A longtime Middle East expert will serve as the next ambassador to Lebanon, President Barack Obama announced on June 24, 2013. David Hale, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service who has served in Beirut twice before, has been special envoy for Middle East peace since June 2011, having served as deputy special envoy under his predecessor, former Sen. George J. Mitchell (D-Maine), from 2009 to 2011. If confirmed by the Senate, Hale would succeed Maura Connelly, who has served in Beirut since August 2009.
Born circa 1961, David Maclain Hale earned a B.S. in Foreign Service at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in 1983.
Joining the Foreign Service in 1984, Hale served early career assignments at the embassy in Manama, Bahrain; the consulate in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia; and as a political officer at the U.S. Mission to the U.N. in New York. He also studied Arabic at the Foreign Service Institute’s Field School in Tunisia, and served his first tour at the embassy in Beirut as a political officer from 1992 to 1994.
In Washington, Hale served as executive assistant to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright from 1997 to 1998.
He served his second tour in Lebanon as deputy chief of mission at the embassy from 1998 to 2001, returning to Washington to serve as director of the Office of Israel and Palestine Affairs from 2001 to 2003.
Hale then served an extended tour at the embassy in Amman, Jordan, from 2003 to 2008, first as deputy chief of mission from 2003 to 2004, as charge d’affaires from 2004 to 2005, and as ambassador from 2005 to 2008.
From 2008 to 2009, Hale was a deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.
-Matt Bewig
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Ambassador David Hale, SFS ’83 (Georgetown School of Foreign Service)
