Bob Krueger - Ambassador

Ambassador

Capitalizing on Krueger's reputation and experience in diplomacy, President Clinton offered Krueger an ambassadorship following his short Senate career. Krueger let it be known he was not interested in "white gloves and chandeliers" but instead wanted to advance democratic interests in a developing country. Clinton thus named Krueger as Ambassador to Burundi, which had been beset with violence in recent preceding years and whose ethnic make-up was the same as that of adjoining Rwanda, whose Hutu and Tutsi tribes had experienced a bloody civil war only months before Krueger began his service in May 1994. His family was initially not allowed to join him in Burundi due to the threat of violence.

As the American emissary in a small country without much strategic voice, Krueger was constantly sought out by Burundi natives to draw attention to human rights abuses in the country, and Krueger did not shy away from expressing concern about those matters to either the Burundi government or the American public back in the United States, including during a Nightline interview with Ted Koppel. The outspoken Krueger served in Burundi until 1995, when his convoy was ambushed in Cibitoke province. He was traveling on a bare highway in Cibitoke, when gunmen with AK-47s attacked the motorcade, before being diverted by Diplomatic Security Service agents Chris Reilly and Larry Salmon.

In 1996, he was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Botswana and concurrently Special Representative of the Secretary of State to the Southern African Development Community. He held those posts until 2000, when he became a Visiting Fellow at Merton College, Oxford, and began to write a memoir of his time in central Africa. It was published as From Bloodshed to Hope in Burundi: Our Embassy Years during Genocide by the University of Texas Press in September 2007.

Senator Krueger was also Ambassador at Large and Coordinator for Mexican Affairs, October 23, 1979, to February 1, 1981