Charles Kestenbaum:  

Hi, I left SHS and after a year at SUNY Binghamton, dropped out and went traveling. Ended up for a year on a beach in Morocco. Went back to school at SUNY, studied Arabic, opened a Moroccan handicraft boutique at Jersey Shore, and then went to American U in Cairo Egypt for MA in Journalism. Worked for NBC News and BBC in Cairo and Beirut for 3+ years, mostly doing Lebanese Civil War coverage for TV and radio, and the Sadat Peace initiative that culminated in Camp David peace accords. experienced my share of war and insanity. In 1979 I went to work at the US Commerce Department as a Middle East trade specialist (first month on the job was the seizure of US Embassy in Tehran) and in 1981 went into the Foreign Commercial Service and served 22 years at US Embassies around the Middle East and world (a favorite tour was Jakarta). I took early retirement in 2002 after surviving 3 years being targeted for kidnapping in Saudi Arabia by Al Qaida - imagine them getting an American, a Jew, and a senior US trade official/diplomat all in one - they wanted to trade me for the 1993 World Trade center bombers, at least until the success of 9/11 made such a scheme usless! After a series of pr...Expand for more