 Harrop served in Palermo from 1954 to October 1955, when he was transferred to the U.S. Embassy in Rome to be assistant commercial attaché there under Ambassador Clare Boothe Luce and, later, James David Zellerbach.Harrop left Rome to return to Washington in the late fall of 1958.According to Harrop's oral history years later, "I came back under protest because by that time I had become fascinated with energy questions and with the politics of energy -- atomic energy particularly.