re: "LEAVE THE BUREAU OF CONSULAR AFFAIRS IN THE STATE DEPARTMENT"

Mark Stout at War On The Rocks ("people who know what they are talking about") provided a well-reasoned argument for his conclusion.

Money quote(s):

"The question of who gets a visa to visit the United States has been a security issue at least since the country was seized by the fear of infiltration by German spies during World War I. In this era of terrorism and Trump, it has come to be one of the foremost security issues of our day. For a century now, the State Department has been at the center of the process, in coordination with various U.S. intelligence services. Recently, however, the Trump administration floated the idea of moving the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs to the Department of Homeland Security as part of the overall effort to restructure the federal government. Given the present political climate and the fact that Carl C. Risch, the person soon to be nominated to head the Bureau of Consular Affairs, once proposed moving the visa function to the Department of Homeland Security, the change seems to be a serious possibility. However, this move is a bad idea. It would endanger services vital to the protection of Americans abroad while doing nothing to protect Americans at home against terrorists or other malefactors."

Dr. Stout backs up that strong introduction with strong arguments.

"To begin with, there is no reason to expect that the Department of Homeland Security could do any better job overseeing the granting of visas than could the State Department. Consular officials take their role seriously and are not known for their flexibility with regard to the rules. Moreover, under an inter-departmental Memorandum of Understanding dating to 2002, the Department of Homeland Security already establishes visa policy, reviews implementation of said policy, and has final say over State Department regulations implementing that policy. So it is not clear why the Department of Homeland Security would do any better adjudicating visas than Foggy Bottom. It is true that there are occasional cases of State Department consular officers being bribed and issuing visas to people who should not have had them. However, the Department of Homeland Security has had corruption problems, too, as has pretty much every other government agency.

In addition, the State Department draws on and contributes to the same watchlist and intelligence databases that the Homeland Security Department does. In fact, the State Department has been working with those databases since before the Department of Homeland Security even existed."

The division of labor at present plays to the two department's respective strengths:  DHS deals with things from within the U.S. and DOS handles the overseas parts.  That's not to imply that those DHS officials who are posted to some of our embassies and consulates don't do superlative and important work, because they absolutely do and we (the U.S.) are lucky to have DHS folks willing to take those assignments.  But that points to the difficulties DHS would be assuming along with the responsibilities of a suddenly worldwide workforce, as Dr. Stout addresses.

"(M)oving Consular Affairs to the Department of Homeland Security would guarantee major problems in recruiting, training, and retaining the necessary people. For starters, the department would have to find a new labor force. Much of Consular Affairs’ work is done by foreign service officers in the consular “cone,” the State Department term for a career field.  However, almost all foreign service officers, whatever their particular field, do a consular tour (usually their first) at an embassy or consulate overseas. A Bureau of Consular Affairs at the Department of Homeland Security will not be able to continue to benefit from that ready State Department labor pool. "

Consular officers are generalist Foreign Service Officers (FSO) with a specific career-track or "cone."  But they are not limited to doing only consular work during their careers, just as FSO generalists in other career tracks/cones (Political, Economic, Management, & Public Diplomacy) sometimes take consular assignments or perform consular duties long after their initial vice consul assignments as junior officers.

CAA, by way of example, has worked outside of his career track during domestic assignments and, while working consular assignments abroad, has covered other portfolios (e.g., Public Diplomacy) in an acting capacity, when a colleague's position was vacant or they were away from post.

Moving the consular functions and personnel to another department eliminates that flexibility and, more importantly for recruiting, evaporates much of the attraction and, for lack of a better word, glamour of the profession.

"I’d expect the Department of Homeland Security to have a hard time staffing the visa lines, let alone protecting Americans. In fact, the State Department itself is having trouble keeping up with rapidly increasing demand for visa adjudicators. Moving Consular Affairs will just dig that hole deeper and make the U.S. government look feckless and disorganized.

Over the longer term, the Department of Homeland Security would face daunting training challenges. Consular officers presently serve two- to three-year tours abroad and require some training before most new postings overseas, which sometimes takes months or even years. This includes language training and area training and familiarization, all functions presently performed by the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute. The Department of Homeland Security would have to duplicate these functions, likely at great cost, or try to negotiate another Memorandum of Understanding with the State Department to buy its students back into the Foreign Service Institute."

There are lots of nuts-and-bolts issues like this that decrease the feasibility of making a move like this, without much in the way of a counter-weighting increase in either efficiency or security.

"(I)t is important to know that the Bureau of Consular Affairs does not just issue visas to non-American visitors and passports to Americans. It is also responsible for “the welfare and protection of U.S. citizens abroad.” This involves a wide variety of functions that require experienced and internationally engaged personnel and institutions. For instance, if an American is thrown in prison abroad, consular officers visit that person regularly to check on his or her welfare, ensure access to legal counsel, attend trials, and provide other services, some of which involve detailed knowledge of the legal and political systems in the country in question. In fiscal year 2015, consular officers made 9425 prison visits. If an American goes missing abroad, consular officers respond to queries from worried family members and work with authorities, media, the Peace Corps, and diplomats from third countries to find the person. Consular officers work with family members to handle those unfortunate cases where Americans die overseas. There were 10,589 such cases in FY15. Children who have been abducted abroad and Americans who get robbed overseas also benefit from the work of this bureau."

Consular officers do all these things.  CAA has done all these things in countries around the world.  Would DHS assume these responsibilities as well or would State retain responsibility for them, only without any longer having the trained staff to perform them?  Would some number of consular officers remain at State as a vestigial Consular Service?  Bear in mind that nearly all of these responsibilities are provided without U.S. citizens having to pay any sort of consular fee, unlike visa, notarial, passport, and other consular services.  The welfare & whereabouts and prison visits, the death and missing persons cases; all of those come out of overhead.  Without the some $3 billion (roughly) in consular fee receipts coming to Consular Affairs, what overhead is that going to come out of and who is going to do it?  

Dr. Stout concluded:

"(I)f the Department of Homeland Security takes over the Bureau of Consular Affairs, it will inherit a wide array of tasks that are related to protecting Americans abroad but not protecting the homeland per se. Many of these duties involve expert knowledge of the country and tasks in question. Defending “the welfare and protection of U.S. citizens abroad” is a mission that at best sits uneasily with the idea of “homeland security” in an agency that has far less particular expertise with overseas affairs."

re: "Sen. Menendez Asks the Consular Affairs Nominee the Questions Y’All Wanna Ask"

Domani Spero at Diplopundit ("an obsessive compulsive observer, diplomatic watcher, and opinionator") has some observations from the SFRC hearing for Assistant Secretary (Designate) Carl Risch.

Mdm. Spero rightly keys on repeated use of the word "currently" with regards to several statements A/S Risch made in response to questions regarding his, er, current views by contrast with his 2002 testimony before Congress.  In that connection, CAA offers an alternative interpretation, that he appends the qualifier "currently" to clearly demarcate his views today with what he believed was the case back in 2002.  In other words that he hasn't changed his mind about the truth and circumstances at that time, but that circumstances and conditions then are no longer the case today.

Lastly, one thing CAA noticed is that, if confirmed, A/S Risch will be the first non-female head of the Consular Affairs bureau in more than three decades!

(The last male in that position was career FSO Diego Cortes Asencio, from 1980-1983.  A/S Asencio bookended his tenure at CA by being U.S. ambassador to Colombia before and to Brazil afterwards.)

re: "State Department Workforce Hopes Tillerson Will Not Sacrifice Mission for Reforms"

Ellen Laipson at World Politics Review ("uncompromising analysis of critical global trends") gives credit, albeit faintly, to the new SecState.  There's also some discussion of the mostly-unsupported recommendation by an outside contractor that passport and visa functions be taken away from the State Department.

Money quote(s):

"It’s also worrisome that the private-sector management consultants who conducted the study offer their recommendations. Many of their ideas are based on employee input, one assumes, but a few seem off the mark in understanding the historical and evolving purpose of American diplomacy. For example, the notion that all passport and visa work should revert to the Department of Homeland Security is a howler. It swings the pendulum way too far in the direction of making security the paramount concern, over the political and cultural benefits of opening our country to diverse cultures and points of view. What’s more, visas are sometimes a diplomatic tool in managing relations with key countries, so stripping the State Department of its lead role would accrue new dangers and costs to U.S. interests."



H/t AFSA.

re: "July 18 SFRC Hearing: Carl Risch to be Assistant Secretary for Consular Affairs"

Domani Spero at Diplopundit keeps the Foreign Service community apprised of important events and developments.

Mr. Risch is coming over from Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) where he was acting Chief of Staff.  He was most-recently the "Field Office Director, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services" at U.S. Embassy Seoul.

On the face of it, despite not coming up-through-the-ranks as a consular officer, he appears an exceptionally-qualified candidate for the position.  He was even, once-upon-a-time, an FSO:

"Mr. Risch who served one tour as a junior officer in Europe in 1999...  took a leave of absence from his law practice to accept an appointment to the United States Foreign Service. Following a year of training in Washington, D.C., Mr. Risch and his wife, Wendy, were assigned to the U.S. Consulate General in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. While in Holland, Mr. Risch managed the Nonimmigrant Visa Unit for 15 months, worked for 3 months at the U.S. Embassy in The Hague, and managed the American Citizen Services Unit in Amsterdam for 7 months.  In May 2002, Mr. Risch resigned from federal service and rejoined his law firm in Carlisle"

According to his 2002 testimony before the Sub-Committee on the Civil Service, Census and Agency Organization of the Committee on Government Reform:

"I interviewed a Tanzanian who wanted to visit the United States. He had only

been in Holland for a few days as a visitor. He could not articulate
a single reason for wanting to visit the United States or even give
a specific geographic destination for his trip. He had no evidence
of employment or other ties to Tanzania or any other country.

I refused his application for failure to prove his qualifications for
a visit to visit the United States. Less than an hour later, a high-
ranking official called me into his office. Apparently, a local VIP
had called to report that he was disappointed to hear that his
neighbor’s safari jeep driver from Tanzania had been denied a visa.

After the State official apologized to the neighbor for any incon-
venience this man caused, I was then directed to issue the visa.
The fact that the applicant did not qualify for a visa under any rea-
sonable interpretation of the Immigration and Nationality Act did
not seem to bother the official. The only thing that mattered was
the diplomatic mission. Only an agency committed to law enforce-
ment and not diplomacy should be trusted with enforcing the laws as intended by Congress."

CAA feels for a first-tour junior officer put in the position Mr. Risch faced.  Where was his first-line supervisor, the visa or consular chief at this post, who should have been providing him top-cover?  This sort of thing is emphatically not how it's supposed to work and at most posts, in CAA's experience, it simply doesn't happen.  Post-9/11, safeguards and procedures such as the worldwide visa referral policy (and a few folks going to jail for abusing that policy) have made the position of even a low-ranking vice consul a lot stronger when it comes to being able to say, respectfully, "No."

CAA has adjudicated visas, both non-immigrant and immigrant, at our overseas embassies in four countries, on three continents, under both political-appointee and career-FSO ambassadors.  I don't know what sort of scared-straight briefings that newly-appointed ambassadors receive during their training before coming to post, but it's effective.  Career-FSO ambassadors know how the system is supposed to work and the political-appointee ambassadors have obviously been advised what a "third rail" sticking their oar into the adjudications process can turn out to be.

My metaphors.  They are self-mixing.

Oh, and I've just got to say it:  Seriously?  A Tanzanian safari-driver?  For realz?

CAA takes a backseat to none in his appreciation for the skills and courage of African safari drivers, but when it comes to one who is just off the plane in a Western capital on their first trip to the First World and then applies for a U.S. visa, absent some major information not presented thus far, CAA would be making the same adjudication decision Mr. Risch did.  The U.S. maintains an embassy and even a visa section in Tanzania and that's where the safari driver should have gone before ever leaving for Amsterdam.

The good news (although perhaps whistling in the dark) is that 2002 was a long time ago and Mr. Risch has obviously had a long and successful USCIS career including working very closely with the Department as part of an embassy country team.  CAA has never served in Seoul, but knows some top consular officers who have, so CAA is hopeful Mr. Risch is familiar and more comfortable with how embassy visa operations ought to be run and are run these days.

re: "Trump White House Reportedly Considering Folding CA and PRM to Homeland Security"

There's a thing where if you miss a committee meeting, the people do _did_ show up assign tasks or other responsibilities to you in your absence.

Domani Spero at Diplopundit ("an obsessive compulsive observer, diplomatic watcher, and opinionator") noticed something like that here.

The Domestic Policy Council which has suggested that the visa and passport functions be transferred from the State Department (along with about $3 billion in fees) to Homeland Security doesn't include in its membership any representative from a certain oldest federal cabinet-level department.  

(The name escapes me, as it apparently did the DPC.)

re: "Should the Visa Function Be Transferred from State to Homeland Security?"

Gary Chodarow at the Chodarow Law Offices ("U.S. & China Visa Law Blog") examined some of the history behind this proposal.

He concluded:

"But it seems to me that the visa function requires balancing the need to facilitate travel and honor diplomatic principles with the law enforcement function of maintaining secure borders. These are functions that a foreign service officer–based on their training and agency culture–may well be better equipped to make than a DHS official."


H/t AFSA.

re: "Transfer Visa Functions to DHS? Who's Listening to Whom?"

Our dear colleague TSB weighed-in the other day on the suggestion of transferring all visa functions to DHS.

"there is a long history of legislation and policy on the question of whether passport and visa functions would be better served if retained with State or transferred to DHS, and so far the decision has been to keep them with State. "

TSB cited and mined some excellent source material (Congressional Research Service report from 2004, which was updated in 2011), including:

"staffing approximately 250 diplomatic and consular posts around the world would stretch DHS beyond its capacity. 

Those who supported retained immigrant adjudications and services in DOJ and visa issuances in DOS point to the specializations that each department brings to the functions. They asserted that the "dual check" system in which both INS and Consular Affairs make their own determinations on whether an alien ultimately enters the United States provides greater security. "

(Note:  Before DHS was established following the 9/11 attacks, the non-DOS part of the visa process resided in the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), which was part of the Department of Justice (DOJ) under the Attorney General.)

And concluded:

"This is far from a done deal, no matter what the Listening Survey reports or what State's reorganization contractor reads in its word clouds. To transfer those functions to DHS the Administration would have to overcome significant bureaucratic and financial barriers, plus, it would just be a bad idea for all the same reasons that Congress already found in the years after 9/11. But that doesn't mean it won't happen all the same."

For reasons most DOS folks will be loath to hear, the Department doesn't have a store of good will banked with the new Administration.  It just doesn't.  CAA just hopes they won't cut off the country's nose to spite the State Department's face.

Ping

Is this thing still on?

Gone But Not Forgotten: SSG Rick Eaton

Gone But Not Forgotten: SSG Rick Eaton

Remembering SSG Rick Eaton

If you read only one thing today, let it be this

If you read only one thing today, let it be this.

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.

Re-Branding DipNote

DipNote, the "U.S. DEPARTMENT of STATE OFFICIAL BLOG," is looking to re-name itself and, towards that end, has solicited in-house suggestions.

Suggestions are due by tomorrow, Friday, November 30, 2012.

GWU/Foggy Bottom questions and observations

Why am I seeing all these Eastern European (female) exotic dancers dragging carry-on bags onto the George Washington University campus?

Also, how come I see so many male GWU students dressed like a cross between early-60's era "Animal House" and Hogwarts extras?  Pledging?

Fanmail

Recently, I had a reader (and prospective FSO candidate) ask me for some input in choosing between the Consular and Polical career tracks (or "cones," as we dinosaurs know them).

With his or her permission, I post the following:

My advice about choosing career tracks (or "cones") is to pick the one in which you think you will be happiest working during the next few decades.

Not everyone actually stays in the FS for a career, but if you're making the effort to join in the first place, that's how you should plan.

Some people give more weight to things like opportunities for rapid advancement (for values of "rapid"), likelihood of becoming an ambassador, &tc.

As for me, as a potential colleague, neighbor, and/or future supervisor, I would rather you picked the cone in which you would not be miserable working year-after-year-after-decade.

Not that there aren't "interfunctional" assignments.  Not that you can't work "out-of-cone" from time to time (although doing too much of that can detract from your chances for promotion).  But you should at least like your home career track.

Your specific questions, on the other hand, were more targeted:  "Please tell me why you enjoy the consular track, and what you feel are the advantages of it over the political track?"

I initially chose Consular because I wanted to be able to help my fellow citizens abroad.  Consular work has not only provided me with ample opportunities to successfully fulfill that ambition but, post-9/11, to materially contribute to national security through the visa process.

Consular officers (similar to MGT cone) also have opportunities to manage/lead people and resources much earlier than do Political or Econ cone officers.

You also stated "I have also read there are more positions for consular FSO's."

That is true in the entry level grades, but may not be true in terms of actual numbers hired.  Virtually every new FSO does at least one year of consular work during one of their first two overseas tours, many of them do two years or even two entire tours of consular work before getting a job in their actual non-Consular career track.  This is simply because, at the entry-level, consular work is where the need for officers is greatest.

But in consular work, like a pyramid, the cone is broadest at the base, among the vice consuls.  That pyramid narrows considerably as it tapers upwards, so that non-Consular FSOs aren't forced to work (or bid on) mid-grade (or higher) Consular positions unless they want to do so.

In Political work, the need is fairly narrow at the entry-level "base" of the cone before bulges outward in the mid-grades.  So most Political career track FSOs have very little opportunity to work in their home "cone" until they reach mid-grade ranks after receiving tenure.  This means they probably spend most of their first four years or so working in either Consular or Management positions.

Hope this helps!

Country Team

"Country Team" is supposed to be more than just a meeting.