A career Foreign Service officer, Margaret Scobey was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. She also pursued doctoral studies in history at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

 

Within the State Department, Scobey has been staff assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Near East and South Asian Affairs, watch officer in the Operations Center, political-military officer in the Office of Israel and Arab-Israeli Affairs, and deputy director of the Secretariat Staff.

 

She served as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia from September 2001 through November 2003, and was confirmed as the U.S. Ambassador to Syria in December 2003. She was recalled after the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005. From 2006-2007 she was Political Counselor in Baghdad, and has also served as Director of Arabian Peninsula Affairs in the Department of State, Deputy Chief of Mission in Sanaa, Yemen, as well as earlier assignments in Jerusalem, Kuwait, Pakistan, and Peru.

 

Margaret Scobey’s Official Biography

Meeting with AmbassadorMargaret Scobey (by Dal Lamagna, Huffington Post)

Scobey’s Testimony to the Committee on Senate Foreign Relations

The New US Ambassador to Egypt (and her Dog) (Arabic Media Shack)