Roscoe Lewis Hoffacker (February 11, 1923, in Glenville, Pennsylvania – August 18, 2013, in Austin, Texas)[1] was an American Career Foreign Service Officer who was Chargé d'Affaires ad interim to Algeria (1967–1969) and served a concurrent appointment as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea (1970–1972).
[2][3] Born to parents Beulah Barbehenn and Roscoe E. Hoffacker, Hoffacker attended the public schools in Hanover, Pennsylvania, Gettysburg College, and George Washington University (BA in International Affairs, 1948) where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
He began his career with the U.S. Foreign Service in 1950 as desk officer for Greece and served subsequently in Tehran, Istanbul, Paris, Elisabethville and Leopoldville in the Congo, Algiers, Yaoundé, Santa Isabel, Norfolk VA, and several tours in Washington DC, where he retired in 1975 as Special Assistant to the Secretary of State (Coordinator for Combating Terrorism).
The Cabinet was rent by violent quarrels…His Foreign Minister and UN Representative were beaten to death.””[4] Macias was described as “a maniac with a record of corruption, sadism, and psychiatric disorders… Proportionally his rule equaled that in Nazi-occupied Europe in terms of brutality.… Madness had gripped his mind at a conference on November 3, 1967, when he said, “I consider Hitler to be the savior of Africa”” [4] Since Hoffacker was based in Cameroon, the post in Equatorial Guinea was manned by two Foreign Service personnel, Counselor Alfred J. Erdos and Administrative Assistant Donald Leahy.
[4] Two George Washington University psychiatrists “testified that (Erdos) had suffered an episode of acute paranoid psychosis.”[5]