Arnold Lewis Raphel

Raphel was serving as US ambassador to Pakistan, and was traveling in the plane with President Zia-ul-Haq on August 17, 1988, when the plane crashed, resulting in the death of 34 people, including him and President Zia.

Raphel was nominated by President Ronald Reagan and succeeded Dean Roesch Hinton as US Ambassador to Pakistan in January 1987.

In 1981, Raphel served as the Special Assistant to Secretary of State Edmund Muskie. Afterward, he became the Deputy Assistant to the United States Secretary of State in 1985.

In 1979, Raphel was a key member of the State Department's Special Operations Group set up to free the American hostages seized by Iranian militants at the United States Embassy in Tehran.

Raphel was married three times. His first wife was Myrna Feigenbaum, by whom he had one daughter, Stephanie. In 1978, he married fellow diplomat Robin Raphel; the marriage, which was childless, ended in divorce two years later. In 1987, he married another fellow diplomat, Nancy Halliday Ely-Raphel. They had been married for around a year when he died in an aircrash in August 1988.

Raphel joined the US State Department in 1966. He held a variety of positions throughout his career until his death in 1988. He was mainly a diplomat for the US Government.

As a boy, Raphel was already interested in diplomacy and international affairs. At age 12, he wrote to the then Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, regarding his interest in diplomacy. Dulles wrote back in reply, advising him to "study hard, work hard and we’ll see you in ten years." Raphel graduated from Hamilton College (B.A., 1964) and the Maxwell School at Syracuse University (M.A., 1966).

Arnold Lewis Raphel (March 16, 1943 – August 17, 1988) was the 18th United States Ambassador to Pakistan.

Raphel was born March 16, 1943 in Troy, New York, into a Jewish family, the son of Harry and Sarah (Rote-Rosen) Raphel.