Barbara Bodine

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Barbara Bodine bigraphy, stories - American diplomat and academic

Barbara Bodine : biography

August 28, 1948 –

Barbara K. Bodine (born August 28, 1948 in St. Louis, Missouri)U.S. Public Records Index, Vol 2 (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc.), 2010. is an American academic and former diplomat. Bodine directs the Scholars in the Nation’s Service Initiative (SINSI) and lectures at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.WWS:

Education

Bodine earned her B.A. in political science and Asian studies magna cum laude from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She became a member of Kappa Alpha Theta, Gamma Rho chapter, fraternity for women. She received her Master’s degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. She also studied at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Department of State’s Language Training Field Schools in Taiwan and Tunisia. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and serves on the Board of Directors of the UCSB Alumni Association and on the Advisory Council to the Program on Southwest Asian and Islamic Civilization Studies at the Fletcher School. She was the recipient of the UC Santa Barbara Distinguished Alumni Award in 1991.

In the media

On September 8, 2006, Bodine complained in the Los Angeles Times about her portrayal in the controversial ABC docudrama The Path to 9/11. In an op-ed, Bodine wrote: "According to the mythmakers, a battle ensued between a cop obsessed with tracking down Osama bin Laden and a bureaucrat more concerned with the feelings of the host government than the fate of Americans and the realities of terrorism. I know this is false. I was there. I was the ambassador."Bodine, B. (2006, September 8), "9/11 Miniseries Trashes Truth", Los Angeles Times, pg. B-13 by Barbara Bodine, Los Angeles Times, September 8, 2006 The ABC miniseries compressed Bodine’s role to a single extended scene suggesting she was dismissive, hostile, and vulgar toward John P. O’Neill from the moment of his arrival in Yemen. Broadcast worldwide on the fifth anniversary of 9/11 (9/10 and 9/11/2006), The Path to 9/11 was based on the official 9/11 Commission Report and other sources. ABC/Disney aired the film in the United States without commercial interruption, adding a disclaimer stating that it was "not a documentary", that various scenes were invented, and that narrative “time compression” was used. In the miniseries, Bodine was played by actress Patricia Heaton.

Bodine was interviewed in Charles H. Ferguson’s 2007 documentary No End in Sight, and Real Time with Bill Maher on September 3, 2007.

Iraq

After serving in Yemen, Bodine became Diplomat in Residence at the University of California, Santa Barbara, until shortly before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Bodine was appointed coordinator for central Iraq in charge of Baghdad by the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), which became the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) on April 21, 2003. She left the position shortly after on May 11, 2003, when L. Paul Bremer was brought in to replace Retired General Jay Garner as CPA Administrator.

Notes

Ambassador to Yemen and USS Cole bombing

On November 7, 1997, Bodine was appointed to be Ambassador to the Republic of Yemen. Bodine’s appointment in Sana’a coincided with events of major importance in Yemen: In 1999, Bodine negotiated the release of three Americans kidnapped in Yemen. On October 12, 2000, the destroyer Cole was bombed in a terrorist attack in the Gulf of Aden. In January 2001, en route to the Yemeni city of Taiz to meet with the country’s president, a flight carrying Bodine and 90 other passengers from Yemen was hijacked mid-flight. The plane was diverted to the small African nation of Djibouti, where it landed without further incident. Bodine left Yemen as ambassador on August 30, 2001.

Bodine’s career was marked by controversy surrounding her relationship with the FBI during its investigation of the USS Cole bombing: The PBS Frontline documentary The Man Who Knew included interviews with officials such as Richard A. Clarke (the Clinton administration’s counterterrorism chief) and Barry Mawn (a former head of the New York FBI office) who stated that John P. O’Neill (an FBI agent and al-Qaeda expert) came into a personal conflict with Bodine over different perspectives on Yemen. When O’Neill briefly traveled back to New York for Thanksgiving, Bodine denied his re-entry visa, blocking O’Neill from returning to Yemen to continue the investigation on the USS Cole bombing. Frontline cited sources as saying that "O’Neill’s removal from the scene in Yemen may have seriously limited the Cole investigation," and some have speculated that if Bodine had not blocked O’Neill’s return, the September 11 plot might have been foiled."" (October 3, 2002). PBS Frontline.