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PRESIDENT’S VIEWSThe Foreign Service Tradition of Dissent and ServiceBY DAN GEISLERAt the annual Foreign Service Dayluncheon at the State Departmentlast May, Admiral William J. Crowe,former chairman of tire Joint Chiefsof Staff and former U.S. ambassadorto die Court of St. James’s, praisedthe Foreign Service tradition of offer ing constructive dissent. This tradi tion, he said, made Foreign Serviceofficers invaluable to him as chief ofmission in London.For more than 30 years, AFSAhas supported constructive dissentin the Foreign Service. We don’t seedissent as an option; it is a profes sional obligation. Political leadersdeserve the Foreign Service’s bestjudgment on foreign policy issues,whether they agree with us or not. Inthis decade alone, Foreign Serviceofficers have dissented on policyissues in countries as diverse asBosnia, Cuba and Ireland.During the ferment of the VietnamWar years, the Department of Stateestablished die Secretary’s OpenForum for discussion of alternativepolicy views and the Dissent Channelfor disagreement with existing policy.In the same era, in 1967, AFSA estab lished three annual awards for junior,mid-level and senior officers.The award for junior officers isnamed after W. Averell Harriman,whose distinguished career includedservice as governor of New York andsecretary of Commerce, as well asmany high-ranking foreign affairsDan Geisler is president of the Amer ican Foreign Service Association.We don t seedissent as anoption; it is aprofessionalobligation.posts. He served as ambassador to theSoviet Union and die UnitedKingdom as well as under secretary ofState for Political Affairs. Harriman,who encouraged career officers tooffer their frank views, endowed theaward through a family foundation.A dynamic lawyer from theMidwest, William R. Rivldn, broughtpassion for truth and fairness to thetask of representing the United Statesin Luxembourg from 1962 to 1965and tiien in Senegal, where he wasfelled by a heart attack in 1967. TheRivkin family provides support fordie mid-level dissent award, which ispresented each year by AmbassadorRivkins widow.In 1969 family and friends ofChristian A. Herter, former governorof Massachusetts and secretary ofState from 1959 to 1961, arrangedsupport for the award to a seniorFSO. The award encourages officersto speak out with their best andfrankest advice, regardless of careerconsequences.AFSA gives three additionalannual awards for service. In 1982the wife of Averell Harriman,Pamela Harriman, established theAvis Bohlen Award in memory ofthe spouse of Charles E. Bohlen,ambassador to France from 1962 to1968. The award recognizes aForeign Service family member forvolunteer service.In 1990, Foreign Service officemanagement specialists — thenknown as secretaries — asked AFSAto establish an award. The DelavanAward was created with fundingfrom the Delavan Foundation,established by the parents of AnnHarrop, spouse of AmbassadorWilliam C. Harrop.Finally, Jon Clements, presidentof Clements & Co. Insurance, in1994 funded a new award for com munity liaison officers. The M.Juanita Guess Award honors thememory of Jon Clements’ mother,who in her role with the companyworked with many CLOs.In addition to these awards, eachyear since 1995 AFSA has given anAward for Lifetime Contributions toAmerican Diplomacy. This yearCyrus Vance, secretary of State in theCarter Administration, will receivetlie award. A profile of Vance appearsin this issue; Journal coverage ofother award winners will appear inthe July-August issue.AFSA salutes this year’s winnersand thanks once again the generousdonors who make the awardspossible. JUNE 1999/FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL5

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LETTERSAre FS Deaths “Normal”?RetiredAmbassadorHumeHoran has spoken out on the deathsof Foreign Service personnel servingoverseas during the last threedecades, with particular reference tothe bombing of our embassies inNairobi and Dar es Salaam(“Letters,” Oct. 1998). There isanotheraspecttothetragic deaths, whether caused by ter rorist attack or accident, of these andother U.S. personnel serving over seas. By accident, I mean the missedapproach at Dubrovnik and theshootdown of two unarmed U.S.Army Blackhawk helicopters overnorthern Iraq on April 14, 1994 bytwo U.S. Air Force F-15 fighters dur ing Operation Provide Comfort, theeffort to protect the Kurdish popula tion. In the Iraqi accident 26 militaryand one civilian, my late wife andveteran FSO, Barbara Schell, servingas the POLAD, were killed instanta neously.In a 1996 doctoral dissertation inorganizational behavior (due to bepublished this spring by thePrinceton University Press), Lt. Col.Scott Snook, now teaching at WestPoint and himself a victim of friendlyThe Foreign Service Journal welcomesyour signed letters to the editor. Pleasemail letters to the Journal, 2101 E St.,NW, Washington, D.C., 20037; fax to(202) 338-8244; or send via e-mail tojoumal@afsa.org. Letters, which aresubject to editing should include fidlname, title anil post, address and day time telejihone number.fire during the invasion of Grenada,has carefully dissected the thousandsof pages of the official Air Forceinvestigation into the causes of theIraq accident and the Uniform Codeof Military Justice reviews thatfollowed.DespitesubsequentOSI/GAO findings that over 70 indi vidual errors contributed to thisaccident, Snooks conclusion isprofoundly disturbing.He writes that he kept looking fora smoking gun: “Instead, two yearsof inquiry confirmed my original sus picions. There weren’t any bad guys;hence, no one to blame. Thereweren’t any catastrophic failures ofmaterial or equipment; hence, noth ing to fix. No gross negligence or actof God caused this tragedy. Themore I looked for traditional cul prits, the more I realized that thisaccident occurred not becausesomething extraordinary had hap pened, but rather just the opposite.This accident happened because, orperhaps in spite of everyone behav ing just the way we would expectthem to behave, just the way theorywould predict. . Indeed, this acci dent was normal. It was normalbecause it occurred as the result ofnormal people behaving in normalways in normal organizations.”As Snook observes, “There aresome powerful messages” in theseattacks and accidents for the politicaland military leadership: amongstthem the possibility that the complex ity of these military/diplomaticoperations exceeds the capacity ofindividuals, groups or organizations tounderstand and react to the threat orthreats in a timely fashion.John Gallup Laylin, Jr.Germ en Louron, FranceNo Self-Satisfaction, PleaseMark Sawchuk’s article on formerAssistant Secretary of State forDemocracy, Human Rights andLabor John Shattuck (Dec. 1998) wasdisturbing. The Foreign ServiceJournal should not be used for uncrit ical fluff pieces that lay claim toadministration legacies in unsettledand controversial areas. There ismuch that is disputable about thisadministration’s contributions tohumanitarian intervention.In Central Africa, for instance,what passes for policy is drivenless by current realities than guilt overpast blunders — blunders which con tributed to the deaths of hundreds ofthousands of Africans. The after shocks of 1994 continue to shake localcommunities and compromise ourcurrent peacemaking efforts in theregion. Thanks to our muddle, diplo mats who muck this pit of developingworld “politics” get their professionalsatisfaction from personal successescounted infrequendy and one at atime. The shoulder-mounted betacams prominent in the Journal’s photoof Shattuck in Bosnia are in no oneswork kit here. And no one is baskingin self-satisfaction either.In “Shattuck’s World” the scatteredblood may be weeks old and dry, buthere in the real world it’s warm andsticky. At post in Prague, AmbassadorJUNE 1999/FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL7

LETTERSShattuck will find himself in the samefix as his chief of mission colleagues— already hampered by waning U.S.influence and further burdened byrepresenting an administration whichrelies on shifting principles.Perhaps unwittingly, Sawchuksummed up this administrations reallegacy in the opening paragraph thatdescribedAssistantSecretaryShattuck’s viewing the warehouse inSrebrenica widi astonishment. Wasthe astonishment at the killing?Or that yet another declaration of“profound (fill in the blank)” wasinsufficient to deter what manyforetold?Terry NickelsonForeign Service spouseKinshasaHow We Use InformationAFSA President Dan Geisler’seditorial in the January FSJ, “TwoChallenges for Diplomacy,” struck adeeply suppressed thought that Isuspect many in my professionshare.As noted in his commentary, thedepartment has gone through sever al iterations of information manage ment reform with meaningful butpainfully slow results. Whether it bethe well-intentioned programs of the’80s to put Wang minicomputers inembassies around the world or threereorganizations of the InformationManagement Bureau in the depart ment or tile latest answer to all prob lems: Y2K preparation and modern ization under the ALMA programs,the end product never lives up to thepromise. Despite the long-lastingimprovements of the latter efforts,they too will fail as long as we ignoretile core problem: information andhow we use it.Geisler correctly states, “The roleof the Foreign Service today is tofish out the important facts and8trends from die data streams thatflow around us. We don’t just gatherinformation, we manage it with aneye to developing U.S. foreign poli cy.” However, I disagree with thealmost generic statement that “theForeign Service lacks modem infor mation management tools.”Before we start talking aboutbetter tools for the job, we needto have a better understanding ofthe jo

NEW LIFE INSURANCE PREMIUMS RATES (Bi-Weekly rates per 1,000 of coverage) EMPLOYEE COVERAGE DEPENDENT COVERAGE FEGLI FEGLI FEGLI FEGLI Age WAEPA Basic Option A Option B WAEPA Option C 25 2.3c 15.5c 3.0c 3.1c 5.4c 30 2.6c 15.5c 3.0c 3.5C 5.4c 35 3.1c 15