Early Life and Career
Crocker was born in Spokane, Washington. Growing up, Crocker had family members in the U.S. Air Force and in Turkey. He lived in Morocco, Canada and Turkey. Crocker attended University College Dublin and Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, where he received a B.A. in English literature in 1971 and was a member of the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity.
After Persian language training, he was assigned to the American Consulate in Khorramshahr, Iran, in 1972. His subsequent assignment was to the newly-established embassy in Doha, Qatar, in 1974 as an economic-commercial officer, and in 1976 Crocker returned to Washington, DC, for long-term Arabic training. He completed the 20-month program at the Foreign Service Institutes Arabic School in Tunis in June 1978. Crocker was then assigned as chief of the economic-commercial section at the U.S. Interests Section in Baghdad, Iraq. Crocker served in Beirut, Lebanon, as chief of the political section from 1981 to 1984. On September 18, 1982, he reported back to the Department of State about the Sabra and Shatila massacre. He also survived the 1983 United States Embassy bombing.
He spent the 1984-85 academic year at Princeton University under State Department auspices, pursuing course work in Near Eastern studies. He served as deputy director of the Office of Israel and Arab-Israeli affairs from 1985 to 1987 and was political counselor at the American Embassy in Cairo from 1987 to 1990. Following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, Crocker became the Director of the Iraq-Kuwait Task Force.
In 1998, as the Ambassador to Syria, his residence was plundered by an angry mob.
In January 2002, he was appointed interim chargé d'affaires to the new government of Afghanistan, and was confirmed as Ambassador to Pakistan in October 2004. In September 2004, President Bush conferred on him the diplomatic rank of Career Ambassador, the highest rank in the Foreign Service, equivalent to a four-star officer in the military. On January 8, 2007, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced that the Bush administration would nominate Crocker as the new American Ambassador to Iraq, replacing Zalmay Khalilzad, once the latter's confirmation to the post of Ambassador to the UN was complete. On December 4, 2009, The Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, in College Station, Texas, announced the appointment of Ambassador Crocker as its next Dean, effective January 25, 2010.
In April 2011, he was nominated to be United States Ambassador to Afghanistan following a personal request from Obama. On May 22, 2012, Crocker informed that he will step down due to unspecified health reasons in mid-summer, following the Kabul and Tokyo conferences.
On August 14, 2012, he was arrested for driving while intoxicated and leaving the scene of an automobile accident.
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