Obama in Africa: Former US ambassador to Kenya says embassy security 'complacent' at times
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As President Barack Obama prepares to visit East Africa, nearly 15 years after terrorists bombed two U.S. embassies here, a former U.S. ambassador to Kenya says he worries that security at the Nairobi embassy has become "complacent."
Obama is scheduled on Monday to visit Dar es Salaam, the commercial capital of Tanzania, which along with Nairobi was the site of near-simultaneous embassy attacks in August 1998. The bombings combined killed 224 people, mostly Kenyans. A dozen Americans died.
Scott Gration, the immediate past U.S. ambassador in Nairobi and a retired U.S. Air Force major general, said that during one period of his yearlong tenure as ambassador he didn't think that security was had the priority it should have been given. He said he thinks the problem has been rectified.