Anticipating Customer Requirements

Most folks who require a consular service of any kind, really don’t do it often enough to get good at it.

So it's a good idea to give as much detailed guidance as they can stand, and to be able to call upon vast depths of patience when they have to change their minds, start over, or sort of flail when it comes to completing government forms of any sort.

We get paid to be good at this stuff, they don't. 

The Curious Case of the Consul’s Maid*

The Curious Case of the Consul’s Maid*

Top-tier diplobloggers TSB (here and here) and Domani Spero both have covered the facts of this case in a thorough and sober manner, so I won’t belabor all of that again; you either know about this situation and the second- and third-order effects or you can follow some linky-love and ensmarten yourself.

See also Patricia Sharpe at Whirled View.

A non-consular colleague asked me for my opinion of this case, noting her own misgivings about how this will likely effect how she or her family members might find themselves treated should she take a non-embassy assignment, such as one to a consulate or other constituent post, where she and her family would not have full diplomatic immunity.

One of the issues in this case is that as a deputy consul general stationed in New York, the accused Indian diplomat doesn’t have diplomatic immunity.  Instead, she has what’s called consular immunity, which is limited to legal immunity only for official acts as a consular official.

As someone who’s conducted visa interviews for domestic staff accompanying travelers and other visitors to the U.S., I’ll admit to being fresh out of sympathy for the accused.  Falsifying employment contracts in connection with this sort of visa fraud is the gateway crime to worker exploitation, mistreatment, human trafficking, enslavement, and even physical or sexual abuse.

Like a lot of Americans from middle-class backgrounds, my own pre-Foreign Service experiences with domestic help were fairly limited.  I do recall, when I was perhaps elementary school age, that the Mother-at-Arms had a very nice lady come in once a week to do house-cleaning.  I also recall how much cleaning my mother did before the cleaning lady got there, so she wouldn’t be embarrassed by a dirty house.  (I can’t explain it, it’s a middle-class thing.)

(Being posted abroad as a diplomat, I’ve been at two Third World posts where it was considered very usual to have a “helper” either full-time or one-or-two days a week.  But I digress.)

Once the Bureau of Diplomatic Security became aware of the alleged victim’s accusations, they had no option but to investigate.  Of course, the federal prosecutor has something called “prosecutorial discretion” but that is, oddly enough, at his discretion and he has discreeded to proceed with prosecution.

So yeah, I’m fine with the Indian deputy CG being charged and arrested rather than given notice to get out of Dodge (and not come back), a.k.a. being declared Persona Non Grata (PNG).

Where I depart in judgment as to how all of this was handled was the planning, or lack-thereof, of the post-arrest phase of this exercise.

They waited until she’d dropped off her children at school.  Good so far.

They let her keep her cell phone and make several calls to arrange for child-care, &tc.  Also good.

They didn’t handcuff her until they had arrived at the federal building for booking.  Right up until now is all good.

They then proceeded with what is being (accurately) defended as being “standard procedure” in terms of arrest, search (including a cavity search), booking, and confinement.

Yes, I get that, in defense, from the perch of a federal prosecutor in New York City this may seem defensible and even laudatory, but it’s really not.

It’s not about treating a foreign diplomat differently or giving her special treatment better than our own citizens.  That misses the point.

The reaction of the Indian press and even the Indian government illustrates part of the real point.

The issue, instead, is one of reciprocity.

Let’s just say that exposing our own consular officials (and their families and children) to the local versions of “standard procedure” is a road we don’t wish to travel.

In some countries, “standard procedure” (whether it’s written down or not), involves subjecting victims of sexual assault to gang rape by police.  So let’s just not go there.

If the object, when the accused Indian diplomat was arrested, was to get her booked (fingerprinted and photographed) and in front of a judge to be charged, then the “standard procedure” could easily enough have been modified.  Run her through metal detectors, the same as anyone entering a courtroom might encounter, skip the whole holding cell circus, and then get her the Hell out of custody.

After all, the charges in this case don’t extend to crimes of violence, in which case the thorough body search would certainly have been appropriate as a safety measure.  This one-size-fits-all process has potentially endangered hundreds of Americans and their family members by exposing them to local versions of “standard procedure” that can be injurious to the point of fatality.

* Yes, I’m aware that she’s actually a Deputy Consul General.

Foreign Policy Goals

Somewhere I recall, perhaps fallaciously, reading Russia described as being "Mexico with nukes."

(All apologies to Mexico.)

The main point apparently was that if Russia didn't have nuclear weapons, it's international significance would shrink accordingly to the purely regional powers, like Mexico.

As I observe what passes for foreign policy these days in Washington, I can't help but suspect that the over-arching strategic goal seems to be of reducing America's international significance to being something that could be summed up thusly:

Russia with precisions-guided munitions.

Memorial Day 2013

Like many of you, at least part of this weekend was devoted to the scorching of foodstuffs on an outdoor grill, as is our national custom.

Flags were put out in daylight and taken in, as is also the custom, before evening darkness fell.

CAA did not, this year, participate in any public displays (beside the flags) or observances marking the occasion of Memorial Day.  CAA's observances of Memorial Day were mostly private.  A few words on the subject were exchanged between CAA and Madam-at-Arms, who teases me on my pedantic insistence about what Memorial Day signifies.

(I know some of my Foreign Service colleagues abroad were representing our country in public observances of Memorial Day at some surprisingly far-flung locales.)

Memorial Day has an interesting and distinguished history.  It honors not (at least not any more) the veterans of a particular conflict.  In fact, it is intended not to honor veterans at all, but to allow civilians (and surviving veterans) to honor those who died in our country's wars.

Living veterans have our own day, in November, which is well and just in its way.

So today, privately, I took some time to remember the fallen, those I knew personally and those whom I never had the chance to meet.  I also reflected upon those veterans who survived their wars, returning home, but who have since gone to their final, well-deserved, rest.

Most of the veterans in my generation ("Generation X" as many call it) are still in the prime of their lives, many still serving in uniform.  We served, side-by-side (actually, most of the time we were their leaders, supervisors, or commanders), with the "Millenials" or "Generation Y."

So unlike The Greatest Generation which won World War II, those of us who served in Iraq and Afghanistan will be around for many decades to come, most of us, although eventually we too will no longer be around to celebrate Veterans Day but will, hopefully, still be remembered and honored on Memorial Day.

I hope all (both?) of my readers had good weather over the long weekend, enjoyed a good old-fashioned cookout or two, and in the course of the day itself, spared a thought or prayer for our nation's fallen service members.

Benghazi thoughts

The Benghazi story certainly seems to have heated-up again this week, with three “whistle-blowers” reportedly coming forward to testify before Congress.

CAA has a few thoughts and observations, but first the caveats and digressions.

Caveat #1:  CAA has neither personal involvement nor knowledge about the Benghazi attack, events leading up to it, and the aftermath/cover-up (beyond, that is, what’s available to all from what we like to call “open sources”).

CAA has read the (unclassified) ARB report on Benghazi; CAA assumes there’s (at least one) classified version.  If I can ever allocate some free time and share some thoughts on the ARB report itself, I’ll do so.

There are so many aspects and questions left begging by the Benghazi attack that it’s hard to know where to start.  DiploMad provided a handy list of some of those here.  

--What was that facility meant to do?--Why was it so poorly protected?--Why did the Ambassador go there on September 11 of all dates?--What was he doing there on that date that was so important?--Why did he meet a Turkish diplomat there of all places on that of all dates?--Why was political hack Susan Rice sent out to do the Administration's cover up?--Why was it so hard for the media to "discover"who wrote Rice's talking points?--Why were the people present during the attack not made available for the press or others?--Where was Hillary Clinton throughout this mess?--Where was the President?--What was the President told? What did he say? 

But I have some thoughts I’d like to meander though a bit.

Leading up to the attack, there are several issues.  WTF we were doing at a facility in Benghazi is certainly a relevant question, given that it was not a consulate (no consular services were being provided there so far as anyone can tell) and the U.S. embassy had re-opened in Tripoli subsequent to the fall of Qaddafi’s government.  It’s a good question; what were we doing in Benghazi that was sufficiently important that we had U.S. personnel in a risky security environment, but since I don’t know myself beyond educated guesswork I’ll only address that in a general way.

“The Gee” (or U.S. government) has more than 260 diplomatic posts open abroad at any given time.  Countries with which we have full diplomatic relations generally merit a U.S. embassy headed by an ambassador (although some smaller countries make do with having a U.S. ambassador accredited to them who is actually resident in a neighboring or nearby country).  Important inter-/transnational organizations such as the UN, NATO, or the EU get a U.S. mission, also headed by a U.S. ambassador.  Within quite a few larger countries, or where there are particular economic or historic reasons to do so, there are various consulates and consulates general that fall (almost always) under the authority of a particular U.S. embassy (and U.S. ambassador).  (The differences between a consulate and a consulate general are technical and mostly seem to have to do with a post’s size.)

Many embassies (or consulates/consulates general) will also have consular agencies at locations remote from them where it’s useful to have a sort of branch office to offer consular services to U.S. citizens in that location.

Speaking of branch offices, those sometimes exist, as do “liaison offices,” and a host of other odd facilities mostly having to do with what State likes to call “tenant agencies.”

“Tenant agencies” are simply those U.S. federal agencies which operate overseas under the umbrella (and authority) of a chief of mission (COM; i.e., a U.S. ambassador in charge of a country mission).  In larger missions those can be a virtual alphabet soup as quite a few federal agencies have one international focus or another.  To give some common examples, the FBI, DEA, and the U.S. Marshal Service (USMS) are all law enforcement agencies with a need to station their people abroad, as are several of the agencies which comprise DHS such as ICE or CBP or even USCG (the Coast Guard).

Much of the time, these folks work out of their embassy’s chancery or other office facility on or near the embassy compound.  In other instances, it’s not unusual for a “tenant agency” to have a building or compound of its own.  One example of that is U.S. Embassy Cairo, which has (or used to have) not only a group of folks from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) keeping an eye on potential epidemics but some representatives of the Library of Congress (LOC), presumably on a permanent book-buying mission.  Both of those “tenant agencies” had their own building or compound nowhere near the embassy itself.

So after all that explanation, let’s just say it’s a reasonable enough assumption to make that the “facility” in Benghazi was housing one or more tenant agencies.

(Digression #1 - A detour of thought:  CAA has had a Top Secret clearance or the equivalent for more than 30 years.  It was over 20 years ago when I realized that, on certain subjects, even my educated guesses on certain subjects were, themselves, classified.  So don’t hold your breath waiting for me to get all speculate-y about the purpose of our Benghazi facility.  It either was or was-not a classified activity.  CAA doesn’t work that part of the world currently, isn’t read-onto anything related to the Benghazi facility, and reads many of the same open source articles that you do.  In the absence of any actual knowledge, I’m not going to guess in a public forum.).

Caveat #2 - CAA doesn’t know what the Benghazi facilities’ purpose was.  It might have been classified in nature, but that’s not terribly remarkable by itself either, even in a diplomatic facility.  Classifications and classified activities have to do with national security, which is not limited to military secrets but extends far beyond that to include much of the inside work of diplomacy and international relations.

Digression #2 - Another digression, this one about security classifications, national security, and diplomacy.  In the U.S. government, information is classified at one of three levels, depending upon the degree of damage to national security that its compromise or inadvertent release would cause.  “Unclassified” means simply that and isn’t, technically, a security classification.  The three levels of classification are Confidential. Secret, and Top Secret.

When it comes to deciding who gets to know what about classified matters, there are two principles employed:  level of access (i.e., security clearance) and need-to-know (NTK).  The second principle, when applied in a formal and regulated manner, is what gives us things like “codeword access,” “special access,” and “compartmented information.”

Backtrack a moment to the bit about damaging national security.  CAA isn’t going to go out on a laughably long limb and suggest that national security and security classifications have never been misused to avoid political embarrassment.  That assertion would be silly.

So let’s talk, briefly, about what security was provided in Benghazi before the 9/11/2012 attacks.

Physical security measures (walls, alarm systems, &tc.) required for U.S. diplomatic facilities are fully specced-out by existing law and regulation, in this instance Volume 5 of the 5 series Foreign Affairs Handbook (FAH) or 12 FAH 5.  Whenever physical security doesn't meet those standards, someone at a very high level is on the hook for having signed a waiver or exception, either temporary or permanent.  Hindsight being 20-20, CAA isn't going to sharpshoot those decisions if the procedures themselves were followed, as the ARB (IIRC) suggests they were.

(For those interested in the topic of physical security as it applies to U.S. embassies, I recommend regular visits to The Skeptical Bureaucrat.  TSB worked in that field long before I ever came to it and remained in it long after CAA went off to the consular salt mines.)

But I will suggest that the standards and procedures, if they haven't been already, might need a fresh going-over in light of the Benghazi experience.  And here's why:

Back in the time period leading up to the 1998 bombings of our embassies in Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam, physical security standards at individual embassies were different depending upon the security threat levels for terrorism in that particular country.  So, since Kenya was at that time a Low or Medium Threat (for terrorism) country, our embassy in Nairobi was only believed to require the security measures for a Low/Medium threat.

Nature abhors a vacuum, water flows downhill, and bad actors will seek out more vulnerable targets, whether they are pickpockets, rapists, or international terrorists.  The thing we hadn't yet internalized about international terrorists was just how international they were prepared to be.

So we changed how did things; security standards became more uniform and applied broadly around the world.  This made sense in a couple of other ways too.  Embassies and consulates are big-ticket items with working life-cycles many decades long.  I think a modern office building can expect at least a 60 year life cycle (figure on at least one renovation/refurbishment in that timeframe) and the sort of robust, purpose-built security architecture involved in our embassies probably extends that lifetime to something closer to a century.

So during a 60-100 year building life, it's not unreasonable to predict that security conditions and threat will fluctuate some, and it's really hard to make a building more robust and security decades after you built it.

CAA won't be around to see it, but I fully predict that many of our recently-constructed "fortress embassies" will outlast the countries in which we've built them.

Getting back to Benghazi, the DS bureau is probably taking a serious look at how physical standards were applied in Benghazi and considering whether it's time for another paradigm shift.

That's the physical security piece, in a nutshell.  As for requests for additional security officers (DS agents), DoD security details, and the like, clearly (in hindsight) some of post's requests for additional security should have been approved rather than disapproved or ignored.  Easy to say in hindsight and we've already seen a systemic change within DS as to how those sorts of requests are going to be handled in the future.  Greg Starr, the likely next DS assistant secretary is a retired RSO with long experience in this area and is someone who can, if others don't get in the way, be trusted to make needed changes.

As for those who made the wrong calls, I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of the sort of Employee Efficiency Rating (EER) they're likely to get this year.  But a mistake in judgment is not the same as a crime.  Transfer or retirement may be the appropriate sanctions.

Now, today's testimony before Congress may have answered some questions (and raised even more) about what happened when, who made what decisions to act or refrain from action, and so forth.  The testimony went on for several hours so I expect the transcripts will amount to a considerable vein of information that will be mined extensively, and blogged-to-death, over the next few days.

Some CAA opinions:  First, CAA was never so embarrassed as an FSO as when then-SecState Clinton said:

"What difference, at this point, does it make?"

Up to that point, CAA (no Clinton partisan he) would honestly state that Sec. Clinton's tenure at the Department had not been so bad as he'd feared, that she had done some good things (her positive interest in the welfare of American citizens abroad was widely known and remarked-upon in consular circles), and that while some of her policy focus went beyond what's passed as traditional diplomacy (women's issues, LGBT, &tc.) that shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone.

That was then.  After her it-just-doesn't matter rant, I couldn't really say that anymore.  The true Clinton colors had been unfurled from mothballs and political viability and presidential electability was again the name of the game.

We shall see what we shall see, in the coming months and years.

How difficult is the FS Hiring Process

Some brief comments I jotted in response to an email inquiry:

The FSOT (which was the FSWE when I joined the FS) is not, per se, difficult.  Doing 100 pushups, swimming a mile, or running a marathon is difficult.  

But I'm being somewhat coy:  what's difficult is doing well on the FSOT.  The top 20 percent (or thereabouts) scorers are skimmed-off to advance to the next step, which is currently the QEP.  The QEP was instituted subsequent to my entry into the FS so it's something of a mystery to me.   

As for the FSOA or "Oral Examination," that is, like the FSOT, not particularly "difficult" but it is difficult to do very well.  By the time an FS candidate advances to the FSOA, they are competing at a level where very minimal differences in their "performance" will make drastic differences in their ultimate FSOA score.  In other words, all the Lake Woebegoners are above average.  So the relative differences, despite what the scores might suggest, are going to be pretty marginal.

Service versus Sacrifice & Remembering someone I never met, FSO Anne Smedinghoff

This post, my first in some time, is going to ramble a bit, without much in the way of internal structure or logic.  Deal with it.  Or not.

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We lost another colleague the other day.

And we lost three comrades-in-arms at the same time.

They did not sacrifice their lives.

And if any of us sacrificed their lives, well, then we're doing it wrong.

Because that's not what it's about.

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Service members in (and out of) uniform do make sacrifices, let there be no misunderstanding.

They undergo stressful and difficult selection and training processes, go to uncomfortable places, deal with often hostile natives, get fed crappy food, miss children's/spouses'/parents' birthdays (and anniversaries, first-words/steps, &tc.), are under-compensated (no matter how you measure it), endure sub-standard housing and living conditions in unhealthy climates.... you get the idea.

(And that's not even mentioning all the shots and immunizations just to get out of the country in the first place.)

Sure, not all the time and certainly not in every assignment, on either the military or the FS sides of the ledger.  Still, those are the sacrifices you knowingly and willingly make for your country, for your comrades and colleagues, for the missions and causes America has committed itself towards.

But you do have a big bullseye painted on your back; you're representing, for good or ill, the United States of America.  So to America's enemies, you will always represent, at the very least, a target-of-opportunity.

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Uniformed service members know the risks.  So do diplomats.  But we take them because we believe in what we're doing.  We believe that, to our country, the missions on which we are sent are sufficiently important that taking those risks is justified.

The Foreign Service, FSOs and specialists combined, is only about the size of an Army (or Marine Corps) division, if that.  So when one of us gets killed, there's generally only one-or-two degrees of separation between us.  A second-tour entry-level officer like Anne Smedinghoff would have only been in the Foreign Service for three years or so; some initial training at the Foreign Service Institute, language training perhaps, two years at her first post (Caracas, Venezuela), perhaps some (more?) language training before going to Kabul, and most of a year there, so far.

And in that time she had A-100 classmates and FSI instructors, colleagues in two countries; it quickly adds up to hundreds of people within the State Department.  And there aren't that many more than 13,000 Foreign Service Officers (i.e., "generalists") and Foreign Service Specialists altogether.  So if you're currently in the Foreign Service, you either knew Anne (I didn't), know people who knew her (several), or know people who know people who knew Anne (dozens and scores, at least).

Going back to the parallel I made above, about the entire Foreign Service being only about the size of a division, when a fellow soldier in your division dies you know about it.

Maybe you didn't know him or her but you know you trod a lot of the same ground.  Your families shopped in the same stores.  You probably ate in the same fast food joints, cafeterias, or restaurants.  To say nothing of frequenting the same bars.  A death at that level of contrasting proximity and distance gives you pause, gives your spouse some added stress and tears, and makes you hug your kids a little tighter.

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Of Madam-at-Arms' words on the subject, the less said the better.  For all my perverse pride in in being a plain-talking, straight-shooting consular officer, she's much more of a plain-speaker than I am.

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Since I didn't know Anne Smedinghoff personally (it's possible we passed in the hallways at FSI or elsewhere, or sat at the same cafeteria table in either of those places), I'm not going to spend a lot of time extolling her dedication, fine qualities, and such.  By all reports (and you should read them), she had all of that in full measure and I'm proud to have been her (distant) colleague.  My sympathies go out to her family, not least because when I think of them I think of my own family back home, and what they would go through in similar circumstances.

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One FSO out of a Foreign Service of only 13,400 (more-or-less) put into the context of a military comprising roughly 1.4 million uniformed personnel means 100 deaths being an equivalent loss.

One hundred dead.  I don't think we've had that many losses on a single day of warfare since 9/11.  (Someone will correct me if I'm wrong.)

For those unhappy with the amount of press this one death has gotten by comparison to most individual military deaths, well, I get it.  I truly do.  It made me a little angry, as a veteran (and I'm an FSO as well).  But for the press it is a novelty, it's someone who the media's Kabul contingent will likely have known personally.

Add to that the kind of elite education Anne Smedinghoff had (which I'm not criticizing, it's a good thing that we have well-educated diplomats and I think rather well of Johns Hopkins' international relations programs) makes her someone whom our media elites feel just a little more kinship to compared to most of our uniformed folks, for good or ill.

In case I was being opaque, this is much more a criticism of our national press and editorial corps than of any of our country's services, military or un-military.

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Unlike Benghazi (four dead), there's a lot more clarity about how these four deaths happened, at least from the macro level.  Bad guys (most likely Taliban, even though they're taking credit for it and trusting their press releases is a sucker's game) hit a convoy (or two convoys converging or passing one another) that was taking books to donate them to a school.  FSO Smedinghoff was the assistant public affairs officer going along to deliver the books and probably make sure some good photography or video of the handover got in the can.

Because while the fact of the books themselves is important, it's just as important to let people know that books are getting to schools, and that it's the United States (and allies) that is making this happen.

No, I'm not kidding.  Good media coverage of accomplishments multiplies the good you accomplish; it's as simple as that.  If we're going to do this sort of thing in a place like Afghanistan, we have to make every success count, in as many ways as we can.

I don't have a problem with the United States providing books to an Afghan school, far from it, granting for the sake of argument that the books themselves are useful ones.  And you shouldn't have a problem with that either.  (If there's a country out there that could use more help educating its next generation than Afghanistan, I'd like to hear about it.)

I'm generally quite open (being a fairly skeptical sort of contrarian) to discussions about whether the U.S. ought to be in the business of nation-building in general, or whether (and how) that ought to be done (by us) in Afghanistan, but not today or even for the rest of the week.

This week, more than usual, it's just a little too personal a question.  Just as it is the other 51 weeks of the year when people talk about supporting the troops but not believing in the mission (whether that's Afghanistan or Iraq or Vietnam or Franistan).

Military members (and their families) have, as the saying goes, "skin in the game."  U.S. diplomats (and their loved ones) do too.