Diplomats: The Front Line in America's Battles

Ambassador Thomas Boyatt is a retired veteran diplomat best known for negotiating the safe release of passengers on board a TWA plane hijacked to Syria by Palestinian guerillas in 1969. Ambassador Boyatt was one of the plane's passengers.

These days Ambassador Boyatt talks at colleges urging students to consider foreign service as a career, and campaigning to get the U-S diplomatic corps up to full strength. Before a speech at the Tampa Bay Committee on Foreign Relations, the Ambassador said a full diplomatic corps is important because in peacetime and wartime, diplomats are engaged with America's adversaries 24/7.