John Dale Blacken

Blacken graduated from Washington State University with a B.A. in 1955) after having served in the United States Army from 1950 to 1952. ^[1]

Before becoming a management analyst in the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture in 1958, Blacken was a salesman with Encyclopædia Britannica in San Francisco. He entered junior officer training at the Foreign Service Institute in 1961.^[1]

While ambassador, Blacken knew convicted American killer and hijacker George Wright, who had eluded the FBI for 41 years despite living in West Africa under his own name, on a social basis. Wright escaped from a New Jersey jail “and was wanted in a 1972 hijacking by the radical Black Liberation Army of a U.S. plane to Algeria.” Blacken claimed the FBI never notified the Embassy about the manhunt.^[4]