves and financial irregularities that severely tarnished Arlington’s reputation. The appointment was made permanent as of October 10, 2010.

 

Arlington National Cemetery is the nation’s largest national cemetery, and the only one administered by the Army; all others are administered by the National Cemetery Administration (NCA) of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. Arlington is also the only national cemetery that routinely holds graveside services and provides full military honors for eligible veterans.

 

Born in 1956, Hallinan served as an infantry squad leader with the Marine Corps during the Vietnam Era. Hallinan joined the NCA as a temporary laborer at Long Island National Cemetery in New York in 1977. At the same time, Hallinan attended college under the G.I. Bill, earning an associate’s degree in liberal arts at Suffolk Community College in Long Island, and a B.A. in Social Science (pre-law).

 

Rather than attending law school, however, Hallinan decided to build a career in the national cemeteries system. In September 1978, he was one of the original 37 employees who opened Calverton National Cemetery in Long Island, New York. Over the next 16 years, Hallinan gradually advanced at Calverton, from day laborer to work supervisor to assistant cemetery director. In August 1994, Hallinan was named director of Calverton National Cemetery.

 

In June 2003, Hallinan left Calverton to join VA headquarters in Washington, DC, as associate director of the Office of Field Programs, and he was promoted to director on October 20, 2008. As director, Hallinan had oversight responsibilities for five Memorial Service Network offices and 131 national cemeteries.

 

Hallinan and his wife Doreen reside in Bristow, Virginia. They have a son, Matthew, and a daughter, Rachel.

-Matt Bewig

 

Official Biography (pdf)

The Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA), which manages the Transportation Department’s research and development programs with the goal of creating technologies that can be used to improve transportation, has an acting administrator who has worked at the agency since 2010. On June 2, 2011, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and RITA Administrator Peter Appel appointed Gregory D. Winfree to become the next deputy administrator on July 15. Upon Appel’s resignation, Winfree became the Acting Administrator on October 8, 2011.

 

Born in New York circa 1964, Winfree earned a B.S. in Communications and Public Relations at St. John’s University in 1986 and a J.D. from Georgetown University in 1989, where he served as a lead articles editor for The Tax Lawyer, the A.B.A. journal of taxation.

 

After a stint at a Washington, D.C., law firm, about which he later wrote a chapter in the book My First Year as a Lawyer: Real-World Stories from America's Lawyers, Winfree served as a trial attorney in the Housing and Civil Enforcement Section of the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. Then, he embarked on an in-house career pathway, working as senior litigation counsel at Union Carbide and as director of litigation at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, which is now part of Pfizer.

 

Winfree worked as chief litigation counsel for Freeport-McMoRan Corporation, which through its subsidiary, Phelps Dodge, is one of the world’s largest producers of copper, gold and other industrial and precious metals. During these years, Winfree resided in Phoenix, Arizona, where he also founded the Eight Iron Golf Apparel Company to market his two patents, registered in 1995, for a “sport shirt or other garment provided with a load-distributing shoulder yoke for relieving the strain resulting from carrying a golf bag.” 

 

Winfree was also the co-founder of Charting Your Own Course (CYOC), a professional networking organization for minority in-house attorneys.

 

Winfree left the private sector for public service again in 2010, and was sworn in on March 15, 2010, as chief counsel at RITA. 

-Matt Bewig

In the middle of one of its largest ever projects–the rollout of a new air traffic control system, dubbed “NextGen”–the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) lost Administrator Randy Babbitt, who resigned on December 6, 2011, days after he was arrested for drunk driving outside of Washington, DC. FAA, which oversees the US commercial aviation industry for the Department of Transportation, with a mission to promote the airline industry and ensure the safety of its passengers, has been led ever since by Acting Administrator Michael P. Huerta, whom President Obama has nominated to be the next permanent FAA Administrator.

 

Born in California circa 1956 to Solomon T. Huerta and Della Montoya Huerta, Michael Huerta earned a B.A. in Political Science at the University of California at Riverside in 1978 and an M.A. in International Relations at Princeton University in 1980.

 

Huerta served as commissioner of New York City’s Department of Ports, International Trade and Commerce from 1986 to 1989. In January 1989, he left to serve as the executive director of the Port of San Francisco, where he remained until 1993. From 1993 to 1998, he served in two senior positions at the Department of Transportation, first as an associate deputy secretary to Secretary Federico Peña from 1993 to 1997, and as chief of staff to Peña’s successor, Rodney E. Slater.

 

Huerta left government to serve as managing director of the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City, a position he held from 1998 to 2002, focusing in part on transportation issues. In 2001, he even registered as a lobbyist for the Salt Lake City Olympic Organizing Committee. While in Salt Lake City, Huerta worked closely with presumptive Republican 2012 nominee Mitt Romney, who was president and CEO of the 2002 Games.

 

After the games were finished, Huerta went to work as group president of the Transportation Solutions Group at Affiliated Computer Services, a Xerox subsidiary specializing in business processes and information technology, from 2002 to April 2009.

 

Huerta joined then President-elect Obama’s transition team, working on transportation issues. President Obama nominated Huerta as deputy administrator of the FAA in December 2009, but his Senate confirmation was held up by Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas), who wanted more fighter drones patrolling the Mexico–United States border near Corpus Christi. After waiting more than five months, Huerta became deputy administrator of the FAA on June 23, 2010. 

 

Huerta is married to Ann Sowder, and they have a son, Matthew. A lifelong Democrat, since 1990 Huerta has contributed $30,000 to political candidates and causes, all but one of them Democrats, including $6,500 to the Democratic National Committee, $750 to President Bill Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign, $2,300 to Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2007, and $2,300 to Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008. Huerta’s lone Republican contribution was to Mitt Romney’s 2008 primary campaign, to which Huerta donated $2,300.

-Matt Bewig

 

Testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation (pdf)

Head of Federal Aviation Administration Resigns after Drunk Driving Arrest (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

One of the most oppressive post-Soviet dictatorships, the central Asian nation of Tajikistan has won the friendship of the U.S. government through its cooperation with Washington’s wars in the region. President Barack Obama on April 16 nominated career diplomat Susan Marsh Elliott to be the next ambassador in Dushanbe. If confirmed by the Senate, Elliott will be the second female U.S. Ambassador to Tajikistan after her predecessor’s predecessor, Tracey Ann Jacobson, who is currently Ambassador to Kosovo.

 

Born circa 1952, Elliott earned a B.S. at Skidmore College in Sarasota Springs, New York, in 1974, an M.S. at Russell Sage College in Troy, New York, and a doctorate in Nursing at Indiana University in 1987, with a thesis entitled “Variables associated with organizational effectiveness of schools of nursing.” She taught Nursing at Ball State University and the University of Virginia.

 

Elliott joined the Foreign Service in 1990 after working as a nurse at the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Her early career postings included service in Lima, Peru, from 1990 to 1992, and Moscow, Russia, from 1992 to 1994. She served as a desk officer from 1994 to 1995 in the Office of the Coordinator for Regional Conflicts in the New Independent States, where she reported on conflicts in the Caucasus (Nagorno-Karabakh and Georgia) and Central Asia, including Tajikistan. Elliott also worked as a member of the Executive Secretariat Staff from 1995 to 1997. Elliott then served four years at the embassy in Athens, Greece, as deputy economic counselor from 1999 to 2001 and as visa section chief from 2001 to 2003.

 

From 2003 to 2005, Elliott served as office director of the Executive Secretariat Staff, and from 2005 to 2007 as a deputy executive secretary on the staff of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, where her responsibilities included Europe, and South and Central Asia. Elliott was the principal officer at the U.S. consulate general in Belfast, Northern Ireland, from 2007 to 2009, and served in Moscow as minister counselor for Political Affairs from 2009 to 2010. Since September 2010, Elliot has been deputy assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs.

 

Elliott speaks Russian, Greek, and Spanish. She is married to Matthias Mitman, who is also a Foreign Service officer. They have two adult sons.

-Matt Bewig