Carney served as a career Foreign Service Officer for 32 years, with assignments that included Vietnam and Cambodia as well as Lesotho and South Africa before being appointed as ambassador to Sudan and later in Haiti.

[1] Carney served with a number of U.N. Peacekeeping Missions, and until recently led the Haiti Democracy Project, an initiative launched under the presidency of George W. Bush to build stronger institutional foundations for the country's long-term relationship with the United States.

His strong views on Iraq's reconstruction efforts after the war in 2003 were in part responsible for a wholesale change in the Bush administration's strategy to stabilize the war-torn nation.

Carney was born in St. Joseph, Missouri and was raised and educated at military posts in the U.S. as well as abroad where his parents were stationed, including in Bad Tölz, Germany, Fort Bliss, Texas and Taipei, Taiwan.

[6] After spending a few years at the State Department's Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia desk, Carney was appointed as U.S. consul in Udorn, Thailand and later as political officer in Bangkok during the Third Indochina War from 1979 until 1983.

[13] Osama bin Laden had fled Saudi Arabia for the safe confines of Khartoum a few years earlier, and Sudan's alleged harboring and abetting of Muslim extremists on its soil was attracting attention of counterterrorism experts in the United States and abroad.

[14] Carney's tenure as ambassador followed a tumultuous period during which his predecessor, Donald K. Petterson, had been forced to draw down embassy staff by half and send their families back to America when terrorist threats were made against U.S. diplomats stationed in Khartoum.

[15] In late 1993, Petterson was asked by officials in the Clinton administration to deliver a "non-paper" ultimatum to Sudan's Islamist leader, Hasan al-Turabi, and the country's president, Omar al-Bashir.

[14] The alleged threats were based on evidence gathered by a foreign agent retained by the C.I.A., data which would be used to justify Petterson's reduction of American embassy personnel in Khartoum.

[18] Petterson's compulsory delivery of the talking points based on faulty U.S. intelligence would set the stage for strained relations between Washington and Khartoum that lasted well into Carney's early tenure as ambassador.

[19] In early 1996, a few months after his credentials had been accepted, Carney met with senior Sudanese foreign ministry officials prior to vacating the U.S. embassy in Khartoum for the safer environs of Nairobi.

[21] During a series of meetings in northern Virginia, Erwa was presented with a list of U.S. requirements, including demands for information about bin Laden and other radical Islamic groups encamped in Sudan.

[22] The U.S. also demanded that the Bashir regime stop hosting the Popular Arab and Islamic Congress conferences that were increasingly perceived in the west as global terrorist planning sessions.

[21] In May 1996, despite Carney's efforts to persuade U.S. officials to reconcile with Khartoum on intelligence matters, the Clinton Administration demanded that Sudan expel bin Laden.

Carney's first task was to streamline reporting to Washington about ground realities in Haiti, as well as bringing in U.S. policymakers in to see firsthand what U.S. taxpayer dollars were funding in the country.

Microcredit financing efforts were also on display, as was the U.S. Coast Guard to monitor Haiti's coastline for Cali go-fast boats laden with cocaine shipments bound for the U.S.

[2] In 2007, Carney returned to Iraq from February until June to serve as Coordinator for Economic Transition[30] and was again with the State Department as Head of the Interagency Election Support Team in Kabul from March until November 2009.

Carney, who spoke at the inaugural event and later went on to become Chairman of the Board for the project, raised concerns about whether the United States government was paying attention to the gravity of problems that were beginning to affect Haiti's stability systemically.

Its purpose was to assist Haitians in developing sustainable paradigms for medium-term and long-term economic growth as well as creating jobs that stabilize its domestic economy.