Adolph Dubs

The death of Dubs was listed as a "Significant Terrorist Incident" by the State Department. Documents released from the Soviet KGB archives by Vasily Mitrokhin in the 1990s showed that the Afghan government clearly authorized the assault despite forceful demands for peaceful negotiations by the U.S., and that KGB adviser Sergei Batrukhin may have recommended the assault, as well as the execution of a kidnapper before U.S. experts could interrogate him. The Mitrokhin archives also indicate that the fourth kidnapper escaped and the body of a freshly killed prisoner served as a substitute for the U.S. inspection. Other questions remain unanswered.

In 1978, Dubs was appointed United States Ambassador to Afghanistan following the Saur Revolution, a coup d'état which brought the Soviet-aligned Khalq faction to power. He was being driven from his residence to the U.S. embassy shortly before 9 a.m. on February 14, 1979, on the same day that Iranian militants attacked the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran, and just months before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He was approaching the U.S. Cultural Center when four men stopped his armored black Chevrolet limousine. Some accounts say that the men were wearing Afghan police uniforms, while others state that only one of the four was wearing a police uniform. The men gestured to the car to open its windows, which were bulletproof, and the ambassador's driver complied. The militants then threatened the driver with a pistol, forcing him to take Dubs to the Kabul Serena Hotel in downtown Kabul. The abduction occurred within sight of Afghan police. Dubs was held in Room 117 on the first floor of the hotel, and the driver was sent to the U.S. embassy to tell the U.S. of the kidnapping.

The Carter administration was outraged by the murder of the ambassador and by the conduct of the Afghan government, and began to disengage from Afghanistan and express sympathy with Afghan regime opponents. The incident hastened the decline in U.S.–Afghan relations, causing the United States to make a fundamental reassessment of its policy. In reaction to Dubs' murder, the U.S. immediately cut planned humanitarian aid of $15 million by half and canceled all planned military aid of $250,000, and the U.S. terminated all economic support by December 1979, when the Soviet occupation of the country was complete. The Afghan government aimed to diminish the U.S. presence in Afghanistan and restricted the number of Peace Corps volunteers and cultural exchange programs. On July 23, the State Department announced the withdrawal of non-essential U.S. embassy staff from Kabul and the majority of the diplomats as security deteriorated, and the U.S. only had some 20 staff members in Kabul by December. Dubs was not replaced by a new ambassador, and a chargé d'affaires led the skeleton staff at the embassy.

Dubs was born in Chicago, Illinois. A 1938 graduate of Carl Schurz High School, he graduated from Beloit College in 1942 with a degree in political science. While at Beloit, classmates, who said they did not want to refer to Dubs by the first name of an enemy dictator, gave him the nickname "Spike", which stuck for the rest of his life. Dubs served in the United States Navy during World War II. Later, he completed graduate studies at Georgetown University and foreign service studies at Harvard University and Washington University in St. Louis. He subsequently entered the United States Foreign Service as a career diplomat, and his postings included Germany, Liberia, Canada, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union. He became a noted Soviet expert, and in 1973–74 he served as ranking charge d'affaires at the United States Embassy in Moscow.

At the time of his death he was married to his second wife Mary Anne Dubs, a Washington-based journalist. He was previously married for over 30 years to Jane Wilson Dubs (1922–1993), his college girlfriend from Beloit College, whom he married in 1945 and divorced in 1976. He had one daughter, Lindsay Dubs McLaughlin (1953–), who lives in West Virginia.

Adolph Dubs (August 4, 1920 – February 14, 1979), also known as Spike Dubs, was an American diplomat who served as the United States Ambassador to Afghanistan from May 13, 1978, until his death in 1979. He was killed during a rescue attempt after his kidnapping.