Foreign political leaders

Sergei Khrushchev

Bill Thompson
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At the very height of the Cold War, in the late 1950s and early ‘60s, one of the most vilified man in the world – at least in the U.S. – was Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev,

For 11 years the USSR was led by this brash, arrogant, often angry man.

You may have heard that he wants. Famously said the Soviet Union would “bury” the United States. That, however, was a mistranslation, and it was not something Khrushchev ever actually said.

Khrushchev’s second son, Sergei, was in his 20s, watching closely as his father guided the USSR. Sergei eventually became a highly educated, and well-respected, engineer in the Soviet Union.

But finally, in 1991 — the same year the Soviet Union crumbled apart — Sergei Khrushchev emigrated to the United States, and became a naturalized US citizen in 1999.

I met him two years later, when he wrote a book about his father.

So here now, from 2001, Sergei Khrushchev”

Sergei Khrushchev died just days before his 85th birthday in 2020 at his home in Rhode Island. He died of a gunshot wound to the head, but an investigation found no signs of foul play, and no criminal charges were ever filed.

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Jehan Sadat

Bill Thompson

This is a somber anniversary in the Middle East.

40 years ago today, October 6th, 1981, the long time
president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat, was assassinated during a military parade.

His killers were extremists who were outraged by his 1979 peace agreement with Israel, for which he shared the Nobel Peace Prize.

Many other people who were on the parade reviewing stand that day or either killed or injured in the gunfire.

Also on the reviewing stand that day was President Sadat’s wife, Egypt’s First Lady Jehan Sadat..

Six years later, she wrote a book. And that’s what I have the chance to meet her. So here now, from 1987, former Egyptian first lady Jehan Sadat.

The mastermind behind the assassination plot was caught, convicted, and executed in 1982.

Jehan Sadat died this past Juily. She was 88.

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Leah Rabin

Leah Rabin

Bill Thompson
Photo: Kingkongphoto

It was an iconic White House photo. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, shaking hands on a peace deal at the White House, with a smiling President Bill Clinton looking on.

Just a couple of years later, in 1995 – on this day in 1995, November 4th – Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated.

Less than a year-and-a-half later, his widow, Leah Rabin, wrote a memoir. Not just a memoir of the military and political leader Yitzhak Rabin, but of the husband, father, and grandfather Yitzhak Rabin was.

So here now, from 1997, Leah Rabin

Leah Rabin died in 2000 at the age of 72.